CHAPTER 15

 

This Chapter has now been replaced by a revision found at

 

TRINITY CHAPTER 14

 

LIKE RAIN UPON THE GRASS

 

The Explanation of Families, the Family of God,
the Criterion of Love, the Meaning of Life,
the Key of Destiny, the Refreshing of Life,
the Avenue of Eternity: in
Jesus Christ the Righteous (Acts 3:14-15)

WHAT is the meaning of this! thunders the Headmaster!

What indeed is the meaning of anything ? might reply the cheeky child of today.

In answer: Christ is the ONLY meaning of anything.

What of God the Father ? HE it is who GIVES Christ as the meaning, and none other is.

WHY should He do so ?

It is simply this: that Christ IS that meaning. In the beginning as the everlasting WORD of God, He was, as He is, the expression towards the outward things, of the inner things. He is the face of the magnificence of God, the declaration of His will, His covenant (Isaiah 42:6, Matthew 26:28,42), made with His blood, His life poured out for sin, because it was

• 1) without sin of its own
• 2) freely made available and
• 3) adequate for any without limit, the infinite for the finite.

If it was equally LIMITED to those who received Him, that is still no limit on the love, since the reception of deception instead of direction, of unbelief instead of correction, of delusion instead of deliverance, this is limit not on the love, but on its application. And what IS that limit ? THIS is their condemnation, that light has come into the world (described in great detail in John 1-2) and men have preferred darkness to light.

The WORLD has been loved, has been lost and only a selection is to be found.

But let us return to our cheeky child. That MEANING, we might tell him/her, is this: that God is no isolate, but exists as an inner Being and an expression, an outer declaration. We mirror that, being in His image.

He also exists as the Holy Spirit, and we too have a spirit, which decides whether to rebel or to realise, to hope or to fume in the follies of rebelliousness of mind, stubbornness of heart and grandeur of self-imaginings, whether because we are exalted, and want to be proud, or depressed, and strive to be re-assured in our own impoverished little selves.

The tenderness of fathers to children, derives from the tenderness of God to His word, who incarnated by a direct act equivalent to procreation, through Mary (God does not NEED to use the means, since He made them and knows their meaning and ways), in the virgin birth. AS Father of Christ, He declares that Christ is His ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, and the word of God declares this with clarity that excels in Luke 2:35.

What then DOES the angel say to Mary ? This: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you: THEREFORE also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called he Son of God" - Luke 2:35. Note the ADDED emphasis. It is BECAUSE of this act of originating the embryo, that the Son will be the name of the Father who begot Him! That is WHY He bears this title, Son of God.

The Church does not require us to believe it, says William Barclay. WHICH church! The ONLY church which is the Christian Church (cf. Refreshings Ch. 8) is the one which declares what GOD has declared, hence receives the BIBLE as His utterance, His SON as His only begotten and His sovereignty as final. Any 'other' church merely preaches some other gospel, or has some other spirit or has some other Jesus, NOT so begotten (II Corinthians 11:4ff.).

If YOU were begotten by James Smith, then someone of whom we need not affirm that, is NOT YOU! Now another Jesus is the production of false apostles, Paul declares in II Corinthians 11. Anyone who wants one, can have one, with the little football dolls and the striped hats of parties. Anyone who wants God cannot have one. God's children follow God's ways. The church which is the church of God is the pillar and ground of the truth, like a candlestick HOLDING UP the light of life, not extinguishing it by hiding it under a 'bushel' as Christ put it!

It is quite vital to realise WHO Jesus the Christ IS. HOW can you believe in Him if you do not know who He is!
 
 

THE WONDERS OF THE FAMILY OF GOD

The Christ was SENT INTO the world (I John 4:9). He was OUT of the world before that (John 17:1-3), in the glory of His Father. He CAME INTO the world IN THE FLESH (I John 4:3) to be the SAVIOUR (I John 4:14) BECAUSE GOD SO  LOVED the world (John 3:16). Having come, He LOVED HIS OWN to the end (John 13:1ff.), served them and saved them (Titus 3:5, Ephesians 2:8), having foreknown who they would be (Ephesians 1:4), and indeed having in His own love, predestinated them to this very thing. As HE IS LOVE (I John 4:8) and HENCE became a propitiation for the sins of those who receive Him as He is (John 4:23, I John 4:10), this ALSO He did in love, not willing that any should perish (I Timothy 2:1-3). While the SCOPE of His offering is as wide as the world, the EFFECTIVENESS and REALISATION of it is as narrow as those who believe, for no PAYMENT of redemption is made where there is no acceptance of the same.

This LOVE, this tenderness, this solicitude, this concern, this willingness to do what it takes to secure the deliverance from the oppressions of delusion and confusion, the profusion of folly and the intrusion of damnation (the ultimate damage) is the very heart of God (Psalm 102:18-21, Isaiah 61:1-3). You see it in Isaiah 42:1ff., where the DELIGHT of the Father in the Son is declared, as indeed, it was when Christ actually DID at length in the predicted time, come to earth. Then it was audibly announced from heaven, and that not only once! (Matthew 3:16-17,17:5). Then, as John shows, His Father's willingness was likewise declared, even as He approached the DEATH OF REJECTION AND MORTAL CONTEMPT at the hands of the rabble (John 11:48), even if it was a ruling rabble: the will of the Father as of the Son, in love for the lost (Isaiah 53:10), like the violent desire of the rabble, yet opposite in kind, was quite clear and direct (cf. Luke 22:42ff.). Nothing was withheld that salvation demanded!

WITHIN the Godhead there is this mutual delight, this cohesion of beauty, this conclave of wonder, and it is beyond all that we conceive, for here is no combination of parts, but the infinite intimacy of what comprises the Godhead, three persons; for God is a SPIRIT and space is not a criterion, but a creation! How foolish are those misled and confused physicists who imagine that space is a criterion. It is a mere stage. Fancy seeing a play and studying the exact configuration of the nails in the platform and stage trappings to find its meaning, when the PURPOSE is the play.

Hence OUTSIDE the Godhead, when God makes His will known, there is this same love, this same (but now created and hence merely IMAGED sense of a unity) as is seen

• 1) in our mind, body and spirit capacity for mutuality,  and
   
• 2) in our families and
   
• 3) in our friendships and
   
• 4) in our societies of choice, in some degree, at their best. Indeed, it spreads out like a flowing stream (Isaiah 58:6-10, 13ff.), as it moves in the path of His revealed and revealing kindness. God, being uncreated, does not vary as do those who are made; for the elements are His, and the knowledge is HIS, and what He would be He is, and what He would not be, He is not, and what He would become, He is, and what He would have become, He did, and where He is to go is where He is.

As He says, when Moses asks, "... when I come to the children of Israel and tell them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they say to me, 'What is His name?' what shall I tell them?" - "I AM WHO I AM.. Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.' " This is found in Exodus 3:13-14. Thus Christ declared (John 8:58), "Before Abraham was, I AM!" It is NOT just that He happened to mention Abraham here, but since the setting is Jewish, He is saying that HE pre-dated the initiation of the very nation of Israel, the first call of the first patriarch, and He is adding something equally important.

BEFORE Abraham CAME TO BE, He had a style of existence in which what we know as TIME DID NOT FIGURE. Past and present, future and the whole matrix and web of time were no constraint on Him or His mode of existence. Through this created thing called time (Romans 8:38-39 makes it clear that it IS created) and beyond it, as sovereign over all, creator of all, was the Being who as Christ came into the world, the one who simply can say, I AM; before this or that, I AM; when this or that comes, I AM.

