May I repeat what I have said on each former occasion at the commencement: we are speaking to three classes of people.
Firstly, those who have never had a definite experience of what the Word of God calls being born anew. That is, they have never entered by a living experience into the Christian life. There have been some such with us on each occasion, and we do not want them to be overlooked while we are speaking of the Christian life.
Then, in the second place, there are those who have but little knowledge and experience of the Christian life—those who have only recently, more or less, entered into that experience and need to be helped at its beginnings.
And then, in the third place, there are the old stagers who know all about it! My point in saying this is that you will understand that, if it does not just meet you where you are, it may be meeting someone else. You should not be bored and impatient by the thing that may be helpful to someone else.
So we shall keep the level, and keep the gathering fresh and living, if we have that in remembrance.
Our subject, as you know, generally is what it means to be a Christian. In the first place, we considered the immense significance of the Christian life. Then, last week, what happens when we become Christians. Now tonight: the divine purpose and principles governing the Christian life.
Firstly, then, a divine purpose. It is very necessary for us to be fully aware of the fact that purpose does govern the Christian life.
That word purpose is very much in view in the New Testament. Most of you are familiar with one statement relating to it, although it is usually cut in half. We take the first half:
All things work together for good to them that love God.
But that is not the full statement:
All things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to His purpose.
“Called according to His purpose.” Then we have another word, not so generally known: “predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will.” Again, “according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord”; and again, “according to His own purpose and grace.”
These are sufficient to indicate, at least, that purpose is a governing idea in the Christian life. We are not saved, we do not become Christians, just to be saved and just to be Christians. That is only the beginning of something. It is unto something very much more in the thought and intention of God.
You ask, “What is the purpose?” Well, there are quite a lot of things said with regard to it—what it is and what it is unto. I am not going to take time to cite the Scriptures this evening; we must not take too much detail.
But when all the things said about it are gathered together, there is one thing which includes them all, embraces and covers them all, of which they are all just parts. That one inclusive and comprehensive thing which sets forth the divine purpose is found in a clause in one of Paul’s letters:
Till we all attain unto the fullness of Christ.
The fullness of Christ—that is the purpose with which we are called, which governs the Christian life, which gives to the Christian life its meaning.
We are going to spend a little time looking into that. But I am sure you will instantly recognize that that makes Christ very great. Surely, if all the Christians who ever have been, and are, and will yet be, are called with that purpose—to attain unto the fullness of Christ—and the number is countless in all the centuries and all the generations since the first Christian, then Christ must be very great indeed.
The Christian life must therefore be something very great. If it takes its character, its meaning, and its dimensions from Christ, then the Christian life corresponding to Christ must be a very great thing.
It makes the Christian life necessarily a progressive thing. No Christian, at any time in his experience or history here on this earth, can ever say that he has reached that end. It means that the Christian life is one of progress and development, all moving towards that ultimate fullness.
So we find in the New Testament that the Christian life is set forth in three tenses: we are Christians, we are becoming Christians, and we are going to be Christians.
There are three distinct words in the New Testament, in the original language, indicating those tenses. I believe it was Bishop Handley Moule who was travelling on one occasion. A Salvation Army lass got into the same compartment with him, and, when they had settled on the way, although he was a bishop—or, I believe, a dean at that time—in his canonicals, she interrogated him: “Sir, are you saved?”
The kindly old bishop looked at her and said, “Do you mean”—and then he quoted the three Greek words. It sounds a bit pedantic for me to quote them to you. “Do you mean, I was saved; I am being saved; or I am going to be saved?”
Of course, she was completely bowled over. It was a bit rough on her, and she did not know what to say, but it led to a very profitable talk about the beginning, the growth, and the end of the Christian life.
My point is that there it is in the New Testament. We were saved, we are being saved, and we are going to be saved. They are all there. “We shall be saved” is the word: the final stage.
We were accepted in Christ. We are growing in Christ. We are to be perfected in Christ. Christ, then, is spread over the whole life of the Christian as its beginning, continuation, and consummation.
That is a statement which you will all agree needs no labouring. But what does this mean? What is the fullness of Christ?
Well, what is the beginning, or simple elementary nature, of Christ into which we come at the beginning?
When we come into Christ, we say we have come into life. We have come into life. We have found life in Christ. The great secret of the first experience is that we have received a gift of God which is eternal life, and we know it.
As we were saying last week, there is no doubt about it. We know that life has been given to us. Let us hold that firmly.
