It seems that so often it is the case that, when the Lord does something, He does it in a big way. So it seems like you have plenty of outsiders this week. I trust it will turn out to be a blessing, and not just something that you have to put up with.
Already, we have been blessed by two of the brothers who are among us, and we just rejoice that we can have these times together.
This morning, if you would turn in the Scriptures to the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John.
You cannot hear? Is there a mic? No mic? I just have to speak up then, huh? Okay.
John chapter 10, beginning to read with verse 7.
Jesus therefore said to them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep.
All that came before Me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them.
I am the door; by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture.
The thief cometh not, but that he may steal, and kill, and destroy: I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.
Can we once again turn our hearts to the Lord in prayer?
Lord, as we continue into this time now in Your Word, we first of all want to thank You for the joy and privilege and rejoicing that was ours this morning, as we have gathered around Yourself and around Your table for this time of fellowship with You.
It really has been a tremendous strength to our own hearts, and we do believe, Lord, that You revealed more of Yourself to us. For this we thank You. We bless You that Your Spirit was here to aid us in the release of our worship and our praise and thanks to You.
And now, as we continue into this time, we pray that You will be with those who are ministering to the children, that Your Holy Spirit will be upon them, that they will be able to impart something of the Lord Jesus Christ to all of those little lives.
And then, Lord, as we are gathered here, we simply want to say to You that our hearts are open to all that You want to do in this time. We do look now to Your Holy Spirit to undertake on our behalf, for the one who is speaking and for those who are here, that Your Holy Spirit would anoint us, so that our time would be something that You could use for the fulfilment of Your purpose in our lives and in our life together as Your people.
So, with this in mind, we just commit all into Your hands, thanking You in advance for that which You are about to do, as Your Word would go forth and accomplish its purpose in our lives, to Your praise and glory, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
It seemed that there was some confusion regarding the Lord Jesus and who He was. He took the opportunity to tell a parable, and they still did not understand the parable. So Jesus goes on to explain the parable regarding Him being the shepherd.
Now, as the shepherd, in this particular instance, Jesus explains that there was something very specific that He came to do: He came as a shepherd to bring life, and to bring it abundantly.
In this particular instance, I think it is important that we try to get some clarity regarding what our Lord Jesus was seeking to declare on this particular occasion. For instance, when He says, “I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly,” I think it would be well for us if we had some understanding as to exactly what our Lord Jesus had in mind.
Now, I think that all of us who are here this morning are interested, in one degree or another, in this matter of life. But when our Lord Jesus says, “I came that they might have life, and have it more abundantly,” it seems that He was talking about a life that is different from just normal life—that is, life that we all, as human beings, share.
So there is a particular kind of life that our Lord Jesus has in mind on this occasion.
Actually, when you turn to the Scriptures in various other places, you will discover that our English word life is used to translate some other words that are in the language of the Bible. For instance, there is a word, bios, that is translated with our English word life. There is the word psuchē in the Greek language that we translate by our English word life, and then there is also the word zoē.
Basically, it seems that these words speak about life on a different plane. Bios is physical life. Psuchē is psychological life, the life that we have inwardly as persons. But zoē is a particular kind of life.
It is spiritual life. As a matter of fact, in all the instances in the New Testament where this word zoē is used, it refers to the life of God Himself. It is eternal life. It is life on a completely different plane, with different qualities than we experience naturally or psychologically.
That is, it is possible for us to be alive physically and psychologically and still be dead spiritually.
So, in this instance, our Lord Jesus is trying to indicate to us that the life He is bringing to us is a life that is eternal, a life that has the quality of God. In reality, it is the very life of God Himself.
If you will recall, in the book of Genesis, when God had placed the man and woman in the garden, then He calls special attention to two trees. The one tree they were forbidden to eat of was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The other tree, it seems, He encouraged them to eat of, and that was the tree of life.
It is my understanding that this tree actually represented the uncreated, eternal life of God Himself.
