We now come to what produces an Epistle. Next to the preaching of the Gospel which gathers, we find this Epistle what God establishes in the way of direct ministry to those that are gathered. He cannot repeat what He did with Moses. Stone is changed for the heart, as the thing written on. The heart is a wonderful thing for good, or for evil. Looked on at the bad side (Matt. 15:18, 19) there is nothing so bad; but here, where God has got the heart for Himself, “we have the mind of Christ.” It will not satisfy God to have one man like Paul. He will produce others, and that is what makes an Epistle. It is more corporate than individual, it is the Spirit of the living God that writes. The law was written on unimpressible material. God wrote on stone, Jesus on the earth, the Spirit on the heart. God wrote what He claimed on the stone, and Moses broke it. Jesus wrote on the earth (John 8), the first time convicting; at the second grace comes in as Himself, needing to go down into it. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die.” The Son of man must be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Out of that womb of death, life comes. Now God, through the Spirit, writes “Christ” from the place where He is, on the heart, producing Christ in us. What will God form on the fact that such an One is in such a place? Whatever Christ is now, presents to God the characteristics that He uses to form the Epistle.
There are three things that characterize the ministry of the New Testament—life in His own title, righteousness, and God’s answer in glory. God is no longer claiming from man, but He finds the elements of a ministry to us in what Christ is before Him, as life and righteousness, which He must crown with glory. There are three things which man is under, sin, death, and condemnation, which Christ takes up, glorifies God in, and is glorified at His right hand, from whence God ministers Him to us, as life, righteousness, and the glory that excels, three things man could never touch. It is a wonderful thing to have a man up in glory who has supplied to God what He required, not merely what the sinner needs. What can God do with Him but crown Him with glory and honor? Sin, death, and judgment all met on this side—,life, righteousness, and glory all active on that side, to produce this Epistle of Christ, known and read of all men, in us.
Do we sit under this ministry? It is everything to keep the heart as a writing-table. People do not generally understand what is practical, until they come to connect it with themselves. The last verses do this. The effect of life from life, righteousness from righteousness, and glory from glory, is liberty; and what gives liberty secures conforming power and correspondence. This is the proper present Church ministry-important, because you get it nowhere else. The correspondence, which is moral now, includes also the full perfection of it when we meet Him in the glory, even as to the body (chapter. v); and God is not merely pledged to do it, but it is His delight.
(To be continued.)
The Word of Life. 1 John 1; 2:1, 2.
The first book which John wrote had a very distinguished character, as revealing eternal life: letting the light of eternal life shine out more clearly. The other Gospels give details. John speaks little of the Cross even, but takes Him back to His own place there (in his Gospel), as he takes Him up here again, as that eternal life. His was the blessed privilege of writing the Gospel of the life. John cannot get beyond Him. Everything else is little compared with the giving of that eternal life! Creation is put under limitation, but God is infinite. How could finite comprehend infinite? What is all creation—all the history of the world compared with this—with who and what He is, who has life and incorruptibility to give away?
God prohibited making any image of God; but He presented Himself to us in the face of Jesus His Son, so perfectly, so identically, so completely one with Himself, that the Son could say— “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father!” Wonder of wonders! In a was presented down here all that could delight the Father! To think that my feet tread the earth that His feet trod, who came out from the Father! How very close He comes to man, leaving them without excuse. Man weaves his own web, and cares nothing for Him!
I turn to my youth. If God had dealt with me according to my thought of Him these years, without a thought of that eternal life, or of my separation from it, where should I be? yet without excuse at all. For He has sent forth the proclamation of Himself. Not that Paul or John or Peter could add to Him; but they tell of the yearning of His heart over them, and of His work to bring them into communication with the eternal life! Hardy sinners made nothing of it, though round about Him. They had not an ear for that word from His own lips, “I give them eternal life and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out my Father’s hand;” or “He that believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death to life.” John’s word goes beyond— “That eternal life, that was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.” This life has been given to us, and can be occupied with the Father and the Son. What then is my first thought? I find that his Father is my Father. If in heaven I am challenged with the question, “Who are you?” I say, “I am one to whom it has been given to be a son,” and I pass on.
Remark three things. Man is always occupied with himself; God always begins with Himself. John begins with a certain person revealing the Father! I ask him “What have you in yourself John?” Nothing of myself; but I have seen and handled the Word!” Nothing in myself, beyond myself in the Father and the Son, and there is the rest of my heart! In that one Man sitting at God’s right hand, God’s perfect rest is there! He never failed in anything He undertook to do, and God rests in Him!
Life and forgiveness I would not separate; but they are often learned separately. If the spring ceases not to rise, channels shall not cease to be filled.
Do you know Christ as your life— the joy of your heart—that your joy may be full? What a solemn and blessed truth that the once devil-possessed soul may know that that life is its life! I can date the time when it was put in me; but not the date of the eternity of the life given to my once dead and stony soul.
“We have seen and heard.” One cannot hear for another man; but my confidence is in Him who has looked into my heart—my confidence is all in Him. It is thus an individual thing; eternal life filling my soul; flowing forth in me from Him. A characteristic of this life is light. The “Light of Life” is what made God manifest, Satan manifest, sin manifest! But how was this done? It showed that His thoughts are not our thoughts, nor are His ways as our ways. Man cast off God, and gave himself up to Satan. Satan delights to pull down, God to construct: Satan to destroy, God to save! If you have this life, is your walk according to it? Your feet tread on this world Paul’s did. Paul’s walk in it was very different after he saw Him! If light comes in it discovers darkness: if the blood cleanses, the blood is not put before life, but brought in to give an eternally cleansed conscience. Then, as to the action of this life, what He likes, it—will do—I will do; what He does not like I will not do. Then He guards. “If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves;” but we can say, ‘Not a cloud above, not a spot within!’