In this
concluding chapter we shall make little further reference to
Isaiah's prophecies. We shall seek first of all to sum up, or
review, the whole matter that we have been considering, and then
to present a few additional thoughts arising out of the letters
to the Ephesians and Colossians.
I would like
you to draw a mental picture. Imagine, first of all, the Letter
to the Romans laid down as a background, and then, super-imposed
upon it, a figure of the Cross. We have seen that the letter to
the Romans sets forth the Cross as God's instrument for clearing
the ground for His building, providing the place for the
foundation of that great building which has ever been in His
thought and His intention - the Church.
Romans
The Letter
to the Romans finds the ground covered at the beginning with very
much upon which God will not build - upon which He cannot build.
As God surveys the human scene, with a view to laying the
foundation for His Church, His glorious Church, He finds a
condition of things so tangled, so evil, so false and so wrong,
that He says: 'I cannot lay My foundation on that; we must clear
that all out of the way. We must set fire to it, consume it, and
make a great clearing for this foundation.' And so, in the Letter
to the Romans, the Cross is brought in and set forth as that
which, on the one side, disposes of that whole state of things.
And what a state it is! What a terrible condition is presented,
in the early chapters of that letter! The Cross is placed there
to deal with it all, to get rid of it all, to consume it all. It
is like the great brazen altar with its consuming fire, bringing
everything to judgment, and leaving nothing but a clearing, an
emptiness, a barrenness.
But then on
the other side, God having laid His foundation, with the
remaining chapters of that Letter a new prospect comes into view.
Everything now is possible for God. We found in chapter 8 so much
said about God's eternal counsels and foreknowledge, His
wonderful thoughts and conceptions in election, in
predestination, in adoption, in conformity to the image of His
Son, the creation redeemed from corruption; the children of God
delivered from bondage. Everything now seems to have come in for
realisation, since the Cross has cleared the way.
That, then,
is the first thing in the mental picture that I am asking you to
draw: the Cross, as God's means for securing the foundation for
everything else.
1 Corinthians
Now, from
that Cross you draw radiating lines. The first line reaches to the
First Letter to the Corinthians. Here the Cross is applied - not
now to conditions in the world, not to those outside of
Christ - but to conditions amongst believers that do not tally with
the Cross. The Apostle brings the meaning of the Cross to bear
upon the natural man, the carnal man, and all his works, upon all
that has resulted from his presence amongst the Lord's people - the
divisions, and all the rest of that horrible situation in the
Church that is described in the First Letter. He says: 'When I
came to you, I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus
Christ and Him crucified' (1 Cor. 2:1,2). So the first
'radiation' from Romans is to all conditions inside the church
that are not in agreement with the meaning of the Cross. God
cannot get on with building until those things are dealt with.
We find the
Apostle telling the Corinthians in that First Letter that the
foundation is already laid: 'I laid the foundation, as a wise
masterbuilder, and others build thereon; but let every man take
heed what he builds thereon' (1 Cor. 3:10). The things that we
find in that letter, as we have pointed out, are the things to
which God says: 'No, you must not put those on My foundation. My
foundation is worthy of something better than that. We cannot
have those things in our clearing - they will only clutter
everything up once more and make it necessary for us to go
through the whole business of consuming all over again. Because
every man's work which is not according to the Cross is going up
in flames and smoke - there will be nothing left.'
That, then,
is the first outreach of the Cross as from Romans, to touch
conditions amongst the Lord's people which are not in accordance
with what God means by the Cross. God says 'No' to all that. 'I
am not going to use that on My foundation; I am not going to
build with that. You get rid of that, and then we will get on
with the building.' As we saw in a previous chapter, those things
were dealt with by the Corinthians themselves. The fire did burn
among them - the fire of repentance, the fire of self-judgment,
the fire of clearing, the fire of brokenness of heart (2 Cor.
7:11). Something happened, and they dealt with those things.
2 Corinthians
The second
radiating line leads to the Second Letter to the Corinthians.
Here you have the great restoration of testimony in the church in
Corinth - in the location, in the city and in the world. The
testimony that had been marred and spoiled can now be recovered.