And I think that should help us to understand that when God created us as human beings, His intention was that those human beings created in His image would actually end up experiencing God’s uncreated, eternal life—that they would actually experience for themselves the very life that God Himself has.
Now, this is a very important matter, at least in my estimation, because God was very capable of even taking life as we know it naturally and extending it all the way to the end, if He so desired, because He is God. However, this is not what God is really desirous of accomplishing in our lives.
It seems that God is very intent that all of those who are created in His image will end up experiencing His life in them—that His life ends up becoming the very source out of which they live.
Now, going back to the tenth verse of John’s Gospel, when Jesus says, “I have come that they may have life, and may have it abundantly,” the word He uses is the word zoē, to refer to the fact that God is desirous that we should experience the very life that He Himself has, and experience it abundantly.
Now, in 1 John chapter 5, I do not know what it is in my life. I guess it is because I am getting a little older or something, but things are getting a lot simpler for me.
I am really attracted by those verses that are just simple. They just say what needs to be said, and nothing else needs to be said.
But if you will listen to me, 1 John 5:11–12 says:
And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.
He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.
How much more simple would we want it to be?
God has given us eternal life in His Son. If you have the Son, you have the life. If you do not have the Son, you do not have the life. Does that not simplify things for us?
It removes all these complications that we somehow try to work out in our heads. God simplifies the very matter for us and says, “This is the way that you can have eternal life: just receive My Son, because in My Son is this eternal life. In the receiving of Him, you also receive this eternal life that God desires for us to have.”
Now, in the Gospel of John, he is concerned about a number of things, but one of the things that keeps coming out in John’s Gospel is this matter of life and the emphasis regarding this issue of life.
I would like to call your attention to some verses in reference to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself that I hope will underline for us this wonderful statement that John makes in 1 John 5: that in the Son is life.
You will look first of all in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, in the fourth verse. John says in reference to the Word, who was none other than the Lord Jesus Himself:
In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.
Now, I am not sure that I am clear regarding all that John was seeking to communicate on this particular occasion, but I wonder if something of what he was trying to say is that in our Lord Jesus Christ was this eternal life of God.
This eternal life, being expressed through Him as He lived out His own life, became a manifestation of life as God intended for every human being.
Now, I know that sometimes we have the tendency, even as Christians, to look at the life of the Lord Jesus Christ and say, “This is a life that I need to model myself after,” because of all the wonderful qualities that we see in Him.
Because I think that we discover in our Lord Jesus Christ life as God intended it for every human being. As a matter of fact, I believe that life any lower than what we see in our Lord Jesus Christ is life lived on the abnormal or the subnormal.
It is a wonderful thing to think about: the normal for every human being is what we see happening in our Lord Jesus Christ—life lived out according to God’s design.
So, in Him was this life, and this life was displayed for all those who would see life as God wanted it to be.
And then you will remember John 3:16:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
So here we have the declaration that what God is actually giving us in His Son is none other than eternal life.
In John 4:14, in this conversation that our Lord Jesus was having with the woman at the well, listen to some of the conversation as He responds to her:
But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst;
but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life.
So that, in reference to Himself, Jesus says that those who receive this water that He gives, which is none other than Himself, will have that spring up within them and become a well of everlasting life.
And then in John 6:51, Jesus again is speaking, and He says:
I am the living bread that came down out of heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever:
yea and the bread which I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.
He is the living bread. He is the bread of life. And by partaking of Him, we partake of life eternal in the Lord Jesus Christ.
John 7:38. Again, the Lord Jesus is speaking:
He that believeth on Me, as the Scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water.
So that by believing in Him, there is deposited within that person a spring of life that will eventually erupt into rivers of living water flowing out of their lives.
And then in John 11, in Jesus’ response to a very dear friend who was grieved over her brother’s death, in verse 25 we read:
Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life:
he that believeth on Me, though he die, yet shall he live;
and whosoever liveth and believeth on Me shall never die. Believest thou this?