Then, at the beginning, we speak of having received light, or having come into light—into the light. Though we may not be able to define or explain everything that has become illumined to us, altogether there is another world. We know our eyes have been opened; we have come to see; light has broken upon us.
We are able to say, “Whereas I was blind, now I see.” I was in the dark; now it is all light. Put it how you will: the beginning of the Christian life is there—life, light, and then liberty.
Liberty! One of the great things at the beginning of the Christian life is a wonderful sense of release, of emancipation, of having been set free. It is a great subject of teaching in itself, the liberty that Christ brings us into. It is a great reality—this liberty, this wonderful setting free.
Further, when we turn to Christ, we come into love. Divine love comes into our hearts. These are core things which, in an elementary form, we come into and which come into us right at the beginning.
There is much more to it, and there are many more things, but that is enough to provide an answer to our inquiry: life and new life.
I do not mean now the way we live—that follows, of course—but a new dynamic power in us, which is called divine life. A new life, another one altogether. That life has in it another nature, belongs to another realm, and has the nature of that other realm, which is the realm of God Himself.
With that life there comes to us a new nature. I do not mean, at this point, of course, that we are altogether other creatures; but this is the beginning. We are conscious that there is a new nature at work within us, working for certain things and against certain things which were never true of us before.
A new and different life and energy. Life is an energy, is it not? It is wonderful. Energy is life. See what life will do.
Life really demands difficulty to prove its energy. I remember some years ago going down into Cornwall and staying on a farm. This farm had fields on a slope, and one of the fields was strewn with large stones—large stones over the whole field.
It was the time of year when seed was in, but nothing was appearing. I said to the farmer, “Surely you will never get a crop of wheat in that field with all those stones.”
“Do not you make a mistake,” he said. “When I first came to this farm, I cleared them off. I had a very poor crop, so I put them back again; and I get a much better crop with the stones, much stronger and healthier than I had before.”
Life, you see, proves itself by difficulties and oppositions. Here is a new life-force, energy of a different kind, of another kingdom, that is given to us in our new birth. It is different.
There is also a new intelligence, a new understanding, a new clearness about things. Everybody who has genuine Christian experience knows that they see what they could never see before. They were always striving and struggling to see; now they see, and another world is opened to them.
It is just as a new world is given to any person who has been born blind and is suddenly given sight. They may have heard about it, talked about it, and had it explained to them, but they have never been able to say, “Now I see, I see.”
Yes, you are given light, liberty, release, and, with release, enlargement. What a large thing the Christian life is! Something is wrong with a Christian life that is small, mean, petty, limited, and narrow. Christian life is a large thing; it is a land of far distances.
With that enlargement there comes a new inward sense of prospect—prospect. Things are ever and ever beyond. The further you go in the Christian life, the more conscious you are of how much more there is. You never exhaust this real sense of prospect and future: a large, wide-open door.
And love: a new motive power in the life and in the heart. The new motive power is love. The mark of a true Christian, a true Christian life, is love.
At the beginning, as we said last week, it shows itself as an instantaneous desire to share—to let someone else know all about it and come into the good into which you have come. There is a great heart overflowing for all the world, that the world might know.
Love is, in its character, selfless and self-giving. If you do anything, make any sacrifice, never consider yourself. The love of Christ constraineth. There is great care for the interests of others and a deep, warm devotion to their interests.
We cannot expand upon each of these—perhaps least of all this wonderful love of God shed abroad in our hearts. But you see, these four things alone are there right at the beginning in an elementary form.
What is the fullness of Christ? It is simply the continuous and ultimate finality of those very things: the continuous growth of life.
The life, the freshness, this dynamic force of God within us, this divine nature which is in His life, should never, never come to a standstill. It is supposed, according to the eternal purpose, to grow and grow and grow more and more: more life.
Oh, dear friends, do take this to heart. To receive eternal life may be a gift once and for all, but you have yet to discover how wonderfully full that life is, and how that life can become more and more abundant as you go on.
The longer we as Christians live, the more we should be characterized by this mighty life of Christ—the power of His resurrection, it is called. It should just be there all the time.
The fullness of Christ is the enlargement and development of those very things which came to us, and into which we came, at the beginning. If we are going on unto fullness, we shall never do so here in this life, but ultimately move right out into the fullness.
It will be the universality of all these things. Oh, you can see how vast Christ is, and how vast the Christian life must be.
The Scriptures teach of Christ filling all things—that He should fill all things. How is Christ going to fill all things? Well, in just this way: that all things will be full of His life, and there will be none else; full of His light; full of His liberty; full of His love.
