To summarise what has already
been said is to say that the Lord Jesus had in the background of
His life here among men various Divine resources, secret springs
known to Himself alone, upon which He was continually drawing for
His life and work. That may be put in this inclusive way: Christ
had His life abidingly in heaven.
Though here on earth, He was
nevertheless in a spiritual way, and in a very living way, a real
and abiding way, in heaven. We are familiar with that particular
fragment of His utterances in John 3:13:
"And no man hath ascended
into heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of
man, which is in heaven".
From the margin we learn that
some ancient authorities omit "which is in heaven". It
may be they do so quite rightly, but it in no way alters the
meaning of what the Lord said. If you leave the phrase out you
have a word which carries the force of it: "No man hath
ascended into heaven, but he that descended out of
heaven..." Surely if language means anything that means that
Christ had an ascended life. If He is drawing a contrast between
Himself and all others, the point of contrast clearly lies in
this fact of having ascended into heaven or of not having done
so. It is the implication of that statement which is so full of
meaning. Christ had His life abidingly in heaven.
Our Access to
Divine Resources
We have seen Christ as the true
spiritual fulfilment of Jacob's ladder, which was set up on the
earth, and the top of which reached into heaven. Of this the Lord
later said to Nathaniel: "Hereafter thou shalt see heaven
opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the
Son of Man". Now if the Lord Jesus is the same, in effect,
as the ladder of Jacob, then He is both in heaven and on earth.
He is on earth, and He is at the same time in heaven. In Him
heaven and earth are united, brought together, and whilst He is
here on this earth for purposes of expression and action, He is
also in heaven. The point is that His life, and all His
resources, were drawn from above. He was in touch with
inexhaustible resources, and resources which could never die,
because they were not of this earth, and could never be subject
to the touch of corruption which is characteristic of everything
on this earth. He draws contrasts from time to time, such as
this: "My peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth,
give I unto you..." The contrast lies in the fact that any
peace which the world gives is a fading peace, a peace that does
not last, a perishable peace, a corruptible peace. It is always a
doubtful thing; you never know how far it will take you or how
long it will last. But of the peace that He gives the Lord Jesus
said, "not as the world giveth, give I unto you". That
which comes from heaven is not subject to the vanity to which
this whole creation is subjected. Vanity, as that passage of
Scripture makes perfectly clear, simply means never coming to
completeness or fulfilment, always under limitation, and always
governed by what is passing and transient. That is vanity. This
whole creation has been subjected to vanity by an act of God. But
Christ does not belong to this creation, nor are His resources of
this creation. There is therefore no vanity, no vain-ness about
them.
Because of resurrection that
blessed truth may be proved by us also, and we mark that in 1
Cor. 15 the exhortation not to faint, not to lose heart, but to
be always abounding in the work of the Lord is urged upon us for
this reason, namely, "forasmuch as ye know that your labour
is not in vain in the Lord". That great statement is ushered
in with a "wherefore", and that word also links us with
what has gone before: "Death is swallowed up in victory
(victoriously). O death where is thy sting? O grave where is thy
victory?" "Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 15:54,55,57). "Wherefore...
your labour is not vain in the Lord" (verse 58). There
is no vanity in your labour because it is deathless, death is
swallowed up. On resurrection ground you are brought into touch
with the deathless resources, and Christ's resources were always
those of an indestructible and endless life. These are our
resources in risen-union with Him.
So then, to gather that up in
one word, it means that for our lives and for our service, our
ministry, our heavenly vocation, there are, in union with Christ,
resources at our disposal which are heavenly, inexhaustible, and
incorruptible. This is the great secret of strength. We have seen
something of what those resources are, and of how they operate;
of their value for spirit, soul, and body; mind, heart, and will.
Not on our own charges are we commissioned of the Lord, but He
Who commissions places His own resources behind His commissioned
and His commission.
