Table of Contents

They that Feared the Lord

The Substance of a Letter on Some Present Difficulties

Fruit Bearing

John 15.

The Kingdom in Various Aspects

As Presented in Scripture.

THE KINGDOM

1.

"The Kingdom of Heaven"

"The Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven"

"The Kingdom of God."

The time of the inauguration of the Kingdom.

The Kingdom in its future aspects,

The heavenly part of the Kingdom.

Kingdom of their Father,

Purpose of God in Establishing the Kingdom,

The Mystery.

The Kingdom and the Assembly to be Distinguished.

The Hope of the Assembly

The connection of the Assembly with the Kingdom in Hope.

The Appearing.

No definite link with Time for the Assembly.

The Last Half-week of Daniel's Seventy.

The Beast and Antichrist.

The Heavenly Sources of the Blessedness of the Kingdom.

Inhabitants of the renewed earth,

Government in man's hands.

The King.

The place of the Nation in the Kingdom.

The Millennial Blessing world-wide.

The close of the Kingdom.

The last Enemy that shall be destroyed.

The Eternal State.

The Knowledge of Christ

"Life and the Spirit"

The Lordship of Christ

CBA6103(2).

Love and Obedience

John 14

Canticles 2: 4

Notes of an Address

Christian Obedience the Obedience of Christ

1 Peter 1: 2.

"Why Persecutest Thou Me?"

The Commission to the Disciples

The Reward of the Inheritance

J. A. Trench - Booklets and Articles

John Alfred Trench

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They that Feared the Lord

They that Feared the Lord.

Ephesians 4: 1-7, 2 Timothy 2: 19-22; Revelation 3: 7-14.

Notes of an address by J. A. Trench, Edinburgh, 1891.

(from "An Outline of Sound Words" No. 6, p. 15)

It is of deep importance for our souls that we should be in the intelligence of what God is doing. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. That surely involves the intelligence of His mind. Twice, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, the Apostle is arrested to betake, himself to prayer; first, for intelligence to show us the path, and secondly for power to take the path; and this preparatory to the exhortations of the three last chapters. Do we know, indeed, that our path is set in the light of the glory of God. Our failing walk does not alter it. We find two things that are traceable all through God's Word, His unchangeable principles, and His grace that always keeps a feeble remnant true to Himself to the end of a dispensation.

First, as to His principles; in Ephesians 4: 1 to 7, we find the path set before us; lowliness and meekness are to characterise it. Was there ever a day that such a spirit was more called for? If at the beginning, when all was at its brightest, there was the greatest need for this, how much more now. "Endeavouring" (verse 3) has not the sense here that it has acquired; it does not convey the thought of the possibility of failure, but is more "using diligence" — throwing, all our energies into seeking to realise that wonderful unity formed with all those that are Christ's. Are we really walking in the sense of being united by the Holy Ghost to a risen Man in glory, even our risen Saviour? Are we living in the fresh sense of this, so as to have the consciousness of the relationship through Christ with all those belonging to Him? It is one thing to assent to the truth, and another thing to realise it in our own souls.

But, it may be said, it is difficult to act upon the truth; things are changed since this Epistle was written. Yes, but the principles of God do not change; we are not left to modify Scripture to suit the changed state of things. All the elements of failure were already at work in the Apostle's times. They have received a terrible development since, but we have the Word of God still to guide.

Blessed be God, no ruin has touched His principles. Look at the verses in the Second chapter of the Second Epistle to Timothy. There we read, "Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are His. And, let every one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from iniquity." Blessed word, He knoweth them that are His. You and I may not be able to pick them out — this is His responsibility, I say it reverently; but then comes our responsibility in the verses that follow. These verses apply to the state of a ruined church. First a man is to purge himself from vessels to dishonour; a very full word in the original, implying separating himself.

The second step in the path is, "Flee also youthful lusts." Watch your own heart lest the enemy get in and mock the so-called path of separation. Then, thirdly, we are to seek out those that are similarly separated. Here, again, we are met by another of God's unchanging principles. From Matthew 11 to 19, the Lord was educating and training His disciples for the path in which He was about to leave them. He says, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. 18: 20). There the church was to be found, and it abides in a day of ruin, although not in view of it. It was the richest resource of God from the beginning, and it remains to the end.

I want now to look at another thing — the ways of God in His grace in keeping a few cleaving to His Name in the end of the dispensation. Look at Ezra 3. A day of ruin. but a day of God's grace that opens the way for those who had been in captivity to return to Jerusalem. A very broken company, indeed, but they were there in faith, and set up the altar of the God of Israel, with the most scrupulous adherence to the Word of God, no innovations, no altering to suit altered circumstances. Then, in Nehemiah, when the people wept, they were told, "The joy of the lord is your strength" (Nehemiah 8: 9, 10). What a moment for that principle to be first enunciated in Scripture! The Lord comes in to encourage faith, though sad days were before that remnant during the lapse of centuries.

We have nothing to look forward to but the Lord. We must remember, in referring to these types, that we have nothing to reconstruct, the Holy Ghost having formed the unity of the body of Christ at Pentecost, maintains it in that unity ever since, even if there was but one on earth walking according to it.

Now I refer to the Book of Malachi when there existed a deplorable state of things, for while the Lord can say to Israel, "I have loved you," they reply, "Wherein hast Thou loved us?" and everything that the Lord says is met in the same way, with scoffing. Yet we find a remnant in the midst of this appalling state of things. There were those who, in the face of everything, "feared the Lord" and "spake often one to another" (Mal. 3: 16). The fear of the Lord became a bond to those that loved Him in the midst of the darkest conceivable state of things. It was so sweet to the Lord that He kept a book of remembrance, even when they did not say anything, but only "thought upon His name." The Lord says, they shall be my peculiar treasure.

Again, in Luke 2, after the lapse of centuries we still find the remnant. Look at Anna, in Luke 2: 36 to 38, what cleaving to the Lord was there, even in her great age! Her heart was in the centre of God's interests on earth; and so we find the grace of the Lord still preserving a remnant, for bad as was the state of things in Malachi it was worse here. Pass on to Luke 21, and in verses 1 to 5, we see a beloved woman, in all her desolation, adhering to the centre of God's interests on earth, even at the last moments of the dispensation, for in the next verse we find that the days were coming when not one stone would be left upon another. Here was faith, lovely faith, adhering to God's unchangeable principles to the end.

Now comes the earnest question for us. Is there anything to answer to this in Christendom? This is where the Address to Philadelphia, in Revelation 3, comes in prophetically. As we come near to the close we find the Lord indicating what suits Him in the last state of things on earth. He presents Himself, not now in His official glory, but in His own essential nature, "The holy" and "The true." There are two words used for "true;" it is not here, he that speaks the truth, but He that is true, genuine. Holiness must be the first thing, and then genuineness, reality, unfeigned reality. He uses His power to open the door, and we have the assurance that this open door will continue to the end. Then we have the character of those who are to occupy the open door, "Thou . . . hast kept My word, and hast not denied My Name." They are not characterised by strength, but by keeping His word. Oh, for obedience that having got a word from the Lord acts upon it. Those that do so will find an open door before them. In the presence of the ruin of these last days, nothing but uncompromising obedience will do. Adhering to the unchanged principles of His word to the end, holding fast the precious revelation of Christ in a day when the enemy with all his power will seek to get it from us. He gives us His attitude, and His path, and He looks for the reflection of that attitude. He says "I come quickly." It is not "Behold" here. He is only addressing Himself to those who are awake. He adds, "Hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown."

Then the Lord addresses the overcomer — the one true and faithful to this position upon whom He puts His seal, as with the remnant in Malachi 3. We cannot fail to observe in this verse (Mal. 3: 12) the constant repetition of the little word "My," the sweet association with Him. There can be no addition to that "Hold that fast," and there will be the richest reward in the glory. I feel that the question is unsolved as to who the persons are. Once in the path does not ensure our being there always, even as the remnant lapse back. It does not need centuries for us to do so. What need of girding up of the loins. Out of the brightest state for Christ we may fail, but He will raise up others to the end. He will find what answers to Him until He comes. May we not be satisfied with anything short of this.

The Substance of a Letter on Some Present Difficulties

The Substance of a Letter on Some Present Difficulties.

J. A. Trench.

Not Published.

The fact that a letter to me, from a brother abroad, is being extensively circulated, leads me to present in this way the substance of my reply to him; and I take the opportunity of adding what may seem needed in this use of it, and of noticing some points not raised by his letter, but much dwelt upon by others.

Beloved Brother, — Your letter is of deep concern to me as fresh proof of how much misapprehension, as to the meaning of the few sentences of Mr. R.'s which have been published, has to do with the trouble we are in. For I dismiss for the moment what sisters were reported to you to have said, and what E.C. has written;* to notice the first point in Mr. R.'s own letters (printed by P.A.H.) that you refer to. Of these, you say — "They show a dangerous, radical departure from the truth," quoting Mons. L. — that it is "worse than that of F.W.G." I have looked at the passages objected to, and see nothing, however obscurely expressed, that is not cardinal truth as to the christian position. Nothing, I may say, has astonished me more, in all this sorrowful contention, than that you should call in question that "there is no such thing as responsibility in Christ" (when the context shows what Mr. R. means); and that "the true calling, relationship, and blessings of the Christian belong to the scene and sphere where Christ is" — that is, of course, to heaven — "wholly disconnected from human life down here." I feel I cannot do better than put these distinctions of truth in the words of another to whom we all owe so much: the italics are mine.

Which, I am thankful to say, he has condemned and withdrawn, as far as one who had nothing to do with the circulating of it could be said to withdraw it, having put in print the expression of his sorrow for having written it.

"Jordan represents death, but death looked at rather as the end of human life. . . . The passage of the Red Sea was also death. . . . It was complete redemption, the death and resurrection of Christ in its proper and intrinsic value. But in this aspect it is a complete and finished work, and brings us to God. Not a history of what one may go through in actually arriving at the result. See Ex. 15: 13 & 17; Ex. 19: 4, etc. It was then that the people entered upon their pilgrimage in the wilderness. The wilderness journey after Sinai supposes this christian position taken, but individual reality tested: to this all the 'ifs' of the New Testament apply; that is, to the Christian on the road to the promised land, but with a certain promise of being kept to the end if faith is there. . . . There is no 'if' as to redemption, nor as to our present place in Christ when once we are sealed. Redemption, complete salvation, . . . introduces the Christian into this pilgrimage. With God he only passes through the world as a dry and thirsty land where no water is; still this pilgrimage is but the life down here, although it is the life of the redeemed. But as we have seen there is the heavenly life which goes on at the same time with the wilderness journey. I do not mean at the same instant, but during the same period of our natural life on the earth. It is one thing to pass through this world faithfully or unfaithfully in our daily circumstances under the influence of a better hope; it is another thing to be waging a spiritual warfare as men already dead and risen, as being absolutely not of the world. Both these things are true of the Christian life." (Synopsis on Joshua 3.)

Here then we have the main elements of what has been objected to as Mr. R. expresses it: namely, first our present place in Christ, fruit of God's counsels and work, what is true of us in Christ looked at in its own proper character as a new creation, all things of God, where there is no "if," no question of testing, "no such thing as responsibility;" and this distinguished from our path down here in the circumstances of human life, where, to our deep profit and blessing, the exercises, siftings, and humbling in God's government have fully their place. Then we have what is really involved in this, "the mystic Cluffite division of the life of the Christian," as you call it, but which I believe to be the clear and indisputable division of the Scriptures, of the deepest moment for our souls; namely, that of the heavenly life, and the life of pilgrimage down here. There is no part of Mr. D.'s teaching that he seemed to take more delight in developing, in every possible form, in the later years of his ministry.

In the Synopsis, in the same connexion from which I have been quoting, he goes on to say, "In both Phil. and Col.  the heavenly life is spoken of as a present thing; but there is entire separation, even down here, between the pilgrimage and  the heavenly life itself, though the latter has a powerful influence on the character of our pilgrim life." And this distinction led him on, not to divide the person of Christ, as you say others have been led on by it, but to do that which seems to be the only foundation of the charge — namely, to distinguish in the same way between these two parts of His life. Thus he says, "His life in connection with men, although the ever perfect expression of the effect of His life of heavenly communion and of the divine nature was evidently distinct from it." He states that the influence of the heavenly and divine life "was perfect and entire in His case. . . . The joy of the heavenly life entirely set aside all the motives of the lower life, and leading to the sufferings of His earthly life, produced a life of perfect patience before God. . . . The fact that He was this life, and that for His living it, He had not to die in His death, as we have, to an evil nature, makes it more difficult to realize in His case; but obedience, and He learned what it was, suffering, patience, all referred to His place here; compassion, grace as to His disciples, and all the traits of His life, though divine, and such that He could say, 'The Son of Man who is in heaven' — all were the development of the heavenly and divine life here."

I do not quote more of the passage because it is in the Synopsis, and may be had of Broom & Rouse, in a separate form, entitled: "The sphere of heavenly life," consisting largely of new matter, inserted by Mr. D. in his latest revision of it. But the connexion between the life, as manifested here, and the objects it pursues, is deeply affecting when illustrated, as he opens it out, in the blessed Lord "Himself that life and its manifestation down here in pilgrimage" — referring to Heb. 12: 2.

The conviction is more and more forced upon me, that some of our brethren, through not seeing this distinction between the heavenly life, and the life of pilgrimage in connexion with men, in which it is developed, and this in Christ, as well as in the Christian, have totally misapprehended what has been said, and have gone so far as to charge brethren with heterodoxy and blasphemy, who are as far from it as themselves.*

*As for instance, in a letter of W. J. L., which I have seen since writing the above, abounding with denunciation of this type, he says, "The life of the blessed Lord is divided into two parts . . . . then the Christian's is treated in a similiar way; the upper part being heavenly and eternal in Christ, to which Mr. R. says no responsibility attaches, the lower his pilgrim life, in which he is responsible. This was openly taught last month in Bristol." We have only to refer to the passage from which I have quoted (and to more that will follow), to see that Mr. D. regards the life of the blessed Lord, as so divided, and that of the Christian too.

For myself, beloved brother, you must bear with me, if I say, that I think to bring forward such a charge without substantiation, is a very great wrong, not only to the brother accused, but to the saints in general, because of the subtle character of the questions raised among them in the attempt to prove the charges (of which the pamphlets that have been issued are the witness), and because of the nature of the truths themselves concerned. With foot unshod one could only safely tread such ground, feeling at every step no one knows the Son, but the Father. Here the rash irreverent mind will be betrayed at once. The attempt to trace out the line, in Christ, between the heavenly life, and the lower in connexion with men in which it ever found its perfect expression when He was here, was ground upon which any of us were bound to err. But it has nothing to do with speculations on the union of the Deity and humanity; it need not involve dividing His Person, nor any heresy at root. On the other hand, to deny that there are these two distinct parts of the life of Christ and of the Christian, only betrays the way our superficial minds can slur over the most blessed things presented in the Word. The painful comments, in the pamphlet you referred me to, upon the letter, now condemned by its writer, show how easy it is on such a subject for one who undertakes to correct another, to fall into error himself, even more deeply affecting the inscrutable glory of His Person. But I dare not discuss the point lest I should do the same myself, and have no thought of characterizing its author as he does his brother.

But to return to the main question raised by your letter because of its importance. "Thus also," says Mr. D. as with Christ, so "with the Christian; there is nothing in common between these two spheres of life; and besides nature has no part whatever in that above: in that below there are things which belong to nature and to the world (not in the bad sense of the word "world," but considered as creation); nothing of this enters into the life of Canaan." Later he says — "This way (Jordan) was alike unknown to both [i.e., man, whether innocent or sinful], as was also the heavenly life that follows. This life, in its own effects and the exercises here spoken of, is altogether beyond Jordan. The scenes of spiritual conflict do not belong to man in his life below; though, as we have seen, the realisation of the heavenly things we are brought into acts on the character of our faith down here. . . . No wilderness experience, be it ever so faithful, has anything directly to do with it." Again, I read (for everything we have most certainly learned seems now to be called in question to prove R. wrong, at any rate) — "The wilderness is the character the world takes when we have been redeemed, and where the flesh in us is actually sifted. But death and our entrance into heavenly places, judge the whole nature in which we live in this world;" and "the life of a risen man is not of this world — it has no connection with it. He who possesses this life may pass through the world, and do many things that others do — he eats, works, suffers; but as to his life, and his objects, he is not of the world, even as Christ was not of the world."

So much for the division of the life of the Christian and of Christ, as Mr. D. brings it out in the Synopsis on Joshua; the last edition giving far greater development on this very point than the former ones. But I turn elsewhere. In different papers in "Notes and Comments," he enters specifically into the whole question of our place in Christ, with all that is inseparably connected with it of calling, relationship, and blessing, into which no question of responsibility ever did or could enter, distinguishing this position in every point of view from the tested and responsible path of the Christian here. I open vol. 2, p. 200, and there read

"I am started in my responsible course in this world on the blessed ground of redemption, to reckon myself dead to sin, alive to God, and to yield myself to God as alive from the dead; and a blessed privilege it is to pass through this world, free by redemption, to live to God, and to serve in such a world as this. In the Red Sea we have deliverance, the salvation of God connected with the judgment of evil, dealing with men in either case as belonging to this world; but Jordan is a passing out of the whole condition of responsible man in the world, godly or ungodly. . . . In a word, Jordan is death as ceasing to belong to this world at all, and entering into heavenly places, as belonging to them, with an ascended Christ. The Red Sea is death as redemption and deliverance, leading us to live to God in this world, and 'if' remains. The Red Sea is deliverance into a responsible life in this world, though if life be there we shall reach the goal; Jordan is dying to it and entering into Canaan as united to Christ". P. 209, "Romans says, those who are in Christ (Rom. 8: 1), but it puts us experimentally in the wilderness." At p. 210 "The gift of eternal life and the sealing of the Spirit, lead me into the consciousness of being in Christ, united to Himself now as sitting in heavenly places, and soon to be with Him bearing His image: here there is full present assurance of faith, and assurance of being in Christ — an eternal thing in which we are, and have eternal life, eternal redemption, heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ. De facto we are down here, with a given faith and hope, to pursue our journey towards the thing hoped for — in the wilderness on the footing of redemption, in the wilderness on the footing of responsibility to 'by any means attain,' but having to persevere with promises that faith confides in, power that keeps through faith for the inheritance kept for us, but having to get across," etc.

I call special attention to this last passage, because of W. J. L's. account of what was taught at Bristol. (See the preceding footnote). No fair mind but will admit, that it is precisely what Mr. D. teaches here. For he (as in all this line of truth) divides the Christian's life, and connects eternal life with the position in Christ, a heavenly and eternal thing in which we are; and distinguishes this from our de facto position, down here in pilgrimage, to which responsibility attaches. This passage may also help to the understanding of the expression which has been so much misunderstood, but which Mr. D. also uses in exactly the same connexion, I refer to "mixed condition."

There is in the same volume, "The Red Sea and Jordan," and in Vol. 1, "The Wilderness," all to the same purpose, and which are most helpful on the difference between the heavenly life, and our life of pilgrimage in which it is developed here, by the comparison instituted in great development between the aspects of the christian position as presented in the Epistles. There are interesting letters too, of those published, where the same ground of the truth is taken. He speaks there of "confounding the responsible man with the redeemed man," and lest we should after all suppose with P. A. H's. extraordinary reasoning,* that there can be no responsibility save of the first man carrying with it condemnation, or as in Christ — Mr. D. adds, "Redemption is always absolute and perfect; the responsible man, whether past Jordan or not, tested . . . The wilderness is an usual but not necessary part of God's ways — what the world becomes to those who are redeemed, or stand on that ground, and individually tested if they get to the end, viewed not as in heavenly places, but through redemption on a journey there; for Scripture does so consider us."

*"The responsibility of the first man is set aside wholly at the Cross, gone in Christ's grave. Mr. R. would resuscitate this, and put the believer back again under it, and thus again under wrath and condemnation. According to him, the believer is abstractedly in Christ; really under condemnation and wrath, in sin, and responsible as there," (p. 22). This might pass for complete misapprehension of the character of responsibility Mr. R is looking at, but for where he quotes (page 13) Mr. R. "It (i.e. Romans) is the life of responsibility here, though carried out in divine power," adding, "The statement one would not object to." Is this resuscitating the first man? Or could a life carried out in divine power be under condemnation and wrath?

P.A.H.'s comments on this point are only another sample of the misapprehension, and I fear I must add misrepresentation, that have done so much to disturb the minds of the saints. Putting the Christian by redemption into his responsible, tested path of the wilderness, to be dependent on infallible faithfulness, and power to carry him to the end, is only (for him) to put him back under wrath and condemnation. Not that I doubt for a moment that he or any other Christian, instructed in the Word, would own that there is such responsibility into which redemption introduces us, totally distinct from our place in Christ; and that to connect the latter with the former would be fatal error. But, what then must be felt of the spirit that condemns, as not only destructive of the christian position, but a denial of the finished work of Christ, etc., etc.  - that which, however imperfectly expressed, must, when understood, be admitted to be the truth, and of the last possible importance to the soul as alone giving it stability before God.

It is no part of my object to defend Mr. R., or the almost total absence, in the letters made public, of guarding statements of truth by other parts of the truth equally important; but when called upon to judge what he says, in the letters you quote, as a "dangerous and radical departure from the truth," I must confess I see nothing but the truth, though put out in such a way as to be liable to the grave misconception of his meaning, that such a comment implies.

Thus far the substance of my letter. I may here add that, since writing it, I opened casually the "Christian Friend," (vol. 7, p. 228,) and in notes of an address by Mr. D., I find the main distinction brought out very simply: — "If I am sitting in heavenly places in Christ, there is no one there to pluck me out of His hand; but if I am walking down here, it all depends on my dependence on the faithfulness of God . . . All the 'ifs' in the New Testament come in for the journey; it would be blasphemous to use an 'if' as to salvation" — or, in other words, to connect responsibility with in Christ. "It would be calling in question Christ's work. For the journey, it is a different kind of assurance; it is just as sure, for God has spoken — shall He not do it? But it is not yet accomplished. Hebrews is full of 'ifs;' for we are looked at there, not as in Christ, but as poor feeble things, walking on the earth, and Christ a Priest on high; therefore, all conditions were looked at as finally fatal, if not kept. There are no 'ifs' in Ephesians, because we are looked at there as sitting in heavenly places in Christ. In Colossians it is a hope laid up in heaven. Phil. always takes up salvation as something to come; it looks at justification as a future thing."

There is another point of which much has been made, W. J. L. going so far as to say, in a letter sent me, that it is the root of all that he calls the heresy. I refer to the manifestation of eternal life in Christ to the world. Now, it is no question with any one of a manifestation in the world, putting all under responsibility to receive Him. — John 1: 1-11, 3: 19, 5: 31-40, 15: 22-25. But to press that He was manifested to it is just to overstep the mark of Scripture. Here, again those who have harassed the saints for months by their charges of false doctrine are found to be opposing themselves to precious distinctions of the Word, long since brought out to us. As to this question of manifestation to the world, it would seem impossible for Mr. D. to speak more strongly than he has done, affirming that the glory of the Son has never "been assumed in manifestation at all," and that in this very fact lies the distinctive contrast between His second coming and the first. I quote from Vol. 2 of "Notes and Comments," "For though He came truly in the flesh, He was — not so known save spiritually — none could come to Him, as so come in the flesh, save the Father which had sent Him drew them. John 6: 63. Accordingly He spake and was known in testimony — He was known as the Word by His words; they had the power in which He appeared, to draw to Himself then; "he that heareth my words," etc. It was only spiritually He was known, though He was manifested in the flesh, it was only in the word that He spake that He was received. . . . In a word, as it was hearing the word, and keeping the word which was the sowing of the Son of Man, so it was not manifestation to men, but veiled, and manifested to be the Person (though men ought to have known Him), only to those whose eyes were opened by His word to see Him through the Father's grace. This is argued in John 6, and its principles opened out in John 8 . . . So those, amongst whom Jesus was in the flesh, did in moral fact only see the Son as we see Him now, i.e., the moral character of the perception was the same. . . . His first coming was in witness, though it was indeed the Son; His second coming is in Person, when every eye shall see Him, and the glory of Him who was hidden be known."

On the whole question, as all that has come out and been controverted passes before me, I see nothing beyond what might have been profitably discussed in brotherly confidence among those who study the Word. In this way, when in teaching, the balance of the truth — ever so important but difficult to maintain, for our minds are generally one-sided — seemed to he endangered, it might have been adjusted. What was actually accomplished thus gave hope as to what was yet wanting. "Pretending to accuracy," as Mr. D. has said, "destroys reverence and leads to infidelity;" but, referring to one whom he feared through confidence in his studies, had run into this, he adds significantly, "the worst of consequences would be brethren following him into it even to oppose . . . what I dread is any number of brethren committing all to what many may be incapable of entering into." Apart from all question of Mr. R. and his views, we are face to face with the effect of what was thus deprecated; and it seems to me to be largely due to the deplorable character the controversy has assumed. It is deeply humbling to us that the occasion was found in the defective way things were presented. But, however this may be, the most serious feature of the present movement (next to the scattering of the handful of saints that had been cleaving to the Lord in the unity of His body) is the spirit of opposition that has been excited against a part of the truth that has ever been the most difficult to maintain — because of the demand it makes upon the believer as to man, and the world he once belonged to, and the unceasing hostility of the enemy — even that which gives Christianity its distinctively heavenly character. Only in the growth of the soul spiritually does this side of God's blessed revelation of Himself to us come to be appreciated, as it ministers to and forms this growth. What full development then it needs, in caring for the Lord's beloved people; what careful maintenance of the foundations of the truth of the Christian position, the common platform of the faith of God's elect, when we would bring out, not our entering in, but the deepest and most blessed character of what we enter into. This was lacking, and gave the opportunity, that the enemy only too well knows how to seize against the truth.

The Lord, in His mercy, look upon the many now stumbled, and in danger of being ranged in opposition to truth that otherwise might have become theirs, in the normal growth of the soul under God's gracious culture. He alone is our refuge and resource in humbling ourselves under His mighty hand. The charges that the Person of Christ has been assailed, if true, would rightly stir the truest and deepest sensibilities of the saints. Many, incapable of entering for themselves into what is in question, will believe that being so freely made they must be true. If true, absolute separation from any who would defend them, was the only course to be pursued, in faithfulness to Him. Nothing could be worse than that jealousy for the glory of His Person should be weakened. That rash expressions have been used is admitted in the withdrawal of them, but these, though deeply to be deplored, are not attributable to Mr. R. But when satisfied that there has been no false system, no false doctrine at root, and the conviction is forced upon one that those who have made the charges, have put themselves into the solemn position of false accusers of their brethren, what a state is disclosed; how humbling to us all. The Lord give us, in His great mercy, to take it truly to heart, bowed low in sorrow and shame before Him; while we rest, as in His grace we can, upon the sure accomplishment of His purposes through it all, for His own glory, and the blessing of His people. J. A. T

Copies of this Paper may be obtained from W. K., 17 Arthur Square, Belfast.

Fruit Bearing

Fruit Bearing

John 15.

Notes of an Address by J. A. Trench.

(from "An Outline of Sound Words" No. 12, p. 10)

John 15: 1. In the 15th of John, Jesus contrasts Himself — the true Vine — with another vine which had been familiar to the minds of His disciples, and of which we have frequent mention in the word. We read of it in Psalm 80: 8, and again in Jeremiah 2: 21. Israel was that vine: God had brought that nation out of Egypt and planted them in most favourable circumstances to bring forth fruit unto Him: but though He had planted them wholly a right vine, they have turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto Him. The cause of their doing so we have in Jeremiah 2: 13: "My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water." First, they forsook the LORD, and so, of course, lost, all joy and happiness, and then, as they must have something, they hewed them out cisterns that can hold no water. They turned to the world and tried to find in it what they had lost in forsaking the LORD; but they lost not only their own joy and happiness but also their power of fruit bearing, for we read, '' From Me is thy fruit found," and thus defeated the object for which God had brought them out of Egypt, and planted them in a good land. So Israel, the Old Testament vine, had to be laid aside, and here Jesus sets Himself forth as "the true Vine." He alone ever brought fruit to the Husbandman. The Father never came to seek fruit from Him, without finding in rich abundance that which He sought.

