I am going to read those verses from the Letter to the Romans, chapter 4, which were placed at the beginning of our time of meditation.
At the end of Romans 4:16:
Abraham, who is the father of us all,
as it is written, A father of many nations have I made thee,
before Him whom he believed, even God,
Who giveth life to the dead,
and calleth the things that are not, as though they were.
Get the tense of that, of course. It does not say that at the great resurrection He will give life to the dead. He is present and active: God giveth life to the dead.
Who in hope believed against hope,
to the end that he might become a father of many nations,
according to that which had been spoken,
So shall thy seed be.And without being weakened in faith,
he considered his own body now as good as dead,
he being about a hundred years old,
and the deadness of Sarah’s womb;
yet, looking unto the promise of God,
he wavered not through unbelief,
but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God,
and being fully assured that, what He had promised,
He was able also to perform.
Unbelief always makes us waver. All our wavering comes from a negative faith. But Abraham waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised He was able also to perform.
Wherefore also it was reckoned unto him for righteousness.
Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was reckoned unto him;
but for our sake also,
unto whom it shall be reckoned, who believe on Him that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,
Who was delivered up for our trespasses,
and was raised for our justification.
The word which stands over this time together is faith. We are being led to see the relationship of faith to three things.
Firstly, faith in relation to enlargement. We have taken note that God’s whole purpose for His people is enlargement unto His own fullness. “All the fullness of God” is the phrase which indicates God’s thought concerning His people.
But every fresh movement toward enlargement, or every fresh stage in enlargement, comes about by a fresh challenge to faith—faith being tested in a new way, as not hitherto. By faith there is further enlargement, and there is no enlargement, no increase of divine fullness, in any other way. The Scriptures show that from beginning to end.
Secondly, faith in relation to establishment. We have again seen the thought of God to have things established: in a state of stability, endurance, steadfastness, something substantial, something deeply rooted and grounded and immovable.
God works on that line to eliminate all those elements which are present in us that make us unreliable, unable to carry weight and take responsibility; to bring us to a place where we are established in Christ.
But every bit of this work—confirming, establishing, rooting, and grounding—is connected with some further testing of faith, proving faith. Every fresh test sends our roots down to take deeper hold. It is along the line of faith proved that we become established.
Where there is no testing, trying, or adversity, we are weak and unreliable. So we see that, again, right through the Scriptures: God is moving toward having things settled and after His own nature—eternal, abiding, enduring. The whole Bible shows that this is brought about by faith.
Thirdly, faith in relation to life. That is to be our occupation a little later this afternoon, with perhaps a closing word on faith itself.
Faith in relation to life. I need hardly take you through the Scriptures to see how those two things go together. Much will come to mind as we proceed, but I just remind you of this familiar fact: the Bible opens with the tree of life, and it closes with the tree of life. That is the great issue from the beginning to the end.
In one sense, as we were saying yesterday, the Bible is all about this matter of life, over and over again.
As in the other two things—enlargement and establishment—we find that God has left us in no doubt whatever as to His mind on this matter. He has made it perfectly clear that His thought is life, and life in fullness.
The Lord Jesus, in His coming into this world, with one hand reaches right back to the beginning and with the other hand reaches right on to the ages of the ages. He is in that position, and upon that self-declared ground and purpose:
I am come that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.
Life, and life abundant.
Those other two things of which we have spoken—enlargement and establishment—are inseparably bound up with this very matter of life. All God’s enlargement is by life.
That, of course, is very clear and obvious when we take the parable of creation and nature. Go right back to the beginning in Genesis. God deals with the void, the waste, and the emptiness which were the state of this world as we find it at the beginning of the Bible. God deals with it in terms of life.
In every realm, His fullness—His increasing fullness—was along the line of life. I say that there is a parable of God’s way. Increase and fullness in the people of God, in the Christian life, are always in terms of life.
When God adds, it is always additional life. The result of all God’s work is that the issue is that there is more life than there was before.
So, progressively, by crises and stages, God is moving with His people—where He can, where they will let Him, where they will not waver through unbelief—toward His ultimate fullness on the basis of constantly increasing life.
