Chapter 7
RESTLESS ROVINGS
and the RELISH of REST
LOVE is not another THING
LOVE is not another THING.
Sanctification is …
something else
but allied to love as love
to truth and both to mercy
When you look at Peter,
Ø
you
see not a potential priest for the
papacy, with claims
o
that his is the ‘voice of eternity’ (SMR p. 1058 cf. pp. 1035ff., 912ff.) or
o
that, though merely a sinner on this
earth, that ‘he alone is most high over
princes’, or
o
that he is ‘greater than man, who judges
all, but is judged by none’,
or anything remotely approaching such exquisitely anti-scriptural folly
(Matthew 23:8-10, I Peter 5),
Ø
but
a man
Ø
whose
errors were serious,
Ø
whose
rebukes were varied,
Ø
not
as giver but receiver,
Ø
whose
heart was most sensitive,
Ø
whose
sincerity was of that almost belligerent quality of grand simplicity and simple
grandeur,
Ø
whose
ways were humble,
Ø
whose
spirit was steadfast,
Ø
whose
failings were corrigible,
Ø
whose
delight was in the Lord,
Ø
whose
loyalty could crumble, but
Ø
whose
strengthening was prodigious,
Ø
whose
sanctification was on the grand scale.
For his part, the apostle Peter was
not, like a lost column in some temple, by itself, not especially noteworthy or
declarative, but was like one in its setting, supported on its glorious base,
soaring into the unequivocal heavens, not useless, but supporting a cover and
bringing it to our attention, a work of art that is not artful, and a support
of strength that has been wrought with labour.
The labourer who made it, in this case ? Christ. It is precisely the
moulding of the disciples into the beauty of holiness that testifies to the
truth. Look for example at James and John. Who could conceive that such men
would ever even dream of that classic prodigy of failure, the desire for ‘being
first’ ? Yet what do we read in Matthew 20:20ff. ?
This, and one almost hesitates to review it. Their mother wanted them to
be seated on the left and right hand of Christ. Where ? at some feast ? Not at
all, but rather, apparently in some outstanding way, “in
Your kingdom”, the very kingdom of God (cf. The
How could such a one as was called to write I John 2, possibly have
so acted ? Had not the message of Luke
14:8-12 come home ? or any such message as in Matthew 11:28-30 ?
v
“When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down
in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him; and he who invited you and him come and say to
you, ‘Give place to this man,’ and then you begin with shame to take the lowest
place. But when you are invited, go and sit down
in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes he may say to you,
‘Friend, go up higher.’ Then you will have glory in the presence of those who
sit at the table with you. For whoever exalts
himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
So important is this message that it is rendered this time in red! Nor
is this humility so in name only, as if it were a trade-off of present desire
for pre-eminence against eventual satisfaction of this lust! Is it not also
exalting oneself to HOPE for exaltation as the GROUND or even A GROUND of one’s
action ? What dentist would I trust in expensive treatment, if it were ever
established as a fact that not my teeth but his eminence in his profession was
what consumed his heart, or drove his eyes ?
You cannot serve two masters, for one or the other in competition will
be despised, and if integrity, love, grace, goodness be not ruling in Christ,
but rather Christ as a means of self-exaltation, a utensil for holding one
forth, in what way is this to worship God rather than oneself ? How is He GOD
whom one uses, the instrument for one’s glory ? Is it not rather that the
servant serves his Master ? and when worship is added to this service, is this
His glory to be shared as the objective for the servant alike ? Is not God, God
? But look at Christ …
Was His objective in coming in to this world to be great when greatness,
even to Godhead was His already ? (Philippians 2). Did God so love the world
that He decided to honour His Son by some charade for the greater honour to be
grabbed, through some specious spectacular in which suffering was a means to
parade ? Is the love of God to be impugned, love to be ignored, as if by a
blind
man ?
Is it meek and lowly in heart to receive people so that you can use them
as stepping stones to your own glory ? Is this the rest which the Saviour
accords ? (Matthew 11:28ff.), if He Himself were roving and restless, eyes bent
on self-exaltation! Is this not ‘saving one’s life’ (Matthew
v
Some
people in some cultures set high store on ‘humility’ …
v
but
for what purpose ?
v
Is
it to impress others with a pleasant demeanour in order that they might exalt
you ?
v
Is
this not the very essence of self-will, exploitation, insincerity and heartless
pre-occupation such as is the contrary of love and the precise placement of
pride!
Small wonder Christ did not yield, then, to the request in Matthew
20:20ff.: no 20/20 vision was there! Yet how graciously He replied, saying it
was not for Him so to appoint. In His address to the other disciples, which
followed, Christ in principle contrasted the whole world view, the whole
culture of dominion, power, lording it over people, having authority over them,
with the concept of service. If you want to become great, He said, SERVE. If
someone wants to be first, let him be
your SLAVE! Slaves do not order about do they, now ? In other words, this
excoriating criticism of the cultural concept of self-advancement is saying
this:
Ø
If you want to be a heavy-weight
with clout and power, authority and impressive presence, an official with
uplift like mountains and all that sort of pathological pre-occupation,
then try being a slave, being ordered
about as if you were an underpaid underling. Will that try your sincerity ? is
this then your desire, is love your plea and passion for goodness your thrust ?
If so, how would this concern you! Be a slave …
Now to be fair, it may be that there
was a desire to be CLOSE to Christ in this word from the mother of James and
John (and she was not the only one with such a desire at that time - Mark
It was only then that they asked!
What a lesson about prayer is there! IN HIS NAME is the asking to be done, and
this accords with HIS PRINCIPLES! One of these is humility, not unsavoury
unspirituality in which your own elevation is the motive of your heart, a
distinctive elevation putting you where by the nature of the case (as envisaged
in the request about right and left hand) none else could be!
