Crucified to the Religious World

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“But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Galatians 6:14).

It is interesting to notice the particular way in which the Apostle speaks of the world here. That term is a very comprehensive term and includes a very great deal. Here Paul gets right down to the spirit of the thing. You notice the context; it is well for us to take account of it:
“For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh” (Galatians 6:13).

What does the Apostle mean? They want to say, “See how many proselytes we are making! See how many followers and disciples we are getting! See how successful our movement is! See what a power we are becoming in the world! See all the marks of Divine blessing resting upon us!” The Apostle says that is worldliness in principle and spirit; that is the world. He sets over against this his own clear spiritual position. Do I seek glory of men? Do I seek to be well-pleasing to men? No! The world is crucified to me, and I to the world.

All that sort of thing does not weigh with me. What weighs with me is not whether my movement is successful, whether I am getting a lot of followers, whether there are all the manifestations outwardly of success; what weighs with me is the measure of Christ in those with whom I have to do: “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). Christ formed in you – that is my concern, he says that is what weighs with me… not extensiveness, not bigness, not popularity, not keeping in with the world, so that it is said that this is a successful ministry and a successful movement. That is worldliness. I am dead to all that; I am crucified with Christ to all that. The thing that matters is Christ – the measure of Christ in you.

You see how the world can creep in… and how worldly we can become almost imperceptibly by taking account of things outwardly – of how men will think and talk, what they will say, the attitude they will take; of the measure of our popularity, the talk of our success. That is all the world, says the Apostle, the spirit of the world; that is how the world talks. Those are the values in the eyes of the world, but not in the eyes of the risen Christ. In the new creation, on the resurrection side of the Cross, one thing alone determines value… and that is the measure of Christ in everything. Nothing else is of value at all, however big the thing may be, however popular it may be, however men talk favorably of it; on the resurrection side that does not count a little bit. What counts is how much of Christ there is.

You and I in the Cross of the Lord Jesus must come to the place where we are crucified to all those other elements. Ah, you may be unpopular, and the work be very small; there may be no applause, and the world may despise; but in it all there may be something which is of Christ, and that is the thing upon which our hearts must be set. The Lord gives us grace for that crucifixion. There are few things more difficult to bear than being despised; but He was despised and rejected of men. What a thing is in God’s sight must be our standard. That is a resurrection standard. Now that is the victory of the Cross: “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world”.

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PIONEERING FRAUGHT WITH COST AND CONFLICT 02

But while it is inward, it is also outward. This letter to the Hebrews is just full of these two aspects of the pilgrimage. “These all… confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Heb. 11:13). It was a spiritual journey, a transition from the earthly to the heavenly, that the Apostle was writing about. There was an inward aspect. But there was the outward aspect for them, and it is the same for us. The whole trend of nature, if left to itself, is downward. Leave things to themselves, and down they go, in all nature. Is that not true?

A beautiful garden will become a wild desolation, a riot and a chaos, in no time, if you take the upward-ordering hand from it. And that is true of us in a spiritual way – gravitation earthward, always wanting to settle down, always wanting to end the conflict and the fight, always wanting to get out of the atmosphere of stress in the spiritual life. The whole history of the Church is one long story of this tendency to settle down on this earth and to become conformed to this world, to find acceptance and popularity here and to eliminate the element of conflict and of pilgrimage. That is the trend and the tendency of everything. Therefore outwardly, as well as inwardly, the pioneering is a costly thing.

You are up against the trend of things religiously. See again this letter to the Hebrews. The trend was backward and downward to the earth, to make of Christianity an earthly religious system, with all its externalities, its forms, its rites, its ritual, its vestments; something here to be seen and to answer to the senses. It was a great pull on these Christians; it made a great appeal to their souls, to their natures, and the letter is written to say, ‘Let us leave these things and go on’. We are pilgrims, we are strangers, it is the heavenly that matters – you recall that great paragraph about our coming to the heavenly Jerusalem (chapter 12:18-24).

But it is a costly and a suffering thing to come up against the religious system that has ‘settled down’ here. It is, I sometimes feel, far more costly than coming up against the naked world itself. The religious system can be more ruthless and cruel and bitter; it can be actuated by all those mean things, contemptible things, prejudices and suspicions, that you will not even find in decent people in the world. It is costly to go on to the heavenlies, it is painful; but it is the way of the pioneer, and it has to be settled that that is how it is. The phrase in this letter is, “Let us therefore go forth unto him without the camp” (Heb. 13:13) – and I leave you to decide what is the camp referred to there; it is not the world. “Unto him without the camp” means ostracism, suspicion.

