If there is one thing that the Church of God needs, it is reality—reality in each professor of Christ.
The characteristic feature of Christendom is unreality, and this is a practical denial of God; for only He (and what comes from Him) is real; He is the only true God (John 17:33And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. (John 17:3)).
What a fearful sham would Christendom be without the true God, and what a sham it would be for professing Christians to be living without the reality of the presence of the true God.
From the Beginning
We are commanded in God’s word to abide in that which was “from the beginning.” What then characterized the church of God “from the beginning?” It was the freshness and blessedness of “serving the living and true God” (1 Thess. 1:99For they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; (1 Thessalonians 1:9)). This gave reality and power to testify to the victorious, risen Christ, who, because He had finished the work of atonement, was raised of God from the dead, set down at His right hand, given all power in heaven and on earth.
Though God may not act in judgment now as then, nor restore the church to the unity that existed in the beginning, yet the reality of what God is and the power of a risen and glorified Christ have not vanished. These eternal springs of life and freshness in God and His Christ can be as operative now to each one as then.
It is not necessary that we should live a life of unreality, sham and fruitlessness. Who could think such a thought! It will not do to say “we may have the form of godliness,” but it is impossible “to have the power thereof” (2 Tim. 3:5).
Yet there are otherwise real Christians, who have become so saturated with unbelief and doubt, having breathed in the deadly vapors of Christendom so long, that they refuse to be exercised about themselves and the state of Christians at large.
The Glory of God
But have we not brought these things upon ourselves and, therefore, must we not reap what we have sown? We answer, yes, but whatever God sends upon us as a result of our failure is never sent to be an excuse for continuing and perpetuating the dishonor to His name; but rather should always have as its intended issue: the glory of God, with a thorough judgment and abhorrence of self in all its hideous and deceptive forms.
The Father’s chastisements, whatever form they take, are a blessed proof of His untiring love and are for our profit, in order that we may partake of His holiness (hagiotes, the quality itself, the only time the word occurs in the Bible is in Hebrews 12:1010For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. (Hebrews 12:10)).
So God works out reality in us, especially in the very things that He brings upon us in these last days, and they are the true means of leading to our recovery.
As soon as we sincerely take our place of weakness and need, so soon will He get His right place in our souls for deliverance.
The Judgment Seat
It is not what we make ourselves out to be, but what we really are in His sight that gives true reality. We must all be fully manifested at the judgment seat of Christ; then the true reality of everything will be fully disclosed. Paul speaking in this connection of himself and those with him, says: “We are made manifest to God.” (Gr. manifest, what is done and of which the effect continues.—JND.) Read the context in 2 Corinthians 5:9-13. He and those with him were living in the full light and reality of Christ’s great judgment seat. He had the search-light of God’s immediate Presence with him every day, and this gave reality, liberty and power, even the reality of God’s infinite love to so fill his heart that some took him to be insane. “If I am beside myself,” he says, “it is to God” (2 Cor. 5:13). (“His ecstasy was not excitement or folly, but if out of himself it “was to God.” JND.)
Now let us look at one or two instances in the Old Testament of God-pleasing reality.
Jonathan, the son of Saul, in a day of bondage like the present, realizing his weakness, but trusting alone in God’s power, said to his armor-bearer, “There is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few. Behold ... we will discover ourselves unto them” (1 Sam. 14:6). “We will show that we have no confidence in ourselves; thus throwing aside all sham and subterfuge.”
God Is Real
There were only two against a whole garrison of fortified Philistines at the top of a high precipice. Would God stand by and see two such wiped out, because they honestly owned what they were? Would God honor reality?
God is real and He will stand by them that want to be real. How crushingly were those Philistines defeated! and while they might tremble because of Jonathan, yet surely it was not Jonathan and his armor-bearer; that made the earth to tremble. God was with those two that stood for the true God.
“And there was trembling in the host, in the field and among the people; the garrison, and the spoilers, they also trembled, and the earth quaked, so that it was a very great trembling (margin: a trembling of God).”
Then, again, in another day of bondage to the enemies of God in the land—the Philistines (1 Sam. 7).
Samuel exhorted Israel, “If ye do return unto the Lord with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods ... and prepare your hearts unto the Lord and serve Him only and He will deliver you.”
“So Israel gathered together to Mizpeh and drew water and poured it out before the Lord:” a deep, real expression of their utter nothingness and helplessness, saying, “We have sinned against the Lord.”
