Notes of G. V. W.'s Third Lecture on Phil. 3
THERE is a peculiar order in this Epistle. Paul presents in it the mind of God in a peculiar way. We see, in himself, (as a model man), how all the principles of the life of Christ acted.
In chap. i. the leading thought in him was, that be had only one thing to do on earth-to magnify Christ, in that poor perishing body of his-in that body, chained to a solder. He would magnify Christ, whether he lived or died. Any one walking in the Spirit would say "what a wonderful place he had!" he saw that the whole heart of Christ was set on him, and his was set on Christ; and, if so, what else could he do, but in his body to magnify that Christ? As Christ was, when down here, the representative of God-so Paul desired to be the representative of Christ.
Little do we know how the heart of Christ is set on a believer. Christ looks down on him saying, " There is one who was given to me, before the foundation of the world, I washed him in my blood, and as I died for him, I want him to live to me." It is this Christ, who is the fountain of life to a believer; and is it wonderful that Christ should look down, saying, I would have that one's whole heart set on me?
The 2nd chap. presents the perfection of Christ, in doing the work He came down to do. His whole course says, "ah! ah I ah!"to the first Adam. He had a will of his own, the Last Adam had no will of His own; He was the only will-less man on earth, all the time He walked down here, making nothing of self; all that the Father gave Him to do, He did, meeting the Father's mind and will, and He the only doer of it. In the perfection of the way He did the Father's will, we get the strength of God Himself as to salvation. If, as a sinner, I am connected with that work, I get into the very secret of the delight of the Father in Him, and invested with the whole glory belonging to His Son's work; He would have me say " Abba," with my whole heart, making it known He is " Abba " to me, even as to that only Son of His love. I get the springs in Christ and the fountain flows from God, through Christ's work and His having entirely met the Father's mind. He can look on me saying, " The Father gave you to me, how can I but love you? "
The results of the true circumcision as to walk, we find in chap. 2., but in this chap. 3, Paul gets to where he found these springs, in the revelation of the Christ, through the Gospel; then he goes on to the third part, i.e., the Savior Christ coming to perfect the body. There are three parts of salvation. The salvation of the soul, you must know that; then, working out salvation by the power of God working in the believer; then, an end flows, from walking consistently, and that is the glorification of the body.
One sees how an inclination to heresy comes in, from people losing sight of the sub-divisions marked in this chap. iii. People take up the notion, that God makes no difference in His dealings in giving salvation to an individual, and His dealings with that person afterward—but we get the difference clearly marked here. The first part of salvation is the poor sinner being brought to Christ, the Rock smitten. Ah! don't we see how the streams flow forth—precious streams of living water gushing out—not to God's people only, but to weary ones round about. We are so grossly selfish, it is always, where am I? what have I got? I stands up first, and that is the " old man "—but God does not begin with me, but with Christ. In the Father's house, will it be I and nothing for the heart to be interested in, save things connected with self? or will you there find Christ so completely the Center of that scene, so completely filling it and His love so precious, that you cannot have the least thought about yourself—so wrapt up with that Christ in the very light of His presence, that you can find no place for the T, the self, that fills up the thoughts in the present time. We have two centers down here, and I comes in before Christ. Paul had two, and had to give up self. If you were to pick out the best down here to be a center, you would find in him only the first Adam. What a different center, to wind things round, is this Christ of God; if He made Himself the center, to wind a man like Paul round, everything that Paul passed through of sorrow and difficulty, only became the means of winding him more and more round this Christ in heaven; and depend upon it, the brightness of that Christ would come out, not only to the joy of Paul, but of God Himself, to find His servant letting it out in a place of all others the most, difficult. (ver, 3.) " For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh."
We have the mark of the people blest by God, "we are the circumcision." Here the Spirit and the flesh are contrasted; Christ cannot shine in the flesh; it is only in the Spirit He can shine. All connected with the first Adam, is a judged thing—the knife goes round to cut everything of flesh. In Eden, nothing that the hand of God could give enabled man to taste His redeeming love; but in the Paradise of God, we find a place of His own joy—a place where all His people will be gathered, and nothing to remind them of the first, save the name—not a place where man as a mere creature could find his joy. If we take the end of Revelation, and compare its descriptions with Eden, we find God in everything, showing the superiority.
