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Chapter 7
The Completeness, Sufficiency and
Scope
of Spiritual Comradeship in Christ
Where Grace is
Greater, Place is Pure
In our
last Chapter, we noticed that the Man from Space has already come. He is not to
be searched for in distant stars, dynamic dumpings or strange feelie messages
from astronomical sources.
BEING UNINTELLIGENT
ABOUT INTELLIGENCE
Not from IQ
deficiency, but Spiritual Lust*1A
It is a
profound comment on our current cultural epoch, that people strain with
billions of dollars to add to the lustre of the effort, to distinguish just
one, just some little message, however garbled or odd, which might, just might
suggest intelligence at work outside our pastured globe in the cosmos, while
they ignore as if their soul’s life depended on it, the elegantly, lustrously,
indeed magnificently intelligent coded messages in our own DNA which come with
every baby, indeed help to form the baby. As to that, it is not merely a
word of enlightenment, or sociality, but a building constructor code actively
at work in making the equipment which we all use, so that we CAN use it.
A half garbled sentence ‘from space’ would set this current
world aglow. Yet millions of sentences already programmed into executive action
to form our bodies and brains, and enable their construction, maintenance and
functionality, make for but jaded talk and lack-lustre or even dismal
indifference AT THE SPIRITUAL LEVEL!*1A
Again, a
cheery ‘Hullo!’ from ‘space’ would make this world explode with curiosity,
delight and bring a rain of fascination, perhaps even a reign of it. Yet an
entire book of hundreds of thousands of the most coherent, intellectually
proficient, predictively lustrous, majestically grand, peaceably effective,
illuminatively comprehensive words brought into our planet over a period well
in excess of three millennia, all with one message, one analysis, from many
sources, many places, composed indeed over some 1500 years and centring on the
most amazingly powerful, pure and loving person ever known, whose claim to BE
GOD has been verified in EVERY dimension despite myriads of attacks, this is
regarded with disdain, contempt, negative passion or a carefully cultivated
indifference by billions on this planet.
IT IS NOT HIDDEN
(cf. Isaiah 45:18-19)
It is a
sickness, even to death. But let us for a moment consider the spiritual
dimensions of the gift which this book records, like a physician’s notebook,
for those to whom it is written, who ACT on it. Before we do so, one word of
preface: acting on it in this case, is first and foremost a matter of two
simple things. It requires ADMISSION of guilt before God, and FAITH in His
provision in Jesus Christ.
Even in
that, you are not alone, for the Spirit of God (we have spirits – cf. It
Bubbles… Ch. 9, Little Things Ch. 5, SMR pp. 348
and
The idea of
‘convict’ is to help you find the truth of something, when that something
includes a sense of shame, error or wrong-doing, or even when it involves a
sharpened awareness of something which you had not (adequately) taken into
account.
Thus the
‘convicting’ of sin means that you do not believe in this colossus of beauty,
this skyscraper of grace, this testimony of majesty, this explanation of all
things which has no equal or near equal, or ever has had (cf.SMR Chs. 1-9, esp. Ch.
5), and reject summarily the Person whom it propounds as your personal
Physician of the Spirit. His name: Jesus Christ.
The term
‘Christ’ is simply from the Greek for the Hebrew ‘Messiah’ for whom the people
of Israel waited some 1450 years as He was announced by many writers in this
book of the Lord (Isaiah 34:16 cf,. 8:20, Matthew 5:17ff.), before being killed
by them. This occurred, as did the way it happened, with the devices to be
used, as also announced in this book some 1000 years before it happened,
the date itself for it being likewise included in that book of the
Lord, some 600 years before (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4).
It means
this, that this Person who has come, is not from space, a mere upward extension
in the time-space domain, in which we dwell. As to that, it is dependent
entirely on the Creator’s allocations of resources, no less than is man in
space is dependent on his ground control’s allocations of resources, as the
recent calamity with Columbia so well illustrates, the Russians coming to
provide what NASA temporarily does not. Rather, this Person, the Messiah, has
come from the God who made space and time, those struts of a temporary
universe in which we are placed in highly testing conditions, and as His very
name and associated predictions imply, He has come as ANOINTED and APPOINTED
for our good.
CONVICTION IS NOT ONLY
FOUND IN LAW-COURTS
In rejecting
this message and of course this Person, this world and those in it who follow
its cultural sovereignty - man for himself by
himself with himself, and give me no instructions – man is convicted,
says the book, of SIN. He is unwilling
to receive grace. It does not interest him to find his position in the scheme
of things ? yes for this concerns the way of his God.
Of what
else then is man to be convicted ? It is of righteousness, we read in John 16.
Why ? why
is this clear intimation crisply brought home to his mind, and impressed upon
his spirit ? The reason for this also is given. It is because the appointed,
anointed Person, Jesus, who came to bring life, was murdered after what He
first completed and consummated, and in view of His identity. He was murdered,
resurrected and bringing His mission to culmination over a period of 40 days
thereafter, left this earth. It was thus that He went to His Father: it is this
very fact which brings, or is used to bring, conviction of righteousness.
Why again?
It is because HE did it all. The world still tries vainly to bypass this in its
midst, as if to avoid its own natural heart. HE died as prescribed, to bear sin
as prescribed, for all who receive Him as prescribed (cf. Isaiah 53, where
those who are ‘healed’ are those whose sin He bore); and before that He lived
in purity, as prescribed (necessary for a sin-offering), did many miracles as
prescribed, tenderly brought deliverance from warped thinking, living and ways,
as prescribed, produced words which none could answer as prescribed, and in
love died as He undertook (Psalm 40 cf. Joyful Jottings 22) to provide the path for man which would
endure until He returned (as prescribed cf. Acts 1, Zechariah 14, Psalm 2).
WHY is
anyone convicted because He has GONE ? It is naturally enough because of
the WAY He went after all that He
did, and
in view of His identity.
As to the former, He was murdered with impassioned
brutality, injustice and travesty of all justice. As to the latter, in the
supernaturally obvious grandeur of God, He had a purpose which no one COULD
prevent, even though man is so constructed that he may, as an option, REJECT
the results of this purpose. Yet in the profound wisdom of God, this divine
purpose USED man’s hatred in killing Him, to provide a sacrifice for sin.