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar” – is that not the vision of the pioneer – always seeing and greeting from afar; hailing the day, though it might be beyond this life’s little day; greeting the day of realisation? – “and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own. And if indeed they had been mindful of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed of them” – God is not ashamed of the people who are on the pilgrimage with Himself to His end; He calls them His own and He is “called their God” – and “he hath prepared for them a city” (Hebrews 11:13-16).

That is a marvellous summary, when you come to think about it. “These all” – what a comprehensive “all”! And covering them all, it says of them that they had seen something – and having seen they could never rest, to their last day and their last breath on this earth. They were still pilgrims, they could never rest, this was in them the call of the unseen. It is something that must come into us from heaven in order to get us to heaven. Have you got it?

Well, as we shall see, that is the key to everything, it explains everything. It is the guarantee – oh, blessed be God for this, would that more of the Lord’s people knew it in greater power! – it is the guarantee that all that is in us of longing and of craving and of quest, born of the Spirit of God, is going to be realised.

Are you hungry? Are you longing? Are you dissatisfied? That is itself a prophecy of more to come. Are you contented? Have you settled down? Is your vision short and narrow? Can you just go on here? Can you accept things as they are? Very well, you will be left to it, you will not get very far. God calls Himself the God of those who are pilgrims. He is the God of pilgrims, and, divesting ourselves of all the mentality of a literal pilgrimage – if you like, of a literal heaven, for I do not know where heaven is, but I know that there is a heavenly order of things and that I am being dealt with in relation thereto every day of my life – let us leave out the literal side, and see the spiritual, which is so real; and let us ask the Lord to put this spirit of pilgrimage in us mightily.

You will find as you go on that, whereas at one point in your spiritual life everything was so wonderful and so full that you felt you had reached the end of everything, there will come a time when that will be as nothing, and you look back upon it as mere infancy. Things that you were able to read then and feed upon: you say, ‘How was I able to find anything in this at all?’

Do not mistake me: there is nothing wrong with that, that is all right for people at that point – but you have gone on, you must have something more. We ought to be growing out of things all the time, going beyond. We ought to be people of the beyond. That is probably the meaning of the word ‘Hebrew’. This letter is called the letter to the Hebrews, and it speaks about pilgrims and strangers, and if the word ‘Hebrew’ means a person from beyond, well, we are people from beyond, our home and our gravitation is beyond. We are pilgrims here, pilgrims of the beyond.

May the Lord make this helpful, and on the one hand move us out of any lethargy or false contentedness, or undue longing to reach an end here, and, on the other, keep our eyes and our hearts with those who have pioneered before, seeing and greeting, and, if needs be, dying, in faith.

What will God do next?

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This is an inquiry, not a prophecy.
That a new thing needs to be done by the Lord is a growing conviction of many of His servants and people. But is there any reason why we should expect a new movement or further step on the part of the Lord? The answer could be given in various ways.

From time to time in the world’s history there have been definite and distinct movements in relation to spiritual interests. These movements have usually, if not invariably, been when conditions were very similar to those which exist at such a time as this. The tide of real spiritual lifestyle has run well out, and things spiritually had become very shallow and superficial. What there was of activity was work by its own motive-force.

That is to say, it was carried on by human energy and interests, it was producing its own dynamic. By various and many forms of organized enterprise, with their interest, appeal, and propaganda, that which was called “the work of God” was kept going.

Then, the things of God had become very set. A tradition became established, and everything was according to the tradition, the accepted and recognized order, way, teaching, and means. There was no way for God to do what He would, because anything not according to the established custom was suspect. Thus He was fettered by the fixed traditions which governed His people’s minds.

The Lord was straitened in His people by their own finality of position, while at the same time they were aware that all was not well. The result was that, in most instances, the new Divine reaction had to be made outside of the recognized order and system of things; and, for a long time, the living thing had to go on in face of a strong and serious opposition, not from the world, but from those who were supposed to stand for God on the earth.

This involves a matter of the most vital concern to our main inquiry – What will God do next?

God has never yet moved from any other standpoint and position than fullness and finality. Man’s first day on the earth was the Sabbath, which was at the end of God’s work. Man did not start with God in the fragments and bits of His work. When the new corporate Man came in on the Day of Pentecost it was upon a basis of fullness and finality in Christ exalted.

The history of God’s specific movements with the Church is not the history of His adding something, but of His bringing back to the primal fullness with which He filled His Son. Look at the epochs in the Church’s history and you will see that they represented the recovery of something which had been lost. God can therefore never be satisfied with something which only represents an elementary, or more or less, degree of the fullness of Christ.