Humility is not a manufacturing
plant for a hollow holiness by which you are not what you seem (not normally
characterised as purity in heart which indeed puts you close to God – Matthew
5:8), and aspire to the opposite of what you profess! That, it has a name:
hypocrisy!
Were then the disciples hypocritical
in this, when they made this extraordinary request about sitting on His left
and right hand ? Not necessarily: perhaps merely inflated with desire which, in
being close to Christ, was commendable; but in having this closeness in so
conspicuous a way, in such an elevating way, they were not tending the kingdom,
but the placement in it. If they had not been corrigible, but incorrigible, if
they had not been changed, but continued in this spiritual mutant desire, then
the case would have been different!
Quite simply,
v
LOVE DOES NOT SEEK ITS
OWN (I Corinthians 13:5)…
So in time, did John and James
become wonders of beauty of life and spirit; for look at their Mentor, and consider
His desire, which led to humiliation, shame and spitting, the stripping down of
face, the haunting horror of having to cry from the heart, even from the heart
which had nestled in eternity in the Father, one God, Sender and Sent, Speaker
and Spoken,
“My God, My God,
Why have You forsaken Me!”
As one shameful episode, however
short, can be magnified out of all relation to reality, caricatured by the
accuser of the brethren (and he, that loathsome liar has many followers on this
earth), and act like tar, so the exposure on the Cross is monumental in
littleness, quintessential in lowliness; for it allows mankind to see one in
the gruesome depravity of sin; and if it is not His own, yet with Christ, it is
there to be borne, and it is in its impact horrible beyond all conception. Its
dynamic is separating Christ as man from the God from whom He came, in whom He
worked and for whom He was the only begotten Son.
In humility He was prepared to
DELIGHT in such a role. In practice, it was grievous anguish (Hebrews 5:7).
Why ? in order to get where He was before He came ?
Somewhat circuitous and ridiculously lowering for such a result. Why then ? For
the glory which was set before Him ? Yes, but what glory ? The glory of WINNING
souls, of RESCUING the lost, for as He said, He came to seek and to save what
was lost (Luke
Love is not duplicable. It is not
devious. It is conjoined to truth as the right arm with the left ( I
Corinthians 13:6), and as Paul declares, it is “faith
working by love” which is in point (Galatians 5). It is not faith which
works by lust, self-oriented, manipulative and manoeuvring with mock majesty
for heights from which to peer at others. God IS love, and when dealing with
Hear Him who declares it: “… because He loved
your fathers, therefore He
chose their descendants after them …” (Deuteronomy
Ø
“For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord
your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above
all the peoples on the face of the earth.
Ø
The Lord did not set
His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other
people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the Lord loves you, and because He would
keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed
you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
Ø
Therefore know that the Lord
your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a
thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments…”
WHY did He choose them ? It was
because “the LORD LOVES YOU”. Why did He send
His only begotten Son into the world ? (I John 4:9), because He loved us. “In this,” indeed, “was the
love of God manifested toward us, that God has sent Hs only begotten Son into
the world, that we might live through
Him.” It is not that we loved Him, but He us, and SO “sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins.”
That is why we should love: God is
like that, acts like that, feels like that, is thorough and practical in being
like that, and we being redeemed are regenerated, taken or translated from one
kingdom to another ( Ephesians 2:6, Colossians 1:13). One speaks here naturally
of Christians whom the supernatural has made natural, and no more despoiled as
by a pathological fungus infection of lust for this that or the other. That,
says John, is why we should love one another.
What do we read of Christ near the
end of the drama of salvation wrought on this earth openly before all ? This (John 13:1): “
… when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world
to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the
end.” And what is the word, as it were,
at the commencement exercises ? In Psalm 40, we read of it, “Behold, I come: in the scroll of the book it is written of
Me. I delight to do Your will, O my God…”
And what was it He came to do ?
“Sacrifice and offering You did not desire:
My ears You have opened.
Burnt offering and sin offering You did not require”
(Psalm 40:6).
What then DID GOD REQUIRE ? That the
Messiah should, as the only conceivable substitute who could give a
substitutionary offering in place of its mere depiction in animal sacrifice,
COME and do Himself “YOUR WILL”!
How did He view such an outing and
outage ? “I delight to do Your will!” HOW could
He so delight ? WHY indeed would an excursion into time and space such as we
men have for our physical environment, a descent from eternal glory, on such a
mission, be treated with anything but demission, derogation and at best, dour
dutifulness in a hated task ? It is in
the scroll of the book written of Him ? Yes, for you find it in Psalm 22,
for example, where the paean of praise AFTER the crucifixion there depicted is
this, “Those who seek Him will praise the LORD. Your
heart will live for ever.” HE was killed in short order so that you
should live forever.
WHY however will all the ends of the
world remember and turn to the LORD ? (Psalm
WHY is it righteous ? It is so
because in this justice is satisfied and mercy is triumphant.
WHY should mercy wish to be
triumphant ? It is because GOD SO LOVED the world that He gave. LOVE was the
propellant, seeking a place for mercy and meeting the requisitions of justice,
that firm ally of truth.
See it in Jeremiah 31:3-11, in its
intensity and practicality.
§
“The Lord has appeared
of old to me, saying:
o
“Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love;
o
Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you.
§
“Again I will build you, and you shall be rebuilt,
o
virgin of
o
You shall again be adorned with your tambourines,
o
And shall go forth in the dances of those who rejoice.
§
“You shall yet plant vines on the mountains of
o
The planters shall plant and eat them as ordinary food.
§
“For there shall be a day
o
When the watchmen will cry on
o
‘Arise, and let us go up to
o
To the Lord our God.’