John 15: 2. Jesus not only brought forth fruit Himself, but He is the source of fruit in others. "Every branch in Me that beareth fruit," He says, shewing that the branch must be in Him, the true Vine, in order that it may bring forth fruit. This sentence gives us the key to the passage: it shews us that the union here spoken of is an earthly union, for vines do not grow in heaven, and in heaven there is no fruit bearing in the sense of this passage. The heavenly union of Christ with His body was not yet formed or manifested, for Christ was not yet glorified, and until He was we do not hear of a Head in heaven and members oh earth. Our union then with Christ as members of His body is not here alluded to; that is indissoluble, and independent of us altogether. The union here spoken of may be dissolved, and is dependent upon our abiding in Him.

It may be said, None are disciples, but those who are true. disciples, and as such must bear fruit; but that is a misinterpretation of the word "disciple." In the Bible we read of true and false disciples. If men will call themselves by the Name of Christ and profess to belong to Him, they will be taken on their own profession, and fruit will be sought from thorn. They will have made themselves responsible to bear that fruit to God which can only be borne by abiding in Christ. "Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away;" not "cast forth" as in the sixth verse. The distinction is drawn between the false and true professor; if we, His own beloved ones, cease to bear fruit the husbandman must take us away. This may be done in various ways; it may be by removing us from our position of service for Him, perhaps by laying us on a bed of sickness. There may be also a taking away by temporal life being cut off, which was what happened in the Corinthian church, as we read in Corinthians 11, on account of the manner in which they partook of the Lord's Supper.

"Every branch In Me . . . that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit." Many of the Lord's dear children are dismayed when they find themselves in trial; they get alarmed and troubled and question why it is that now they meet with trials unknown till they became the Lord's children. They overlook the blessed truth revealed to us here, that purging necessarily follows fruit bearing. Only bear a little fruit and you may be sure that the husbandman will not spare the pruning knife. One time when walking round an orchard I remarked a tree unpruned: on asking the gardener why he had neglected it when all the others bore marks of his care, he replied, "That tree is half dead, I have no hopes of it bearing more fruit, so do not think it worth the trouble of pruning." Another day I remarked a tree very closely cut, to my eyes almost ruined, so unsparingly had the knife been used on it. Again I asked the gardener, "Why was this?" "Ah Sir," he replied, "that is my finest tree. I look for more fruit from that tree in autumn than from any other in the garden." Just so you may expect to feel the pruning knife if you are bearing fruit; but remember it is a Father's hand that uses the knife. "If ye endure chastening God dealeth with you as with sons." Will you consent to be treated as a son, or would you miss this proof of sonship, because "no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous?"

John 15: 3-5. "Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in Me." In the first two verses we had the husbandman's part quite independent of us; in the 4th verse we have our responsibility to "abide" in Jesus: words of deepest and most blessed significance. Abiding in Jesus is dependent upon, and connected with, obedience to His word. Jesus kept His disciples clean by keeping them walking in His word, and we learn from this that the way to abide in Jesus is to walk in obedience to His word, learning His will as there revealed to us. Lot us take it as one sole rule of life, so shall we abide in Jesus, and so bring forth much fruit to the glory of God the Father. Seek to maintain a tender heart, and a sensitive conscience — a tender heart that instinctively knows His will, and a sensitive conscience that is aware of the slightest departure from Him.

John 15: 6-8. In the sixth verse there is a change; we read, "If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch." Hitherto, Jesus had been using, to the Eleven, gathered round Him, the word "ye," personally addressing the beloved disciples; but there was a vacant place at the table. Judas, the twelfth, had just left. Already he was on his way to the High Priest's palace, thinking for how many pieces of silver he would sell Jesus, and Jesus knows it. It may be in reference to him. He says, "If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned." But again He personally addresses them in the 7th verse, "If ye abide in Me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." Fruit bearing, we have already seen, is the result of abiding in Jesus: here we have another precious promise and result of abiding in Jesus, namely, "Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you;" and remark here again how closely are connected abiding in Jesus and His words abiding in us. His words, not His commandments, are here mentioned. But does the heart that is abiding in Jesus' love need more than a word from Him, a passing hint of His wishes? No! it is all joy to the faithful heart to find out one little thing it can do to please Him. There are some Christians that know but little of this kind of obedience; the language of their hearts seems to be, "Show me His commands and I will follow them." They would put themselves again under law, and seem to think it a higher place to be a servant under law, than a son under grace; but the truth that characterises this dispensation is sonship. Our Father ever seeks for the service and worship of children only.

John 15: 9, 10. In the 9th verse Jesus tells us the measure of His love to us, even as much as His Father bears to Him, and in the 10th verse He tells us that He abode in the Father's love because He kept His commandments. Would we enjoy uninterruptedly and uncloudedly the sense of the love Jesus bears us, we must keep His commandments. Unbroken communion is another sure result of walking in accordance with the word.

John 15: 11. In the 11th verse, He tells us, "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." "These things;" what things were the source of Jesus' joy? First to be the true Vine that never failed to bring forth fruit to the Father. Secondly, to walk in perfect obedience to His will and thus to have a perfect plea for intercession for His people. Thirdly, to abide in His Father's love by keeping His commandments. "These things" Jesus reveals as the source of His joy — a joy He would share with us; He would have us as full of joy as He was Himself. He says, emphatically, "That My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." Truly to abide in Jesus' love is fulness of joy.

John 15: 12, 13. In the 12th verse He gives us the measure of our love to one another, even the extent of His own love to us. How we fail in this! How often, if we judged ourselves truly, would we find that we loved one another because of some natural amiability, or because we suit each others natural disposition, or because we find each others society agreeable. Does Jesus love us for any of these reasons? Ah! Jesus never found anything in us to attract His love: He loved us when we were enemies, and dead in trespasses and sins, and found no beauty in us, but utter entire loathsomeness; and now that He has cleansed us from our sins, and arrayed us in all His own spotless beauty. He still loves us in the same sovereign way of grace. His love knows no limit, and no partiality. Think you He loves the fruit hearing branches better than the barren ones? Those who bring in much service, you might imagine more merit His love; but such is not His way to love. He loves all alike: the difference being that those who are abiding in His word have a clearer, deeper sense of His love.

John 15: 14, 15. In the 14th verse He shown us that obedience brings us into the wondrous position of being "friends of Jesus." Think of this! What is it to be a friend of Jesus? A friend is one on whom I depend: on whose sympathy I count; to whom I can confide all the secrets of my heart, and disclose the motives of my actions. Such a friend is Jesus to us, and such a friend would He have each of us be to Him. Jesus wants a friend, and He goes to you and asks you to be His friend. Will you be a friend to Him? Then show your willingness by obedience to His will. How can two walk together except they be agreed? And is He not much better able to choose the right way than you are? The difference between my servant and my friend is, that to my servant I give my command without assigning a reason: but to my friend I tell my wishes and also my motives, and this is just how Jesus treats us, as He tells us in the 15th verse. "Henceforth I call you not servants: for the servant knoweth not what His Lord doeth; but I have called you friends: for sill things that I have heard of my Father 1 have made known unto you."

In the 18th and following verses Jesus shows them (the consequence of what He had been telling them) their treatment by the world. He had been telling them that obedience would bring them into the path of much blessing: it would be the source of their fruit bearing; of bringing glory to the Father; the source of successful prayer; of their dwelling in the full enjoyment of His love; of their enjoying brotherly love amongst themselves, and, finally, of their being His friends. In mentioning this last result He would make known to us that not only are we more blessed and happy, by walking in His ways, but that He is the gainer also, for Jesus loves to have the friendship of His people. But He then faithfully reminds them that they cannot be His friends and be loved by the world, "The friendship of the world is enmity to God." Once take Jesus' part against the world and shew yourself to be His friend, and the world will hate you, just as it does Jesus. Just as far as you manifest on whose side you are, so far you may expect it to treat you as it treated Him. Which will you have? Jesus, or the world? You cannot have both. It may be that you will have to meet the world in those nearest and dearest to you. I care not in whom the spirit of the world's opposition may be found, it may be the father, the husband, the brother, the friend you prize most on earth, and you think you must follow their will first. But you have a Father, a husband, a friend in heaven and His will you are bound to follow first. Not first the earthly and then the heavenly, but first the heavenly and then the earthly. His love is a love that had no beginning and can have no ending. "Greater love," He, Himself tells us, "hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." His love has been proved to be limitless. Which of your earthly friends has ever given you such a proof of their love? Would they ever do it? Ah no! Then yield yourselves to Him. Who loves you best; be His friend; walk in His ways, and you will truly find that "His paths drop fatness."

When the world would bid me leave Thee,

Telling me of shame and loss,

Saviour, guard me lest I grieve Thee,

Lest I cease to love Thy cross;

This is treasure

All the rest I count but loss.

The Kingdom in Various Aspects

The Kingdom in Various Aspects

As Presented in Scripture.

J. A. Trench.

THE KINGDOM

In seeking to enter into the mind of God on the subject of the kingdom, or kingdoms, as revealed in His word, we are met at once with a variety of expressions that have to be considered. "The kingdom of God"; "the kingdom of heaven," with "the mysteries" of both; "the kingdom of the Son of man"; "of the Son of his love"; "the kingdom of his Father," and "of their Father" (as of the righteous); "His heavenly kingdom"; "the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ": and all these in the New Testament. These cannot all refer to one and the same thing. And we have long learned by experience that every clear distinction of scripture yields blessing, as we wait upon God for His meaning in it, in the increased apprehension of His mind into which it leads. In humble dependence upon Him by His Spirit to instruct us, this brief sketch of a great subject is attempted. With the hope that it may help in the study of the word on the subjects before us an index is given at the close, of the passages referred to.

1.

"The Kingdom of Heaven"

may be taken up first, as bringing out an aspect of the kingdom which is constantly found in the Gospel of Matthew, and only there. "Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" is the testimony of John the Baptist, and of the Lord Jesus when John's testimony closed; also the twelve, as sent out by Him, were to preach that the kingdom of heaven was at hand: and thus generally it is presented in Matthew 3 - 12. It is the kingdom of Old Testament prophecy, but is given a character by the name "kingdom of the heavens" (as it always is in the original) that it hardly possessed in Old Testament communications, though an expression in Daniel 4: 26, "after that thou shalt have known that the heavens do rule," may have prepared the way for the use of it. It implies that the seat of the authority of the kingdom, when set up, is in the heavens; and thus the rejection of the King, and His sitting at God's right hand is indicated in the title, before that rejection comes out fully, as it does in Matthew 12 and what follows. Already there is the vein of rejection running through Matthew 5 - 7, commonly called the Sermon on the Mount. It brings out the principles that should characterize those who enter into the kingdom when established, and by implication the principles of the kingdom which the Lord was prepared to introduce. See the Beatitudes.

The title is peculiar to Matthew, and gives the dispensational character of the kingdom; and this is so distinctly marked, that when the instruction goes deeper, and involves what is moral, rather than its form in God's dispensation, the "kingdom of God" is used, as in Matt. 6: 33; Matt. 12: 28; Matt. 19: 24; and Matt. 21: 31, 43. The rejection of the King comes first fully before us, in the change in, the Lord's address to the twelve from Matthew 10: 16, and in the circumstances of Matthew 11, when the cities wherein most of His mighty works were done repented not. But in Matthew 12, when the leaders of the nation take counsel how they might destroy Him, and denounce the manifested power of the Spirit of God in Him, in casting out demons, as of Beelzebub, the prince of the demons, the Lord pronounces judgment upon the nation; and, disowning His natural relationships in Israel, He leaves the Jewish house, and goes out by the seaside of nations in Matthew 13 to announce the outward results in the world of a new work, namely, of sowing seed to produce fruit, instead of looking for it any more in Israel; and after this preparatory parable, which is not one of the kingdom of heaven, though the seed sown is the word of it (ver. 19), we are given the wholly new form which the kingdom would take as

"The Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven"

in the six following parables. The first three of these give the external features of it, as to be established in the world by testimony, and are spoken to the multitudes generally. The last three, bringing out the hidden reality in it known to the heart of the Lord, with the interpretation of that of the wheat and tares, are communicated to the disciples privately, in the house. In that of the wheat and tares we find already a mixed state of things in the sphere of the profession. The field is the world, as the Lord distinctly states While men slept the enemy has been at work; and there are in result the children of the wicked one, the tares, introduced among the wheat, the children of the kingdom, and so to be left till the harvest, namely, the end of the age. In the time of the harvest angel reapers, in God's providential ways, were to gather together first the tares, and to bind them in bundles ready to be burned, while the wheat is gathered away out of the field into the heavenly granary. So far the parable: in the interpretation the Lord goes further with the disciples, even to the end of the age, to which we must refer again. In the parable of the mustard seed, that which was sown the least of all seeds becomes a tree, always the symbol in scripture of the great powers of the world: while in the last of the three the kingdom of heaven is likened to leaven hid in three measures of meal, until the whole is leavened. It is the spreading of doctrine as a system through a measured mass, a property that it has as experience proves, affecting numbers besides those who are reached by it in heart and conscience. That leaven, everywhere else in Scripture, is a type of evil is significant of the Lord's estimate of such a state, in that which professes to be His kingdom in His absence.

If these parables were all, we might think that there was little to be found in it of value to the Lord. But in the last three communicated to the disciples we learn of the reality known to Him to be there. The treasure hid in the field for which the Lord with joy sold all that He had and bought the field, would be the whole company of His redeemed that are in the world. The pearl of great price is added to bring out what that special part of them that forms the assembly,* called out now in the time of His rejection, from Pentecost till He comes, is to Him. Seeking goodly pearls, when He had found one that was in His estimation of great price, He sold all that He had and bought it: "He loved the church, and gave himself for it." Lastly, if the net cast into the sea gathers of every kind, the fishermen have for their occupation putting the good into vessels; while as usual the interpretation adds fresh features, and brings us to the end of the age, when angels will be used in carrying out the judgment of God on the bad, as previously so employed, in the interpretation of the tares. Thus would the Lord furnish us with instruction as to the kingdom of heaven, without which we could hardly account for the state of things in which we find ourselves — "things new and old" (ver. 52): for if the thought of the kingdom was from of old, the form it was to take in the rejection of the King, and as now seated in the heavens, was wholly new.

*I only use the word throughout as truer to the original than "church," with all the varied meanings attached to it unknown to Scripture.

But now we must inquire into the relation in which this aspect of the kingdom stands to that which is expressed by a term of much more extended scope,

"The Kingdom of God."

Not that it tells of a different kingdom. It is the kingdom of heaven still, but presented in its moral characteristics rather than in its dispensational form. The passages where the change of expression takes place in Matthew will have prepared us for this. As, for instance, when the Lord says (Matt. 12: 28), "If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come upon you," that is, the moral power of it was displayed in His Person. It could not have been so said of the kingdom of heaven: it was at hand.

A passage often misunderstood helps as to the force of if. (Luke 17: 20.) When the Pharisees asked when the kingdom of God should come, the Lord replied: "The kingdom of God cometh not with outward observation;" namely, in such a manner as to be seen with the eyes. "For, behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you." (New Trans.; Rev. marg. — not surely "within" Pharisees!) Again, it is as manifested in its characteristic traits and power, in Him who was in their midst. Later on, when the kingdom had been actually established by the testimony of the Holy Ghost to Christ risen, and glorified at God's right hand, we learn from 1 Corinthians 4: 20 that it "is not in word, but in power," and from the same apostle in Romans 14: 17 that it "is not in meat and drink; but in righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." It flows from this deeply blessed character of the kingdom of God, that even when Christ was here, and every lovely feature of it was displayed in its perfection in His Person, it needed to be born wholly anew to see it, much more to enter into it when established. (John 3: 3-5.) Only do we enter into it in reality when, by the word applied to our souls in power by the Spirit, we are made partakers of a life and nature suited to such a kingdom.

That it formed part of the testimony of the Lord, as well as in the form of it given in Matthew, we know from such passages as Mark 1: 14, 15; Luke 4: 43: the twelve also and the seventy were sent out to proclaim that it was come nigh. It is, as at present known, the sway of God established by testimony over those reached by the testimony, subjecting us to Him; even as under the form of it, as the kingdom of heaven, it is the subjection of the soul to Christ, as at God's right hand. Hence it is said in Luke 18: 17: "Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein." Both may be taken up in the way of mere profession, as we have seen as to much that is included in the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 13. But when the difference of moral character and dispensational form is comprehended it will be seen that the latter yields itself to this aspect of a professing sphere, rather than the former. Thus only two of the parables in which the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven are contained are applied to the kingdom of God, those of the mustard seed and the leaven (Luke 13; Mark 4), though Mark prefaces these by a parable, peculiar to him, of the sower who leaves the seed to itself to spring and grow up, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear, till the harvest is come, when he intervenes again to put in the sickle. (Mark 4: 26-29.)

The time of the inauguration of the Kingdom.

As to the time of the kingdom being established, we know from the Lord's words as to John the Baptist that it had not been in his time. For, although he was greater in privilege than all the prophets who had gone before him, as coming nearer to the King in Person, the least in it when actually come was greater than he. (Matt. 11: 7-11; Luke 7: 26-28.) "The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every one presseth into it" (Luke 16: 16), another form of the expression used as to the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 11: 12, where, "from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." For the testimony of it, in either aspect, was putting every one to the test. It involved the path of a Christ rejected out of the world, where self must be denied and the cross taken up, that He may be followed, and that in the teeth of the opposition of every principle of man and his world. It needed the holy energy of faith to break through every obstacle, to be wholly for Him whose claim on His own was absolute. That the time of it was not yet, while the Lord was on earth, is plain from the parable He gave when nigh to Jerusalem (Luke 19: 11), when they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear; also from that of the fig-tree and all the trees in Luke 21: 29-31, "When they now shoot forth," etc., "So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand."

Having formed such a full part of the Lord's instruction before His death, He still speaks of the things pertaining to it when risen from the dead. (Acts 1: 3.) And at last we find it formally inaugurated by the testimony of the Holy Ghost come down at Pentecost to Jesus, raised up of God and exalted by His right hand, made of God both Lord and Christ. (Acts 2: 33-36.) In its dispensational character, Peter had been given the keys of it by the Lord in Matthew 16, which he uses to open it to the Jews in Acts 2 and to the Gentiles in Acts 10 Philip preached the things concerning the kingdom of God in Samaria (Acts 8: 12), as Paul did at Ephesus till all they of Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus. (Acts 19: 8.) And he became the great exponent of its principles, not only there (Acts 20: 25), but also at Rome. (Acts 28: 23, 31.) Apart from him, indeed, it forms no part of the actual testimony of any given us in Acts, save that of Philip at Samaria. Not that it was not established in the most real way, but the great subject of the testimony of all as they went from province to province and from city to city was Christ, and His death, resurrection and ascension; and to this the power of the Holy Ghost gave effect in souls, subjecting them to the confession of His name, and thus the kingdom was formed and spread. Nor is it otherwise in the epistles. Besides the two passages already quoted from 1 Corinthians and Romans, not many will be found that speak of it in its present form. It was not the subject of testimony in the teaching of the apostles, any more than what is given us of their preaching; although every fresh soul brought to bow to Christ by the gospel was introduced into it, the sphere of it being thus continually extended.

The believer in the most blessed way has been delivered from the power of darkness and translated into it, and that as the kingdom of the Son of His love, an expression which only occurs in Colossians 1. It gives us the thought of the deep interest of the Father in that which is so directly connected with the glory of the Son whom the Father loves, and of our part in a kingdom of such precious associations, for Him and for us. Again, it is not a different kingdom, but a special character it has, enhancing the blessedness of being of it and in it. Paul, too, can speak of his fellow-workers unto the kingdom of God in the same epistle. (Col. 4: 11)

In Revelation 1: 5, 6, the moment He is presented as the faithful witness, looking back to what He was on earth — the first-born from the dead in resurrection, and prince of the kings of the earth in millennial glory yet to come — our hearts go out to Him who "loves us, and has washed us from our sins in his own blood, and has made us a kingdom," and also "priests unto his God and Father;" while John himself speaks out of his present conscious companionship with others, in the tribulation, and kingdom, and patience of Jesus Christ (ver. 9) — things that go together as long as it is the kingdom of Him who has been rejected out of the world. But it will not always have this character, hence his attitude of patience, reflecting that of the blessed Lord on high.

2.

This leads us on naturally to the second part of our subject,

The Kingdom in its future aspects,

when it will be no longer a question of the mysteries of a kingdom, either of heaven or of God, established by testimony, and embracing as its sphere all who profess to receive the testimony (though in reality only those who have been born, by the testimony reaching heart and conscience in the power of the Spirit); but when it will be set up in manifested power and glory with both its heavenly and earthly parts.

Of the earthly side of it the Old Testament, in the Psalms and prophets especially, is full. The heavenly side of it was as yet unrevealed, though doubtless there were those who by faith, like Abraham who looked for the city that hath foundations, rose above earthly promise and hope to that which is heavenly. (Heb. 11: 16.) But a heavenly portion for His people was among "the secret things that belong unto the Lord our God: those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever," as Moses speaks. (Deut. 29: 29.) The things that were revealed pointed clearly to a kingdom to be set up in power upon earth, to embrace the whole world within its scope, as in Ps. 22: 27, 28; Ps. 72; Dan. 2: 44; Dan. 7: 13, 14. But the same testimony of the prophets is decisive, that judgment, world-wide in its bearing, will be necessary to clear the scene for the shining in of the glory of Christ in such a kingdom.

Not by the gospel, or any such testimony of long-suffering and grace on the part of God, will Israel and the nations be reached. "The Lord is known by the judgment which he executeth." (Ps. 9: 16.) "When thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness." (Isa. 26: 9) "Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the Lord, until the day that I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce wrath: for all the earth shall be devoured by the fire of my jealousy. For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent." (Zeph. 3: 8, 9) But, first, we must turn to the New Testament for

The heavenly part of the Kingdom.

We can well believe that it was not possible that the moral traits and power of the kingdom were perfectly manifested in Him, who alone had come down out of heaven — "even the Son of man who is in heaven" (and that while speaking to Nicodemus on earth) — without something of the heavenly side of it being expressed, and that so as to leave the impression of what was heavenly more and more upon those who had to do with Him. There was, besides, the direct teaching of the Lord. Already in "The Lord's Prayer" (so called), both in the form of it given in Matthew and that in Luke, He directs the hearts of His disciples to the Father's kingdom, "Father . . . . thy kingdom come"; while on the earthly side of it, in Matthew at least, they are taught to look for the Father's will to be done as in heaven so on the earth (see R.V. Matt. 6: 10), in the same whole-hearted, joyful obedience.

This double aspect of the kingdom in the future comes out clearly, in the interpretation of the parable of the wheat and tares" in Matthew 13, already alluded to. For while the parable left the tares gathered on the field in bundles to be burned, the wheat being gathered out of it into the barn (ver. 30), the interpretation (vers. 36-43) occupies us chiefly with the end of the age; when the Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all scandals, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the

Kingdom of their Father,

so that the kingdom divides into these two parts: the kingdom of the Father in which the righteous are displayed in heavenly glory and the kingdom of the Son of man, of which they are heirs. In that heavenly side of it, "my Father's kingdom," the Lord looks forward to the renewal of His joy with the true remnant of His people in Matthew 26: 29, though the parallel passage (Luke 22: 16) contemplates rather the kingdom then about to be brought in in grace, as we have it now.

Again, the Mount of Transfiguration, as presented in Luke 9: 29-36, must have strongly impressed the chosen witnesses, with a character of the kingdom beyond anything prophesied of it in the Old Testament. For it was not only "the Son of man coming in his kingdom" that was portrayed there, as in Matthew; nor "the kingdom of God come with power," as in Mark, both belonging to the future. But in Luke there is another side of it. They saw the kingdom of God indeed in a very bright gleam of the coming glory of it; they saw His glory and heavenly saints who appeared in glory. But that passed — the time was not yet when it could be established. Still there was what remained; as the cloud of the excellent glory overshadowed them, and they entered into it, to hear such a voice from it saying, "This is my beloved Son; hear him." Jesus remained to them, revealed in a glory of His Person, deeper than all that could be manifested in the day of the glory of the kingdom — the perfect object of the Father's delight. This is the heavenly side of the kingdom, and is closely connected with the Father's house, in the abiding and eternal joy of it, though this last is apart from and above all dispensation. Thus they had the word of prophecy the more confirmed, as we know from 2 Peter 1: 19; if there was what went beyond the scope of prophecy in the glory of the Lord Jesus revealed there.

And what we have seen of the Mount of Transfiguration is quite characteristic of Luke; as Jewish and earthly hope recedes through the rejection of Christ, though not one word of promise will fail of its ultimate accomplishment, what is heavenly and eternal comes into view. Luke 12 opens the heavens to faith, before the whole scene of man's responsibility under law and grace closes in judgment in Luke 13. The kingdom is connected with the Father's counsels in verse 32, "it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom," even as it is "His kingdom" we are set to seek in verse 31 (reading thus, with New Trans. and R.V.); and accordingly their hearts are directed to a treasure in the heavens (ver. 33) and to the heavenly side of the Lord's coming by the "parable" (ver. 41) of verses 36 and 37, as shown by the blessed result to the watchers, "Verily I say unto you, that he shall gird himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them." For this is the rich reward of watching for Him, whether He comes in the second watch or in the third: He will bring us into the Father's house and minister to us the richest joys of it for ever — and what untold joy will be found in having Him to minister it to us, the blessed Lord finding thus the occasion to serve the objects of His love, when we might have thought the need and possibility of His service was over for ever. There is another side of the Christian's life intimately connected with true watching, namely, that of active service; to which the Lord passes on in reply to Peter, as to the application of the parable, "Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh, shall find so doing. Of a truth I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath." That is in the day of the kingdom. Both ought to be characteristic of the Christian; but the reward of the watcher is as high above that of the doer as heaven is above the earth, which expresses the relative estimate of these things for the heart of the Lord.

Association with Christ, in both parts of His kingdom, was to be the portion of those who had continued with Him in His temptations in Luke 22: 28. For I suppose that eating and drinking at His table in His kingdom (ver. 30) would be entering into His joy; while on the earthly side of it they would "sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." But it was not only when Christ was here that temptations, or what we now speak of as testing, lay on the path for those who follow Him. "We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God" (Acts 14: 22), which enables us to understand how all the persecutions and tribulations the Thessalonians were enduring, in patience and faith, was a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God; that they had been counted worthy of the kingdom of God for which they suffered (2 Thess. 1: 4, 5). If the unrighteous shall not inherit it (1 Cor. 6: 9, 10; Gal. 5: 21; Eph. 5: 5: where it is both "the kingdom of God and of Christ"), "Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?" (James 2: 5.) How well we may be "exhorted and comforted and charged" by the beloved Apostle, "as a father doth his children, that ye would walk worthy of God, who hath called us unto His kingdom and glory" (1 Thess. 2: 12) — "a kingdom that cannot be shaken," that we receive (Heb. 12: 28), when all things that are made, not the earth only, but also heaven will be shaken to their removal, according to His promise. In his last epistle Paul looks with confidence to the Lord to be preserved unto His heavenly kingdom (2 Tim. 4: 18), which indeed is "the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ," for it will never pass away, or pass to another; into which an entrance will be ministered abundantly to those who give diligence to make their calling and election sure. (2 Peter 1: 10, 11.)

We have thus looked at the main passages in the gospels and epistles, in which the kingdom in its heavenly part, in various connections, is brought before us. But there are others, in which it may not be specifically named, but which instruct us as to the

Purpose of God in Establishing the Kingdom,

and thus help to enlarge our apprehension of the all-important place it has in the ways of God. Thus it is of deepest interest to learn that it is the answer of God, according to His predeterminate counsel, to the lowly grace and humiliation in which His Son came to carry out all His will, and to the world's rejection of Him as thus humbling Himself. Psalm 2 already presents Him as exciting the rage of the nations  -  their kings and rulers gathered together against Jehovah, and against His Christ. But they can only "do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done." "Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: Jehovah hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession"; though it is to "break them with a rod of iron; and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." And the kings are warned to come to terms with Him while it is still possible.