It is so simple. A novelist does not say to a character in her/his book, I was around when you were doing that. The author/authoress is PRIOR in kind. The SORT of time which eventuates in the book was WRITTEN, created by the writer. Outside of it, the creator of the book is not enmeshed in its toils (except perhaps it were an autobiography) or limited by its turmoils; not in creative writing.

How much more the creator of the universe.

But IN THIS UNIVERSE there is the opportunity for love and tenderness and peace and unity which ONLY GOD has. It is derivative for us; integral, intrinsic for Him. If HE did not have it, there would be no source. SINCE He has it, this IS the source. WHERE the source is cut off by unbelief, there is the gap, the awful, the atrocious gap, the source of all atrocity, whether done with gentlemanly graces of externals, or with slicing scimitar. The end, the objective, the heart it is which matters (cf. I Timothy 1:5), and there is the source and criterion of all atrocity. It may be invaded by the antagonist of the universe, the autocrat of unholiness, flinging his tinny tinsel about as if its glitters and glamour were anything but deceit, deception and confusion of the issue. It may be expanded by egotism, pride, hatred and contempt. If the love of GOD is not in the heart, then that lifeless instrument of life is merely a place for categorisation of the lack: as in vitamin deficiency of the spirit. It is however far more serious.
 
 

THE WOES AND WITNESS FOR THOSE
REFUSING THE FAMILY OF GOD

Since GOD IS LOVE and GOD IS LIFE'S SOURCE, the absence of God, self-defined, self-declared BY HIS ETERNAL WORD, is the absence of life. The result may be like a vine branch recently cut off, or like one long scorched; but it has no life. Its derivative biological life may continue, but its living condition is defunct. Corpses without tags, bodies without funerals, they continue, and their hearts are proud, or spiteful or grievously afflicted with egotism, desire, some delirium of conception, some poised hope for recognition at last because of their empty selves, as though debt were credit, and absence were presence; and so they hope to evade hell.

But hell is no mere penalty. It is the recognition of the CONDITION. It is the passport's end, which is called unbelief, it is the destiny of category, it is the empty shell for the empty husk to call its own. It is the cover of the uncovered, the exposure of ignominy far worse in this, that it is WILLINGLY deserved, NOT through some deprivation, but through persevering rejection of that God who is the I AM, who IS love; and hence through the rejection of love, uncreated love, in favour of some sentiment, affection, affectation or desire. It is the end of justice deferred (cf. II Peter 3:9), and the exclusion of mercy (cf. Matthew 7:21ff.). Its name rots, and its contents are as its name (Mark 9).

There is no INSINCERITY in God. If you are His, so then you are; and if you are not, then no pretence or substitution is possible. You CANNOT worship what is NOT God and get away with it, as if to ask the Government department on spiritual returns to make some sort of correction. It is YOU who must make the correction through REPENTANCE WHICH IS REAL, corresponds to reality, and hence accepts the TRUTH of God where it may be found, in HIS WORD, His eternal word, His son, His Only-Begotten Son, whom He sent INTO the world, from the glory He hitherto had enjoyed with His Father. Into this world He came, we read (Philippians 2) by a CHANGE OF FORM.

He did not cease to be, who IS ETERNAL, the I AM, but He changed His form. In heaven, EQUAL with God, this WORD, this eternal light (Revelation 21:23, John 3:3-13, 12:35-36,47-50, 9:5), shines as He has shone, for ever (Micah 5:1-3). "His GOINGS FORTH are FROM EVERLASTING." His proceedings are not limited to, or in time. Time is His and He made (Romans 8:38); and without HIM was NOTHING made that is of the made category (John 1:1-3). NAME IT! If it is made, He made it. HE is not made, for He could not have made Himself, being not there: the CLASS of being, "made", is exclusively and totally HIS production. He is the word who WAS WITH GOD AND WHO WAS GOD.

The Jehovah's Witness folly, that there is more than one God

• (for there is ONLY ONE CREATOR by definition in Isaiah 45:18-19, 44:25-26, 43:10, 40:11-14, 45:5, 21-25, both el and elohim, and it is He who is also the ONLY Saviour and the EXPLICIT speaker, and there is no god formed before or after - this is explicit, so that any other being allegedly co-creating is another God, a polytheistic implication, and an affront to the truth, both logical - SMR Ch.1 - and Biblical),

in the face of Ephesians 4:4 not to mention the entirety of the Bible including the ten commandments is so ludicrous that it is a marvel any can stand without blushing in such manifest and total contradiction of the Bible, which is professed as if believed!

The "gods" who have NOT made heaven and earth are mere pretences and pretensions (Jeremiah 10:11) who will perish, as God says so dramatically in Ezekiel 28:9 and Psalm 82. You may SAY you are gods, but you will DIE like men! He declares with unremitting and scathing irony. Gods! there is ONE who counts, who made all,  who is everlasting. The rest are the inventions of the heart of men, or the excrescences of heaven, like dispossessed Satan (Revelation 12), removed even from the purlieus of heaven because ...  though created, he rebelled; though in heavenly places, he fell; though given glory, he demitted. But even he, he was not GOD, he did not create, except for his rebellion, he created that! for there is ONLY ONE. THIS ONE is what the Bible affirms is the CREATOR of all that is, the Christ, one of that trinity of persons who comprise God, one God, one Being. It is ONE FOR ALL, and all must come to the One.. For there is ONE CREATOR ONLY (Isaiah 45:18). "There is no other," He there declares.

The category : creator but not God, when it comes to the universe, has ZERO occupants.

As to those who believe in any such being, such a fabricated nonentity in such a category, they are worshipping the god of their own creation, which cannot save them, since he is no God!

THAT is precisely what Israel did, they worshipped "that which IS NOT GOD"! and God so declares. They invented, they lamented, they spewed out gods, and they worshipped them in vain, like silly kids who do not know the difference between pantomime and reality (Deuteronomy 32:17-21). This is like those who perpetually want what they are not, to do what they cannot, and hence fail to be what they might be, or do as they ought. It is illusion and a profusion of confusion, a severance from reality, the more awful in this, that reality, God, who has fathered time and creation, is so very wonderful. Truth is illustrious, glorious; and personal. It is hence able to be propositional, revelatory and realised.
 
 

THE NECESSITIES OF TRUTH IN THE FAMILY OF GOD

It is necessary to live in the truth, according to it and to face it in all things.
The alternative is not to trifle, to hire a lawyer or to engage in a talk-fest! It is hell.

That, quite simply, is where it belongs: it CANNOT of necessity belong where truth rules (Revelation 21:4-8). Sorrow goes, but so do lies, when heaven is in view.

Now Christ is the key, He is the fresh showers upon the mown grass that gives it light, upon the grass to be mown, which gives to it beauty and fulness (Psalm 72). His is the UTTERANCE, the DECLARATION, the REVELATION and the OUTGOING of God. HE it is who is sent after the glory (Zechariah 2:8), and it is HE who says,

"From the time that it was, I was there,
And now the Lord God and His Spirit
Have sent Me!" (Isaiah 48:16).

Without Him (Isaiah 51:6,16, in context 50:4-5, 49:3) -

• "an Israel in whom I will be glorified" (Israel = prince with God),
• the One who DID it, and did not fail, for His people, being likewise
• "a light for the Gentiles" (Isaiah 49:6), though rejected by the nation (49:7),
• the One who in Himself was THE COVENANT (Isaiah 42:6), and
• on whom was laid the iniquity of all who were to be healed,

who had believed the report of Him (Isaiah 53:1 - still the issue!): as in Isaiah 53:3-6 ...

• WITHOUT HIM, NOTHING!