”
§
“For thus says the Lord:
o
“Sing with gladness for Jacob,
o
And shout among the chief of the nations;
o
Proclaim, give praise, and say,
o
‘O Lord, save Your people,
o
The remnant of
§
“Behold, I will bring them from the north country,
o
And gather them from the ends of the earth,
o
Among them the blind and the
lame,
o
The woman with child
o
And the one who labors with child, together;
o
A great throng shall return there.
§
They shall come with weeping,
o
And with supplications I will lead them.
o
I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters,
o
In a straight way in which they shall not stumble;
o
For I am a Father to
o
And Ephraim is My firstborn.
§
“Hear the word of the Lord,
O nations,
o
And declare it in the isles afar off, and say,
o
‘He who scattered
o
And keep him as a shepherd does his flock.’
o
§
“For the Lord has
redeemed Jacob,
o
And ransomed him from the hand of one stronger than he.”
(Colour added.)
God has loved them with an
everlasting love. It is not mere passion, though its drive can make passion the very name
of that love, and this for its enduring felicitous reliability, not for some
summary selfishness which can afflict man so readily.
Now notice in the red type above,
the place in this scripture, of the THEREFORE!
I have loved you with an
everlasting love, therefore …
BECAUSE HE LOVED, therefore He has
acted.
In both Testaments, as always, you
have the same message from the same God with the same motives, the same mind
and the same faithfulness, whether in bud or bloom, symbol or substance,
preliminary or fulfilment. The ardour does not vary. The action is adequate. The
passion is pure.
What do you read in Hosea 11, but this at the outset, that God loved
§
“When
o
And out of
§
“As they called them,
o
So they went from them;
o
They sacrificed to the Baals,
o
And burned incense to carved images.
§
“I taught Ephraim to walk,
o
Taking them by their arms;
o
But they did not know that I healed them.
§
“I drew them with gentle cords,
o
With bands of love,
o
And I was to them as those who take the yoke from their neck.
§
“I stooped and fed them.”
There is the background to the
ransom God performs in His Son (Hosea 13:14, Isaiah 9:1-7, Psalm 2), and it is
in Him that one is to trust (Psalm 2:12), the exposure of the very face of God
(II Corinthians 4:6) whose light is as commanded as was that physical light
which tore through the darkness that it might be seen as such, and all things
made manifest. The presence and presentation of that light is one of the vast
aims of God, enormous specifications of spirituality, glorious expressions to
mankind, and its beauty is this, that it is not cold, like some fluorescent beams,
but warm and warming. What is shown of Christ towards the rich young ruler
whose portentous ponderings on life were interrupted by his portfolio
considerations of wealth ? This: HE LOVED HIM! (Mark 10:17-22). But when the
ruler left, Christ did not run after Him, or even walk! Love is not possessive.
COMPREHENSION BY OPPOSITES
IS NOT APPOSITE –
PLUS DOES NOT MEAN MINUS, NEVER DID AND
NEVER WILL
What was the cause of the love drawn
forth from Christ ? It seems that the ruler’s diligent desire for the
commandments and zealous seeking after them all his life was basic to it. Alas,
the habit of obedience was not enlightened with the motif of love in the time
of the young man’s challenge to find life, so that when this was focussed in
isolation, he went from it. He went sorrowing, for he realised the loss
through financial/social lust.
Love seeks the redemption of its
object when it is lost; and what would one expect ? that it would calmly
contemplate its loss without concern! So too it seeks good for its object. When
therefore Jesus wept, in that shortest of the verses it is depicted, why was
this so? It was because, as the people realised, He loved him, Lazarus, dead
now and in the tomb! (John 11). Here was to be depicted and rehearsed the very
resurrection of Christ Himself, with the same impelling love by His Father,
when the time should come; with this difference, that that love was not
redemptive, for in Christ there was nothing to redeem; and with this
similarity, that love it all was, applied in the dimensions of resurrecting the
sinner, or the Saviour Himself, that His salvation might be to all the earth,
inflamed as with the colours of Spring, perfumed with her scents and outlaid
with the source of her abundance.
Love was prepared to pay to redeem,
to act to resurrect the redeemed, to face and overcome death in order to make
the payment; but it did not stop there. It stooped without stopping to show
this love in the very presence of personality, and even portraited that
personality from itself, by having the Word of God made incarnate. In so doing,
Christ is shown wishing redemption and life for His people, yes, but also that that they might have resident
within themselves, in experience and
dynamic, that same love of the Father with which He loved His Son.
Thus, in John 17 we find this, that
Christ is praying that “the love with which You loved
Me may be in them, and I in them.” What HE has He is seeking to impart
to them; the love of the Father for Him, He desires this for them! The love of
God is not competitive, but dispersive: that is love. He is seeking that “they may be made perfect in one,” and why ?
It is for this reason: “That the world may know that You have sent Me, and have
loved them as You have loved Me!” He is not concerned about retention of
priority, for His is an indisposable, indispensable and eternal immutability;
but His desire is the dispersal of this love, not with pre-eminence but with
ardent pursuit of its donation, not with parading power but with their
exaltation in mind, and in this He exults. That, it is love: it does not make a
parade, nor chat in specious charade, but eminently desires the good of its
object.
Hence, loving them, He loved them to
the end (John 13:1) and WHAT an end! If
it takes that, it will be paid! It took that and it was paid in love. I, said Christ, and my
Father are ONE! (John 10:30). They saw it, feeling it made Him equal
with God, so seeking to stone Him: they were right, not in their perception of
His intention, but in their response. God had so loved that He sent His Son as
a Servant, and they had so contrived it in their hearts that they despised the
love and delighted not at all in being its objective, only instead, in
themselves.
What a farcical sin twist is this,
that they resist and resent the love which is bent to straighten them, and
scorn its impact, hating its donor and providing in the end, for His death in
an ignominy amounting to passion. It reminds one of a patient detesting the
doctor whose work despised, continues diseased as before.