Beware of dogs "; this was very severe from the lips of a Jew; a dog—a thing unclean altogether. Jews turning back to their own works, were these dogs. Next see the biggest beads he can string together on this human nature, v. 4, 5, 6. The first circumcision was like a finger-post, very important as showing that God would have a separated people, but that was practiced on Ishmael's family as well as on Abraham's.
A Pharisee, means a separated person "Concerning zeal," &c. To the Jew it was blasphemy (and very naturally so) to suppose the Eternal Jehovah dwelt in the Nazarene. The very Jehovah of Isaiah vi. tabernacling in flesh—was spit upon and buffeted. Paul's zeal came forth to exterminate, if possible, the darling delight of God's heart—the Church. This was the thing against which all the fiery zeal of Saul came forth, not only to, persecute, but in blasphemy and injurious words; he did not know any word too bad to give to Christ's followers. Of course he did not, he could not have such a thought as He, the Eternal God, having left heaven, to become a man, a despised. Nazarene, to go to the death of the Cross, to deliver poor sinners from judgment, by bearing it in their stead. Yet utterly impossible to find any other thing than that He who hung on that Cross was the eternal God, or the most wicked impostor that ever lived. "As touching the law blameless." Afterward Paul discovered the law had claims on the inward man, not the outward, and that there is no power in a rebel to turn round to God and say, " all my springs are in Thee." He found the " law was spiritual," &c., " he, sold under sin," When the excellency of the knowledge of Christ came, what was all he had counted gain for Christ? He suffered the loss of all things.
We see the contrast of the two Adams: no possibility of comparing them together. The thorough mistrust man had of God is a very painful thing; to feel that there is One that you cannot trust, that that One is the originator of whatever He likes;—that He is perfectly arbitrary and wills everything in the universe, and you cannot shut Him out. " If you take the wings of the morning and flee," &c., even there His hand will find you. He will turn everything to His own glory; His love to sinners being rejected, He knows how to throw back the whole of man's shame on himself, and he, to have to say, I owe to myself all my ruin, I chose to perish in my ruin, rather than be carried off as a sheep on the Shepherd's shoulder—the trophy of His love—I owe it to none but myself. Satan is not independent, he is subject to One who called him a "liar and murderer from the beginning." Neither are you independent, but you must either be subject to one who would like to tear everything to pieces, or to One who delights to bless; either you belong to Him, or if not, you will be spued out of His mouth. Every man living is in the one place or the other; you cannot be in both: either nothing but a football of Satan, or a poor withered flower, picked up to be worn by Christ, in His infinite grace. When Solomon had gathered everything that earth could yield of beauty and delight, the bubble burst, and all was vanity and death. What can suffice to fill the heart of a ruined creature (let everything be heaped up round him) if not subject to the One who came down, as the One in whom the heart can rest!
What broke in on Saul was the beauty of the eternal Son of God, who had come to Calvary, shed His blood and gone back to heaven, and there that Son of God had a heart to look round the earth to appropriate to Himself, one who was an enemy and a blasphemer, to make of him a model man. Who was this man? and who the One who looked down on him 2 He was "the Resurrection and the Life," saying, "You Paul have death in you, and if you go to the grave, there is the second death and nothing else for you; but if I, ' the Resurrection and the Life,' have taken your shame, and have gone down into death and the grave and am risen up out of it, then you and every one, if connected with Me, will come out of the grave too." This blessed One was raised up and planted by God, at His own right hand, as the center of all, and of every heart. God said, "I have brought in a new man altogether." Have we got self as our center, or this 'One who is the center of all God's dealings, and all His delight? a living man in heaven, making all new. This is the one presented in all beauty to Saul. I get the person of Christ in the gospel as the alone channel of blessing, the smitten rock from whence the waters are to flow, to prepare a people, so that He up there as 'first-born of many brethren, may have them with Himself in that scene of glory, where God and the Lamb will shine forth.
In the present day we have got the gospel corrupted and brought down to an infinitesimal measure of truth. I rejoice that any one should get the feeblest ray, but that would not be any acquisition in a badly presented Christ, or an excuse for only presenting one point, and not presenting the whole truth of God, and leaving it to work in the heart. Paul knew, not only Christ's blood as that which meets everything that unfits for glory, but he knew Christ Himself, as the center of the glory, and the one round whom all the counsels of God roll; he had Him ever fixing his eye, as the most beautiful of all objects; and he lived by the faith of that Christ who had loved Him, and gave Himself for him.