This is not too dramatic. As Isaiah 51:16 makes clear, this effective Israel, this One who took it, did it and make it happen, this Christ, this Prince of Peace of whose kingdom there would be no end (Isaiah 9:7), this one who could be named 'everlasting Father', but who at the same time was the earthly Prince on whose shoulder the government would by divine decree, interminably be placed, this One whose name included the very matrix of deity specifications, in nomenclature, WONDERFUL, COUNSELLOR, THE MIGHTY GOD (as in 10:21), this everlasting WORD of GOD, this brilliance of His glory: He was crucial to all. WITHOUT HIM ? Nullity and straggling segments of the disjointed, embroiled in a horrid ruin.

But with HIM ?

God explicitly states (Isaiah 51:16):

"And I have put My words in Your  mouth:
I have covered You with the shadow of My hand,
That I may plant the heavens,
Lay the foundations of the earth,
And say to Zion, 'You are My people!' ."

Here is the "Mine elect in whom My soul delights" (Isaiah 42:1), the sinless substitute of Isaiah 53:10-12,6, the enabler, the doer of the works (42:3ff.); and it is ONLY BECAUSE GOD has put in the MOUTH of His Son, His words (as reflected in John 12:48-50, cf. John 10:30-33) that the HEAVENS WERE PLANTED, OR 'THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE EARTH' LAID (Isaiah 51:16). Thus in Isaiah 49:2, we read of this same Messiah:

"And He has made My mouth like a sharp sword:
In the shadow of His hand He has hidden Me,
And made Me a polished shaft,
In His quiver He has hidden Me."

It is HE who is to be as a covenant to the people (Isaiah 49:8, cf. 42:6).

It is only through Him, that this plan of salvation being operable, God says to Zion, "You are My people!" (Isaiah 51:16 cf. Hosea 13:14 with Hosea 14, in the parable of the life of Hosea). Here is the One who stands out of Israel, beyond Israel, for Israel^*1A, or more especially, for those who believe in Him. Thus in Isaiah 51:20, we see the sons of Israel are all fallen. "BY WHOM WILL I COMFORT YOU ?" the Lord dramatically asks, only to answer, soon, clearly, decisively (Isaiah 52-53). THEY, Israel and her sons, they are sold FOR NOTHING (Isaiah 52:3); full of the fury of the Lord, they are weak, pathetic, powerless; nevertheless they may arise…

WHY is this so ? How can such a transformation occur when the means so entirely lack, as so repeatedly insisted! It is because of the beauty of the feet upon the mountains (Isaiah 52:7), which carry those who "proclaim salvation". Where ? How ? By whom ? we naturally ask. In 52:13 we find the quite astounding answer: It is by MY SERVANT, who shall "be exalted"  - and so far, this fact is not astonishing. It is by this one, "You are My servant, an Israel in whom I will be glorified," this single, and singular star of the morning, in the starkest possible contrast to the repeated estimates and judgments on the degraded state of the nation! Far from sin, He was able to become the sin bearer; without sin, He was the Saviour; from God He performed as deity alone can do (Isaiah 40:10-11,25).

But then ? Yes we follow the exaltation of such a contradistinct person, with such an advent (as in Isaiah 40:1-10), with peaceable equanimity; but consider what allows! This:

"Just as many as were astonished at you,
So His visage was marred more than any man,
And His form more than the sons of men:
So shall He sprinkle many nations… WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT ? …"

and so it moves on into Isaiah 53, and the Saviour, the substitutionary sacrifice for sin, the alive and triumphant overcomer of death, indeed of murder. TO HIM, this NOTHING (as in Daniel 9:26 - "there is nothing for Him"), so that to man might be something, might indeed be in fellowship with God. By this Christ,  the abuse is abused, the death is dismissed, life in its liberality accounting triumphantly but vicariously, for the doom of deserved death in its destruction (as Hosea 13:14, I Corinthians 15:53-58 declare with the eloquence of a loving realism, the immortal words of Him who alone has immortality, but confers eternal life to whom He will, and is most willing).

He accordingly, is this way, and He made it; but it is a way to be travelled, a highway to be entered (Isaiah 55:1-6, 35:8).

Already, we have been introduced to Him, just before,  in Isaiah 50:4-8 indeed in amazing circumstances, where His resolve and purity when under mordant assault are focussed, and of course He appears in Isaiah 40:10, 42 and 49, at length.

Thus we have learned and re-learned that Israel the nation, they fail (41:27ff., 51:19ff. - indeed right from Ch.1); but here is AN Israel (49:3) who will NOT "fail or be discouraged" (42:4) "till He has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands will wait for His law." Without THIS Israel, this replacement, this Saviour from heaven, Israel all and altogether would be defunct. ONLY because of Him, has history been unleashed! - for as with Israel itself, so with the Gentile nations, He who comes for the one, comes also for the other. Rejected by the first (Isaiah 49:7), He is received by many in the second, until the time come (Zechariah 12:10), and Israel repents of this murder, and cries in anguish of soul, with profound mourning, for "they shall look upon ME whom they have pierced," the Lord declares.

• It was because of this provision of THIS servant, THIS, "mine elect", that history was ever unleashed!^*1B  That is what we learn in 51:16 in context (with 50:4ff. for example, and 49:1-6). Let us hear it:

"And I have put My words in your mouth^*1B, and I have covered you in the shadow of My hand, that I may plant the heavens, and lay the foundation of the earth, and say to Zion, You are My people."

It is just as in Revelation 5:1-7, when history cannot be unscrolled until the Lamb seizing the plan, enables its execution!

As in David, so in Isaiah, the word can turn from the needy sinner to the necessary Saviour, from sin’s need, to sin bearer (cf. Psalm 40:1-5, then 40:6). The reason is clear: it is through man, God in this format, that man is able to be saved. It is through, specifically, AN Israel, or prevailing Prince,  or Prince of God, who is in the format of a man, but without sin, and sent from heaven, with the throne of God His own (Psalm 45), that anything can be done; and it is only BECAUSE the plan is secure, that the creation was performed!

Here is the crux in creation,
of salvation, prepared beforehand in the plan for the universe (cf. Ephesians 1:4),
known from the first, executed to the last!

His death was not for His own sin, but
"for the transgression of My people was He smitten",
and
"Surely He has borne our griefs";
but wrongly: many having considered Him
"smitten of God and afflicted",
even though it is written,
"But He was wounded for our transgressions".

This they did, rejecting Him in unbelief, then as now:
for the nation of the Jews, however, as for the new nations of the Gentiles,
where it becomes both de rigueur and a terminal rigor of the dismissive soul that does so.
Blessed are those who repent (Luke 13:1-3, Hebrews 2:3,12:25).

Let us hear a little of these words in Hebrews: "See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven: Whose voice then shook the earth {in the Exodus and following events}; but now He has promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven." Again we read: "How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation" - in 2:3.

What then of the wanderers, especially those who have wandered dangerously from the light when it has come ?

Only in mercy will any such ever be found, but Israel, the nation, in much and in many this will turn again (cf. Micah 7:18ff., SMR Appendix A, The Biblical Workman Ch. 1),  and many who have been long lost, these too will be found; for look at the apostle Paul, and consider him in his days as Saul (Acts 8:3ff., 9:1ff.), and consider this, that with God nothing will be called impossible! But it is to God they must come; there is no other, and inventions of the imaginations and proud flesh, these are like specialists of the mind, to whom one pays visits, ignoring those who actually practice!