It was very
remarkable really. It meant that in LOVE and with GRACE (undeserved kindness),
He came and being both manhandled (as He foresaw and described in detail as in
Psalm 22 – cf. Joyful Jottings 25),
and murdered with unspeakable agony and a malice not so incredible as you watch
the last century’s dealings from man to man – He made use of man’s guile, power
hunger and hatred so that those who killed him really in one way, in another
way at the same time, acted as priests. In what way then ?
It was
this. What does a priest do, in the old domain ? He offers sacrifices for sin
upon an altar with a view to meeting the requirements of justice against the
sinners who render the work apposite (cf. Leviticus 4, 16-17, Psalm 51, Romans
3:23ff., Hebrews 7-10). For whom are these useless or even worse ? It is so,
for those who reject God or the provision. Where is this found in the Old
Testament ? It is found in Deuteronomy 29:14-21. The crucial issue is a matter
of what is going on in the HEART (29:19).
Someone not
regarding the point and purpose of these provisions gains no benefit, but
merely becomes outré, rejected, a spiritual casualty. It is rather like NOT
receiving antibiotics. It does not matter whether you were in the surgery,
whether you made an appointment, whether you ‘saw’ the doctor, had the
prescription, went to the chemist. If you do not take the stuff, then it is all
purposeless, and perhaps deceptive as well, if you give an opposite impression!
At that,
however, Christ did not fail to lament for Jerusalem for its obdurate
insouciance, as it went to the soon to come doom; nor did He not find the
outreach of love even to the rich young ruler who found, to put it in modern
terms, his religious rites in his cheque book, despite an ardent desire,
without this impediment, for life that is eternal! (Mark 10:17ff.). Christ
loved, but the way he did not follow, and so left the Lord, mourning.
Yet
consider the beauty of the planning, for good with grace!
Thus those
who OFFERED Christ on the ALTAR of the Cross at
Those who
most despised Him, thus most served in this work, by offering Him. Naturally it
was not a good thing that they did, but it WAS most emphatically a good thing
that it was done! Their guilt is not reduced, in this morbid misuse of the
spirit of man by man, because they performed a most useful task. We answer IN
SPIRIT for the motives and thoughts of our very amply endowed minds and hearts.
God however is very deep. In this way, the terrible irony of man’s littleness
and vaunting pride is brought out like a spotlighted feature on the face of an
actor on the stage in some play.
Even when
man is MOST asserting himself, God has so arranged things that at that very
moment and in that very WAY, there would be effected the PRIOR and previously
PRECISELY PREDICTED will of God. Who would do to precise specifications ? Those
who hated Him. What makes it the more ‘convicting’ is this, that in God’s
purpose, despite His foreknowledge and prophesied coverage of all these things,
despite His acute awareness of all that man would do, He still loved, and He
still showed grace.
He still
did it!
Put all
these things and many more like them together, and what do you find ? It
is occasion for CONVICTION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, because Christ, the
sacrifice, has gone back to His Father, and while the world whirls
without His personal, healing, words of truth and holy presence, it harbours
all sorts of fraud, political, religious and social (as predicted (Matthew 24,
II Timothy 3, II Peter 2). It is this which goes on while God continues to enable
this space station to continue on its path, and the ‘play’ proceeds.
The stage
is being bruised; but it continues yet a little while (cf. Matthew 24:21-22).
Like
This, the,
in John 16:9-11, is therefore cumulative. They are convicted of sin, in this
entire milieu, because they (still) do not believe in Him and should do so.
They are convicted or righteousness, because HE DID HIS PART in entirety, and
has returned to His place, so that man is left with the Gospel (as also
predicted cf. SMR pp. 763ff.,
just as HE was predicted cf. SMR pp. 765ff.).
That is the first and second of the trio of convictions as found in John 16.
Now we
arrive duly at the THIRD. This is a conviction, an awareness of the propriety
and fittingness of JUDGMENT, which will come. Why ? It is statedly this: it is
because “the ruler of this world is judged.”
What does this mean ? It is that you are in a mundane environment not ruled for
the glory of God. There is a prince of this world, a cultural clime, a
leading edge, a perspective and a power which does NOT, emphatically does not
want to follow its Creator, its Maker, the Maker of its DNA, or to
receive ANY, repeat any messages from ANY authority, except of
course itself. It has had many dummies ? or let us perhaps more advisedly call
them leaders, like
Mao,
Hitler,
Mussolini,
Hirohito,
Marx,
Freud,
Lenin,
popes,
Napoleon,
Roman Emperors aplenty, some hard to
distinguish from being literally insane, and so on.
Some may
repent, but in the interim, they fill this world’s stage with their aspirations
and deployments of unlovely dominion.
There has
been, over the ruptured ruins of history, and scattered in its scenarios, a
power lust, a social imperiousness, a reign in the mind, in the State or in the
Empire, which has frequently been gross, vile and devastating. Ultimately, when
the thing is seen in perspective spiritually (for man is a being WITH spirit
and to ignore this is merely to deny your own capacity to rove discursively and
wisely over our current material cf. Little Things Ch. 5, Joyful Jottings 5), it is worthy of judgment.
This whole
species of spiritual disaster is not really as autonomous as it looks and often
claims to be. The sometimes ironic point is simply that the more you RUIN what
you have been allocated (like an adolescent slowly learning that he/she has one
body, not two, one mind to burn, not two, one personality to mould or
become mouldy, not two, during a period of reflection in some kind of
rehabilitation), the less you are free. In the analogy, the mind is no longer
able to concentrate as it did, your motivation is not as sharp and clear as it
was and so on. In the principal reality, the more you kick the graces given,
the more bruised is your receptor.
In the end,
the book of the Lord refers to some having consciences SEARED or scorched, as
with a hot iron (I Timothy 4:2, cf. II Timothy 4:3). In fact, as the natural
tendency towards truth is left behind for various and often specious reasons,
the whole structure of the personality, in its spirit and movement, changes. It
is like bruising, except in this case, as indeed in the body, cumulative
disregard can have accelerating consequences.