When God finds that state of heart, that state of spirit -
broken, humble, contrite, very low before Him, 'trembling at His
word' (Is. 66:2) - He can get on with things in relation to
testimony in the world. That is, He can now build. When He has
that, then things begin to happen outwardly - it does not require
a great effort, they just do happen - because here is the
expression of the mighty dynamic power of God in the midst.
The Apostle
says in that letter: "It is God, that said, Light shall
shine out of darkness" (or, 'Let light be', in the first
creation), "who shined in our hearts, to give the light of
the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6). A few verses previously he says: "We...
beholding... the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same
image from glory to glory" (3:18). That is the testimony:
when things inwardly have been dealt with, the outshining is
quite spontaneous. It is just the result of a deep, very quiet
work of God. When God spoke into the first chaos His fiat: 'Let
light be!', I do not think that there was a very great noise
about it. There never needs to be a great noise when God puts
forth His power. There is the 'hiding of His power', to use
Habakkuk's phrase (Hab. 3:4). But that is not the minimising of
His power. God only needs to speak, and immense things can
happen. He only said: 'Let light be!' - but look at the force and
power of light in this creation. How terrific is the light! - and
just from a word. It is symbolic.
But here at
Corinth, the light shines out when God has right conditions; and
that is how it will be. There need not be the great noise of
publicity, of advertisement, of organization, of tremendous
excitement and feverish activity. If the testimony is there,
people will know it, people will feel it. If the conditions are
right, something will happen. And if there is nothing happening,
then we had better look to our conditions.
Galatians
The third
line radiating from the Cross, as we saw in our last chapter,
takes us to the Letter to the Galatians, where we are shown the
resultant life in the Spirit. The Cross produces a life in the
Spirit: it brings about a true, spiritual Christianity, as
distinct from a merely professional, formal or ritualistic kind
of Christianity that is all on the outside. This mighty thing, a
true spiritual Christianity - a life in the Spirit: how real, how
effective it is! That is what we reach when we come to the Letter
to the Galatians. It says that the Cross works out in a life in
the Spirit, and that true Christianity is a spiritual thing.
'Ephesians' and 'Colossians'
With that
brief resumé of what has gone before, we now turn to a few
additional thoughts from the twin letters, 'To the Ephesians'
(so-called), and 'To the Colossians'. It is quite evident that
they are twin letters: you cannot read them without finding that
you are covering very largely the same ground, only with a
distinctive emphasis in each. And in them you come to some
tremendous things.
Notice,
first of all, that in these letters, as in all the others, the
Cross is the foundation. In Ephesians, we are told that 'we who
were dead in trespasses and sins were quickened and raised
together with Him' (2:1,5,6): the Cross is there. In the Letter
to the Colossians, we read of "...the putting off of the
body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ; having been
buried with him in baptism" (2:11,12) - here you have the
Cross again. The Cross is basic, that is the point. It is the
foundation carried over from Romans.
Then, when
you recognise that, you come upon what I think we may say are the
two greatest things that have ever been disclosed by God. They
are such wonderful things that, if we really see them, not as in
the Bible to be read, but as a reality in the heart, something is
bound to happen to us.
Have you
ever come upon something in the Word of God which has just
overwhelmed you, carried you away? Perhaps I can illustrate this
by a humorous little incident that occurred during ministry in
the Far East. I was speaking in a meeting one day - of course by
interpretation - when suddenly the dear brother at my side, who
was interpreting for me into Chinese, went off into fits of
uncontrollable laughter! There he was - he just could not stop
laughing: and then the people caught it, and went off into
laughter likewise! Well, this dear brother could not get back; he
tried and struggled, but the more he struggled, the more he
seemed to lose his control. I was not conscious of having said
anything extraordinary - at least; nothing that would occasion
such mirth. I had to wait, and wonder what it was all about -
wondering what on earth I had said to cause this. And even a
little later on, when he had recovered somewhat, and we had got
away from that, the thing came back to him, and off he went
again; and this happened more than once.