While, then,  there is NONE like God among the mighty (Psalm 89:6-8, cf. Isaiah ), and none but God is Saviour (Isaiah 43:10), THIS ONE, THIS CHRIST, THIS GREAT PHYSICIAN IS HIMSELF PRECISELY AND EXACTLY SAVIOUR, bearing sin vicariously for His own (Isaiah 52-53); and there is none like Him! (Isaiah 41:28-42:4). He IS the covenant (Isaiah 42:6). He is the LIGHT which shone in darkness (Isaiah 9:1-7). Godhead is His; divinity is His; deity is what He is (Philippians 2). From whence He came, thence He has returned (John 6:62-63, ), and from whence He has returned, thence He comes to bring to that place, those whom He has redeemed (John 14:1ff., II Corinthians 5:1ff., I Thessalonians 4, Acts 3:19ff., John 17:24).

Not to RECOGNISE Him, is like de-recognition of a State on earth. It means the relationship is CUT.
To what HE IS, such persons are not willing to be related! This is the ultimate severance: it follows incisively  SINCE He is the truth, the expression and definitive exhibition of who God is (Hebrews 1:3), the brightness of all glory and the AGENT of salvation, who IS that salvation (Luke 2:30,1:33, 2:11, Matthew 1:21), who IS therefore that GOD WHO SAYS, "Besides ME there IS NO SAVIOUR" - Isaiah 43:10.

Indeed, there is NO OTHER GOD, HE KNOWS NONE, and there WAS none before Him, and there WILL BE none after Him (Isaiah 43:10-11, 43:24-26). It is HE, God who spread forth the heavens BY HIMSELF, we there read, yes and it was specifically HE who did the measuring and the craftsmanship (Isaiah 40:12) without counsel from ANY; and this Christ, NOTHING was made without Him! They are ONE BEING, and God is THREE PERSONS, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, by whom He also dwells in the hearts of His people.

What then ? No Saviour but God, Christ the ONLY Saviour (Acts 4:11-12): no Creator but God, Christ the worker in ALL things created whatsoever, indeed who created (Colossians 1:16); no Wisdom but God's, and Christ the wisdom of God (I Cor. 1:30, 1:24, cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 27) : this simply and strictly is the position. Making a farce of God merely makes a fiasco of your own soul. Truth does not change for fuming, fury or recalcitrance, for sophisticated mockery or barefaced effrontery. Love is not changed by carefully concealed hatred. It is better, says the Proverb, to rebuke OPENLY than to love SECRETLY. Love that does not manifest itself is not love. Love speaks, acts, is no dumb dog, and has spoken, in and AS the eternal WORD of God, who is love. There is no other option.

God is love and in love, He loves, perpetual in purity, undiminished in source, undefiled in splendour: the Father and the Son, the Speaker and the Word, the Glorious One and His Glory, expressed; and He loves too, by and in His Spirit, as Christ once appeared to put it, "the finger of the Lord" (Matthew 12:28, Luke 11:20), who can be in all things as He will, sent from the Father and the Son (John 15:26). As to God,  He loves (cf. Romans 5:5) in all His ways, and by and in and through His Spirit, "the Lord is the Spirit" (II Cor. 3:17-18), He also loves, dealing in the depths of the spirit of man (Romans 8:23-26).

Man has meat and meaning in this love. Man is derivative; God is underived. Man is created; God increate. Yet man is to receive the love of God, though derivative; for as Christ could come as a man BECAUSE God had first made us in His (spiritually relevant but created) image, so WITHIN that image, or race, He could come as a SON because the Word of God, His expression, within our format could so be expressed. There is the base. But the ONLY BEGOTTEN of God was full of grace and of truth (John 1:1-14), AS IS fitting for the only begotten of God. As He has always been, so He was; and as He was, so He was seen (I John 1:1-4), that eternal life of God, freely offering Himself (John 6:51ff.).

There is the parallel to us, in our format, for so He came, as man in form;  yet He came without sin and PLUS the deity which is His. Without that, He is not He, and you who do not believe are not His (cf. II Corinthians 11:1-6)! It is so simple: judgment is ACCORDING to truth (Romans 2) and that, it is the truth. "I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE," He says: not I USED to be! Truth ? of this He is criterion, and HE, it is He who is the judge, appointed so, as is fitting for One who IS the very word of God (John 5:19-23), and in this truth, He will expose what is not true, whatever its claims, pretences or pretensions^*1 (John 9:39ff.). "For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind", He said as the spiritually blind refused to be grateful for His physical healing of the blind man, and in their blindness continued obscured in vision.

Religious ? Oh most religious; but they continued constant, like children who never take the bit, never turn alive, mouch like flies through school, unchangeably constant, inconstant to all that is real:  without Christ, without hope and without covenant! (Ephesians 2:3,12)^*1A.

Thus Christ may be called the Everlasting Son of God because

• 1) HE is everlasting
• 2) He came as Son and
• 3) He acted as Lamb (that is, God in the form of man, sacrificed justly to meet the doom of sin, so that breaking it in His infinite power and purity alike, He might freely pardon in truth, by mercy and love, those who so receive Him - Romans 5, 8); and
• 4) He is, as Lamb, to be praised and worshipped for ever (Revelation 5:12-13); and as for His kingdom, it shall not end (Luke 1:33, Daniel 7:26-27,14).

His relationship, in other words, with His Father is such that sonship is the human expression - an apt one in the realities of what has NO PROCREATION in itself; for God is not flesh, but Spirit, but One who, when so expressed in flesh, has this as its parallel, correlate and chosen vehicle of expression (cf. SMR pp. 532-560, A Spiritual Potpourri Ch.12). Who is He, but the One - "Slain from the foundation of the world" (Revelation 5:6,12, 13:8), just as His people, called 'saints', are those whom "He chose in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love" - Ephesians 1:4.

The sects and liberals who in effect simply deny HIM, worshipping some other God who does not have the privilege of existence, worship in vain. It is not just that it is untrue; it is a case of mistaken identity, and that, it is the REAL identity crisis. But see how it comes! BECAUSE, sect or agnostic or whatever, some refuse the truth, therefore for them there IS not truth, except this, that having refused the truth, when it has entered at such cost, as available and effulgent light, THIS is their condemnation (John 3:17-19).

THIS is Himself Jehovah's Witness, THIS CHRIST, for He IS Jehovah expressed (Isaiah 45:22-23, Philippians 2:10): it is HE who is witness with His Father to HIMSELF (John 8:14-19). To such witness none may add or subtract; better by far to add to Einstein's thoughts as a Primary pupil, than alter God's own attestation to Himself!

To God only is homage to God to be shown (Isaiah 26:13), and to Christ just that homage to the divine is to be shown - that is what the texts above in Philippians and Isaiah show so clearly. Indeed, as to Christ, to KNOW HIM IS to know His FATHER ALSO (John 8:19), and to SEE Him is to see His Father also (John 14:9).

Such things would be an infinite blasphemy relative to anyone other than God, and for anyone other, it would be an idolatry to worship (cf. John 20:28, Matthew 28:17), a fraud to follow; while to put trust in any one less (as in Psalm 2:12) would be the very idiom of rebellion (Jeremiah 17:5). But with Him, all these things are not so; for HE IS THE TRUTH (John 14:6), sent for savour (cf. John 1:14), needed as Saviour, the ONLY ONE indeed (Acts 4:11-12), just as God is the ONLY ONE. This is because He and His Father are ONE (John 10:30ff.), so that what the Son does is precisely what the Father does, and moreover, He does it in THE SAME WAY (John 5:19-23). Having come from being in the form of God as an inherent nature, in the infinitely magnificent, and necessarily unique manner of God Almighty  as His expression (cf. Philippians 2), He can act on earth at the very level of the divine, sharing with His Father what ONLY His Father can do, both in substance and in method, in purity and in power. This He does without shroud or cloud, His word, the definitive expression of His Being, God as God revealed.

