Vision and Vocation 04

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Secondly, it comes by the way of pain. You get a thing revealed to you as truth, perhaps something about the Cross of Christ, or victory over Satan, and you think you know it, and you say, This is beautiful! And you begin to talk about it, and it is not very long before something happens – your circumstances are touched. Now you go down with this truth, down into the vortex of awful agony, right down to the gates of hell, your being is upheaved right from the very bottom, and all the time there is the question – ”Will that truth hold good?” Is it going to work?

And when you have got down as far as you can go, the flesh elements and the self elements have been dealt with, and you grimly hold on to the Lord in this matter of victory – then it comes out, you have tested it right to the very bottom of your being – that thing has become you, and then you can go to others in their grim conflict and their darkness, and say. ”I know – I know this thing, and I know God is faithful, I know the victory.”

You have got a mighty emphasis on your knowledge, it is a thing about which you have no doubt, because you have gone down into the depths with it, and proved it down there, and by the very pain the thing has been proved. It is the people who know their God like that, who count. There is a power which is greater than all the other powers of the universe, and that power is to be mediated through you, but only as you know God on the basis of a personal experience through pain and suffering.

Then this knowledge of God only comes by implicit and unreserved obedience. ”If any man willeth to do… he shall know,” and you never advance in your personal knowledge of God beyond the point of your will. If there is something upon which the Holy Spirit ever so gently puts His finger, and that thing at once starts debatings in your consciousness, a quarrel as to whether it is right or wrong, – beyond the point of your dealing with that thing, you do not develop one fraction of an inch in your knowledge of God.

Your knowledge of God depends utterly and absolutely upon your attention and obedience to every phase and every little bit of Divine revelation. You cannot know God beyond the point of your obedience to what you already know of Him. He will give you no further revelation of Himself beyond that point where you obey what you know. There are a good many Christians today who have stopped growing – who are where they were ten years ago, they are not moving on, the Divine revelation is not growing.

If the truth were known, there is something upon which the Lord put His finger, and they did not attend to it. If we are going to know the Lord in this way, we must attend in a practical way to every bit of revelation and see that it is fully obeyed. If we want to know the fulness of an ever-growing power, it will only be as we respond to every dear command of His, answer every bit of revelation, and make it live, and this will give us a wonderful spiritual and moral ascendancy – when everything else is going wrong, then will be the strategic opportunity, and it is in strategic opportunities that we are found out.

Centrality of Christ # 09

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CHRIST FORMED WITHIN

“My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.” “Until Christ be formed in you.” Gal. 4:19

Firstly we have: Christ in revelation within; secondly, Christ in life within; thirdly, Christ in formation within. Now here again discriminations are necessary. There is a similar passage in Romans 8, or one which appears to be similar. It has words which are very like these, but the two again are not of the same nature although they point to the same thing. Here it is: “For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son.” There the believer is being conformed to the image of God’s Son. Here it is Christ being formed within. There are similitudes, there are differences, and we are occupied with this one in Galatians for its own specific meaning and value.

Take again the whole letter to the Galatians. Bring to mind its object, see what it is that the Apostle has as his motive for writing; that it is the correction of an error. That falling into that error, the becoming bewitched, under the witch’s spell, is due to spiritual immaturity. These believers had not gone on as they should have gone on in the Lord, and because of their belated maturity they had fallen a prey to this thing that was going about.

Now the Apostle, writing to correct the error, puts his finger upon the root of the matter, right upon the spot, and he says in effect: “All this is because of the indefiniteness of Christ in you.” Follow the metaphor closely and you will see what he is saying. In verse 19 the emphasis is upon the word “formed” “… until Christ be FORMED in you.” It is a very strong word. What he is saying is: “Yes, Christ is in you inasmuch as you are believers and children of God, but it is an ill-defined Christ, an unformed Christ, a Christ without features developed; He is there, but He has not yet come to clear definition in you, the features are not developed, and because of that there is all this – this weakness and this aptness to be misled; the Christ that you have is one that has not yet come to formation.”

You see that this is a different thing from Romans 8:29. That points on to our progressive growth, unto the ultimate image of Christ the Son of God. That is what is going on. We are being conformed by chastening, by suffering, by tribulation, by pain, by discipline, by things which the Lord allows to come to us, we are being conformed to the image of Christ. That is what is going on daily, but that is not what is here, this is something else.

This is the implication of Christ being clearly defined in our hearts. There was confusion, indefiniteness, because they had not seen clearly that “Christ is the end of the law to them that believe”; that Christ really represented a clean cut between the old dispensation and the new, the old order and the new; that Christ had fulfilled the law and put it out of the way. They had not grasped the clear definition of Christ in their hearts, and because they had not grasped clearly those features of the meaning of the person and work of Christ, they were a prey to anything that came along. Now there are a lot of the Lord’s people like that. They are a prey to all sorts of things because they have not recognized the clear implications of Christ within.