Thus you
come under a control which is not open at all, but relates to various powers
and persons who are interested in garbage, which of course is the ultimate
result when the Producer and His Methods of Maintenance is obstructively and
obdurately disregarded. A short point of clarification fits here.
It is not
that man is not a sinner from the first, in the sense that he does not
naturally any more know God, and so has to find Him, and while he does
not find Him, he remains out of place entirely (and even when he does find Him,
this is not the same as instant perfection, but rather total imbuing with the
Spirit of the Lord, in GRACE that is magnificent). This is the sadly apposite
and scriptural reality.
It is
merely to point out that, this being granted, man can IN ADDITION so act that
he is more and more completely taken over by a SPIRIT which is adverse to
truth, alienated from God, and a LEADER in his life. You see it on countless
seeming occasions when a barrier, a spirit, a spree of active disinclination
prevents even rational discussion of Christ, in those who FOLLOW THEIR so very
different LEADER. As to this, read in John 14:30 and you find that the Prince
of this World, or its Ruler, is displacing Christ as He leaves. It is his
innings, certainly with limited scope; but it is so in all matches!
In what
sense displacing ? In this: that when Christ was present, He exposed and
explosively dealt with all the devices, subtle, dynamic and crippling, of the
devil, and with his followers, whether they were dressed up as priests or not.
When He left, it was not to donate a world of IMPERIAL SPLENDOUR, before His
return, but one for the spreading of the Gospel, the good news concerning
Him until that time as He expressly stated (Matthew 24:12-14, 28:19-20). For
that the power of the Holy Spirit was given, just as in His own coming, the
power of the Son of God was observable!
What
however of this other spirit, that of this world ?
This RULER
it is who is JUDGED (John 16:11). He is judged not merely because, in the
ultimate control seeking panel, it is the devil (cf. Revelation 19:20ff.., I
John 2:12-14). For that matter, the devil is characterisable and bears the name
because of the deeds! It is this, we read in this book of the Lord, the
fact that the ruler of this world is judged, which brings CONVICTION OF
JUDGMENT.
His whole
way and day is wrong; and that is not a matter of complete indifference, any
more than was the killing of Christ as a sacrifice. It is all planned, and in
testimony of that fact, it is all written in advance, and most of it has
already happened (cf. News 87, … Immovable
Faith Ch. 6). Incidentally, avoid the mere
confusion of imagining that things wrought before time, are capricious or
arbitrary: quite the contrary. Undelimited, they are the work of principle and
person, reality and truth undivided and unhastened!
But what of
this world ?
Those who
simply immerse themselves in this or that phase and facet of this mundane,
secular, and –the devil is indubitably technically very clever - often
religiously confusing and miscreant activities, to what do they drift, like
wood on Niagara River above the Falls ? Rejecting the CHRIST APPOINTED AND
ANOINTED, verified and confirmed in all ways from logic to history (cf. SMR, TMR),
are thus to be found a sort of an army.
They are in this or that squad, amidst the rebellious forces. Hence they look
forward to judgment. Hence when the Spirit of God convicts, this is that phase:
conviction is of judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. It is, in
mere analogy, like being in some of the genocidal forces in Biafra, or the
former Yugoslavia, and becoming from time to time aware, that there will be a
day of accounting; but here, it is not with mere man, that the dealing is to
come, but with his Maker.
Now another
point of clarification is in place. This judgment to come, it is not some kind
of knee-jerk reaction as with Communist party bosses, trying to ‘rehabilitate’
those who still want to think discursively, or to indoctrinate as if they were
latter-day popes of some kind, those who do not follow their reductionist
follies (cf. Repent or Perish Ch.
7, SMR pp. 925., Highway to Hell). It is in no sense a use of
force to secure words that are insincere, or allegiance that is to merely power
oriented. Nor is it a harsh use of majesty to prevent difficulties or to ensure
the continued place in the palace of rule, of those who desire establishment.
It is in truth, about truth: truth is the term of reference. Mercy then is
rejected, love is demeaned, the good news is dismissed, the dispensing of the
word of wisdom is neglected and God is avoided where He is to be found (cf.
Isaiah 55:5ff.).
This
however is the last Post. There are many which are before it. It is all the
more because of this tender and multifarious mercy, that the sense of judgment
is augmented. In the interim, and it is a very long interim, God has wrought so
much in so many ways, and in such an eminent way with the highest of all
Persons in His Kingdom, His eternal word, that the sense of judgment must be
realised in the midst of what makes it so aweful. It is the PREFERENCE for
darkness which is its kernel (John
GREATER GRACE THAN
THIS WORLD
HAS EVER SEEN
OR COULD*1 SEE,
COMES FROM ITS KING
He COULD have removed
the earth (and will – Isaiah 51:6, Matthew
He COULD have PLANNED
to remove the earth as part of the entire strategy from the first, when He
CHOSE who would be His (Ephesians 1:4, Romans 8:29ff.), at some early stage,
without the patient prodigy of procedure which led to the Messiah and His
costly remedy.
He COULD have chosen
on the basis of simple preference in order to fulfil His wishes, say the
bravest or most choice people, and made this part of His plan. He did not.
He chose many who are low in
intellect – some mighty, to be sure (I Corinthians
He chose many who had been mere
swellings, as far as could be seen, in the river and currents of selfish life,
like Zacchaeus (Luke 19). Indeed,
He COULD have been
remorseless and merciless WITH His people, even after they received Him, but He
was not, forgiving Peter in magnificent style, with tenderness, grace and
goodness.
Just watch
the method as Christ deals with fallen Peter. First there is a LOOK, quite
simply, nothing more (as in Luke 22:61), after Peter’s impetuous betrayal of
Him. The Lord turned and looked on Peter, as He went from trial to trial: on
the way!
Of course,
to be fair to Peter, he HAD tried to defend Christ with a sword from His
betrayers, first of all, but apparently confused with the rebuke to put away
his sword, he fled, and then in the multitude of commotions, found himself
declaring THREE times that he did not so much as know Christ, and that in the
very palace of the High Priest!
