The character of Colossians is this, that the saint is looked at as risen. It is not hope so much, but you get their “affection.” Then it brings out another side, that is life, “Christ our life;” that is more fully brought out here than anywhere; you get it everywhere, but more fully developed here. And Christ in us, Christ that made the hope. The way the saints are looked at is as risen, not as yet as in Ephesians sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. There you get the Spirit of God dwelling in us, and revealing the things above. And here you have the person dead, and risen with Christ; but the hope is laid up for him in heaven. He is looked at as walking in this world, but as a risen man, not as in Ephesians for you cannot talk of sitting together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus here.
In Romans you get a living man walking in this world, justified and the hope of glory before him, but a living man down here. In Romans it is that a man is to yield himself to God, as one alive from the dead; but in Ephesians he is looked at as alive to God. In Romans it is yield yourselves to God, offer your bodies a “living sacrifice, holy acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” It is not like a sacrifice of bulls and goats. You are to give yourselves up as a living sacrifice unto God, In Ephesians you are to be “imitators of God,” What Colossians gives is being dead with Christ, dead to sin, the law, and the world, and then that life is developed. We get in this chapter the way the Christian is to live, and that founded upon the place he is put into in grace. Then he speaks of Christ Himself. He is going to reconcile all things in heaven and earth; the whole scene is to be brought back, and then we whom He has reconciled come in.
First we have the great truth of what our life is, and then what it is founded on in the place we have in grace. What he prays for is this— “For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you.” It is our walk down here, that is what his prayer was about— “that they might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.” It is not merely that they should avoid sins, but there is a path in this world the spring and character of which is God’s will, a path that the vultures’ eye hath not seen, but we have seen it in Christ. He was subject in everything, and he that saith he abideth in Him, ought himself also so to walk even as He walked. He has given a path through this world which has nothing to do with the character of it:— “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” It is a path in which Christ is displayed. It is “always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body,” You see the privilege on which it is founded, that is the privilege of being like Christ walking down here. The whole character of His life was the manifestation of this heavenly thing in the midst of this world, There was not one single motive in the world that governed Christ. It is expressed in “the wilderness,” That is the Christian’s path. Giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.” “If thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light.” If my body is not full of light my eye is not single, it is not that its always visible. This is a path that is of God. Christ comes down from heaven, the word made of flesh, and treads a path that there is nothing at all like.
The character of this obedience is, that God’s will is its motive. Christ did not do anything that was not God’s will: it was his motive. Satan says, “If thou be the Son of God command that these stones be made bread.” A voice from heaven had just said, “Thou art my beloved Son,” He takes our place before God there; then He is led of the Spirit to be tempted of the devil, but when Satan comes he says, “If thou be the Son of God, &c.” There is no harm in eating when you are hungry (people say there is no harm in this and that), but He had taken upon Him the form of a servant, and there was no command for this. So in the case of Martha and Mary, they sent to say, “He whom thou lovest is sick.” You would have said He would have been off at once, but he remains two days in that place. He suffered him to die that there might be the testimony of the power that could raise Him from the dead. It is the knowledge of God’s will, it is not what you say, it is the right thing to do, it is “filled with the knowledge of His will” it is knowledge that with God decides the state of a soul—if I have this divine wisdom, where I am more spiritual these things become a matter of course to me.
Our path is that which the saint has to find, it is God’s path, and God puts him to walk in it to test the state of his soul, to try if he sees what to do. “If thy whole body, therefore, be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.” A candle is to give light, Christ is the perfect light. The principle of it all is, that “ye may be filled with the knowledge of His will.” As to the state of the soul it is “wisdom and spiritual understanding.” Then you get the measure of it. “That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing.” That shows how necessary the real knowledge of Christ is. Suppose a man tells me to walk worthy of my father, how can I unless I know his mind. Then the object always gives character to our walk. When Christ is that we get the eye opened to see all that He is.