So He could say to this woman in the face of death, “I am the resurrection and I am the life. He that believeth on Me, though he die, yet shall he live,” because within him is this eternal life.
And then finally, in John 14:6, Jesus says:
I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by Me.
So I find here that John is underlining for us this very truth: this life that God desires for all of us to have in abundance is, in reality, in His Son. By the reception of Him, by receiving Him into our lives, we receive this life.
I also think it is important in this whole matter not only to understand what the source of this abundant spiritual life is, but also simply to ask ourselves a question, even as believers: Who is living your life?
If you will look with me to Galatians chapter 2, I trust that the Holy Spirit will remind some of us, and maybe even break through in a fresh way in some of our lives, regarding this matter of what it means to be a Christian and to live the Christian life.
Again, how simple God would have us to see this—how simple it is.
In Galatians 2:20:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me:
and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
Now, if you will read carefully this verse, you will find yourself immediately confronted with what we might call a paradox, a contradiction. On the one hand, Paul says, “I have been crucified,” and then comes right around and says, “Yet I live.”
If we are trying to explain that intellectually, it simply cannot be done.
But it seems to me in the Scriptures that what God has done is to take spiritual truths and encase them in paradox—in things that seem to be contradictory, that do not line up intellectually. They are a contradiction in our thinking, and it is in that tension of that contradiction that the truth itself is held.
Here we find our brother Paul saying, “I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live; and yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”
I would hope that all of us this morning would have greater insight as to what the Christian life really is.
Now, for many, many years of my Christian life, I felt like I knew that in the beginning only God could do it. I realized that it was only God who could forgive me of my sin. I realized that it was only God who could cause me to be born again and become one of His children.
But I had this erroneous idea that, from that point forward for the rest of my life, the rest of it was up to me—that the harder I worked at being a Christian, the more I sweated, the more I strived, the further I would get ahead.
Only after many years of trying that did I discover, first of all, that it was not what God wanted. That is not His design.
This matter of being a Christian and living the Christian life is simply Christ Himself living in us. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
And how that truth, if it will penetrate our hearts, will just liberate us from this sweaty Christianity, where we are always trying to be somebody and to be a better Christian.
The issue, brothers and sisters, is really how much of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ is being released within us. To the same degree that that life is released, to that same degree we can live effectively as Christians.
So this paradox of us not living and yet still being alive is something that I think you and I need to get some real clarity on.
When we look at this matter of the Christian life, I guess we could say it is not so much a changed life as it is an exchanged life.
We are exchanging our natural, soulish life for this eternal, uncreated, spiritual life that we receive in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And in the same way that John said in reference to the Lord Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease,” that is very simply what it means to grow in the Christian life: there is less and less and less of us, and more and more and more of Him.
So it is just so important that you and I understand that this life that our Lord Jesus came to give us, to bring to us, is a life that, if we will allow it to have its way in us, will cause us to rise up and be able to be victorious in any situation that we may find ourselves faced with.
And then, in Romans chapter 8, there is another reference to this life that I trust will be helpful for us. Let me read verses 1 through 4.
There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh:
that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
Now, in this matter of living life according to God’s design, there is a law. There is one overriding law, and here the apostle refers to it as the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
The wonderful thing is that as this law operates in us, and we recognize it, bow our knee to it, and obey it, it first of all liberates us. It sets us free from the law of sin and death.
So obeying this law will produce the freedom in our lives that we are really hungry for. Again, you see the paradox: the way you get free is to become a slave. You become a slave to this life of Christ, and it will liberate you from those things that keep you from being all that God wants you to be.
And then you will also notice what he says in verse 4: that as this life, this law of life, is operating in us and we respect and obey it, the result will be what he says in verse 4: “That the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.”
Now, please do not think, brothers and sisters, that once this life is operating in us, somehow we are free from the law. We are not free from the law.
The thing is, if the life of Christ is resident within us, and is actually that which energizes us and enables us to live, then that life in us will enable us to keep the requirements of the law, in the same way that we saw it in our Lord Jesus Christ.
