I wish to draw attention to the expression “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8). It is generally taken as some vague, general way of expressing the preciousness and value of His work and Person, and while it is surely so to everyone who loves the Lord, I suggest that this is not the real thought of the passage.
There were a great many things spoken of the Lord Jesus in the Old Testament, as we are aware, and if I might give them a name, it would be “the searchable riches of Christ.” There we may find the promises which had Him for their object and fulfillment. We find His miraculous birth, as born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14); His life of suffering and rejection by His people (Isa. 1); His atoning death (Isa. 53; Psa. 22); His burial with the rich (Isa. 53); His resurrection (Psa. 16); His ascension to the right hand of God (Psa. 110); His receiving gifts for men, or “in the man” (Psa. 68:18); His coming in the clouds of heaven (Dan. 7:13-14); the judgments that He executes (Isa. 59:16-20; 63:1-6). There we also find His glorious reign (Psa. 72; Isa. 32) and the principles of His kingdom (Psa. 101). All these and many more might be searched out and traced through the Old Testament Scriptures.
Unsearchable Riches “Hid in God”
But there were the “unsearchable riches” as well — those which were “hid in God” — His eternal purposes which were before the foundation of the world. The Lord had come in among His people, but those to whom these promises were made rejected these promises in the Person of the Son in whom they were fulfilled. Rejected by them, He accomplishes the work of redemption on the cross, dies, rises again, and ascends on high to the Father’s throne. From the glory of God He sends down the Holy Spirit, charged with pardon for His people Israel, but the only response to this fresh offer of His gracious heart was a more determined refusal than ever. Stephen, stoned as a blasphemer, bears on high to his rejected Master (as it were) the message from His citizens, “We will not have this man to reign over us,” and all is over.
Saul of Tarsus was then called, and to him were the “unsearchable riches of Christ” committed; to him who was “less than the least of all saints” was the grace given.
Those “unsearchable riches” embrace in their thought the mystery of Christ and the church and her rapture (as of all saints) to glory. They unfold themselves in the unnamed interval during which the Lord Jesus is sitting on the throne of God as man, rejected by His people and the world — an interval of which no account is taken in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. The prophets then looked from hilltop to hilltop, as it were, and they pass over unnoticed the great valley lying between the mountaintops which caught their prophetic eye. They connected the coming of Messiah in His humiliation with its glorious results for His people Israel in His kingdom and glory, by and by. They spoke of the “sufferings of Christ” and “the glories that should follow,” and stepped (in prophetic language) from one hilltop where His blessed feet stood in the day of humiliation to the other hilltop where He would stand in the day of His power. The valley which lay between, with its untold mines of wealth, was still “unsearchable” to man.
The Valley on Earth
A man sits on the throne of heaven — the Son of the Father. From that scene He receives of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit and sends Him from heaven. Only then was that made known which lay in the secret of His heart from before the world. The valley is explored, its mines of wealth discovered, and we are led along its paths as strangers and pilgrims on the earth, but fellow-citizens with the saints in heaven.
During this interval, while He is hidden on high, another thing comes in. United to this glorified Head in heaven is His body, the church. He loved it; He gave Himself for it. He followed her into the depth of degradation into which she had fallen. Unlike the first Adam, He is not deceived, as was Eve. No; He follows her in the mighty strength of His love into the place of her shame and takes her sins upon Himself; charges Himself with them before God; holds them up in the light of God’s holiness; bears the wrath and clears her from every stain.
The Valley of Rejection
Jesus, then, is on high as Man, the mighty work accomplished which sets us before God in the light, without a stain. The Holy Spirit is here and, dwelling in His members on earth, constitutes them His body—His bride. From the hilltop of Olives, where He passed into the heavens (Acts 2), to the same hilltop where His feet will stand again in the last days (Zech. 14) lies the long valley of His rejection by His people the Jews and by the world, but in which His “unsearchable riches,” never scanned by the prophetic eye, are found. That period began on the day of Pentecost and will end with the moment when Jesus will take to Himself His bride, to conduct her to His home on high.
Meantime, while God prepares this Eve, “of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones,” He has left His “father and mother” — His relations with Israel after the flesh; He is joined to His wife (Eph. 5:31), or, as Genesis 2:24 still more beautifully expresses it, “shall cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh.” How different from this are our poor human thoughts! How well we can understand the weaker cleaving to the stronger, unable to stand alone. But here it is the divine thought from Him of whom are all things; it is the strong one, Jesus, cleaving to His weaker bride, and thus perfecting His thoughts of grace.
I would now draw your hearts and affections to the closing stage of the long valley — even to the moment when Jesus will come forth and translate His saints to the place He has prepared for them — to that house made fit to receive His bride. How short the time may be till that blessed moment when she will come up out of the wilderness “leaning upon her beloved!”
Words of Truth, Vol. 7 (adapted)