You have “walking worthy” thrice. We are called to walk worthy of God, who has called us unto His kingdom and glory (1 Thess. 2:1212That ye would walk worthy of God, who hath called you unto his kingdom and glory. (1 Thessalonians 2:12)). That is the place we are to have with Him in glory, when all is complete. We are to walk worthy of it here. Christ displays the mind of God in this world. We are to walk worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called (Eph. 4-1). The third is walking worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing (Col. 1:1010That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; (Colossians 1:10)). We have the Holy Ghost to lead us. As a calling we are to walk worthy of the Lord to all pleasing, increasing in the knowledge of God. You are growing in the knowledge of God, and your heart, and affections, your mind, and walk, are formed by that. That is the walk of the Christian.
Then you get the power that we are walking in. “Strengthened with all might according to His glorious power.” What struck me is the way it works. We do need strength, and we have “strengthening with all might.” That is the strength we have to walk in it. “Unto all patience and long-suffering, &c,” it is to all patience that is the secret of being right. A man’s patience is not his control over his will, but he goes through things in patience, that is the secret, of it. We often want to hurry God, we would hurry Him even in such a thing as restoring a soul. Take an example in the call of the Syrophenician woman, when she asked Him to heal her daughter. He did not answer a word. The disciples wanted to get rid of her, she had no promise or anything, but she says, “Lord, help me.” “No, I cannot cast the children’s bread to dogs;” it looked hard but it brought her to know what God was, and what she was. The Lord did not say there is a promise to Israel, but you are not in it. He brought her to say, I have no promise, but God is good enough to give me what I want. It seemed hard, just as in the case of Martha and Mary, but there was no perfect patience till the thing came out as God would have it. That requires thorough confidence in God, and thorough having done with self. It is for me to do His will, as Christ did in everything. If there is patience there is none of my own will, I go on in long-suffering for others and joyfulness. Christ was characterized by patience. He could say, “that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.” Do I always do things as He did? There we get the stay of the soul. You see the privilege upon which it is all based. What are the signs of an apostle, “patience” is one of them. “Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience.” There were other signs too, but he does everything as God pleases, even in healing a friend. Epaphroditus was sick, nigh unto death, but God had mercy on him, and there was his love and labor, he was going on a message from Paul, God had mercy on him, Paul waited for this.
Now, the saint, is not of this world, he is in it, but he has to walk in the spirit and character of Christ, with spiritual understanding of God’s will, and having spiritual strength, and then doing God’s will, as James bays, “Let patience have her perfect work, &c.” I have no will of my own in patience.
Now, as regards the Christian as fully as can be, he leads us into this: Paul says, “Giving thanks unto the Father who hath made us meet, to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.” All the patience and walking worthy is founded upon that, and mark here it is a very strong passage, it is not, who has justified and given us a title to glory: that is very true, but it is “who hath made us meet.” You have seen the path and walk of the Christian, and the grace which put us into it, but the thief could go straight to Paradise with Christ for he was fit to be there, fit to be Christ’s companion. Blessed testimony that, when all deserted Him, the thief comforts Him! to think that when He was there on the cross he should just settle in his mind that He was coming in glory; not a cloud was upon his soul, and yet he was in agony and pain in this lingering death, but he never thinks about it,—all he thinks of is to be with Christ, and a perfect work of confidence is wrought in his soul. We must remark he did not go through the desert, but he was fit to be with Christ in Paradise. It is the most striking instance of conversion you find anywhere: he was the only person who was a comfort to Christ on the cross. You get this blessed truth, “Giving thanks unto the Father who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, making it up there in seeing that very place of perfection He has made us meet, and fit for it.” Then you get another thing. “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness.” I get Satan as the ruler of the darkness of this world, and that we are delivered from him. We may get into evil, but still we are delivered from the power of darkness. The prince of this world sets up for glory, which has nothing to do with God, and was revealed in Christ to us. “This is your hour and the power of darkness.” The world (although there are mercies in it) is a world that has rejected the Son of God. “This is your hour”—and what was that “the power of darkness.” I dread the things of the world for saints. If a man commit a plain sin there is nothing but what is evident and unmistakable in that; but the world slips in by back doors. The world began with Cain who rejected the mercy of God, killed his