Christ filling all things: all that Christ is expressed in the whole creation. That is the purpose of the Christian life. We have failed the purpose if that is not true in a progressive way now.
If it is not true that these things are increasing in us, we have missed the very object of the Christian life. If there is not more love, and still more love, and yet again more love, we have missed the very purpose of the Christian life. That is true of everything else.
Christ filling all things, and all things filled unto Christ.
I do not know how best we could illustrate that. I have some very good illustrations from the Old Testament, because there is an illustration there for this very purpose. Everybody knows something about King Solomon.
You read the story of Solomon: his great wisdom. He is a synonym for wisdom—the wisdom of Solomon. If anybody shows particular wisdom or acumen, we immediately dub them a little Solomon.
Solomon is also the synonym for vast wealth: the riches of Solomon. His kingdom was of vast power, reaching beyond all the kingdoms that had ever been in Israel; and his glory was vast. Even the Lord Jesus referred to that. It was proverbial:
Even Solomon in all his glory.
That was Solomon and his kingdom: so great in wisdom, riches, power, and glory. His people were in it—right in it.
It says that when the Queen of Sheba came to see all this for herself, her verdict was, “The half was never told.” “I had heard fabulous stories, but the half was never told.” Solomon’s people were in the good of that.
But in certain senses, it was in them as well. You get a description of his table, and when those who ate at his table got up from it, his glory was in them, his riches were in them, and they knew it. It worked both ways. They were in the greatness of Solomon, but the greatness of Solomon was in them.
Now, here in the New Testament, Jesus says:
A greater than Solomon is here.
Christ infinitely transcends Solomon. Therefore, the people of Christ are that much greater than Solomon’s people. His fullness is to be their inheritance. They are to be in it, and it is to be in them.
The purpose of God is there. God’s purpose is to have a people essentially in great prosperity, in great wealth, great spiritual riches, and great spiritual glory. We are called, says the Word of God, unto His eternal glory.
That is the purpose, briefly and very simply.
The principles governing the Christian life: first, there is no realizing the purpose apart from the principles. The principles are basic and governmental to the purpose. We never get on in the purpose, either progressively or finally, except by way of the divine principles.
If the purpose lays hold of our hearts and we respond, saying, “Yes, wonderful thing, this Christian life; wonderful thing to be called according to that purpose; and I want to attain unto that,” then it is necessary to know some principles which govern that.
Without them, apart from them, there is no getting on in the purpose and no development of the purpose.
The first basic principle of the purpose is the cross—the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The cross operates in two ways, or has two sides. Firstly, His cross and what it means for us; and then, His cross and what it means in us. Those are two sides of the cross which occupy a vast amount of New Testament teaching.
The cross is a work fully and finally done. It is a work which is finished on one side: that is, as to being allowed to come to God, having access to God, having union with God, and having fellowship with God. All the work for that has been fully finished.
We are made nigh by the blood of His cross. We have been made one with Him by the cross. The cross, on that side, is a fully accomplished work for our approach to God, our access to God, and our union with God. There is nothing more to be done apart from our accepting of it by faith.
But there is the other side to the cross: what it is to mean in us. The cross is also an abiding power in our lives. It is a principle to be continuously at work in us.
On the one side, it is what the cross means in itself; and on the other side, it is what the cross requires in us. What did it mean?
Well, all-inclusively and comprehensively, the cross meant the removal, from God’s sight, of one kind of man.
Jesus Christ, at a given point, assumed the representative capacity of all men as they were in God’s sight—in sin, under judgment. The Scripture says that He “was made sin for us, He who knew no sin.” Again, He was made a curse in our place.
That is where we were. All men were there: sin—not only sinners, but something worse in God’s sight—under judgment, under condemnation, in rejection.
Jesus, at that given point, took that place: your place, my place, the place of every man as in God’s sight under that rejection. He entered into all the conscious meaning of that rejection.
You and I have never known, and never will know, the slightest taste or hint of having been rejected by God. It would be enough to disintegrate us with terror. If you and I should have any little consciousness of being forsaken, it would be devastating to our moral being—intolerable and unbearable.
He took the sum of that awful consciousness. Sin—He was made sin. He was under it, and broke.
He knew and endured, in that one awful eternal moment, being forsaken of God on our behalf:
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
That was done for you and for me. We never need to come to that if we will accept what He has done for us.
But it was, you see, the setting aside of a kind of man which He had voluntarily accepted. He voluntarily allowed Himself to become, or to take the place of, that kind of man in that awful hour.