The same is true in relation to establishment: confirming, making things stable, solid, and deep. This work of establishing is always, again, in relation to life: confirming in life, making strong in life.
The real element about this life is its eternity. An increase of life is always an indication that something deeper has been done in the heart.
The emergence from some state of uncertainty, through the victory of faith in a crisis, in a difficult and dark experience, simply means that there is more life. That is all. It is like that every time: more life. We are experiencing and enjoying more life.
Life is the basis of becoming more settled. There are lots of people who think there are other things which lead to consolidation, establishment, certainty, and assurance. But when you come to look at it, it is not that way at all.
You do not get established by a lot more teaching, a lot more information, even about divine things. You do not even become spiritually established by knowing your Bible better. That is not to say that you should not do that, or that it is not necessary.
But real establishment is that life becomes known in our inward sense. The answer is this: “This is the testimony, that God gave unto us eternal life.” The testimony is not a form of teaching, an interpretation of truth, or a system of thought. They are not the central things.
The testimony is none of those things:
This is the testimony, that God gave unto us eternal life.
To be established means to be constantly knowing the increase of His life.
That being the connection between these three things, because they go together invariably, we will look at some of the evidences of God. Inclusively, of course, the evidence of God is life. The evidence of God is life. The testimony to God is His life.
I need not turn aside to say that the evidence of God is not death and many other things. The evidence of God is life.
Let us go back to that original criterion in the symbolism of the beginning: the tree of life.
It is perfectly clear, is it not, that the tree of life—what it represented and symbolised—held the whole issue of whether God was going to continue with man or not, whether man was going to continue with God or not, whether the relationship was going to remain intact.
The evidence of God was set there. Now, evidently, it represented another and different life from that which man already possessed. That is perfectly clear.
God had brought in the living things: the waters swarming with living creatures, the air filled with living creatures, and the earth full of living creatures and living vegetation. Then God breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul.
Already man had, as we all have by nature, this life that we call natural life. But it was after the imparting of that kind of life, and after man had become a living soul, that God pointed to the tree of life and made that the issue of life and death.
It was not the life already in man that was the issue of life and death, because man did not forfeit that life which was in him when he disobeyed. The tree evidently represented and symbolised another life altogether, beyond that which God had already breathed into him: a different life.
Death, therefore, came to mean two things. In the first place, it did come to mean a change in man as he was. Although he would continue as an animate being over a long period of years, a change took place in him.
There is no need to analyse that change. He became different by disobedience, even in his own natural being.
On the other hand, he forfeited his right to this other, extra, and really true life, as represented by the tree. He never inherited that; he never possessed that. He forfeited his right to it.
That throws a little light upon words about the Lord Jesus:
As many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become children of God.
It is only saying, in other words, the right to this other life of God, which is through being begotten of God. The right to that life was forfeited by Adam through disobedience and unbelief. The right to that life is restored through faith in the Lord Jesus.
That is very simple and very elementary.
Satan said, “Thou shalt not surely die.” That was the categorical statement: “Thou shalt not surely die.”
Apart from his known rupture in fellowship with God through his disobedience, because of unbelief, Adam probably was not conscious of what had happened. “Thou shalt not surely die.” Very well: believing the devil instead of God, he acted.
Yet a veil came over the face of God, and a shadow, instead of light, clearness, and fellowship. The man went on living. He did not there and then wholly die. He went on living, and went on living quite a long time.
He went on growing, developing, enlarging. Do you see? There was tremendous enlargement after its kind from that man: the group, his children, the family, the tribe, the race—development and enlargement in every way.
It looked very much as though the devil was right: “Thou shalt not surely die.” God was wrong and the devil was right. But what has happened?
There has entered into man a deep and terrible delusion—an illusion—a false life, a life in which there is death right at the very core.
That has surely worked itself out, and it is still working itself out. All the increase obtained, all the development and enlargement of its kind in the matter of this world—right at the core of it all are bitterness and disillusionment. At last, at most, there is emptiness and disillusionment.