To presume to be a witness when THIS witness witnesses, to presume salvation by dead works when this is secured by grace alone (Romans 3:23ff., Ephesians 2:1-10, Titus 3:5) is just to grab the mouth of God, like a megaphone from the one in charge, and shout nonsense down the tube. But God is not mocked, and the ONE GOD who has done all things AS ONE, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, will continue in His word, His works, His salvation without help from any who contradict Him. After all, Christ endured the contradiction of sinners in the flesh, and is it then any marvel that many who talk of Him, now as then, would mar the very mouth of God!

Blind and ignorant ("Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing!" - Luke 23:34) are many, inhabiting the centuries, as likewise Golgotha; yet so they err.

Children of the Age, they do it their way, and it is rife as dreams in the mind at sleep, when it should be awake! To all without Him, therefore comes the word, "Awake you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you life!" (I Corinthians 6:1). To all those from among  mankind who are in Him, this has happened already. Yet the calumny and confusion now spreads as by evil agents, as it did in Paul's own day (II Cor. 11, II Cor. 4:1ff.), though now it is in a profusion and delusion, hitherto
unexampled in our Age (II Timothy 3. II Peter 2), as was also foretold. Accordingly, through many former churches and sects, many minds and many hearts the folly spreads like fungus, a symbol of this Age in its sheer invention and multiplicity of evil (cf. Matthew 24:24); and that, it is merely one more example of the precision of the testimony, the prophecy of God, who set such things for just such an Age as this, with its varied criteria in prophecy (cf. II Timothy 3, II Peter 2 and cf. Scoop of the Universe43).

Why so many seem to imagine that God is inexact, imprecise, does not care for the truth, as though this were some paltry and insignificant thing, when everywhere else in the life God made so punctiliously with code and contrivances multiplied, it matters greatly: this is one of the mysteries specific to the delusion concerned. It is symptomatic of the case.

Wholly irrational, it is widely received. Like a plague with swelling of flesh, so this, with swellings of mind and word (II Peter 2:18), continues, inflated, unabated, hated by God. God, in Romans 9, is seen to hate what is consolidated with sin. His love drives home the nails on the predicted and predestinated cross of Christ (Isaiah 53:10), that we might be saved; and the vicious exclusion of this love, really embroils the practitioners of exclusion with a merited cross of just contempt, impelled into it by their own actions of rejection. In this case, however, it is they who must bear  it, with no relief, unredeemed.

As to the Cross,  this is the mode of penal exclusion already covered by Christ in His humiliation of judgment, that man might be included. This therefore  is the place to which these all must come: yet it  is hated. As so many Jews were reported crucified outside Jerusalem, 40 years after the time of Christ on earth, when Rome destroyed the city so thoroughly, so in symbol, they show the lot of the lost, the plight of the unpardoned, the place of those who reject their own mercy. There simply is no other.

When this is the case, then sin is then no longer  a thing of pity to be remedied, but a thing of determination to be exposed and destined according to case. Without God, there is no love, no light, no truth; but the truth still is - it is just that those so finally placed, live as those made for what they exclude, like cars without oil, sheep without water, horses without grass, heavens without clouds, corpses without shrouds.
 
 

THE ULTIMATE REFRESHMENT

 

Yet what is there that more greatly refreshes than this: that a potential destiny without the love of God, becomes a destiny WITH IT; that an impending destiny without the truth, becomes one in which truth rules; that a place with the race of the ruined, becomes usurped by someone else, and one is swept into the kingdom of His dear Son (Ephesians 1:6), where "we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory" - Ephesians 1:11-12.

It is stunning; but it is true. It is transformation from exclusion to inclusion; confusion to clarity; meaninglessness to the core of truth; exploration to discovery; lovelessness in confusion, to love in profusion, without covenant, to covenant inclusive, without the WORD of God, to having it; without the splendour of His kingdom, to finding it; without knowledge of even this world, to seeing it clearly; from being within the curse, to being excluded from it, by Him who became a curse that we might be redeemed (Galatians 3:1-13).

That! It IS refreshing. On top of that, there is the periodic refreshings (Acts 3:19) which come to His people, UNTIL He Himself comes for them. The school ? it is life. The parental coming to take us home, it is His COMING! If some go before He comes, then for them is a place prepared (John 14:1-3). OF COURSE this is so, as Christ so beautifully intimated, since HOW on earth would HE who CAME to earth, fail in heaven to provide for those for whom He came! Are you dreaming! "If it were not so, I should have told you!" Christ declared.

If there is something to be called moral aesthetics, that is its pinnacle!

Hence a body eternal in the heavens is prepared (II Cor. 5:1ff.), and to this, not uncovered, but overcoated, we come. WHEN the Lord returns, then in that great resurrection will the coats go on, as they do when the butterfly spirits forth, yet still clothed - only differently - from its pupa condition, which in truth, had little suggestion of such a thing to come! But that, it is the way with the Lord. He is not limited by POWER, or PRECEDENCE, or PROCEDURE.

HE PLANS (and do we not, ourselves do so, making a new home for ourselves in THIS year, and not that, so that for decades there is no sign of movement, and then suddenly, the earth moves and the new foundations are laid), and HE DOES. WHAT He is going to do, He has said.

That also, it is refreshing. "IF IT WERE NOT SO, I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU" in John 14, these are amongst the most refreshing words ever spoken. The SON of God, expressive and receptive of the love of His Father, speaks to His CREATED, ADOPTED (Ephesians 1:13-14) family, and tells them about home.

It is not some guesswork, or hope or consideration: it is the truth.
OF COURSE this destiny with deity, this haven in heaven is so provided, for to do otherwise,

• when our very sicknesses He healed in multitudes when He came,
• when death He conquered with the son of the widow of Nain, with Lazarus, and
• when the axe of envious hatred was used, split first into little nails for better penetration, to kill Him, and when THIS TOO He simply overcame:
• to do otherwise, with all this done and said,  it would be insanity! Let us therefore relish with understanding the words of Christ: 'If it were otherwise, I should have told you…'

Now the MOST SANE person who ever lived on earth, is Christ. NO TEST in power, in word, no trick, no trap, no challenge was there that He did not cover, overcome and in the focus of His wonder, control and surmount. History could not elude Him, and He fulfilled the divine words concerning Himself; nor does it elude Him, for it follows the divine words proceeding from Himself. In the character of His trials, the stakes were infinity: the destiny of the race of man, and He overcame there also. It is He who has so said (John 16:33: " Fear not, I have overcome the world!").

• Life, death, health, sickness, word, power, peace, grace, love, truth,
• in all He was paramount,
• controlling without egotism,
• humble with holiness,
• special without self-exaltation,
• so meek in Himself, that many did not even notice...
• that this, it was God on earth as predicted.

Their eyes, filled with the enemy's propaganda, their own plans to surfeit, could not even see that One whom they affected to serve (John 3:1-3, 12:47ff., 8:54-55, 9:39), and indeed, the one many did serve was the very prince indeed, but that of liars! (John 8:42-44).

Nevertheless, in truth Christ died, and did so as prophetically prescribed, being passionately killed in a slow manner with piercings of hands and feet, as prophetically prescribed, in the treacherous situation prescribed, enabling the Gospel precisely as prophesied to reach the Gentiles, as predicted, till Israel returned to her land as predicted (SMR Ch.9, Joyful Jottings 14, p. 106, Joyful Jottings 25, pp. 234ff.).
 
