I wanted to post this particular paragraph because of where the Lord has had my heart for the last several months as it relates to seeking fulfillment in the world.  The bottom line is that there is none to be found, this is a bankrupt creation that has nothing more than empty promises to offer, at least in that regard.  This paragraph, at minimum, begs the question from our hearts “What to we expect from the world?”  If we truly desire to walk in the Lords way and be found in Him, what do we anticipate the the worlds reaction to be as we turn our hearts to God and necessarily turn our back to the world? We should all ask the Lord to settle the cost of being one of His sooner rather than later.          

“…Another aspect of Paul’s readiness was that he had counted the cost. This, like the former question was settled once for all. Paul had sat down and faced it out. He had weighed it all up. He had said to himself: ‘Now, I have a name for being such-and-such a man. I have a reputation, I have a position, and I have influence. I am known to have taken the line which I have taken without any reservation at all. Having taken that line in the manner that I have, I have gained a position. That position represents a great deal. I know quite well what all my friends, and all the people who, from my present standpoint, are most worth considering, think about the other line of things, of that course which lies before me now. I know what they think. I know their attitude. I know how they treat people who go that way. I know quite well that it will cost everything. It means reputation, position, influence, all gone, and, more than that, that those who are now for me, who have been on my side so strongly, will become my bitterest foes. I know that it may involve my being cast out of public life and out of domestic life. I know quite well that what they did to Jesus of Nazareth they will not hesitate to do to me, but my life goes with this.’ He had weighed it all up from every standpoint, put it all in the balances, and settled it once for all. ‘If I take this course, I have nothing to expect from this world but complete antagonism. From all my friends I have nothing to expect but the loss of all things.’ That is how Paul put it. He had settled the cost, so that later on, when things began to work out as he had anticipated, he was not stumbled in his course. He did not come to a standstill in order to go over the whole matter again. He went on. All those matters had been dealt with, and were behind him. So often we are arrested because we come up against the cost of things, the price to be paid, and we find that we are not ready for that. “I am ready to die…”; “I am ready to preach…”; “I am ready to go…”; “I am already being offered, and the last drops of my sacrifice are falling.” (That is the literal translation of the words to Timothy.) Paul pictures himself as a drink-offering being poured out for his Christ. That is abandonment to Christ. That is passion for Christ’s interests. That is the meaning of the Cross – “henceforth… unto him…” Dead to self, and all else”

“I am aware that this is nothing more than an appeal to your hearts. There is not a great deal of profound teaching here, but I feel this is what is needed: a people of this sort who really do and can say, with a true, conforming background: “The love of Christ constraineth”! No longer unto ourselves, but unto Him! “We are ambassadors… of Christ…!” Those who stay at home, and continue in business and in the home life should not be any the less ambassadors than those who go abroad. There ought to be in us the spirit of: “I am ready to preach…”, “I am ready to go…”, “I am ready to die…” ‘I am ready in this full sense of readiness, with the result that everything is held so loosely that it will not be able to keep me back from serving the Lord’s interests.’ Everything is regarded solely in the light of how it can serve the Lord, and if it cannot serve the Lord, then we have no personal interest in it. If we are obliged to be in any given thing as in this world, well and good, but our hearts are not in that for any personal interests at all. Our hearts will only have to be in it in so far as it is our duty. We will do what is our duty with all our might, but the connection must serve the interests of the Lord Jesus up to the hilt, as far as that is possible. That is the attitude toward life which is called for. It is possible that this spirit, this element, this real concern and passion for the Lord, may have dropped out of the lives of many.”

“Ambassadors are not ambassadors because they have been appointed, but because “the love of Christ constraineth”. We are not ambassadors of churches, congregations or assemblies; we are ambassadors of Christ. The Lord write this in our hearts.”

The great question then is: What does it mean that all things in this new creation are out from God? What kind of a life will such a life be? To answer that question adequately would be a very comprehensive task and the most revolutionary thing conceivable.