How was He able to keep the laws that God made? Because of the life that was in Him.
Only God can keep His own law. His laws are so high, so exalted, so far above us, that only He Himself can keep them. And He never lowers His standard.
But it is grace that God Himself, through His Son and through the Spirit, would come and indwell us. His life in us can enable us to rise up to that level and to live according to the requirements of the law of God—to live a life that is pleasing to Him.
I believe in all my being that God delights even today to stand, as He did on the day our Lord Jesus was baptized, and speak from heaven and say, “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.”
Now, please understand, brothers and sisters, the only way that is possible is for our Lord Jesus Christ—the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus—to be so operating in us that we are living out of that life.
Now again, let us not make things so complicated. Let us not make this Christian life a list of rules, of things you do not do and things you do do.
I realize that at a certain point in our lives, in order to learn how to live according to this law of life, the Lord, by the Holy Spirit, has to impose certain disciplines upon our lives. It is the same way we do in rearing children.
There is a period in their life when they need law, for their own protection and for their own good. They cannot just be free to do anything they want to. But hopefully the parent understands that there comes a time when the corral can be pushed over, when the law can be taken aside, and they can begin to live out of the life that is in them.
The same thing is true with us.
God wants us to learn to be sensitive to this uncreated, eternal life that we have received in His Son, and let that life energize our thinking and energize our walking.
Naturally, it ought to be just a spontaneous, natural thing to walk according to the Spirit—the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. Let it so operate in us that we are more sensitive to it, that it is regulating our lives, so that we are obeying God rather than obeying our old man.
Now that brings me to something that Paul mentions in Romans 8:12–13, in reference to this matter of us living according to the law of the Spirit of life.
So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh:
for if ye live after the flesh, ye must die;
but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
Now, please understand that resident in every one of us there is an enemy to this eternal life. There is one who is vying for position in your life. It is our flesh, our old man, who we are in Adam.
So that when we receive this eternal life within us, within this one person are two lives: the old life that we received from Adam and the new life that we receive from Christ.
Now, we alone are the ones, in one sense, who determine which one of those lives is going to be in control.
Here Paul says that if we want to live life on the level that God designed it—abundantly—there is something we need to learn to do. By the Spirit, we need to learn to put to death the deeds of the flesh.
Now, I probably do not need to tell any of us this morning, but I am just going to remind us of it: we all love our flesh, at least parts of it.
Some of it, we would all agree with God, is not good. It has to go—bad habits, and so on and so forth. But that is not what it says. It does not say that you put to death the deeds of the bad flesh. You put to death the deeds of the flesh.
If we do not understand that, sometimes we become satisfied to live out of our old flesh that we have sought to make Christian, to make spiritual. We live out of that for our own benefit.
And so, as the Holy Spirit is in charge of our education and teaching us how to walk in this life, He will design times in your life when He will be after something that is in you that is hindering you from living according to the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
What we need to be careful to do is to look carefully at this matter, because in all probability it is something good in our estimation. It may not be any sin, and it may not even have to do with sinful things in the world. It will have to do with something in our flesh. It could even be religious.
And the Holy Spirit is saying, “This thing needs to be put to death.”
Now, in recent months—I hope this is not too strong a way of putting it—I have been impressed that in dealing with this matter of the flesh, the deeds of the flesh, I have got to learn, in a sense, to keep my foot on the throat of that old man. He longs to arise again and have his way.
Sometimes, when we read this, “By the Spirit putting to death the deeds of the flesh,” we read it with such softness that we do not realize what it is actually talking about: mortify; put to death; strangle it, if you please, for this life is not being released in you.
And He says, if you will do this, then you will live.
That is, then the life of Christ within us can rise up and be expressed. The result will be that we can face the situation before us in the Lord Jesus Christ, in His life, and the outcome can be that we can handle that thing in a way that is pleasing to God, in the same way that our Lord Jesus Christ Himself was pleasing to Him.
