Now comes another thing, the second part of the chapter. It is my personal condition; but in that condition personal relationship that is treated of now; still founded on the Spirit. “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God they are the sons of God; for ye have not received the Spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father.” It is not that you are to see whether you are sons by the Spirit; but “ we are all the sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” The Old Testament saints had not this, though as faithful as we are. “The heir as long as he is a child differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all—till the time appointed of the Father—but when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” So here we are sons of God, as many as are led by the Spirit of God—and if sons then heirs. Of whom? of God, and joint heirs with Christ. We have not received the spirit of bondage to fear—like the Old Testament saints dreading death. We are sons and know our place as such, according to the word of the Lord, “my Father and your Father, my God and your God”—and the Holy Ghost now becomes the earnest of the inheritance.
What is the consequence of this? “We suffer with We cannot have the Spirit of Christ without suffering. I must in my measure have the thoughts and feelings of Christ. He could not be in the world and see sin and misery, and not suffer. We cannot but suffer. It is not suffering for Christ, that is a privilege given us; for “unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake.” It is with Him. We cannot but sorrow, if there is any heart, as the consequence of the consciousness of sonship. Yet we reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to be revealed to us. This is the time of the “earnest expectation of the creature,” not yet the “manifestation of the sons of God.”
Just see now what the consequences are. First, relationship with God is settled; secondly, I am an heir in whom the glory is to be revealed; I am a son, I am an heir, I am going to have all that Christ has: not only the Father’s house, but the kingdom, the inheritance in heaven of all things. They are revealed to my heart now, and they are His; there is the great and blessed thing.
Take the Mount of Transfiguration, the New Jerusalem, the Father’s House, all these things tell me what I have got, and my heart is bounding onward in the power of the Holy Ghost, rejoicing in the Lord always. The Spirit of adoption shows me all the blessed things Christ brings me into they are not manifested yet I belong to heaven, and am yet in a body that belongs to earth, so that I must and ought to feel things here. What brought the creature into the bondage of corruption? How did it get in? Through us. And how will it get out? Through us, when the glory comes! It is a beautiful thought! The effect of the glory of the new creation is to make me feel what the old creation is. We brought them into it, and shall bring them out of it (vv. 20-22). We know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, waiting for the liberty of the glory of the children of God. It cannot get into the liberty of grace—the body cannot; I have to keep it down. But when the deliverance of glory comes this is all ever. We get the glory, but creation gets deliverance. ‘This body connects me with all the sorrows of this world (v. 23); “Ourselves also which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves waiting for the adoption, to wit the redemption of our body.” We are not wishing for the soul to be saved, but for the body to be delivered.
Meanwhile, what does the Spirit do? He helps our infirmities. We groan within ourselves. It is not selfishness: it is the Holy Ghost puts us into it. It is the Spirit of love, of God, that feels the evil in the way of love. Is it merely selfishness to feel what it is to be in a world like this? Not a bit. Christ sorrowed in love. In virtue of the very joy and glory as the first fruits of the Spirit, I groan. What is that groan It is the Spirit of God. Our hearts become the voice of a groaning creation going up to God. And He that searches the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit? What a word is this! What does He find! Does He find sin in it? No; but the mind of God: that is like Christ. He comes and searches my heart, and there He finds the mind of God—what is “according to God”! It is the Spirit of God in me feeling things in divine love as in Christ, and He carries up the groan to God. Where does it come from? From the Spirit of God. While I am waiting for the redemption I have got the relative condition of son and heir, which makes me the vessel of the sympathies of God, having a link to connect me with it all. The very consciousness and knowledge of all this blessedness makes me conscious of the state of the groaning creation till the power of God delivers it. I do not know what to ask for, or how to ask, but I do know this, that God makes all things work together for good to them that love Him, to them who are the called according to His purpose. I cannot pierce through the trammels of evil in the world, but God holds the thread. I have got the Master of the whole scene, although I have a heart that cannot enter into all, and He makes everything work for good.
Now God is for me. This is not a work in me, but for me: not God in me, but God for me. What shall we say to these things? When Paul has considered the whole case, felt the joy and felt the evil, well, he says, I know through the Holy Ghost that He has given His Son for me when a sinner; and the conclusion is, God is for me. There may be plenty of adversaries, but what of that? God is for me.
One word for the closing part, to point out that what we get in it is good for us, and nothing of the work in us. It is the gift of the blessed Son of God. “ How shall he not with him also freely give us all things”? In the gift of His Son God gave the very best thing in heaven already, and of course He will give me everything else that is good for me. Do I want a proof that He loves me in something less? He freely gives me all things. That is all very well; but what about sin? Here God is not giving, but it is God that justifies; who shall condemn? Thus I have learned it all. There is an end to that question. All is well. But death is in the way, and life is awfully dangerous. Death? Christ died; O then death is the very best thing for me. Life? He is my life. Height? Christ is on the right hand of God, the very place where I learn all the blessing. Depth? He has descended into it for me. What shall separate me from the love of Christ! “Of Christ,” because He is a man. The moment I say Christ, I take it from the throne of God to the depths of earth, and from the earth up again to the throne, and I find nothing but Christ!