To begin with, we should have to be settled regarding the difference between the old and the new creations, and then as to how far-reaching that difference is. In addition, we should need to see that God has put these two creations asunder, utterly and forever, and however gracious and forbearing He may be with us in our ignorance and slowness of apprehension, He never accepts the overlapping or intertwining of the two. Then there would be the further need of an inward, intelligent judgment and power by which we are made aware of the Divine veto upon the one and energy toward the other.

There are a few things which, precisely stated, sum up this matter.

1. All things out from God means that all things, in the first place, are in God. A truism though it be, that fact is one of great significance. Whatever man may have, or think that he has, or knows, or can do in the realm of the old creation, nothing of the knowledge, ability, or power of the new creation originates with man. He has to begin as a helpless, ignorant, innocent infant. Everything for him is in God, he has nothing in himself.

2. Whatever God may impart, of wisdom, knowledge, or ability in the new creation, He never does so outright. That is to say, He never gives the resource to be held apart from Himself. He never constitutes men gods, with independent Divine resources. He never allows man to become a possessor in himself, in such a way that man of himself is something. Everything must be held in abiding dependence upon God, both for receiving and using, and nothing can be absolute. It was the violation of this law or the attempt to have it set aside, that brought ruin in the first instance. Man had all by dependence, faith, obedience, and humility. He yielded to the suggestion to have it in himself, with freedom from this law – to “be as God.” God is not leaving that door open in the new creation, and nothing that savours of man will ever get through at last. Here is the importance for life and service of a life wholly in God.

3. The larger the measure of what is of God the more utter will be the application by God of the law of dependence. This means that God will have no plenipotentiaries-at-large. The life and instrument related to God’s fullest thought will be kept on a basis of step-by-step guidance and strength. There will be no making over of plans, schemes, schedules; no seeing of the way from beginning to end; no resources to draw upon without Divine witness, or to endanger exactness as to the Divine intention; no making of men into authorities and courts-of-appeal by reason of their being a fountain of wisdom and knowledge: in a word, nothing that would infringe the law that for all things, at all times, and in all ways, “all things are out from God.”

The only certainty is God. An apostle may be led to move in a particular direction, and then by reason of need and opportunity he may conclude that certain regions are the objective, but when he reaches a point he will be met by a double, Divine “No” to those thoughts, and be shown something unthought of. (Acts 16:6-10.)

To the old creation such a life is most unsatisfactory and irregular. Yes, and in a thousand other things this life is utterly different from what man naturally wants and likes. But that does not mean that God is not more honoured, glorified, and satisfied. Let us read the New Testament with this one thought in mind, the Gospels as well as the rest, and see if it was not true in the case of Christ, the Apostles, and the teaching.

4. If this is all true, then it is its own reflection upon those other major questions. The difference between the two creations, their extent, and the Divine attitude toward them, is clearly and forcefully revealed by such issues as we have pointed out. The difference is irreconcilable and cannot be bridged. The extent reaches to mind, heart, and will. It is a matter of mentality, capacity, and the very springs of life. We are not only confronted with the fact of limitation when we come to probe the question of the old creation, but with a state with which God can have nothing to do. Even though it appear in religious form, and that in the red-hot devoutness of Saul of Tarsus, its deeper nature will be proved inimical to God.

5. There remains one thing to be referred to. In the divide between the two creations there is planted the Cross of Christ. The Cross has a death side and a life side; death to the old, life to the new. The recognition and acceptance of the Cross in this twofold meaning is God’s only way to the new creation. To the believer who receives Him by faith the Holy Spirit is given as the inward intelligent power for witnessing to the Cross against the one and for the other. Hence the immeasurably great importance of a life governed by the Holy Spirit at all points and in all things. Only that which, by the Spirit, is immediately out from God will survive or get through. All else must perish with the creation which God has placed under condemnation.

It is not what is done for God that will last, but what is done by God.

The measure of spiritual value is determined by the measure in which God promotes it, not the measure of human activities according to human judgments and energies in the name of God.