The
Blessedness of an Inescapable Necessity
It means, then, that we also
must abide in heaven as He abode in heaven. That can be expressed
in many different words of Scripture; as for example, Walking in
the Spirit and not in the flesh; warring after the Spirit and not
after the flesh; or again, that the weapons of our warfare are
not carnal but spiritual. These are only ways of defining what it
means to abide in heaven and not to live as of the earth; to
allow no dependence on earthly means, no worldly methods, and
never to take ourselves as we are naturally as the final word.
For Christ in a very real and full way the heavens did rule, and
so it must be in our case. The rule of the heavens must decide
whether a thing shall be undertaken, and whether we can go
through. What is seen, what appears, what is felt must never be
the ground of our decisions. It is a grand thing and a source of
tremendous strength to come to the same position as that of
Christ as Man, where we know that boundless heavenly resources
are available. I think we only come there progressively, and not
all at once. We only come there by the way of discipline,
discipline which takes the form of bringing us to an utter
dependence, but which is yet not an emptying and a breaking down
as an end in itself, but one which is accompanied by that grace
of God, that graciousness of God, which, when we are empty, makes
His fulness to abound. There is a positive as well as a negative
side. God is no believer in negatives as being the ultimate goal,
but when He breaks, and when He empties, He does something on the
positive side which ever causes us to marvel, and we have to say
every time: Well, that was the Lord, not ourselves. We come
progressively by that way of discipline to know that there are
heavenly resources which far outstrip all human possibilities,
and these resources are operative. The Lord leads us so far in
making that real and manifest to us actively and then perhaps
brings us to the place where we have to take up a position upon
it, lest we begin to take it for granted.
It is possible, and perhaps
true of us sometimes, that after an experience of the Lord's
goodness in this way we sit down, so to speak, in the arm chair
and say: He will be gracious again like that! We need not bother;
we need not worry; the Lord will come in! We are quite empty, we
cannot of ourselves meet the demand; the Lord must do it! So we
become passive. If the Lord has acted thus with us, He has not
done so in order to put us aside, and He does not pick us out of
an arm chair and work through us as mere automatons! He has dealt
with us thus in order to teach us a lesson, and then He calls for
a definite exercise of faith in relation to it. So that, while
the truth holds good that it is no longer I but Christ, that is
only half of the statement. We have to bear in mind what follows:
"the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith
of the Son of God..." That is the other half of the
statement. "...I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ
liveth in me: and that life which I now live... I live in faith,
the faith which is in the Son of God..." That is the active
side of living by His life. Paul adds the latter half to
safeguard his utterance. Although we might not knowingly fall
into the error against which he was guarding, that is, we might
not fall into the formulated error, yet we might fall into the
error itself. Paul was guarding against pantheism. You know that
these Greeks were all too open to the pantheistic idea, and the
pantheists would seize upon that word, "...it is no longer I
but Christ...", and say: Well, then, it is a case of our
being merged into the great Divine, and losing our personality,
losing our identity, losing ourselves in a great All, so that any
distinctiveness of feature about us is lost to sight. Such is
pantheism. Now these Greeks might have received what Paul was
saying in the light of pantheism, and said: Oh, well, that
supports our idea. Thus Paul immediately covered his statement,
protected it, and rescued it from that false conception. "I
live by faith in the Son of God". I still retain my
identity! I still retain my personality! This life of union with
Christ is a faith union, not a merging of substance.
We might not ourselves fall
into the known error, but we might well fall into the principle
and become more or less passive, thinking it is the Lord who is
to do it all, and that we have little or no place in it. We have
a place, and that place is the definite exercise of faith in
relation to Christ and the heavenly resources.
This then is what constitutes
spirituality. This is what makes a life or service spiritual. It
is the drawing upon heavenly resources, living the life in this
way in heaven, living as out from heaven. That is spirituality.
