EN 32:24-32{THERE are three things, beloved friends, that I have before my mind to say a little upon to you now. One of these is: What does grace make us? what is Christianity? It is very elementary, you may say; but I feel it very important in these days to go back to elementary things to see if we are what we know we are-to find out whether we are in our practice up to our intelligence. It is a sad state of things when the intelligence 'gets beyond the heart. Those whose hearts are beyond their intelligence are the ones God instructs; and, in every ease in Scripture, the ones the Lord uses are those whose hearts are beyond their intelligence. Therefore, though without doubt intelligence is a good thing, yet it is the heart God looks at.
The three things I wish to speak a little on are: First—What Christianity is; Second -What we are coming to-what is the consummation of things; and Third-What is the Lord's thought about us at this present moment. What grace has made us, is the first thing.
If I look at the Lord's walk on earth, everything He did was to consummate the will of God; and He did it. And now what is He thinking of? Not my standing, or state before God, for that has been accomplished by His work in the cross. It is my state here He is thinking of. You may say, But we have to learn our standing first; and I answer, Yes: of course you cannot be in a state in keeping with your standing, without knowing what that standing is; so before we come to this point I will ask you to go over with me a little what Christianity really is.
To put it in the plainest way. When Christ was here upon earth, it was heaven that He was thinking of; now that He is in heaven, it is earth He is thinking of. There are two parts in Christianity—two experiences; and you get them both in the parable of the prodigal son. The first is, that I am cleared of everything that stood between me and God by the blood of Christ. There is no such thing as God imputing sin to you any more. I admit there is often weakness in the heart as to this, but the fact is God does not impute sin any more. But, says one, I know I do sin.-I know you do and will, but you must not lose sight of the fact that God says: " Your sins and your iniquities will I remember no more." This is the first experience in Christianity. I know that in the heart of God there is no remembrance of my sins.
Then when you do sin, what do you do? I go into the light, and the light finds it all out. I remember its being pointed out to me once in a show-room, that silver, when placed in 'a full blaze of light, any tarnish there might have been on it was no longer visible so when the soul is brought into the light, all the tarnish upon it is judged, and put away. And this is repentance. Repentance is my putting the flesh that did the crime into the same place in which God put it, that the body of sin might be destroyed, and He has never taken it from thence. I take it away, alas! And repentance is when I go and put it back again there where He put it. The effect of the light is to make me do this. But when a man goes on moping—(I must use plain words), talks of how he falls into this and that failure, why he does not get into the light at all. Such a one spoils the prayer-meetings and the worship-meetings; and all because he will not go into the light. The light would say, I cannot have this tarnish. The light makes manifest the evil, and, having discovered it, it frees me from it. It brings me, by the power of the Holy Ghost, the ashes of the red heifer-the water of purification.
I say to a person, Have you really got into the presence of God about this failure?-He says to me, I am afraid to.—And I do not wonder at it; I really do not object to the reluctance, for I know how many souls have not got quite clear as to this experience. But there is not a single thing in the heart of God against me. God says, I do net remember them, and therefore " if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." What language that is! Has God cleansed me? Where then is the tarnish? But, you say, I have done them.—Yes, He says; and if you come near me, I will take care that 'you shall get rid of them. " Having therefore boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh "... I do not go on to the rest yet, because it leads to the second experience I spoke of.
I want you just to get down to the lowest point, and I say, Have you really learned the efficacy of that blood in the sight of God? Have you learned that He says, " When I see the blood I will pass over you "? I go to a Pagan and I say, What do you bow under that wheel for?- To appease the Almighty.—All right, I say; but the question is, Can you appease Him? You cannot. I do not object to the word " appease." I think that conscience must have got into a very low state that does not know that God needs appeasing. And, when he acknowledges it, then I preach to him Jesus; I tell him that God has sent His Son-that God is love; that when the sinner could not meet God in righteousness, then God said I will meet the difficulty myself. And what is the effect of this upon my soul? I see that God has done it; that He has set aside that which caused the distance between Him and me, and has removed it according to the sense that He Himself had of it; and, if He does it, I say, He must be perfectly satisfied. A soul that has once got hold of it can never lose the fact that God has thus come forth according to His own sense of what was wanted, and given His Son to pay the ransom-the only One who could pay it; the One " whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood."