It was God saying, “I have closed the door forever to that kind of creation.”
That is what the cross means: that in Christ’s death, you and I have been set aside in what we are naturally—men and women in the old nature. God has, in Christ, wholly set aside and removed a kind of being, a species of creation, and put it out of the way.
In the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, all that man is gone. Not the man—that man—that was raised from the dead. A new man, another. He has now put off that man and assumes the place of a new-creation man.
There the heaven is open. God accepts that Man, and Man is installed and established forever before God as the type of man God has ever had in mind.
Thus, on the one side, God sets aside one man; and on the other side, He installs another kind of man. Therefore, says the apostle:
If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.
—2 Corinthians 5:17
The Christian life is just that in principle. The cross has registered this difference—a difference between where we were and how we were in God’s sight before, and how it is now. A different man, a different creation, in Christ.
In Christ, by faith, another man is placed where the other one was: in the resurrection of Christ.
Out of that arises all the teaching concerning the necessity, first of all, of accepting that position. We will never get anywhere in Christ, on the way to fullness, until we have accepted that position in which God has put us in the death of Christ.
In effect, He says to us, “Look here: in yourself, you are a dead man, a dead woman, where I am concerned. You have got to recognize that when My Son died, you died in Him. Until you do that, you never get anywhere at all.”
When you do that, then you are in a position to take your place in Christ risen. In Christ risen, there is a new creation.
You see, first of all, it is a matter of position to be taken—deliberately taken by faith. This is not new to many of you, but it needs constantly to be underlined.
That is the basic position of the Christian life. It is the basic principle of the Christian life: we have got to consent to God’s verdict upon us by nature.
We are not to dissect ourselves and say, “This is good and this is bad; this is not so good, and this is not so bad,” and all that sort of thing. God has the whole lot of us in His Son. He does not make differences between what we call good and bad. He regards us as altogether under condemnation.
There is none righteous, no, not one.
—Romans 3:10
Oh, that is basic. I say again, it makes all the difference when you get hold of that fundamental Christian principle of the Christian life.
Many Christians do not make any progress at all, and development and growth unto fullness are stayed and arrested because they have not got that settled. They are still trying to make something of the one that God says He never will entertain at all. They are still thinking that they can be something in themselves and trying to be something in themselves.
They never accept this utter, ultimate position. God says, “I put you in a grave with My Son, and that was the end of that. Now everything has got to be from another source altogether, of another kind. It has all got to come from Christ risen now, and not from you at all.”
That is the key to fullness. It opens up the way, throws open the doors widely. When you get that really settled and take that position, there is no limit to what can be in the Christian life.
Then, when the position has been taken and accepted, acknowledged, and received by faith, the other side begins: the application of the principle.
We accept that ultimate position as a basis and recognize it as God’s own verdict. Then the principle of the cross begins to work in us.
Yes, the first side is Romans 6: we were crucified with Christ.
We were crucified with Christ.
Then Paul says:
Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body.
—2 Corinthians 4:10
Then he said, “I die daily.” And his aspiration was:
That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection.
—Philippians 3:10
You see, the principle is at work. It was done, but now it is being applied as an active thing in the life. On the one side, it brings into actual reality our death with Christ; and on the other side, corresponding and balancing that, it brings into actual experience our life-union with Christ. As the death works, so the life works.
What is God doing with us? Why all this trouble, all the difficulties, this discipline, this chastening, this hard way, this difficult school? Why all this?
Oh, the Christian life was never intended to be one continuous song and picnic and joy ride! No, it is not. That does not mean that the joy disappears—not a bit of it. The joy goes on in spite of everything.
But it does mean that we come into a lot of difficulty, and into what, to our old man, is a very difficult way. What is the meaning? God is applying the principle, getting the old man out of the way and making room for the new.
Is it not true of a Christian—a true Christian, as differing from any other person—that suffering produces beauty? Suffering produces the true nature of Christ. Suffering brings out what Christ is.
In others, so often, suffering brings out bitterness and resentment. Some of the most difficult people I have ever met and tried to help have been people who, because of some great adversity in their lives, have turned against God and become bitter. Suffering has done that.
But that is not what happens to Christians. The marvel of the Christian life, the miracle of the Christian life, is to find some dear children of God in lifelong suffering and agony, either in body or in circumstance, just wonderfully radiant—wonderfully radiant.
You go in where they are: it is the peace of God, the joy. The hymns they sing are hymns about the love of God; they are their favourite hymns. If they ought to sing about anything at all, naturally speaking, it would not be that. But they are their favourite hymns: the love of God.