That constitutes a spiritual life and a spiritual walk. The
resources are not drawn from self or from the world, they are all
drawn from above. The government is not that here of men or of
the world, but that which is from above. Everything is so utterly
from above, and so utterly not from man, that the life or work
becomes spiritual as a consequence. Some people seem to think
that spirituality is a kind of mystical or mythical
"something"; that spirituality is something remote from
reality, a kind of frame of mind. Well, spirituality is certainly
not a frame of mind in the first place. We speak of a calm and
heavenly frame, and there may be something of this kind as a
fruit of it, but spirituality is not a nebulous, mythical, or
abstract thing. Spirituality is the most practical thing. When
men or women are called by God into some piece of Divine
ministry, and in face of the demand are conscious to the last
degree that they have no ability, no resource, no power to fulfil
that ministry; that in themselves the thing is utterly
impossible; that for them to essay to do it would be the utmost
folly and absurdity; when in such circumstances they recognise
that they have a living Christ in Whom are resources more than
enough to meet that demand, and by faith lay hold of Him, and go
forward into the ministry with that consciousness, that is
spirituality: and that is practical, tremendously practical. The
issues prove that it is practical. It is in that way heavenly
things are done, and these are the things which cannot be shaken.
Spirituality
is not Remoteness
Christ's spirituality was not
that He was remote from what was practical in every day life. It
was that He was bringing heavenly forces and resources to bear
upon the practical matters of every day life. You can wash doors,
or clothes, or floors, or do any of these ordinary domestic
things, in spirituality. People seem to think that spiritual work
and ordinary work, household work for example, are two different
things. They talk about the spiritual work and the other work.
Now, you can bring heavenly resources in to do anything that is
legitimate, and the doing of those things may be a testimony. The
majority of people have no occasion to draw upon heavenly
resources for a platform ministry. For the most part their work
is of some regular, daily kind, and very often they feel utterly
unable for it, and they are tempted to think that if they had
some spiritual ministry to fulfil, if they had to go and take a
meeting, or speak to some souls about spiritual matters, they
could make a claim upon the Lord for help and He would carry them
through. For the trivial round and common task such a thought is
all too often wholly absent from the mind. Now, exactly the same
resources have to come into the ordinary work as into what we
call spiritual work. It has all to be done on a spiritual basis,
and therefore to be a testimony. To get through an ordinary day's
work often requires something more than ordinary human resources.
Spirituality consists in our doing everything as out from heaven.
Let us be careful how we draw a line, lest we make a distinction
between the spiritual and "the rest".
The Divine
Resources are for the Divine Purpose
Christ never took things for
granted. That is to say He never took these heavenly
resources for granted. He never allowed the thought that they
would operate mechanically, irrespective of certain conditions on
His side. His was a life of exercise in relation to them. Before
He chose His disciples He spent a night in prayer. I think we are
right in saying that the two things were in some way related. Of
the occasion He said later, "I know whom I have
chosen". That was said in connection with His having
deliberately chosen His betrayer, Judas. To do that surely
demanded Divine government, Divine help, Divine assurance, as
well as His choice of the rest. In the light of the repeated
breakdown and failure of those men, in the light of the final
scene before the Cross where they all forsook Him and fled and
everything seemed lost, did Christ make a mistake? Is there
indeed room for our remonstrance: Well, Lord, You would have done
better had You chosen a different set of men; You made a mistake
in Your men! His reply to that would be: "I know whom I have
chosen".
This choosing was governed by a
night of prayer. He evidently found prayer to be a necessity. I
do not think we are right in saying that prayer to Him was just a
case of getting away and having a quiet talk with the Father for
fellowship's sake. I think it was a necessity; I think He
required it. I think prayer was an avenue for the communication
of resources, and if so, His prayer life, rich and strong as it
was, makes it perfectly clear that He took nothing for granted as
to Divine resources. Only on certain grounds could He take His
Father's help for granted, namely, on the ground of His own
maintained exercise in relation to those resources. You and I
must be careful lest we fall into a snare in this very thing.
While these same resources are at our disposal, are ours in
Christ, and are intended to be expressed in our lives; while it
is true that the sovereignty of God secures them for us, yet
these resources will not be ministered to us irrespective of the
conditions that obtain on our side. We cannot presume upon them.