So
afterward, when I had got him alone, I said: 'Look here, brother,
what ever did I say? what did I say to cause you to go off like
that, and all the people too? Did I say something so outrageous,
so terribly funny to you?' He said: 'No, brother, no, nothing
like that. It was just something we had never seen before, that
is all, we had never seen that before!'
The point is
this: it is possible to see something in the Word of God which
carries you right away - it is so absolutely fresh, so new! The
Lord deliver us from becoming so familiar with it all that it
never provokes anything, it never stirs anything in us. It ought
to be with us as it was with those dear Chinese friends. But that
is by the way. When we come to these letters, if we have our eyes
really opened, we come to things that are calculated to take our
breath away, really to carry us right out of ourselves: for they
are very wonderful things indeed. Perhaps when I mention them
they will be so familiar that they will not stir you at all; but
I cannot at any time reflect upon them without being tremendously
moved. The language of them is indeed familiar, but may the Lord
bring home to us something of the real impact and meaning of
these words again. Let us, then, see what is the key to and the
sum of this letter, that is called the Letter to the Ephesians.
Ephesians: "All Things in
Christ"
Amidst all
the wonderful fulness which is in this letter - and it is a very
full letter indeed; almost every clause carries us out of our
depth - there is a small fragment, which gathers the whole of the
letter into itself; which really reveals what it is all about,
what it all means. It is always very helpful to be able to get
hold of something like that which contains everything. Here it
is: "...the mystery of his will... which he purposed in
him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up
all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things
upon the earth; in him, I say..." (1:9,10). "To
sum up all things in Christ". That phrase 'sum up' does not
perhaps fully convey what the Apostle really meant and was
saying. It goes as far as it can, but it might be better to say:
'to gather together (or better still: to subsume) all things in
Christ'.
Human Disintegration
When sin
came in through Adam, a great process of disintegration
commenced. First of all, it began in the man himself: the man was
no longer a single entity, he was a divided personality. And
every child and son of Adam is a divided personality; there is
civil war in his very nature, in his very constitution. He is a
divided man, a man who is in conflict within himself. Is not that
true of all of us? We know enough about ourselves to know that
there is nothing in our natures, our make-up, our constitution,
that speaks of complete harmony. There is war within us - war in
our make-up; war in our temperament; war in our whole
constitution. We are broken; we are divided; we are
dis-integrated. That happened in the man himself.
And then it
happened between the first two - the only two - the man and his
wife. You can discern the elements of disintegration and
disruption between them: the man starts blaming the woman, and
that is the beginning of a domestic schism. There had been a
wonderful unity and harmony; they were "one flesh", it
says (Gen. 2:24), but now something has come in, and they are no
longer like that. When they were driven out of the garden, they
were no doubt blaming each other, saying, 'This is all your
fault!' We are familiar with that sort of thing - recriminations
and so on. Division has come between them; there is a strain in
life.
And then
what of the family which came through them? Here you have Cain
and Abel, the first children, involved in schism, division,
disintegration, even to the point of murder. And out from the
family, the thing spread to the race, until there ensued the
great scattering, the dividing up of the race into its many, many
parts, with all its diversity of languages, as we have it today.
The whole race is broken to pieces, in a condition of utter
disharmony. You pursue that through, and, before you are out of
the Old Testament, you find the whole race divided into two
irreconcilable sections, Jew and Gentile, hating each other with
bitter hatred. The Jew will have nothing to do with the Gentile,
calls the Gentiles 'dogs' - unclean things - and will have
nothing to do with them. And the Gentile nations react against
the Jews, as we know they have done all along and continue to do
today. The present state of the human race is one of brokenness,
scatteredness, discord and hatred, quarrels and strife and
conflict and war. From centre to circumference it is all in
pieces, and all the pieces are against one another. There is no
harmony, no unity and no integration in the human race.
God's Secret
But God had
a secret. He knew all about that, He knew what would happen; He
knew what would come; and He devised His own way of meeting it.