Psalm 8 carries us further; for the Spirit's interpretation in Hebrews 2 gives us the answer to the question of the psalm, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the Son of man, that thou visitest him?" It is Christ made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honour, and set over God's works. "For unto the angels hath he not put in subjection the habitable world to come," of which the apostle speaks. (See Heb. 2: 6.) "Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet," so that to have this place of destined supremacy for man He had to become man; though not for that alone, but "that he by the grace of God should taste death for everything." By another quotation of the psalm in 1 Corinthians 15: 27 we learn how absolute is the subjection of all things to Him that is spoken of in it; for the only exception is He who subjects them to Him, although we see not yet the accomplishment of this. Other psalms might be referred to, but Psalm 110 enters into the argument of the apostle in 1 Corinthians 15: "For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet." His place of universal supremacy as man seems a little distinct from all hostile power being subjugated to Him, and this psalm is evidently referred to which says: "Sit thou at my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool."

This then characterises the whole time of the kingdom — God subjecting everything to Christ. Psalm 91 beautifully grounds His exaltation upon His devotedness. "Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name." (Ver. 14.) In the Gospel of John: "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand." (John 3: 35.) In John 5: 20 et seq. it flows from the same place He has in His Father's love, that He has determined that, if the lowly place He took, and that was necessary to carry out His Father's will, exposed Him to be despised and rejected of men, all men shall "honour the Son, even as they honour the Father." Hence besides His life-giving title as the Son, all judgment has been committed to Him, because He is the Son of man — the very form in which He was disowned and dishonoured.

The same truth of the connection between the place He is set in, and the infinite humiliation He came into in the accomplishment of the divine will, could not be more fully stated than in Philippians 2: the exaltation of verse 9 and following is directly founded upon it. Emptying Himself as God, humbling Himself as man to become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (vers. 6-8), forms the ground of verse 9: "Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow," and not only of the heavens and earth, but even of the infernal regions, and "that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

The Mystery.

The revelation of the mystery comes in to confirm what we have seen in the fullest way, bringing out the universal headship of Christ, as nowhere in the Old Testament, save as Psalm 8 supplies a connecting link. For in Ephesians 1, when first the believer is given to know the place he has had individually in Christ in the eternal counsels of God, in complacency, sonship and acceptance — God satisfying Himself in the character of the blessing unfolded to us — He counts upon having those who will be interested in His counsels for the glory of Christ, in whom we have been so blessed; and in all wisdom and prudence He makes known to us the mystery of His will concerning Him: that in view of the dispensation of the fulness of times, when the purpose, for which the ages of time were set in motion, has been reached, He would head up all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. That is then the object of God in the kingdom, though it may be only seen to be fully accomplished at its close. It is the furthest reach of God's government in time, and discloses Christ as the centre and object of the eternal counsels of God in the establishment of it, and all "to the praise of his glory." (Ver. 14.) "The fulness of times" doubtless carries us on to the end of the millennial reign, which discloses Christ set at the head of everything in heaven and earth.

That this revelation, of God's eternal purpose as to Christ, is intimately connected with the place of the assembly, which is the subject of the mystery in every other passage, may be seen in verse 11. For when all things are thus headed up in Christ by God, we are found to be heirs in Him of the whole inheritance of glory: the very next thought is "in whom we also have obtained an inheritance," or, for it is one word in the original, "we have been made heirs."* And before the chapter closes that which was shadowed forth in the first Adam, set at the head of everything on earth, and who was given Eve to share the position with him, is seen to be gloriously realized in the last Adam: Christ, raised from the dead and set at His own right hand in the heavenlies, above all principality and power, and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come; "and he hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the assembly, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all." Thus He, too, has His heavenly Eve, the heir and sharer with Him of the whole inheritance of glory, as His body and His bride.

*It is to be deplored that the Revisers of 1881, doubtless through failing to grasp the peculiar position of the assembly and its entire distinctness from Israel, have here missed the point of the passage and translated, "made a heritage." That Israel stood in this relationship to Jehovah is continually found in the Old Testament. Deut. 4: 20; Deut. 9: 26, 29; Deut. 32: 9; 1 Kings 8: 5 1; Psalm 33: 12, "the people that he hath chosen for his own inheritance." So Jeremiah often. (Jer. 10: 16; Jer. 12: 7, etc.) On the contrary, we are His heirs — "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." (Rom. 8: 17; Gal. 4: 7.) See Ephesians 1: 14 where, before the time comes for Christ to take the inheritance, redemption being put forth in power to the purchased possession and we inherit it in Him, the Spirit who has sealed us for God, is for us the earnest of the glorious inheritance. If we were God's heritage there would be no room for the idea and fact of an earnest — the earnest would not be for us, but for God — an impossible thought. If it be supposed that verse 18, "the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints," involves that the saints are His inheritance, we have only to turn to Daniel 7 to see the aptness and force of the expression. When the Son of man comes to the Ancient of days (vers. 13, 14), and there was given Him dominion, etc., and He is found to be the Ancient of days Himself who comes in verse 22, the saints of the high or heavenly places take and possess the kingdom. (Vers. 18-22.) That is, He formally enters into possession by putting the saints into possession. So the purchased possession, of which we are heirs, can be beautifully characterized as the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and becomes one of the three subjects of knowledge for which the apostle prays for us: (1) His calling in what is infinitely above us according to verses 3-7; (2) the glory of the inheritance according to verses 10, 11, in what stretches out in indefinable glory (Eph. 3: 18) below us, and (3) the power (ver. 19) that has put us into the calling and made us heirs of the inheritance.

We see, too, how the heading up in Christ of all things has had its commencement: He has already become Head over all things to the assembly; the assembly stands to Him in that relationship as its Head, besides owning Him in the Headship over all things which belongs to Him, though we see not yet all things put under Him. But there is His own personal supremacy besides, according to 1 Peter 3: 22, "Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him," which took effect when He ascended. It is blessed to see that thus no thought of God fails of its full accomplishment: if man fails, and has failed, in every position in which God ever set him up, all will be found made good and sustained in Christ as man to God's everlasting glory.

The Kingdom and the Assembly to be Distinguished.

It is very important for our souls to see that the assembly is never identified or confounded with the kingdom. In the age to come it will be associated with the king, as we have seen. "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him" (2 Tim. 2: 12). Any connection of the assembly with the world in rule or government now would be the worst unfaithfulness to its calling, Christ being rejected. But when He takes to Himself His great power and reigns, it flows out of the assembly's nearness of relationship to Him, as united to Him as its Head, that its association with Him in His kingdom will be complete. In the measure in which the truth of the mystery has been apprehended, and the assembly known to be wholly heavenly in its origin and calling, relationships and hope — the fruit of God's eternal purpose — it will be seen how entirely distinct it is from the kingdom in its present form; though while the assembly is here, those who compose it are in the kingdom too. It must be said, while the assembly is here, because the parable of the wheat and tares has shown us the wheat gathered into the barn, while yet it remains for the Son of man to send forth His angels to gather out of His kingdom all that offends; so that the kingdom overlaps the assembly.

Another consideration flows from the revelation, through Paul, of the place of the assembly, that the kingdom in its present aspect is not so much in the forefront of the apostolic teaching. The great present work of the Spirit of God is taking out of the nations a people for the name of His Son (as Peter declared, Acts 15: 14), who belong to Him, in heavenly relationship, according to the counsels of eternity. It is not a work that belongs to the history, or ages, of the world in any way, though now being carried out on earth; hence time does not count in it. The assembly belongs to that remarkable parenthesis in time that comes in between the sixty-ninth and the opening of the seventieth week of Daniel's prophecy (Dan. 9: 24). Hence

The Hope of the Assembly

is not the yet future kingdom; although, as we have seen, the assembly is so intimately connected with Him who is the King that every interest of His is hers, even before the day that she is called to reign with Him. The king Himself (though it is not in this relationship she belongs to Him — He is never spoken of as king of the assembly) is her hope. The kingdom is Israel's proper hope; hence the Old Testament closes with the arising of the Sun of righteousness, even as Elijah must precede the great and terrible day of the Lord. (Mal. 4: 2.) The New Testament closes with the bright and morning Star; if every promise for Israel and the earth is secured in Him who is the root as well as the offspring of David. But it is not such Jewish relationships that touch the affections of the Bride. The morning star belongs only to those who watch through the night, and is Christ, as we know Him in heavenly glory, and as coming for us — no sign to be looked for — before He rises as the Sun. The moment the Lord presents Himself as such the answer of her heart is immediate, "the Spirit and the bride say, Come," and we are given the whole range of her interests, because they are His, in the rest of the verse. The hope of the assembly, then, is the coming of the Lord Himself to receive her to Himself for the Father's house, before He comes to reign. It need not be sought for, at least as formally distinguished from the latter aspect of His coming, save through the apostle by whom her distinct place according to the counsels of divine love is revealed. Save that, when thus revealed, we can look back in the light of the revelation and see how fully it was before the heart of the Lord, specially in His closing intercourse with those who were to form the nucleus of the assembly; and this to satisfy His own heart, as in John 14: 2, 3, and John 17: 24. In the Epistles to the Thessalonians, believed to be the earliest of Paul's writings, we have the revelation of the heavenly side of the Lord's coming, which when revealed is found to run through the whole warp and woof of the assembly's constitution, ingrained as it were into the Christian life; and this, by the way it is assumed and implied, even when not specifically stated, as, for instance, in 2 Cor. 5: 2, 4, 9; 1 Cor. 11: 26, 1 Cor. 15: 23, 51; Eph. 5: 27; Phil. 3: 20; Heb. 9: 28; Matt. 25: 10, 13; Rev. 3: 10, Rev. 12: 5, and other passages.

The connection of the Assembly with the Kingdom in Hope.

There is a connection we have with the kingdom, as we are now looking at it, in the coming day of glory, which has still to be noted. It is the sphere of reward for individual saints and servants, to which their responsible path here looks forward. Thus in the teaching of the gospels, in Matthew 5: 10-12, the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are declared blessed in being persecuted for righteousness: reward in heaven, rather, being presented to those reproached and persecuted for Christ's sake. Reward indeed is never an adequate motive for the saint, but is set before faith — as an encouragement in being true to the Lord; and on the other hand there will be the loss of it where there is unfaithfulness — the kingdom being specially the sphere wherein cognizance will be taken of both by the Lord, and that as the result of manifestation at His judgment-seat. (See 2 Cor. 5: 10; 1 Cor. 3: 13-15, 1 Cor. 17; 4: 5.) Even a cup of cold water given to one of the Lord's little ones in the name of a disciple will not be forgotten in that day. (Matt. 10: 42.) What a Lord we have to serve! who but He would think of recognising anything of such little account? It is when the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels that He will reward every one according to his works. (Matt. 16: 27; Rev. 22: 12.) Thus it would be "in the regeneration" (or "times of restitution of all things," as it is called in Acts 3: 21), when the Son of man should sit on the throne of His glory, that those who had followed Him in His rejection should sit upon thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel, if many that are first should be last, and the last first. (Matt. 19: 28.) Rule over many things, which involves the kingdom, is the appointed portion of the faithful servants in Matthew 25, as well as entering into the joy of the Lord. (Compare Luke 12: 42 and following.) The parable of the pounds in Luke 19 specifies authority over ten and five cities for the servants, according to the quality of their service — "faithful in a very little."

The Appearing.

All this prepares us for the place, that the aspect of the Lord's coming, known as His revelation (1 Cor. 1: 1), manifestation (Col. 3: 4), or coming (1 Thess. 3: 13), the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1: 6), and appearing in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, has, as bearing upon the responsible walk and service of the people of God. It is with a view to the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, "who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession," and which in its times God shall show, that the apostle urges Timothy (1 Tim. 6: 13-16) to faithfulness in the charge committed to him; as also in the second epistle, where it is a question of the exercise of his ministry, while yet there was an ear for the truth, he is solemnly charged to preach the word and be instant in season and out of season, and so on; as "before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom." Even as the apostle, with the consciousness of having fought a good fight and kept the faith, loved the thought of it for himself, and knew that there was laid up for him, in view of that day, a crown of righteousness, which the Lord the righteous judge should give him, and not to him only, but unto all that love His appearing. (2 Tim. 4) To Titus, in relation to the duty of servants towards their masters, he characterises it as "that blessed hope, even the appearing of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ," for which we are set to look under divine training. Thus while our hearts rest in the hope of the Lord's coming for the assembly, in which the counsels of eternity as to her will be accomplished, our responsibilities, as individual Christians and servants of the Lord, connect with the time of manifestation before the judgment-seat of Christ, and His appearing, and kingdom.

No definite link with Time for the Assembly.

Another consequence of the unique place of the assembly as belonging to heaven, though gathered out upon earth, is that there is nothing definitely to connect the moment of its completion, and translation to its own place, with that of the resumption of God's ways with His ancient people, and as preparatory to assuming the direct government of the earth, through the mediatorial kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. We may judge from the analogy of God's ways in the past, that He will not long leave the earth without testimony from Him after the assembly is gone. And this gains support by the fact that the testimony of the disciples to the coming kingdom, when the Lord was upon earth, which was broken off by the Jews' rejection of it, and their consequent scattering amongst the nations, is looked at by the Lord (Matt. 10: 16-23) as to be resumed when Israel is found again in their cities; "For verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come." That the testimony is not to be confined to them we know from Matthew 24: 14: "This gospel of the kingdom" — note, not that of the grace of God or glory of Christ as we now have it — "shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come," "The everlasting gospel" of Revelation 14: 6 may give us the general character of this testimony "to them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people," and help us to distinguish it from the gospel now preached.

In Matthew 25 we are brought to the issue of that testimony, which has been so universal, at least, among the nations outside Christendom, that the reception or rejection of the messengers of it, "these my brethren" (ver. 40), becomes the only point in question when the Son of man comes and sits upon the throne of His glory, and all nations are gathered before Him. It determines the difference between the sheep who enter into the blessedness of the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world and eternal life, and the goats who are cursed and go away into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For the judgment of the living being by Christ in person is as definitive and everlasting in its consequences as the judgment of the dead in Revelation 20, with which it has too often been confounded.

The Last Half-week of Daniel's Seventy.

In Revelation such a testimony from God may cover and include the whole of the last week of Daniel's severity. But there is nothing definitely to mark the commencement of that epoch. So careful is scripture to furnish no date that would connect the assembly with the course of things on earth, either as to the Lord's coming for it or the starting-point of the testimony which is to succeed the assembly's. It is very different with the last half of the seventieth week. The Lord gives us a very unmistakable mark by which that is determined, quoting from the prophet Daniel 9: 27, Daniel 11: 31, in Matthew 24: 15. It is the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place. There may have been before that frightful event the beginning of sorrows (ver. 8); but "then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world, no, nor ever shall be." (Vers. 21, 22.) "Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it," as Jeremiah had testified (Jer. 30: 7): "it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it." And so the Lord speaks of it, as it will affect the Jew in verses 14-20; also indicating that, if sharp, the tribulation would be short. "Except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened." (Ver. 22.)

But that it has a wider application scripture leaves us in no uncertainty. Psalms and prophets alike point to it. See for the latter Amos 5: 18-20; Zephaniah 1: 14, 15.But in Revelation 3: 10 the promise to the overcomer, while still the assembly was on earth, is conclusive. "Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee out of the hour of temptation, which shall come upon the whole habitable world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." To be kept out of the hour of it is to be taken out of time altogether, according to the assembly's hope. See as to those who go through it, Rev. 7: 9-14 proving its universal character; while Revelation 12: 12 tells, at least, of its limited duration. It is variously computed as "time, times and half a time" (Dan. 7: 25, Dan. 12: 7; Rev. 12: 14); "forty-two months" (Rev. 11: 2, Rev. 13: 5); and "twelve hundred and sixty days," specially counted, as to the very days, because of what the witnesses should have to go through in Revelation 11: 3, and of the preservation of the woman (Israel) who brought forth the man-child who had been caught up to God and His throne from the enmity of the dragon, now directed against her and the remnant of her seed. (Rev. 12: 6 and following.) All indicate three years and a half, and evidently the same last half-week of Daniel's seventy.

The period closes with the coming of the Lord, as Matthew 24: 29, 30, tells us. "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory." This brings us to the close of the seventy weeks. See also Revelation 1: 7 as to the effect on the nations when the moment has actually come; very different from the delusions which, conscience being hardened by the progress of providential judgments, ever increasing in intensity, under the seals, trumpets and vials of Revelation, they had buoyed themselves up, saying, "Peace and safety," when sudden destruction was coming upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape. (1 Thess. 5: 2, 3.) Contrast their earlier impressions under the seals (Rev. 6: 16), when they said the great day of His wrath had come, though it had not, and called upon the mountains and rocks to fall on them and hide them from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. But the effect of judgment upon the proud heart of man that will not bow before God is only to harden. (Rev. 16: 9, 10) Providential judgment is over now. The Lord comes to execute the last stroke of judgment in person. But this is to anticipate.

To turn back a little: though it would be impossible in a brief paper to bring forward all the testimonies there are as to what will characterize that fearful time, whether as to the objects of judgment, or the judgments that fall upon them. Daniel must be studied to give us the aspect of things in the East mainly, while Revelation is principally concerned with the West, though neither exclusively.

The Beast and Antichrist.

As to the last, there will be the Satanically revived Roman empire, in the beast, the first of Rev. 13, and given to us in more detail in Rev. 17, with seven heads and ten horns. By its heads it is identified with the various phases the Roman empire of the past has passed through, though now revived in a form in which it never existed before, with a head and ten associated kings. Of these we are told that they had received no kingdom as yet (ver. 12), so that it is in vain to look for them in any past or present distribution of the map of Europe. But besides the first beast of chapter 13, there will be another (ver. 11), with lamb-like horns, but speaking as a dragon. It is plainly Antichrist, who exercises all the power of the first beast in his presence, playing into his hands in the West, at least, by enforcing, on pain of death, the worship of the image of the beast he makes. In the East, we know from 2 Thessalonians 2: 4 et seq., that he sets himself up as the object of worship in the temple of God.

There we learn also that, if the mystery of lawlessness was already at work in the apostle's time, before it could be headed up in this lawless one, whose coming was after the working of Satan (ver. 9), there must be the removal of a hindering thing (ver. 6) and a hindering Person. (Ver. 7.) The first would be, doubtless, the ordered government of the world, "the powers that be that are ordained of God," and that act as a barrier to the full outbreak of the lawless will of man; the second, the presence of the Holy Spirit in the assembly. When the assembly's hope is fulfilled in the coming of the Lord and our gathering together unto Him (ver. 1), the Holy Spirit will be no longer here; the restraint will be removed. "And then shall that lawless one be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the breath of his mouth, and shall bring to nought by the manifestation of his coming." (Ver. 8.) Thus we have Satan's two chief instruments, the Beast and the false prophet; while from Daniel 8 and 11 we know that the ancient struggle between the kings holding territory north and south of Palestine will be renewed, and that land itself will become the battle-field of their contending forces, which will thus bring the last scourge of God — the most terrible that there could be — upon the land, and the nation restored in unbelief.

As to the once professing assembly, all that are Christ's being taken out of it at His coming, it is spued out of His mouth (Rev. 3: 16) as the most nauseous evil ever manifested on earth; for the corruption of the best good must ever be the worst evil. And it becomes the fitting tool of Satan to help to build up, by its corrupt alliance with the world, that masterpiece of his, Babylon. It is the apostasy fully come. (2 Thess. 2: 3.) And there will be the dark, judicial blinding of God, where the light of testimony from Him had been so long maintained. Now, instead of sending the truth, "God shall send men strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." Besides this, there will be the awful display of direct Satanic power: his place found no more in heaven (where, note, it is still), "the great dragon was cast out, the old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels with him . . . . having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." (Rev. 12: 8, 9, 12.) As the result, in Rev. 16: 13, 14, we find unclean spirits issuing from the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet (a Satanic trinity of evil) spirits of demons working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of the great day of God Almighty.

Such are some of the elements of the scene with which the Lord will have to deal when He comes from heaven. For if the forces of the world under Satan are thus arrayed against Him, the Lamb shall overcome them; for He is Lord of lords and King of kings, as we see in the next chapter, Rev. 17: 14: "And they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful, the heavenly saints." The details are given more fully in Rev. 19: 11-21. For He comes to establish His kingdom like David by conquest and judgment,* before He reigns as Solomon in peace. The multitude of the nations gathered together to make war against Him that sat on the horse, and against His army that came with Him from heaven, perish by the sword of Him whose name is called the Word of God — come as such to make good the nature of God by judgment upon all who would not have the full revelation of it in grace — and who treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. "And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone." While Satan who led them was cast bound into the bottomless pit, that he should deceive them no more, till the 1,000 years of the kingdom should be fulfilled.

*And to this character of the exercise of His power belong several passages in the psalms that, mainly by an alternative rendering in the margin rejected by the text, have been used to give a distorted conception of the kingdom when established in peace. I refer to Psalm 18: 44 (2 Sam. 22: 45): Ps. 66: 3; and Ps. 81: 15. (See for the Heb. Deut. 33: 29, "found liars," with marg. "subdued.") The verse that follows in Psalm 18 helps to bring out the force of the expression: it is really as in New Trans., "strangers come cringing unto me." The Hebrew, I quote from Delitzsch, to deny, lie, dissemble, is said here, as frequently, of the enforced submission, which the vanquished show, to the victor. It in no way characterizes the reign of the Lord Jesus.

We may not be able to put together all the passages that, in the Old Testament, foretold such a confederacy of the nations; nor to identify them, and their overthrow, with the later prophecy of Revelation 19. Jerusalem would appear to be the objective in those referred to. And when the Lord was about to resume relations with His ancient people, and Jerusalem would come necessarily into prominence, it is quite enough to account for the assemblage of the nations against it, under Satan's blinding influence. See Ps. 83, Ps. 118: 10 et seq.; Isaiah 17: 12-14; Joel 3: 11-16, compared with ver. 2; also such passages as that referred to already in Zeph. 3: 8; Micah 4: 11; Zech. 14: 2 et seq. (comp. Zech. 12: 2-9), which show, the design of God in thus gathering the nations, and His direct intervention in their destruction.

The ways of God with the nation in connection with these events will have resulted in a remnant of them turning to Him in true repentance, made willing in the day of His power (Ps. 110), as they were not in that of His grace, while the apostate part will be cut off in judgment. Zechariah 13: 8, 9 tells us of them; and of the third part left, who will be brought through the fire and refined as silver and tried as gold, whom the Lord will own as the nation, saying, "It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God." Also Zechariah 12: 10-14 tells of their repentance and its source, when they shall look upon Him whom they have pierced, and mourn and be in bitterness for Him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born.

If there is one last assault of the nations under the Assyrian, the Gog and Magog of Ezekiel 38 (and of other prophecies, ver. 17) and Ezekiel 39, it will be after the Lord has come to Zion and Jerusalem; and by His presence and power manifested on their behalf it comes to its end. (Micah 5: 5.) Warrior judgment when "in righteousness he doth judge and make war" is over, if it may be so distinguished from the sessional judgment which takes place when the day, so long before appointed, has come in the which God "will judge the habitable world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead." Then the Son of man shall come in His glory and sit upon the throne of His glory, and the living nations of the world shall be gathered before Him to receive their judgment; which depends, as we have seen, upon the character of their treatment of the brethren of the king, sent out to them with the warning that the hour of His judgment is come, and that results in those who are counted to have received Him in receiving them, entering into the blessedness of the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world, the rest being sent away to the lake of fire. (Matt. 25: 31-46.)

The Heavenly Sources of the Blessedness of the Kingdom.

We may now be prepared to contemplate the blessedness of such a kingdom, in so far as God has been pleased to reveal it to us, only first looking at it in the heavenly sources of the glory and power of it. The time has come when He to whom all power is given in heaven and earth (Matt. 28: 18), who has so long been set down with His Father in His throne, is to take His place on His own throne. (Rev. 3: 21.) Nothing could help us better to enter into the effect of the point thus reached in the ways of God than the scene opened to John anticipatively in heaven in Rev. 4, 5, when the Lamb has established His title to the inheritance of all things upon which He was about to enter. The Spirit leads on our hearts to the full result in an universe of blessing, before we are given the judgments that were necessary to clear the way for it, as from chapter 6 on. The central object of the whole scene of glory is the "Lamb as slain, in the midst of the throne, and of the living creatures, and in the midst of the elders." His taking the roll out of the right hand of Him who sat upon the throne was the signal for the outburst of the new song of those who formed the nearest circle round the throne: "Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed* to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made them unto our God kings and priests: and they shall reign over the earth." Myriads of angels in outer circles take up the glad refrain, celebrating His power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing; though they cannot sing the song of redemption, nor indeed are ever said to sing in Scripture. And then we have every creature, in heaven, and on the earth, and even beneath the earth's crust, as well as such as are in the sea, in their ordered place and blessing, and celebrating the praises of Him who sits upon the throne, and of the Lamb by whom all was brought in. The attributes of the throne, of which the living creatures are representative, add their Amen, while the elders fall down and worship — their privileged place throughout the book.

*For so it must read, omitting "us" and substituting "them" and "they" for "us" and "we" in verse 10. It is not of themselves they are thinking as the subjects of redemption, absorbed as they are with the glory of Him who wrought it: and this is true worship.

It is to be noted, too, the place that from this out the elders have in connection with the living creatures: the elders are the representatives of all who are Christ's, not only the assembly, but the saints of Old Testament times as well, seen in Rev. 4 enthroned around the throne of God, with kingly crowns and priestly robes: the living creatures are symbolic of the attributes of the throne in government. These have been administered by angels hitherto, in the unseen providential government of the world. Hence angels do not appear in chapter 4: they are at their work. But "unto angels hath he not put in subjection the world to come," of which the apostle speaks in Hebrews 1 and 2. This was reserved for Christ and the heavenly saints associated with Him. Thus the moment the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, is seen, as a slain Lamb, in the midst of the throne, with His undisputed title to all declared, the elders are moved up into association with the living creatures, a place they ever after keep in the book, and angels take their place in outer circles. Christ will henceforth administer the kingdom by the saints; not unseen, as angels had been, but in glorified bodies, everywhere radiating the glory of Christ who is displayed in them, as they carry out the government of His throne.

For in that day the Lord "will be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe." (2 Thess. 1: 10) According to His own wonderful words about us to the Father in John 17, "the glory which thou gavest me I have given them: that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one: and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me." We shall be displayed in the glory of Christ to the astonished world, and do not wait till then to know how dear we are to the Father, for we have heard Him say it, and verse 26 makes full provision for our enjoyment of it now as a present reality. Again, in Colossians 3, if Christ is our life, and we are now hid with Him in God, the moment He is manifested we shall be manifested with Him in glory.

Of this manifestation with Him in glory the remarkable appendix to Revelation, which comes in after the eternal state, but before the book closes, from Rev. 21: 9 to Rev. 22: 5, gives us in symbolic representation the wonderful details. John is shown the bride, the Lamb's wife, as the holy city Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God; and thus to shed the light of that glory on the earthly Jerusalem, and the nations generally, who will walk in the light of it. There is no temple in it, a clear difference between it and the earthly Jerusalem; the whole city is a sanctuary. The throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, thus making it the heavenly metropolis of the kingdom, which the kings and nations own by bringing their glory and honour to (not "into") it. While the assembly preserves its character of grace; for the leaves of the Tree of Life in the midst of it were for the healing of the nations.

How direct is the association of the assembly with the kingdom when it becomes the Lord's. The power and rule over the nations vested in Him according to Psalm 2 He confers on the overcomers in Revelation 2: 26, 27. And in Revelation 3: 21 they are even given to sit with Him in His throne, "even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne." In Revelation 20 we learn that all who are of the first resurrection shall be priests of God and of Christ, and reign with Him a thousand years, which gives us the first full intimation of its destined duration: in the Old Testament this had been only expressed in general terms, as measured by the continuance of the heavenly bodies, the sun and moon, as Ps. 89: 36, 37; Ps. 72: 5, 7, 17.

But there are other passages still that are needed to help us in our apprehension of this great subject. Peace was to characterize the long-expected kingdom according to the abundant testimony of the prophets. The fulfilment of it had been presented to the nation in a Saviour, Christ the Lord, born to them in the city of David; as the heavenly host proclaimed, "Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good pleasure in men." (Luke 2: 11-14.) But He whose coming might have brought in peace was rejected, and the proffered peace taken from the earth (Luke 12: 51) can only be celebrated as to be established in heaven (Luke 19: 38). The fact was, that He, in whom all the fulness was pleased to dwell, had to lay the only possible ground for peace in such a world by the blood of His cross, and so, by Himself, reconcile all things to Himself, whether they be things on earth, or things in heaven. (Col. 1: 19-22.) We know that the reconciliation has begun with the leaders of the revolt — with us who, alone of all His creatures, were alienated from Him in heart, mind and will: "You, that were sometime alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death" — sweetest fruit for us of the wonderful work of redemption, with all its satisfaction for God.