So I would hope that, realizing the source of this life in our Lord Jesus Christ, and understanding that being a Christian is simply allowing Christ to live His life out through us, we would understand this: He does it without violating you, without violating your personality.
Sometimes we have this erroneous idea that if I allowed Jesus to live His life out through me, then I would become a nothing, a nobody, and somehow He would violate who I am.
No. This life that God gives us in His Son is so wonderful, so unique, that it can operate and be expressed through us and yet not violate who we are as persons. So do not be fearful of that.
As we learn to touch this life, as we learn to bow our knee and obey that life within us, the result will be that more life will be added unto us. We will live in a greater way. The more we obey, the more the increase of the life of Christ within us.
In this matter of life, I thought it would be well this morning if we would also give some consideration to this matter of ministry.
Now, I hope you understand that as part of the work of our Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary, He has made us kings and priests. That is, we are priests of God, a holy priesthood, according to Peter.
Now, if we would look at what the writer of the book of Hebrews says in chapter 7, we would discover there that he reveals to us that our Lord Jesus Christ is the High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
It is my understanding that, as priests, we are a part of that order and not a part of Aaron’s order of priests. That is, we are priests according to the order of Melchizedek in the same way that our High Priest is.
What you will discover in Hebrews chapter 7 is that the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ is based upon an indestructible life. It is not based upon having been born into the tribe of Aaron or Levi. It has to do with the fact that God has made Him to be a High Priest on the basis of an eternal, indestructible life.
His main objective and ministry is to minister this indestructible life.
I would like for you to look with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. Let us begin by looking first of all at verse 1:
Therefore seeing we have this ministry, even as we obtained mercy, we faint not.
And then down in verse 7:
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves;
we are pressed on every side, yet not straitened; perplexed, yet not unto despair;
pursued, yet not forsaken; smitten down, yet not destroyed;
always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body.
For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
So then death working in us, worketh life in you.
Without exception, all of us are priests in the body of Christ. We are priests according to the order of Melchizedek. And that with which we have to do is none other than Christ Himself.
We are to be priests who minister life, in the same way that our Lord Jesus, as High Priest, ministers life.
As priests, we are not just to be involved in doing religious things. Our calling, our responsibility, our task, is none other than to minister Christ Himself to others.
Well, should we put it this way? To minister Christ, first of all, to God, and then to minister Christ to others. This seems to be the two main responsibilities of priests: to learn how to minister to God, and then to minister on behalf of God to others.
As priests who are in the order of Melchizedek, our number one responsibility is to minister life by ministering Christ. That is, the One whom we have received into us is the One whom we are responsible to minister to God and to others.
Do we understand this morning that of all the things in the universe, there is only one thing that satisfies the heart of God? Do you know what it is? His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
That is the only thing. There is nothing else in the whole universe that satisfies the heart of God like His Son.
We need to be those who learn, as priests in this order, to come into the very presence of God and to minister Christ unto Him.
Please understand that if the Holy Spirit is in charge of our ministering to God—of our worship, our praise, or our thanksgiving—then He only has one thing to give us, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
Now, I know that sometimes when we talk this way, some of us almost check out and say, “Well, that is far beyond me.” Humanly speaking, naturally speaking, you are right.
But for the youngest, for the newest believer who has received the Lord Jesus Christ, do you realize that it is a possibility? Now, you can grow in it, but you already have within you the Christ that satisfies the heart of God.
Your thanksgivings can be in Him. Your worship can be presented in Him. So that, as priests in this order, our ministry to God is to minister Christ in a living way to Him.
And then, in terms of our ministry in the body of Christ to one another, you know what it is, brothers and sisters, that all of us need more of? We need more of Him. We do.
You do not need more teaching. You do not need more experience, unless that teaching and that experience actually transmit Christ to you.