What has it all been for? What is it all about?
The people who have most and have not God are the most dissatisfied people, always. That is true. People who have most and have not God are the most dissatisfied people in this world.
The evidences of it are everywhere. As I was saying yesterday, I have just come back from a part of the world where every last whim and fancy is satiated. Everything that the soul of man could crave for seems to be available.
Take the natural things. Down there, where I have been in Southern California, you see acres and acres, miles and miles, of the most beautiful fruit. I picked baskets of the most beautiful grapefruit and oranges that ever you could see.
My friend, on whose fruit ranch I was staying, said, “You know, it is so prodigal that, in order to keep any market at all, hundreds and hundreds of this most beautiful fruit are put into a ditch and ashes poured over them so that no one will get hold of them and try to make business of them.”
Poor people who would like a little of that abundance are deprived of it in order to preserve some sort of market. It is so prodigal.
It is like that not only in natural things—fruit and other things like that—but in pleasure. Very often, in one family there are three or four cars. All the children have a car.
You can go on. You know what the word Hollywood means. There is the very, very latest in every kind of human design. You can see it all there.
Yet there is feverishness, restlessness, busyness, uncertainty, and anxiety. The biggest hospital in the world is there in Los Angeles, and four thousand cases are treated every day. In a country like that, where everything comes to hand for help, what is it all about?
It is the strain of life, trying to cope with life.
I stayed out in a very beautiful suburb. Everything was very nice. I went around house after house, all standing empty, and I asked my friend, “What is the meaning of this?”
He said, “Everybody within miles of this city is living as though on the edge of a volcano over this atomic-bomb business. They are all moving out as far as they can get, because they think at any moment the atomic bomb may be dropped upon them.”
Life in tension, with everything conceivable to furnish life: strain, tension, fear, and fear. Oh, I have not exaggerated the difference, because I could not. You have only got to go to see.
Here is an example of what I mean. The more men have, the more dissatisfied they are. The more you give to this life, the more it will take, the more it will demand, and the more dissatisfied it becomes. It wears it out in no time.
The whole thing fails to last. It does not last. That is the life that Satan has given in place of this other life.
You and I can have very little in this world, nothing at all comparable to a Californian setting, and yet have the Lord Jesus and be satisfied in our hearts. It is a very practical thing, this matter of the difference.
But you see, the devil said, “Thou shalt not surely die,” and Adam took it up and walked away with it. Oh, God was wrong; the devil was right; he was alive; and this is what it made him: a false life, hollow at the core, never answering man’s real need—a mockery.
The fruit looks beautiful, hanging from the trees, but there is poison, a hidden deception, in this life.
But in that life which is represented by the tree—the other life—it is just all the other way. It has nothing to do with things at all. It has all to do with a Person.
This life does not wear out. It wears well. It survives.
It is not like the other, kept going only by artificial respiration and stimulants. How artificial they are! This life is maintained from a living source and requires no stimulants, nothing artificial, to maintain it.
That is very searching. That is very important: to be quite sure that this thing has taken place with every convert; that there is no illusion or delusion; but that they have really become definitely and surely recipients of this other life, which will not require a constant succession of stimulants from without.
When all outward things fail, it goes on. That is the test. That is going to be the test. It is a very important thing.
This illusion can get into religion, and that is the place where the devil likes to have it more than anywhere else: an illusion.
The Lord had something to say to a church on that very matter. He said to Sardis:
Thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead.
A reputation for life, a reputation for being alive—and yet dead. The eyes of flame see through the reputation, the name, the false situation.
It would not be difficult, of course, to portray what that would be, how that would be, how a church like that would be. We need not stay with it. There are many things that have a semblance of life, that look like life, that people call life, but they are not life.
As I have said, they require external stimulants to be applied to keep the thing going all the time. What the Lord calls life is quite another thing indeed.
What are some of the marks of this life, this divine life? In the first place, it is perennial freshness. It is called “newness of life.”
We should walk in newness of life.
The word “new” in our English language has two Greek words behind it. One means something that never was before; another means something altogether fresh.