But the moment was come when the reconciliation should be extended to all things, even as He had tasted death for everything. Long had the whole creation groaned and travailed in pain, subjected to this as its lot by the fall of him who had been set at the head of it; but it was "in hope that the creation itself should be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God." (Rom. 8: 19-22.) "The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God." This is the point to which we have been brought according to the wonderful purpose of God. "The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together" (Isa. 40: 5), and we shall be manifested with Him in that glory. It is the occasion of that celebration in heaven recorded for us in Revelation 11 when "there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their thrones, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God, saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned." (Vers. 15-17.)

Now we may turn to contemplate the earthly scene of the kingdom thus established, as the Old Testament presents it to us, in a few passages. And first as to the

Inhabitants of the renewed earth,

the subjects of the kingdom. The first place must be given to the 144,000 of Revelation 14: 1-5, who had gone through the awful time of the ascendancy of the Beasts of Revelation 13: they had endured to the end, not only to be saved into the blessing of the kingdom, but to be specially associated with the Lamb on Mount Zion and have His Father's name written on their foreheads. Redeemed from among men, the firstfruits unto God and the Lamb, they come nearest to the portion of the heavenly saints; they sing the song of heaven though on earth, and not of course in glorified bodies as they of heaven. Those of the true remnant of His people who had been slain for their faithful testimony, whether in the beginning of sorrows (Rev. 6: 9-11) or later on under the severer testing of the last sore troubles, having lost their lives after the assembly was gone and before the kingdom was established in power, get the yet better portion of the heavenly saints, and are found in Rev. 20: 4 — both companies of them (see R.V.) — as of the first resurrection, kept open, as it were, to include them; and instead of being subjects of the kingdom they, as well as the saints that came with Him from heaven, "lived" (because they had been raised from the dead to do so) "and reigned with Christ." (Vers. 5, 6.) In glorified bodies, alike with all who are of that resurrection, they will never have their localised habitation on earth again, but will be available for Christ in the administration of His kingdom, as we have seen.

But to return to the inhabitants of the earth besides those of Revelation 14 there will be the elect remnant, not merely of Judah and Benjamin who had gone through the tribulation, but of the ten tribes who had never had the responsibility of the rejection of Christ, and will be dealt with separately (see Ezek. 20: 30-44) — 144,000 of all the tribes of Israel who are scaled as the servants of God in their foreheads. (Rev. 7: 1-8.) "He shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to another," as the Lord says in Matthew 24: 31. These will form the nation, brought into the enjoyment of the promises made to their fathers, in the land, now to be possessed in the full extent of it, under the new covenant — the characteristic blessings of which are the law written in their hearts, their sins and iniquities remembered no more, and the Spirit poured out upon them. They are blessings with which we are familiar in God's infinite grace; for though not under covenant, and having a far richer portion according to God's everlasting counsels in Christ, all the blessings of the new covenant are ministered unto us by the Spirit. (2 Cor. 3)

Then again, Revelation 7 tells us of a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, who have come out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Doubtless they are the fruit of the testimony, that was to be sent out to the nations outside Christendom, after the assembly was gone: the sheep of Matthew 25, who enter into the blessing of the kingdom as prepared for them from the foundation of the world. Here we learn something of what the blessing is. They have their place "before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple (compare Isa. 66: 21): and he that sitteth on the throne shall tabernacle over them They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall shepherd them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

It is well to have the whole description before us; for coming nearer to the realisation of the kingdom-blessings, as we might expect, it concentrates the light of them more fully perhaps than any one passage of the Old Testament, full and rich as its testimony is as to the world-wide prosperity and peace to be enjoyed under the sceptre of the Lord Jesus Christ. Three things go far to secure this: the manifested glory and power of the throne of the Lord; the Spirit poured out upon all flesh (Joel 2); and the absence of Satan, bound in the bottomless pit. Thus although children are born to the saints that inhabit the earth, all else having been cut off by judgment, and inherit the flesh from their parents in its unchanged evil, there is nothing to act upon the flesh to draw out its evil. Or if, in exceptional cases, there is an outbreak of the will of the flesh, the sceptre of righteousness, that characterises the throne of the Lord, secures its suppression by instant judgment. The sinner being a hundred years old is devoted to judgment, though in the prevailing length of life, dying at that age, he will be accounted a child. (Isa. 65: 20.) Moreover, there will be a standing witness of the consequences of transgression for the warning of others: "They shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh." (Isa. 66: 24.)

There will be no death otherwise in the millennium. "He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces." (Isa. 25: 7, 8.) Those who have died in the Lord — in what past multitudes by grace! — have ceased as a characteristic class; hence their blessedness as a whole is declared, when the number of them is complete, in Revelation 14: 13: "And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow them."*

*This would be special and needed consolation at the moment contemplated in the passage, when those who were dying in the Lord, cut off for their faithful testimony, did so after all that were Christ's had been raised at His coming, and before the kingdom was set up, to which they had borne testimony. It might have seemed that they had lost everything, though, as we have seen, it is their gain, in being raised to form part of the heavenly company who reign with Christ. (Rev. 20: 4.)

Government in man's hands.

But now we must take up a link with the past ways of God, if only to bring out the contrast. Government had been first entrusted to man in Noah, but his fall was immediate and complete through failing to govern himself. There had been the government of the throne of God in Israel, but preferring to be like the nations, God had given them a king after His own heart, in whose seed the kingdom should be established for ever; though meanwhile the trial of royalty in man became a complete failure, in his responsible descendants; and the throne of the world was committed to the Gentiles in Nebuchadnezzar, with apostasy as the result, and the development of its bestial character; and thus the times of the Gentiles began to run their course.

Now at last the government was to be upon the shoulder of a Son, counted to Israel indeed, but "whose name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end." (Isa. 9) "He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give him the throne of his father David." (Luke 1: 32.) Although, as we have seen, when He takes throne He does so by a wider title, even of universal sovereignty as Son of man — "His name made excellent in all the earth." (Ps. 8) "Fairer than the children of men," "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of equity is the sceptre of thy throne. Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." (Ps. 45) Nor are we left in uncertainty as to who these "fellows" are that are so wonderfully associated with Him in the day of His glory: "we are become fellows of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end." (Heb. 3: 14 uses the same word as in Heb. 1: 9 — quoted from the psalm.)

A multitude of passages in the Old Testament set forth the effect of such a government on earth as had never been known, or, but for them, conceived by the heart of man. It may be helpful to put together a few of them under different heads. First, as descriptive of the King and the character of His reign; then of the special place Jerusalem and the nation of Israel have in the kingdom; and lastly, the way the whole earth is brought into the blessing.

The King.

We have already looked at Ps. 2, Ps. 8, Ps. 45.

Psalm 72 gives the character of the rule established: "he shall judge thy people with righteousness" — it is the great prevailing characteristic of the kingdom everywhere — "and thy poor with judgment." The subordinate authorities from the highest to the lowest, too, are in their perfect place — "the mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness." "He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth: in his days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace." The character of the rule He sets before Himself when He receives the kingdom is found in Psalm 101. Isaiah 9 has been referred to. In Isaiah 11 we find the Spirit in seven-fold perfection for government resting upon the Rod out of the stem of Jesse, making Him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge after the sight of His eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of His ears, but with righteousness shall He judge, with the result of peace between animals that naturally would prey on each other, "and a little child shall lead them." "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." In Isaiah 32, "Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes rule in judgment," with results set forth in verses 2-5, and then, with the Spirit brought in as "poured upon us from on high," in verses 15-17, the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, etc.: "Then judgment shall dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field. And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever." In Isaiah 42: 1-4 He is "my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him," and the result — "he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles . . . . and the isles shall wait for his law." See also the connection of Isaiah 61: 1, 2 (quoted by the Lord in Luke 4: 18, 19) in the earthly blessing resulting in the land, when "the day of vengeance of our God" is fulfilled, closing with the remarkable testimony of verse 11. See also Jeremiah 23: 5, 6.

The place of the Nation in the Kingdom.

As to the place the nation, with Jerusalem and Zion, will have in the kingdom, only a few passages out of so many that there are can be referred to. Deuteronomy 15: 6 will not fail of its accomplishment in the supremacy of Israel among the nations, though long deferred through their failure on the ground of responsibility. Then "the Lord shall make thee the head, and not the tail; and thou shalt be above only, and thou shalt not be beneath." "He shall subdue the peoples under us, and the nations under our feet." (Ps. 47: 3. See also Isa. 60: 12-14.) But this will be brought about by the resources of God's sovereign grace, connected with the establishment of royalty in God's king in Zion, when under law and even priesthood they had utterly broken down. See Psalm 78 for the record of their failure, and the place that Judah and Mount Zion and David have at the close as the new ground of the blessing of the people, also Psalm 132: 13 et seq. This is ever the significance of Zion in Scripture. God sets His king there. (Ps. 2) The salvation of Israel is looked for to come out of it (Ps. 14); and Isaiah 66 celebrates the accomplishment of it. In the psalms that follow the introduction of the king in Psalm 45 (as, for instance, (Ps. 48: 2), Zion is the joy of the whole earth, the city of the great king. (See also vers. 8, 11, 12.) Again, out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined. (Ps. 50: 2.) "In that day, that the Lord shall punish the host of the high ones on high, and the kings of the earth upon the earth. . . . The Lord of hosts shall reign in mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously." (Isa. 24: 21, etc.) "There shall the mountain of the Lord's house be established, and out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." (Isa. 2: 2, 3; Micah 4: 1-3; Zeph. 3: 14-20.)

Morally it will be as new heavens and a new earth, when the Lord creates Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a joy. "And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people: and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying." (Isa. 65: 17-19 and following.) All that love and mourn for her are called to rejoice with her, and be delighted in the abundance of her glory, in Isaiah 66. (Compare Jer. 32: 39-42; Jer. 33: 7-16.) No language can exceed in beauty the consequent effects set forth in Isaiah 60 - 62, when it can be said, "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee," following upon Isaiah 59: 20, when the Redeemer comes to Zion and to them that turn from transgression in Jacob. "Thy people also shall be all righteous: they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified." (Isa. 60: 21.)

The blessing of the nation will rest upon the new covenant, to be made with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. But it will not be according to the covenant made with their fathers, when the law was imposed on the flesh that was contrary to it. It will be put in their inward parts and written in their hearts: there Will be no more need of teaching every man his neighbour and brother, saying, Know the Lord, "for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." (Jer. 31: 31-34.) The subjective change wrought in them, when gathered out of the countries wherein they had been scattered and brought into their land, is further expressed in Ezekiel 11: 19, 20: "I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh: that they may walk in my statutes," etc.; while Ezekiel 36: 25-27 adds the Spirit put within them as the power to enable them to do so: and see the following verses, for the blessed work of repentance and establishment resulting — they shall remember their own evil ways and shall loathe themselves in their own sight for their iniquities and abominations. And thus morally cleansed, their waste cities should be built and inhabited, and the land that was desolate become as the garden of Eden. Nor shall they be two nations, for in chapter 37: 22 the Lord says: "I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all." (See Ezek. 34: 23-31.) One blessed consequence is, that the guilty wanderings of the people are over for ever, and this according to the covenant of the Lord with them. (Isa. 59: 21. See also Ezek. 14: 11; Ezek. 39: 7, 29.)

The Millennial Blessing world-wide.

It is not easy to divide between the blessing of Israel and their land, and the world-wide aspect of it. they are so closely connected. For, as we learn from Romans 11: 12, "If the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?" "Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the whole earth with fruit." (Isa. 27: 6.) Compare the call of grace (Isa. 45: 22), "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth," with the answer to it, and the way of its accomplishment in Isa. 49: 6: "It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the ends of the earth." (Also Isa. 52: 9, 10)

Thus, if as we have seen (Isa. 2) the house of God will be there, it will be the centre of the world's worship. So Isa. 66: 23, "from one new moon to another . . . . shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord." It is the house of prayer for all nations. (Isa. 56: 7; see (Ps. 22: 27, Ps. 48: 9, 10 and Ps. 86: 9.) And this will be enforced by judgment. (Zech. 14: 16-21.) "At that time" Jeremiah witnesses "they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the Lord," no more to walk after the imaginations of their evil heart. (Jer. 3: 17.) Psalms 96 - 100 celebrate the universality and glory of the kingdom, following on the moral restoration of Israel in Psalm 95; also Psalm 145 and the closing hallelujah psalms: "Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord." But other testimonies abound. As long ago as Numbers 14: 21 we find Jehovah pledges Himself — "As truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord." (See Hab. 2: 14; Isa. 40: 5.) "Blessed be his glorious name for ever: and let the whole earth be filled with his glory" (Ps. 72: 19) closes "the prayers of David the Son of Jesse," for what more could he ask for? But now we must pass on from the fulness of testimony, to what the world will be when the kingdom of it becomes the Lord's, and everything is subdued to Him — the whole created universe owning His rightful sway — to see what scripture tells us of its close.

The close of the Kingdom.

It would be a mistake to build anything upon the types, apart from the doctrine of the word. But in the light of what we learn from scripture of what takes place on earth at the close, it is surely significant that, in Numbers 29, where from verse 12 we have the offerings on the occasion of the feast of tabernacles, which were to be the expression of joy and worship on earth when every word of promise had been fulfilled and blessing spread everywhere, there are marks of decline. Beginning with an outburst of joy that was almost perfect on the first day — thirteen bullocks (besides the two rams and fourteen lambs that remained the same throughout)  - there was a steady decline in man's appreciation of the blessing during the ordinary seven days of the duration of the feast; for the bullocks dropped down by one each day to seven on the seventh day, God securing this testimony of its completeness on His part to the end. The eighth day would give what was apart from the earthly blessing, leading into what was heavenly and eternal.

What then does the word testify as to what is before the world, after the enjoyment in undisturbed peace of ten centuries of blessing under the sceptre of the Lord Jesus? It would be a terrible surprise if we had not learned what the heart of the flesh is towards God in the cross.

First, as to the action of God, whose voice at Sinai had shaken the earth but now we learn from Hebrews 12: 26, 27 that "He hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this yet once more signifieth the removal of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain" — that would be the heavenly side of the kingdom which we have received. (Ver. 28.) How unaccountable it seems, without further testimony as to the causes of it, that this is what is before the earth and the heavens connected with it,* after it had been the scene of the magnificent display of the glory of God, made good and maintained throughout the kingdom by the Son of man, everything in heaven and earth having been subjected to Him.

*It may be noted also, because it has been a difficulty to some, that heaven is used in at least three ways. There is the atmospheric heaven that is necessary to life on the earth: thus, "the heavens and the earth" go to make up one complete sphere of existence. (See Gen. 1: 1; Gen. 2: 1, 4; 2 Peter 3: 5, etc. These are shaken and removed, as in Hebrews 12: "kept in store reserved unto fire against the day of judgment," etc. (2 Peter 3: 7, 12); and give place to new heavens and a new earth (ver. 13), such as we see in Revelation 21: 1-8. They are not two distinct spheres but one, in which God dwells with the redeemed for ever. But there is besides the heaven of God's throne, and government of the earth. Here the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan among them. (Job 1: 6.) Here, in the heavenlies at least, as contrasted with the earthly scene of which the heavens are a component part, is the sphere of the assembly's conflict with the wiles of Satan, with "spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies." (Eph. 6) Here he is the accuser of the brethren night and day before God; whence he will be cast out into the earth, and his angels with him. (Rev. 12: 9) It is for this reason perhaps — of Satan's defiling presence, or because of its connection by government with earth and man, that "the heavenly things themselves" need to be purified with better sacrifices than of bulls and goats. And lastly there is the heaven of God's presence: "the third heaven" it may be supposed to which Paul was caught up — "paradise" — and heard unspeakable words which could not be expressed in human language. (2 Cor. 12: 2.)

But Peter goes further (2 Peter 3), for he reminds us that, if the world is wilfully ignorant (because it has been plainly revealed) of the appalling interruption of the ordered course of nature in the past by the word of God, when the world that then was being overflowed with water perished, worse is in store for it: "The heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men." And more (ver. 10) he develops that in that day "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." And he shows the practical bearing of all this upon the walk of Christians now. "Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting the day of God"; and again he insists on the tremendous reality of the cataclysm, "the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat." Thus we learn that, if never again by water, the solemn dealing of God by fire is analogous to the flood God brought in upon the world of the ungodly. It is "the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men."

But prophecy is more specific still as to the character of the ungodliness that leads to the closing up of all God's earthly ways of government, including the mediatorial kingdom of Christ, by a judgment of fire from heaven. See Revelation 20: "When the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog" — symbolic names given them from the last up-rising of the nations against God (Ezek. 38, 39) at the commencement of the millennium. But there never had been before anything to compare with this gathering of the nations to battle, whether judged of in the magnitude of their forces — "the number of whom is as the sand of the sea" — or in the light of the blessing enjoyed for so long, under the manifested glory of Christ, from which they have revolted, to range themselves under Satan's banner the moment he appears.

It is the last expression of what had been fully proved long before in the cross, of what the heart of man is in its irreconcilable enmity against God: "And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about," Those with whom the kingdom had begun had been kept faithful throughout its course, a mere handful now as compared with the teeming millions of their descendants, in a thousand years when no wars had decimated (Ps. 46: 9; Isa. 2: 4), or sickness or death had been known amongst them, save where transgression had brought it upon them. Grace is not inherited: though there had been no test throughout the long course of the kingdom to bring out the unregenerate condition of the mass. Now it was come, in Satan's presence once more; and the saints and "the beloved city," which for so long had been the place of the throne, and the sanctuary, and the centre of light and blessing flowing out to the earth's utmost bounds, are the objective of the hostile array of the whole earth; till "fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone," where his former instruments "the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever."

The last Enemy that shall be destroyed.

The next scene, opened to us in the prophecy, is the momentous one of the last act of the Lord Jesus in judgment; for all judgment is committed unto Him. It is that of the great white throne. From His face that sat on it "the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them." This is as we have seen from Paul in Hebrews, and Peter. They are removed by the voice that shakes not the earth only but also heaven: "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up." The time scene is over: the dead are raised in God's eternity. Death was the last enemy to be subjected to Christ by, God, and in being subjected is destroyed. (1 Cor. 15: 25, 26.) Death and hades deliver up the dead that seemed to be most firmly held within their grasp, namely, those that died in their sins, from Adam till the end of time. Then cometh the end, "when he delivers up the kingdom to God, even the Father." (1 Cor. 15: 24-28.) There had been no domain of man or Satan that had not felt the power of Him who subjected all to Christ. The declared purpose of God in the kingdom had been accomplished. "For he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet"; and all things had been so completely subjected, that the only exception was God Himself who had subjected them to Him. And now the astonishing revelation is made to us, that He who had reigned as man, till none were left to dispute His title, delivers up the kingdom to God, the Father; and the Son also Himself becomes subject unto Him that put all things under Him. He gives up His reigning place as man, to take His own place of predilection — blessed, adorable Lord — as Son subject to the Father, "that God may be all in all."

Then will be produced the full result of the work of the cross. The new creation, where no trail of the serpent or trace of sin ever came, will be founded on the perfection of that work and be the manifestation of it for ever. "Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world." "Now once in the consummation of the ages hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." All the value of that work was needed to remove a single sin from our guilty souls, and, blessed be God, was effectual to remove all our sins, and us who had sinned as well, for God and for faith: here God founds a new heaven and new earth upon it, where sin can never come.

The Eternal State.

It unfolds to John in Revelation 21: 1-7: "I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away , and there was no more sea" — no part not brought into order and blessing. The divine name, being the way God reveals Himself, gives its character to every dispensation; and thus is of the deepest moment for our souls, as we know well from the name of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in which is contained the sum of all possible and infinite blessedness, now forming Christianity. In Revelation hitherto it has been God and the Lamb: this is the way God is known in the millennium. But when the dispensations of time are over, and the whole sphere wherein the ways of God in government unfolded themselves is passed away for ever, in a new heaven and new earth it is God. God Himself is the fulness of the eternal joy. And He rests in a sphere perfectly suited to His own heart — God is all in all.

No distinctions that came in by sin in time are found. There are neither Jew nor Gentile nor nations. The assembly is there, both as "the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride" — not for display now, as in the millennium, but — "adorned for her husband," for His eye and heart alone. It is the assembly's relation to Christ, according to eternal counsels of God for His glory and joy. So also is it found in its relation to God as His dwelling place. A great voice out of heaven calls attention to the tabernacle of God with men. (Ver. 3.) For He reverts to His own original thought of a tabernacle, so wonderfully realised when "the word became flesh and tabernacled amongst us." "And he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." But what a chord this reference to an only too familiar past touches in our hearts! These things were the governmental consequence in time of sin, when Adam and Eve had to be driven forth from Eden, and sorrow be the prevailing characteristic of the condition of each. Long since, God Himself, in Christ, in unfathomable grace, had followed them into the sorrow, stooping down to be characteristically the "Man of sorrows," to take part in them, as never had been the lot of man or woman before. As God, on the threshold of a new creation, He now wipes away all tears from their eyes, and removes the source of them. He that sat upon the throne, the eternal throne of God surely, for He is "the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end," can survey a scene so perfectly suited to Himself, and say, "Behold, I make all things new." And John is directed to write the true and faithful words that tell us "It is done." He who knew what thirst was once, where nothing could satisfy, has been brought where the fountain of the water of life flows freely in eternal refreshment.

One more link with time of unutterable sweetness declares "these things" to be the inheritance of the overcomer. The conflicts of the past are over for ever now, recalling humbling failure and defeat on our part; but His only remembrance of them is the final overcoming, fruit of His grace and power. "And I will be his God, and he shall be my son," in all the intimacy of an individual relationship enjoyed by all. And then there is the solemn and decisive pronouncement of the last verse (8), of the fixed, unalterable condition of those who were only raised from the dead, when time was over, to find their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

This last passage referred to, Revelation 21: 1-8, does not properly enter into the scope of the kingdom, save as it is viewed as the power of God in contrast to man's evil, a power that will never cease. It is the eternal state. If the kingdom was the result of the ways of God in government in time, the eternal state is the fruit of the perfection of His nature. There is a sense in which Christ reigns for ever, and so the saints; but it is not a human mediatorial kingdom any longer. That, Christ, having held as man for the purpose of all authority and power being subjected to Him, gives up to the Father, that all may be God's exclusively. But God, who is all in all, is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, so that in no sense has the kingdom come to an end, or passed to another. Only that the thought of a kingdom, in its proper sense, assumes subjects to be reigned over; and this is not what is presented to us in Revelation 21: 1-8. The reign of righteousness is needed no longer. God dwells with men for ever, and righteousness has found its familiar home there; it is the new heavens and new earth that we have been taught to look for in such wonderful grace, wherein dwelleth righteousness. (2 Peter 3: 13.)

But I close, painfully conscious of how defective and cursory is such a presentation of so large a subject; yet in hope that by God's grace the attempt to gather from scripture how these things are set before us may be as interesting and helpful to others as it has been to the writer.  J. A. T.

The Knowledge of Christ

The Knowledge of Christ.

A Letter Written By The Late J.A.T.

(from "An Outline of Sound Words" No. 24, p. 14)

Every now and then the truth prevails to draw out of the varied evils of the sects, in face of trial, those who finding refreshment in Christ begin to prize Him now not for what He gives alone but for what He is in Himself. And it is far better and brighter to be attracted out by the excellency of the knowledge of Christ to Himself, than merely to be driven out as many now by consciences become restless by the discovery of evil, for in this last case there is nothing to sustain us when out, or to lead one on and guide in the intricate path.

Have you ever observed the order in 1 Peter 2? How quickly the new born babes are drawn on from the first taste of the graciousness of the Lord displayed in all His conferred blessing to their occupations with Himself according to the twofold order of the priesthood. In verse 5 we have, after the character of Aaron, a sacrificing "holy priesthood," only not now offering up sacrifices for sins, but spiritual songs of praise (Heb. 13, 15) to God and acceptable to Him by Jesus Christ. With boldness by the blood they have found their way into the holiest of all, without a cloud upon the brightness of God's presence, there to feed with God upon the fat and excellency of the work of Christ, not only in its results for them, but of best and brightest glory for God. Praise to God — worship — is the necessary outflow of hearts surcharged with Christ in such communion with God.

Entering with God into His rest and delight in the work of Christ, they are in a fair way to learn about His Person — Himself; and the next verse gives us this. He is "precious" to God, and as our hearts awake to this He becomes therefore "the preciousness" (as the word is) to us, or the sum and substance of all that is precious to us: as Paul who, when he began to learn and know Christ, was willing to suffer the loss of all things for such a One, nay has done so, and looks back on what he has lost to heap shame and contempt upon all. But all this is learnt in the presence of God and in communion — the spring of that worship the Father seeks — and belongs to the "holy priesthood" in this first aspect of it.

Now we come to the second — our "Royal priesthood" and the character and exercise of it. This is priesthood after the character of Melchizedek — as the other was after the character of Aaron, and both are found in Hebrews as you well know, with all that is typical in them applied to Christ, as here to us. And I daresay you have learned to distinguish that while Christ is Priest after the order of Melchizedek, yet that the time for His exercise of His priesthood as such is not yet, but is Aaronic in character, as in Heb. 9 and 10, and Lev. 9. 22-23 will be the exercise of the Melchizedekian priesthood when as King-Priest He comes out to bless the people — in their place without, waiting for Him: — and the glory is displayed: so in Zech. 6. 13: only of course both types fail as all types must when we turn to the reality, and comparisons become contrasts. We go in with our Aaron there to commune with God about the perfection of the offering, which is far beyond knowing that our sins are borne away by the scapegoat, as the people outside will when He comes out. But then it will be to display the glory of the Most High God possessor of heaven and earth, in Himself victorious over all the kings, and Heir of all the promises — see Gen. 14 and Heb. 7. 1, 2.

So much then for the order; and character of the Royal priesthood; it is one of display before the world, and it is the glory of Christ that is displayed: but how in any sense can this apply to us now? Oh how precious is verse 9 of our chapter; having learnt Christ in the communion of the sanctuary with God, we are now to go out and display Him in our walk and testimony in the world — showing forth the virtues (margin) of Him Who hath called us out of darkness into His marvellous light. What occupations with God! and Christ the source and centre and power of all. I hope my sketch has not been too scanty to lead you into my train, if it is new to you; it has been very sweet to me.

John has been very much before us as well this last month, — one thing I would like to give you, that is the difference in the aspect of the Spirit's indwelling as given in John 4 and John 7, and it is not without connection with our gleanings from Peter.

In John 3 we get light shining in the testimony of Christ that discloses nature to be such in its best and most religious condition that a Nicodemus must be born again to see or enter into the kingdom of God — but if the light thus discloses man's condition, it reveals the heart of God to man in that very condition (John 3: 16). For Jesus if He knew all men, and more, what is in man (John 2: 24, 25) — knows God (John 3: 12, 13). As Son of Man before Nicodemus' eyes, He is in heaven, God, and everywhere. But look, if man is to be brought out of his old condition by new birth into a wholly new one — it cannot be by slurring over that old condition, nor by anything short of its judgment — hence the force of "must" in verse 14 and "so " — the Son of Man must not only be lifted up as the serpent — now the serpent was the brazen effigy of what was working death among the people — and ah! behold Him Who knew no sin made that cursed thing sin, that by its judgment under the hand of God upon Him, "whosoever, etc." But the cross was not only the judgment of sin on the Son of Man, but in verse 16 it was the revelation of the heart of God in the Person and work of the Son of God; and does not this go infinitely beyond the mere judgment of sin? Oh! what depths of love are here disclosed in that word "so "! And this is all the subject matter of the Word, which by the operation of the Spirit on the natural man is the instrumentality of the new birth in which — born of the life of God and made partaker of the nature of Him of Whom I am begotten I am "clean every whit" in the sight of God (hence the use of the symbolic "water," including as it does not only the instrument but the effect).

Nicodemus ought to have known much of this from the prophets. But now in John 4 we get a wholly new thing — a divine gift by Jesus, ("I will give") living water to form a well within, ever springing up into everlasting life — so that there shall be not more thirst. This is the Holy Ghost given to dwell in the regenerate one, to be the power and energy of life in communion with God its source and end. Here then is a source of joy apart from and independent of all circumstances — of joy the deepest and eternal, and a source that never fails though at times the joy may be clouded over here below; it is the knowledge of all that eternal life is that we have got, made known to us by the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, Who is at the same time the power of communion in it, with God its source and level. Could there be any joy beyond this in heaven-itself? Now the Holy Ghost is given to be the power of it below, and the spring of it all is thus in every individual believer.

