(Concluded from page 94.)
(7) Laodicea. The chronology of the church properly has to do exclusively with the new creation, and its commencement is unmistakably fixed by Him who is “the beginning, the first-born from the dead,” also called (as here, Rev. 3:1414And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; (Revelation 3:14)) “the beginning of the creation of God.” Not yet literally or in fact passed out of this world, she has still done so in spirit; and both faith and external profession plainly avow that death as a past thing has shut out from her the life of man in the world alike with its pride, its projects, and its final doom. She has thus the cross with all that was accomplished by it as the solid foundation on which she stands; and as God has declared there the total end and judgment of man after the flesh, everything for her, in her history within and without, to be according to God, must be after the pattern of Christ, whose life and ways thus become her only guide and example. Not only so, but also on God's part to complete the likeness to Christ and to communicate divine power and intelligence, the Holy Spirit has been sent down to abide in her midst.
Short of the blessed Lord Himself, never was there, in the history of God's dealings, a witness for God in the earth so richly endowed; but we have here, in the Epistle to Laodicea, the sad result of her trial as a responsible witness in this view of the nature of her position and endowments. In Philadelphia we saw that it was a question of the heart's receiving and acknowledging Christ personally; here it is as distinctly one of His Spirit and ways being followed. But there is this striking difference between the two Epistles, that in the one case we learn the object of the Epistle by considering the “works” of those who are faithful to the Lord and only one verse is given to the opposite class, while in the other case (Laodicea) we trace the Lord's mind from His condemnation of universal failure, and this failure is precisely the development of that which was found present in spirit or germ in Paul's day and which be mourns over in pointing out: “All seek their own and not the things that are Jesus Christ's” (Phil. 2:2121For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's. (Philippians 2:21)).
We get a hint from the Lord saying to the overcomer (in ver. 21) “Even as I also overcame” that the trial under which failure is here manifested, which failure “he that overcometh” is to stem, has its counterpart in the Lord's own life; and the character in which He appears to the church (in ver. 14) confirms the thought.
He is the Amen” —God's seal upon everything that is of Himself: we cannot go beyond Christ and there is no such thing possible as development in divine things after Him. He is also “the faithful and true witness,” the One who stands forth alone in His right to such a title, the only faithful One to God who never failed. And more, He is “the beginning of the creation of God” (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17, 1817Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 18And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; (2 Corinthians 5:17‑18)); so that, as we have seen, everything that is of God must be after the pattern and example of Him.
When tempted, if He had assumed an independent possession of power or intelligence in Himself, He would have done just what the enemy desired and strove for; but we know that as the perfect Man He took the only perfect place before God, the place of complete dependence. Had it been possible for Him to harbor indifference to God or His glory, then would room enough have been found for thoughts of self; but it was not so, and could not be so with Him, whose perfect obedience was the necessary outflow of His blessed condition of perfect dependence on God.
It is as we see Him thus that we are prepared to own that if He, the blessed Son of God who personally had a divine claim to every glory, was found in such a spirit and path of lowly earnestness for God, there is ten-thousand fold, nay infinite reason, why the church should be in it, not only as following Him in His ways as Son of man, as she has indeed been set to follow, but also because without that beauty which grace has bestowed upon her she has nothing that is not really shameful. There is in her case, and we may say in every case in which gifts or privileges involving the possession of power are bestowed on man, the temptation to use these without occupying the place of dependence, thus despising the beauty of grace which when owned would set one there, and thinking more of the powers or gifts which have been bestowed. But this is in fact to assume that we possess inherently the wisdom, or spiritual insight or power; and such boasting is true blindness and folly, for we never can hold anything from God according to His mind except as we are truly owning that we are mere empty earthen vessels “that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us.”
Foiled in his attempt to induce the Lord to assume the independent possession of power in Himself with self for the object of the exercise of that power, the enemy endeavored to sap the foundations of God's glory in Him by another method. The Lord Jesus being present in the world made all its character plain morally, because “He was the true light;” and so we hear that the devil showed Him “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them” and said, “All this power will I give thee and the glory of them; for that is delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.” But the temptation failed, for He would rather be avowedly poor in this world as it is than take earthly honor and glory in any but God's way and in His time; and in this He showed His steadfast purpose first of all to walk with God meanwhile. He “overcame” by taking the downward path in this world, all that was of God being contrary to it; and each step and movement of His in it God found fragrant with pure and perfect obedience (Phil. 2); and He has a present glory as well as a future one as the fitting result. “I am set down,” He says (Rev. 3:2121To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. (Revelation 3:21)), “with my Father in his throne;” and a similar place of blessed association with Him in His glory is held out as reward to the heart of him who “overcometh” in view of the church's failure, walking in His path, and in presence of the evil tendency of that failure. “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father in His throne.”
There was yet another form in which the blessed Lord had to endure and did successfully meet the temptations of Satan; and, considered in its moral and spiritual bearing, it may be said to have arisen out of the other two. The Lord stood in the unshaken consciousness of relationship with God, and the devil sought to work upon this by getting Him to act in such a way as that, while ostensibly it was to be displayed, yet really a question was to be raised about it, and, more than that, self thus assumed to be the center of God's actings, instead of the divine glory being their starting-point and end. The Lord met this by simply referring the matter direct to God as His center, refusing to use the confidence in His care and love which God gave to be sufficient for any and every question about self; so that the heart might be always undistracted to think of Him and His glory—refusing, I say, to use this, as an occasion for making self prominent. “The devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence, for it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”
Now in all these details—in many others also alas!—but in these, as specially revealing the spirit and ways of the Lord as man in responsibility before God, the church has failed; and this failure is made apparent in the words of the message to Laodicea, which, though few, are amongst the most solemn which the book of God contains. The Lord give us to ponder them deeply in these days of indifference!