A Vessel of Recovery

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What is the nature and the condition of a vessel to be used by the Lord in recovering His full testimony – the testimony concerning His Son? That vessel – that instrument – is, and must be, one upon whose heart, genuinely, the condition of things as so clearly contrary to the thought of God lies with very great pressure.

 

It is one thing for us to get a kind of public concern about things and then begin to make a lot of noise about it amongst men – to advertise, to demonstrate, and to give it a public form in utterance and effort and organization; to join ourselves to some cause or to join some cause to ourselves. . . and then, in that cause, to make a great big affair of it; – that is one thing.

 

It is quite another thing for the Lord to put into our hearts in secret an almost unbearable, intolerable burden, which is His own heart-burden, and for us first of all to bear that thing upon our hearts in a deep outpouring of travailing prayer secretly in the presence of God; – quite another thing to come to the Lord’s interests in that way.

 

It is one thing to come to a situation from the outside, link ourselves on with it, and take it up and make it our bit of work for life – our life-interest. There are plenty of people whom you could get interested in a cause, whom you could get to take up a piece of work requiring help. But it is another thing to have that spiritual fellowship with God which results in God’s putting His travail into your soul.

 

What kind of vessel must the Lord have in order to do things? He does not want “workers” to take up His work; He wants travailers to travail with Him for His spiritual interests. He does not want employees; He wants sons. He does not want experts; He wants those who have a passion – those to whose heart the whole thing comes so closely that it bends them down before Him in an anguish. . . who are so much in the matter that it is their matter before God – it is theirs. It is no mere mental apprehension of teaching and of truth; it is a heart burden, a desperate concern for the Lord because of things as they are spiritually amongst His people.

 

Have we taken up work for the Lord? Have we associated ourselves with the cause of Christ? Or, have we come to know God’s own burden of travail in our souls to the point that this is to us a thing which saps our life, saps our very vitality – the thing for which we are pouring out our very blood, the thing which costs everything? And yet we can do no other. There is no question of resigning – of giving up; the thing is ourselves. For His purpose, God must have something like that at the end.

 

Oh, let us wipe the slate of all these other ideas of organizing something, running something, getting a movement going. Let us see that God brings His thing into being out of travail.

He baptizes a soul into an anguish; He throws upon some one – or some little company – the mantle of His own terrible disappointment, dissatisfaction, and grief because of things as He sees them spiritually amongst His own people. That is how God brings things into being. Men do it in other ways, but that has always been God’s way. It has cost the instrument its life every time (not necessarily that it has died a sudden death, or even laid down its life in martyrdom, but it has cost the instrument its life).

 

Oh, may the Lord save us from having the preponderance, the greater measure, before men and the lesser measure before Himself. May all that is before men come out of what we are before God. That should be a matter of exercise for us, and we should ask the Lord that our secret life with Him over these matters shall be kept well abreast of all our public ministries and our outward activities. If the balance is on the side of what is public and toward men, there will be weakness and failure. Strength and effectiveness will be the measure of our secret history with God, and others are able to take account of us and say: “There is nothing put on in this matter; this is no mere professional thing; it is not some habit – something they are interested in. This is something which to them is a matter of life and death; it is a matter which goes right to the heart with them.”

 

And men are able to discern whether it is like that or not. Oh, they know, better than perhaps we think they do, whether we are real or whether it is put on; whether we are speaking out of a book or out of our hearts; whether the thing is something we have collected or something born of anguish.

 

May I urge this upon you, that you seek ever to have your own heart deeply exercised in everything that you have to say publicly. Yes, it will cost, it will be anguish, it will be sorrow of heart, it will mean a price; but it is the way of spiritual fruitfulness and effectiveness. The Lord can make you His messenger in His message; that is, a sign unto the people of what you are saying. Men are able to say: “Yes, that is not something he has read or studied and prepared; that has had a working in the life, and it has cost something.” It will cost, but it is the way of effectiveness and fruitful service.

 

And what is true as to public ministry will be true in relation to any instrument that the Lord will use for any special purpose; it must have the thing wrought into it, and it must not be something that it has adopted. The Lord keep us from adopting things. . . but work the thing right into us.

Priesthood and Life

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What is a priest? He is not an official or a member of a religious caste, but a man who withstands death and ministers life. The one all-inclusive issue of the ages, the great purpose of God from eternity to eternity, can be described in New Testament language as eternal life. As soon as sin entered the world then death ensued, and so men needed an altar and the shedding of blood in order that sin could be countered by righteousness and death be overcome by divine life. Together with the altar there emerged the personal activity of a man called a priest, and so, as time went on, such service grew and grew until it developed into an elaborate priestly ministry.

 

Death as an active power could only be arrested, nullified and removed by having its ground of sin adequately dealt with, hence the priestly ministry of righteousness, the perfect righteousness of incorruptible life expressed by the blood of the offering. Israel was to be a nation of priests, a people based and grounded on God’s own righteousness, and therefore able to face death and defeat it. The Church was called to take up this ministry. The Lord Jesus Himself foretold this by saying: “the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matthew 21:43). Peter later explained that redeemed sinners have entered into the spiritual calling, being the “chosen nation”, the “royal priesthood” which has to undertake the great vocation of being God’s ministers of life in the earth.