In the latter part of chapter 4 God receives the overflow in the grateful worship of those whose life being in the Son know Him as Father, and have fellowship with Him in the consciousness of this relationship.

In John 7 the Holy Ghost is given consequent upon the Man Jesus being glorified at God's right hand, and our union with Him there, and He is given as the witness of all the glory of Jesus' place there — of sin purged away therefore, righteously accomplished, and peace made — of all the glory of Him Who is there and of all that He is heir to: and all this the Holy Ghost reveals to us as those who share in it all by virtue of union with Him — not as using us as channels merely, unintelligent of all that was passing through to others, as in Old Testament times (1 Peter 1), but as giving us the consciousness that all is our own in Him — and in this lies the force of "out of his belly" shall flow — a well known symbol of the heart and affections and deepest emotions. So then thus filled by the Spirit's sweet revelations to us of. Jesus in the glory — streams are how gushing out from us and through us to the dry and thirsty ground around. In the desert a rock with its stream followed Israel for their blessing, and that rock was Christ — but here is Christ — revealed in our souls by the Holy Ghost's power that out of the fulness of our joy, even in the desert, flows blessing to the desert, or wherever there is a thirsty heart in it.

And now put all together, and do not these two in John give us most blessedly the power of all that we had in Peter? God the Holy Ghost dwelling in the believer the power of communion with God and of testimony to the world. And in John 7 this is the very thing that Jesus substitutes for us for the millenial joy of which the feast of tabernacles was the shadow.

A well of living water springs

In worship up to God:

A river outward flowing brings

To men the living word.

"Life and the Spirit"

"Life and the Spirit"

J A Trench.

Words of Faith 1884, p. 197-221.

"Life and the Spirit" has been sent me, and I am concerned about it chiefly for the author's sake. For though it tends to hinder unestablished souls in getting into their true christian place, God may use this, as He does every hindrance, only to deepen the exercise by which it becomes more real and firmly grasped when known. On the face of it, stated with an accustomed felicity of expression, the system will commend itself to some who care little for searching the word for themselves by its simplicity. You have only to take all the passages which speak of quickening, or life, or in Christ, and put them together as meaning the same thing. It saves all the trouble of examining the context in which these truths are brought in, and the modifications they have according to the scope of different books and vessels used in the communication of the truth, or the subject the Spirit of God may have in hand. It was the way we all began, I suppose, and only by degrees found out how we limited the truth, and contracted our own apprehension of it by the process.

But in attempting to direct serious attention to the way the truth and souls are affected, the difficulty presents itself, that divine truth cannot be judged of apart from our own apprehension of it by faith. "Why do ye not understand my speech? Because ye cannot hear my word" — is a paradox in human philosophy, but a principle of God of immense importance for our souls. We must know the thing in what is divine, to understand the way it is presented to us. Now, so many souls are not in their full christian place before God — and this is the worst of such a paper, it commends itself to such as expressing where they are themselves, tending to satisfy them short of God's place for them — that until they know it they will not be able to see the defect of the system. Yet, turning to the word which delivers from all our short-sighted reasoning, we have the truth, "and the truth shall make you free." But in seeking to test what is presented to us by this only standard, the first thing that strikes one is, how almost every term that is used in this paper is employed in some different sense from what it has in the word; and this is a difficulty in seeking to unravel the confusion of it, involving the necessity of examining the word for the scriptural sense of the terms.

At the outset, the author's way of stating the question before us is a little misleading. For, speaking generally, no one would object to say that "forgiveness of sins, justification, and acceptance in Christ go with new birth — with life" — and the Holy Ghost, too, if by "go with" were meant that they were characteristic blessings of the new world into which we are born. But we shall see that this is not at all what is meant. And so with the other aspects of the question, save indeed when as to Romans 7 it is asked, Is it a sinner seeking peace, or a saint fruitfulness? when one taught in the word must answer, as it appears to me, Neither. Nor as to the last question can there be any hesitation in answering, that the seal of the Spirit is in the word, connected with faith in the work, and not simply in the Person, of Christ.

We are not long, however, in being introduced to the divergence of the writer's use of expressions, and system therein expressed, from scripture; for on page 4, (which is really page 2 of the tract) he states "that all Christians are dead to sin and to the law." Now if he meant the Christian in his full place as such, or even in the mind of God, or as to the efficacy of the work of Christ that brings us into it, it would be true. But the tract makes it too plain, that this is not what he means; that he would have you assume from the outset, without even a reference to the word, what is really the point to be proved  - and that lies at the root of all the subsequent teaching.

In Romans 6: 2, "We who have died to sin" is not presented as the absolute fact of Christ's death and resurrection for us, as in chapter 4: 25 — true of us before we knew it — but in connection with, and, in a sense, the end of, an experimental process we have gone through to bring us to the reality of our identification with Christ in His death: "know ye not that so many of us as were baptised unto Jesus Christ were baptised unto his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism unto death" — so as responsibly henceforth to take our place only as dead men upon earth. "Knowing [observe "knowing" again] that our old man has been crucified with him that the body of sin might be annulled, that henceforth we should not serve sin." It is not of the abstract truth of our death (as though it were said) in His death before God, that the apostle is speaking; but he addresses himself to the full Christian intelligence of this become a fact for our own souls — of our death "with Christ" — and reasons from it to the practical consequences that flow from it. Now nothing could be more disastrous to souls than to maintain, as this paper does, that every quickened soul is dead to sin, freed from sin, and not under the law, with its necessary consequence that "sin shall not have dominion" over us. (Rom. 6: 2, 18, 22, and 14.) For it is attributing absolutely to everyone who has been born of God, what the apostle speaks of as the ground and fact of an actual deliverance from sin's power, which, if it exists without that deliverance, renders the deliverance hopeless, and shuts up the soul to the state of Romans 7: 14-24. This state is necessarily that of a quickened soul, but of one that is not dead to sin, for it is "carnal, sold under sin," is not freed from sin, for it is brought "into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members," and is still under the law of sin's dominion  -  consenting to the law, delighting in it, referring to it wholly as the rule of good for the soul, but proving it in effect to be only the power of evil. And this is simply "a saint seeking fruitfulness"! There is not a thought of fruitfulness according to God. It is the struggle to gain power over sin, with the law looked to as a source of strength in the struggle (not knowing that it is "the strength of sin,") and which must be given up as hopeless, and the bond of the soul with the law broken — deliverance from the first husband and sin found in all its reality — in order to any fruitfulness: "whereof, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should be to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God." (Rom. 7: 4.) Is not the experience of the close of the chapter diametrically opposed to the condition of fruitfulness as stated in verse 4 — to abiding in Christ? Could words depict more clearly one who is born of God indeed, or else there had been no struggle — (it takes two to fight) — but who, as to the condition of his soul — the state he is in (and this is what scripture is concerned with) — is "to the law," as still having authority over him, a state that verses 2 and 3 declare to be incompatible with being to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, so as to bring forth fruit unto God? Nay, is not the express object of chapter 7 to contrast these two states of a soul alike quickened in each as the basis of them, and to prove that both cannot exist together?

And this is all a question of knowledge, we are told, of progress in knowledge — I am free from sin if I only knew it, etc. — of knowledge by the word and subjection to the Spirit. As if there was no such thing as the conviction of need, of the work wrought in the soul, in order to any divine knowledge of the work for it. Yet the conviction of sins had to precede justification from them — not less surely the conviction of self in order to deliverance from self. But a truth so fundamental from the beginning of God's ways in grace with souls is lost sight of even as to the first, that is, our justification. And we are told (p. 7) that "all quickened are justified then, of course from the first moment of quickening." But this is again to use terms as scripture does not — as a student in his study, not thinking of the state of souls. The first five chapters of Romans to verse 11 of the last, develop this subject of justification. There is not the trace of such a statement that every quickened soul is justified; on the contrary, it is referred to another thing. "Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness . . . . that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." Resting thus immutably in divine righteousness on the ground of redemption and faith in His blood, God is the justifier of him who believes in Jesus, and we are reckoned righteous "if we believe on him that raised up our Lord Jesus from the dead; who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification. Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Thus the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, and faith in His blood, form the ground of justification for the believer in Jesus; and faith in Him who raised Him from the dead carries peace in the divinely assured certainty of it to our souls. It might as well be said, that every quickened soul has peace with God, as to say he was justified, for these two things are thus connected in scripture. The system of the paper would require, therefore knowing that we are justified, etc. But justification from our sins is as real and actual a thing for the soul, as scripture treats it, as deliverance from sin, in its place, namely, a revealed ground of relationship upon which the soul stands consciously with God as the fruit of redemption, and worthless to us here if it were not so. Of course, every quickened soul was ever justified before God, and that before ever they were quickened, in the counsels of God. But it was not the revealed ground of relationship until Christianity; and then it is not by quickening we are brought into it, but by faith in Jesus known in the efficacy of His work, who shed His blood to lay the ground of it in righteousness, and in God who raised Him from the dead as the proof of His acceptance of the work that had so glorified Him; so that now a risen Saviour in the glory of God becomes the glorious proof to the believer that his sins, that brought Him to the cross, are gone for ever, and he has peace with God. I turn to the passages, however, upon which this justification by quickening is sought to be founded, only, alas! to find everything confounded.

We are first asked to identify "eternal life" with quickening as "ours from the first moment of it." (Page 5.) Of course it is in fact: there is not — there never was — any other outside the forfeited life of the fallen man save life as flowing from the Son of God, who, in His own Person, is "that eternal life that was with the Father." But I earnestly press, that it is not so that scripture speaks of eternal life. When the Son of God was manifested, that life was manifested, the Father gave Him to have it in Himself,* and He was a divine and sovereignly quickening source of life in the glory of His Person, as thus manifested on earth. The hour was come that the dead should hear His voice, and live — and live of the life He gave, even eternal life, now recognised as such, because manifested in Him. (1 John 1: 2.) But to identify this with being born of God, through His word, by the Spirit, as Nicodemus ought to have known of it from Old Testament scriptures (page 10); and these, again, with being quickened together with Christ, as in Ephesians and Colossians, is a sad way of handling scripture. We are told that eternal life "was the possession of every one born of God from the beginning of the world." "Scripture is surely clear;" but we have not one text given to us. But, turning to scripture, why, then, should the Lord say, "I am come that they might have life"? (John 10: 10.) They had it all the same, whether He came, or not, according to our paper, which is true as to the absolute fact of the life they possessed — divine life, as born of God — but not as scripture presents it. And it is our only wisdom to abide by the word. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee [the Father, whom He was addressing], the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." It was not eternal life, as scripture speaks, to know God as Almighty, or as the Jehovah of Israel, but as the Son came to make Him known — the Father revealed in the Son. Eternal life, then, according to the word, is that which was manifested in the Son, that He came that we might have then, or "more abundantly" when we should possess it in a new way in Him risen from the dead, carrying with it all His own relationship, as Man with the Father and God, as that into which we are consciously brought. Now this last is what is expressed as "life in Christ Jesus" — not simply divine life, or even eternal life, but this life possessed in the power of resurrection, of Christ's new place before God as Man risen from the dead. Thus there was "the promise of life which was in Christ Jesus" — why, promise if it was theirs; but even this unrevealed — unrevealed as promise, but, "according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and incorruptibility to light by the gospel." So Titus 1: 2, 3: all the ways of God with the first man coming between this purpose and promise of life in Christ Jesus before the world began, and its manifestation through the gospel.

*A very different thought from the unhappy expression, "life is deposited in the Lord as Son of man, as source of it for men," from any false use of which we are preserved by the passages he quotes: John 1: 4, John 5: 26. But he was led to it apparently by the desire to deduce "Hence he is last Adam," which is not the scriptural connection of these different aspects of His glory, and confounds His glory as Son of God quickening whom He will before the cross, in the power of eternal life in Himself, with the place He has taken as Man consequent upon it in resurrection, the last Adam a quickening Spirit.

And this connects itself closely with the point to which I am now come, namely, the close of Romans 5, for the expression, "justification of life" (quoted at page 5). In verse 12 we leave the question of the perfection of the way we have been brought to God by the death and resurrection of Christ, clear of every question of our sins, justified from all things, at peace with God, His love shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given us, beautifully represented in figure by Israel's position when the Red Sea was crossed, and up to and until Sinai necessarily changed the whole ground upon which they stood. We leave this, as complete, to enter upon a wholly distinct aspect of truth, tracing us respectively to two distinct heads of races, as of Adam, or of Christ. Here it is no longer a question of the acts of individuals, but of the state of those so classed, in which they were involved by the acts of their heads respectively — the race identified with its head, whether as Adam having accomplished sin, and entailing ruin, and wretchedness, and death upon his; or as Christ, having accomplished righteousness, and entailing nothing but life, and righteousness, and blessing upon His. Thus it was, "as by one offence towards all to condemnation, so by one righteousness towards all to justification of life" — precious contrast as it is. All who have come under Christ as Head of a new race, possess a life, to which no charge of sin ever did, or could attach. For in that life in which He came in grace, and had to do with sin, as made sin, He died, and died unto sin once, never more to have to do with it again. But not till His work was accomplished did He take His place as second Man and last Adam — "quickening Spirit He had ever been, indeed, as having the power of divine life in Himself for others ("was made" has no place in the original — 1 Cor. 15 — and is misleading), but now to exercise this power as Man in resurrection, to communicate life in a new way, in which it never had been, or could have been, possessed before, life in a risen Christ, to which, as we have seen, no charge of sin could attach; in direct and absolute contrast with the effect of participation in the life of the first man. But this is not the justification or forgiveness of our committed sins, of which the first part of the epistle so fully treats, but a life become ours in the risen Christ, where there is no question of any, and thus a justification of life; by participating in which we have part in His death, as judged, condemned, and crucified with Him, as to all we were in Adam; and as having died with Him "we believe that we shall also live with him," and be "of His resurrection," and have title to reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, even as He has no more to do with it, and alive unto God in Him, to have nothing but God before our souls for ever.

An immensely important consideration now comes in. Is all this transference from one headship to another, from Adam to Christ, from death in sins unto life in liberty of obedience, from the state and position of the fallen man to the whole position and state of the glorified Man — short of the glory, yet to come for us — simply a question of (p. 4) knowledge by the word (not to speak of "instinct or intuition") according to the writer's theory? Far otherwise. It is a work of divine power, not apart from faith in those in whom it is wrought. So far as we have gone (Rom. 6) it is unfolded as connected with the work of Christ, which is ever the ground of it. before God, and by faith in which we have part in it. Chapter 7 is introduced parenthetically, expressly to develop the "middle ground" (p. 3) which this paper deliberately ignores and refuses but which is the ground on which numbers of souls are found — nay, the necessary condition of every one sooner or later, in order to know as our own, a deliverance in power by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, that "has made me free," from the whole old order of things that was ours in Adam — the law of sin and death. Necessary, I say, because it is the divine conviction of the state to which that deliverance applies, and without which we should never have known our need of it. It is a quickened soul as we have seen, one truly born of God, but who, as to the ground upon which the soul actually is, is still in the flesh, under law that applies to that condition and that condition only. "If ye be led of the Spirit ye are not under the law." (Gal. 5: 13.) A soul under the law is in the flesh, according to the clear force of the expression in Roman 7 a state fully developed there, and with which that of Romans 8 is directly contrasted. (Compare Rom. 7: 5, Rom. 8: 9.) It is a wholly new place and standing, fruit of the power of God, that raised Christ from the dead, when He had been delivered for our offences, and had closed in death our whole first Adam place in the flesh under law and captives of sin, but in Romans applied in its negative aspect, if I may so speak — I mean as to that out of which we are delivered, rather than carried out into the full consequences of it in association with the risen One. It is the Christian "in what characterises him as such. . . without raising the question of how far human failure might come in to hinder the realisation" (to adopt the author's words at p. 5, not so truly applicable in his connection as to Romans 8). Will it be believed that the expression of this characteristic state of the Christian "in Christ," as his place before God consequent upon redemption, "in the Spirit," as the power of it down here as surely as the Spirit of God dwelleth in us — is taken to prove that the Spirit of God dwells in the directly contrasted state of the undelivered soul in Romans 7? "It is said we have nothing of the Spirit in all the seventh chapter, etc. The thought seems contradicted by what is said directly afterwards: But we are not in the flesh," etc., quoting chapter 8: 9. Is "directly afterwards" a just account of the order of the truth of Romans 7, Romans 8: 1-9? That is, does Romans 8: 9 follow directly on Romans 7: 14-25? No one could think so who will take the trouble to read the passages and see what comes between.

Now in this description of the characteristic state of the Christian, in which it is said, If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is not His, the Spirit is presented in three ways: the Spirit of God (ver. 9) in contrast to the flesh; the Spirit of Christ (vers. 9, 10) as the formative power of the new man, so that Christ may be formed in us, hence with the immediate result "if Christ be in you;" and lastly (ver. 11), as the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead. These correspond with the three parts of our deliverance in answer to the cry of Romans 7: 24, as first, by life and nature; secondly, by the objects presented to that life; and thirdly, the body yet future. Nor is it yet the truth of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost as a distinct Person, though this is assumed (and taught from ver. 14), but His presence as identified with, as He is the power of, the delivered condition. No wonder then that it should be presented that that condition cannot exist without the Holy Ghosts presence, that where He is not, the man is not of Christ — not in his characteristic christian state, that in which Christ Himself as man now is; for it is not here the question of belonging to Christ, but what is "of Him," that forms the subject of the Spirit's teaching. "He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit." (1 Cor. 6: 17.) And mark, that whereas it is by faith in the death and resurrection of Christ we passed out of our condition in the flesh and under law, into that of being in Christ, yet because the operation of divine power in the Spirit of God enters into this, it is here said, "ye are not in the flesh," not because we have eternal life, or even have died with Christ and are in Him risen, but "in the Spirit," so integral and necessary a part does the Spirit of God bear in this total change of our position — "if so be that the Spirit of God dwells in you." This intimate association and identification, in wondrous grace to us, of the Spirit with the delivered man, is marked again in verse 10: "If Christ be in you the body is dead "held to be such for faith, for if tolerated in its smallest will it is only sin, "and the Spirit is life" - the simple blessed power of it, as He is its source, unto practical righteousness. And this is as absolute as If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is not of Him, for it is the same full christian condition from another aspect of it — "Christ in us" become our life characteristically, as surely as we are "in Christ" and "in the Spirit."

Nor is it without its full significance in blessing, that it is only after this first part of chapter 8, in which the Spirit is identified in the most absolute way with the delivered, that is, the full christian condition, that we find Him presented as a Person distinct from us, dwelling in us; though the former could not have been without the latter, and we received the Spirit to dwell in us the moment we believed the testimony of God to the work of Christ for our justification as in chapter 5. The order of the truth is as simple and clear in answer to the needs of the soul, as it is divinely perfect in wisdom. "The question as to peace is long before settled" (p. 13). Who introduces it here? To do so would indeed be "to destroy the proper significance of a most needful lesson." But we must have had extraordinarily little to do with the state of souls and their difficulties, not to know how the whole question of peace and relationship with God is often affected by the want of deliverance, and this because until set free from the law of sin, the soul is under the law in its condemning  power, and is not beyond the reach of peace even as to justification being disturbed, until in its place in Christ, in all the impossibility of condemnation for Christ — made free from the law of sin and death, by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. So far, also, is it from being the case that one must "be consciously a child of God before he can realise that even in a child of God sin dwells," that the consciousness of indwelling sin, till the soul is brought to reckon itself to be dead unto sin, tends constantly to cause uncertainty as to the relationship. The soul reasons from its own state to the state of God towards it, as "can I be a child of God and find all this evil in me?" Certainly to the soul that has passed through the deeply-needed exercise, and been set free. Romans 7 presents no problem. It is then that peacefully he can look back and recount, as the close of the chapter does, what he has been through. Again, I repeat, it is not the state of one who has been set free, but of one who has not: and this paper plunges the truth and soul, into confusion by seeking to make out that it is the condition of one who has received the Holy Ghost. It is not that there are not those who have the Spirit, who may not have to pass through the experience in a modified way, as the effect of bad teaching or not having previously learned themselves; but this is not Romans 7 in the principle and true force of its instruction. Of course it is the expression of "a saint," if by saint is meant one who has been truly born of God. All question of fruitfulness only comes after the "saint" has been set free from the bondage of sin.

But I pass on to another aspect of truth, very distinct from what has been before us, but bringing out more fully one point of all-importance to our souls, wholly ignored by this paper, namely, the way in which the power of God enters into so as to effectuate the full position of the Christian. I refer to that which we find in Ephesians 2, where, when we are viewed as wholly dead in sins,* God came in in the exceeding might of the power that wrought in Christ when He raise Him from the dead, and quickened us together with Him — here followed out to its fullest consequences of heavenly association with Christ, seated in Him in the heavenlies. In Colossians we have the same truth (Col. 2: 12), bringing in faith in the operation of God when it is a question of being risen with Him; only that here it is not as absolutely as in Ephesians, the state in which we were found — only dead in sins — but the Epistle looks at us also, as Romans, as having lived in them, and does not carry us into our full heavenly place. But the point of view as to being quickened together with Him, is the same in both Ephesians and Colossians. It is that of a wholly new place for man, into which we have been as it were quickened out of the grave of Christ by the operation of divine power which put Him into it — "together with" involving union, and in Ephesians that of both Jew and Gentile believers, of the whole body, which is looked at as having been taken by one mighty exercise of divine power out of the grave of Christ when He was taken out, and put into the whole of His new place as man before God. Hence we do not find the baptism of the Holy Ghost in the Epistle; union was so fully involved in the exercise of this power that has put us into His place, "together with Him." The point of view in both epistles is the same as to the power that put us into the place, though in Colossians not carried beyond our resurrection with Christ, and developed more as to the blessed effects of the place, on the side of Christ in us as life.

*Note here, what is of importance to those who observe the way truth is presented in scripture — every distinction with its own significance — that when it is our full new place in and with Christ, it is God who quickens, Christ being looked at as dead, come in grace and under our judgment where we were dead in sins. In the case of eternal life as in John, it is Christ who quickens, communicating divine life and nature as the Son of God to the dead who hear His voice; and with this the exercises of soul begin that lead to the reception of our new place, by faith of our death and resurrection with Him. Only that our death and resurrection with Him is more the way out of the old condition; when it is our full positive position in heavenly association with Christ as the fruit of God's everlasting counsel we were found dead, and were quickened together with Christ into it. We find both in Colossians; the last only in Ephesians. Death and resurrection with Christ are never presented as putting us into the full place of God's counsels in Christ.

Now this is the passage (Col. 2: 13) that is taken to prove that the forgiveness of sins belongs to the action of the Spirit in quickening by the word, as He ever did before Christ came, or to that of the Son quickening whom He will while He was yet upon earth, or to these operations still, of which it speaks nothing. "This surely teaches that forgiveness accompanies life; having forgiven, refers the time of forgiveness definitely to the time of quickening" (p. 6)* — of life in a new position in arisen Christ, and of quickening together with Him involving union by the Holy Ghost, indeed; but of life and quickening apart from these conditions it surely teaches nothing. From the moment that we are united to Christ, we are taught in His blessed grace to look back and see all as one complete act of divine power when Christ was raised; but, of course, it is another question altogether when we were individually brought into it. Of the quickening of the Spirit, or of being born of God, the passage says nothing; but of our being quickened together with Christ, which is a wholly distinct thought, as any one must see who will read the verses for himself. Divine power, expressed in the resurrection of Christ, has come in and taken us out of all we were in Adam, and put us into the whole of the position of Christ founded upon the finished work of the cross, and made good to us individually when we believe the glad tidings of our salvation, by the Holy Ghost who takes up. His place in us, giving us the consciousness that we are in Christ and Christ in us, and of union with Him and with all that are His. All reasoning as to what Old Testament saints had or could not have had, will not take away from the plain force of such scriptures to a mind subject to them. Whither this reasoning leads may be seen: "the direct result to me would be this, that Old Testament saints were neither children of God, nor could they be justified from sin, or in the last Adam," etc. (p. 8.) Thus what scripture applies to a revealed position before God, that we are brought into on earth as the fruit of a gloriously accomplished redemption, is here attempted to be applied to saints before Christ came, which if it were, would have taken them wholly off the revealed ground upon which God placed them. To have our place in Christ according to Romans 8: 1, our old man must have been crucified with Christ; but having died with Him we have died out from under the law, and the bond of relationship with that first husband has been absolutely broken; how then could Old Testament saints, who were "kept under the law" have been in Christ? Of course they were children of God, as surely as they were born of God, though the mere possession of the nature carried with it then no more than now the consciousness of relationship, and were justified from sin before God,** and not under condemnation; though none of these things were the ground upon which they stood, as they are, and are characteristic of (in contrast with them) the ground upon which we stand. Read 1 Corinthians 15 and think of an Old Testament saint being "in the last Adam"! Also Galatians 3: 23 - 4: 7 for the contrast of their place and ours, specially Galatians 3: 28 as to how "in Christ" takes out of Jewish ground, as out of all other distinctions of the flesh. For "if any man be in Christ, there is a new creation." (2 Cor. 5: 17; compare also ver. 16.)

*And both therefore to the time of Christ's resurrection. So that if time is taken into account here, we were both quickened and forgiven before ever we were born! The truth is, the passage teaches nothing as to the time of either.

**"Before God" I say, in contrast to any revealed position; for note the difference in Romans 3: 25, between "the passing over of sins that are past through the forbearance of God," and justification now, the cross laying the righteous ground for both the one and the other. The paper here as everywhere, leaves out the full place the cross has before God.

I turn now to the way the Gospel of John is brought in to support the position of the writer to the detriment of the truth. The knowledge of the glory of the Lord Jesus as one with the Father ought to have preserved from the assumption, that our being in Him is a parallel thought with His being in the Father (p. 8). "At that day ye shall know that I am in the Father." (John 14: 20.) I have no manner of question that this is the full divine glory of His Person, ever true of Him as that the Father was in Him, perfectly expressed in His words and works when He was here (vers. 10, 11), the full sufficient witness of that glory. But when He had taken His place as man in the glory of God and the Holy Ghost was given, they should know it fully as they had not while He was with them. (Ver. 9.) They should know Him in the Father; and now came the added wondrous truth, "Ye in me and I in you:" in community of life and nature indeed, but not theirs or ours simply by being born of God or quickened, but the fruit of His being glorified, and the Holy Ghost come, give them thus their privileged intelligent Christian place. Thus when this position is developed in 1 John, from the same point of view of community of life and nature, we find three things, that mark it according to Paul, even in the babes. They are addressed as consciously forgiven (1 John 2: 12); they know the Father (ver. 13); and have an unction from the Holy One, the Holy Ghost dwelling in them. (Vers. 20, 27.) But here, as elsewhere through the paper, we meet the contradiction of the express statement of scripture. We are told at the foot of page 8, that "the life He communicates makes us sons of God" (the italics are the author's). Now the communication of life was nothing new in itself. It was communicated to the Old Testament saints, yet it did not make them sons of God. It needed that He should "redeem them that were under the law that we might receive the adoption of sons." (Gal. 4.) "Ye are all the sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3: 26); and then, "because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father;" thus completing the glorious position. "Wherefore," it is added, "thou art no more a servant, but a son." Again, the paper confuses being in Christ and Christ in us, with abiding in Him — John 14 in which the Lord distinctly and in terms brings in the future for their knowledge of His glory in the new place He was about to take (adding to it the statement of the new place consequently to flow to us, in both its parts in richest privilege and responsibility, connecting all with the coming of the Holy Ghost), with John 15, the then position of the disciples with Him upon earth; though the abiding belong to both positions as the essential condition of fruitfulness.*

*The paper distinguishes between identification and union — rightly, for they are distinct truths. But union is not the subject of John — never enters into it. Now for identification, of which John does speak, it was necessary that the corn of wheat should fall into the ground and die. There was none without this. "He abideth alone." Yet we are told there was nothing future in the fullest expression of this identification, "Ye in me and I in you." It was all theirs already, they had only to know it by the Spirit. (p. 9.) Nor is the verse quoted for union (1 Cor. 6: 16) truly so applied "Union . . . . applies to the Church alone." (Same paragraph.) There is nothing about the Church in the passage. It is the Spirit as the source and character and power of our connection with Christ, in contrast with "two shall be one flesh." But "he that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit," involving union of course as the indwelling of the Spirit ever does.