As viewed by Christ and His apostles it is no mere negative deliverance, it is rich in positive elements, the unfolding of which will demand the eternities for their field, and the infinities for their range – elements which can in no wise be shut up and exhausted within the narrow limitations of time. Who will dare to limit the possibilities enfolded in the newborn spirit? Has it not been born again for deathless and incorruptible being? and with eternal life shall there not be eternal development, and ever-growing likeness to God?

Measured by our years as children of God we ought, many of us, to be teachers; measured by our attainments we ought to be classed as spiritual defectives.

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Man only has two options for service. Man can choose to embark on a life long mission to serve himself, hopelessly laboring in an attempt to finish something that is not able to be finished, not ever. Or, he can serve God by laying down his life in exchange for the ever-ongoing revelation of what has been finished.

There is no mingling of the two for they are eternally separated from one another. The only blending for these two realities, these two worlds, these two men, is in the the vain and darkened understanding that is produced in the human heart. Allow the Lord to enlighten our hearts so that we may see the impossibility of living in or for two worlds; serving two masters. They are not separated by merely time or distance but rather the Cross of Christ and this division is finished and irreversible.

Consider a baby, new to the world, fussing over the lost “comforts” of the womb. Growing up is a process of seeing a finished work that forever disconnected two worlds. Two worlds were joined just for a few moments, but with the severing of the cord that connected them came an unchangeable and necessary division. Paul understood that this type of separation was not just required of God but actually was the pleasure of God. The proclamation of this finished work, in Christ, was pleasing to God (Gal 1:15). God is not doing anything different today. He still desires to reveal His Son in us.

Let us give the Lord liberty in our souls to free us from the bondage of self so that we may submit to His finished work and not just another one of our vain attempts to bring completion to ourselves. Christ alone is complete and He is offered to our hearts always.

We are not offering to you, the reader, another version or revision of the scripture, although we have been extremely careful to maintain the integrity of each word as to its original meaning and definition. We are offering to you what we believe to be a true verse by verse exegesis of this letter by carefully following the central theme of the letter from start to finish, which is “God hath spoken in Son” (Heb. 1:2). May you and I be open to hear what He hath said.

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The first part of the appeal, therefore, is that the people of God, and particularly those in responsibility among them, shall -

Take Heavenly Ground

The best illustration of what this means is presented to us in considerable fulness in the New Testament, and particularly in Paul’s letters. We can narrow these down to two – ‘Corinthians’ and ‘Ephesians’. One is the earthly; the other is the heavenly.

What is meant by the earthly is clear in 1 Corinthians, especially – for our present point – in the early part. Implying that it is wrong for supposedly spiritual people to be or to act so, the Apostle uses the words: “Are ye not men?” (3:4). This clearly means, as the context shows, that spiritual and heavenly people are not allowed to proceed as the rest of men do. The immediate connection (although it applies to all the other things) is that of divisions, and circles, bearing particular names and taking the character of natural preferences. This might be temperamental, doctrinal, emotional, intellectual, or ‘spiritual’(?). Whatever the causes or occasions, Paul says this behaviour is “natural” and “carnal” – it is acting as “men”. In a word, it is earthly. At best, he says, it is childish, or ‘babyish’; it does not signify any spiritual stature. Looking at Christianity today by this standard, we cannot fail to be painfully impressed with how little the Church has grown up.

But that is the negative side. When we turn to ‘Ephesians’, we find ourselves in the presence, not only of the oft-repeated words, “the heavenlies”, but of the realities and characteristics of that realm. Here is the “one body”. Here is the “unity of the Spirit”. Here is heavenly wealth, walk, warfare. Here is relatedness and inter-relatedness. The Apostle – nay, the Holy Spirit – has no restraint in giving out of the fulness, that it may lead again to the fulness of Christ. Here are the measureless dimensions of eternal thoughts, counsels, purpose, and love. Here is ascendency over disappointment, frustration, discouragement, and earthly limitations. Here is grace transcendent and triumphant. Yes, truly we are on heavenly ground here, while all those things are bitterly true down below. To be “seated together with him (Christ) in the heavenlies” is no mere ideal, fantasy, illusion, beautiful concept, or sublime teaching; it is real because of the literal counter-realities to which it is set in contrast.