I do not know what was needed to satisfy God; not a sinner or a saint upon earth ever knew what God required. None ever knew but that one Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, and He answered. to it. These two things prove Him to be the Son of God: First-That He knew the measure of my iniquity; Second-That He knew the love of God. How could you measure God's thoughts of your offense? My answer, to an infidel was: " What value would you set upon your dog's opinion of you? How, then, could you form the slightest conception of God? You cannot even measure the great animals of His creation." God brings before Job animate and inanimate creation, just to prove this to him.
But God is love, and He says: I do not like the distance; you cannot remove it; you cannot even understand it; you cannot measure it; but I will send. the One who can, and He will remove it.
Now a great deal of what is called evangelicalism does not go any farther than this. Indeed, it would be thought a great way to go, to say that you could go into the presence of Gods and find all cleared away, and not a stain of sin remaining. But it is only the first experience of which I have been speaking.
I now come to the second, where there is a great deal of practical exercise for the soul. I will turn to two chapters in the Old Testament, to give you an illustration of it. The first is the twelfth of Exodus. There are literally two experiences here, though they do not exactly come up to what I mean. The seventh verse is the one of which I have spoken. " They shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts, and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it." You have got such, a sense of the blood between God and yourself, that you can look up with perfect security. I have got a Savior there. Instead of my fearing to go into the Father's house, I find there is rejoicing about me up there. I am an object of wonderment. I am cleared of everything.
But in the eighth verse I get another experience altogether. " They shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it." Here it is the soul inside feeding upon Christ who has borne the judgment of God. If Christ has borne the judgment of sin, are you feeding upon Him as the One who has borne it? You get the warning here: " Eat not of it raw." If you speak of Him in a merely natural, familiar way,' as if He were a man in the flesh, you are eating it raw. I sometimes hear people say, " Sweet Jesus," " dear Jesus," and the like, and feel it is almost profanity.
'Here is a soul with a sense of being perfectly clear before God, and what now goes on in it? Your whole bearing shows it out; your loins are girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; you are eating the Lord's Passover; you are leaving Egypt. I turn next to I Kings we find the first experience in the fifteenth verse. " She and her house did eat many days," or as the margin has it, " a full year: " a year takes in the whole circle of your life-every season. The prophet comes to the widow, and finds her in the most desolate way: " I have not a cake, but a hand ful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse; and behold I am gathering two sticks, that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die." Just like the world: they want to make the best of things, and enjoy themselves while they can. But the prophet comes in, and the whole scene is changed. He is to her very much what the Lord was to His disciples when on earth with them. And many a saint has not got beyond this: Christ is a shelter for me, and takes care of me. Souls look for their barrel of meal not to waste, and their cruse of oil not to fail. But is that the whole of Christianity? Is it that Christ comes and dwells with me 365 days-stays with me through every season, and cares for me? I make bold to say it is not. Is it shelter only? No! There is another experience altogether, and that is what I am coming to, and you are mutilating Christianity if you confine it to the first. It is the effort of Satan to divide it thus, and " what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." God says: I have saved you by my own Son, and now another thing must come in you are to live by the One who has saved you; my purpose is that you are to be conformed to His image.
The true character of grace is this. God says: I gave you my -law, but you were never able to keep it. You were tenants, but you were never able to pay your rent; so now I send my Son to say to you: It is useless my looking to you any more for the rent; He will pay all, you owe me, and for the future, instead of having you as my tenants, I make you my children.-Many a man I have seen who does not know what to do with his farm. That is just the seventh of Romans: he never has paid, and never can. But now, says God, I am going to make a model farm of it; and you all know what that is: it is a farm that is carried on at the owner's expense.