Any movement of God which is taken hold of by man and made something in itself as an end, whether it be evangelism or a fuller message of life, and truth, or whether it be an advance in order or method of Church life and procedure, must sooner or later become a tradition and a legal system, bereft of life and heavenly fullness.

God ever seeks to carry His people on to “full growth” which, with Him, is the timeless fullness of Christ. If there is yet to be an advance made to a position beyond what has been, those (they may be comparatively few) who will make it will be brought to a deeper realization than ever of the failure and impotence of traditional Christianity as it exists. They may strain and strive and hurl themselves into it to try to improve it, but they will break themselves upon it, and will eventually, in the mercy of God, come to see that the old wineskin; cannot be given the new wine. God must do a new thing, and He must have a clear way for doing it.

So we ask, are we not being hedged up to something untraditional and extra to what has been? Is not God bringing much of that which has been used in the past under the hammer? We have to admit a question as to whether God is willing to revive that which has taken the mold of men’s various and conflicting religious orders and systems, or whether He will not transcend all such and move apart from it. It will be a costly business for all who are a part of it, especially the instruments used for it, and they will have to be very broken and emptied vessels.

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4. CHRIST SETTLING DOWN (HOME-MAKING) WITHIN

 

And then the next thing, the fourth thing. Ephesians 3:17: “That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all saints…” “That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” Now here you have an advance upon all the rest. You may not recognize it, but it is an advance. This is not saying, that Christ may take up residence in your heart. This is not saying, that Christ may come into your heart. And this is not saying, that Christ may find a lodgment in your heart. This is saying: “That Christ may dwell in your heart” and the Greek word there is, “make His home” or “settle down” in your heart. “That Christ may make His home in your heart.” That is something more than a lodging, that is something more than just coming in and being there. Every house is not a home.

 

Some of you will be going back to our thoughts about “Bethany,” and you will remember how at the outset of our meditation upon Bethany, we showed that Bethany represented the contrast that when He came – He who created all things – came to His own and they that were His own received Him not, so that He said as to His presence here on earth: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head”: that was His place in the world: but He came to Bethany, and He came again, and He came again – and in the face of greatest stress, when things were pressing more and more heavily upon Him towards the end, His constant retreat was to Bethany. The only home He seems to have had here on this earth was Bethany. It was because He found heart satisfaction in Bethany. There was one there who “kept on listening.” As we pointed out, the literal translation of Mary’s listening is: “she kept on listening to His word.” He wanted someone, He wanted some heart into which to pour that what was in Himself and find appreciation and response, and He found it at Bethany – the better part. It was His own heart satisfaction there because He was listened to, responded to, and made to feel that it was the greatest of all privileges to have Him there. “That Christ may make his home in your hearts.”

 

We are so often like Martha before she got right (thank God she did get right, and the last picture of Bethany is Martha still serving, but things are right now, the activities outwardly have not outweighed the spiritual activities inwardly; things have been put right) like Martha before the correction, we are doing a multitude of things for the Lord when the Lord is just craving an opportunity to be listened to. The Lord would often say to us: “Yes, I know you mean to be very busy for me, I know you mean it all for Me, I know your motive is right, I quite appreciate all that, but oh, that you would give Me a chance to say a few things to you; oh, that you would give Me an opportunity just to speak into your heart, to show you things which you do not know, which would make such a lot of difference.” And this is the explanation of our being called aside at times. He would draw us from the feverish activities of the “many dishes” to a place where He is listened to. But how much better if we gave Him the chance, than He having to make it. We have got to run the risk of being misunderstood for seemingly doing nothing, as Mary was misunderstood. Sometimes we are afraid that people will think that we are slacking because we get away with the Lord a little more. All right, the Lord knows. But mark you, He will come and make His home where He finds that. It is something more than having Christ as a lodger. (Forgive that way of putting it.) It is Christ being at home in the heart, making His home there. You ask the Lord to apply that to you just as it needs applying. You busyworkers, remember that all your work, in the Lord’s mind, can never take the place of an opportunity which He craves of being able to speak fuller things into your heart. Your activities will be without vitality unless you are giving Him time to speak and He is having response to new unveilings.

 

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The Three-fold Law of the Cross

 

“Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.” John 12:24.

 

In these words we have the three-fold universal law of nature which is also the three-fold law of the Cross. This three-fold law is (1) Life through death. (2) Liberty through surrender. (3) Enlargement through loss.

 

1. Life Through Death

The supreme illustration of this law is in Christ’s own case. The real life of Christ is not the life of the three and a half years in which He trod this earth, but it is the life which He has been living in all the world since Calvary. It is an open question whether the record of those three and a half years would have survived or would have taken the place in the history of the world which it has taken, were it not for the romance of His continued activities and triumphs world-wide since His crucifixion and resurrection.