This is as much the work of grace, to be apprehended by faith, as is our initial justification.

Would that the Church – believers, and their leaders – could first see it, in the way in which the prayers in this letter show that it should be seen: could then, by faith, take it: and henceforth positively and resolutely refuse to come down on to the earthly ground of Corinthian divisions, strife, pettiness, and nature!

But what is the way thither? How can it be?

This leads to the second part of our appeal: it is to -

Take the Ground of the Cross

The Corinthians knew about the Cross. They were “in Christ”, and there is no way into Christ but that of the Cross. Yes, but even so, the Apostle said that in visiting them it was his considered, resolute, and premeditated determination that he would ‘know nothing among them, save Christ, and him crucified’ (2:2). There was a knowledge of the Cross which either they did not possess, or else they were violating. In ‘Ephesians’, the death and resurrection ‘togetherness’ with Christ is foundational to all that fulness of heavenly position. In Corinth, the value of the Cross was in what it meant for them, rather than what it meant in them. There is undoubtedly a difference in these aspects, both as to position and as to results. The fuller aspect may have a deeper application to the natural life – but, again, both in one are presented to us for our apprehending by faith.

The Cross not only deals with our sins and our condemnation: it deals with all our earthliness, our natural ground, which is so fruitful in those works which bring dishonour to our Lord. We are especially thinking of this spirit which produces or ferments jealousies, rivalries, contentions, criticisms, and all that is not love.

If we would take heavenly ground and the ground of the Cross, the Holy Spirit would be able to cause the things which really do not matter to fade from their importance, and to give the Lord’s people a loving concern for all who are His, just because they are His, and not ‘ours’ in any earthly way.

First published as an Editorial in “A Witness and A Testimony” magazine, Nov-Dec 1956, Vol 34-6

The Invasion of Death

I want to try and put the meaning of that portion of Scripture into a simple, concise form of explanation. You see that its main theme is life and death. Now, the Bible teaches that death was not natural, it did not belong to the constitution of things. It was not a law which God put into man and nature, that after a certain time he and it should die. Death is not a natural law originally. It is something altogether unnatural from God’s standpoint. Death was an invasion like the invasion of an enemy, and is always regarded in the Bible as an enemy which has invaded, has no right, and ought not to be. You know that, deep down in your very being, you revolt against death. There is that which says, This is wrong, death is wrong, death ought not to be! Yes, the Bible teaches that death is an invading enemy who has got in and really should not be there; he is an intruder into God’s creation.

But the Bible just as definitely and fully reveals that there is such a thing as a deathless condition or state, a state out of which the very sting of death which is sin, has been rooted, extricated; a state free from death, a deathless life. In the New Testament, in our translation, it is so often called ‘eternal life’ – not a very complete and perfect explanation of what it is, for that phrase always conveys the idea of duration rather than kind. We come to that again. The Bible, we are saying, equally reveals a condition of deathless life which is not only continuation indefinitely but is glorious life, or a life of glory. There is no glory about death as death. You may see glory triumphing in the presence of death as in the passing of a saint triumphantly, but death itself has no glory in it. Glory is only found in deathlessness, and this deathless life of which the Bible speaks is a glorious life in its essence, in its nature; that is, it has all the power of glory and glorification in it.

There are two sides of the Bible about this matter, but we have to return for the moment to the former. God, so to speak, had to make a grave: He had to make a grave for what had been invaded by death. Graves have always signified the end of a certain order, a certain form, a certain creation. You have to say over every grave, That is the end of something and it is the end of that in which death has its root, its place, its grip. So we find that graves came in right at the beginning. Sometimes, and usually or more often, they are the graves of individuals. You have the monotonous repetition – So-and-so died and was buried; So-and-so died and was buried. But you also find very big graves into which vast multitudes were cast at one time. The flood in the days of Noah was one of God’s graves. It stands as a great type and symbol of this truth, that sin works death and death must have a grave. There must be the burying of something, the putting away forever of something.

