We return to the two passages of Scripture around which our thoughts are circling at this time.
The First Letter of Peter, chapter 1, verse 3:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
A living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Letter of Paul to the Colossians, chapter 1, verse 27:
To whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the nations, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Well, a very great deal of proof, evidence, and material is drawn together to enforce the one fundamental reality. It is that reality on which we must keep our eye. Try not to lose it in the tremendous amount that gathers around it.
But I feel quite sure, dear friends, that we will agree—and I trust very heartily agree, when we close this gathering—that that which the Lord is bringing before us at this time is a, if not the, most vital thing in the whole of the Christian life: the meaning and reality of those last words, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
So we are concerned at this time with Christ living and growing within as the only hope—not merely the hope of anything, but the hope of God for everything.
In the earlier meditation, we sought to show how mightily this was proved in the experience of the first believers and the first apostles. We saw, firstly, how the cross brought desolation to everything until Christ became an inward reality.
Indeed, we could say that this is the very purpose of the cross on one side: to show the hopelessness of everything until Christ comes in in a living way.
We saw the hopelessness of a merely outward association with Christ. They spent their time with Him in the days of His flesh. All the wonderful truth about Him was right present with them: the infinite truth of incarnation, God manifested in the flesh; the wonder of His personality; that divine personality which was all the time registering itself, though not understood.
Everyone was conscious of the impress of a different and superior kind of Man—of humanity, of personality. There was One right in their midst through the whole time who carried in His heart the secret of His birth, the miraculous fact of His works, and His miracles in every realm.
Then there was His teaching, which altogether confounded and defeated the best scholars of His day. They could never get equal with Him, to say nothing of defeating Him. All that they had, and with all that they were closely associated for that time.
And yet, when the cross came, it completely shattered their faith and their hope. They were all—the twelve, the seventy, and all the others—scattered, forsaking, fleeing, denying, as though it had all gone for nothing.
It left the necessity for something in addition to that. It proved valuable eventually, all of it, when that other something came. But it proved to be helpless for them in the day of the great ordeal, because that other was not there; and the other was Christ on the inside—Christ in you.
We can say with Paul, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Christ not in you, with all this, can only bring hopelessness.
We went on to the twelve and the seventy receiving a delegated authority and being sent forth with authority to heal the sick, cast out demons, and raise the dead. They came back rejoicing and proclaiming, “Even the demons are subject unto us.”
Delegated authority—official authority. And in the end, what? Again, it was as though it all went for nothing. They were all scattered and fled, in the deepest doubt and uncertainty. Yes, being upbraided by Him for their unbelief, and again utterly without hope.
And the cross became an actuality until He came in, and by the Holy Spirit took up residence within. And then it was different.
Well, that far we went this afternoon, with many more illustrations. We proceed this evening a little farther in this matter: the hopelessness of human nature in itself.
Now we look at these. We do not know very much about the seventy. We know a little about some of the followers, like Mary Magdalene, the Bethany family, and some others. We know a good deal more about the twelve.
As we were saying this afternoon, Peter always stands as a good representative of the others. What was true of him was so true of them in many ways.
We look at them, and there are a lot of good things about them—quite a lot of good things about Simon Peter. I think, in many ways, he was a very lovable kind of man.
No doubt whatever, on the credit side there was a very warm heart there, and a warm heart toward his Master—real good intentions. Good-intentioned people can, as we say, put their foot in it often; but good intentions were there. He meant so well. His motives were all the best.
We could go on saying a lot of good things about him, and about John. Perhaps you think you could say better things about John. About them all, there is no doubt about it: there was a very good credit side to these people.
They were no worse than we are; perhaps, in many ways, a great deal better than some of us. Human nature—the point is human nature, not at its worst, but perhaps at its best—was represented by that company around the Lord Jesus.
Though faulty, sometimes blundering, they were not evil. There was nothing vicious about them. Good, honest, open-hearted men, and in their intention and in a certain realm committed to Jesus—very thoroughly committed to Jesus.
Sometimes they broke out in very strong affirmations and declarations of devotion and intention to go to death with Him, should it ever become necessary.
Calvary. The cross.
Now, what is the real truth? What is the real internal value of it all? How much of it will go through, survive, and triumph? Not one point. Not one thing.
