Chapter 9. (Continued)
When the Lord's Messiah-ship was given up, we have seen He takes the place of translation from earth to heaven. He, being rejected, was no longer to be looked upon as the Head of Israel down here, but as the heavenly Christ; for He takes His place on high, when cast out by man, and this fact was to give a character to the path of those who follow Him. The two things go together—rejection on earth and a heavenly place. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (ver. 23). The Lord shows them that this heavenly calling involves the cross down here, as it was with Christ Himself. The peculiar place given Him in heaven was, in God's counsels, dependent on the cross which He bore as the Man. “He humbled himself and became obedient unto death,” etc.; “wherefore God hath highly exalted him,” etc. It was through the cross that He went there: and, if we are to have a place in heaven, we must have it too. The cross was for the destruction of sin and for the destruction of self, in which sin dwells. We have the same place; therefore He says, “Let these sayings sink deep into your ears, for the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men.”
We want the heavenly calling to give power to take up the cross; and it is at the same time in proportion as we are dead to things down here, that the heavenly things are realized. When the blood was taken within the veil, the sacrifice was taken without the gate: so we are to go “without the camp, bearing his reproach"; and if we apprehend the value of the blood, and go within the veil, we get to the place of being where the burning outside the camp was; for while we are in spirit where His blood has been carried in, our bodies are where His body was burned. Judaism only put men between the two: for they did not go in within the veil, His blood not having been shed; and they never went outside the camp (vers. 18-22). He is going to take another place, and they are to follow Him in it; and then, in order to strengthen them for it, He shows them what the heavenly place was. “He took Peter, and James, and John, and went up into a mountain to pray,” etc. (ver. 28). The heavenly part of the kingdom is here represented by Christ, Moses and Elias—the earthly part by the disciples (and there is one part in which the church on earth is alluded to as down here). Peter speaks of this scene as the power and coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, etc. Christ Himself, in the position of the dependent man (praying), takes them up into a mountain. “Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep"; asleep in the presence of the glory, just as in Gethsemane, showing what human nature is. There is no power in it, in suffering or glory, to fix the attention on Christ and His interests.
Moses and Elias were in the same glory (vers. 30-32), and we are made the associates of Christ in the same glory (the glory of the kingdom in its broad character), not, of course, the essential glory. “As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly,” even of God's Son in glory. “We know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him.” “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, we shall appear with him in glory.” The portion is not to be under Christ, but with Christ. “We shall appear with him in glory” —with Him in the same glory. We look for the Lord from heaven, “who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned,” etc. We shall be with Him and like Him, and this we shall all alike share, though there will be different degrees of glory for one and another: for example, Paul's measure will not be mine. What we speak of now is all the same glory, and we are predestinated “to be conformed to the image of his Son.” “The glory thou hast given me I have given them.”
The next thing that we see is the perfect familiarity in this glory. They are talking with Him—not presenting a petition—not at His feet (though this is our blessed place too); but this part of the scene represents communion, familiarity of intercourse, the same as that of the disciples on earth, though better of course. On the holy mount they had a higher understanding about it, but it was the same subject occupied them. This shows us the kind of intercourse we have with Jesus now, for we belong to the heavenly part of the kingdom.
A third point to mark is the subject they talked of. This is quite a new thing, for He ought to have been a king. But man was a sinner, and there was the determinate counsel of God to be fulfilled—redemption. Jerusalem was the place of royalty, and His decease was to be accomplished there, where He ought to have been acknowledged king. There was full intimacy on the theme which occupied His heart, for they talked on this, His decease. Then He told His disciples afterward the consequences of it to them. They must deny themselves. “Let these sayings sink down into your ears.” The great subject on God's heart should be that for us.
Another thing is, it is the glory which enables us to talk on this subject. We cannot talk of it until we have peace with God through the knowledge of sins forgiven. When a man has not this, he has to come in his need and get it: but when he is in it, he can contemplate and enjoy it. Besides this, God saw all that was passing in Christ's soul as to obedience unto death, etc. We shall never cease having interest in this subject: when with the Father in the glory, it will be the absorbing theme. He said Himself, “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life.” How much more shall we not love Him for the same cause? Think what it must have been to be occupied with Christ about His decease! What His knowledge was, of what He was going to do! He knew what man was, what the counsel of God was. He came to “reconcile all things to himself.” It was so effectually done that the eye of God could only see the effect of that blood in what was washed away. The rejected Christ a Savior! and this the subject of intercourse with Christ Himself! “They spake of his decease.” Peter says,
“Master, it is good for us to be here,” etc. Then immediately there was a voice from the cloud: “This is my beloved Son; hear him.” The effect on Peter's mind is a wish to put Moses and Elias on a level with Christ.
We have spoken of this, viewing it dispensationally, law and prophecy mixed with Him; but there is another thing to be noticed in it, namely, that which characterized the Son was peculiar. Nothing could be put on a level with Him. There necessarily comes out, therefore, the Father's testimony to the Son. “This is my beloved Son,” etc. When a saint knows Jesus, though he also knows he will be like Him hereafter, and that all the saints will be like Him too, yet Christ has the supremacy in his heart. He is single and alone in blessedness, having supremacy in the heart, as well as being the object of faith. I delight in the saints, but Christ is the alone object of faith. Then I get into this fellowship with the Father. I have the Father's thoughts about the Son, as well as the Son's thoughts about the work. I have fellowship with the Father and the Son. We cannot have communion with the Father about redemption work because He had not been made a man. Notice, the Father does not say, This is the Son whom you ought to adore and admire, but He tells us His own thoughts about Him. “This is my beloved Son.” Wherefore “beloved"? “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life"; thus I know that I have one thought with the Father, in delighting in the Son and in His death. The Father communicates His own thoughts about the Son, and by the power of the Holy Ghost they are put into my heart, and I have fellowship; and as a consequence I know that he that hath everlasting life shall never come into judgment.