The Lord by His word fastens upon the root of all the evil, giving in a sentence the character of the condition which manifests such failure and which is the occasion for His expressed judgment. “I know thy works,” He says, “that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would that thou wert cold or hot. So then, because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” Care or concern for God's glory there is none, and anything like faithfulness of heart is entirely wanting; nor is there that entire absence of movement in divine things which is an opportunity for the application of the word in the convicting power of the Spirit to the conscience; all is utter and complete indifference. God's word is known and the truth no doubt assented to, but in all the well-satisfied carelessness of those who are contentedly self-occupied and whom the Apostle describes (2 Tim. 3) as “traitors, having the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.” The keen edge of the word is thus turned away from the conscience and so nothing can stop the sickening course of unabashed self-satisfaction and self-occupation, but that rejection by the Lord which will make manifest even to man in the world all its nauseousness.
Instead of having Christ as object and example and resource and covering and all, “I” fills up entirely the range of vision, but it is “I,” man, without being a possessor of the eternal blessings which are received from the Lord's hand, although boasting in the fancied possession of the light and knowledge and material blessings flowing from Christianity. “Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire that thou mayest be rich, and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve that thou mayest see.” Thus the fruit of boasting in the possession of light and knowledge which have come in by Christianity is that the church thinks these are her inherent possession without Christ. And in result this boasting leads to such a course as that in very blindness she shows her enlightenment by adding man as he is naturally to Christ, whether by means of ritualism or by the philosophy which exalts his mind and himself to God, heedless of the lesson taught thousands of years ago, that to bring man as he is at all into God's presence is but to make very manifest that he is only a poor naked sinner who never can stand before Him.
The second chapter of Colossians reveals to us that trusting in the teaching of human philosophy, or having confidence in the ordinances of worldly religion, goes hand in hand with (even the slipping away from and certainly with) the absence of vital union to Christ as Head, and with the giving up of the entire truth as to Christ. And we do well to note this in connection with the Epistle to Laodicea for there are evidences in Col. 2:11For I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh; (Colossians 2:1) and iv. 16 that the apostle had the actual assembly at Laodicea, much before his heart in writing to Colosse, so that we may judge that he discerned a similar condition in both.
There is no doubt that there is—and in one sense it was the Lord's intention that there should be—in Christianity light set in the world, which light has wrought (in and by the truth) in enlightenment and civilization among men, even where the reception of eternal life and eternal blessings has not in every case been secured, and thus the wealth of the world has been brought to light. And Satan has not been slow to see and to use this, and to present all this wealth of the world in attractive forms to induce men's hearts to receive it to the exclusion of God. He thus attacked the Lord, as we have seen, but a sad contrast to His blessed faithfulness is displayed by the church's course. He was content to be “the Son of who had not where to lay his blessed head;” but she is found boasting that she is “rich and increased with goods and hath need of nothing” alas! not even of dependence on God now, for she rests on what she is and has. (Compare Acts 3:11Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of prayer, being the ninth hour. (Acts 3:1) and 6.)
We learn too in solemn words how her self-assertion has excluded God, for verse 20 tells us that the blessed pattern and example, the only One who can guide because He was the only thorough overcomer in such a trial is outside the door of the church—shut out! It is a dreadful condition and utterly hopeless, too, of amendment, if we look at it; but the watchful and loving One reminds us even in it that we can count upon Him. In His care for those who are His own He will have to send chastening that their hearts may be roused out of their dull lethargy to listen to His voice. “Awake thou that sleepest! and arise from among the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” But there is the blessed intimacy of communion with Him to reward those who do. “Behold,” He says, “I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him and sup with him and he with me.” And His heart not satisfied with even this, the blessed overcomer, the faithful and true witness, who passed unconquered through the full trial of Satan's wiles, will share the glory that attaches to Him in this character with any little one who has sought truly, however feebly, to follow His blessed footsteps.
And with Him shall my rest be on high,
When in holiness bright I sit down,
In the joy of His love ever nigh,
In the peace which His presence shall crown.
“To him that overcometh,” are His words, “will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father in His throne.”
And now, beloved reader, where are you, and what is your individual share in heart and spirit in the condition of this church that has been so wonderfully dealt with? Be not deceived: that which is around you and bears the name of the church is not what God has developed from the principles given in the New Testament writings. That it is so is man's proud boast, but at the same time is Satan's deceit. It is, I repeat, not so, but really, if God's word is to be trusted, that which has slipped farther and farther from His will and ways. It is that whose history we have seen traced by God's hand in these chapters, whose features you may discern, for God has Himself delineated them for you—that assembly seen on the earth, once made the depositary of His truth about His Son and concerning the work He accomplished and the glory awaiting Him, and once separated from the world to God by this to know the power and reality of a present Holy Spirit and of a coming Lord; but that assembly which has in every detail proved her unfaithfulness to her trust, which has embraced the world and mixed with it and sought to deck it with her name, so that she might without conscience be worldly; yea, which has in result taken sides with that world in all its indifference to and rejection of the Lord. You may be able even now to trace some if not all of those features on her face which God has shown us—you ought to do so—and if so, how are you in heart acting towards them and her? Are you acquiescing or witnessing against, consenting to the present order of things religiously or vindicating God's name and character from it all; are you overcome or overcoming? Which? You must be either.
If you are one of His, He has watched over and cared for His own amidst the disorder right through all its course and does so now. But oh! listen to His word: let it enter your ear, let it command you, let it stir you up to act faithfully for Him, let it rest in your heart and lead you on to bright reward.
Pause, I beseech you, even now, and do not incur the very serious and solemn danger which will most surely threaten you if you again pass by His warning, entreating, seven-fold uttered call— “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.”
F. J. R.