This life, of course, is something that no one has ever possessed before outside of Christ. But its characteristic is freshness. It is freedom from the earth-touch.
There is a curse upon this earth. This earth is in death; it is under judgment. All that belongs to it is under judgment. If this earth touches anything, it touches it with death.
But this life of which we are speaking is completely free from earth-touch and free from the touch of mere human nature. It is fresh, and for its freshness it demands that it shall be kept from this earth and kept from man’s touch.
That has been the issue all the way along, has it not? The life of God comes in, wonderfully precious and wonderfully beautiful. Then man must take hold of it in some way, put it into his mould, run it according to his ideas, organise it, and set up machinery for it.
It is not long before the thing is no longer in freshness. It is touched with something that takes the bloom off it, and in the course of time it has become old.
God has no interest in anything that is old. Many of you, some of your parents, are older than I am, but I still say it.
God is only interested in that which is of Himself, alive in us; and His interest is to keep it fresh into old age and grey hairs. If the life of God is the principle upon which we are living, there is still freshness—still freshness.
But we must keep man’s hands off, and we must keep the earth away. We must not bring it down. Oh, man has a terrible habit of wanting to take hold of and run the life of God. It has killed more works of God than anything else.
A wonderful movement of the Spirit comes; man takes it over, brings it into his framework, under his control, and under the direction of his committee. Very well, the Lord withdraws, and it is no longer in the freshness of His life.
Freshness and newness are marks of God’s life.
There is the new cruse. Consider the story of Elisha and the unwholesome waters of Jericho, with the barrenness and death which resulted from the lack of this vital element in the water.
Bring me a new cruse, and put salt therein.
The waters were healed. Pentecost is the counterpart of that: the church as the new cruse, with the life in it, against all the death of this world.
Newness of life requires new vessels. The Lord Jesus put His finger upon this very principle when He said:
No man putteth new wine into old wine-skins.
Madness! You are going to lose everything if you do that. You lose everything.
No man putteth a piece of new cloth upon an old garment.
God does not do that. He must have everything new and fresh. We are citizens of the new creation.
You could go on. Look up the word “new” in the New Testament, and you will be surprised how it covers everything. Everything is new where this life is.
A second mark of this life is its productiveness, or productivity. That is God’s method of increase, as we have said: it is the method of life.
There is all the difference between adding from the outside—accretion—and increase from the inside. That is God’s principle: the organic principle of increase and multiplication by life from within.
It really does happen that way. Life produces life, and life produces organisms after its own kind. The seed has life in itself to reproduce the mature plant a hundredfold. The characteristic of this life is its productivity.
Now, that is first a testimony; it is also a test. If there is life, there will be increase. There is no question about it, because it is a law of life to increase.
This is also a test. It is a challenge. If there is no increase—no increase—then there is something wrong in the matter of the life.
If you and I are not bearing fruit, if we are not really in the way of increase, then we had better look to this matter of our life. It is inevitable; it is unavoidable, because it is spontaneous.
There is to be productivity. Where there is life, there is reproduction—unless, of course, we thwart the life, get across it somehow or other, and block up the well. Then our fruitfulness is hindered.
This life is characterised by its inexhaustibleness. There is no end; there is no exhausting. It goes on. As we have said, it does not get old. We may get old, but that life in us does not get old. It just goes right on. It is inexhaustible.
Finally, it is incorruptible life. Because it is God-life, it is incorruptible.
Life corresponds to salt in the Bible. The symbolism of the new cruse and the salt therein is simply the vessel with the life of God in it. The presence of that life is the counter to the presence of corruption wherever it is found.
This is, of course, the great reality in the Book of Revelation, in those first chapters containing the challenging messages to the churches. It was, and is, a time of spiritual decay.
You look at those messages and see the names given to the decay: spiritual corruption, Satanic influence, Jezebel, the teaching of Balaam, teaching Israel to sin. Here is corruption.
The challenge to that state of corruption is indicated first by the announcement of the Lord Himself:
I am He that liveth, and I became dead;
and behold, I am alive for evermore.