Mark, further, how they came into the excellent glory. There came a cloud and overshadowed them. The cloud is the Shechinah, the dwelling-place of God, which the people had to guide them through the wilderness, and they were to stay or move according to it. It was the divine presence, and “they feared as they entered into the cloud.” They were not protected by the cloud, as Israel were, and as they will be by-and-by. “Upon all the glory shall be a defense"; but here they enter into the cloud. The fact was, coming into the cloud was coming into the presence of the Father now, a dwelling-place for us. It was thence the Father's voice was heard, “This is my beloved Son,” etc. Thence they were told who this Son was. He had been with them as one of them. He was the Father's beloved Son, in a place worthy of adoration, but the companion of their hearts. He brought them to the Father, the only place into which redemption brings us (as to our relationship). Until a man knows redemption and is brought into His presence, he can never know the Father's love: but when there, he can never know the end of it. It is the kind of love the prodigal never knew till he was in his father's arms. He had doubts and fears as he went on, and thoughts about the hired servants, but none when he was in his father's house. It is known only by the teaching of the Holy Ghost in us—in the cloud—God in us. It is in the presence of the glory, realized by faith now, we know the power of redemption; and by its brightness and its truth, it blots out all other relationship.
Notice who are learning this glory. Saints walking on the earth—Peter, James, and John—and so with us. The truths written in this book are not for us to know in heaven. Is the Father's love not to be known till we are in heaven? Is redemption only to be known there? Was God less intimate with those on earth than with those in heaven? Not at all. It was to Peter, James, and John this was communicated, not to Moses and Elias. The Father's voice was to men on earth. We learn the rejection of man here and the grace which has brought us to share in the glory.
In what follows we find the Lord coming down into the crowd of this world, not remaining on the mount. We may listen and enjoy, but we have to come down and pass through this world. The Lord comes down and meets three things—a throng of men, Satan's power, and the disciples' unbelief. There was no seclusion here for Him, but He comes to a crowd. What a picture of distress this is! The son of one possessed with a devil (ver. 39); and the father's heart racked more than the son's body. The world will weep till they are tired of weeping, and then go on with the same thing again.
We have seen before how the Lord was come in the display of His power and bound the strong man. The disciples could not do it. The power of Satan remains the same unto this day. He is not literally cast out, but remains the “prince of this world,” the character he has gained, not lost, by Christianity. He will be bound; his power will be overthrown as a fact, and not to faith only. The question was to be settled about Satan's right, and what did the Lord say of him?
“Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” His title is “cast out,” but Christ has not yet exerted this power. Therefore in the Epistles we find him spoken of as still ruling in this world. In Ephesians he is called, “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh,” etc. Then we hear of the “rulers of the darkness of this world.” When “the powers of the world to come” are in their full display, Satan will be cast out entirely; but these instances and more show he was here then as he is still. “How long shall I be with you,” etc. (ver. 41). It was not because Satan was here that Christ said this, but because the disciples could not use the power He had brought in; and that closed the dispensation. So it will be in this. The power and goodness of God brought Christ into the world, but the incapacity of man to believe, so as to use that power, will close it. So we read in Rom. 11, “Toward thee [the professing body now], goodness, if thou continue in his goodness; otherwise thou also shalt be cut off"; but until His grace ceases, there is refuge for us to go to Him.
While He was here, the moment the father of the child sought to Him, He cast out the demon. As long as Christ's grace is at work, if there is only one saint on the earth and everything else failed around, he would find the power of Christ ready to be exercised on his behalf. There can be no failing in meeting the need of a soul, because as there is Christ to go to, there is help in Him. However dark the dispensation may be, there is exactly the grace that is needed for the position. Not that God would have our eyes blinded to the darkness around, for if we do not take heed to the ruinous state, conscience is not in its right place. If I am ready to say, Why should He not stay? when He says, How long shall I be with you? I am insensible to the state of things around me, and I am not awake to the response that Christ's love to the church demands; but, on the other hand, if I am not able to look up and count on the grace of Christ to meet that state, however bad it may be, I am powerless.
Verse 43. “They were amazed at the mighty power of God.” It is very humbling to see how amazed they were about this power. They did not wonder at the power of the evil. But they ought so to have counted on His power as to have been amazed if the power were not exerted. Christ brings them back to the cross. “Let these sayings sink down into your ears, for the Son of man shall be delivered into the hands of men” (ver. 44). You ought to have been able to get this power; but you must now know not only the power of Christ, but the cross of the rejected One. “Rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” We have more to be rejoiced at in this than if a miracle were to be performed tomorrow. It is more blessed to know the cross. It was as though He had said, “I had rather you should come now to own the rejected One than be looking for this power even.” Beloved friends, you are not thinking of what God is doing at this present time, if you do not see that now it is not power on the earth, but rejection.
(To be continued)