We cannot take them for granted. We cannot neglect prayer. If we
do, we shall find that the resources are not forthcoming, but
that weakness, loss, and need supervene. The Lord Jesus must be
our pattern in this matter. That, then, is a brief summary of the
question concerning His resources and ours, when joined to Him in
resurrection life.
I want to add a further word
with reference to the fact that all this lay behind the purpose
of His life. There are two things to be said in this connection.
One is that there was a secret strength for Him which lay in the
fact of a Divine purpose, a heavenly vocation. He knew that He
was on this earth for a purpose of tremendous significance, and
from the fact that He had come for a purpose, and that a purpose
was bound up with His being here, He drew a great deal of
strength. The other point is that these resources of which we
have been speaking were definitely related to the purpose, and
that the strength of those resources would have immediately
failed if He were found at any time not in the line of that
purpose. Those are two things which we want to follow out a
little more fully for a few moments. They touch us very deeply in
our own experience, in our own lives.
Firstly then,
The Strength
Derived from a Sense of Divine Purpose Marking our Lives
It is true again that as you
read the story of His time here on earth you cannot miss those
emphatic marks of Divine purpose. Go through John's Gospel, for
instance, and underline the occurrences of the word
"sent". You will first come upon the word in chapter 4
and verse 34. You pass on into chapter 5 and find it repeated
four times. In chapter 6 it is again found four times; in chapter
7 four times; in chapter 8 four times; in chapter 9 once; in
chapter 12 three times; in chapter 13 once; in chapter 14 once;
in chapter 15 once; in chapter 16 once. All these have reference
to Himself. Then there is the word "gave", and its
cognates, in such passages as John 3:16: "God so loved the
world that he gave..." There is purpose in it.
"That" governs the giving. Again, trace through the
Gospels the usage of the word "come" with reference to
His advent. "The Son of Man is come to seek and to
save that which was lost". "Come" is related to a
purpose. "I am come that they might have
life." Then His use of the word "works" provides a
further instance of this feature. "I must work the works of
him that sent me whilst it is day"; "My Father worketh
even until now and I work". He is engaged in something
specific, definite. He has come with a purpose. There is an
entire absence of what is of merely incidental value in His life,
and an equal absence of what is of merely general meaning. The
immortality of Christ is not to be thought of in mere terms of
His doing a work which others would take up after Him, and that
in the ultimate His part would be seen somewhere in the mass,
would have a place. In His case the purpose of His life was
clear-cut, unique, and He with His work will be found at the end
abiding for ever. He was not here merely to start a movement
which was to continue when He was gone and forgotten. He was not
here for an enterprise, a campaign, which others were to take up
and assume; He was here to do something with which He personally
would be associated through time and eternity. He was here
related to a definite, predestined, and undefeatable purpose,
clear-cut and rounded off.
For this cause He was called in
the book of the prophets the Servant of Jehovah. That title meant
that He would come to fulfil a purpose of God. He was the Servant
of Jehovah, the Servant of a Divine purpose, and when you come
into the realm of service in the case of the Lord Jesus, you find
everything very precise. We are familiar with the outstanding
note of Mark's Gospel, for instance. Mark's Gospel is the Gospel
of the Servant of the Lord. Without any introductory particulars
of His birth, or childhood, the Lord Jesus is there immediately
presented as a Servant. The language is precise. Precision
characterises everything in Mark's Gospel.
"Straightway," for example, occurs nineteen times. That
is the characteristic of a true servant. The Servant of the Lord
is here on business; not here to play, not here for interest, for
diversion; He is here with a purpose, and to that He is given. If
He summons into relationship with Himself it is for service -
"and straightway they left the nets and went after
Him." There is business on hand. There is the element of a
Divine purpose governing His life. From that consciousness He
drew a great deal of strength. It meant strength to Him.