As to John 20: 22, nothing can be built upon it in the way of doctrine. Clearly there is a figurative bearing of those three occasions, recorded in chapters 20, 21, upon which Jesus showed Himself to His disciples after that He was risen from the dead, besides the actual and historical; for there were many others. And the first, taken figuratively, must bring out the Pentecostal gift, as the second does the calling of the remnant, and the third the millennial day. Taken historically, when the truth is known from other parts of the word, it helps to illustrate the difference, between the Spirit as the power of life in Christ Jesus (the last Adam breathing upon them, as God once breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life, would suggest strongly this connection with life) — of life now theirs (the same life as before but) in a wholly new position in a risen Christ — and the Holy Ghost dwelling in us; though one could not be without the other now — so far from the absurdity suggested as the contention of some (p. 11), that "people in fact receive the Spirit as life before they receive it as the indwelling Spirit of sonship." And this leads me to note the way the paper mixes up such crudities of thought and teaching, if they are to be met with, with the sober setting forth of what those taught in the word have gathered from it on the points in question. It is not a method that commends itself, to say the least.

Last, but by no means least in importance, we come to what Scripture connects with the giving and reception of the Spirit. John 7: 39 is a cardinal passage; by which we learn, that the gift of the Holy Ghost was not connected with the communication of life before Christ came, nor with the Son quickening whom He will when on earth, though life precedes its reception in every case, but with the place He takes in glory when redemption was accomplished — "the Spirit was not yet because Jesus was not yet glorified" — they that believed on Him should receive the Holy Ghost when Jesus was glorified. He comes then as the witness to that glory, and therefore of the perfection of the work on the ground of which He has been glorified. Now the knowledge of salvation is conveyed by the remission of sins, as we know from Luke 1: 77. For when God speaks of remission, it is not the thing true in His heart of us before we knew it, but of forgiveness positively conferred on us. "Peter's preaching at Pentecost proclaims One whom they had crucified, raised up of God, made Lord and Christ, and giving the Holy Ghost." (p. 14.) Pricked in their hearts they ask what they must do. "Then Peter said unto them, Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2: 38.) Now in the face of all this, we are told that "the efficacy of Christ's death is not mentioned throughout." Yet on the ground of it, the two characteristic blessings of Christianity, the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost, are presented to them; nay, they are exhorted to repent and be baptised that they may enter into them. And the Holy Ghost is connected with the forgiveness, which ought to have preserved from the rash assertion that it is governmental. I should like to ask in what more powerful way the efficacy of Christ's death could be presented? As to the next case, that of Samaria (Acts 8), let me say, No one is pleading for delay. (p. 15.) Scripture puts not time, but a thing, between life and the Holy Ghost, that is, the blood of Christ. But the passage goes far to prove the falseness of the theory of the paper, that the reception of the Holy Ghost is connected with life; for when the apostle went down "as yet he was fallen upon none of them." He is given, as wondrously conferred privilege. In the first Gentile case of Cornelius (Acts 10), Peter is sent to this quickened soul to tell him words whereby he and all his house shall be saved. Is there no parallel case to this now? And we see what salvation is according to scripture — not the mere communication of life, but the position into which we are consciously brought, by faith in the testimony of Christ's finished work. To this Peter bears testimony — to the infinite facts of His lowly life of doing good — His rejection and death — His being raised up by God and given place of Judge of quick and dead. And now, to give knowledge of salvation through the remission of sins he adduces the united testimony of the prophets, "That through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive the remission of sins." It is at this (one would have supposed) significant point of his testimony, that the Holy Ghost fell upon these prepared souls. "This is the whole statement. Blessed be God it is, and therefore fraught with the deepest interest for our souls. We have no such treatise on the atonement as the writer seems to miss, in all the preaching of the Acts. But we have repentance and remission of sins preached through His name, founded upon the divine facts of His death and resurrection; and where faith receives the testimony, the person is sealed by the gift of the Holy Ghost. In Acts 19 we have a company of believers again, at Ephesus, who had believed through John the Baptist's testimony "on him that should come after him, that is on Christ Jesus." If not here, in Ephesians 1: 13 Paul tells us what he brought them, "the word of truth, the glad tidings of their salvation" — that is, of a Saviour come, and of His accomplished work — "in whom having believed ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise," of whom indeed they had not heard till then that "he is," that is, in His special place and testimony on earth.

"Faith in the Lord's Person is" not "what is emphasised" in all these places, but the testimony, upon His accomplished death and resurrection, of the remission of sins. There was the testimony to the glory of His Person by His words and works when He was upon earth and this rejected, and now, and this is the cardinal point of the testimony of the Acts (and it only shows how far even a beloved servant of the Lord may be carried by the bias of his mind, that it should be overlooked and denied), there is the testimony that "thus it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day; and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem." It is not the "intelligent apprehension of atonement" (p. 15), that is "necessary either for the forgiveness of sins or for the reception of the Holy Ghost." But what we do learn from all scripture, from the united testimony of type, and history, and doctrine, is indisputably, that the Holy Ghost takes up His dwelling-place in the believer, on the reception of the forgiveness of sins by faith in the Holy Ghost's testimony to the death and resurrection and exaltation in glory of the Lord Jesus. For to this answers exactly, as we have seen, the place the Holy Ghost is introduced doctrinally in the Epistle to the Romans (Rom. 5: 5); and in beautiful type, in the cleansing of the leper, where the application of the blood of the trespass-offering comes between the water, type of the word by which we are born of God, and the oil, the type of the Holy Ghost. (Lev. 14.) Of course it is those who believe in Christ who are sealed, not those who do not. But the question is, Does the indwelling of the Holy Ghost follow upon faith in the Person of Christ, apart from and before the testimony of His work is believed. Scripture leaves no doubt or cloud upon my mind as to the answer. Those of Acts 19 believed and had life, before they received the glad tidings of their salvation; when they heard these, their faith in Christ receives what they had not before, that is, the seal of the indwelling Spirit.

Nor will it shake the simple Christian who knows his place before God, and has the testimony of the word to the blessed effects that accompany the presence of the Holy Ghost — that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us, that He is the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry Abba Father, that where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty — to have the case of souls before Luther's time brought up to him. (p. 4.) For he who knows the grace of God, and marks the ways of that grace with souls, knows how many there are, who are in reality in these effects of the Spirit's presence, whose doctrine forbids it to them. He holds to what scripture teaches him of these effects, and refuses the theory of this paper, that would reduce the great characteristic truth and witness of Christianity, the presence of the Holy Ghost in the believer, to a mere means by which he enters intelligently into what in fact he already possessed before, thus reducing His presence to a nonentity, effecting nothing actually, and alike dishonouring to the glory of Christ on high (glorified in God consequent upon God having been infinitely glorified in Him — John 13: 31, 32), and the Holy Ghost witness to it on earth. The "intelligent apprehension of atonement by the cross" might indeed in such times have been sought for well-nigh in vain. But it is not this, nor any question of intelligence then or now, that brings with it the divine power and blessedness of the Holy Ghost's indwelling.

By the infinite and precious grace of our God, the state of the soul is not measured by its intelligence, but by its needs and God's answer to them, through the faith of His testimony in the gospel. False and defective teaching may hinder much, so that the intelligent apprehension of the place may be small — yet there, and enjoyed, and expressed in the spirit of their intercourse with God, when sometimes denied in the formal doctrine of it — and with deepening intelligence will come deepening enjoyment of all that we have been brought into. As to the danger of slipping out of known and enjoyed blessedness (p. 4) by unwatchfulness and the like, it is most real. If the Holy Ghost be so intimately bound up and identified with the christian state, what grieves Him must affect the enjoyment of all parts of our blessing. But enfeebled as the sense of it may be even to the loss of all the practical power of it, one who has been brought into the christian position does not lose it, blessed be God, any more than a deeply-failing child loses his relationship. Now this position, this relationship, based on accomplished redemption, flowing from the new state and place the Lord Jesus has entered into as Man in resurrection power and glory, and the Holy Ghost given to bring us consciously into it, is His own place as risen Man before God and the Father, and therefore, is one of assured divine favour and acceptance. The power of His resurrection entering into it involves our deliverance from the whole old status of man in the flesh, and therefore from the dominion of sin under the law — as well as the forgiveness of the sins that belonged to that status. It makes sin a far more terrible thing. But it is one thing to be on this ground with God in the soul, and estimate all failure as inconsistency with a constituted relationship, of which the Holy Ghost is the power, and another thing never to have been in the relationship; but to be, on the contrary, carnal, sold under sin, and brought into captivity to the law of sin in the members, albeit with the holy desires of the new nature and the earnest struggle to be free. These prove the life and nature of God to be there, by birth from God, as surely as with those who are in their full christian position, but that that position is not the fruit of life (though it could not be ours without it), but of the death and resurrection of Christ made good in divine power to our souls by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost.

The Epistle of John (from which a verse is quoted in a way to weaken its full force, page 5) is the blessed counterpart of the christian position as unfolded through Paul — the complement of it. By our deliverance in power into that position, we have become entitled to disown absolutely any other life as ours, save that we have received in the Son of God, now to be displayed in us in its characteristic divine traits, in the place where it was once displayed in all its perfection in Him. I am crucified with Christ: it is no more I that live, but Christ that liveth in me. That life is free to express itself now. There is not a word of the deliverance, but we are instructed in the essential privileges and characteristics of the life as if we never possessed another. What a confirmation of the deliverance to the delivered soul, of the ground of the new creation upon which we have been brought. Power to walk as such, comes from taking the place He gives us by this Epistle, to disown all other life but His as ours. But what constant energy of faith and abiding in Him this needs! Then we shall walk as He walked. Thus the passages quoted on page 5 (1 John 2: 11, 3: 6), are as simple to faith as they are solemn in their application to our souls. If these things are not known as true in us, it is either that we have never been brought into our full christian place (the "perfect" or those "of full age" of Paul's Epistles), or else the far more serious alternative, that having been brought into it, we have gone and sinned against the known light and love and relationships of that place — against all that Christ was, and was manifested for (chap. 3: 5) — against known deliverance from sin's power. And to this too sad possibility (such are our hearts) the only two exceptions to what is the general rule of the Epistle (recognising nothing as true of the Christian but what was so of Christ, for He is our life) apply, to sin in my own case in chapter 2: 1, and in my brother's in chapter 5: 16. It is sad to have even John 4: 13, 14, used in the same way in the same connection as the passages above, as if this last, too, does not apply in all its absoluteness to what Christ is speaking of, that is, eternal life in power by the Holy Ghost in us, rising up in communion to its source and level in God — did anyone ever brought there ever thirst again in it? But surely the Lord does not promise that we shall never thirst again, if we turn away from the source and sphere of this divine satisfaction, to some poor earthly cistern that never sufficed even for the natural man.

I have written at more length than I intended originally in a letter, but the importance and blessedness of the truths involved have led me on, though so little able to present to another the full disproof, that the word of God gives my own soul, of the position taken up by this paper. The effect of its perusal, in the light of the word, has been only to strengthen and deepen the hold of the truths, and their connection, that has been the apparent object of this paper to call in question. These are nothing less than the foundation on which Christianity, as in contrast to Judaism, rests — the truths in which a full Christianity is contained and revealed. So far am I from believing with the writer (p. 1) that no fundamental point is in contention. Those who have found it as, in the infinite grace of God, the answer to the deepest needs of our being — but not measured or limited by those needs, being the answer of divine love and power, and nothing short of the fruit of God's everlasting counsels for His own glory and joy, accomplished at such a cost — will not lightly give up the truths in which it has been made good to our souls.  J. A. T.

The Lordship of Christ

The Lordship of Christ.

Notes of an Address at the Believers' Meetings, Dublin, January 5th, 1865 by J. A. Trench.

CBA6103(2).

The Word of God to which I will refer you, beloved friends, is in 1 Cor. 12: 3. "Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost."

May God write upon our hearts, at the close of these blessed meetings, the solemn words, that "no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost." But you say, "we constantly say that Jesus is the Lord; why we are always talking about 'the Lord Jesus Christ.'" That is just what I want to call your attention to. We do not enter into the solemn truth we are uttering, when we say "our Lord Jesus." By His Word to us tonight, God would bid us pause, and ask ourselves if we fully understand all their significance. Oh, if there is one child of the living God here, that has been able to say "the LORD Jesus," as He would have that word said, it has only been by the direct teaching of the Holy Ghost. The flesh rebels against His Lordship over us. We have hearts that are not willingly subject to His authority. We are fonder of choosing our own path, than of walking in the one He has marked out for us. Are we not disobedient children? But God would remind us that Jesus is our Lord. And it we are able duly to confess that He is, then it is not of the natural heart, but by the Holy Ghost, and by Him alone.

Let me read a passage from the Acts of the Apostles, that will enable us to understand the import God attaches to the name "Lord." In Acts 2: 36, Peter preaches to the men of Israel, that "God has raised up" Jesus of Nazareth, whom "ye took, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain; and" (according to Psalm 110, "Jehovah hath said unto my Lord, sit Thou on my right hand, until I make Thy foes Thy footstool,") "hath made that same Jesus both Lord and Christ." Here, then, this name is given Him in special reference to Israel's subjection to Him; but we read in Psalm 8, "Thou hast put all things in subjection under His feet," and though "we see not yet all things put under Him," (according to the Word of God, in Heb. 2: 8) — "but we see Jesus who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour." Yea, "hath God highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow; of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is LORD, to the glory of God the Father." (Phil. 2: 9-11). Thus, then, this name belongs of right to Jesus, as raised from the dead by God, to the place of power and authority — an authority which must yet be owned by all.

For this, His undisputed Lordship, the time has not fully come: but the time has come for the Church's subjection to Him as its Head. Hence we have a special application of Psalm 8 to our own time, by the Holy Ghost, in Eph. 1: 22. "And hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the Head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him which filleth all in all." In fact, Jesus waits to enter upon His universal sway, until His Church shall be associated with Himself in it. Meanwhile each one of us, who have been "quickened" from our death in sins, and "raised up together with Him," have been also baptized by the Holy Ghost into one body (1 Cor. 12: 13), of which Christ is the Head and constituted Lord. So, we find ourselves, beloved, in the blessed and solemnly responsible place of subjection to Him. He is the Lord of His Church's heart, as the first-fruits of his universal sway. Oh, that each one of us, as members of that body, may be enabled by the Holy Ghost to say that He is Lord, and to give Him His rightful place in our hearts and consciences! Therefore, we see that He is not "our Lord" merely as our Saviour; it is not simply a title for Jesus, as we say in the world, "lord so and so," marking special rank and distinction, but this title is His because of the relationship, in which He stands in resurrection to us, as Head of His body, the Church. And the Holy Ghost would keep us in mind, by every use of it, that we are responsible to obey Him. Yes, beloved, to obey the precious One, who has washed us from our sins in His own blood, and made us one with Himself, "members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones" — in all that He is. Oh, I am persuaded, that in the comfort and peace and blessing of our salvation, we think too little of the unreserved obedience which now becomes due to our Lord Jesus!

The better to enter into our Lord's mind, about this, our confession of His name, and the responsibility that attaches to it, let me remind you of those words of His, in Matt. 7: 21; "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father." Often to take the name "Lord" upon our lips is nothing, but to yield ourselves in everything to be subject to His will, as revealed in His Word, this is indeed to acknowledge that He is Lord. Do we not then begin to see more clearly, why "no one can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost"? By that name, we are bound in responsibility to keep His commandments. I would not use that word, as if it were bondage to obey Jesus — God forbid. Far be it from us to think so! Bondage to obey Jesus! No, no, He has revealed Himself to us as our precious Saviour, our peace, our joy, our hope, our heaven, our all, that He may win our hearts for Himself. He does not want the cold service of the apprentice or the slave. He wants the loving heart-service of His chosen friends; and so he says expressly — "Henceforth I call you not servants, but I have called you friends." Then as His friends He comes to us and makes known to us His counsels, His will; and now His own word to us is, "If ye love me, keep my commandments." And here, beloved, shall we not say, that our self-willed hearts need the warning of Luke 12: 47, as well as the previous exhortation, "That servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes"? There was a time in the history of Israel, recorded for us in Judges 17: 6, when "there was no king, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes." This is what the flesh would like — the self-willed flesh that is still present with each of us: Yes, we need to be on our guard, lest the natural man should rise up in revolt within us, against the authority and Lordship of Jesus, as Head of His Body, and we should be found, each one acting as seemed best to himself, instead of giving Jesus His rightful sovereignty in our hearts. Then should we let the Word act as a sharp two-edged sword, in judgment, to cut at the root of the slightest insubordination, in thought, or ways, to Him. I speak as one who has proved in some little measure the desperate insubjection and self-will of my own heart. All I say is for myself, as well as you, beloved. What I desire is — is it not what we all desire? — that henceforward Jesus shall be our Lord, not in name only, but in deed. Oh, for an eye single to Him, a heart so occupied with Him, to the exclusion of all others, that not by effort or constraint, but spontaneously, our question at every step may be — What will Jesus have me to do? Then could we be found each one following his own inclination, or guided by the world's "needs be," or walking in a brother's path, be he ever such a "good man," liable to be crooked and perverse as our own? — and not rather, so that we might say with one of old "The Lord before whom I walk," and, "He that judgeth me is the Lord."

Here I am met with the cry, "Be all this as it may, let us at least love one another, we cannot see eye to eye in all things; let us give each other all freedom of action, and be found, it may be, ranged under distinct banners, walking in separated paths; but let us love — love — love!" There is no heart that is subject to the Lordship and commandments of Jesus, that does not own, after all that Jesus has said about it, our blessed responsibility, to "love one another;" and we have had many precious words of exhortation on this mutual duty, during our meeting. Still we must not forget that the paths of love and obedience are not distinct, but identical. "And this is love," said one who lived very near the heart of Jesus, speaking by the Holy Ghost, "that we walk after His commandments" (2 John 6). Love may be met with in paths of disobedience; but this is not the holy love, which has its spring in God, and to which Jesus commands His people. Jesus Himself is the first object of all true love — the centre of that love, that takes into the circle of its affections all who are His; so that the closer our hearts are drawn to His, the closer they will be drawn to one another. But do not let us forget that a scrupulous obedience to the Word He has given us, as the all-sufficient, unerring guide for our path while He is absent, is the way He has appointed us, to prove that our hearts are His in more than name. Entire consecration to Jesus is the most precious bond that can unite hearts in this wilderness; and, certainly, in proportion as we are attracted to Him as our one object in life, His people, once separated, will become united in their path.

Hence it is, beloved, that the bond of unity between the Churches of the Saints, scattered over the earth, is found to be, according to the Holy Ghost, in 1 Cor. 1: 2, the acknowledged Lordship of Jesus. "Unto the Church of God at Corinth," He says, "with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our LORD, both theirs and ours." Mark the emphatic place given to His title, meant as it is, to awake the Church throughout the earth, and specially at that time, the assembly at Corinth, to its responsibility of obedience to its Head and Lord. And the responsibility is later enforced, in every little matter of detail, by the solemn words of 1 Cor. 14: 37: "If any man think himself to be spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord." To meet the condition of the Church at Corinth, in which already "the leaven" was working, which has now well-nigh leavened the whole lump, the Holy Ghost will sound again and again in their ears, with a frequency that has only its parallel in 2 Timothy, the name of "the Lord;" so that, at each mention of it, their conscience may be stirred up to the path of obedience, to the holy and separate walk that becomes the Church of God. Thus provision was made for a unity of path throughout the scattered Churches, by their common obedience to the one Lord — a unity such as even the world might recognize, and be forced to "believe," as Jesus said, "that Thou hast sent me" (John 17: 21). But from this glorious place of testimony for God in the world, the Church, once "a city set upon a hill," has fallen. Already, in 2 Timothy, the general apostacy and departure of the Church from Christ had set in; and instruction is given us, for our individual path of faithfulness in the midst of it. Here again the Lordship of Jesus is pressed upon our consciences by that often-repeated title, needful to correct the constant tendency of our hearts to stray from the straight path of following Jesus. A word from the Lord is enough for a mind subject to Him: and "this is love, that we walk after His commandments." Divine love and obedience are principles of action linked hand in hand. God's truth will never, never, be sacrificed to love, in the heart that truly loves. In the path of faithfulness to Christ Jesus the Lord, hearts will be drawn closest together; and though there be but two or three found that have courage for it, the precious promise is as good for us today, as when first it fell from His lips — "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them." If He is there, what more do we need for blessing? Beloved, we have prayed much that the glory of God may be increasingly the object of our lives; let us remember how He has bound it up with our confession of Jesus as the Lord, (Phil. 2: 11), and cry to Him for more obedient hearts.

The Epistle of Jude is a solemn one, as bearing upon these last days. It opens with an exhortation "that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints " — needful, in consequence of principles already at work in men's minds, whose tendency was to subvert everything. These principles are found by v. 4 to be twofold - the grace of our God is turned into every kind of ungodly license, and the only Master and Lord is denied. Men, finding that salvation was through the grace of God, would begin to assert their liberty to act in everything as they thought best, and hence to turn Jesus out of His place in their hearts as Master and Lord (for both words are found in the Greek original*). Insubjection to lawful authority, this was the principle at work, described again in v. 8 as lordship† despised. And, oh! beloved, are not the seeds of it found in each heart? It begins to manifest itself in the disobedience to parental authority of the child's earliest years, and betrays its presence still in the desperate waywardness, and self-will, and rebellion of our hearts, even as the Lord's children. Oh! as we look back over the past for a moment, is it not a fearful retrospect of self-pleasing insubjection to the only Lord? And do we not still find ourselves ever disputing within, the paramount authority of our Lord Jesus? Shall we not then cry, to Him for "the casting down of every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and that every thought may be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ"? Never was there a day, I am persuaded, in which more humble watchfulness in this matter was needful for the Church of God. We live in an atmosphere "of despising dominion;" and one of the most popular papers of the day has its very popularity in that it holds up all who are in power to contempt, "speaking evil of dignities." How solemn the example of respect for authority given us in the Epistle before us, when it is said — "Michael the Archangel, in contending with the devil, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee." Even "the prince of this world," "the ruler of the darkness of this world," "the prince of the power of the air," is to be owned in the region of his brief authority — a very important guide, I may say in passing, to the Church of God, as to its connexion with worldly power in the present age. And shall we be unsubject to Jesus our Lord? Oh, for grace to enable us to give Him no longer that name without the submission of heart in all things to His obedience, which is alone to own His Lordship.

* despotes and kurios.  † kuriotes.

Here let me say, that while we set a guard upon our unsubject minds, we need to watch against a very insidious form of insubjection to the Lord, to which we are often tempted; it is as real as open rebellion against Him, but not so patent, and therefore, if possible, more dangerous for our souls. That is, to own and be subject to authority which is not the Lord's, which is in truth to say, that Jesus is not the Lord. If it be required of us to be subject to authority, we must ask if it come from Jesus, for to own authority which is not from Him as its source, is really to disown His. The question, then, is not whether our hearts are subject to any lordship, but whether Jesus is the Lord, to whom they alone are subject. "Every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Bear with me, beloved, in all that I have said, if it be according to the Word of the Lord, as to the responsibility connected with the name, that by the Holy Ghost we are taught to ascribe to Jesus.

And now a promise or two from Himself, and I have done. In John 15: 9, He has left us this precious word: "As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you; continue ye in My love." He gives us, as the only measure of the love wherewith He loves us, the Father's love for Himself, His well-beloved Son. Well may we say, "it passeth knowledge." And His is an unchanging love — "the same yesterday" — when first He set His heart upon us, dead in our sins  - "today, and for ever." Our apprehension of it may change, but His love never can. Yet He wants that it should not be so with us. He desires that we should walk in the full enjoyment of it all our way in the wilderness — "Continue ye in My love;" and so He says, "If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love." Oh, beloved, what an incentive to obedience is here for us — the unclouded enjoyment of His love! Does His face seem hidden at times? Ah! it is not that He has changed, but there has been some departure of heart from Him on our part, some unfaithfulness. His will has lost its proper place in our terribly self-willed minds, and for the time we have been found in disobedience. Yes, it is in proportion as we walk in subjection to Him, that we enjoy that love, and disobedience mars it all. The other passage is in John 14 "He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." Observe the difference between having His commandments and keeping them — everybody with a New Testament, to be had for two pence, has the commandments of the Lord — but how have we kept them? He would speak to the heart of his disciples, troubled by the thought that their loved One was leaving them, and bid them prove their love, not so much by the tears of regret at His departure, as by practical obedience to His commandments while He was away — "he it is that loveth Me." Then the promise, "and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself unto him." And so, beloved, obedience to the Lord will lead into a wealthy place; Jesus will be with us in special manifestation of His love and presence, if few besides are found there. It will be a rough path, because of the fearful insubjection of our hearts: it will be a path of trial, because of the world, in the midst of which it lies. "I have chosen you out of the world; therefore, the world hateth you." You may be tempest-tossed, but there is a pillow in the storm for you, on the bosom of Jesus: lonely, shall I say? no, for the promise is, "I will manifest Myself unto him," and His presence is fulness of joy. The heart cannot be desolate, with Jesus for company, if it has learnt anything of His preciousness. Shall we hesitate one moment longer to yield up all in obedience to Him, though it be to tear from our heart the most cherished interests? At last, shall we surrender and be His alone? "Yes," you say, "if I only knew certainly what His will is." Then hear Him speak again, "If a man love Me he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." Mark His little words, His slightest wish; thus shall we know His will. "Nonessential" will then be an unknown word; it will be essential with us to find out His will in everything; and When we know it, to yield Him the joyful and implicit obedience of our hearts, if we have been taught by the Holy Ghost to say, that Jesus is the Lord. And what a promise! If all desert you, if you stand alone in a household, determined at all cost to follow the Lord; if you become a stranger to your dearest friends; if every cord that bound to earth is severed; "We will come unto him and make our abode with him." Oh, what fulness of blessing, verily "His paths drop fatness." And now, beloved, we are about to separate, to return to our several spheres of service, while we still wait for Jesus, oh, may it be to enter into the deep, and solemn, and heart-judging significance of the name Lord Jesus! And every time we take it upon our lips, may it be to remember Him, to whom the subjection of every thought is due!

THAT I am Thine, my Lord and God,

Sprinkled and ransomed by Thy blood!

Repeat that word once more

With such an energy and light,

That this world's flattery nor spite

To shake me never may have power.

From various cares my heart retires,

Though deep and boundless its desires —

I'm now to please but One;

He before whom the elders bow —

With Him is all my business now,

And with the souls that are His own.

Indeed, if Jesus ne'er was slain,

Or aught can make His ransom vain,

That now it heals no more —

If His heart's tenderness is fled,

If of a Church He is not Head,

Nor Lord of all, as heretofore —

Then (so refer, my state to Him)

Unwarranted I must esteem,

And wretched, all I do.

Ah! my heart throbs, and seizes fast

The covenant that will ever last:

It knows — it knows these things are true.

No, my dear Lord, in following Thee,

And not in dark uncertainty,

This foot obedient moves.

'Tis with a Brother and a King,

Who many to His yoke will bring,

Who ever lives, and ever loves.

Let me my weary mind recline

On that Eternal Love of Thine,

And human thoughts forget;

Childlike, attend what Thou wilt say,

Go forth, and do it while 'tis day-

Yet never leave my sweet retreat

Thus all the sequel is well weighed,

I cast myself upon Thine aid —

A sea where none can sink.

Yea, in that sphere I stand, poor worm,

Where Thou wilt for Thy name perform

Beyond whate'er I ask or think.

Love and Obedience

Love and Obedience.

John 14

Notes of Bible Reading with J. A. T.

(from "An Outline of Sound Words" No. 2, p. 18)

John 14: 1-3. We can estimate but imperfectly what it was to have the Father's house presented to the disciples for the first time — for nowhere else is "it spoken of. Jewish hopes looked for the manifestation of Christ on earth, but now, instead of that, it is the full revelation of the Father's house to which the Lord directs their hearts. They had believed in God without a manifestation of God; now they were to have Him as the direct object of their faith. Then He says, "I go to prepare a place for you." Redemption having settled every question of our sins — and thus prepared us for the place — His presence there prepares the place for us. He is coming again to receive us to Himself, but, between His going and His coming, He has sent the Holy Ghost that in heart and spirit we may know the Father's house before we get there. The coming is dropped in the rest of the chapter which is the unfolding, all through, of the power of the Spirit.