 

So we find that as members of Christ’s body we have a relationship to Him, the great High Priest, which is analogous to that between Aaron and his sons who shared his work of priesthood. In the letter to the Hebrews, which deals with this subject, we have a kind of New Testament Leviticus. In this epistle believers are addressed as sons as well as “holy brethren”, as though Christ regards us as His sons – “I and the children whom God has given me” (Hebrews 2:13). Through us, therefore, as members of Christ, the great high priestly work in heaven is to find expression here on earth. If we ask what is the significance of the Lord’s continuous work as High Priest, the answer is to set life over against death, to nullify the operation and reign of spiritual death. The Church’s great conflict is with spiritual death, and the more spiritual a man becomes, the more he is aware of the awful reality of this battle with the evil power of death.

 

No priest or Levite of the Old Testament was ever tempted to become lyrical on this subject or to talk in poetical language as though death were some sort of friend. Oh no, they knew death to be the great enemy of God and of all God’s interests. When the Scriptures speak of death as the last enemy, they not only mean that it is the last on the list but that it is the consummate enemy, the inclusive expression of all enmity. The effect of priesthood is illustrated again and again in the Word of God. We observe death breaking in because of sin, and then God intervening with His answer of life by means of blood sacrifice. The blood speaks of an accepted righteousness, and by means of it, the priest was able to meet death, counter it and minister life. Finally we are told of the Lord Jesus, who met death in the concentration of all its enmity, overthrew it by means of the perfect sacrifice of His own life’s blood, and then entered upon His priestly work of ministering life to believers.

 

The priest is a man of authority though this is spiritual and not ecclesiastical. He has power with God. The apostle John speaks of the case of one who has sinned a sin which is not unto death, and he says: “He shall ask life…” for him (1 John 5:16). This reference discloses that a believer who is standing on the ground of righteousness by faith through the blood of Jesus, can exercise the power of priesthood on behalf of an erring brother, and so minister life to him. Surely there is no ministry more needed on earth today than such a vitalising ministry. If we minister truths which do not issue in life, then we are wasting our time.

 

God has not commissioned us to be mere imparters of information about divine things or teachers of morals; He has loosed us from our sins so that we might be ministers of life to others by virtue of priestly authority. We live in a world where death reigns. Daily there are multitudes being swept away by a tide of spiritual death. Why? Because of unrighteousness. What is needed is the activity of those who will accept their priestly responsibilities, both asking life for others and offering them that life through the gospel. We must minister Christ. Not mere doctrines about Him; not mere words or commandments; but the vital impact of Christ in terms of life. So every believer is called to stand between the dead and the living giving the answer of Christ to the activities of Satan.

 

No wonder that the kingdom of Satan was at war with Israel, for the presence of this nation on a right relationship with God proclaimed effectively that sin and death do not reign universally in God’s world, but they have been met and overcome by the power of a righteous and incorruptible life. In the end Israel lost this testimony and so lost the priestly ministry. The Church was then brought in to take it up, being no longer a localised people in one land but a spiritual community scattered in all the earth, a people whose supreme calling is to maintain God’s victory over death according to the testimony of Jesus. And what is the testimony of Jesus? It is the testimony of the triumph of life over death. He Himself so described it to John: “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and I have the keys of hell and of death” (Revelation 1:18).

 

This testimony was deposited in the Church, and immediately the disciples presented it powerfully among the nations. Alas! In many respects the Church is now failing in its priestly vocation. This vital element of victorious life seems to be lacking. The letters at the beginning of the book of Revelation show that Christ was not satisfied with the churches’ many good activities, zealous works, correct teaching, patient persistence in orthodoxy. He sought to call them back to their true task of demonstrating the power of His overcoming life in the face of every challenge. What ministry do we want? To be running around taking meetings, giving addresses, supporting Christian work? All this may be included, but it is of little value if it does not fit into the context of priestly warfare against death, the bringing in of the powerful impact of Christ’s victorious life to meet death’s challenge.

 

The book of the Revelation makes it plain that such a testimony provokes the animosity of Satan, but such enmity should be a compliment to us, for it means that our lives are really counting for God. The day when you or I are no longer involved in the spiritual battle will be a bad day, for it will mean that we have lost our true vocation and are no longer providing any real challenge to spiritual death but are failing in this matter of priestly ministry. On the other hand, the painful antagonism of the powers of evil may be a clear proof that we are truly serving as priests.

 

Test everything by life. The life that is victorious over sin. The life which delivers from bondage, especially the bondage of fear. The life which expresses itself in terms of love for needy sinners. Not only does John encourage us to ask for life, he assures us that in answer to such prayer God will give it – “…he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death”. We must not fail in our priestly ministry.