He had a secret in His own heart as to how He would solve this
terrible problem. This secret is what Paul, in this and other
letters, calls 'the mystery'. How would God do it? He would 'sum
up', He would 'gather together all things in Christ'. He would
make His Son the integrating Centre and Sphere of a new creation,
in which all these diversities and conflicts would never again be
found. That is the sum of this Letter to the Ephesians - to
'gather together all things in Christ'. I say, surely that is
something to send a thrill through us, however often we may have
heard it before.
And so, in
that connection, three things come into view.
First of
all, the Cross of Christ. You notice here that Paul says: 'the
enmity was slain' (2:16). We have many conceptions and teachings
on the Cross, but here is one wonderful thing, that in the Cross
this enmity was taken hold of and destroyed. Where there is a
true work of the Cross in any of us, that kind of national, or
international, or personal, or social, or even Christian division
ceases. The Cross is the instrument for dealing with all that -
and it will deal with it. If the Cross really gets down to the
depths of our being, the whole situation, both in ourselves and
between ourselves and others, will change. The Cross does
something, so that we no longer meet one another on natural
ground at all. We meet one another on heavenly ground, on
spiritual ground, on the ground of Christ.
Secondly,
Christ Himself is the focal centre and sphere of that. We meet
'in Christ' - that is the great word: "to sum up all things
in Christ". notice how often that little phrase 'in Christ'
occurs: everything is 'in Christ'. He is the centre and sphere of
this wonderful new integration. "In one Spirit", says
the Apostle, "were we all baptized into one body" (1
Cor. 12:13).
Thirdly, as
clearly emerges from this letter, the Church is the vessel of all
this. God's secret was not only that His Son would be the focal
centre, but that the Church should be the vessel in which this
unity should be displayed. What a tragedy that it is not more so!
And yet, as I have said, where you get a true expression of the
Church, this is what you find - that these disintegrating things
are outside and the mighty integration of Divine love is within.
You get a real testimony to the Body of Christ.
We are so
familiar, of course, with the phrases and terminology. But it is
a most wonderful thing to realise that, in the fulness of the
times (we have not yet reached the 'fulness of the times', but I
think we are getting very near to it), God purposes to gather
together - not geographically and physically, but into one
glorious unity of spirit - all things in Christ. God has
determined to do that, and it will be a wonderful day when that
purpose is realised.
'Slaying the
enmity by the Cross' (2:16). Dear brother, dear sister, do give
heed to this. If there is any enmity between you and another
brother or sister in Christ, that is a denial of the Cross; it is
a denial of Christ, and it is a denial of the Church. That is
very solemn. Have you any enmity with another brother? or another
sister? It says here that in the Cross enmity was destroyed! Where
is the Cross - where is Christ - where is the Spirit - where is
the Church - if there is still present that which the Cross is
supposed to have - yes, and in reality did - put away?
It has no place here.
In the great
prayer that Paul prays in the third chapter (vv. 14-19), he says:
"I bow my knees unto the Father..." Then
we are a family! There you have the heart of things. And what
is the chief characteristic of a true fatherhood and a true
family? It is what Paul says here - it is love. Listen to what he
says: "...that Christ may dwell in your hearts through
faith; to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may
be strong to apprehend with ALL the saints" - note that
- "strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the
breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of
Christ which passeth knowledge..." There is a
love in such dimensions that can do this thing, that can achieve
this end of gathering together all the brokenness in Christ. It
is only going to be done by that mighty, mighty love, with its
breadth and its length and its height and its depth. That love is
great enough to do it; but you and I have got to be strong, with
all saints, to apprehend it. Apprehend that love, and God
gets His end.
Colossians: The 'Fulness' Restored
We can only
look briefly at the second of these 'twin letters' - the Letter
to the Colossians. What is the great word, or statement, in that
letter? It is this: "It was the good pleasure of the
Father that in him should all the fulness dwell" (1:19);
"and in him ye are made full" (2:10). What
has happened?
First of
all, at the beginning of the creation, the great Potter created,
moulded, fashioned, shaped, so to speak a beautiful vessel. And
as He stood back and looked at it, He said: 'It is very good.'