But let us remember that death does not begin with the body, death is not first of all physical. Death is first spiritual. The bodily or physical side of it is only just the final outworking so far as our being here on this earth is concerned; it is the final stage of death’s working in us here. But death started long before that. It is firstly spiritual, and the nature of death is simply, but terribly, severance from God, a rupture in the Divine relationship. When that takes place, there is death. When we become conscious of that, we know something very, very much more terrible than physical death. Indeed, many have sought most eagerly to bring about physical death in the hope that they might quench this full consciousness of their separation from God as it has broken upon them. To become alive to the fact, which fact exists in the case of every one of us outside of Christ, to become alive to the fact that we are severed from God, are without God in our natural state and therefore without hope, is the meaning of death, and it is an awful thing.

Now, apart from an intervention of God, the whole situation is desperate and hopeless. There is nothing for it but eternal separation and somewhere becoming conscious of it, becoming conscious that that separation is a fixed thing – that is awful. A hopeless and desperate situation exists unless God intervenes. It requires God to intervene; only God can meet this situation. You know quite well that in the physical realm, with all inventions and devices, there is no power of man in existence to ultimately frustrate death. When the time for death has really come, nothing can change that. We are all compelled to bow, to surrender. It will take Almighty God in a direct intervention to change the situation and bring in hope.

God’s Intervention

Well, that brings us to the other side. God has intervened. That is the Gospel. So familiar is the word to us that it has lost its real meaning and impact and force: it is just thought to be some kind of preaching something that preachers talk about. They call it ‘the Gospel’, and it is a word despised by many. Ah, but originally it carried a different sense – God’s Spell, God’s good news, and you have to be in a desperate situation in order to appreciate good news. If we recognise how desperate the situation is, we are ready for good news. God’s Gospel is this, that He has intervened in a hopeless situation. He has Himself intervened in this very matter, this desperate state of things. God has not sent an angel, not even an archangel. He has come Himself, incarnated in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ, and so has intervened in this scene and state of desperate hopelessness.

Well, now we are keeping very close to what we read, “One died for all”. One stepped into the place that all were in. He, sinless, Who knew no sin, He in Whom there was no sting of death at all, which is sin; He over Whom death had no right or power whatsoever, He Who in His own right and prerogative of His very nature of sinlessness could not be touched, let alone holden, of death, He came into the scene, He Who knew no sin, was made sin on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21), and by His being made sin the sting of death was there, and so He suffered the death of sin in our place. He died as in our room and stead, as a sinner upon Whom were laid our transgressions, our sins. He died our death, bore judgment in our place, and the point at which He touched our state far beyond our consciousness was this, that there was given to Him in an eternal moment the awful consciousness of what death is – abandonment by God – when He cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). He entered this into the full and consummate meaning of death, and to have that for a moment is to touch eternity. In that moment, He entered into the full consciousness of separation from God. We have never had that and need never have it, thank God! That is where He went instead of us.

“…That they which live…” That clearly indicates life beyond death; that clearly indicates resurrection from the dead. Postpone the physical side of that, that is in the future. The spiritual side of this is now, resurrection from the dead now. God “raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand” (Eph. 1:20). That setting means that God placed Him, positioned Him in the sense and with the meaning that here is One installed Who is an inclusive representation of many others. He is the type, the firstborn, the firstfruits, the forerunner of many others who will and can come into that blessed position of deliverance from the power of death because of deliverance from the condemnation of sin. He is installed, He is placed, He is set as the representative One, “that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes (or in their place) died and rose again”. The intervention of God in Christ, the raising of Him from the dead and setting Him at His own right hand, has brought hope, eternal hope, into the place of that awful despair and hopelessness in which we are.