Here Was Reality
“And Samuel took a sucking lamb and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the Lord.” This aroused the Philistines. Satan knows that trouble is brewing for him as soon as the children of God humble themselves and desire reality. Therefore, “as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering the Philistines drew near to a battle against Israel.” Israel did not present their own ranks of warriors against the enemy, as having confidence in the flesh, but rather the sweet savor of the burnt offering, the merits and perfection of the lamb of God’s providing. Not self but Christ! What was the result? “The Lord thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines and discomfited them ... Then Samuel took a stone and set it up and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, ‘Hitherto hath the LORD helped us.’ So the Philistines were subdued, and they came no more unto the coast of Israel.”
The One Thing
Some may ask: Why do we need reality? are we infected with the sham of Christendom? Are not we “in the truth” and “in fellowship” delivered from it?
Here is a disclosure that should open the eyes and startle every one of us: The one thing that characterizes us pre-eminently, perhaps, above all others, is that we profess the highest and most wonderful line and scope of truth, with almost nothing of it realized in divine power in the very inmost recesses of our moral being!
God wants reality. Oh, beloved, what would be the effect if one-half of the truth that we know and can so freely speak about, were dwelling in vital energy, in the power of an ungrieved Spirit in each one of us. How paralyzing to the conscience is the condemning power of truth known and confessed, but not inwardly operative nor controlling all the channels and outposts of our hearts and lives.
A number are looking back, with sincere remorse, upon years that have been spent, for the most part, out of the reality of His Presence, and wonder how they could have endured to have lived without the abiding blessedness of being stripped and disclosed and their sham uncovered in the blessed disclosure of the reality of God’s own love and Being, as revealed at the cross and in the holiest.
To those that were used in the beginning of the last century to recover the marvelous truths of God, for centuries neglected and forgotten, the truth was a living, powerful, divine reality. By deep and continued exercise of heart and soul in God’s presence, they dug out the truth by deep heart-searchings, and yielded themselves fully up to the power of the Holy Spirit, that they might be taught “the deep things of God.”
It Cost Them Much
By fightings and fears within and without; by continued prayer and vigils with many tears: they learned to know God and His things in soul-stirring power. They gave up everything. It is said that when they came together, sometimes not a word was spoken; but when they left, the floor was wet with their tears. They wanted to know the power of the truth in every department of their lives, cost what it might! God honored their sincerity. They wanted reality, and God and Christ and the truth became real to them. They had been in the meshes of a dead and worldly church, buried in its slumbers: but God honored their purpose and desire for reality and withheld not a happy, precious abiding deliverance. They walked with God, and the truth spread into every land with almost apostolic fervor.
But how have we received the truth—second, third or fourth hand, at a few cents per volume? With little exercise and comparatively little cost, it has been gotten cheaply and, alas, held cheaply.
We ought to have been watchful to abide in that which was from the beginning, but we did not abide in its freshness. We allowed ourselves to become satisfied with the knowledge of having the truths, without sincere and steadfast exercise and the giving of ourselves “wholly to them that our (not knowledge, but our progress) profiting might appear to all” (See 1 Tim. 4:12-16, JND).
If our failure is real, our weakness and shame is also real. Self has become the great center to us and our lives have become self-centered instead of centered in Christ. There should have been:
Everything loss for Him below,
Taking the cross where’er we go;
Showing to all where once He trod,
Nothing but Christ, the Christ of God.
Is it reality we want? We can have it in the power of the abiding Presence of God. There is no sham there, and if we are minded to submit ourselves constantly to the power and reality of His Presence, we will find him to be the discerner of the very thoughts and the purposes and the intents of the heart, dividing asunder soul and spirit, joints and marrow; Yea, “all things are naked and laid bare (JND) to His eyes, with whom we have to do” (Heb. 1:12-1312And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. 13But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool? (Hebrews 1:12‑13)). Provision is also made through the blood and our great High Priest, for the straightening out of all things so as to be consistent with His presence.
By abiding in His presence constantly and recalling one’s heart to it every moment, we learn the reality of His love. He will teach us more of its depths. By having everything constantly “laid bare” we will learn more and more to abhor ourselves and the utter badness of our hearts, as in 1 Kings 8:38, “When every man shall know the plague of his own heart.”
Everything done in His Presence from morning until night and all done, always under His immediate review and in the wonderful sustainment and joy of His Presence, this gives reality, simplicity and blessed liberty. The great truths of our salvation, of the gospel, of the cross will be made so real and powerful, in this constant communion, that you will not feel like a hypocrite, after speaking to others and go home like one who has received a beating; your conscience upbraiding you for the shocking unreality in your heart of the things you have been pressing upon others, as well as the grievous dishonor done to your Lord.
The reality of His love will make you feel like crying, “Bring me yet another vessel! Go borrow me vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels; borrow not a few. Bring me yet another vessel!” (2 King 4:3,6). The truths of His word will spring up into wonderful prominence. As a brother recently put it, “Before this we enjoyed bright places here and there in, the Word, but now it is all bright and wonderful and new.”
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