Christ however continued till it was
completed, to the end, both in the mission, the program of redemption, and in
the love for His people. He did not expand it to include the world, the system of
those who did not receive Him, this redemption, nor did He turn hurt
from His rejection and its surreal recalcitrance. However, He did not limit it
to those who were His in that generation, but expanding it to the whole of His
creation, declared: “I do not pray for
these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word…” (John
17:20).
So do we have that glorious equality
between the totality of the creation, all things visible and invisible, in
Colossians 1:15ff., and the redemptive proclivity and outreach, which follows
in Colossians 1:19ff., one of the most manifest possible dramatic, verbal equivalents in scripture. ALL He created; ALL
He would bring to reconciliation to Himself. To say otherwise, is flat contradiction
of the Bible, distortion of the love of Christ, and attenuation of the scope of
the Saviour’s passion and compassion.
Love is not constrictive or
restrictive, except in reality in terms of restoration; for it is not posited
where it is not preferred, and that is why THIS IS THE CONDEMNATION, “that light has come into the world, and men loved
darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” – John 3:19.
It was not limited because it felt like being limited; this is the precise
opposite of the affirmation. It was embracive of the world, but the world was
not embracive of it; and in the face of such love, the condemnation is read out
accordingly that it was the human preference for darkness which constitutes the
divine ground of condemnation despite the celestial compassion, even to the
uttermost.
Does God then so love that He does
nothing to penetrate that darkness ? Is this then the message ? The precise
opposite (John
It is this which is the ground of
condemnation, not a secret counsel affirmed in utter denial of Colossians 1, I
Timothy 2 and John’s Gospel, to note just a few. Did then God really mean that
He did NOT so love the world that He gave so that anyone who believed should
not perish, but that He so loved a part of the world that if He chose to
liberate anyone’s mind by mere will, without respect to the affirmed scope of
the love, that anyone on whom He so operated would be saved ? That is not at
all what is written.
Delighting to DO what the Father DESIRED,
He did it in one Spirit with one heart, locked in an incandescence of love in
which purity and truth, peace and joy inhered, as mountains in a range, crested
with Alpine lake, covered with the snows of purity, with the azure skies above,
filmed with the mist as of compassion, looking down with a serenity that seems
paternal: but with God, this is precisely what it is.
WHY are some condemned ? STATEDLY it
is because of their preference. WHAT is the attitude of God ? STATEDLY it is
one of so loving the world that the case provides for the difference. God is
not a liar, and it is impossible for Him to lie (Titus 1:2 cf. SMR Ch. 1, Acme, Alpha and Omega Ch. 8, Repent or Perish Ch. 2, Barbs, Arrows and Balms
6 -
7).
How sad it is that so many, so
perversely wanting to PROTECT the sovereignty of God, which NEEDS NO PROTECTION
for it is just as absolute as His love, make His love to be short-circuited and
His statements to be contravened! Of course, it is in one way, quite as sad
that others so short-circuit if it were possible, the sovereignty of God, that
salvation is made a consequence of a mode of the human heart at some moment, of
the vast scope attributed to the damaged and sinful human will, when this is
JUST AS SECURELY denied in the Bible, just as expressly, just as explicitly, as
in Romans 9:16, John 1:12, John 15.
YOU did NOT choose Me, I chose you, said Christ. NOT
of him who wills, say Paul. Born NOT of the flesh or the will of man,
says John.
Why is it that the clearest of words
are in a thing called theology so often made into utter wastelands, as if a
Boeing 767 were smashed into them, to destroy the twin towers of TRUTH! It is
the sin of man. God does not need help in articulation: HE SAYS what He means, that
He would have ALL to be reconciled whether in heaven or on earth! (cf. Predestination
and Freewill, Tender Times for Timely Truths
And that ? it is equally
categorically affirmed that it is BY HIM, by Christ, and not another, that this
must be done, implemented, this passion given its fashion and this fullness its
income: it is by this love and by this practical expression of it in
redemption, not by some other way (Galatians 6:14, Colossians 1:22ff.).
God is not thwarted in His heart by
not forcing what He does not wish to force, for it would mean abdication from
love, and distortion of its very being, which being His own, is a sort of
spiritual suicide! He is entirely sovereign; man is entirely dependent on God’s
entirely gratuitous grace for his salvation, and none of His own are lost. As
shown in Predestination and Freewill and Tender Times for Timely Truths Ch. 11, so far from these facts
constituting, with all the rest of the scriptural revelation on this topic, a
problem, they provide the ONLY solution and in their principles, the ONLY
POSSIBLE solution to what philosophy could never solve, the relationship between human responsibility and will, and divine
sovereignty and power. Further the ‘solution’ being simply reality, has all the
choice loveliness of flowers, the chaste beauty of grace and the
tender-heartedly reality that is His from eternity.
It is not now however this glorious
harmony and symphony of divinity that we pursue, but another: the effectiveness
of this love of God, when received, and the necessity for its reception for the
mere continuation of human life. Hell is not merely a censure, a judgment; it
is the negative summit, the inverted mountain of folly, the end of the way
marked, without the God of Revelation in Person in Christ, and in writing in the
Bible, without the God of Redemption and
the Creator, the Truth.
The consistency and coherence of all
these things is to be found on all sides, in all ways, merely awaiting, like some flower farm, the attention to be placed in
order to reward the enquirer with the solicitous savour of the beauties of
holiness, of God.
THE PLUS THAT NONPLUSSED
THE DEVIL AND DELIGHTS THE SOUL
Let us look at Peter in an early
phase of his spiritual career.
Thus when Peter –
Ø
as
far from the renegade papacy as it is possible to conceive anything, the papacy
of primacy, its very name, its ‘fatherhood’ so forbidden (Matthew 23:10-12), in
words as clear as those on the scope of the love of God and the sovereignty,
the purity of the one and the probity of the other –
Ø
when
this apostle falls into self-expression and novel concepts, he is not left
alone, as the pope is, alas, for in non-reception of the rule of the revelation
God has given (cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088H), there is no alternative.