We see the desolation of all their protestations, all their confessions, all their declared good intentions, all their professions of love, devotion, and faithfulness—lying in ruins. The most representative is denying repeatedly, with oaths and curses, that he has any knowledge of this Galilean.
Need we say any more? The utter hopelessness of human nature in itself. In itself.
Where could hope be found? Would there ever be hope again? Would hope rise out of those ashes? Is it gone forever? Is it finally and eternally hopeless?
Yes, if it is left to them—if they are left to themselves. Where will hope be? Not in themselves, but in Christ in them. That will be the hope of glory: change, transfigured outlook, shame, remorse, reproach—glory.
And let us be very, very clear about this, dear friends, because it is just at this very point that you and I need to learn all our lessons over again: hope will never be found in ourselves.
Even when we are Christians, even though we go right on as far as any Christians can go, should He leave us for five minutes, it is as hopeless as it was before ever we started.
“In me”—and it is an apostle, a mature and experienced apostle, who is speaking—“that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.” There is no hope there. Christ in you—the hope, and the only hope.
Second Corinthians 5 contains the very foundation of any hope where a man is concerned:
For the love of Christ constraineth us;
because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died;
and He died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves,
but unto Him who for their sakes died and rose again.
Wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh.
Well, if any man be in Christ, there is a new creation. The old things are passed away; behold, they are become new. But all things are of God.
The way of hope is through the devastation of the cross, up into the resurrection glory: Christ, the centre and the circumference of a new creation. A new creation—that is it.
So there is no hope whatever—absolutely no hope—in man naturally. I say we have got to learn that lesson all over anew, because you are always, always trying to find hope in yourself. That is your trouble.
Shall I put it another way? Your trouble is that you cannot find any hope in yourself, and the fact that you complain about it shows that you want to. You have not given yourself up.
God gave you up in the cross of Jesus Christ as a hopeless mess, and showed by that very cross how hopeless we are. In raising Jesus from the dead, taking Him up, and then sending Him in the Holy Spirit to dwell within, God started a new basis of hope.
It is never in us; it is in Christ. It never will be in us. We shall be as hopeless at the end as we were at the beginning. It will always be in Christ.
Friend, we have got to make everything of Christ—far more than we have, far more than we have. Oh, that we could free ourselves from that old ground of expectation where we are concerned, and get positively onto the ground of Christ.
Christ, my hope. With both hands I lay hold on Christ—Christ only. But He is the hope of glory.
That is as to our selfward attitude. We have got to take God’s position about ourselves. God’s position about ourselves is that He has nothing to do with it; He has only to do with His Son.
Here opens a very large field of perplexing experience, and it is interpreted by this one truth. This one key opens the door to so much. Why does the Lord ignore so much of our prayer? Why does the Lord not come onto the ground that we try to get Him to come onto?
Why do we not find the Lord with us in much crying, beseeching, and entreating? He does not answer—does He?
The answer, dear friend, the explanation is usually that we are on the wrong ground. We are taking account of things that God has finished with long ago. We are wanting to get God onto ground He has abandoned forever.
You will only have the Lord—or we shall only have the Lord—with us at all while we keep on the ground of Christ. Make no mistake about it. You have got to find out whether that is Christ-ground, or your ground, or other people’s ground: the ground of human judgment, human interpretation, human feelings, human desire—that which is natural.
If that ground is the ground on which we are trying to get the Lord to encamp and do something, He will be silent—and silent forever. You are not moving Him.
One thing about God is that He is a realist—a realist. And if He says, in the cross, “I close the door forever to the natural man,” you will never get Him opening that door again.
Not a bit. Break your heart in prayer to get Him to move and to act: He will not do it. Only on one ground—that is the ground of His Son.
Can you provide the ground of Christ? Then you will find the door open with God, and He is coming through. That is His only ground. It will be despair and hopelessness until we can get clean through onto pure Christ-ground; and then it is an open heaven. It is release.
I said that opens a very big field. You see, it opens the field of the whole Bible. We could carry this conference right on for the next two or three years, with our Bible in hand, on this one thing only.
I would ask you to take this as the key to your New Testament. Make no mistake about it: this is the key to the New Testament. It is of the Old Testament, of course, but in spiritual reality. Every book of the New Testament must be read in the light of this: Christ as God’s ground, and God’s ground of hope alone.