John 14: 4-7. "Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know." It is as if He had said, "Ye know the Father's house." Thomas said, "Lord, we know not whither Thou goest; and how can we know the way?" Jesus immediately says, "I am the way " — the way to the Father's house, and the way to the Father. We have come to the Father, and thus to all the deepest blessedness of the Father's house. It is the Father's presence that makes the Father's house. Christ is the revealer of the Father: to receive Jesus as the Sent One of God is to have the Father revealed in the fullest sense. "This is life eternal, that they might know Thee (the Father) the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent" (John 17: 3).

Is the Father's house for others besides the Church?

What John presents is only for this dispensation. The Father's house will not be revealed to saints in the Millennium. But we have entrance, by the Spirit, to where He is gone. Hence while it is no question of corporate blessing, only those who compose the Church know this blessedness now. Not that Abraham, and such, will not know the Father in the future, but they never knew it on earth.

John 14: 8-11. Philip seizes the thought of the Father, and so he says, "Shew us the Father," proving how little he had grasped the glory of the Person of the Lord. In reply, the Lord says, "Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me?" His "words" and "works" were a full manifestation of the Father, in whose bosom He dwelt — that life of communion, that life of relationship, into which He was then introducing us. Thus we have the path of Jesus in His words and works; then the work of redemption to set us there, and then His coming again to bring us there actually.

John 14: 12-14. The works that He had done, they would do also, and more wonderful works, from the greater nearness to the Father as Man which He was to take. A poor sinner who receives His words now is brought into greater nearness than could be while He was on earth. "If ye shall ask anything in my Name, I will do it." That is the new blessing into which we are introduced.

John 14: 15-24. Now comes the path by which we can enjoy it unhinderedly. Love leads into the path, and then there need be no check to the enjoyment of all the Lord leads us into. "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is. that loveth Me." Then the power of it — the Comforter, the Spirit of truth shall abide with you for ever, whom the world cannot receive. The Spirit is here because the Lord is not here." I will come to you," is a present thing, come for you is a future thing. The revelation of the Father was here, but the enjoyment of that revelation could only be in His going away. In touching words He almost reproaches them for not having discerned Him.

What are the commandments?

The commandments and words are very like each other. They diner essentially from the law. All that manifested His life here is given to us to form that life in us. The commandment is the direction of the Lord in certain things; but His words are connected with a higher spiritual intelligence that leads to the obedience to the word, when an actual command might not be found. What I see true of Him is now given me. The commandments have to do with certain details, but the word expresses the whole life, all that is seen true of Him is seen now as a commandment for me.

Does it need more communion to keep His word? "If a man love Me, he will keep my word." One walking in nearness to the Lord will not wait for a command, but seeing the life of the Lord — what is in Christ — the Holy Ghost produces it in me. As the Apostle could say, "By the meekness and gentleness of Christ" (2 Cor. 10: 1. I am formed by that life, in occupation with it. "I will come to you" is the result of the Spirit's presence — the opened eye to see Him Who has withdrawn from the world. "Because I live ye shall live also," is not merely security, but it takes in all His present service for us, that we may hang upon Him moment by moment.

"That day" is the Holy Ghost's day. Then "Ye shall know." This leads to the development of the words "I in you." The having the commandments is the proof of love. A careless child forgets the commandments, but an obedient, intelligent, child is glad to get his Father's words and treasures them in his heart.

John 14: 25, 26. What a comfort to them that the Lord speaks of the One He would send from the Father, bringing back to their remembrance all that He had said to them, and would teach them, so lighting up the path of the Lord Jesus as to bring them into the intelligence of it, and this He does for us too.

John 14: 27, 28. "Peace I leave with you." What a legacy! The peace in which He had ever walked down here, bringing us into association with Himself — not giving away. He was leading them into an unknown path. "If ye loved Me ye would rejoice because I go unto the Father." He had taken the subordinate place on earth as Man, but was now going back as Man to the place of nearness.

John 14: 29-31. The chapter does not close until the perfection of the path He had trodden is brought out — love and obedience. The love, the spring of obedience — doing His will instead of our own. This would lighten up the loneliest path of each one, that every act may be in obedience to that blessed One.

Canticles 2: 4

Canticles 2: 4.

Notes of an Address

John Alfred Trench.

(Dublin Tract Repositary)

Beloved Friends — I wish to give you a Motto, and I trust, if you come to see anything of the truth that it contains, you will take it as a word to be next and dearest to your heart for the coming year. It is —

"His banner over me was love."

You will find the words in Canticles 2: 4. I know no more precious portion of God's Word than the whole passage from which they are taken: —

"I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys." (Cant. 2: 1.)

The rose in its beauty, the lily in all its hidden perfectness — it is Jesus; and the moment he is presented to the souls of those who know him, their affections are drawn out towards him by the thought of all that he has been and is to them.

This Jesus — little known or thought of by the world, is our shelter from the heat of trial, and the food of our souls, in the dearth and famine of all else that can satisfy in our desert journey of life.

"I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste." (Cant. 2: 3.)

But, my friends, is it so with you? Do you know anything of Jesus? I do not ask you by what name you call yourself, nor what doctrine you hold about Jesus; but I ask you earnestly, and must press my question, Do you know Christ for yourself? Do you know him personally? Have you received Christ in your heart as the One whom you love above all others? Do you know him in your life as a power separating from the world and from sin?

It is sad to listen to the vague and heartless way in which many who have not peace with God, but yet who acknowledge the claims of Christ, speak of him in general terms. They speak of our Saviour, who died for all the world, and think thus to avoid all individual dealing with God. How different is the warm appropriation of Christ by Mary, as she says, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him!" How she speaks as if he belonged to her and none else in the world beside. "My Lord and my God," cries Thomas, as the light of a risen Saviour burst in upon his soul. None knew better than Paul about Christ; but far — far more blessed, he could say, "I know whom I have believed."

My brother, my sister, be warned of a religion without Jesus. Be warned of a form without power — an unreal, empty shadow; if you don't know Jesus now as "the friend that sticketh closer than a brother," you will find yourself alone when all other friends have failed — alone at the bar of God — alone in the bottomless abyss of hell; — in the crowd indeed — but in the crowd of those upon whom the awful solitarinesss of the soul without God has burst with tremendous reality!

But if, on the contrary, the truths about Jesus have brought us to Jesus, how blessed to know the place that he has given us before God!

Many of the Lord's dear people fail of the "fulness of joy" which is our privilege, and which it is his will we should have abidingly, (John 17: 13,) because they do not see this truth. Jesus has died for us. He has borne our sins, and borne them away for ever. He "loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood." But this is not the whole truth. There is more to be told and to be enjoyed — far more than all this, wonderful as it is! This, indeed, he has done for us; but he has done more. He has brought us into the family of the Father. He has made us the children of God. He has given us the place of Sonship. This is the place he has given us -

"He brought me to the banqueting-house; and his banner over me was love." (Cant. 2: 4.)

The blood has not only availed to wash away my sins, so that God can say, "I will remember them no more;" but it has rent the veil that separated the people of old from the Holiest of Holies, and has brought me in with my High Priest, Jesus, even into the most holy presence of God. Nor am I there unclothed; for by faith in that blood, I have been brought in as Jesus himself, and stand there "the righteousness of God in him." (2 Cor. 5: 21.) Enveloped in that spotless robe, I take my place as no unwelcome guest at the banqueting table of love. The arms of love, from which nothing can ever separate me, enclose me in their embrace. The kiss of reconciliation and peace is upon my brow; and the blood gives me my title to it all.

Oh, beloved! if as a poor sinner you have really cast the eye of faith, though it be with a feeble glance, to Jesus, this look of faith — this renunciation of self and trust in Jesus — gives you this place before God, whether you know it or not. In Christ you have your meetness for it all. Your place in the presence of God does not depend upon any merit of your own. It does not depend on your walk down here, or upon your realization of all this blessedness, but it depends upon the value and efficacy of the blood of Jesus. May God give you to see it and enjoy it.

But, beloved, has the perfectness of my place before God given me immunity from trial, difficulty, or temptation down here? No, no. Each heart answers, No. My path down here may be one of trial. Each, one knows the character of the trial to which he has been exposed, and each knows the uncertainty of all that is to come. The coming year may be one of sickness. Health may fail; friends may fail; the happy Christmas circle now complete, may have many a gap in its ranks before another Christmas comes round. Besides all this, there are things hard to be borne — the reproach of Christ, the opposition of those dear to us who know not the Lord; the want of sympathy of those who are the Lord's, from whom we might have looked for the right hand of fellowship.

But, beloved, it is not with the path and with its roughnesses, that I want to occupy your minds. No; but I would have you think of the banner that floats above your heads. Up! weeping eyes that are turned in upon self, or fixed upon the path, or strained, amid tears, into the future, where all looks dark and gloomy — look up, and listen to the words  - the precious words -

"His banner over me is love."

Thy trials and difficulties are from the hand of a Father, who deals with thee in love, as with His child. He is drawing thee nearer to Himself. Thou must nestle all the closer to the side of Jesus. There perplexity, or coldness, or the withering blast of disappointed hope, has no power; or if it blows at all, it serves but to float over thee the banner of love. "But the future?" you say. Well, the future — trust it to the Father. Bring Him all your care, "for he careth for you;" and leave it with Him. Have things turned out otherwise than you had looked or hoped for? Still, "his banner over you is love." And it is your place and mine to bow our heads in meek submission to the Father's will. This was Jesus' yoke, and it is ours; "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight." Let us take his yoke upon us, and his word is pledged to it — we shall find rest unto our souls. "His banner over me is love." What a thought to rest upon! What a pillow on which to sleep or die!

But there are those who say, our Motto might be otherwise rendered. They say, the word "Banner" ought to be rendered "Standard." Be it so, we will follow them in the change, and see if it is not still a Motto for us. And now, we are taken from the gentler scenes of rest in a Father's house to the sterner activities of the camp, the battle-field, and the fight. The "Standard" at once summons me to the thought, and very presence, of the enemy. Need we stop to inquire — who and what he is? Nay, we are in the fight already. The world, the flesh, and the devil. are opposed to us in formidable array. Our conflict is with "principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world — wicked spirits in the heavenlies." We were once found on the side of those that are now opposed to us. We walked according to their course, and according to their prince. (Eph. 2: 2.) But we are deserters from them: therefore the fight is all the fiercer. We have been quickened, raised with Jesus, and seated in the heavenlies — brought into the banqueting house; and they ever seek "to cast us down from our excellency," and make us walk in the flesh. Oh, which of us has not felt the power of the enemy? But how blessed, to look up now and again, nay ever, from the scene of strife and conflict, to repose in the thought that the Standard over us is love!

God, in His great love wherewith He hath loved us, has given us to fight under that standard, and not all the powers of the enemy can prevail against us. "Sin shall not have dominion over you." Our standard is one of victory. There is not one blot on the unsullied fame of that standard. Far and wide it has been carried over the earth, and everywhere it has prevailed. We fight, then, in no uncertain cause, for the Lord has triumphed, and in him the victory is secured to us. Look up, faint-hearted one, and see the names of the victories that love has now inscribed upon thy standard, and once more gird thy sword upon thy thigh: rally closer round the standard — for it is when we wander from it, we fall. Oftentimes we go forth in the impetuosity of self-confidence, and fall; but round that standard all is victory — "victory through the blood of the Lamb!" But then again, as the standard is borne in the fight, it suffers. I have seen one, that had never known defeat through a century of war, hanging in shreds by its pole. Oh! beloved, as we gaze upon our standard of love, we see it bathed in blood; it is pierced with the spear and the nails; it, has been in the deadliest conflict, when none of us were there to fight around it. Ah, you see it — the standard is love, and that, God's love manifested in the Cross of Jesus.

Jesus is our standard; and all this he has borne for us. He has fought for us alone. He has, in death, triumphed over death and hell. He has bruised the head of the serpent that had the power of death. He that has led captivity captive, has gone up on high; he is our standard of victory. Well may we take courage, for even in death we can cry, "O death, where is thy sting? O, grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be unto God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

But there is another, and a third sense, in which, I think, we may use our Motto with effect. We speak of a standard of right and wrong; and I conceive the meaning is not altogether unassociated with that which we have been just considering. As the regiment follows its standard, never hesitating to follow where it leads, the standard becomes its guide, its rule: so we take the word in the sense of a rule of life, and then, how blessed to read, "His standard over me is love!"

Dear brothers and sisters in Jesus, what has been your rule of life until today? Have you been setting before yourself some human model — even the dearest servant of God that you can find? If so, I say you have been lowering God's standard. Worse again — have you been making your own experience your rule? "I walked up to such a mark last year — I will make it a higher one next year." Or has it been your highest thought that you are under a system that consists of rules of right and wrong — of "do this, and don't do the other"? Then, no wonder you look so unhappy, and do so little. Look for a little moment at God's standard as set before us in the light of the truth which we are considering.

And now we have both parts of our verse brought into connection. Love has brought me into the banqueting house; and now this, my place before God, is to be the rule of my walk down here. In other words, my standing is my standard. How influential, then, does all this truth become, if we could only live in the full realization of it! What is the place which God has given me? He has brought me into His own presence — made me one with Christ. Now what conduct on my part will be suitable to this position? Am I risen with Christ? Then why set my affections on things below? Is my home in heaven? Then let me walk as a pilgrim and a stranger here. Is my citizenship in heaven? Oh, then, let every word, every act, be consistent with such a dignity. Were these blessed truths made by the Holy Spirit part and parcel of ourselves, how should we be enabled, as it were, to look down from heaven to earth, and judge of things as God judges!

But this thought goes higher still: Christ is my standing before God. I am accepted in him. Then I should walk as Christ himself. Would Christ be found in such a scene of gaiety or revelry? Then surely will not I. Would he give way to such a thought? Neither can I. Would such a word be his? Then let me not utter it. Oh! how such a rule transcends all miserable questionings as to whether there is any positive command against one thing, or any harm in another. Love is a thousand times more influential than law. When the love of Christ fills the soul, there is an end to all these wretched, cold calculations of selfishness which would bargain for yielding as little to the Lord as could be withheld with an easy conscience. Oh! how different is the boundlessness of the obedience of love, that, if it had a thousand hearts, would regard them all as too little for Jesus, and that finds its supreme delight in seeking to please him in all things!

But do you say, what a high standard is this! How can I ever attain to it? Ah! beloved, here God meets us, humbled under a sense of our shortcoming and imperfection. He has given us a High Priest who can be touched with a feeling of our infirmities. In all our need and weakness and difficulties, as we journey along the wilderness path to our Father's house and home, we have the precious sympathy of Jesus. He has faced the full brunt of the storm. He, having been tempted himself as the Son of Man, clothed with our nature, can succour us when we are tempted; and we have not only his sympathy, but his help. I may sympathize with you in a little; yet however I may yearn to do it, I cannot help to bear your load of care. But Jesus has not only a perfectness of sympathy, but he is all-powerful to help. Let us, therefore, beloved, "come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may find grace to help in time of need."

And now, in conclusion, let us, above all things, set Jesus before us. Let us keep looking unto him as one whose banner over us is love — as our standard round which to rally in every hour of conflict, and as our rule by which to order all our ways. Following in his footsteps, lean upon his arm. Be assured of his sympathy — his help; and keep looking for the moment, when, according to his promise, he will appear to take us to himself. May the language of our hearts be, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus! come quickly!" May the Lord be with you! The Lord bless you!

Christian Obedience the Obedience of Christ

Christian Obedience the Obedience of Christ.

1 Peter 1: 2.

J. A. Trench.

It is my desire, with the Lord's help, to look a little into the place and character of the obedience which this passage shows to have been in the thoughts of God for us from eternity. There is nothing I fear, if one may speak for others, that we enter so little into. Yet it involves the whole principle and blessedness of the christian position, and the life which belongs to it.

In the passage the words "obedience" and "sprinkling of the blood" equally depend on "of Jesus Christ." This at once brings out the distinct character of the obedience. Peter, writing to the believing "strangers [or "sojourners"] of the dispersion," connects their position with the counsels and foreknowledge of God the Father; and in terms that while, I doubt not, conveying an analogy, are intended to suggest the great contrast between this position and that of the Jew nationally. If Jehovah had chosen Israel as a nation, to be a special people unto Himself, above all peoples that are upon the face of the earth (Deut. 7: 6), these Christians from among them were chosen individually of God the Father, which at once gives a far more intimate relationship. If for the nation there had been an outward sanctification by ordinances (Lev. 18 - 20 see especially Lev. 20: 24-26), theirs was the "sanctification of the Spirit" — an effectual work of God that, applying the truth in power to their souls, had separated them to Him, thus carrying into effect His counsels. (Compare 2 Thess. 2: 13.) Then as to the object of these counsels and work — "unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." For the nation, from Sinai, the condition of entrance into blessing was obedience to the law, to which they were bound by the blood — the penal sanction of death — which Moses sprinkled upon the people. (Ex. 24: 6-8.) For the Christian it is a wholly contrasted character of obedience — "of Jesus Christ"; that is, in other words, to obey as He obeyed. For this the heart is set free, by His blood-shedding having met every question of sin for the glory of God, and purged our consciences. The blood of Jesus Christ, instead of establishing the authority of the law by a death penalty on disobedience, becomes by His meeting it in infinite grace the delivering power for an obedience after the only pattern of His own. The verse presents the beautiful contrast of the christian position in every particular. And the place it gives obedience, and that so totally new in character, as the end and object of God in the blessing we have been brought into, commands the deepest interest and the subjection of our souls.

The first great thing to apprehend clearly is, the difference in the whole principle of it between the obedience of Jesus Christ and that which the law claimed. The law was addressed to man in the flesh, giving the perfect rule of what he ought to be for God. But now that the full character of the flesh has come out, we know that it is "enmity against God," "is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." So that "they that are in the flesh cannot please God." Thus the flesh is in its nature opposed to the rule imposed upon it; and a law given to it must mainly consist, as in fact it did, of prohibitions — "thou shalt not" — "thou shalt not"; or if it be considered in its most positive requirements, what a state of things is revealed that necessitated God's demanding His creature's love! Yet how inoperative, save to condemn: God unrevealed to be loved ["Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was" (Ex. 20: 21)]; no giving of a nature capable of loving Him. Nor was love ever produced by commanding it; or, if thus produced, of what value would it be? Yet it will be found in dealing with souls, that the ordinary idea of obedience does not go beyond what the law claimed, but was ineffectual, flesh being what it is in fallen man, to produce; and the serious thing is, that wherever the idea obtains it shuts out any true conception of what the obedience of the Christian is.

Nor is it only the law that accustoms us to the thought of an obedience wholly different in principle to that of Christ's, but even that which we constantly, and rightly, look for from our children. I say to my child at its play. "Go and do your lessons and the child gives up its play and sets to work, and we say that is an obedient child. But that is, that the child having a will to do what was pleasant to it, has given up its will to do mine, however distasteful; and the more the thing was distasteful in itself, the more the child's obedience would be shown. It is in principle that of the law's claim; only that the child's known relationship, and the affections flowing from it, furnish a motive to lead to obedience that the law could not give.

Now in what total contrast to all this is the obedience of Christ, as the word presents it? Come (genomenos) of woman, come under the law, He obeyed it perfectly; He magnified and made it honourable in submitting to its obedience, but not as having to be forbidden what He desired. "Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart." Neither was it any way the character of His obedience that He gave up His own will before the authority of the Father's will: for, He says, "I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me." As thus come, we see One whose only will was to do God's will.

It is of such a character of obedience that the epistle of James speaks (James 1: 25), "Whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein." The revealed mind of God is what is referred to; but first (ver. 18) it is "the word of truth" by which we have been begotten of God, so that we have received the nature of Him whose word it is. To the child of God then the word only comes to direct a nature he possesses in that in which it already delights. It is thus "a perfect law" — a law of liberty upon which the mind becomes fixed objectively — the law and the nature going together; or, as if I said to my child, "Go and play" — bidding just what pleases it.

But that the word should be this to us, far deeper principles are involved, connected with a state subjectively suited to the revelation found in the word. And first there must be deliverance out of a state wholly contrary to it. For if the nature we have received, in being born of the incorruptible seed by the living and abiding word of God, delights in what is revealed therein as His will, there is the flesh within that is, as we have seen, diametrically opposed. But when the condition of the flesh has been learned experimentally, as it must be learned, and we know by fruitless efforts under law, after good in it, that it is nothing but evil — if it is not I, but that is too strong for me — and the point of "O, wretched man that I am" has been reached; the neck of the flesh's will has been broken, and the soul thankfully bows to the absolute necessity of God's way of dealing with it, so long before intimated; "The end of all flesh is come before me." (Gen. 6: 13.) Then I learn that "God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin [i.e. "as a sacrifice for sin"] condemned sin in the flesh." But this condemnation having taken place in the death of Him who gave Himself for me that He might be my life, I see that I am entitled to count all that took place In His death as having happened to me. Thus we know that "our old man," that is, all we were as characterised by sin and the flesh, "has been crucified with Him that the body of sin" — its whole system and power — "might be annulled, that we should no longer be slaves to sin." (Rom. 6: 6.) Then in the diligence of faith, reckoning ourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God, of which position in both its parts Christ is the wonderful pattern (ver. 10), we tolerate the will of the flesh no longer. "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the passions thereof." We have died to the law too — which was the "strength of sin" (1 Cor. 15: 56), instead of being any strength against it — "by the body of Christ, that we should be to another, to Him that is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God." (Rom. 7: 4, 5.) And not being under the law we are led of the Spirit (Gal. 5: 18), and the righteousness [dikaioma, full sum of what it required] of the law is fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh under law, but after the Spirit as the power of the life have in Christ. (Rom. 8: 4.)

But the truth goes farther still. It is not merely that, by death to sin and the power of the Spirit there has been a positive deliverance from the dominion of sin, the flesh in the man condemned; but the man himself must go. The Epistle to the Colossians leads us into this deeper aspect of the death of Christ (Col. 2: 11, 12); "ye have died" (Col. 3: 3); and this become so real, as God presents it to faith, that the practical consequence can be pressed (Col. 2: 20), "Wherefore if ye have died with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances?" Why go and falsify your whole place as a Christian by subjecting yourself to ordinances that suppose the man to be alive; whereas the truth is that we have died with Christ out of our whole place and living status as such, to have it in a totally new sphere, risen with Him — now to know Christ as our life, and to be directed to objects where He is, to form the life practically by Him here, where we have been left to represent Him.

Yet there is another point, touched on indeed in this epistle (Col. 2: 13), but not further developed there, that has to be reached in the faith of our souls, in order that we may apprehend our full place in Christ, from which it flows that His path is ours; not now death and resurrection with Christ to clear us out from all that was connected with man in responsibility here, his guilt and state closed, but what has resulted from the full disclosure of that state in the long, patient trial of the ages, ending in the rejection of Christ; namely, that he is dead in sins. The Epistle to the Ephesians brings us to this proved universal condition of the first man. (Eph. 2: 1-10.) In 2 Corinthians 5, the added light of the cross is thrown upon it; for if God had to give up His Son to death that any might live, it was the plain proof that man was given up of God as dead; and this in contrast to dealings with him up to the cross that supposed him to be alive. "For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead." Now into this scene of universal death of man by and in sin, and where Christ was dead in grace for sin, God came in power to form a new creation, "If any man be in Christ there is a new creation"; raising up Christ as the first act of His power to be the beginning and head of it, and then quickening us together with Him. This involves His whole position as seated in the heavenlies, a position revealed to faith that we might know and realize it as a present thing in the power of the Spirit.

To Paul it is given to develop this new creation on the side of our place in Christ according to the eternal counsels of God; while in John's epistle (all we have learned through Paul as to the divine clearance made of the first man in judgment being assumed) it is brought out on the side of Christ as our life, involving participation in the divine nature, John being thus in teaching the complement of Paul. If in Paul the full christian position has been seen to be of a new creation of God, in John our condition is viewed as wholly of the same; and by the teaching of the Spirit through both apostles, He also being given to dwell in us as the power of our realization of it, we know that the Son is in the Father, and, in marvellous association of thought, that we are in Him and He in us. (John 14: 20.)

In 1 John then it is not the believer now looked at as with a war of two opposed principles within him — the flesh of which he has been born into this world, and the divine nature as born of God (though "if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us"); but now, all that is of the first man gone in the death of Christ, God sets before us the characteristic privileges and nature of the life we have been brought into in the second Man, as if we never had another — a life which, according to the threefold testimony (1 John 5: 6-12) of the Spirit come from the glory of Christ, of the water for purification, and of the blood for propitiation (water and blood alike flowing from His side in death — the end of man in judgment), is absolutely God's gift to us in His Son.

It may seem to have been a long digression, but the truths that have been before us are necessary in order that we should enter into our having been set apart for the obedience of Christ; so that no lower character of obedience may be seen to belong to the Christian. The Epistle of John puts it into its full place for us, the introductory part (1 John 1 - 2: 11) bringing out the great principles of the epistle. 1 John 1: 1-4 teaches us the wonderful privilege of the life we have been brought into in "fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ" that our joy may be full; verse 5 to the end characterises this fellowship by the principles of God's own nature as light, going on in grace (1 John 2: 1, 2) even to divine resources for its practical restoration if absolutely interrupted by sin; verses 3-11 adding the test of the two great principles of the divine nature in man, as manifested in Christ — obedience and love, by which false pretension to the possession of the privilege is judged.

Thus the essential principle of the christian position in its deepest privilege is disclosed. The life that was true in Him alone when He was here, shining as the light of men, but in darkness that apprehended it not, is — now that He has closed that state of man for God and for faith in the judgment of the cross, and taken His new place as man in the glory of God — "true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light now shineth." The commandments and word, that were the full expression of the life in Him — as He says, in answer to the question, "Who art thou?" (John 8: 25.) "Altogether (or "essentially" ten archen) that which I also say to you" — I am in nature what I speak — are now given to form and direct that life in us, wonderfully "new" in such application to us, but really the "old commandment which ye had from the beginning." Thus whatever blessed traits of that life are seen as expressed in Christ's path here, become His word, with divine authority over me as His commandments too, to indicate what alone is true as the expression of the same life in me. Hence the intimate links that constantly connect the gospel and epistles of John.

Thus wholly contrasted in principle is the obedience of Christ to anything known or presented to man before. Instead of a law acting from outside upon a nature wholly foreign and opposed to it, it is the revealed will of God, livingly expressed in the commandments and word of Christ, coming home with authority by these to a nature which, as His own in us, responds to and delights in that will, and knows no liberty but in obedience.

Sweet it is then to turn to the lowly life of Jesus, where that obedience is seen in all its perfection; even though the incomparable glory of it humbles us, and we feel more and more the utter poverty of all our thoughts of Him. The Psalm (Ps. 40) from which I have already quoted, brings us to His entrance into the place of it, where for the first time it was possible for Him to obey. All the Jewishly-ordained sacrifices are set aside as having nothing in them for the heart of God, now to find its entire satisfaction in Him who says, "Mine ears hast thou opened," or, more literally, "Ears hast thou digged for me." But as this necessitated His becoming man, the Spirit accepts the paraphrase of the LXX translators, in quoting it in Hebrews 10, "A body hast thou prepared me."*

*Note that in Hebrews the delight of the Lord Jesus is omitted as not so much the point of the Spirit's testimony, but the perfection of the work for God, the contrast of what gave Him no pleasure being strongly brought out. (Heb. 10: 5, 6, 8.)

In Isaiah 50 we find Him come, and in the path — "When I came was there no man? When I called was there none to answer?" But who was it that came? He who had power to redeem and to deliver, who had all nature at His command as its Creator and Lord. In what character then did He come? "The Lord Jehovah hath given me the tongue of the instructed, that I should know how to succour by a word him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the instructed. The Lord Jehovah hath opened mine ear." He who was Jehovah came, a man to be dependent and obedient; for this was man's perfection suited to the place He had taken: instructed out of His own deep experience of human sorrow in that place, how to succour the weary by a word, but as Himself looking for direction to God, with His ear wakened morning by morning to receive it. What a study for our hearts! What an obedience is thus foreshadowed — of One to whom alone as man will of right belonged, but become man only to carry out the Father's will, and so waiting upon Him in that blessed communion in which He ever walked for the instruction of it. In the gospels we trace the actual footsteps of the path of the Lord Jesus.