And He filled that vessel with His fulness - what fulness He
filled into the vessel of this creation! How full is the vessel
of this creation, even now in its present condition - how full of
the beauty and glory of God! But at the beginning it was filled
with unsullied beauty and glory. And then, a great enemy came in
and struck a blow at that vessel and shattered it to pieces: all
that Divine, spiritual fulness leaked away - it has gone; and in
its place you find, by comparison with what once was, only
desolation and emptiness.
Now the
Great Potter comes back, to 'make it again another vessel' as it
pleases Him to make it (Jer. 18:4). Here is the vessel - the
Church. This is the vessel of the Lord: a beautiful vessel,
"a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such
thing" (Eph. 5:27). As He looks at it according to His own
thought and His own ideal, pondering all that He intends and all
that He will realise through it, He says - 'A glorious Church! It
is very good.' And in this Letter to the Colossians we see the
re-made vessel now filled again with all the fulness. The vessel
is mended, all the fragments are gathered together; you cannot
trace the cracks and the joins; this Church as He has it here is
once again a beautiful whole; and now He fills it again with all
His fulness. "That ye may be filled unto all the fulness of
God" (Eph. 3:19), is the prayer of the Apostle. "In him
dwelleth all the fulness... and in him ye are made full"
(Col. 2:9,10). That is how it is to be.
One thing
that must be underlined is this: that, while this is a process
which God is seeking to work out, an end to which He is
labouring, we must remember that the achievement of this great
and glorious thing - this 'gathering together' again of all
things in Christ, this filling of that 'gathered together' vessel
with all His fulness - requires, and must have, a continuous work
of the Cross. That is the challenge of all that we have been
seeing in the foregoing pages: the challenge of the Cross in
everything, in relation to the great purpose of God. This
re-integration, if the Lord is allowed to have His way, will be
effected by means of the Cross. If there is anything contrary to
integration, to oneness, it will always be traceable to something
which has withstood, or is withstanding, the work of the Cross.
That applies in our own lives, and it applies in our assemblies,
our fellowships, our companies. If there is something that still
represents disintegration, dividedness, schism, if things are
broken, are not one entity, not one whole, it can be traced to a
failure to allow the Cross to do its work in some direction or
other. That is the inclusive, and the only, explanation. If the
Cross really does its work, this integration will spontaneously
result.
The way of
unity is not the way of patching things up from the outside - the
way of unity is the work of the Cross in the life. When the
Church really allows the Cross to get to work in its very
constitution, the problem of division is solved. And if there is
spiritual poverty, if there is scarcity, if there is limitation
in our spiritual resources, and we are not knowing this fulness,
it is for the same reason. If the Cross works, you find that the
measure increases, quite spontaneously: it always does so, when
you get things out of the way that are contrary to Christ.
Conclusion
And so we
finish where we began. "To whom is the arm of the Lord
revealed?" If we have any interest in, or concern for,
knowing God with us and for us in power, in support, in
protection, in deliverance, in succour, this is the way. The
answer to that question in Isaiah 53 is found in that same
chapter: it is revealed to this One who goes to the
Cross, who suffers the Cross; to the One who lets go all in the
Cross; who goes down into shame and dishonour in the Cross; who
loses all His own in the Cross: to Him the arm of the Lord is
revealed. And it is revealed to all those who go that way with
Him. History is the great proof of it. Throughout history, God's
arm has been, and ever will be, bared for His Son, and for all
those who are with His Son as crucified men and women - crucified
churches - a crucified Church.
There is a
passage of which we are all very fond: "The eyes of the Lord
run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong
in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him" (2
Chron. 16:9). The Cross is the instrument for testing whether our
hearts are perfect toward the Lord, or whether we have personal
interests, or worldly interests, or divided interests in any way.
That word 'perfect' means 'complete' or, 'whole': the Lord will
show Himself mighty on behalf of him whose heart is complete
toward Him. And where could we find a greater embodiment of one
whose heart was completely, wholly for God, than in the Lord
Jesus on that Cross?