This was
a lie
a breach of friendship
a disloyalty of the most extreme
degree and
susceptible to the charge of nervous
fear, whether or not this was the actual case.
Christ,
then, gave Peter a mere look as He was being led to judgment: He did not shout
or take derisory action. Then He SAW Peter on the first day of the
resurrection (I Corinthians 15:5), and again as in John 21, days later when
Peter, rich in repentance and desire, discerned Him on the shore, after the
miraculous catch such as had occurred at the beginning of his time with Christ;
and it was then that he rushed to meet Him. We do not know, to be sure, what
was said between them on that first day after the resurrection, but we do know
what happened on this last occasion.
Three times
Christ asked Peter, using the word for friendship as well as religious love,
whether he loved Him. This covered the three denials! It was serenely parallel.
What grace and gentility was here.
Thus we see
that while Christ could be vigorous in denunciation to false shepherds (as in
Matthew 23! for there few more scorching words have adorned the earth – yet
scorching because their scathing exposures were just), this is a Shepherd’s
natural fire! Thus, we are not surprised when we find the gracious Martin
Luther strong in denunciation of those who caused countless heart-aches among
the German people (of which Luther was one). How did they do this ? It was, as
Luther began to point out, by twisting the truth and masquerading their system
with a pope as if he sat in the very chair and seat of Christ, when He had
expressly forbidden having any human masters (Matthew 23:8-10). How was this
shepherding folly performed then ? It was by the use of a system of such
severity and indeed forcible violence as would make Peter’s thought of using
the sword, a mere trifle by comparison (in the Inquisition, over its centuries
of moral cess). Tender to a point, Luther was most truculent and even
denunciatory to those who caused such human torment.
Did not God
Himself state that He would come down and DO IT HIMSELF, while castigating the
neglect, selfishness, soulless heartlessness and ruinous neglect of priests in
Ezekiel’s day, relative to the people. You can read it in detail in Ezekiel 34
from which an excerpt is here given:
“Son of man, prophesy
against the shepherds of
‘Thus says the Lord God to the shepherds:
“Woe to the shepherds of
“So they were scattered
because there was no shepherd; and they became food for all the
beasts of the field when they were scattered. My sheep wandered through all the
mountains, and on every high hill; yes, My flock was scattered over the whole
face of the earth, and no one was seeking or searching for them.”
‘Therefore, you
shepherds, hear the word of the Lord:
“As I live,” says
the Lord God, “surely because My
flock became a prey, and My flock became food for every beast of the field,
because there was no shepherd, nor did My shepherds search for My
flock, but the shepherds fed themselves and did not feed My flock— therefore, O
shepherds, hear the word of the Lord!
Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am
against the shepherds, and I will require My flock at their hand; I will cause
them to cease feeding the sheep, and the shepherds shall feed themselves no
more; for I will deliver My flock from their mouths, that they may no longer be
food for them.”
“For thus says the Lord God:
“Indeed I Myself will
search for My sheep and seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock on the
day he is among his scattered sheep, so will I seek out My sheep and deliver
them from all the places where they were scattered on a cloudy and dark day.
And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries,
and will bring them to their own land; I will feed them on the mountains of
“I will feed them in good
pasture, and their fold shall be on the high mountains of
“I will seek what was
lost and bring back what was driven away, bind up the broken and strengthen
what was sick; but I will destroy the fat and the strong, and feed them in
judgment.
“And as for
you, O My flock,’ thus says the Lord God:
Behold, I shall judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats. Is
it too little for you to have eaten up the good pasture, that you must
tread down with your feet the residue of your pasture—and to have drunk of the
clear waters, that you must foul the residue with your feet?” ’ ”
You see the
love and compassion, the outrage at its abuse by those supposedly caring but in
fact caring largely for themselves. As here, so in Christ, the incarnate Word
of God.
Tender to a
point, like an exquisite doctor with patients, He could caress the very hearts
of his people, and with sympathy excel; yet when they were mauled by false
words and false shepherds, did He not react like any shepherd.
Do you not
find something of this in Luther in his caressing strength towards the
afflicted Germans of his day, in the churches, and his scornful exposure, even
with satire, though he did not at first rush into it, of the recalcitrance of
the unholy squanderers of the divine testimony.
What would
you expect ? That Luther would call wolves ‘different sheep’, with all the
finagling and wangling wrangling of the WCC ? or that their teeth he would
smile at!
So and much
more was the compassion of Christ, who was tender where truth was revered, and
could even understand, with finesse and beauty of holiness, the movements of
the heart of man: He was denunciatory of the fakes and frauds who acted
to take over His sheep in His name by their own methods and self-glorifying and
money-hoarding methods as if personally addressing a spiritual plague! He did all
this full well knowing from the prophecies, that it would assuredly lead
to His death in an agony and anguish vastly more intense, because as for
Him, God as man, sin was wholly alien to His own nature!
Thus God
did not resent and remove the world because of its treatment of His Son. He was
sent on a purpose and a mission which, fulfilling, enabled the proclamation of
the Gospel, that VERY Gospel which Isaiah had, for one, so abundantly clearly
forecast and preached 700 years before. In His immovable mercy, as in His
intractable truth, God proceeded to provide for our race all that could
possibly without folly, be desired. If you want to be God, it is literally
impossible; you are too late. If you want to have heaven fail so that hell
won’t seem so bad, you are too unjust, for the condemnation of hell is
precisely this, that it is evacuated of light and filled with dark preferences
which despoil the nature of man, defile truth and despise lasting peace.
We should
be clear here: since God knows all things in advance, this being like a book to
an author, but one equipped with free characters, who though dimmed and
diminished by sin, are yet able to rebel with the hearts and spirits which HE
made free, He COULD have planned to resent it, what they did to
Christ. He COULD indeed have decided to have some other plan, and to have
nothing to resent. To go further, He COULD have decided that it wasn’t worth
it, and this in either of two ways.
God could
have decided in His own counsel that it was not worth sending His eternal Word
as His Son via a virgin, equipping Him with a visible life that was beautiful
and distinctive of the wonder of deity, though such a plan undoubtedly is what
He pursued. He NEED not; there was no force.