It is a great comfort, that whilst we add to what we have learned, in doing so we never lose what we have previously been taught by God. Here in the seventeenth of Kings she does not lose what she has already got. We do not lose Christ as a shelter because we know Him as something more. He is shelter to us; that is the character of His grace; and, believe me, the heart is not happy that does not know Him, like Zaccheus, as a guest in his home. But am I to stop there? Do you think you will lose the first verse of the twenty-third Psalm if you go on to the second? " The first verse is a grand verse," said a poor saint to me once, and I could not get her past it: And truly it is a grand verse-the Lord for my shepherd, my shelter; but it is not all; in the second verse, I " lie clown" -I am satisfied. I could not get her on to that. But the first verse is not enough for the saint; God alone knows what is enough for us. I trust I am speaking to many to whom it has been brought about; He must bring that home to us which He has done for us in Christ.
So now the widow's son dies. And then it is she says: " Art thou come unto me, to call my sin to remembrance?" After these 365 days of unbroken care, after all this wonderful exhibition of divine love, this is what she says. And so you find it. Souls that have a sense of the perfect care of the Lord for them, when death comes near them are thoroughly disturbed and upset. They have never learned it. You say, Why speak of death?—Because it is the judgment of God for sin. I see the Lord Jesus Christ can raise the dead, but to save me He had to go into death Himself. That same blessed One who raised Lazarus in one chapter, had to go into death Himself in the next chapter; and then it is the Son of man is glorified, though the Son of God was in the eleventh chapter. Be sure of this, that you must face death. People have got hold of truth poetically. They talk of having got hold of Christ in glory. I say, if you have, you will have to learn death here. God must bring it home to you. The moment Paul sets us with Christ in glory, he says, Now it is death down here to the flesh. Glory never put an end to flesh; it is death that does. So her son dies; and then it is she says: " Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance? "
And what does the prophet do? He does exactly what the Lord did: he goes down into death to the child. " He carried him up into a loft where he abode, and laid him upon his own bed." " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone." He went into death to bring us out of it. And thus another thing comes out. There is life, but there was life before; now it is life out of death.
Let me turn for a moment to the twentieth of John. Mark the disciples here. They did not know the Lord in this wonderful way; they had not learned death. When I come to the death of Christ it is " a new and living way." It is not every saint that goes in by the new and living way; the Old Testament saints did not, for the veil was not rent then. I want you to see what this experience of the disciples was. They had had the shelter and comfort of Christ; and you may say, I know the blood was shed for me; but I want you to know what the apostle means when he says: " I am crucified with Christ," and not only 'that, but " the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." This is another thing. I am not only cleared by this blessed One, but I have to live His life. I hope you never have a shadow of a doubt as to being cleared; God has taken all out' of the way, and. now He can come in and dwell with you.
The disciples understood who He was; they had received Him; they knew His shelter and His love; but He is risen from the dead, and what now? Look at the nineteenth verse: " He saith unto them, Peace be unto you. And when he had so said, he showed. unto them his hands and his side." The soul says, How am I to get this peace?-By having to do in spirit with the risen One. I believe it is impossible for you
to be in contact with the risen Christ, and not know the results of His resurrection. Righteousness comes in by resurrection. He comes into the midst of His disciples, says, " Peace be unto you," and shows them His hands and His side. All is cleared away. God's Spirit alone can conduct the soul into such a scene as this. see that One above all the ruin, in the pure light of the holiness of God's presence; I stand with Him upon that level, and I breathe a new atmosphere altogether. So we read: " He breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost." It was not clearing them from all that was against them, for they were cleared; it was not conversion, for they were converted; but they are on entirely new ground, and they are to taste the fact that they are not only cleared, but that they have the life of this blessed One who has cleared them. I have got life, which is the burden of John's gospel; not only a life that triumphs in death, but " the gift of God," " the well of water springing up unto everlasting life."
To complete this, see how the apostle works it out in Galatians. In that epistle I find the defect of the Christianity of the present day. The apostle is not dwelling on the first experience of the gospel after the first chapter, where he says: " Christ gave himself for our sins; " but he is taking up the fact that they have lost the second. This comes out plainly in the last verse of the epistle, when he winds up by saying: " God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." Now, that is a very strong statement. It is not the experience of putting away your sins, but of putting away yourself and the world. If the world be crucified to you in the cross of Christ, and you to the world?-well then, what is left? Nothing but the new creation. I have nothing but Christ.