 

IT IS ALL SO VERY UNORIGINAL: UNBELIEF
IT IS TAUGHT AND SOUGHT, BUT HAS NO PLACE TO LIVE,
ONLY ROOM TO DIE

It is all so very unoriginal, unbelief. It ignores the truth, whether in biology or physics, in psychology or in sociology, in religion, in history,  or in theology; and it protests its greatness while declaring with metatags to all who see, disclosing its smallness, its insignificance in all things, that its enduring value is negative, its attainments tainted, its rules are slanted and its knowledge is in vain (cf. SMR Ch.4, Spiritual Refreshings for a Digital Millenium 13, A Spiritual Potpourri 1-3, That Magnificent Rock 7, SMR Ch.5).

Sad it is, and poignant; and how created time will move in that inordinate calamity of rebellion, self-will and truth evacuation, called hell, it is in the hand of God to determine. Yet what is refreshing is this, there is NO WAY that ANY ONE may avoid HEAVEN from the God of love and His dispositions, except CULPABLY and FOOLISHLY and through PREFERENCE FOR DARKNESS in the very sight of the God who would not have any to perish.

You CANNOT get there, to this interminable termination (Mark 9),  except this is your preference, that the light shall not rule you; and more than that, it is in the very face of the preference of God that you might not go there, where truth is obscured with the lusts of mind, spirit and body. Since the ALMIGHTY has such a preference, though He does not force, and since He has taken the WHOLE MATTER INTO HIS OWN HANDS, having predestinated (Romans 8:29ff.), it is IMPOSSIBLE that ANY should end there, except over the dead body of Christ. In love, we seek; in faith we know that the God of the whole earth so LOVES (John 3:16), and that this cannot be supervened or undone, for His power is over all His works.

Man on earth often imprisons the innocent; but God in heaven does not SEEK to send away, but to bring near, and CAME in the PERSON of His everlasting SON to do so. The COST He paid is the measure of the intention and the intensity of God, who SO loved the world.

 

FAITH IS SINGULARLY REFRESHING

Are you still unconverted, who read this ? If so, respond to that love by the grace of God, and taking the sacrifice of Christ as your cover, join the family of God, by faith. That too, it is refreshing, and the angels in heaven itself, they rejoice greatly, for God so loves...(Luke 15:7). Here is the beauty of the internal love within the Godhead, expressed through the Son in eminently practical form, in the loyalty, resilience, illimitable pity, unbreachable power, on the cross, so that others - though maximally disqualified from such a place as those adopted, both by lacking eminence in heart and not lacking sin in heart, could be joined in this invisible and magnificent way. Though derived, created and fallen, yet are they invited to this atmosphere of unity:

• "I in them and You in Me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. Father I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have know You; and these have known that You sent Me."

Again, you come thus, and there: but you are not the ONLY one, for ALL who come, come with repentance to receive by faith what is provided in mercy by the grace of God (Luke 13:1-3). There is simply no other way, no room for boasting (Romans 3:23ff., Ephesians 2:1-10), except in the Cross of Christ (Galatians 6:14). This though some, even theologically, would minimise or even dislike it, is still the heart of the gospel which is the power of God to salvation (Romans 1:16). The ONLY SAVIOUR, this same Jesus is He who will come again as He went (Acts 1:11). Be ready, for it is now by His OWN WORD ... near, very near (Luke 21:20-28).

Remember meanwhile this: that the family of God: these are His stones built into a temple with Christ the cornerstone (I Peter 2), for the worship of God. This BODY which is His, is the fulness of Him who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:23, 2:22-23). It is EXPRESSIVE in adopted form, of the LOVE in the TRINITY, declared in the Son, made in practical matters, equally, a vehicle for transmission to the FAMILY of God, created in Him. So to be endued in such intimacy with such a Being by such a method through such a declaration, given as such a covenant in such a manner of living, and dying, and rising and coming: if the thought of this does not refresh you, is it not because you lack its object!

If you do: take Him who wa sent for just such a purpose.

If however, He IS yours, and you are His (Song of Solomon 6:3 cf. The Kingdom of Heaven ... Ch. 11), then rejoice with the enlivening beauty of the rain of grace (cf. Psalm 72:6).
 
 

EPILOGUE

DELUDED WITH SPACE,

CONFUSING SIZE WITIH SIGNIFICANCE,

THE STAGE OF MAJESTY WITH THE mAJESTY OF ITS mAKER,

DEGRADING PERSONALITY BY THE VERY VEHICLE OF VALIDIty (Romans 1:18ff.),

SKIMMING LIKE A MOSQUITO ON THE SURFACE OF SUPERFICIALITY,

WHILE OMITTING THE PRECIOUSNESS OF PROFUNDITY:

MAN IN MULTITUDES GRIMACES AT HIS STarVING, STRAYING  SUPPER OF THE

MEANINGLESS (Jeremiah 10:11, 2:13, 2:25, 35).

 

v           POLLUTING IN A PROFUSION OF BEWILDERMENT
BOTH HIS INNER AND OUTER ENVIRONMENTS,
LIKE A PSYCHIC SKULL, GRINNING AT FATE,
INSTEAD OF USING THE KEY TO THE DOOR OF REALITY,
WITH RELISH:
HE DIES IN THE PRESENCE OF LIFE, BURNING WITH THIRST, IN THE MIDST OF FOUNTAINS OF WATER (John 4:14, Jeremiah 1:31).

And  to what door is love not the key ? But to what shall love give its name - rather than rebellion - but to truth! And where is wisdom but in God (Job 28:12-28, I Cor. 1:31)! It is not in the puny approximations of manacled man, by himself estimating himself, without knowledge (II Corinthians 10:12, 11:4,14-15, Galatians 1:6ff.). It is not in the stars, mere productions of the Almighty . It is in God who has spoken His words, uttered His thought (Amos 3:7,4:11-13, Joel 2:11, Isaiah 45:19, John 1:1-14, Hebrews 1:1-3), declared His mind in the universe, His production, and in His created image, in man, care of the astute contrivances of DNA and the acute consciousness of spirit, the human psyche, now so degraded in its dance between deluded autonomy in its lordliness and impoverished pathos in its weakness, hopelessness and burning peril, and this, not from stars only, but from the black fire of everlasting darkness, death to truth, like a dismembered arm, lonely without its body and severed from its Head.

There is a door to God, who is love, while many self-trashed into the garbage can of death to truth, may long dismally for what they deny. It is only in His love that life flowers, peace prospers and spirit finds everlasting meaning.

That door is Jesus Christ. Long announced, foreshadowed since the fall of man from the living and fatherly presence of God, at the first, He having now come, is open to access.

To be sure, His cross meets you at the door; and the avenue of hope stretches beyond it, clean, reasonable and bold with integrity, understanding, validity, virtue, truth and peace. Redemption is the price He paid for all who come, by Christ covered at entry (though He has known His own from eternity - Ephesians 1:4). Relinquishment of pollution, of puff-ball psychology, of the materialism of heart that would worship 'nature' or 'self' or some other creation, rather than the Maker of man, meaning and hope, where challenge is choice, because donated as duty: these things are a cost. For pollution to be pure, there is a cost. It entails a  transformation by truth, in love that cares and a payment by Christ, already once and for all made (Hebrews 9:12-28, 10:10,14).

This cover cleanses the universe of the soul - His life for ours

• a) as a substitutionary sacrifice, to satisfy justice (Galatians 3:1-13)
• b) as a dynamic impartation to enable vitality of spirit (Romans 8)
• c) as a regenerative reality to give housing to life (Titus 3:5ff.)

and it gives the end to death, imparting to the reception of the soul, life that is eternal (I John 1:1-4, 5:12ff.).