Not so was it with Peter. On the
contrary, while James and John had an excursion which, however tinged or even
impelled with devotion, did not limit itself to the mode of love, as we have
seen (Mark 10:35-36), and erred, Peter did it in more practical terms. Each
erred, whether in one way or the other, and each was corrected by Christ.
What appears to be the essence of
Peter’s mistaken protestation to Christ,
from the text in Matthew ? This.
Ø
The CROSS ? Oh Lord, this is far
from you, says the misled apostle to Christ,
his Master and Saviour, the LORD! (Matthew 16:21-23). YOU on a cross ? YOU dying in the hands of sinful men as you have JUST
SAID is to happen ? Not at all. Let me
set you straight, put you right, orient you better, says the apostle to the
Lord.
It is humorous, to be sure; but
severely dangerous, eminently perilous. Better alive is Christ, in the sight of the fond disciple, dispensing
good, performing miracles, doing the undoable in the power of the Sovereign
God, showing a love inimitable, a total truth and reality otherwise unthinkable
among the sons of men, indeed being the Son of man because the Son of God, so
wrought by the Father into mankind: continuing like this, it is better that
than merely dying. That seems to be the apostle’s mistaken thought.
If followed, this counsel of
Peter, would however have removed two things: the payment of redemption
and the power of the resurrection, annulling
the counsel, as predictively exposed, of deity, and exposing man to nothing
more than damnation. The result would have been a work damaging to love, intolerable to truth its companion, and
rejected by Christ. As the living word
of God, He would not rescind His call and the cause of His coming. He HAD DONE
one part, in making manifest the love, power, purpose and nature of God; He
would not fail in the other. God does not fail. He says so, He does so
(Zephaniah 3:5).
This indeed is therefore one of the
most vast of all verifications, for as God sketched out what He would do, so He
did it. It was hard. It was excruciating and humiliating, and the great may
find that too much; but not God. He said it, for centuries, and then did it for
all time. Had those snarling Sadducees beaten Him in the verbal contest, the
seething Pharisees in the scurrilous censures, had the power of His
declarations as in the healing of Mark 2, failed just once, then God would have
filed. Had Christ, crying, If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me … LET
is pass, then God would have filed, the scripture would have failed, His word
would have failed; poetry would replace clinical practicality and the world
would be lost.
God however NEVER fails; and the
lost world NEVER has ANY excuse, but only the light to reject, as it will, for
its own ruin.
As to the Lord, He passed His own
test, and in showing man the power of God, He showed also His reliability in
word and deed.
But not die ?
Let us endeavour to follow further
the more subtle enterprise by which Satan sought at that late stage, through
Peter of all people, to overcome Christ.
Die ? Most unfitting, look at the good
you can do. How many have felt this in the purely spiritual realm, the
physical apart, deciding that no, they will not become Christians, for the loss
of autonomy, of wealth or of prestige (and at certain times in history, yes, of
life), what is the point of that ? So they try to save their lives, ignorant of
the love of God, sees refusing germination, designed for life, designate now to
rot.
What, then, the apostle to come, Peter seems to have been musing, what
is the power of death ? Why, Jesus, should you go on that route ? Listen to me:
we NEED you. Don’t go on with this dying project.
Death ? Can it confer
blessing ? Will it help the sick ? Will death bring life ? Surely Christ, you
must be wrong, thinks the apostle, and this concept of dying among the hateful
sinners, the odious theologies of corruption, the vehement despisers of you
ways, Christ, this is no work of love, no place for purity! What put one’s dog
into the paws of a leopard ? Put one’s funds into the hands of a corrupt
financier ? By all means, but NEVER put yourself, Jesus into the hands of men,
far less those elders and chief priests.
These as Christ Himself would say
(Matthew 23) were whited sepulchers, tombs of spiritual death made to appear
majestic, but veritable slums of the spirit. Such seems to have been the
direction of thought of Peter, mercifully not some ‘sovereign’ and thus
contra-biblical pope, but a delightful fisherman READY to learn, to be rebuked,
to find his own weaknesses and leave to Christ the Mastery which by His own
claim, and by His deity, could be and
was His own alone. It was not of course
a self-affirmation, but an affirmation of His Father who sent Him, who in turn
affirmed Him whom He sent, calling Him
His beloved Son in whom He was well pleased, again and again, and that from heaven to earth, just as He had
come from heaven to the earth.
Thus Christ corrected Peter, any
‘papacy’, teaching authority on his own right, in his own name, was as outré
here as absurd in any case, and so Peter became the one whose next weakness,
this too, would be corrected, even when he actually three times running, denied
that he so much as KNEW Christ! As Christ corrected the one group, James and
John, so Peter also. He after all, alone is God and Lord, and He alone rules,
so that to add to His words, or attempt the mastery of others, instead of
simply being their brothers in the case of Christians, this is the way of daft
deafness (Matthew 23:8-10), of blind contempt, continued from the scribes and
Pharisees to this day.
However our present concern, seeing
these tests of Christ, and temptations of some of His disciples, is to consider
the transforming beauty of the power of the Lord, WHEN and AS they simply
abided in Him, not seeking greatness by His side, or to instruct Him with some
erratic teaching authority such as papacy and sects alike have poured out into
the generations since Christ’s day on earth, just as He indicated (Matthew
24:24).
What then of Peter ?