I am united to Christ in glory, and there is no ground I delight more in pressing; but, the moment I take the place of being connected with Christ there, I cannot dissociate myself from where He is on earth. It is what we find in Hebrews: earth is done with for the saint now; if I am inside the veil " I am " outside the camp." I find that in many minds " outside the camp " means only " outside of system." But that is not at all as I find it in Scripture. Outside the camp is the spot you ought to occupy here: it is where Christ died. Christ having gone to that spot for you, it is the spot you ought to occupy here for Him. And you cannot do this unless you first understand that here you are to live Christ. As the apostle says: " I am crucified with Christ," self is gone; " nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." What a place I am in! and he was laboring for the Galatians that they might know this. " The life I now live: " I am actually living, breathing, enjoying the very life, tasting the very joys, knowing the very relationship, and am in the wonderful position of being on earth in the very place of that blessed One who has delivered me. I have life out of death-His death. " Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the spirit of his Son into your hearts." We are now placed on earth as that blessed One who has placed me in His acceptance in heaven.
But to turn back to Jacob. Jacob, like some of us, after many years of wandering has been brought back to the true ground. But true ground is not power. Christ is power. " There wrestled a man with him." It was not Jacob wrestling with God for blessing, but God wrestling with Jacob to set self aside in him. As soon as God touched the hollow of his thigh, Jacob says, Now bless me. Jacob is come to nothing; he is crippled; so God can come in and bless him The moment I am nothing, that moment I am a reliant person. When I am nothing I turn to God; I am crippled; God must do everything for me. Job prayed for his friends when he lost everything, and immediately God blessed him. As soon as Jacob feels that he is nothing, God comes in. The moment he dropped himself he became a dependent man. He says: I am a crippled man; I have nothing; God must do everything for me. Now, says God, you have come to the right place; you have done the right thing; I will bless you and change your name. You must no more have the disgraceful name of Jacob; you shall be called Israel. He begins a new day; it was at " the breaking of the day."
And has he no exercises after this?-Yes. In the thirty-fifth. chapter he gets the name confirmed when he went to Bethel. I never get the value of Christ's name but in God's presence.
He had one great exercise between these two periods, and I believe this to be especially our snare; it is Shalem. He settled down, lost the pilgrim character, without reaching the house of God—Bethel—the place of worship. And I can do this, as he did, after getting the sense that I am a crucified man, and that Christ is every, thing.
God has to make this true in us, and He brings it about in different ways. You say, But can I not get it without having to go through all that Jacob did? I think you can. Paul did in those three days in which he was blind, and neither ate nor drank; and he felt it was a good thing to have gone through it, and to have got clear about it. If you really enter into what Christ bore for you from the hand of God, you need not go through this severe breaking in your own individual experience. But God must somehow bring you to the moment when you say: I cannot stand flesh. There is a moment historically when the soul says, I am good for nothing. That is what Jacob does. If you were real at the Lord's Supper you would learn it there; you would there learn to shrink from the old man; His death would teach you. There are two ordinances of Christianity that express death, and people relieve their consciences by thus expressing it. One is baptism, which avows that I am cut off from man; the other is the Lord's Supper, which avows that I have reached Christ in His death. I have watched souls, and seen a moment come when He brings in one thing and another to make that soul taste death, and then it gets hold of Christ. He was saved before, but he had never really got hold of Christ.
And that is what God is doing: He is working out in me that which He has accomplished for me. If I am rightly at the Lord's table I shall feel a shrinking to have to do again with that man for whom Christ died. Abraham learned it in the feast that he made for Isaac; he sent Ishmael away then. Are we Abrahams? I fear most of us are Jacobs. God has to break us down by circumstances-sickness, perhaps-it may be even on a death-bed. Saints go on and on, resisting the workings of God's grace, but God will have it out in the end. He says, You must give in. And then the most active man in the company comes out a cripple-insignificant in the eyes of men, but great in the eyes of God.
The Lord lead our hearts to know what Christianity is.
(J. B. S.)
What measures sin is the greatness—the magnitude-of the Being against whom it is leveled.
(H. H. M.)