You see, this is marvellous, marvellous. I have certain instances clearly in my mind—such people in my own experience.
What is it all for? Why, the principle of the cross is at work: on the one side, clearing the ground for Christ, for this new-creation life; making way for the fullness of Christ.
That is the first principle, and it can only be mentioned in brief as we hurry to a close.
The next is a very important principle. The principle, or law, of fullness is relatedness.
No individual Christian, and no number of Christians simply as separate, isolated individuals, can come to the fullness of Christ. That goes without saying if you think about it. How could it be otherwise? If Christ is as great as we have said, how can any one individual contain that? It is nonsense even to think it. It would be arrogant to suggest it.
It will require a vast, vast multitude to come to that. But they will never come to it as a multitude or congregation of individuals.
See the great conception given to us in the New Testament: the aggregate of Christians is the body of Christ.
Think for a moment about your body. You know quite well that no one member of your body, or even all the members of your body if detached from one another, will grow.
It requires not only all the members, but all the members united, making one body. There can be no development either of any member or members, nor even of the whole body together, until articulation has taken place.
I believe the very first thing that a student of medicine has to learn, very early in the course, is from a box of bones handed over to him: all the bones of the human body. “Now then, put those together and make up a skeleton.” That is the first lesson.
The very first lesson in fullness and growth is the articulation of the members: the recognition of the fact, firstly, that they belong to one another; and secondly, that they cannot get on without one another.
Their spiritual life depends upon their relatedness with one another. The maintenance of that adjustment to one another is the secret of spiritual growth.
If Satan can carry out his masterstroke of separating Christians, he has effected their spiritual arrest. It is always like that. That is why he is after it. Divisions are the masterpiece of the devil, set against God’s ultimate purpose—the fullness of Christ.
If we would only look at our divisions—not only the larger ones, but the little ones between us and somebody else—in the light of how they affect our spiritual growth or their spiritual growth, and how they relate to the larger interest of Christ’s increase, we would have a new motive for getting rid of those divisions, healing those quarrels, and adjusting our relationships.
Relatedness is vital to growth. First of all, it is articulation—that is, member to member. Then it is mutuality of life.
Mutuality of life: dependence and interdependence; recognition of the fact that we must have one another, that our very life depends upon it. Fellowship is essential; it is indispensable.
That is a principle of growth. Do not make any mistake about it. You will be greater or smaller in your measure of Christ according to your recognition and observance of that principle.
But remember, it is not artificial. It is not something that we organize. It is not institutional. It is organic; it is by life and by love.
It is not from the outside—arranging it, deciding to have it, and fixing it up. It comes from the inside. It comes from Christ within.
Paul put his finger upon that very thing in the church at Corinth. He found different circles: one centred in himself, saying, “We are of Paul”; another centred in Apollos, saying, “We are of Apollos”; another centred in Peter, saying, “We are of Peter”; and so on.
His appeal to them was this:
Is Christ divided?
—1 Corinthians 1:13
The answer is no: you cannot divide Christ. If Christ is in you and governs, then all this is a contradiction to Christ. This is all not Christ.
No wonder there was such a poor, mean, miserable measure of spiritual life at Corinth at that time. Thank God, we have another side of the story later on. They evidently got over it, and the second letter gives a very different picture of things there.
But Christ cannot be divided. All divisions, whether they be between just two Christians or the great divisions of Christians, are a contradiction of Christ.
No wonder there is spiritual poverty, weakness, ineffectiveness, and lack of registration and impact upon this world. The devil triumphs there.
Let us take note of that. It is a great battleground, this matter of fellowship. For that very reason, all the evil forces are set against it.
Paul says this is a matter about which we must be very diligent:
Giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit.
—Ephesians 4:3
I will just mention a third principle without enlarging upon it. It is the principle of purity of spirit.
You and I will not grow at all in the increase of Christ towards the fullness of Christ unless we maintain a very pure spirit.
You ask me what I mean by a pure spirit. I mean an open heart—an open heart, free from prejudice, free from suspicion.
There must be readiness to receive, ability to adjust, and no final closure.
Even though you may have been brought up in a certain way, be open that if the Lord has more light and truth to break forth from His Word, you are open to it.
Never come to a final position that you know it all, you have got it all, and you are in it all.
A pure spirit is an open heart: a ready response to every bit of life that God gives; obedience, instant, without arguing.
That is a pure spirit. You would be surprised how much hangs upon that.