Dear friends, do recognise the infinite grace of God in this present time. God declares facts to us; He does not, He could not possibly, bring those facts home to us in any fulness whatsoever. If we were to have the fact of our condition outside of Christ brought fully home to us, we should disintegrate, we should go raving mad, something would happen, we should commit suicide, do something desperate, we could not bear it. In His mercy, God is not doing that. But He is saying that we need not know that. When He speaks of a darkness where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 13:4-7, etc.), He knows what He is talking about. There is a consciousness of hopelessness, full and complete. But that is the dark side. In His mercy, He says that that is not necessary because He has intervened to save us from it, and not only to save us from that awfulness of doom and despair, of darkness and hell, but to save us unto glory, deathless life which in its full outworking is glory for spirit and for body – a glorified body in the power of this deathless life. He has intervened to secure for us that which was the inheritance He meant us to have at the beginning, but which was lost to us through Adam’s sin, and this invasion of death. He has dealt with the whole condition, cleared it up and made possible a full realisation of all that glorious hope. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Pet. 1:3-4). “A living hope”. That is what this passage of Scripture that we have read amounts to.

But what is the practical thing between the two? There is the awful grave, and here are we, and that grave is in our path, it lies across our way; not just the grave of Mother Earth, but that awful grave, the grave which God has had to dig for a creation, the grave of that awful death, that grave which is after all spiritually only a passage through into an awakening which it is impossible to contemplate. Here we are, and in our path lies that grave, but between us and that grave stands a cross – “two arms outstretched to save, like a watchman set to guard the way from that eternal grave” – a cross on which the Prince of glory died, a cross where He, as us, suffered the consequences of sin right to their full and most awful realisation in God-forsakenness, and full consciousness of it. That cross for us – that is the Gospel.

The Need of a Declaration on our Part

But the practical point for us – it is simple, so simple that so many stumble at it, do not come to it, and the great enemy who would hold in that grasp of sin and death sets himself with all his power and his cunning to keep from that act – what is it? A declaration on our part – that is all. This is the way from death to life, this is the way from that awfulness to that glory – a declaration on our part that His death was our death, the sin laid on Him was our sin, the separation from God which He experienced was our separation from God. We were there in God’s thought and mind. When Christ died, we were there. He died in the place of all – that is God’s declaration. In that death, our sin as the very sting of death was plucked out and destroyed. In His resurrection, sinless, no longer bearing sin, sin done away, buried forever from God’s sight, in His resurrection our sins are gone. We are no longer under death because we are no longer under the penalty of sin. We stand justified in His resurrection. He lives for our justification, and in His resurrection we are accepted by God and are given by God that deathless life – “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23) we are given that deathless life and possess it, the germ of all that glory which is to be, and “though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God” (Job 19:26). Not in this flesh – in a glorified body I shall see God. The body of this humiliation shall be changed and made like unto the body of His glory (Phil. 3:21). Then it shall be said, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? …Thanks be unto God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:55,57). We make a declaration on both sides, the death side and the resurrection side, and in taking that position and expressing our faith like that, we come into the place where we are longer under condemnation but justified, no longer in death but in life, no longer in hopelessness of prospect but now in the prospect of eternal glory.

A Practical Expression

In the New Testament there is seen the way by which that declaration is made practical. It is baptism. The means does not effect the result, it does not bring it about. The means does not pass us from death to life, from despair to hope, but it is God’s given way of helping us to put our faith into a very practical expression. As we go into the water, we declare that we have passed through; that, on the one hand, we have recognised ourselves as in that doomed, judged, crucified, slain Son of Man. On the other hand, we see that One in the glory there for us, nay, He is there as us, and we shall be there with Him in due course. That is the declaration that this form of expression, baptism, holds. God always asks that we should put our faith into a practical expression. A practical expression does not save, but if the Lord has prescribed, there is something about it which carries a blessing, and we who have gone that way do know that it does carry a blessing. It is a glorious Gospel, changing despairing darkness to light, shame to glory, hopelessness to the most blessed prospect conceivable.

First published in “A Witness and A Testimony” magazine, May-June 1946, Vol 24-3