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CHAPTER 12
The Blessed Assemblage of I Peter 1:2.
It is a one, two treasure.
The Treasure
In I Peter 1:2 and II Thessalonians 2:13, we find a blessed concentration of conceptions. In this, surely, the final point is salvation, is belief, is sprinkling with the blood of Jesus the Christ. In these passages, we read that this is what God has chosen the Christian FOR. But is this a speck of salvation dust in the desert of anonymity, a mere legislative display, a thrust of divine power, a sample of spiritual deposit, like a sum put into a Bank. Not at all. It is ALL personal since God IS personal.
Man too is personal, not a dumped, dizzy or merely impressed bit of clay. He has a material construction, just as a pianist has a piano; but that is not what he is; for it is the means for life in this world. The life itself is focussed on the final correlative to God Himself, the spirit of a man, which God distinctively set in him, after the basics were done(Genesis 3). This is like putting a pilot in an aeroplane.
That was engineering in the factory for aircraft; this is putting in the pilot. Your desire to escape spirituality, if so be, effort to elude or ignore the divine, the power beyond yourself, the force of conscience, the need for conviction, if this is the way with you, as it is with many, is itself spiritual. It is a dealing in invisible but highly personal things involving preference, evaluation, prioritisation, all perfectly unseen, but not uncogitated. Here is the realm of thought, like sound from the piano, the region of understanding, which is not the same as just being something. This is to be active about its meaning.
Thus, being personal by creation, even if by personal desire you would prefer to depersonalise as the Communists with gross gall and intemperance, cruelty and folly, act to do. Again, however, this is BY personal desire for DUMPING the personal, and so merely making the distemper of one, who makes up the stuff, the dynamic thrust to FORCE all into this saga of pathology, and unrealistic thoughtlessness. It is as if someone having had an injection for having a tooth out, felt it so glorious that everyone else's mouth had to be made numb, and people were killed or put in prison if they resisted.
The day of the grand delusion is with us, and this is merely one of its symptoms, in brutality, brutishness and bombast, rather as in Revelation 6, where death (of others) becomes a sort of fetish, fad, a raving of lost souls to implement their INVISIBLE desires on the INVISIBLE side of man's nature in order to have the INVISIBLE satisfaction of seeing other lost souls made to conform. It also resembles a criminal or deeply immoral person who, having tasted the dust in some horrid moral failure, cannot rest until others who might have been critics, share the mud.
But man is personal, and these are mere illustrations of how he can apply that fact, whether in affirmation or defamation.
Accordingly, when God in His foreknowledge, as I Peter 1 affirms, CHOSE some, this being "FOR obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ," the desideratum, the state, the criterion, what counts: it was a personal thing for Him and for the some, who constitute the Christians thus chosen. It is not a matter of an impersonal dumping of a transformation, like liposuction dumping a dynamic which changes things, with you a resultant which bears it thence in yourself, for good or for evil. It is wrought personally, spiritually, in godly style, with personal intent, expression, meaning and power, in a domain where this is the character of things. Hence it is not isolated, like a pin on a carpet, from spiritual reality in its precipitation and progression.
It is a spiritual thing and hence it is done in a spiritual manner. Sanctification, holiness, the vision or realisation of God and the virtue of God, the presence of God and the grace of God, these are all and always present in the matter.
Just as you are chosen with fore-KNOWLEDGE on the part of the Father, so you are chosen FOR obedience and sprinkling of the blood, and these things being so, the entirety of the matter goes through a tunnel, a locale, a mode of constraint and moulding, atmosphere and availability; for you are not orphans in the spiritual world on arrival, but come into the very presence of the living God, eyes open, heart beating in the spiritual realities, alive and aware. The tunnel, like the Chunnel, goes from place to place. It has its own atmospherics. It has its conformities, rules, ways beneath the waves of circumstance.
It is in this you go, as you add patience and longsuffering and brotherly love and virtue, growing, knowing. Put differently, you are alive in the soil of the garden of faith, pruned by the gardener, as we lift our horizons to the horticultural, attended by the supply plane for new fuel, as we lift further to the aerial, sitting in heavenly places, as we lift in quality yet further, to the realities of heavenly life, as indicated in Ephesians 2:6.