brother, and when God remonstrated with him, he said, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.” And he was a vagabond on the earth—he went out from the presence of God, and he builded a city and called the name of the city after the name of his son, and that is what the world has done; it has settled itself when it was driven out from God. Then you cannot have a stupid city without anything in it, so you get wealth, then instruments of brass and iron, and so on. People say what harm is there in brass and iron? No harm at all; God made them, but in a world of that character man must try and get on well because he is away from God. There is no harm in them, but the harm is that they were using them to be happy away from God. I have got into the light, but that is not all, I have this blessing, “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, &c.” I have not only God as light, but love; those are the two essential names of God. I do not mean names given in a dispensational way as Jehovah; but the two essential names as characteristic of his essential nature are Love and Light. We are delivered from the power of darkness, and brought not simply into the light, but into the kingdom of the Son of His love, where all God’s love displays itself towards His Son. That is where lam; “thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me.” It is the light of course, but it is also the kingdom of the Son of His love. Then he adds the how of it. “In whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” It makes me fit to walk there, we are brought into the light as white as snow. It shows what a blessed place we are brought into, partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.
I am in Him, I have this blessing, “Hereby know we that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit.” I have my sins all forgiven, and I stand with my conscience clear. We have the walk of the saint, founded upon this place he is in. We have another most blessed thing here, but that is connected with every day responsibility. It takes up the whole question on another ground. We have the character and perfectness and the fullness of the grace we have got in Christ.
Then he takes up what God’s ways, and plans are in Christ, then reconciliation comes in; everything will be reconciled in the new heaven and new earth. Look at vs. 15—(having got the groundwork, Christ, and the place in which He is, and having seen the place in which we are) we get “Who is the image of the invisible God.” He revealed Him as God, He is the image of the invisible God. Then when I get the created system which God has been so pleased to have, He is the head of it, the ground of that is, that He was the creator of it.
“For (that is the reason) by Him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, &c.” There I get this blessed truth for us, that while He created all things, He is the Son of His love, “they were created by Him and for Him.” He is going to reconcile all things unto Himself, but will not do so without our being reconciled first. The time is coming when the whole state and order of things will be put in order. Satan will be cast out and the saints introduced into it, and Christ will be the head of it. As Adam was the head of the old creation so Christ is the Head of this new creation. As in Hebrews, “Whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds, who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, &c.” It is spoken about the Son, but He did not take it (the headship) as God simply, but He that ascendeth (as man) has descended; has ascended up far above all heavens that He might fill all things. He went down into death that ruined the creature, looked at as to his condition and state; He goes down into death, the grave, and hales, and ascends up to the right hand of God, and fills all things in redemption. And hath put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the Head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all. Not merely simply as God but in the power of redemption. He has not brought the things into order yet, but is sitting at the right hand of God, in the Majesty in the heavens till His enemies be made His footstool. He has not yet taken to Him His great power and reigned, but He has perfected us; that we have got already— “by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.” The same Epistle says, “Now, we see not yet all things put under Him—but we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour.”
A part of the eighth Psalm was fulfilled. He has taken His place, not on His own throne yet, but on His Father’s, and He must reign till He has put all things in subjection under Him. He is now sitting on the Father’s right hand while He is gathering out the joint heirs. The time will come to reconcile all things, all will be reconciled in Christ. And He is in that way the First-born of every creature. “And He is the head of the body, the Church; who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead.” You get there a special relationship, a double headship, the headship of Christ to the Church, which is the body of Him who is the head; but over everything: one is over, the other is to. It is over everything that Christ created to the Church, which is His body. “He is the head of the body, the Church, who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead,” and there I get the special place in which the Church is. So that He is not only Head over everything that He created, but also Head to the Church which is His body.