It could
have seemed disproportionate, even gross, to allow such human grossness, with
tormented and twisted with lies and folly for thousands of years, to visit
itself on His Son, made vulnerable as a sacrifice to bear the very sin of which
these evils were examples only!
The
Almighty could have resolved, instead, and even more drastically, that it was
not worth while to MAKE MAN AT ALL, thus removing “the problem” altogether. In
this latter case, there would have been no human heart with which to love, no
capacity for divine friendship, no eternal life in which to dwell delightedly
for ever, no fascinated admiration of the intriguing works of His hands, no
provision for creativity among man: for there would be not one of them, no, not
one.
This, quite
astonishingly, He did not do.
Instead, He
made man, if so inclined, able to swank with grandiose misconceptions of his
own worth, and this the more as his worth, through rebellious meddling with
what did not concern him, grew the less. He made mankind, with persons able to
persecute and even torture and kill those who love God, as man has done for
centuries and more, just as indeed Christ predicted; and He even gave to man
such liberty that he could, if he wished, KILL people in CHRIST’s name, as
Romanism has done, asserting that this was to the glory of God, with a
mendacity and a profanity that must reach to the very depths of the pit (John
16:2). Further, He knew all this and foretold the scenario; but He pursued the
eternal purpose (cf. Ephesians 1:4, Revelation 14:3) without stinting in His
own sacrifice, and allowing those who would follow Him, to do so, even indeed
ensuring that through no error, no misconception, no ruse, would anything ever
separate any one of His own people from His love. These things may be pursued
in their beauty further in Predestination
and Freewill, and Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch. 11.
For all
that might have been thought and said, in fact, God did NOT resolve not to make
man, or even to make him instead with only programmable functions, which would
satisfy some, but give no scope for love or the knowledge of truth, or the
infinitely delightful comradeship of man with God (cf. A Spiritual
Potpourri Ch. 16 – Flashing
Falls of Freedom). Instead, God made man, equipping him duly with a
constructed marvel of magnificent facility, his body and brain, and with his
spirit.
What a
wonder and a glorying in the Lord this permitted, for many! What a maestro of
muddle and confusion, pride and vainglory, vanity and idiocy, brilliant folly
and fallacious frenzy many of the race nevertheless have elected to become.
ALL have
sinned, and adding to this, many proceed by ignoring, twisting or denying God’s
word, and their conceptions of His being, though in His book, it is very clear,
valid, verified and minutely left standing after all attack on it and assault
is finished. It is the same with the Son whom God sent.
Yet the
cost was penetrating, piercing, in His Son. When they had QUITE finished
tormenting His flesh, mocking His Spirit, mauling His body, pretending His
guilt (despite Pilate’s formally washed hands!), attacking His doctrine (with
never any success), assaulting His healing ministry when it happened on a
Sabbath (though quite willing to pull out a cow if it fell on a Sabbath into a
pit), vehemently arguing against Him (Luke 11:52ff.), interring His body after
exposing it to the skies with the blood dripping off, and the breath being
depressed as the arms sagged over the hours of the crucifixion: THEN they still
failed.
What they
could not prevent was quite simply the FAILURE to produce His body after the 3
days which He set as the term for its being dead, before it would rise. HE was
unable to be shown wrong even when State and Religious Power, in inglorious
communion, had done their worst.
WHERE was
the body, since they had been TOLD from ancient times and repeatedly from the
lips of Christ that NOT ONLY would He rise from the dead (which, incidentally
does NOT mean, NOT rise – cf. Luke 24:38-39), but would do so at an
arithmetically distinct time, precisely THREE days after the burial.
To the delight of His friends, the joy of His apostles, the
wonder of many, the turning of the tables on fraud, lying and deceit, the
overturning of the power of the devil, the dealing of death to death and
destruction to destruction, the elevation of mercy in glad glory over judgment,
He met judgment and ruined its results by gladly bearing them. Convinced, His
disciples spoke; oppressed they spoke; in prison, they sang; in torments of
whipping, they praised God for the privilege (Acts 3-10), in confrontation,
they fearlessly noted the murder and resurrection; told to cease, they
continued; rescued from prison, they spoke again in the face of their
tormentors; at peace they knew no weakness, in prayer, they abounded in
endurement (Acts 4:22ff.).
How then
did God do it ? We know why; but how ?
One obvious
reason is this: the maximum planning of man, with soldiers and tombs, with the
stark and customary reality of death in his face, is not adequate to displace
the intention and planning of God; and this does not cease to be so,
EVEN WHEN GOD ANNOUNCES this in advance, as He very frequently does! (cf. SMR
p. 743). There is no limit to God.
The
experimental test is clear: man failed, God succeeded. As to the rest of the
resurrection*3, His eating in their
presence, His calling to them in their boats, His conversation with Peter in
the midst of the other disciples, His differentiation about the different death
modes to come for Peter and for John (accurate as always – John 21), His
invitation to Thomas to try out the substantial character of His wounds by
using fingers (a fitting rebuke, both personally and procedurally!), and to the
disciples as in Luke 24, to verify for themselves that a SPIRIT does not have
FLESH and BONES as He did: it is one long narrative of simplicity and
testimony, of data and procedure according to plan.
In John 14,
16-17, you see Him telling that after His death, He will be going to be with
His Father (John 14:2, 25ff., 16:7, 16:29, 32ff.), when He is ready, and in His
own time returning in JUDGMENT so that all should be judged as the case
requires.
In Matthew
24, you see Him telling of what would happen after His death and return to His
Father, over long periods involving much international commotion and
development, in which the Gospel would be preached to all nations. He would
then RETURN to judge (24:29 to the end).
In Luke 24,
you find Him telling them,
“O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all
that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these
things and to enter into His glory ?”
In all
things the plan went according to plan, and the words, whether ancient or from
Christ’s own lips, were to be fulfilled without any exemption or exception, any
cavil or qualification, as always is the case with the word of God (cf. Isaiah
44:25ff., 48:6ff., 41:21ff.). If it were otherwise, there would be no
Christianity, and Christ would have been a mockery (as in Mark 2!) long before
it was found necessary to deprive Him of life on this earth (to the point of
killing His formatted frame), as an exasperated and guileful grasp on life and
national power was held out (John 11:49ff.), for the taking. HE goes, WE say.