Here we are, all redeemed people, I assume, for the most part. And being redeemed, we have right within us the Lord Jesus Christ. Ministry in the body of Christ is none other than me taking the Christ in me and giving Him to you under the direction of the Holy Spirit.
This is not because of any talent or gifting or anything else that we have naturally. It has to do with who we are in the Lord Jesus Christ and what a Christ we have received.
Our ministry, our function, is none other than to take that which we have received and learn how to minister to the other brothers and sisters with whom we have fellowship.
There is also a responsibility regarding the world in which we live. We only have one thing that can really help the world and those in it. There was only one thing that brought us out of it. It was the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
Jesus did not tell us in Acts chapter 1 to go do witnessing. He says, “Ye shall be My witnesses.” There is a difference between doing witnessing and being a witness.
Being a witness is somehow who Christ is in you being transmitted to other people. That is what they need—not some doctrine, not some particular emphasis, but the Lord Jesus Christ.
What a calling is ours. What a privilege. Think of it. Think of it. Mere mortals, flesh and blood, with all of our weakness and frailty, and God saying to us, “I want you to minister Christ.”
First of all, to Him, and then to each other, to those that He brings into our lives.
And you know the marvellous thing? Our God is so gracious. He gives us everything we need. In terms of what we need as content for our ministry, He gives us the Holy Spirit to empower us to do this. We go ahead and do it, and guess what He says? “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
No, He does it all and then gives us the credit. That is grace. That is grace.
You remember what John’s testimony was in John chapter 1?
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth.
For of His fulness we all received, and grace for grace.
Oh, dear, how God wants to transform us into what He wanted us to be originally, by the Lord Jesus Christ coming into our lives, increasing in us, and then allowing us to be instruments of actually transmitting this life to other people.
Finally, this morning, I thought it would be well if we would give some thought regarding this matter of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ—not just in our own personal lives, but in reference to our life together corporately.
I want to encourage you to look with me first of all to Colossians chapter 1.
Here the apostle again is speaking in reference to our Lord Jesus Christ in Colossians 1:18:
And He is the head of the body, the church:
Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead;
that in all things He might have the preeminence.
And then look with me to Ephesians chapter 1, verse 22:
And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church,
which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.
Now, there are a couple of things here that I felt would be good for us to look at for just a moment. First of all, Paul says in both of these instances that God has made our Lord Jesus Christ Head of His body.
It seems to me that there are two main functions that the Head is going to carry out. One is that He is going to govern the action of the body. Secondly, He is going to distribute life to the body.
In one sense, I guess we can say—in a true sense—He carries out both of these functions the same way. He governs the body by the life that He imparts to it. He distributes life by distributing life.
So, as the Head of the body, our Lord Jesus Christ is the source of everything that we need as the body of Christ.
There is nothing outside of Christ that can add anything to the body. Everything that we will ever need has already been given to us in Him. God has put Him in relationship to the body as the Head, as the One who would govern all its activities and who would be the source from which it would get all the life that it needs to carry out these activities.
The other thing that I saw in this instance is that Paul was caught up in this matter of fullness. I do not know how much thought and meditation you have had regarding this matter of what God is ultimately going to accomplish.
But when I hear the apostle say that Christ is Head over all things to the church, which is His body, “the fulness of Him that filleth all in all,” let me just try to share very simply this morning what I understand the end product is going to be.
The whole universe is going to be a way of God displaying His Son. Everything in the whole universe is going to express Him—the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
Now, I do not know, maybe again for some of us that just seems like a lot of spiritual talk. But have you ever stopped to think what it would be like to live in a condition where there was no evil at all? Absolutely none.
That it was absolute righteousness, purity, and holiness, and all those wonderful qualities that we find in God? That the whole earth, every place that you could see, every place that you looked, just manifested those kinds of things?
That is what God is after. So this end product is going to be where everything is going to manifest His Son.
Now, in the meantime, between where the world system is now, the universe is now, and where it is going to be, there is a very important group of people. It is called the church—the body of Christ.