Peter’s intensity, his love for
Christ, his boldness were so delightful. However he had to learn that the love
even for Christ must bow to the will of Christ, as He bowed to the will of His
Father, for GOD SO LOVED the world that He GAVE, not alone the picture of
truth, not only the pinnacle of spiritual power, not just the purity of
personality, in Christ, His only begotten Son (Luke 1:35), but even to the
death He gave, Christ as the vicarious sacrifice for sin. God did not want man
to lie murdered by the madness of iniquity, forever wallowing like some poorly
built, but more to the purpose, wrongly handled craft in the midst of the seas.
As to Christ, He
Ø
sent
in a rescue team of one,
Ø
paid
a rescue price of one redemption,
Ø
displayed
the rescue authenticity in one resurrection, as in the preliminaries of that
power in the life of Christ, and
Ø
sent
forth one Holy Spirit to accomplish His good purposes until His return.
Ø
He
came as indicated;
Ø
He
passed all tests as prophetically prescribed, to the last intimate detail;
importantly, indeed vitally, He maintained a love to the end, for how would
love cease to be love, endued with eternity and displayed on earth;
Ø
He
deployed His resources in word and wit, to overturn all captious, carping
critics, in tableau or putation, and
Ø
He
did it all till it ended, and then ending the end,
Ø
He
brought life into the eyes of His friends, covering the raising of Lazarus,
dead of sickness, with His own resurrection, dead of hate and the nails of
preference for darkness, dark nails of dark design, deftly inserted as a
testimony to the heart of man.
Christ ? He would GIVE in LOVE
whatever it took to deliver man from his own willful, crafty, ill-crafted ways
and bring him back to reason, to righteousness, to reality, to Himself indeed.
HOW would He so give ?
By bearing the penalty Himself.
WHO would then bear it ? (cf. Psalm 49:7,15). Not some commissariat
(with dachas at the Black Sea), not some uppity talk at Downing St., or some
columned mansion in Washington, not in Tokyo’s screeching property prices,
seething upward or scurrying downwards, not
in the diseased communings of devil worship, not by trances or dreams,
not by commission to investigate, or by precepts alone: for God would do it
Himself, investing flesh with His eternal word, and then having it made the
carrion for carrying sin.
Peter therefore was wrong. Christ
rebuked him. Peter took it because Christ is Lord, and Truth, and love has ways
of its own; and the love of God is at peace with truth and justice and
compassion and mercy all at once. But notice now the apostle Peter. His
leadership was untainted with self-elevation, his heart was tender who had been
made more tender by rebuke, yes and by the effect of a look from Christ, when he actually
denied His Lord, and this after blustering and picking up his sword to protect
Him (again! –as in Matthew 26:31ff.,69ff., Luke 22:61). How Peter wept at that
look! What tenderness was in it, and what truculence of truth continued in the
steadfast eye of the One to be scourged, erect, undissembling, virtuous,
implacable in love.
But what of Peter ? He DID love;
though he had failed not once, but twice, and both times very badly. There is
love, that is willing to be corrected by a look; for a small thing will
influence one ready more than a 100 lashes, the self-willed and spiritually
opaque. Peter wept, for he loved the
Lord, not himself or his elevation or his primacy or any other seething psychic
splendour to which the flesh is heir. He was willing to be corrected,
remoulded, inspired all over again, and resume his walk and work with the Lord.
Better a faithful man, however many his faults, than incorrigible perfection that
parades its pride.
Then again in John 21 you see it,
this change, and the horizons of it, as it swept in from the ocean vastnesses
of the love of His Lord for him. John and Peter had run to the tomb, but perceptive
John, himself much chastened by this time from earlier ways, realised the
resurrection while at first Peter WONDERED. When Christ re-commissioned Peter,
with what tact and what depth He persisted, using different words (in the Greek
– John
But the Lord did love Peter, saw
through and past his errors, and using him as simply one of the brethren, not a
potentate, restored him, who later had again to be corrected, but did not die
for that! (cf. Galatians 2:14ff.). THAT was the point. GOD IS LOVE, and without
this, there is nothing to do with Him! (I John 4). Peter loved the Lord his God
and was willing to be pardoned, to repent, to find better ways, and to travel
no more the downward path which had tricked and trapped him.
Our point here now appears. PETER’s
sanctification, his change of nature, his moulding by the Spirit (cf. II
Corinthians
It is time many others did so
likewise. SO the beautiful spectacle of NOT being lords over the LORD’s
heritage comes in, most necessary and most critical, crucial indeed, in I Peter 5. Act as those to give account, be
faithful, reasonable, SHEPHERD them, and don’t drive them: this is his
instruction to the elders. How does he give it ? as a fellow elder.
Surely Peter was to write in the
inspiration of God (as in I Peter 1:10ff. and II Peter 1:16ff.), when so given,
and that was one facet and function; just as John was to write far more, and
Paul an amazing amount further still. This role in being, like the prophets of
old, deposit stations for the deposit of the faith did not alter their
humanness, or their own capacity to err in their own private lives, or even on
occasion in judgment.
Notice in this connection with
Paul’s affliction of the eyes (II Corinthians 12) where three times he sought
deliverance, and the Lord did not remove it, since the visions and powers given
to Paul had to be tempered, not in their reality, but in their personal impact,
lest he should become exalted. THAT is the word: sanctification is necessary in
all, whether apostles or prophets or healers or administrators, and woe to that
one who allows the functionality which God supplies in the power of the Holy
Spirit to become an excuse for the slightest pomp or self-importance, as if
judgment rested or was vested in you or even your group, by some sort of divine
right: God is the wright, and we are the things to be moulded.
The use of gifts in no way enables
or renders proper, the distortion of the life of the one to whom the donation
is made. God is love. He does not use power to destroy, but to build!
Thus do we see in these instances
the sheer wonder of the spiritual surgery of Christ, as His people are moulded
into the ways of the Master, not manufactured by specifications, but led into
love by truth.