ONE goes, the nation stays.
They have
merely inherited infamy. The nation inherited devastation, and the continuation
of its unbelief, brings it untold suffering to this day; and who cannot lament
for such things, so unnecessary in the very face of the love of God, so
slighted, with such sad results.
The highest
minds of His day, these could not answer His answers, taint His power, spoil
His ministrations, exhibit any weakness. They could not stop Him raising
the dead (John 11), nor when His time came, could they find the body,
since He was freely walking about with it. The greatest Empire on earth could
not keep His body, since God has His own ways of moving things and removing
things, which depends on His entire comprehension of, and planning for what is
to be. The author has great rights over His book, though in the events before
us, THIS AUTHOR who is DEITY HIMSELF, is careful not to make of the test which
we all face, a farce, by removing the suffering or obscuring the issue.
So Christ
suffered in the grandeur of grace, performed in the illimitability of power, and
did so in a body so frail that, like those we have ourselves, it could be
snuffed in hours, and rose in the reliability of deity, allowing no rest for
Rome or for Jerusalem alike, so that thousands came in short measure, after His
death, knowing His return was to come, and seeing His Spirit (as in Acts 2) had
come already as He promised (John 14, 16).
Suffering
is not optional for love, where need is. Power is not optional where sin is.
God acts neither so as to remove the reality of test, nor to remove the
continuity of His people. Do then miracles such as those multiplied in Christ,
and categorically exhibited in His resurrection remove the stringency and
reality of test ? On the contrary, miracles do not alter the test, except to
remind man of the conditions in which he is placed, and of the opportunities
which he is ignoring, by his morbid defiance of the grace of the most gracious
sovereign in heaven or on earth, the most wise and the most powerful. The cost
in the interim remains colossal, as Paul put it in Colossians 1:24:
“I now rejoice in my
sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions
of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church.”
(See for
exposition of this,
To Know God … Ch. 1.)
Carefully
marking the place of the tomb (they were not mad! Luke 23:35, or inhuman in
their grief!), they returned to find the action of deity, not in destroying
Twin Towers, but in raising the twin towers of Truth and Mercy in His Son, so
that those who would believe in Him would see both the suffering and the sense
of glory. NO ONE CAN BEAT GOD, but God does not simply beat man; for man is not
so made: rather, He provides for Him astutely, even in the very MIDST of his
sin, by exposing Himself to evils untold, by plan, and overcoming them in
suffering, by plan, and overturning them in ignominious defeat, by plan, so
that in all things man might see the work for himself as image-bearer of God,
and might savour the victory.
It is not
to suffering-free selfishness, like some slug leaving its silver trail on the
surface of the earth, that man is called; for man is not the centre, but a
derivative from deity’s creation. It is not in vainglorious self-affirmation,
for the selves which do so, are merely blind to the glory of the God who made
them. It is however WITH suffering and in the MIDST of the glory of God that
the children of God work, with the same power which raised Christ from the dead*4available, and the same sharing of ignominy as
the case may require, as the Prince of this World blows his horns, and
arrogantly asserts his place.
Yet it is
not his place, and so brings judgment. Hence there is CONVICTION OF JUDGMENT
for those who disbelieve in this ONLY PROVISION of Almighty God for mankind.
Consider
then the multiplying graces which, accelerating in speed before our astonished
eyes, present themselves as they pass. Let us look at just some glimpse of a
few of them, as tokens.
He cares
ENOUGH TO CREATE, and having created enough to PROVIDE, and having provided,
enough to be AVAILABLE, by His Spirit (I Peter 5:7, Ephesians 3:16,
Romans 5:5, 8:10ff..)
His is
LOVING. There is really nothing to equal that. A mother, imperfectly but even
passionately may care for her child, even to old age in one sense. My own
devoted and blessed mother lived to 99 years, and her solicitude did not cease,
nor her kindness. But God created the SYSTEM in which love might appear, and
could have ignored this, and done otherwise.
Love in Him
is ORIGINAL and ULTIMATE: God is love (I John 4:7ff.). This, we must always
realise, does not mean that LOVE IS GOD. That is nonsense. Principles do not
make themselves and kick about the universe. God whose omni-competence is the
basis of all thought and order, IS LOVE. NOTHING contrary appears in Him.
Nothing compromising to it is with Him. There is no quality which dispenses
with it, censures it or withholds it, in Him.
That is one reason why some forms of Calvinism (and Calvin is not
without fault in this cf. To Know God … Ch.
1, however great much of his work is) have to be exposed as
unscriptural. Quite simply Colossians 1, as the author has shown consistently
since 1956 when it was, by consent, presented to the class of John Murray at
Westminster Seminary, without reply, teaches the love of God in the most
expansive possible manner.
It is not a merely regional matter, for its scope it
indifferent, “Whether things on earth or things in
heaven”: it is one.
It is not a matter of economy. “HAVING MADE PEACE THROUGH THE BLOOD OF HIS CROSS” – sufficient was this for any or all, as the
Bible Presbyterian Church of the 1930s rightly affirmed in its Constitution, in
the
It is not a merely bureaucratic style of venture, for
“it PLEASED THE FATHER”. Nor is it impractical,
for it led to action, in this that “it pleased the
Father than in Him should all the fullness dwell”. This means
that there was no truncation, shortening, partial presentation in the Christ
who became man, sent from His eternity in heaven (John 1:1 – God knows only ONE
GOD! Psalm 82, Exodus 20, and that is why Thomas addressed Him as My Lord and My God!
Using in the Greek, the GOD OF ME, phrasing, when ‘answering Him’ who spoke to him).
It is not a reserved matter. God did not spare
Himself, reserving select regions of His nature from attack. ALL FULNESS went
into the incarnation, and that is one of the many reasons why there can never
be another.