There is a great deal of
strength to be drawn from the realisation that things are not
incidental, not general, but specific, with regard to our being
here on this earth; that we are related to an eternal purpose,
are called according to His purpose. Wherever we are, provided we
are there after having subjected our lives utterly to the Lord,
and definitely sought to be in His will, we are not to mark time,
not to stand and wait, but to recollect that we are there in
relation to a purpose. A great many of the Lord's people are
standing about waiting, marking time. They think that they are in
a kind of hiatus, in some place where the real thing has no
bearing upon their lives. Now, let us leave such thoughts behind
us. There is a treachery about that mentality. It may be true
that we have not yet come into our ultimate calling, but we are
in it relatively now, and we shall never come into that unless we
are making good all the possibilities that are present where we
are. This is preparatory. If the Lord were to come to us and say:
Now, look here, this present time which seems to be unmarked by
anything very special in the character of the work is
nevertheless intended by Me to fit you for a large work that I
have in store, which will develop in a certain given year, and on
the first day of that year you will move out into a tremendous
piece of work! we should begin at once to use the time between
for preparation! But God does not do that, and yet it may all the
time be true that at a given point in the Divine ordering of our
lives there should be a moving into something very important. But
He would not have us to be exercised toward Himself simply
because of a piece of work that lies ahead; He would have us to
be exercised toward Himself for His own sake. It is so easy to
get people to be very earnest, when you give them definite work
to do, but so often, apart from that, there is no personal
spiritual initiative in them which takes this attitude: Well, it
may be that God has something on hand! I do not know, but I am
going to use this time for Him, so that I shall be ready if He
should call. If we were but to take that attitude, to recognise
that in any case we are bound up with the purpose of God, and if
only we applied ourselves with all our hearts, we should find
that that purpose was already present! There is something
relative to our present position which is tremendously related to
God's purpose, and were we to take that line, that attitude, we
should derive strength from that definiteness of objective. Where
there is no vision the people go to pieces. That is but another
way of saying that if we lose, or fail to have, a sense of
purpose we lose strength.
Nothing destroys strength more
than to lose a sense of purpose. Nothing demoralises more than to
lose a sense of definiteness of purpose. If the enemy can come in
and make us feel that, after all, we have been mistaken in our
calling, in our lives, in our work; that when we thought that God
had something for us it was not really the case; it is all a
mistake, and He has no such thoughts, then the enemy has
destroyed us; we are weak; we are impotent; we are demoralised;
we are unable to stand up to anything. That is a thing which we
have to avoid. We are called according to His purpose.
Let us watch against that pernicious habit of postponing to a
"tomorrow" which never comes. Oh, it is coming! but it
does not come, and our minds are ever fixed upon a calling that
is future - Perhaps next week! Perhaps a month ahead! Perhaps two
months! Perhaps next year! We must be careful. The Devil wastes
our lives. Today is the day in which to know the Lord as much as
we can, and today's increase in our knowledge of the Lord in its
measure is our equipment for a larger ministry tomorrow. The
Lord Jesus moved day by day with such definiteness because He was
aware that there was a great purpose bound up with His life, and
no day was wasted. "I must work the works of him that sent
me while it is day..." "I work today and tomorrow, and
the third day I am perfected". His law of life was day by
day to its measure, and every day as a day bound up with the
great purpose of God. There is strength in such an attitude.
In the first book of the
Chronicles, chapter 17 we have the Lord's word to David through
the prophet with reference to what He was about to do for and
through both him and his seed. In verses 7 and 8 the Lord said:
"I took thee from the
sheepcote, from following the sheep, that thou shouldest be
prince over my people Israel: And I have been with thee
whithersoever thou wentest, and have cut off thine enemies from
before thee; and I will make thee a name, like unto the name of
the great ones that are in the earth".