Here lies one of the greatest depths
of the ways of God, that He can not only create, and not only redeem, but
sanctify, and that not by prison and propaganda, as is the way of Communism,
Islam in so many ways, of Romanism, of various sects and world-rule aspirations
among mankind. This is not His mode; for He acts in love, with grace, in
compassion, with relish and the sheer penetrating laser of life. In His light
we see light (Psalm 36:9), because it is there to be seen!
Making life for man, He remakes it;
and remaking it, He sanctifies it. He does not brutalise it, force it, but forges
it, not on an anvil of totalitarian control, but in the friendly fashioning of
His beauty of holiness, with appeals, exhortations and example, with
longsuffering and discipline, never too severe, with grandeur of heart and
implacable integrity of thought, with wisdom and the wholesomeness of truth. “The lie” (II Thessalonians
Thus do His people also share in the
sufferings of Christ, for if He has to teach, they to learn; if He came to
redeem, they are moved to be remoulded; as He used power, so they receive it in
His service, for His purposes, like a composition, with all paragraphs in
order, and the point at the end. And what is the end, and what do you find in
these apostles, as also in Stephen, in Paul ?
Let the latter tell us as we also
see it occur:
“Now the purpose of the
commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience and from sincere
faith…” (I Timothy 1:5).
The COMMAND is from the Lord, for He
is God.
v
The purpose at once embraces love, for God is love.
v
A pure heart is incomparable felicity, for without it the waters are muddy and the
peace of the lake is not seen, nor its serenity and delight experienced as in truth
man is made to experience them, in that love of God.
v
A good conscience is the alternative to faulty motives, mixed machinations and fouled
pursuits, known or unknown; for it is not as a means, but as an end that God
works in all who are His.
v
Sincere faith is as important to the Christian as is the umbilical cord to the baby.
It is the connection to the source.
Is it then left to the psychological situations of man to kept it intact ?
Not at all. Man is no more able to
cut it than is the baby in the womb. Faith is one of the fruits of the Spirit
(Galatians 5:22), and saving faith is one of the donations of deity (Matthew
16:17, John 6:65), and once given, with Christ its object, salvation its
platform and the cross of Christ its focus, His resurrection its lead, it can
no more be vanquished, quenched or smothered than the sun by a butterfly (John
10:27-28, I Thess. 5:9-10). YOU come, HE keeps; and indeed, it is only by His
grace that you CAN come; and it is only by His predestination that you DO come;
but that predestination, yes you have guessed it, it is IN LOVE, for God IS
love, and mere time no more distorts that time that does a leaf distort
stainless steel struts.
The knowledge that surpasses time no
more obliterates the reality of what occurs in time than it does the words
spoken in time: as HE IS, so God has chosen, and as WE ARE, so He knows us, and
as to Him, He does not change whether in the character of Christ on earth or
before all time; nor does He elect quiddities, but people; and this neither for
their merits in any regard, nor for their superiorities with X-factors of
God-suitability, a nascent superiority (cf. Chapter 1, *2), but in the way love acts, when it
is the love of God, neither subverting nor submitting, but penetrating in truth
with the mercy, where it is fitting to be placed, with love where it is
received. It is He who knows all, and as He is, so He acts.
There is no mystery in the love of
God in this, that to all is His love first directed, and where received, it is
never lost; for it is not a passing mode or mood, when God begets a spiritual
child through the redemption in Christ, but an unsurpassable gift, unsearchable
in depth, illimitable in time and beyond our time, the work of a Father who has
added to His family, and though men may rob children of earthly families, those
who can rob the family of God do not exist. Their ‘seed’ remains in them, as
physiologically in the parallel, it also does in a family, as I John 3:9
teaches.
In love is the knowledge of God, in
truth His peace; but it is not, as Peter had to be taught, an undifferentiated
‘love’, as if a word were God; for the
very word of God has defined His love (and who or what else would be able
to do so), a love which refuses in the end, to co-exist with sin, but insists
in the meantime on doing what it takes to prepare a place for man. This, it is
for those of our race, even one by one, everyone who receives the Saviour
Himself (John 5:39-40, 14:1-3, 1:12-14, Acts 4:11-12), the perfect expression
of God; for of what use is it to be married to a picture which is not the
original, or to an imagination which is mere dream, or for that matter, to a
photograph when it does not represent the person concerned!
God has acted, and man has reacted.
It is only in the love as defined by God, expressed by God, actualised by God
into a Cross and a Resurrection, not as symbols of truth, but as truth which
men may symbolise perhaps in the Lord’s Supper, and exemplify in their deeds,
yes and in the VERY SPIRIT of those deeds, with true humility as servants, not
tricky time-servers: it is only in this that man lives.
There is no other life but His; and
even attempt to duplicate, replicate, refurbish, revise, disturb, replace leads
to idiocies so terrible that if this world has a reputation, it is not one that
any sane person would want to share. It loves its ways, and its ways are those
of death (James 4:4), self-seeking in defiance of the reality of creation,
striving for effect more than truth, for ‘success’ more than spirituality, for
placement more than spiritual harbour, for power more than godliness and in so
doing, losing all power except to deceive, distort and disturb their own souls,
their world and their destiny.
It is all written, in the book of
life, in the book of history, in the book of the Lord, the Bible, in the
publication of Christ, in the application of His words, whether to history, as
in fulfilled prophecy, or in sanctification, as in those who truly serve Him,
whose witness strides across the globe, like the shadow of a cloud, on which
the sun plays, which moves like an army across the terrain. As it was to be, so
it is, and as it is, so it will continue until He comes, and the warnings for
that, they are profuse, like cloud of locusts beneath the sun. You did not
notice ? It is not eyesight but eyes that are then needed (cf. Answers
to Questions Ch. 5).