But before we turn to them, the doctrine of the epistles comes in largely to increase our apprehension of it — I refer especially to Philippians and Hebrews. In both we find the same wonderful truths of who He was and of the place that He had taken, which are indeed inseparable. In Philippians 2 the mind that was in Christ Jesus is to be now in us — a mind that, instead of reaching up as the first Adam to be as God, reached down until He could go down no lower. And there were two great steps in this stupendous stoop; for "subsisting in the form of God" it was no question of usurpation of what did not belong to Him "to be equal with God;" but He "emptied* Himself, taking a bondsman's form, becoming in the likeness of men; and, having been found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." As God He emptied Himself, as man He humbled Him. self; and His obedience in that place went on up to death, even that of the cross, in which it was put to the last possible test, and proved perfect — all He was thus entering into and giving its character to every step of His path. For it was nothing that man as such should be dependent and obedient; it was his apostasy that he departed from it. But that He, in whom "all the fulness was pleased to dwell," should take man's subject place, to glorify God by answering to it perfectly and never leaving it, gives the humiliation, and dependence, and obedience displayed in it their only measure and infinite glory.

*We can appreciate the hesitation that our English translators may have felt in rendering literally, in such a connection, the most wonderful word they had before them, ekenose (Ver. 7.) From Tyndale down (Wycliffe had "lowered himself") they adopted the paraphrase "made himself of no reputation;" and there is this to be said for it, that if "emptied" necessarily involved the thought of something of which He emptied Himself, the paraphrase would be truer to the sense: for the word refers, as the participial clauses following show, to the place He assumed rather than to that from which He came.

The same great elements of the truth come out, only if possible, with greater fulness in the Epistle to the Hebrews. For if Hebrews 1, while fixing the eye of faith on Him who as man, having by Himself made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, leads us by ever-ascending steps to the full, divine glory of His person — from being born Son of God into this world (ver. 5), object of angels' worship (ver. 6), addressed as God by God according to Psalm 45 (vers. 8, 9), to being owned as Jehovah by Jehovah, and this when in the lowest depths of His humiliation according to Psalm 102 (vers. 10-12; Hebrews 2 brings out the reality of His manhood, and the purposes of God accomplished in it, not merely as necessary to His having the place of universal supremacy marked out for man by Psalm 8: 5-8, but for far deeper reasons connected with God's glory, and the state of those with whom He became man to identify Himself, and conduct them as the sons of God to glory. (See for four such reasons vers. 10, 14, 17, 18.)

All in this chapter then depends upon, and is brought out to be the proof of, His true humanity. Only as man could the Sanctifier and the sanctified be "of one," and He "not ashamed to call them brethren." Yet the corn of wheat must fall into the ground and die, else He must have abode alone in His humanity; It is then as the risen Christ that He is able to associate us with Him, as we hear Him say, according to the words of Psalm 22, "I will declare thy name unto my brethren," and "in the midst of the assembly will I sing praise unto thee" - opening the wilderness for us with a song of redemption more wonderful by far, through such association, than that of Moses and Israel. (Ex. 15)

"It is finished! It is finished!

Who can tell redemption's worth?

He who knows it leads the singing.

Full the joy, is fierce the wrath."

Then He has set us the example of dependence for all the way, "I will put my trust in him (from the LXX of Isaiah 8: 17) until the last quotation, in the same connection in the prophet, brings us to the end of the path — the remnant of the house of Jacob displayed with Him as His children in glory. Thus the mystery of His humbled place as man, the stumbling-block of Israel's pride, is solved; and we have Him fully in the path of man: suffering being tempted, but thus able to succour the tempted ones: learning obedience by the things that He suffered, thus able to sympathise; and the epistle does not close without bringing Him in as the last of the long line of witnesses to the principle of faith as the power of the just man's life, if in this as in all things He must have the pre-eminence — "the beginner and completer of faith." (Heb. 12: 2.)

But obedience is the special point before us in the blessed unfolding of the Lord's place as man, that the epistle gives us. See then how, if in contrast to Israel's priests, who being taken from among themselves could exercise forbearance towards the ignorant and the wanderers, we have a great High Priest that is passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God; and if His very exaltation and glory as such seems to take Him out of the range and reach of human need to be able to sympathise, the Spirit of God can recall to us (ver. 7) "the days of his flesh," in which "when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him out of death," He was "heard for his godly fear." (eulabeia; compare Heb. 12: 28, where the same word occurs, His reverent submission to the will of God.)

Thus what full capacity, albeit that He is the Son of God in glory, to enter into all that connects itself with human weakness! What are our deepest distresses as compared with His, who "though He were a Son, learned obedience by the things which He suffered"? But what could surpass the grace that presents Him to our hearts as having passed through our school? He entered it indeed in a very different way, and for wholly different reasons than we, who have to learn obedience (it is the great lesson God is teaching us in all His ways with us) because, alas! too long accustomed to disobey — He, because ever accustomed to command. He had never before been in circumstances in which obedience could be rendered. Not that there was anything in that holy nature contrary to obedience; as we have seen, He became man only to obey, and found His sole motive for everything in obedience. But thus He learned it. Only that the Spirit mould now lead on the Hebrews addressed, from a side of things, unspeakably precious in itself but connected with what He was down here, "unto perfection," connected as this always is with His place as man in glory according to the counsels of God (Heb. 5: 9-14; Heb. 6: 1) There only all His precious sympathy and succour is now to be found; thither He would lead up our hearts: and thus the great object of the epistle is carried on, that those whose religious relationships with God had been earthly in Judaism, should be weaned from them to new relationships that now were wholly heavenly.

We have seen then, in the doctrine of the Old Testament and of the New, what gives its character to the obedience to which we are sanctified. That It was that of the Son of God become man, to render it in a perfection beyond all that could have been otherwise conceived, so contrary in its nature to all that man is naturally. But we must turn to the gospels to seek in the power of the Spirit to trace a little the detail of that perfection in His walk: no more wonderful study could be presented to our poor hearts, so slow to enter into it. The test came early. For when — in fulfilling righteousness (Matt. 3: 15), that is, carrying out God's will, His first public act was to identify Himself in John's baptism with those who, in submitting to it, took their true place before God, confessing their sins, and were thereby proved to be "the saints, the excellent of the earth" in whom was all His delight — with the opened heavens, and the descent upon Him of the Holy Spirit, the Father's voice declared Him to be, in the humble place He had thus taken, the object of the Father's delight, the very next thing is that He is led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

But what circumstances for the Son of God to be found in in this world! "Having fasted forty days and forty nights, afterwards He hungered. And the tempter coming up to him said, If thou art Son of God, speak, that these stones may become loaves of bread." But simple as it would have been for Him, with all divine resources ever at command to help Himself to bread, He would not put forth power to take Himself out of any consequence of the place He had come into as man. He had not become man to command; ,man's place was to obey, and the enemy is foiled by His keeping that place perfectly. "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." He waits therefore — will only act, if it be but in the matter of taking necessary food, when there is a word from God for it. But more than that, He lived by it, for this was God's will for man according to the passage that He quotes, if now for the first time it was realized in man — not merely a path outwardly directed by the word, but an inward life formed by it, of every movement of which the word was the motive and source.

Well may we pause at the outset of such a study, beloved brethren, and put it to ourselves honestly before God, Do we know indeed that this is the obedience to which we have been sanctified? I am not speaking of failure in walking according to it; but have we bowed without reserve to the principle of it as thus brought to the test by Satan, and proved in its absolute perfection in the blessed Lord. Then we shall know how to judge in the secret of our hearts any spring of thought or action that has not its source in God's known will. I say known, because there is no more subtle form of temptation than when it is pressed upon us that circumstances call for action, when there is no word from God, no intimation of His will. Yet if we act without knowing God's will nothing can be more certain than that we are doing our own; and this is the essence of sin. "Behold obedience is better than sacrifice, attention than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination and self-will is as iniquity and idolatry." (1 Sam. 15: 22, 23, New Trans.) Nothing In man is right except obedience. Confidence in God will be surely needed for waiting, as with the Lord, left for forty days without food; and this was the principle brought out in the next temptation: but is it a strange thing, to those who know His heart as perfectly revealed in the Son, that we should trust Him?

This testing took place then alone with Satan, but under the eye of One who appraises it as none else could, and reveals it in grace to us, that delighting in it with Him we may learn man's true place of obedience and be formed by it.

A very different form of testing arose with the circumstances of His rejection, as it began to come out more and more plainly. We see the effect of it on His spirit in Matthew 11. His testimony, as that of His forerunner, was as rejected by that generation; He felt it. "Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not," more hard of heart than Tyre or Sodom. But (ver. 25) He bows in the deep trial to His Father, answering the rejection of the cities by, "I thank thee . . . . even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight." What rest in the known wisdom and love of the Father, and what perfect submission also, as He traces all that pressed upon Him to its source there! Then if He exercises divine will, it is not for Himself, but only, as always (Matt. 8: 3; John 5: 21), to meet need in man, in carrying out the testimony of grace committed to Him. Here it is to reveal the Father; so as to give us the same resource and resting-place He had in the knowledge of the Father, and then to call us to take His yoke upon us, learning from Him ("meek and lowly in heart" 1) that submission in which rest is. practically found for the soul, whatever the circumstances. Testing then, in whatever form — whether from Satan or from men — only drew out before God and His Father the sweet savour of a divinely perfect obedience now found for the first time in man upon earth.

But for the full positive development of it we must go to the Gospel of John, where, above all, the divine glory of His Person shines forth; than which nothing can be more remarkable in the connection of the truth. Here He is the Word that was with God, and was God — for none other could express God — the only begotten Son in the bosom of the Father, come to make Him known according to that relationship, even as One in it only could. He can say, "Before Abraham was, I am;" "I and my Father are one:" yet it is ever the Son become flesh, whom we see, and who, true to the place of man, never assumes anything to Himself, but delights to receive all — even when it belongs to the rights of His Person — from the Father. He may speak and act as none but a divine Person could; yet He never leaves the place of a servant, subject to the Father, carrying out that for which He was sent. Surely the mystery of His Person meets us everywhere: nowhere else is there such an unfolding of obedience as in this gospel.

His ministry opens in John 4. He had found a poor sinner to whom He could reveal Himself in an activity of grace that formed, as to His life in connection with men, His only joy here. There was manifest refreshment for His spirit in it. He sees the fields already white for harvest in the light of that one soul brought to know herself and Him. But the sources of it lay deeper than the disciples could enter into: "I have meat [or "food"] to eat that ye know not." Wherein did it consist? Not merely in outward acts of service. "My food is that I should do the will of Him that has sent me, and that I should finish his work." What a character this gives His whole path! His food, the very sustenance of His life, was in carrying out the Father's will.

John 5 becomes a complete revelation of the place He has taken, as of Him who takes it. Divine grace, active in power to bless even on the Sabbath day, had clashed with Jewish stickling for forms. How little they knew the heart of God, who thought that He could rest in a world where there was the cry of human misery on every hand. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," revealed that heart, but in terms that they knew well involved the perfect community of nature between the Son who spoke and the Father; and they charge Him with making Himself equal with God. Nothing could be further from the truth, as to One who never sought His own glory, but only the glory of Him that sent Him (John 7: 18; John 8: 50); yet to be on such an equality was no usurping of what did not belong to Him, as we have seen. But He had emptied Himself, becoming in the likeness of man; and so He answered them, "The Son can do, nothing from [apo] himself, but whatever He sees the Father do." He had not come down to act as an independent divine Person on earth in the exercise of His own will and power, but in perfect dependence; and in the communion in which He ever walked with His Father, we learn further that "whatever things he doeth, these also doeth the Son in like manner. For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that he himself doeth; " and this carried out even in quickening whom He will (ver. 21); while verses 27-30 show that not otherwise will it be in the exercise of the judgment committed to Him. "I cannot do anything from myself: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is righteous; because I do not seek my will, but the will of him that sent me." Oh, how it searches and humbles us to hear Him speak of not even seeking will of His, but only that the Father's might be accomplished!

In John 6: 38 et seq. it is the same thing that characterises Him as the bread of God; He came down from heaven to do the will of Him that sent Him. For if He found the food of His life here in doing that will, God found His bread,* the food of His own joy as it were, in Him as come down to do it. In wonderful grace, when we have reached Him through His death — "have eaten the flesh and drank the blood of the Son of man " (ver. 53), identifying ourselves thus by faith with His death, without which "there is no life to taste and to enjoy the bread," as another has truly said — verse 57 brings us into participation in what He was to God; "as the living Father has sent me, and I live by [or "on account of"] the Father; so he that eateth ME even he shall live on account of Me."

*Compare for the force of the expression Lev. 3: 11, 16; Lev. 21: 6, etc.; Num. 28: 2, 24; Ezek. 16: 19; Ezek. 44: 7, where "food," "bread," and "meat" are the same in Hebrew (the point being missed by the LXX., save in the last two quotations). Nor can I doubt that the "bread of God" here gets its character from this use; namely, that it is not merely the bread which He gives, but upon which He feeds first of all, as the infinite excellency and perfection of Christ, proved under all testing, in the lowly stoop and place He had taken to carry out the Father's will, yielding Him divine satisfaction and joy.

We have seen this principle of dependent obedience as to the works of the blessed Lord; but nothing gives a greater idea of its absoluteness than to find it also true of His words, "I speak to the world those things which I have heard from [para, "from with"] him;" though men would only recognise, when they had lifted up the Son of man, who He was, and how as to the place He had taken He neither acted from Himself, or spoke save "as my Father hath taught me." (John 8: 28.) How wonderfully the opened ear of Isaiah I., as of one that is instructed, has been verified in His path. For, as He says again (John 12: 49), I have not spoken of (ek) myself, but the Father which sent me He gave me a commandment what I should say and what I should speak. . . . Whatsoever I speak therefore even as the Father said unto me so I speak " — in words and works thus alike, the revealer of the Father; and so, as the verse tells us, "His commandment is life eternal": for it is eternal life to know the Father as thus revealed.

But we are nearing the end, for the enmity of man's heart was surging round that only path of perfect light ever seen in this world, where, in the Son become man, and keeping man's place in the simple perfection of dependent and delighting obedience, God found His delight and was glorified. The state of all men being thus fully revealed, it was necessary, because of that state as well as for the glory of God, that such a path should close here; but only in taking up that state to identify Himself with it in grace — and endure the judgment of God in which it is ended for ever for faith, as for God. Precious it is to know that meeting the judgment due to sin became only the occasion for manifesting the depth of the perfection of His obedience, laying therein a fresh ground for the Father's delight in Him: "Therefore doth my Father love me because I lay down my life that I might take it again." Divine power was needed, for "No one taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay it down and power to take it again." But He will only exercise that power as ever in obedience — "This commandment have I received from my Father." (John 10: 17, 18.)

One more passage connects obedience with the spring of it, that whether in Him or in us, gives it all its blessed character and acceptance — LOVE. I refer to John 14: 30, 31: "Henceforth I will not talk much with you; for the prince of this world cometh and hath nothing in me. But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment so I do." What foothold could the enemy find in a life made up of nothing but love and obedience? Luke brings us to this final assault of Satan; he, who notes that after the temptation in the wilderness the devil departed from Christ for a season, and at the close that, if it was "man's hour," the "power of darkness" was awfully associated with it. (John 4: 13; John 22: 53.) In that Gospel too, in Gethsemane, the full force of the temptation comes before us, as that of Satan who, having by man's sin and the judgment of God, the power of death over man, sought to press it in that character upon Him, to deter Him from going the whole way in obedience. We are permitted to draw near and know what very real conflict it was to the blessed Lord, though none can fathom His sorrow, in anticipating having to pass out of the experience of communion with the Father which had been all the light and joy of His path, into that of being wholly forsaken of God. Presenting it before the Father in the unclouded communion in which He yet was, did but add poignancy to the sorrow. In His very perfection He shrank from such a cup. "Nevertheless not my will but thine be done " records His giving Himself up to It, in the perfection of obedience here brought to its absolute and final test. And the fiery trial over, in peace we hear Him say in John, "The cup which my Father hath given me shall I not drink it? " as He went to the cross to exhaust that cup, as He alone could, and finish the work given Him to do. Thus in infinite depths of suffering He endured the judgment of the will of the flesh that once characterised us; but that even now we may be so easily betrayed into if not abiding in Him. Oh, that in true dependence and nearness of heart to the Lord we may know how to be "always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus," that nothing but His will-less life may be manifested in our body.

Lastly, I would look at what the word connects with obedience, as the abounding portion of our hearts to be enjoyed in the path of it, and not to be known out of it. We have seen it as the principle, simple but of such far-reaching effect in the soul's history, of rest practically realized, as shown us first in the experience of the blessed Lord Himself. (Matt. 11) And this is true in every part of the blessing. For all flows out of the fact, so immense in itself, that it is of His own life and nature we live, of which His path here was the perfect expression and revelation.

Thus if in Philippians 2: 12. "as ye have always obeyed" was the condition, whether under apostolic care, as when Paul was with them, or now much more in its absence, of their deliverance from all the present allowed power of the enemy, the mind of obedience (as well as of self-emptiness) was expressed in Him, who, being found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. (Vers. 5-8.) Here was the wonderful pattern for the saints. In the path of obedience the apostle had helped them to work out their salvation; they had only to go on in it now, that he was gone, and work out their own* salvation "with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you both the willing and the working according to His good pleasure." The Lord's path had been the complete illustration of the principle; and the verses following (14-16) are just the reproduction in the saints of the blessed traits of His own life. His name and testimony involve us in a conflict which is His with Satan: the issue is not uncertain; we are on the winning side; He will bruise him under our feet shortly. But the enemy works by wiles; it is well not to be ignorant of his devices; fear and trembling have their wholesome place if we have learned to distrust ourselves; but we have only to be occupied with carrying out God's will in obedience, and are carried safely through all to the heavenly glory of Christ, which is the salvation of the epistle.

*In contrast to Paul's, not to God's.

Still it is in the Gospel of John, where the obedience of Christ has been brought out to the full, that we find the full consequences in blessing of its being wrought in us; and first, in John 14. This precious instruction of the Lord opens out to us the Father's house, as connected first with the full revelation there had been of the Father in the Son come down here — "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father"; when with the place He was about to take as going to the Father on the ground of accomplished redemption, "I go to prepare a place for you; " and lastly, with His coming again to receive us to Himself there. But meanwhile, between His going away and coming again, the Holy Spirit is promised as the power of our enjoyment of the new place, that it may become the present home of hearts that miss the Lord out of this place. All that follows from verse 16 is the effect of the Holy Spirit having been given us; we should not be left orphans, for the Lord Himself would come to us, to be known in a way He could not have been to the disciples. When the world saw Him no more we should see Him, and this intimately connected with living of His life — "Ye see me; because I live, ye shall live also." And further, "At that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me and I in you." If the Son has His place in the Father by the glory of His person, we have ours in Him by redemption, not only in divine righteousness before God, but — inseparably connected with such a position — He in us, as participating in His life and nature, now to be expressed in this world.

Now from verse 20 we have the path, the only possible one, in which the Spirit dwelling in us, and ungrieved, can be the power of the enjoyment of all this wonderful blessing. Flowing from a dependent life in Him it is but the path of that life, the reproduction in us of what constituted the life in Him as verse 31 shows it — love to the Father and obedience. And so verse 21, "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." Thus the obedience of love in us, being of His own life, brings with it the manifestation of the Lord Himself. Then when the thought of such a private manifestation to one, and not to another, clashed with Jewish thoughts of an appearing in glory that would be public and before all, the Lord in reply to Jude only deepens the character of the obedience, "If a man love me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." The word differs from the commandments of Christ only in that it is the full revelation of His mind, whereas these have to do with details; as, for instance, the oft-repeated one, that we love one another. There is not a commandment for everything, but His word covers the whole range of the life leaving no room for the subtle plea of self-will, that His will is not revealed. Love keeping His word then brings with it not only the manifestation of the Son, but the coming of the Father and the Son to make their abode with the obedient one. So that the two characteristic joys of what is before us, the Father's "abodes" (for it is the same word in verses 2 and 23) and the Son's presence, are brought down to our hearts, and made the present portion, in the power of the Spirit, of the obedience of love — this obedience being but the true expression and path of the life we now possess in the Son.

John 15 confirms the wonderful character of the path set before us. There (ver. 9) we learn the only measure of His love — it is the Father's love to Him. But His desire is that we should abide in it — be in the enjoyment of it continually; for though the love does not depend upon our walk, the whole realisation of it does: "If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in His love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might be in you, and your joy full." It is but the same path of the same life, now true in Him and in us, leading into the same joy — the joy He had in the Father's love.

One thing more is connected with it in verse 14, "Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." Oh, how unspeakable the privilege! to be treated not as servants who receive their orders, and that is all, but as the trusted friends of Christ to whom He communicates His mind — all things that He has heard of the Father — so as to be the depositaries of it in a world that has seen and hated both Him and the Father, and be formed by it as witnesses for Him.

The epistle (1 John) adds its testimony to the full blessedness to be found in walking according to our wholly new order of being as of a new creation in Christ.

In 1 John 2 we have already seen this to be the principle upon which the walk of Christ is the pattern of the Christian's. Let us look at it again as to the wonderful consequences flowing out of it. "Hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments." This is not given us as a test by which we may know whether we know Him — as often falsely used to lead souls not in the liberty of grace into doubt and perplexity; for the fact that we are addressed as to the characteristics of the divine nature assumes that we are partakers of it; it is impossible to conceive anything of a nature we do not possess, as that of angels. But It enables us to judge (as do all the tests of the epistle) the pretensions of human wisdom, and the like, to have part in christian privilege when Christ is unknown. For how can we know Him save as having His life and living of it! Certain it is that man in the flesh does not know Him" the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God;" but as we have seen everywhere that life consisted of obedience. Hence "he that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar and the truth is not in him;" while, on the other hand, every footstep in the path of obedience confirms and deepens in the soul the knowledge that we have of Him. The next verse shows the character of the knowledge contemplated; it is not that of ordinary acquaintance, but of communion with the One we know in partaking of His nature, and walking according to it: "Whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected; hereby know we that we are in him." Keeping His word is not different from keeping His commandments — "The old commandment is the word which ye have heard" (John 2: 7) — but only carries the obedience further as in John 14. His word is that in which all that He is in His own nature of love was perfectly expressed. That love is now shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit given to us — God, who is love, thus dwelling in us. In keeping the word then, which is the revelation of the love, there is nothing to hinder the full realisation of it; it is perfected in us, and we know that we are in Him. Again, it is but His own path, "he that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked." Oh for hearts in the power of the Spirit to enter into the character of that walk a little more! So walking — the normal life of the Christian — our heart condemns us not; we have confidence toward God; we are formed by His mind in the intimacy of the confidence in which we walk, and "whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight." (1 John 3: 16-22, Compare John 8: 29.) And this leads into the last blessed consequence of such a life and path of obedience, as brought out in the last verse — there is nothing beyond it for ever — "He that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him." The heart, first drawn to Him by all the infinite grace revealed in Him, as its refuge from itself, and its hiding-place, now in the path of obedience — that is, of the divine nature — knows Him as its dwelling-place. and home; the richest fruit individually of all the ways of that grace with us. It is surely an inestimable joy that may thus be our portion now. But as essential to it, in the possession of the divine nature,. "He dwells in us," and we know it "by the Spirit which he hath given us," as the power of the manifestation of all that is true of that nature, and that nothing else may be tolerated in the life of the Christian.

And now, in closing, I would put. it to myself as to my beloved brethren: How are our hearts, affected by such a calling, that setting us in Christ by place, and as Christ by life, nature, and relationship before God and the Father, can give us no other path here than that in which He walked, doing always those things that please Him? It is profitable for our souls to pass and repass our life in review before God in the light of such an obedience, and consider how much of it would have been left out, how many things in word, action, or thought would never have occurred if Christ had been filling our hearts. Deeply humbling as such a review of the past must be to each of us it is well if it only shuts us up the more absolutely to the grace that is in Him, for the present, and for what may lie before us; that, if sanctified to the obedience of Jesus Christ, and seeing it flows from and is alone true of the life we have in Him, we may seek to realise it, not by effort but by abiding in Him. But this abiding in Him must be where He is, and dwelling there in heart and spirit with Him, we shall be formed by the things that are there — the natural home and sphere of the life we possess — so as to live out nothing but that life in a sphere where everything is contrary to it. "I am crucified with Christ: but I live; yet no more I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Gal. 2: 20). May we each one know more of such a life — Christ become everything as our object to those in whom He is our life. (Col. 3: 11).

"Why Persecutest Thou Me?"

"Why Persecutest Thou Me?"

J. A.Trench.

What meant that "Me"? It meant that the persecuted saints were every one of them united to Christ in glory by the Spirit who dwelt in them: they were members of His Body, that which He accounts to be Himself, even as He had become their life. There had been nothing like this before. The assembly had been formed into this relationship at Pentecost, but this was the first intimation of it: the whole truth of it was involved in the words that fell so strangely from heaven upon the ears of Saul. It was, in principle, the Mystery, which was ever after to characterise his ministry; even as the Lord had further to say to him, "I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee" (Acts 26: 12-16).

The Commission to the Disciples

The Character of the Commission to the Disciples in Matthew 28

As to the commission in Matthew 28: 18, etc., I think some considerations may help you as they have helped me. It was not from heaven, but from Galilee, and does not immediately connect with heaven. It was to bring the Gentiles into connection with the remnant of the Jews on earth already recognized, not to form the elect of both into one body united to Christ in glory, as through Paul’s commission. The revelation of the Trinity is not essentially and distinctively Christianity: a triune God was involved in many an Old Testament scripture, even from Genesis 1, where the plural name of God is found already with a singular verb (as nowhere when the gods of the nations are in question). But the full revelation came out on the occasion of the Son of God being manifested to Israel (Matt. 3, John 1: 31) — that is, in His place on earth, the Father seen in Him, the Spirit not given by measure to Him, all the Fullness pleased to dwell in Him.

Christianity starts with a risen and ascended Christ at God’s right hand, and the mission of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son. Matthew 28 was from resurrection, not ascension. Paul was not sent to baptise: he accepted what he found going on, and there was no other revealed formula of baptism. God does not go back of the full revelation of Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as to the name in which the remnant will take up the testimony to bring in the nations, when the assembly is gone though it does not appear to me to involve for them the full intelligent relationships implied in the revelation as it affects us, which depends on testimony to make good to us such relationships.

The testimony for the remnant is the testimony of Jesus, the spirit of prophecy, and will not, as it would seem, bring them beyond the names by which God was known in the Old Testament, as we find reproduced in the Revelation, with Jesus the rejected, suffering, and exalted Lamb superadded. They will not have gone over all the cities of Israel till the Son of Man be come — broken off when they were scattered from their cities the mission will be resumed when they are again in them — doubtless others will go out to the nations: though the formal bringing the nations into their own accepted place by baptism, as in Matthew 28, only belongs, I suppose, to the future of the testimony. It did not go far beyond the manifestation of such a remnant till Jerusalem was destroyed — the work among the Gentiles being committed to Paul, who did not take Matthew 28 for his testimony. I quite think with you that the grace side of the testimony comes in with the Father, Son, and Spirit and that judgment is more connected with the Revelation side of it — “the hour of His judgment is come” (14: 7)

J.A.Trench

S.T. 1915

The Reward of the Inheritance

“The Reward of the Inheritance”

Question — What is meant by “the reward of the inheritance”? — (Col. 3: 24)

When it is known that the word for “reward” is not the ordinary one so rendered, but occurs only here in the New Testament (though not infrequently in the LXX. i.e. Greek translation of the Old), and that it signifies recompense with the underlying thought of compensation, it will be felt how beautifully suited it is to the way that grace would light up the otherwise unenviable condition of the Christian bond-slave, as from verse 22.

Bound to his master according to the flesh for life, his obedience in all things was to be with singleness of heart fearing the Lord, a hearty service even as it would be accepted as done to the Lord. The rich compensation of his servile lot in this world would be found in the inheritance he should receive from the Lord, in marked antithesis to any ordinary portion of a slave, as may be seen from the contrasts of Galatians 4: 1-7, Romans 8: 15-17.

J.A. Trench

S.T. 1914