God is ONE
BEING and it is impossible that He should come as two different beings, as if
the image of God in man were not a definitive matter, or God’s use of it were
not an expression of eternity, not subject to any duality. Moreover, ONE death
is what men suffer, so ONE death is what Christ vicariously suffered, and ONE
life is what is given to man, and ONE life is what Christ assumed in
presenting Himself a sacrifice for ANY man, and for ALL who come to Him (Romans
8:32 makes it quite clear that those for whom He is actually sacrificially
offered up are possessors of heaven). So is the reality preserved with that
astounding accuracy which is one of the prerogatives, without any exception at
all, of God.
Thus it is not a PARTIAL MATTER, since in Christ to
be crucified, dwelt all the fullness. Nor was it a merely selective matter in
some sense of mere preference, for the Father WOULD HAVE ALL reconciled by this
means. Statements to the contrary, on the basis of what is written, do
injustice to the love of God, and simply, idly contradict the book of the Lord
(cf. SMR Appendix B, The Kingdom of
Heaven Ch. 4).
It is not a CIRCUMSCRIBED MATTER, for God is seeking
nothing less than RECONCILATION TO HIMSELF. It is not a mere forbearance, not a
simple toleration, as with David towards Absolam on his first return when he
had fled, nor a putative matter, as if things were under review for eternity or
some lesser time, on probation. The result of the blood and repentance with
faith receiving the living God in the name of His bodily resurrected Son,
is one thing: reconciliation to God. There is no mere lazy waiver, no slack
wave of the hand, nor is there any mixture: God loves, provides, forgives, receives
as CHILDREN of His own, adopted into His own family in the name of His own Son
(Ephesians 1:5). In Him they are ACCEPTED (Ephesians 1:6).
It is not temporary, for God is not double-minded in
love, but loves absolutely. Hence of the children of God, we read this, that
they “have obtained an inheritance” (Ephesians
It is not unclear, for what does it say ? That if you
believe in your heart that God has raised Christ from the dead, and confess Him
with your lips, you will be saved. The Greek is not GO ON CONFESSING,
incidentally, the present tense, but the aorist of past action. Faith is such
and being such, reaches God by the power of His Spirit and the promise of His
word, and when He is found, YOU are never lost.
If this is
rejected, it is simple failure to believe. Indeed, whoever enters HIM AS DOOR,
HE WILL KEEP, most explicitly in John 10:9,27-28, and NOTHING whatsoever can
snatch out of His hand, nor will the life concerned ever PERISH.
It is not dependent on performance, for it is NOT OF
WORKS, lest any man should boast (Romans 3:23ff., Ephesians 2:1-10), and it is
not indifferent to performance, for when HE makes a tree good, it bears good
fruit, not as a condition but as a consequence. Roots are not fruits, and every
tree which He plants is His, and what is NOT planted by Him, does not last
(Matthew 15:13, 7:18ff.).
It is not dependent on man, for when HE saves a
person, he is KEPT BY THE POWER OF GOD (I Peter 1).
It is not indifferent to growth, for it prescribes
growth areas, like a good gardener (II Peter 1).
It does not leave people in a mist of test as if they did
not personally matter FOR THE PRESENT, for He sends His Holy Spirit (as in
John 14:18ff.), so that His comforting strength and virtue and victory might
inhere by His presence in His people (cf. I John 5:4, Romans 8:5ff.).
It is not merely abstract for it is wrought “in the body of His flesh through death” – Colossians
It is not impersonal, for churches which use His name
without truth or faith, may indeed be severed, the personnel changing over time
(Colossians 1:23, Revelation 2-3), while HIS sheep shall never perish, even
those ever so simply, who ENTER HIM AS THE DOOR OF GOD, TO GOD and PRESENTED BY
GOD. It is in this, God Himself placed for entrance, that they gain access and
acceptance (Ephesians 1:5-6) into His own Kingdom.
It is not without price, since the ultimate sacrifice
was made of God’s only begotten Son, in whom ALL His fullness dwelt, first in
enduring entry to littleness of life as a babe, then to smallness of human
resources, not in the houses of the rich, then to temptation (Matthew 4), the
devil an advocate of evil in His very hearing, making offers, then to
contradiction of sinners (Luke 11:47ff.), thence to condemnation (Mark
14:47ff.,62ff.), both in word and in all the awful folly of torture, which came
relentlessly to the accompaniment of death in the very mocking presence of His
enemies.
It is not without a blessed combination of
PURITY of MOTIVATION, PERFECT PERSEVERANCE (for what love
deserves the name, that stops towards those who receive it!), TENDER SOLICITUDE
and CAREFUL TEMPERING OF TEST (I Corinthians
Not totalitarian, God is nevertheless TOTAL IN
GRACE, and in knowledge as well, for He knows who are His (II Timothy
Reconciled
BY the work of LOVE, His people are reconciled TO the life of LOVE, and kept IN
LOVE, for God is love!
In truth
they grow, for HE is the truth, and in the way they go, for HE is the
way, and as the way, He provides the HIGHWAY OF HOLINESS, for He is holy
(Isaiah 35).
Such is the
grandeur of the greater grace, the glory of the greater king, the wonder of the
Eternal God.
NOTES
Cf. Repent
or Perish Ch. 7, A Spiritual
Potpourri Chs. 1-9, News 152.
The
inordinate character of the indifference to God and His ways, as He is exposed
and expressed in all His munificence and magnificence, represents a kind of lust
or failure to contain the spirit given us, within the realm of factuality and
reverence alike. As the word of God truly declares (cf. SMR, TMR), the
invisible things of God are MANIFEST, even His divine nature and power (Romans
1:17ff.), and the failure to recognise Him, not as some ‘power’ but as He is
revealed to be, is part of the defence against God which man in a sort of
wrestling with reality, descends to perform.
As God also
declares in Romans 3:21, the specific revelation in Christ is witnessed by the
law and the prophets, and Paul demonstrated that Jesus is the Christ (Acts
Yet like
the blind, the bemused, they grew fat and fatuous (cf. Deuteronomy 32:15),
indifferent to thought, without regard to the obvious. Such is the account and
exposure in Deuteronomy. As history flowed over the world, so His word flowed
over history, which became in this way, conformist after all!