It is through this church that God is continuing to do His work of filling up. You and I are caught up in that.
So I want us to see how important it is that, even though we have been the recipients of eternal life, what a marvellous thing it is—not just that we are going to live eternally, but that we are going to have such an increase of a different kind of life, the same life that God has.
Certainly we will live eternally. We will not live this way eternally. Hallelujah. He is trying to change us.
I am glad I do not have to spend eternity the way I am now. God is going to change us by imparting more of His life to us. As a matter of fact, even now we are being changed from glory to glory.
But that is not enough.
It is very, very important that you and I understand that we are caught up in something that is bigger than just us personally. We are caught up in what God is doing eternally in terms of the whole universe.
It is the church—yes, all of us in our weaknesses and our peculiarities and everything else, with our idiosyncrasies, our personality clashes, and all these kinds of things. God is, in the midst of that, working something out of eternal significance.
Somehow we need to keep this in perspective. It is so easy to lose sight when we start running into one another and have personality clashes. I run into your idiosyncrasies and you run into mine, and we somehow lose sight of what God is doing in the midst of all of that.
It is your idiosyncrasies that face me and force me to face up to the weaknesses in me, that I can lay hold of more of the Christ in me.
You know what someone said to my wife and me a number of years ago? “We deserve each other.” It is true.
My wife has grown by leaps and bounds in the Lord because she is married to me. And I am not just making a joke; it is true.
So it is in the body of Christ, brothers and sisters. Please, for the sake of what God is doing, when somehow you come face to face with somebody that you just cannot stand, stand there in the Lord. Allow His life to increase in you and cause you to rise up and have love flowing out of you to that person, and overcome.
See that it works.
You know what He is really after? You know all that the Holy Spirit has been doing from the day of Pentecost? It is to see to it that there is an increase of Christ among the people of God.
That is what our prayer needs to be: that somehow, however the Lord should so design it, through our life together with one another, through the ministry of the Word, through giving ourselves away, the result would be that there would be a tremendous increase of the Lord Jesus Christ in us.
Remember what Paul said there in 2 Corinthians: “Death worketh in us, but life in you,” so that there might be an increase of the Lord Jesus Christ among us.
In conclusion, Ephesians chapter 4, verses 15 and 16:
But speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him, Who is the head, even Christ;
from Whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.
Brothers and sisters, the issue before us is growing up in Him who is the Head. That is, somehow we are more vitally linked to our Lord Jesus Christ than we ever have been before, corporately.
We find out how, experientially—maybe through many mistakes—but somehow we learn how to be vitally united with our Head, realizing that our activity as a church is to be regulated by what is coming out of our Head.
The other thing is to acknowledge as well that individually I am to be a joint of supply.
Please, if there are any of you here this morning who somehow have disqualified yourself or excused yourself from functioning in the body, may I appeal to you? For the sake of what God is doing, for the sake of you realizing and experiencing what life is really all about, begin to learn, as of today, to be a joint of supply.
But understand what it is you are supplying: Christ Himself.
You know, it is possible for us to have Him in us and for Him never to be released because we are fearful, because we have had a bad experience, or because of somebody else.
But please understand that in doing that, we are robbing, first of all, our brothers and sisters of the life that He has given us. Secondly, we are robbing God of His glory. We are.
And I tell you what: we are robbing ourselves.
As being that joint of supply that would end up supplying the Lord Jesus Christ in any given situation, may the Holy Spirit today write indelibly upon our hearts that we will never forget, especially in those difficult situations, in those situations where we feel awkward, where we feel somehow cramped, that we would just be reminded by the Spirit of God that resident within us is Christ Himself, and He is capable of handling the situation that we are faced with.
If we will just learn how to carry about in our body the dying of Jesus, being continually put to death, then the life of Christ will be manifested through our mortal flesh. And just see the wonderful results. Just stand back in awe of what God is able to do.
And I conclude with that wonderful verse in Ephesians 3:20–21:
Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,
unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever. Amen.