 

It is this romance that has attracted so much attention to that brief span of His life and teaching on earth, and which has created the world’s literature relative to “The days of His Flesh.” The greatest truth about Him is that “He was dead but is alive again.”

 

That life through death has controlled the world ever since and has made the world realise that, in spite of most determined efforts to destroy it, here is something which is indestructible. Great world systems, cults, and even empires have exhausted all their resources to blot out the Name and the continued vitality of Christ. But it is they which have perished; He still lives on victoriously.

 

We never receive the real life of Christ until we too have been to the Cross. The real divine life – the life of Jesus Christ – is only known by what it does in men and women in making them live on a plane which infinitely transcends the human level.

 

Christ said of Himself that He had “come to scatter fire on the earth,” and that He was “straightened until it was accomplished.” A baptism was necessary in order that this divine fire or life might be liberated, and the ”straightening” of Himself destroyed. He groaned, ”Oh, that it were already accomplished.” This baptism was a baptism through the passion, and it was through the Cross that He looked for the realisation of all His world-wide mission. The ”fire” was to become world-wide in the members of His body. It was thus essential that they should be identified with Him, and identification with Christ is only found at the Cross, where such passages as the following have their deepest meaning:-

 

”I have been crucified with Christ and yet I live and yet no longer I but Christ liveth in me.” Galatians 2:20.

”Having been buried with Him.” Colossians 2:12.

”We were baptised into His death.” Romans 6:3.

”For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection.” Romans 6:5.

”Like as Christ was raised from the dead, so also we.” Romans 6:4.

 

If we are going to manifest that life of Christ, and if that vital indestructible something is going to bear its powerful testimony in the world, if that divine life – that very life of God Himself – indestructible, victorious, is going to bear its mighty witness and make itself felt in the world in the members of His Body, it is only through their oneness with Him in death and resurrection.

 

Until we know this oneness, our Christian life will count for little. We must take our place in one initial, all-inclusive reckoning with Him in death to the old self, and the old world with all its ambitions, desires, programmes, ideas, and standards, and then allow that death to be wrought out in us daily in order that the resurrection life may be increasingly manifest in us. The life of God cannot come into the old creation, it is the new creation life.

 

Not only does this apply in the case of ourselves as sinners, but it is a law which works out in every other relationship of Christian life. Take the matter of the knowledge of truth, in spiritual education. We come into the school of the Spirit to be taught. This school differs from the educational institutions of the world, where we go to have a certain amount of knowledge imparted to our brains. In secular education we can be crammed with a vast amount of theoretical knowledge, but the Holy Spirit’s method is to have things wrought out in our very beings so that they become us and we become them.

 

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PIONEERING FRAUGHT WITH COST AND CONFLICT

 

So we come to the third feature of this pioneering. All pioneering is fraught with great cost and suffering, and, this being a spiritual course or way, the cost of this pioneering is mainly inward.

 

Perplexity; yes, perplexity. I have been reading a translation of a message by our brother Watchman Nee. In it he says, in effect, ‘There was a time when I had such a high idea of the Christian life that I thought for a Christian to be perplexed was all wrong; a Christian to be cast down – that is all wrong; a Christian to despair – that must be all wrong; what kind of Christian is that? And when I read Paul saying he was perplexed and in distress and in despair it constituted a real problem for me, in the light of what I had taught myself a Christian ought to be; but I had to see there was nothing wrong with it, after all.’ Yes: a Christian, and such a Christian as the Apostle Paul, perplexed, and cast down, and in despair. That is the way of pioneers.

 

Perplexed. What does perplexity imply? It implies a need for capacity or comprehension in some realm in which at present there is none. There is a realm that is beyond you. It does not mean that you will always be perplexed in the same measure over the same thing. You will grow out of your perplexity on this matter, and you will understand; but there will be to the end perplexity, in some measure, simply because heaven is bigger than this world, vaster than this natural life, and we have to grow and grow. Perplexity is the lot of pioneers.

 

Weakness. Brother Nee asks, ‘A Christian in weakness and confessing to being weak? What kind of a Christian is that?’ Paul speaks much about weakness, and about his own weakness – meaning, of course, that there is another kind of strength which is not our own, which has to be discovered; something that we do not know naturally. It is the way of pioneers: to come to a wisdom which is beyond us and which for the time being means perplexity; to a strength which is beyond us and which for the time being means weakness in ourselves. We are learning, that is all. It is the way of the pioneer, but it is costly. The cost is inward, like that, in so many ways.