You see, that passes from the individual to the corporate. Oh, we have not done much yet. I am aware, dear friends, that this is perhaps the most difficult thing in the whole Christian life—for all of us, every one of us. And in this I am the most elementary of pupils.
We shall not get anywhere with one another in our relationship as the Lord’s people if we are going to keep on the natural ground of one another.
You are judging me according to what I am naturally, taking account of me because of what you see I am, just as a man in myself. You will have all the ground for despair that ever you can want. And I will do the same where you are concerned. I will have to give you up. There is no hope—no hope.
My eyes, of course, are unable to see all the frailties and faults of others. And where does it lead? Despair, does it not? Failure, no way through, no future, no promise.
The Lord is not with us in that. “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh.” What is the “henceforth”? Since all died—all died.
This lesson for us all is just this: to take account of the minutest bit of Christ that there is in another. Focus upon that—the work of grace.
Go as far as you can, even if it is only in a sort of negative way, and say, “Well, what would they be but for the grace of God?” But go further and say, “See what the grace of God has done.” Now, that is the only way of hope: Christ—Christ in you.
Well, you see what that leads to. Oh, dear friends, it does mean what this New Testament is all about: that we have got to provide one another with a great deal more of Christ in ourselves for hope.
There has got to be a continual increase of Christ, a continued increase of the work of grace—the grace of the Lord Jesus. The only way.
So, as I have said, the whole of the New Testament is about this: Christ must get inside, and then Christ must grow inside, until there is more of Christ than there is of ourselves. But that is the way.
The apostles, who, as we said this afternoon, were so meticulous and particular about this matter of converts receiving the Holy Spirit as a definite, positive, concrete experience—Acts records this—were just as particular in all their teaching that not only should the Holy Spirit have been received, but that believers should be filled with the Spirit.
Filled with the Spirit. The end of the Spirit: the world. It is only another way of saying Christ is in, but Christ has got to be fully formed within, more and more.
It is a very practical school, is it not? A very hard lesson. But does it not explain much? Yes, it does.
It is the heart and the core of true spiritual Christianity: Christ—only Christ—the Alpha and Omega, the beginning, the end, and all between.
A few words before we go, and just another point: the hopelessness of the kingdom until the King is within.
How much we could say about the hopes and expectations concerning the kingdom that filled the heart of every true Israelite. And, as we know, these disciples—the apostles—were very true representatives of Israel’s hopes for the kingdom.
They cherished that hope. They built everything upon that hope—all their thoughts and mentality concerning the kingdom. Indeed, their very commitment to Christ, leaving all things to follow Him, had the kingdom in view as its motive.
Right up to the last minutes, we might say, before He went to glory, they were obsessed with this kingdom matter: “Dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” Those were the last words to Him on record before He went.
But what about the effect of the cross upon all that? Yes, the cross—the crucifixion—that ended all their hopes of the kingdom.
“We had trusted that it had been He which should redeem Israel.” Their kingdom lay waste, and all their hopes, so far as He was concerned and the kingdom was concerned, were shattered—scattered like dust to the wind. Where is the kingdom now? What is the hope of the kingdom now?
Hopelessness of the kingdom. It came back when He came in.
That is what Peter is talking about:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away,
reserved in heaven for you.
It is the kingdom vision, but it is back on right ground: Christ, the King, within.
That was Peter’s note on the day of Pentecost. That was the preaching of the first preachers: Jesus Christ is Lord. He is Lord. God had made Him both Lord and Christ—King of kings and Lord of lords.
There is only hope for the kingdom, but that is perhaps speaking in large terms. What I am talking about is the preaching—the preaching of the kingdom. Yes, if you like, alter the phraseology and say preaching for man’s salvation. That is the kingdom. It is called evangelisation.
But here we have missed the point so much. What is evangelisation? What is preaching the kingdom? What is preaching the gospel? What is it? Is it just and only announcing certain truths, certain facts, or certain doctrines? Is it?
No. According to the true meaning of the very words themselves, it is bringing Christ—bringing Christ. Not only speaking about Him, preaching concerning Him: it is bringing Him.
There is no hope unless you bring Christ. Your preaching has got to bring Christ. Your evangelisation is going to bring Christ; it is not to be something in itself. Christ has got to come in it.
And therefore, can you not see, dear friends, why at the beginning the demand was that they should preach with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven? What is that? It is nothing else than Christ coming in—in power, in presence.