Further promises follow:
"I will subdue all thine enemies"; "...the Lord
will build thee an house"; "I will set up thy seed
after thee"; "I will be his Father"; "I will
not turn my mercy from him". The Lord has come in with the
assurance of a purpose in David's life. He has shown David that a
Divine purpose has governed his life throughout; that God is
bound up with it and related to it. Then we mark also how chapter
18 is closely related to chapter 17:1-2. And now David is
on his feet, with tremendous energy. What has happened? The sense
of Divine purpose marking his life has come to him, and in
consequence he is a strong man. All these enemies existed before,
but they were unbroken, undestroyed. Immediately David became
conscious that his life was no mere casual thing, but that it was
bound up with God's sovereign purpose, he was a man full of
strength to do battle. There is a tremendous strength derived
from a sense of purpose in life, Divine purpose. The Lord Himself
drew strength from that.
With regard to our union with
Christ risen we have much to assure us of a Purpose, and that we
are bound up with it. "As the Father hath sent me... even so
I send you". Here again is the word "sent". It
would take us far too long to gather up all the evidence we have
that everyone who is livingly related to the risen Lord is
brought into an eternal purpose though it be by different ways,
in different spheres, along different lines. Oh, if the Lord
would bring us to the place where we realise that we are not just
to live our life in a general sense as Christians, and then go to
be with the Lord in glory, but that there is tremendous purpose
bound up with it. There is a mystery in the purpose. We cannot
always understand how the Lord achieves His purpose, but somehow
He does so in these lives of ours. That is the fact of purpose.
Effectual
Service the Fruit of Spiritual Resources
The other thing is that the
service was the fruit of spiritual resources. That is to say, it
was not merely official. It was official; Christ was chosen and
appointed for a work. In that sense He was elected; He held an
office, and in it He was fulfilling a special end as appointed,
ordained by God; His particular work no one else could do. But it
was not merely official, or only official. He did not fulfil it
simply because He was One set apart to do that work, and that was
all that there was to it. Although He was the chosen and
appointed Servant of Jehovah, His service was also the result of
spiritual resources and not merely of official appointment. The
two go together, but they must be kept together. The one cannot
obtain without the other. What was official never went beyond the
spiritual. It could not. The Lord Jesus could never have
fulfilled His purpose, His office, but for the spiritual
resources. That is just where the disciples in their ignorance
were in danger.
We recall the occasion when the Lord was in the
mount and a man brought his child in a grievous state. The Devil
had a good foothold in his life. The man first brought his child
to those disciples who were left at the foot of the mount, and
they attempted to cast out the demon. The narrative implies that
they made an attempt, and failed. When the Lord was come down the
man brought the child to Him and said: "Master, I have
brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit... and I spake
to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could
not." And when they were alone, the disciples said to Him,
"Lord, why could we not cast him out?" Evidently they
had tried and failed. The Lord says in reply: "This kind
goeth not out but by prayer and fasting". Had they attempted
it, then, as officials? They were disciples; the man had
recognised them as Christ's disciples. They were in the official
position related to Christ and so on the official basis they had
attempted to do it, not recognising that the office must be
accompanied by the resource, the spiritual resource. No office
can be fulfilled, even in relation to Christ except on the basis
of an accompanying spiritual resource. The office must not get
ahead of the spiritual power. If it does it will break down. The
office is never a mechanical thing. You may be chosen before the
foundation of the world; you may be elected; you may have been
marked out from eternity for a special work; the sovereignty of
God may single you from the multitudes of earth for a purpose,
but you will never fulfil it except on the ground that there is
the accompanying spiritual resource; not mechanically, but
governed by a relationship with heaven. There is always the
difference drawn in the Word of God between vital faculty and
vital force.
The Relation
of Grace and Gifts
With that we will draw to a
close. We will just refer to two passages of Scripture: Ephes.
4:7: "But unto each one of us was the grace given according
to the measure of the gift of Christ".
Note what that means, "the
gift of Christ"! "When he ascended up on high he led
captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men". The gift of
Christ! Grace according to the gift!