Despite
unbreakable testimony of things past and to come, with an entire companionship
to the nation with power and majesty, never once failing, the desire for life
without His covenantal promise overpowers many now, as it did then, who torture
the truth. In this, the treatment of Christ by Jewish and Roman authority,
epitomises the sins of the past and encapsulates those which were to come.
Moreover,
since He Himself by no means makes His dwelling with the vanities of lie
and fraud which bewitch the lustful (Psalm 50:20-23), God has made His own
contradistinct testimony in word and deed, so that there is neither competition
nor avail, only Himself and His word, with its fulcrum, the Gospel. for meeting
the case. Otherwise, man lives in a realm where lying and injustice, fraud and
pretence are ruling, the prince of this world having his day in the fray, as
Christ foretold (John
To remove
the world (it came close in the flood) is one option. To provide remedy, this
is the other. It is not removed. Remedy is apparent in the book of the Lord and
in no other, nor is there even any other which rationally attests itself,
verifies itself, conforms itself to the demands of reason for the attestation
of truth. Truth lies exposed like mountains in the Winter sunshine, their
gleaming proportions massive, peaceful and vast. There is nothing else.
To
attribute mere contemplation of the sum of vast and profound iniquity in this
world, to God, as if He should tolerate it, and merely continue such a
universe as that: this is an idea which begins by ignoring the fact that all is
His creation, and truth is the word accompanying the deed of His choice. His is
not division of Spirit, where creation vies with desire, or the irresolvable
asserts itself in duplication: for He is uncreated, unconstrained and nothing
is irresolvable. If then such a thought as this world, derelict without
divine remedy, begins by ignoring His status, how does it end ? It does this by attributing to Him the sleaziness so readily
found in His creatures in a monumental vanity of mind and failure of wit, which
thus becomes a moral accusation as well (cf. SMR pp. 99ff., 999, 1001ff.). This is explicit or
implicit, depending on taste!
So do
creatures attribute the absence of their powers, to their Creator, and breed
thoughts of their own superiority over Him, as if theirs were the moral
integrity He is deemed to lack, even in the face of the evidence that they
ignore the remedy for thousands of years made plain without alteration, with
intervention in the Cross, with demonstration in the Christ, with application
in history, and in the state of the world which nevertheless bares its doors to
Him, as if the Maker were a burglar, and they the moral burghers in the town.
Declaring truth without deeming it to exist in a vacuous world without any
absolutes, they tear the very concept of truth as they advise us of its
content!
When you
invert someone, does he not tend to get dizzy; and man upside down is seeing
double, himself as his own saviour despite is obduracy, rebellion and
irrationality, and God down the reversed telescope, as small, defective and
perhaps even reprehensible. After all, where faith does not receive the
intractable truth, folly breeds its own assurance.
Excuses for
turning from the Christ are not minimal: they do not exist, reason and
righteousness alike being sacrificed on the altar of inordinate will (cf. Wake
Up World! Ch. 2, Repent or Perish
Ch. 2, TMR Ch. 5). As shown in these references, you
blaspheme God or accept His verified, solely valid revelation in Jesus Christ:
it is He who has not only acted in differentiation of Himself from the affront
to His own actions which lying and injustice comprise, but in His so doing, has
acted with a largesse and munificence which to ignore. In this way does man
provide towards God an effrontery like a negative sublimity, not soaring to the
heavens, but squalid subterranean in its abysmal pretensions.
This is a fascinating point that perhaps needs a little more
to be said on it. Moreover, it helps perception of something more flaming in
the annals of liberty than man can ever know, and a love more flamboyant in
pure beauty than it is given to our race to exhibit; though in Him, we abide in
this love and know it, and it abides in us.
As shown in the text, God’s options included many in the
eternal realm, where planning precedes time as we know it, since our time is
merely a means of giving to man, or any others concerned, opportunities to see
things develop as they act, or constraints to await results and make
commitments before they come, or scope for patience in love over a work of art,
or bearing with the irresponsible in love and endurance, until the erring might
learn to love also: and many such things.
Man is thus able in time to show some of the divine
characteristics imbued into him by the Holy Spirit (cf. II Corinthians 3:18),
and even if he should waver, he can be moved to repent; and even if going
aright, he is able to become strong and confirmed in righteousness, to undergo
tests like Job for the glory of God, to show the integrity of sincerity and its
intensively NON self-seeking nature, to exhibit without inhibition the justice
of truth at any cost, within the Lord, and to love without remission in the
very midst of hostility and hatred. All these things, in slow motion, if you
will, are man’s lot in time in particular.
Yet to man it is not given to decide whether there should be
a creation, or even whether - should there be one - such a being as himself
should exist in it; or indeed, even if it should, whether there should be
redemption available, and even if in some sense there should be, whether it
would be worthy of infinite cost.
Such things are not for man, already created. These things
belong to God alone, and in exercising these wholly divine prerogatives, God
shows a love which NONE CAN EQUAL, for the rest are already immersed in
history; but He decided to make it so much as exist, so that there would be
problems with the misuse of freedom, and solutions provided from the source of
all, Himself. Inseparable from love, this solution was such as cost Him not the
earth, but His eternal word, who coming to earth, made eternal life available
to man. To be sure, He was resurrected: yet the experience of sin, though
vicarious, of mockery and death, of folly in authority and reckless irreligion
in a priesthood which in many cases inveterately hated Him, so that His
subjects crucified Him with taunting cry, Come down and then we will
believe you! this is not available for quantitative costing!
This
fascinating presentation, in I Corinthians 1:20-31, is as follows.
“Where is the wise? Where is the
scribe? Where is the disputer of this age?
“Has not God made foolish
the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through
wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message
preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek
after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and
to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God
is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
“For you see your
calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty,
not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things
of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of
the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of
the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things
which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should
glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us
wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption— that, as
it is written, ‘He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.’ ”
See for
example Spiritual Refreshings … Chs.
5 and 6.
Cf. SMR Ch. 6, Magnificence of the Messiah, The
Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 9, Section 14, Things
Ancient and Modern Ch. 2, Excursion 2A).On
the current power of His resurrection, associated with the fellowship of His
sufferings, as in Philippians 3:10, see the volume, To
Know God …