This is the pilgrimage path, below, above, at height, wherever; and it is personal, spiritual, an environment as when you become an air cadet at some academy for learning; only here, your entry is on a path where even though one be a fool, he cannot stray (Isaiah 35), for its outcome is an income from the first, for it is the "elect according to the foreknowledge of God," the Church which is living by faith in the Saviour, who needs no co-Saviour (Acts 4:12), which is in view. Since chosen before time was (just as in II Timothy 1:7ff., and Romans 8:29ff.), the outcome is not an issue. Indeed, it is as in John 10:9 and 27-28, where the sheep who enters THIS door (as in Psalm 118:19ff.) is able to come home to perpetual pastures, go in and out and find pasture, never liable to perish, given eternal life as in that testimony of Christ Himself in that place.
You not only go THROUGH this sanctification of the Spirit, but He by the Spirit goes WITH you (Matthew 28:19-20, Hebrews 13:6 and John 10), AS your Shepherd to whom you have fled (Hebrews 6:19) from the corruption and corrosion of this world.
BY the foreknowledge of God you are CHOSEN. You are chosen FOR belief and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, the criterion. You are not chosen in a land of isolates, orphans, however, but THROUGH sanctification of the Spirit. It is not only the PRESENCE of Christ through the Spirit, but His action (as in II Corinthians 3:18), in liberty (3:17), so that your place is in grace, and grace is in lovingkindness and this is in mercy and you are in the domain of the dynamic of God.
As Psalm 1 puts it, you are NOT now like the chaff which the wind blows around, which is for the separated, segregated, SPIRITUALLY wicked or unrighteous or self-coded ungodly, for those not subject to God nor desiring so to be. Rather are they makers of their own plan of salvation and bent on ignoring that of the Creator, who alone know how to redeem, and to whom alone is the sin subject for judgment in the end, against whom is the shame of separation committed. That is one course.
This is another. Those who are God's and HENCE the godly (none being at all perfect, but each seeking it with vigour, valour, desire) are different at once absolutely: the Lord, we there read, KNOWS them. Jesus put it, He knows His sheep and they hear His voice and they follow Him. This is sanctification of the Spirit, the way of it, the through path.
The Task
When do you begin ?
In a novel from an air force ace, Dale Brown, Fatal Terrain, there is envisaged a situation in which an elaborately refitted bomber, with highly advanced technical equipment, is in the air near an unexpected advancing armada from China to Taiwan, intending a sudden take-over. A Taiwanese frigate heavily armed with recent equipment opposes the aircraft carrier in particular, and looks ridiculous. In bombast and anger, the Chinese Captain (actually an Admiral on the capital ship) considers the case. HOW COULD they so challenge him! Is there some trick ? How puny the command that they stop coming into what are deemed the private waters, the national ones of the Republic. Stop and prepare for boarding!
Both outraged and enraged, and engaging his dynamic, unleashing his power, the final authority over the Chinese vessel back on the mainland, seeks to obliterate everything obliterable, and sends an in explicit message, prima facie but not explicitly authorising use of atomic weapons (so that he could deny it later if necessary). Thus a covertly commanded nuclear attack is launched on one of the islands associated with Taiwan. Before this, the question has been poised both for the America bomber crew and the Captain of the Chinese vessel. Will we strike NOW, or wait. IF the US bomber does not wait, then much damage may be done in response and ramifications. Yet if the US bomber crew waits, then the Chinese vessel may seek successfully to destroy it or the Taiwanese vessel with its courageous crew.
What then results from this ? IF we do not wait for them to act first, then we may initiate a war. If we do, then they may do so, with havoc resulting. In the end, the Taiwanese vessel and its associate, frigates, themselves attack, and then are attacked. A nuclear device is quietly despatched, for later propaganda pretending assault on THEM, and sent to accomplish this nuclear destruction on the frigate. Had the American command acted sooner, the Chinese aircraft carrier now doing this damage, could have been sunk, and so many lives spared from the assault, and the nuclear devices, illicitly used, avoided. There was time; but the Americans at home base, were neither ready nor willing to use it. Those on the scene, claiming defence, did, but after waiting, hence only reducing the devastation.
Time! It is necessary to have authority when you make huge decisions affecting many, in the midst of vastly important forces, and beings, elements of destiny.
In the above novel, the US delayed, and though in great courage the aeroplane did much to mitigate the devastation through intervention on the nuclear missiles and initial protective measures for the Taiwanese vessel, yet the total victory was not reached.