God who has spoken in worlds and in space, in created life and in consciousness, has spoken most clearly, and definitely in His word; and most definitively in His Son, His eternal word; and what He has said is this: REPENT, and COME and BELIEVE in the ONE whom He has sent, as announced, pre-arranged and foretold, in the One who has in turn foretold what was to be, which now is (Isaiah 45:19, Hebrews 1:1-3, Luke 24:25-27 - cf. SMR Chs.  8 - 9).

Our large concert hall, the universe, and marvellous if bombed stage, this earth (bombs of Hitler and the Allies were but symbols of the curse both present and to come from which the redemption in Christ is the ONLY and MOST COSTLY answer) , cursed with man's delinquencies, are to go their way when the Maker, the Creator of all, ends this production and assesses His cast (Isaiah 51:6, II Peter 3). He has already pre-assessed His own, in Christ, for they are His, adopted and adapted, redeemed and called (Romans 8:29ff., Ephesians 1:6-11). For the rest, there is no cover (Matthew 25:33ff., 21:44, 22:11-14, 7:13,22ff.).

Producer and products then meet in what is called the judgment (Revelation 20:12ff.).

Life requires repentance (Jeremiah 2:35, Luke 13:1-3), because of pollution - "Because when they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were they thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into  an image made like corruptible man..." (from Romans 1:22ff.). Empty, spurious, insignificant and meaningless in his self-chosen nakedness, because divorced from its meaning, its Maker, man has fallen into a standing ruin, erect only in outline, defiled within.

Here is the pathos, the everlasting pity for man when, proud in pollutions, darkened in counsel, through ignorance, dead in the presence of life, a rebel in the midst of divine love (Jeremiah 2:35), a spiritual pauper amidst the unsearchable riches of Christ, he murders logic (Repent or Perish Ch. 7), as he murdered Christ.

But that is all part of the Maker's plan, this provision, the brilliant work of the Creator (I Corinthians 2:7-8, 1:24-25, Romans 1:16) who arranged death in its hatefulness, as the place of love for life, placing His Son in the path of the contempt of murderous man, as the way to the forgiveness of God (Isaiah 53:1-10). It is WHEN that Son is made a sacrifice for sin that the seed of spiritual reality is restored, and man becomes a child of God by adoption (Isaiah 53:10 cf. John 1:1-4, which echoes this in the New Testament cf. SMR pp. 727, and The Kingdom of Heaven Ch.9, p. 175ff.) . FAITH must so receive what FUNCTION has provided (Ephesians 2:1-10).

Double dissolution of all hope ? This occurs when THIS love of God, free, foretold and fulfilled, THIS Gospel, this great news from God (Isaiah 52:7, 40:1-10), is turned away,

• with the tang of confusion,
• the dignity of delusion,
• the ache of autonomy called angst -
• this becoming as  'god' to the forsaken soul (Jeremiah 2:11-13,19, 25,27-28),
• while the garbage writes its pathetic epitaph, called philosophy (Jeremiah 8:9).

It is NOT garbage by creation, but has created itself garbage by its sin^*2; it is NOT inferior by birth, but through lack of new birth; it is NOT a distinction of caste, but of contempt, for what has PRACTICAL contempt for Christ by the inaction of NOT receiving Him in faith, makes itself contemptible through this contempt of truth (John 1:1-4, 3:15-19, 33-36).

It is time, while the stage is still here, to enter the kingdom of God with repentance for wilful ignorance that produces woes, by he door of Christ (John 10:9,27-28). You do not need to manufacture your remedy; for He has come so that you should be won, clean, and pardoned; nor could you make it, since you yourself without Christ, are internally and eternally lost, in debt to justice, divorced from reality (Ephesians 4:17ff.), indeed "alienated from the life of God."

It is the Lord alone who can find you. It is He alone who should be your trust. It is HIS word which is truth. It is in His truth, that love dwells, for in truth, He is love (I John 4:7ff.). It is in Christ that peace is therefore profound so that in sublime experience and reality, it passes understanding (Philippians 4:6-7); in Him that mercy is multitudinous, for the love of God is kind (Titus 3:4ff.) and indeed, passes in its magnificent heights and splendid depths all knowledge, as the infinitude of numbers passes thought (Ephesians 3:18-19): but He is not to be found by guesswork, but by grace. He has come out of His place to show, to confirm, to seek, to pay. To His place at the headquarters of this sprawling and exceedingly spacious property, material testimony of spiritual majesty, the universe, to this you come ONLY by invitation and ONLY by the door, His definitive and eternally living word, His only begotten Son, with Him in eternity, God, Jesus Christ the Lord.

But you see, He is also the Saviour and His profound love is shown in the freedom He donates -

• liberty to return
• liberty to live
• refreshed with the personal presence of His majesty, the relish of His own sublime humility, retrieved and restored by the certainties of His everlasting redemption which makes perishing alien (John 3:16, 10:27-28), and rubbish of the philosophic odours of perennial smouldering.

To all He says: "Come to Me ... and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light" (Matthew 11:27ff.). To all He says:  "NO MAN knows the Son but the Father; nor does any man know the Father, save the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal him" - Matthew 11:27. But to whom does He come ? He came to seek and to save what was lost (Matthew 18:11, Luke 15:10, 19:42). What is found in its own unsaved and unsavoury eyes, is lost forever (John 9:39-41).
 
 

END- NOTES

*1A

The matter may be seen in a developmental manner. Thus Israel the nation was chosen to show forth the praises of the Lord (Isaiah 43:21), but their performance became so appalling in this regard, that they were deemed ‘blind’ in an exemplary way: "Who is blind but My servant!" (Isaiah 42:19). Nor is this merely a passing phase: "You observe many things, but you do not observe; his ears are open, but he does not hear…"  Indeed, in Isaiah 30 we read the categorical judgment on the nation: "For it is a rebellious people, lying children , children who will not hear the law of the LORD.." (Isaiah 30:9). Indeed, the prophet is required to write this: "Now go, write it before them on a tablet, and inscribe it in a  book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever."

That ? It is in the verse preceding the judgment: "It is a rebellious people…"!

Hence there was needed one who WOULD BE ABLE to act because HE was altogether delightful to the Lord, who would be Saviour (Isaiah 53) because He had done no violence, because there was no deceit in His mouth, because His was no case of required discipline, but perfection without blemish able to be thought of as guilty, but in fact taking the vicarious punishment of the straying Israel, even all who would believe (Isaiah 53:1, 4-6). This is made clear in terms of contrast in Isaiah 41:27-42:1,6). With all of Israel unable to produce any counsellor or deliverer from the sins which brought blindness and the rebellion which ruined them (as also in Isaiah 51:20, 52:10,13), the Lord would send His own wholly different ‘servant’ who would both BE the covenant and BE the light (Isaiah 42:6, 49:6), even to the Gentiles, though the Lord gives His glory to NONE OTHER (Isaiah 42:8).

Thus it was in the first instance Israel which was to receive the WORDS which God planted (as in Isaiah 51:16); but it did not keep them. Hence the movement (Isaiah 49:3) to this wholly pure One, to be Saviour from sin (though God ONLY is this - Isaiah 43:10), who would call the ELECT from Israel as one above them, and operative in His contradistinct power to deliver them: there being NO OTHER SAVIOUR as He says in this context. Israel is HOPELESS for even being obedient, He declares, but THIS pure servant will be EFFECTUAL even for bearing the sin of the repentant, who tremble at His word (Isaiah 66:1-4, cf. Psalm 49:7,15). While man CANNOT redeem, this God as man, will do just that!

Hence the word of God is planted (Isaiah 49:2,6) in the mouth of THIS, ‘My servant’ in contradistinction to Israel, and to mere man altogether (from whom we are to ‘cease’ - Isaiah 2:22, the race and the individual, none being able to stand before the fire of His glory, Isaiah 2:11-21): for "the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day", as He says. ONLY THUS could creation occur at all (Isaiah 51:16).