It is not only a fact, but involves a great deal. He had to become a man for the suffering of death, and has met the whole case that our sins had brought in, been under death, met Satan’s power, drank the cup of judgment, and now He is above all that. This is after the evil had come in, after God’s judgment is executed. He as man entered into a place that innocent Adam never could be in. He is there after death, after judgment, after sin had been all dealt with, He is in this glorious place: it is a totally new place. He is our life in that place. “I am the living One.” “When Christ who is our life shall appear, &c.” “In Him was life.” The Godhead too, but there was life in Himself. The life was the light of men. He became a man, and takes the whole consequence of responsibility on the cross, and goes into a new place in God’s glory. It is for us. He will be head over everything, but then taking this place as man, He is also the first-born from the dead. All the fullness of the Godhead bodily dwells in Him (Col. 2:99For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. (Colossians 2:9).) “It pleased the Father, that in Him should all fullness dwell.” By Him all is to be reconciled, there are two things—by Him I say whether they be things in earth or things in heaven, then I get the other point, “And you ... yet now hath He reconciled.” You get it again in the V. of 2nd Cor, vs. 18, that He has reconciled us. That is a blessed truth, and gives more than acceptance. It is our present condition of soul with God.
I have learned that my sins are gone, my heart has trusted this love of God, and my soul is brought into it by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not only that I am going to heaven, but even here I am with God, without a cloud.
If it is a question of men being reconciled, they are not so, but we are reconciled, it is our condition in this purpose of God. It is not only this, but it goes on to bring us into our responsibility in connection with it. We are reconciled, consequently we have got back to God, with a sense of more love than if we had never sinned. The seal of the grace of God is God’s love in not sparing His Son. Now, I can joy in God. I am reconciled now. That brings us into the path where responsibility is exercised, and conscience too. It is the place as a present thing now, I am in the path with God. As with Israel, “Thou in thy mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed. Thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation.” “I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.”
We are reconciled to Him, the heart is brought really back. That is the reason you find what is a very touching thing in John. He has sent His Son that we might live through Him, and has given His Son to be a propitiation for our sins, and here in this love in giving His Son, it is that as He is, so are we in this world. But we love Him, because He first loved us. The heart has drunk in all this love that brought eternal life to us, “We have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in Him.” You know it by the Holy Ghost; it all streams into the heart of the saint, Take a child, it would say, “if you only knew my mother, though I so often forget her wishes, still I find her heart all love.” “We love Him because He first loved us”—that is reconciliation! He loved us, we love Him, it is the divine nature in us. Having seen that whereas the state of things is not reconciled yet, and cannot be until Christ comes; righteousness will reign then and dwell where the whole thing is new; but we are reconciled in an unreconciled world. The present effect of that is to put us upon Our responsibility to go on to the end. When Israel was in bondage, God called them (I take it as a figure) there, the wilderness forms no part of God’s purpose, but of His ways it does (see Exod. 3:6-156Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God. 7And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; 8And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them. 10Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt. 11And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? 12And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain. 13And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? 14And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. 15And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations. (Exodus 3:6‑15)).
God was going to give them Canaan, but in point of fact He led them through the desert, that is what He does with us, The case of the thief shows that it was not a merely necessary thing to go through the desert.
It is with the desert the if’s are connected. It is no question of purpose, nay, of the accomplishments of it but in bringing about the ways of God. He puts the Christian through this world exercising and trying, and so on, to see if he will keep His commandments or not. And you that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in His sight. That is his purpose. Then he says, “If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled.” He puts them through the wilderness where they are tested and proved as to their obedience and dependence upon God. It is not a question of redemption if we are in Christ. In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me and I in you. There is never an if there, but the moment He takes me as an actual living man in the flesh here, He says, “You must run that you may obtain.” It is not that I am not fit to be with Christ, but now the thing is, I am sent to travel through the desert. If any man serve me, let him follow me. And where I am there shall also my servant be.