In life below, here on this earth, there is no such impediment. We do not have to seek authority in order to act. We have it already. It has been thought out, wrought out, and taught out. We do not have to wait for it, as Paul shows in II Corinthians 6. He declares this:
"We then as co-workers together with Him also plead with you
not to receive the grace of God in vain."For He says,
In an acceptable time I have heard you,
And in the day of salvation have helped you.
"Behold, now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation."
The call to the remnant of Israel here, from the Messianic Isaiah 49, is just the same in spiritual savour, content and meaning as that to the Gentile; and though the former has associated with it, God's long term plan concerning the Jew and Israel and the site of His death and return as in Zechariah 14, yet it is one Gospel, no other being possible, one urgency, it is to one and to all, and there is a time of urgency which has impact, and is ignored at one's peril (Galatians 1:6-9, 3:26-29, Hebrews 8:13, 9:12,28).
The Triumph
There is, as Paul affirms in Romans 11, ONE TREE from which Israel was taken out (as a nation, though some in it did start the aggregation in the Christian Church, being known as the apostles ...), and it is still there. ONE TREE into which Gentiles are grafted, STAYS PUT, and in particular, whosoever will is invited. ONE RESULT of ONE PEOPLE comes at length, when it had all seemed so incoherent, divided. Whether you were in and out, and then re-grated, or simply out and then in, it is all one set of branches in one rooted and grounded, founded and specific, unchanging and specific TREE of life. Such is the wisdom of God that He can, and will do this. Paul exults in this and we with him, who love the Lord in His grace and majesty, wisdom and power, peace and purity. His is the triumph in bringing all as one to One, so that the victory which He won may apply to many (Romans 11:33-36).
But to one as to all, there is a day as well as a way. TODAY is the day. Lingering as in the novel cited, can be damaging. It COULD in that story have spelt a huge nuclear blasting of Taiwan if NO action had been taken by the bomber crew, as who took some action to counter it before it was absolutely too late. When THE adversary, the devil, seeks to blow up your very spirit, that is, destroy its integrity once and for all and condemn it to eternity with hostility, then the time to act is at once. In a little, the Lord will return (as shown in Answers to Questions Ch. 5 and SMR Ch. 8, and 9), and that is a restoration as when General MacArthur returned to the Philippines (a very imperfect but poignant parallel) or went to Japan as commander, and was most active for the distribution of Bible, the grace of the counsel before and behind the power in its application.
If the USA had not acted in the case of the Berlin wall, what then ? If you do not take the time at the height of opportunity, what then ? THE time is coming, when the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea, and Christ will rule on it (Habakkuk 2:14, Isaiah 11, Psalm 72, Matthew 25) and when He comes, there is indeed a day of no small judgment (I Thessalonians 1). First He removes His people, foreknown, then He comes to rule (Revelation 19). But are you one of His people ? NOW is the time. The Lord would have all (Colossians 1:19ff.), came to save THE WORLD (though not the system, so evil and corrupt and adept at pollution - John 17:9,15, with 3:15-19), and not to judge it. Delay in dithering can make mountains stay put, devastations occur, losses mount.
Not only therefore is the TIME coming, the appointed time (as in Acts 3:19-21) when He comes from heaven and the restoration of all things is at hand as foretold so directly, but the OPPORTUNITY is going, for participation with relish in that time. It is not a time to be softly soporific, calculatingly worldly, inveterately unbelieving, unspiritually stand-offish, but one for coming in repentance for your sins of commission, omission and above all omission of a personal knowledge through the blood of Christ, of God as your anchor, governor, inspiriting Redeemer, Saviour and Lord. This is the objective. It is THROUGH that Chunnel that Calvary constitutes, one that carries you to the end that you come (Romans 3:25).
There is no other way (Ephesians 4:4, Hebrews 9:22, 10:18-21, 2:1ff.). So you begin,enter the door, the domain from which henceforth you are inseparable (Romans 8:30, Ephesians 1:5,11). Thence, It is WITH that Christ who by His Spirit is with you to the end. It is IN the kindness of God our Saviour that this is available (Titus 2 -3), His kindness toward man, who is the Saviour of all men (in offer), especially of those who believe (in fact), as in I Timothy 4:10.
Here is your heritage. Here is your opportunity. Take it and awaken to His righteousness, act and find His grace is there before you. Call on His name, and receive His word of reconciliation like a peace treaty, and abiding in Him, always covered by the blood of the Lamb (Hebrews 9:12, 10:10-14, I John 1:7ff.) live eternally (I John 3:9, 5:11ff.). That is what you were built for.