And what was the end to be? A very blessed one. The Lord would come forth to change His body of humiliation, to make it like his own immortal glorious body. He gives it by putting forth power to subdue all—everything to be filled up by Him, by that mighty power. Is He the One who is to give me a glorified body, and what else? Ah! (Paul said), He is the one who has guided me all through the wilderness—what else? Ah! is not His living person up there ever spewing to his servant down here His perfect acceptance, saying, the whole question of sin is settled, and here I am occupied with you. No one knows the path you are to walk save me; you are to walk where I walked. " I shall put your feet into the prints marked out by mine."
There is something very full in the "excellency of the knowledge of Christ." It is clearly the revelation of an object by God, on which his eye rests, an object whose beauty was beyond all thought of man; that Nazarene whom man despised, He it is who is there. He is my Lord. He loves me and I love Him. Do you know that Christ as a living person in glory as Paul did? and, if you do, is it the fruit of your own intelligence, or has God given you power beyond nature to look up and see Him, and as you do so, is it a place of gold—precious stones—that fixes your eye? No! it's a person, one who sees me—one that came down here to die for me, one who loves me and allows my heart to twine itself round Him as a person to be loved. Two things: an object presented to the heart so really attractive that I desire to draw near it because so attractive; and that object the Lord Jesus Christ in all His beauty on the throne of God. Ought not I to love the One who had a longing about me before the foundation of the world as one given Him by the Father. If I draw near to God, it is because I find Him on the throne with everything, not only for perfect rest of soul before God, but having, in Himself, everything attractive to the heart.
Poor pitiful things are we, but as a people connected with the Sonship, by the Father choosing us in the Son of His love, before the foundation of the world, the thirk„ that feeds our hearts, as it did Paul's, is the person of that Christ, His love to us so realized, that it is the one object of our hearts to love Him. Not one weakness, not a sharp. flint to cut the foot—but He just lets us see how He is taking the occasion presented by it, to show His love. You, poor Peter, will deny me, but I shall come again to fetch you to the place I am going to prepare for you because I want you. What rest to one's soul! What attractive power in His love! I find in self such waywardness of mind; I find things ruling me; I do not like walking here, I do not like the way I have to go; but what rest to know amidst it all, that He is up in heaven, and the flock under His hand and His power for them, as for a flock belonging to Him, and just where faithfulness fails His power comes in; for the sheep are His property, and He will surely guide and keep them to the end.
And what is it when it is the question of suffering, or the loss of all—He is ours! What did Paul give up? God says Christ is mine—I gave Him up for you—what have you given up for Him 2 There is a cup of water. Now have you displaced the water by putting something heavier into the cup? If you have a heart full of lusts and vanities—well how are you to give it all up? it is by the precious gold poured inside the vessel, and all there, is displaced by it. If I had a few copper pieces in my hand and a purse of gold were given me, I should lay the copper pieces in the street where a beggar could find them. Don't talk of what you have given up 1 If God have given you Christ—can you spare Him 2 Are you not obliged to say, Father Thou knowest what that gift of Thine is—Thou knowest about His cross and glory. And in the glory, oh what heart can conceive what it will be to look in that face What will you say then of the beauty of Christ? The woman of Samaria said, " Come and see a man," etc., He had talked at that well with her half an hour and she could say He read, not only this unclean heart, but all that I ever have done, and He hadn't a heart to condemn me. Oh when we think of what that Christ is personally, who shall read the fullness of the Godhead in Him and not feel like a little child looking at the Father who gave Him, and feeling He knows all about Him, and there the heart rests.
Evangelists say, How can the gospel suit a person that does not know he is a sinner? It did me. I found by it, that God had given Christ, and the Person of that Christ, as a living man, with all human affections occupied in heaven with me, was revealed to my heart, first bringing out a flood of affections, the rest came afterward, and I had to learn all my sinnership; but I got my heart caught by the beauty of that Christ. I have not got Him yet, but God has got Him for me; rays of light shine down from His face, but I shall not see Him till He come to take is up, but I can raise my voice and join the saints in songs of praise, till I see Jesus and am glorified together with them.