It is as though He were saying, “According to this incorruptible life, I am measuring you. On the principle of this incorruptible, death-conquering life, I am challenging you in your corruption.”
The effect of the message is this: if you had the life vibrant and triumphant, there would be none of these conditions at all. These conditions of corruption are due to something having arrested the life and posed the issue.
The overcoming, the setting aside of all corruption, is a matter of life.
False teaching: the corrective of heterodoxy is not orthodoxy. I change the word: the corrective for modernism is not fundamentalism. The corrective of error is life.
That is what the Scripture says. The corrective for error is life. So it is in the seven churches. There was false teaching, and John, who wrote Revelation, also wrote his letters, you know, very much about the same time.
His letters are dealing also with error, decline, corruption, antichrist, and the rest. But John’s great word—in his Gospel, in his letters, and in Revelation—is life.
Every study of John’s writings produces that conclusion. He begins his Gospel:
In Him was life; and the life was the light of men.
That is the keynote to the Gospel right the way through, unto resurrection.
His letters are on that note all the time:
This is the testimony, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.
He that hath the Son hath the life.
Then you begin Revelation with, “I am He that liveth,” or, “I am the living One.” You close Revelation with the tree of life, the water of life, and the river of the water of life. It is all about life, but it is all presented in a day of corruption.
The answer to corruption is divine life. It is not argument. It is life.
This life is something which is only appreciated and understood by those who have it. Others who have not got it can see its effect or its fruit, but they do not understand it at all.
They may say, “Well, those people have got something I do not know anything about. I do not understand it at all. I do not know what it is. They seem to be happy about it all, but I am certainly a stranger to all that.”
Or it may not affect them at all. They come in where there is abundant life and go away unaffected. They do not understand it or appreciate it.
But you and I do. Those others who have this life do appreciate it and understand it. We cannot explain it to anyone else. In the natural realm, we can explain what natural life is, but no one can explain how this divine life is. We know it.
If we are spiritually alive—really spiritually alive, alive unto God, alive in the Spirit—we go in amongst other children of God and we feel something.
It may be that we feel a lack of life, an absence of life: something here is not alive; there is some check to life here. Or, on the other hand, we may sense the presence of life.
That capacity, that ability to appreciate and to understand, is the guide of the Lord’s people. It is our spiritual intelligence.
We feel something is wrong here. Why do we feel something is wrong? Why do we say something is wrong here? Because we do not feel the life. We do not sense the life. There is something that is not alive. Is that not it?
Very well, we are then alive to the fact of something wrong. That is our intelligence, and that is our guide.
What is it? What is it?
I believe that is exactly what Paul found at Ephesus when he found those certain disciples. They were disciples, and they had received some very rich teaching that Apollos could give, because the man was mighty in the Scriptures and was giving them a lot of Bible teaching.
When Paul came down, it was as though he said, “There is teaching here, and you are professing disciples of the Lord, but what is the matter with you? There is something I miss here.”
Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed?
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of life. Paul registered the absence of the witness of life, even with all the Bible teaching. That was his guide, and it led him to put his finger upon the situation in order to clear it up.
This life is a very practical thing, a directive thing. It works in so many ways that I am not going to try to point them all out, but you see the principle.
All the Lord’s progress, as we have said—the Lord’s enlarging and the Lord’s establishing—is along this line of life. The whole thing is governed by this.
We are thinking much of Abraham. There is more to say about him yet, but there it is: every fresh movement toward enlargement, consolidation, and increase of life was by a fresh testing of faith.
Everything rests upon this matter of faith being proved. You and I pass through times when our faith is being severely tested, really being put to it. Let us try, or ask the Lord to help us, to adjust ourselves to this.
This is not unto death, but unto life. This is not meant or allowed by the Lord to bring an end. This is allowed by the Lord to bring us into larger life.
If only we could have that attitude, we would rob the dark times and the difficult times of their deadliness and make them the very ground upon which we come into newness of life through fresh victories of faith.
Faith is the way to life through trial, testing, suffering, and adversity.