Further, nothing can separate me from the love of God. All else is a creature, and God is necessarily stronger than that which He has created. It is divine love. Though Christ as man was in all my circumstances passing through the power of evil—all I might think would separate me from His love. He has come into and triumphed over everything that might be against me.
Thus we have had the Spirit as the power of life to walk in righteousness; then taking part with me in all the sorrows of the path here. and, finally, we have been brought to “God for us.” What I specially desire is that our hearts should apprehend what it is to have the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, because we are washed by the blood of Christ. Are you going to use your body for sin; if it is the temple of the Holy Ghost There are a thousand things flowing from it. Even the resurrection of the body is because of His dwelling in me. This is what characterizes Christianity. “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his.” May we abide in the consciousness of this, knowing that Christ dwells in us, and we in Him.
“And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation: and hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.” Rev. 5:9,10.
“Do The Work Of An Evangelist.” 2 Tim. 4:5.
I desire to present what has struck me as to the passage quoted at the head of this paper. One constantly finds when there is controversy current on any subject, that those whose hearts are true, or seek that they should be so, are benefitted, and things find their own place in the circle of God’s workings.
I do not propose to enter upon the subject of the Evangelist’s service, as a gift of. Christ, for the gathering in of those who are His for the glory to come. Another has examined the service of an Evangelist, in its nature and character, and has given examples of his work with individuals or the crowd, drawn from the Acts of the Apostles, which gives us the history of the planting of Christianity on earth. The book being history (inspired of course), we cannot found any doctrine on it, although we find that which blessedly confirms doctrines given elsewhere, and this is as it should be, and as we should expect.
That no such state of things is now before us as in the planting of Christianity, is very plainly to be seen; the Church of God, formed by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, was then a thing to which the Lord added such as were being saved. On one side, God had quickened members and sealed them with the Holy Ghost, thus uniting them to Christ, and all were seen as “seated together in heavenly places in” Him—His body. On the other, God was dwelling by His Spirit in a house on earth, the saints being builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit. For the former see Eph. 1, 1 Cor. 12 for the latter see Eph. 2, 1 Tim. 3, &c.
To this real thing God added those who were being saved. The work of the Evangelist was necessarily outside this sphere. He had the heathen or the Jew as his sphere of labor, and those who accepted his testimony were introduced or received into this place of blessing, that its privileges might be theirs, through baptism. All this was the normal state of things then before the eye. To reach those outside, whether in the mass, or individually, was his aim; and he used the synagogue, where he could reach the Jew with his Scriptures and orthodoxy; or the market-place or elsewhere, and the inscription on the altar, or man’s knowledge of a Creator, to reach the individual or the crowd in Heathendom, with its heterodoxy.
Such was his normal place. But all this, let me repeat, was outside the Church of God. At the same time, I would add, that he who thus became all things unto all that he might gain the more, and did so for the Gospel’s sake of which he was the herald and messenger—was glad to teach those who had accepted the glad tidings, the way of God and liberty of grace more perfectly (Rom. 1:15).
These details are (as “all Scripture”) most valuable in the instructions they convey to us. But that such a normal state of things, and field for his labor, is not now before the Evangelist, as contemplated in 2 Tim. is plain. They were not before the mind of the Spirit of God in the Apostle, when he wrote this Epistle; nor even before him in his own service, ere he left the sphere of his labors.
In his second letter to Timothy, a totally different state of things had come in. What we may term the abnormal state is there dealt with. In it I find the direction, “Do the work of an Evangelist”—a sentence, the meaning of which I never understood (even in the measure in which I now do so) until some difficulties arose with others as to the modus operandi, in the details of ministering the word, and preaching the Gospel.
The masses had embraced Christianity in name. The Lord knew them that were His, in a vast professing sphere which the apostle likens to a great house. Evil men and seducers were there, and would wax worse and worse. Heresies were abundant; worldliness characterized those who were called Christians, as well as the world around them. There was a form of godliness without the power. All were seeking their own, not the things of Jesus Christ. Others were enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end was destruction, yet in name Christians. Some would depart from the faith, giving heed to doctrines of demons; men of corrupt minds, and reprobate, were creeping into houses, leading captive those of effeminate minds. The people were seeking teachers who ministered to their lusts, and would be turned to fables. All this was before his eye; and all nominally Christian.
In the midst of all this, Timothy is exhorted not only to “preach the word,” using every energy, in season and out of season, in every legitimate way (as one taught in the truth) to gain an entrance for it where heresies abounded; but he was to “do the work of an Evangelist!”
Now normally, as we have seen, this was done outside the Church. Heathendom or Judaism was its sphere. Abnormally, “the work of an Evangelist” was now within! It was in the professing church he was now to evangelize, and its sphere was Christians! not heathen or Jews. In name Christians, they were worse than heathens or Jews for while named after a rejected Saviour, they were unbelievers, rejectors of the power of that name!
In all this I do not limit the sentence in any wise.
I’ll bide with Jesus yonder,
Upon His throne of light,
And on His grace I’ll ponder
With rapturous delight.
Then from my starry tower
I’ll issue forth’ to tell
The Heavenly grace, and ponder
Of Christ—Emmanuel.
I’ll bear to men the story
Of pard’ning love and grace,
And far proclaim the glory
That shines in Jesus’ face.