If you and I cannot bring Christ to the unsaved, we can preach until we are blue in the face and have no effect. You have got to bring Christ to them, into their presence. They have got to meet Christ when we preach, sense Christ. Preaching must be by the Holy Spirit.
Why is so much preaching ineffective? It is not in the power of the indwelling Spirit. That is not just a criticism; it is a challenge.
Salvation rests on that ground. The hope for men’s salvation rests upon the ground that we bring Christ to men. I know it is bringing the gospel, the good news, but it is, with that, bringing the Person by the Spirit and in the Spirit.
Churches are only born by Christ being introduced. He is the seed, the living seed, out of which the organism grows.
You cannot found churches from the outside, collect people, and call the collection a church. That is not the New Testament. Every body of believers in any place has got to be the embodiment of Christ.
The one reality is not their teaching or their manner of procedure, but that Christ is met, Christ is found, Christ is there. There is no doubt about it that Christ is in the midst.
Those people have Christ. You meet them, you meet Christ. When you go amongst them, you find Christ. Christ is in their lives. Christ governs their life. He governs their business. He governs their hope. He governs their relationships with one another. It is Christ.
The only hope for churches is that Christ is brought in. And it is the only ground and way of believers being built up and growing.
If we just grow ourselves, it will be an awful thing that grows. The tragedy is so often that the sphere and interests of God are made the playground for the flesh to inflate itself and display itself, to strut up and down. No.
Spiritual growth, you can understand, is not our growth in the sense of what we are growing. Spiritual growth is just the increase of Christ in us. That is perhaps too simple a thing to say, but what I am saying is that all this is one thing: Christ—only Christ.
The only hope from beginning to end, in any phase or stage or form, is Christ. Christ risen changed the scene of desolation and devastation which met our eyes after the cross.
He changed that and gave a new hope—gave a new hope—when He came back in the Spirit and entered in, and began the realisation of the hope.
That is what we have, is it not, in the New Testament? The hope brought in with the resurrection, and then a proceeding to the fulfilment of the hope. We read the Book of Acts, so called: it is the hope working out, is it not? The hope in progressive fulfilment.
Dear friends, that is where I am closing this evening, unless it is to underline and re-emphasise this one thing. As we theologically distinguish the persons of the Trinity, we do not divide between Christ and the Holy Spirit in work or in nature.
Therefore, when we speak about Christ in you, we mean the Holy Spirit within. When we speak of the Holy Spirit dwelling within, we mean Christ within. That is what the Holy Spirit Himself means.
It is what Jesus Himself meant when He said:
He shall not speak from Himself;
but what things soever He shall hear, these shall He speak.
He shall glorify Me:
for He shall take of Mine, and shall declare it unto you.
They work together in such complete identity that you cannot distinguish between them, though Christ remains at the Father’s right hand, here in you and in us by the Holy Spirit.
Now my final emphasis is upon this: I need to be very sure about this matter of the indwelling Spirit, which is the indwelling Christ.
I know all the things that are going on around us. I know what questions you could begin at once to fire at me about all this matter of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and so on. I am not surprised that the devil has supremely confused this whole thing and brought it under reproach. I am not surprised.
The devil at least knows a good thing when he sees it. He knows value when he comes into touch with it, and this is the matter upon which everything hangs.
But leaving all interpretations apart, all questions, let us come down to the fact that you and I must, in our Christian life, know two things: our death with Christ to the old man, and through that, Christ within—the Holy Spirit within.
Starting on heavenly ground only, and entirely ignoring all earthly ground—going on on heavenly ground. That is the way of the Spirit. Oh, let us learn, or seek to learn, this lesson.
I do not want to throw you into the vortex of great confusion or questions as to whether you have ever received the Holy Spirit because of this, that, or something else about manifestations. Do not be troubled about that.
You can know that Christ is in you. You can know that the Holy Spirit is in you by a thousand spiritual impressions—evidences—without any of those manifestations that some people say are the essential proof of the Holy Spirit.
I mean tongues and such like. No, they are not essential to the fact and reality of the Holy Spirit being within and filling. They are not.
It is the reality that you and I need—not some particular kind of sensations, and demonstrations, and noises, and whatnot. It is the deep, deep reality.
Christ is enough. And there is our hope of glory—our only hope of glory, but our true hope of glory.