But what is my confidence? It is another and a blessed thing. He does not withdraw His eyes from the righteous. Christ is my righteousness, there is no if there. Why am I kept by the power of God? We are in danger of stumbling, but God will keep us to the end, we have to be kept, would not you stumble if you were not kept of God. Take that passage in Mau 10th, “I give unto them eternal life.”
What is the good of saying, “They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand,” if they were not in danger of being plucked? it is the same word as “catcheth” in vs. 12, “the wolf catcheth them”—but Christ says, “they will never catch them out of my hand.” There is perfect security in the Lord’s faithfulness. I get the way He keeps me; I have prayed for thee “that thy faith fail not.” Peter’s faith did not fail.
Take another instance, is it not so blessed as that in John? Paul says to the Corinthians, “So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” What makes it so striking is, they were going on badly, he blames them for what they were doing, but still he says, “Who shall confirm you unto the end.” We are put through the difficulties and trials of the way. We may fail, and do fail, but we have got this, “Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.” And therefore the responsibility of leaning upon this grace every moment, not calling in question our redemption, while walking through the wilderness.
We are put through this every day, so that we in the sense of our weakness may lean upon the Lord—so that we may go on day by day leaning upon Him, that we may be with Him at the end of the journey. I It is not a question of redemption or acceptance, but it is a question of His putting you through this process. He puts you through it in perfect faithfulness to bring you through, but to bring you through knowing Hine, and knowing yourself too. We should find out not merely that God has accomplished perfect redemption, but that He never withdraws His eyes from the righteous. He loves and chastens, but puts us here and says, “You must get to the end of the journey.” He says, “My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12-9). The apostle was in danger of being puffed up, the Lord sends him the messenger of Satan, it made his speech contemptible, and when he learned that he was reduced to utter weakness, then it is that he says, “Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in mine infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”
We have all to go through this. I have the perfect settled consciousness that I am reconciled to God. He will present us in that day without fault, we have the promise that that will be done (Jude 2424Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, (Jude 24))—but we have exercises all the way, to see how far we will walk worthy. When you speak of the desert then you find all these ifs. You never find “if Christ is my righteousness” —that has nothing to do with if. The case of the thief showed us the desert was not necessary; and it is God’s way to put us through it. Just as with Job he was saying, “When the ear heard me, then it blessed me: and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me”—he was getting pleased with himself, and God reveals Himself, and He says, “Now, mine eye seeth thee, therefore I abhor myself.” Then can God bring in all the blessings.
There is no uncertainty as to the perfectness of Christ’s work. No uncertainty as to being in glory. “You hath He reconciled.” He wants our hearts to get into this place. He is earnestly exercising our souls, but with the blessed promise that He will never fail. The soul can always lean on that blessed truth. “They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.”
There may be wandering away, or the tendency to it, and therefore you get, “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” We are every day exercised all the way, and we gain immensely by it. Paul does not say I believe, but “I know whom I have believed”—he knew Him. “He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” I get this full and blessed knowledge of Christ—we get that in passing through the wilderness. My soul gets perfect rest by being able to say, “I know whom I have believed.”
I add one word from the Old Testament, “The Lord is my shepherd.” It is not that He has given me great blessings, but THE LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want even walking through the valley of the shadow of death. God spreads a table for me in the midst of mine enemies goodness and mercy shall follow me all the day of my life. He had learned through all the power of death, the Lord had kept him through all this, and he was in the knowledge of what the Lord was. Whatever comes in our path, we get the assurance of God’s faithfulness. He can never fail.
There are three things.
First we walk worthy of the Lord, that is what we are called to.
Worthy of God who hath called us with an holy calling. Then we get the blessed consciousness that if it is a question of responsibility, we are made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.
And the third thing is, God has carried you through the wilderness, where all the motives of the heart are exercised. And thus you learn and know Him.
It is wonderful to think that God should think of the difficulties and dangers and so on, but will never cease to carry us along the road.