Romans 12:6: "And having
gifts differing according to the grace that was given to
us..." Grace according to the gift! Gifts according to the
grace! Grace given by the gift, that is one side. The other side
is the gift given by grace. There is a Divine gift in sovereignty
through the members. It may be one of the gifts mentioned in
Romans 12, or it may be some other gift for helping, for
administration. God has made you a gift to the Church. If He has
gifted you to the Church (in office that is) as an apostle, the
office is that of an apostle; if as a prophet, your office is
that of a prophet. If God has given you to the Church as a gift,
you cannot fulfil your office except in so far as the grace comes
up to the measure of the gift. That is to say, the vital force
must be according to the vital function. It may be, and it should
be. But so often when men have thought they were apostles, or
evangelists, pastors or teachers, they have viewed the matter in
this way: I am an evangelist, I am a pastor, I am a teacher; God
has made me that, that is my gift! and they have tried to fulfil
their function simply because it was the gift, and were resting
upon the gift rather than upon the grace. It is a very dangerous
thing to become an official, and not to keep the vital force, the
grace, in proportion to the office. That is what has made
professional ministry. To express it again the other way, the
gift is according to grace.
How can we best illustrate the
point? The import of the matter is that the two things have to be
kept together in equal measure, gift and grace, or gift and
function. If you divorce them, or if you over-rate one of them,
there is either a complete nullifying of any fruitful result, or
else the loss of balance, and the whole thing becomes lopsided.
For instance, supposing you build an electrical station, and you
put in your dynamos, your generating plant, and set it going
close by a city. You generate tremendous electrical power,
capable of lighting the whole of that city and driving all its
machinery, supplying that whole city with lighting, and yet you
have no wires, and no lamps, and no switches. What is the good of
it? You have vital force without vital function; a tremendous
amount of power, but unrelated power. Or suppose you go round the
city, wiring, with splendid insulated wire, and fixing switches,
and yet have no generating station, and you attempt to switch on.
What happens? There is no result. This is the opposite case; you
have the office without the power. To make good you must needs
have both. And if you overload your wiring and your lamps with
power you are going to meet with disaster. The gift has to be
adjusted to the grace, to be according to the grace. If you
divorce the two you have nothing at all.
That may be a poor
illustration, and it may only serve to help us a little, but we
must remember that God's resource is according to the purpose to
which He has called us. We shall not receive more than that. If
we stretch ourselves beyond our measure the vital force will not
come through. If we try to step into something for which God has
never chosen us we shall lack in resource. If we try to take on
something more than the apportioned gift that is particularly
ours it will be disastrous. It is God who has appointed,
adjusted, and arranged the Body. We can never take it upon
ourselves to say what work we shall do for the Lord. It is a most
disastrous thing when people decide for themselves how they are
going to work for the Lord, and what kind of work they will do.
It is a terrible thing for a man to try to fulfil a teaching
ministry when God has appointed him to be an evangelist. It is a
disastrous thing. We use that by way of illustration. God has
sovereignly decided what our work shall be, what our gift is to
the Church, and we have to function in that position and keep
there, and not stretch ourselves beyond our measure. If we do,
the power will not follow. Many take up more than the Lord
intended them to, and they break down. To express it in the other
way, if the Lord has called us to a work, then His resources are
available right up to the fulness of that calling. The
supply is there according to the gift, the grace according to the
gift, the vital force according to the vital function. It is all
there. Blessed be God, that is true. If the Lord calls, then His
resources are available for that calling right up to the hilt.
But we must be careful that we do not of ourselves manufacture
the calling or the appointing.
That is where our union with
the risen Lord is of such account. We are to be governed by life,
through union with the risen Lord. It may be that some things are
not quite clear to you, and you cannot follow. Well, ask the Lord
to enable you to understand. Our point is that these resources,
these heavenly resources, are related to a Divine purpose. The
resources will be forthcoming as we enter into the purpose, keep
within our measure, and draw upon them. They are there for the
purpose of God. There is strength to be derived from the
resources for the purpose, and there is strength to be derived
from the fact of the purpose itself.
The Lord instruct us, and teach
us still further in the way of life.