It is in the mouth of THIS walking Covenant, God inscribed as man, the eternal word made flesh (Micah 5:1-3, Isaiah 42:6, 55:4) that God puts His words, making that mouth like a sharp sword (Isaiah 49:2), hiding Him in the shadow of His hand. It is THIS EFFECTUAL SERVANT who makes the earth makeable, who makes history possible, without whom there could be no creation! (51:6,16).

Likewise it is He alone who can open the seals of history to complete it, as in Revelation 5:3-12. For creation or consummation, righteousness or realisation, He alike is the indispensable, the only God and His expression, as in Isaiah 44:6, 48:16. The affinity between Him and His Father is thus infinite, eternal, elemental (Titus 3:4, 2:13-14, Philippians 2, John 5:19ff., 17:1-3, Rev. 5, 2:8 with Isaiah 44:6). Names and functions are as of One, whether as Saviour or King; and there is no other (Isaiah 45, 44:6-7, Psalm 45), nor is the name of God attributable to any not God (Deuteronomy 32), this being the flush of magnificence and the prerogative of infinity, the King of Eternity, immiscible, majestic, illimitable.

To the Son, that Eternal life always with the Father (I John 1:1-4), is the commission given without which creation would be void, vapid, meaningless. HE would not then have planted it (Isaiah 51:16, 49:49:2); but God being God (Rev. 2:8, Isaiah 44:6), unchangeable and knowing all things, in the perfections of predestination as in the accomplishments of history, in creation as in judgment, King and King alone (Isaiah 44:6, Zechariah 4:12-13, Ezekiel 21:27, Psalm 72): He did it.

Accordingly, we are here, and need to go there, to be found (Isaiah 55:1-4), to Him who is the leader, commander and witness (Isaiah 55:4), the word of the living God, and His salvation, the very focus of faith and the cynosure of salvation (Isaiah 49:6, 53:6,10 cf. The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 9, pp. 175ff., Biblical Blessings Appendix I, pp. 216ff.).

There is no other Saviour (43:10-11), and this Messiah, He does the saving work (Isaiah 53:2-12), the certitude for creation, redemption and the whole plan of salvation. As word He speaks, as worker He does, as God He is, embraced in the eternity of aseity (Micah 5:1-3), exhibited in the beauty of majesty (Psalm 45, 72, John 1:1-14).

 

*1B
 
 This word ?  It was put into the mouth of that prototype, promulgator and perfection of Israel, the Messiah, that substitute for it in labour, that provision for it in love, that other Israel (Isaiah 49:3), hidden in the shadow of His hand, of whom He said, “You are My servant, an Israel in whom I will be glorified,” and again, “that You should be My salvation to the end of the earth,” and this: “I will give you as a covenant to the people,” constitutive in Himself of the Covenant (cf. Matthew 26:28), yes and for that matter, “as a light to the Gentiles.”

As for Israel the nation, alas (Isaiah 30),

 “Now go, write I before them on a tablet,
And note it on a scroll,
That it may be for time to come,
Forever and ever;
That this is a rebellious people,
Lying children,
Children who will not hear the law of the LORD,
Who say to the seers,
 ‘Do not see…’ ”

The number of those able to redeem it – ONE ? (Isaiah 41:27ff., 51:20ff.).

The mode of deliverance ? bearing the sin of many, being incarnate in lowly form, and having the beard pulled from the cheek, the blood drained in piercing (Isaiah 50, 52), in hideous deformity.

The status of the agent ? God as man, God in being sent with His name, from the same name (Isaiah 48:16, Psalm 45), with His unique requirement of faith in Himself (Psalm 2, Jeremiah 17), in being without sin as a sacrifice, while yet human (Proverbs 20:9, Leviticus 3:6, Malachi 1:8, II Peter 3:18), man as suffering in the form of a servant.

Qualifiers for the post ? One.

Time of the qualification ? about 30 A.D. (cf. Highway of Holiness Ch. 4).

Result of the sacrificial death ? divine resurrection (Isaiah 53:12, Psalm 16) and redemption as free ground of pardon for man (Isaiah 53, 55). Gospel for all from this ? As in Isaiah 52-55, 61. Status of the Saviour ?  God only (Isaiah 43:10-11). Status of the Servant ? Effectual Saviour (53-6-11), format, man. Findings of other options amongst all of Israel ? None (Isaiah 41:27ff., 51:20ff). Those who can perform redemption for man ? God ONLY (Psalm 49:7,15).

This then is the ‘Israel’ that counts. As the Saviour and hence God Himself; but yet by virtue of His love and humility, His saving mission, so inseparably annexed to man, Himself the representative and the glory of Israel, that He can count for believing man, while yet distinct and apart from the unbelief within that nation, that it is He, an Israel (‘prince of God’) who prevails at last. In HIM, death is swallowed up in victory (Isaiah 25:8, 28:16, 53:11-12), wiping away all tears (cf. Isaiah 40:10), and giving life to repentant people, Jew or Gentile, who believe in Him (Isaiah 53:1, 49:6, 11:10). It is He who is its commander, witness (Isaiah 55) and light (Isaiah 42:6, 49:6). It is He who is without sin or limit of His power (Isaiah 11), hence both fitting sacrifice and pure sovereign. It is He without whom, His mandate apart, there would and could have been no creation.

If God were other than He is, He would not have done what He did, nor made us as we are. Yet so grand was His design that with the end in view, the Messiah at His side, His eternal word, that He commenced at the beginning and performed the short work of His creation! Long has it endured, but in a little while, it goes (Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 24:35); and all the good that is left, is His provision and His people,  those who serve this Prince of Peace, in whose eternity there is neither war, nor sin, its ultimate cause.

Such is central to the teaching of Isaiah, concentrated at times, as in 51:16, 48:16, 52-53, 11, and at times more gently portayed (as in Isaiah 27:5, 32:20, 32:16-17, 61:10).

 

  

*1 "Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith" - I Tim. 1:5. The Greek 'sincere' is 'unfeigned' or 'unhypocritical', making clear the intense importance of being where and what you mean, meaning what you saying, and saying what you mean. God ? He means good to us, so let us take it in all meekness of spirit, and blessedness of heart.

*2

There are no 'distinguished people' in heaven, for NONE can come without FIRST being admitted and acknowledged as SAVED ONLY, ALTOGETHER AND ALWAYS BY GRACE! and by FAITH! And what pray IS that faith ? That "we were by nature the children of wrath, just as others" (Ephesians 2:3 in context 1-12). Are then children of wrath, just as others, distinguished! How can you be distinguished when your lineage is LOSTNESS, your parentage, SIN (Psalm 51:2-5, Romans 5:18-19), and your hope, HELL!

To be sure, you may thereafter (and will) conduct yourself most differently, and in GRACE God may give you such and such tasks in the hereafter (have you noticed in the reward section of the parable of the talents, that the task matched the fitness! it is functional, and all dominion and dignity of flesh is fictional - Matthew 25:14ff., John 13:14, Matthew 20:25-28).

Nor is it this: that you MAKE yourself serviceable IN ORDER to be great, for then you REJECT the REQUIREMENT that you be HUMBLE IN HEART like Christ - Matthew 11:28-30; and are merely a secret and indirect, nay perhaps even devious, seeker after DOMINION! This will not meet the requirements, for God is a Spirit, and the spirit is crucial in all things; and as He declared, GOD DESIRES those who shall worship Him IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH! Truth! how refreshing, a kingdom where THIS rules, this most beautiful, and so very much more so, when the truth is that this, our God, is love!