Here then is knowing God, the
fellowship of His sufferings and the power of His resurrection, at work in the
hearts of men, in the paths of history, in the accumulations of His works
through His people over time, in the fellowship of the saints over all time, in
the sanctity of truth and the peace which passes all understanding. Without it,
the race in renegacy from the truth,
while aspiring to endless seeming wars (as predicted in Matthew 24:7,
Revelation 6, 19), without any understanding at all, mistakes its true opponent
and seeks only to rule man. Not thus is Christ ruled, for His kingdom is not of
this world; and the prince of this world has no part at all in Him (John
As for this world it CANNOT be
rescued; it WILL NOT be sanctified and is not EVEN CONVERTED! As well seek to shine
a candle into an abyss in order to find its base, as deliver this world from
its ways. It is INTO this world that Christ came, that people who are His may
FOLLOW Him, in the end, out of it.
It is not even possible for each to
strive without divine plan from the Designer, imagining or acting as if
dreaming that his welfare, her glory, his aspirations, her dreams must be true,
because it is their own, or those of this nation, of some other compilation
from uncomprehending will, or that. It can and does only lead to carnal and
contentious strife and smitings; and now, with its empty opinings without God
the Maker, the cultures of this world could obliterate the world: a fact which
should have been obvious from the first, from Cain, and is now made manifest so
that a 10 year old can conceive the thing.
Unsanctified selves
with power in a limited world cannot work. It is good to be individual, for we
are so made; it is madness to be individualistic, as if your self were your own
saviour, your thought your own governor and your god your own being; for it is
not so.
You were made, designed, and
deliberately divesting yourself, in thought’s imaginary autonomies from your
design specifications is bad enough; but when to this is added the arrogation
of the inventor’s privileges, it is not less than demented, spiritually so: for
there is nothing so devious as the heart of man, and nothing so misdirected as
his own direction. It is not in man who walks to direct his steps, says
Jeremiah, nor is it in man to ignore his responsibility. In his own right,
realm, domain (albeit one invented by another, fashioned and fabricated for
another purpose, one of exquisite harmony and unelaborated truth), man is like
a mad hatter in his castle. The lead of his soul has gone to his head. IN the
end, the castle cannot protect him.
The corruption lies within. So the
world wearily picks up its departing steps, like a lost child, meandering; then
like a drunken adolescent, raucously and relentlessly seizing this and that;
then like a terrorist, acclaiming ‘divine’ rights to anything and everything
including the lives of others, as though eyes had been denied, and sight was
deleted; then like someone senescent, dreamily evaluating morals without God,
as if wants could sanctify goodness into
existence, or definition could create truth: so it goes. It has not much
further to go. It learns the lessons of means, and squanders the necessities of
ends, and making its own ends, ends.
In this vagary, the more you know,
the less you stay. So it is with this ravaged world. When you know God, you
know enough, and there is no end to the wonder of His wisdom, giving light to
all things (cf. Psalm 43:3, 97:11, 36:9); and when you do not, you are bathed
in such ignorance that it is dangerous to be about. That is what the world is
finding out; but for several millennia, it has been told , and told how it will
end. Daniel had pithy words (cf. Daniel 12), as did Isaiah (cf. 24, 51) and
Christ articulated the nature of its end (Matthew 24, Luke 21). But it does not
heed, nor hear, nor concern itself, except with its predicted fears and
tensions, distress and anxieties, its disquietude and its demands.
Christ predicted that unless HE
returned, the world could not continue, or rather, flesh within it could not do
so (Matthew 24:22). But it does not listen, achieving its deafness with great
knowledgeability, and theorems so simplistically surreal as to constitute for
all time, its judgment (cf. Spiritual Refreshings 6, 13, 16, Wake Up World Chs. 4-6, Earth Spasm… Chs. 1, 7). Perversion of body, of mind and
of soul mount like volcanoes, rising from the tormented surface, the stricken
energies erupting instead of flowing in peace from a stable basis.
It is a peculiar but not wonderful
feature of this world that it cannot learn. It does not desire humility except
as time-serving substitute for spirituality,
truth except as ground for ambition, peace except as place for
pre-eminence or for the indulgence of self,
a throne for Satan or splendour, the imaginations of its own heart, as
if God who made it were its enemy; and so it becomes the chief enemy of itself,
not deficient in power to destroy, only in power to continue, or to know the
truth (cf. Matthews 24:12-14,22ff., Luke 21:20-28.
The Jews are back in
The world however is not back in its
right mind. Payment has been made for the redemption, but it is one by one (cf.
Zechariah 12:10ff., John 3:16), and when
people will not pick up the cheque for their pardon by price paid in Christ,
then no price is paid, for God knows the ways of His funds (Romans 8:32, Isaiah
53:3-6) and the hearts of His people. Each cheque therefore is individually
designed, received and credited (II Corinthians
As Isaiah 53 shows so clearly, with
Romans 8:32 no less, those paid for are healed, and those not healed, stay
sick. What Hospital Benefits scheme is like this, that the sick do not want
their own private room, but rejoice with passion in their debilities, and
relish the absence of the surgeon, despising all medicine, even that ‘medicine
of immortality’, the blood, the devoted and sacrificial life of the oblation and offering, Christ
Jesus Himself. His riches, offered to
all, are receipted only by some; and
there is no loss in the divine riches, for those whose squandering is merely
for spiritual adventurism, hollow hope or the devices of doubt; and rather do
these find their treading under foot the blood of Christ, an act for their own
eternal loss (Hebrews 10:29-31).
The scope of the blood is as wide as
the blood, but its payment as narrow as those on His path; and if all are most
vigorously invited (cf. Matthew 22), many most rigorously refuse. There is
however loss on the earth, the soul that prefers darkness to light, and as to that,
it is there that its condemnation lies (John
It was a great game; but the game in
the end, is up! It is best to know the Maker, and to find in Him, the reasons
for the game, and to deliver yourself from the treason of mischievous maligning
of the truth. That, it is no game.