Brother Kong’s ministry begins with John 15. We will read the first twenty-one verses.
I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.
Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit, He taketh it away; and every branch that beareth fruit, He cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit.
Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you.
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in Me.
I am the vine; ye are the branches. He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from Me ye can do nothing.
If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; and so shall ye be My disciples.
Even as the Father hath loved Me, I also have loved you: abide ye in My love.
If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love; even as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love.
These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
This is My commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Ye are My friends, if ye do the things which I command you.
No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I heard from My Father, I have made known unto you.
Ye did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it unto you.
These things I command you, that ye may love one another.
If the world hateth you, ye know that it hath hated Me before it hated you.
If ye were of the world, the world would love its own: but because ye are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
Remember the word that I said unto you, A servant is not greater than his lord. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they kept My word, they will keep yours also.
But all these things will they do unto you for My name’s sake, because they know not Him that sent Me.
One is your Master, the Christ. Our Master calls us not only to come to Him, but to come after Him. He calls us to Himself because He wants to reproduce His image in us, and He wants to get things done through us.
The first thing that our Master will do, after we have fully committed ourselves to Him, is to develop in us His own character. This is to conform us to His own image. Unless His character is developed in us, we are of no use in His hand.
So this evening we would like to go into the second thing that our Master will do in us—or make us in, if I may say so. This is the area we have been talking about in the morning: relationship. The first thing is character; the next is relationship.
Man, as created by God, does not stand alone. Man, as created by God, is in relationship with his neighbour. When God created man, He created male and female. There is relationship in life. It is not God’s will that we should merely live by ourselves; it is God’s will that we should live together.
So far as character is concerned, it may seem to be more on the individual side. In other words, our Master is to develop His character in each one of us. But in the matter of relationship, He is going to develop something corporate.
Adam and Eve were not only related to each other in life; they shared life together. But they were also related to God. If their relationship with God was proper, and their relationship to each other was right, then their life would be full, and the mission that God committed to them would be fulfilled.
But unfortunately, we find that relationship was broken. Not only was their relationship with God broken, but their relationship to each other was damaged. So when our Lord Jesus came into this world to seek and to save the lost, one thing that He set out to recover and restore was relationship.
We find in the Gospels that our Lord Jesus spent much time with His disciples in the area of character, and He also spent no less time in the area of relationship. Character must be dealt with; relationship must be readjusted.
First of all, let us look at our Master and see what a perfect relationship He had. In the life of Jesus on earth, you may look at any area, and you will find that He maintained a perfect relationship.
First of all, consider His relationship with God. We have already mentioned that, being equal with God, He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. He emptied Himself and took upon Himself the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of men.
You will find that our Lord Jesus deliberately took a lower place so far as His relationship with God His Father was concerned. Having taken that lower place, He never violated that relationship. Throughout His life, He was obedient.
Throughout His life, He did nothing by Himself. Throughout His life, He did not even speak anything by Himself. Throughout His life, He never, at any time, took His hour into His own hand. Everything was up to the Father. He maintained a perfect relationship with His Father.
The same thing was true with the Father. The Father and the Son are equal, but for the sake of the work to be done, the Son deliberately took a lower place and the Father took a higher place. Having taken that higher position, the Father never once relinquished His responsibility. He took full responsibility in His relationship with His Son.
He was so responsible that He crushed His Son on Calvary’s tree. He was so responsible in His relationship that He raised His Son from the dead. In other words, you find there was perfect relationship between the Father and the Son during the earthly days of our Lord Jesus—not to mention in eternity, not to mention in the Godhead. Their relationship was perfect.
But then you may look at another area and find how He maintained a perfect relationship with His earthly parents. He was born by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit upon the womb of the Virgin Mary. Yet, from the human viewpoint, He belonged to the family of Joseph.
Being of that family, you know from the Gospels how He maintained a perfect family relationship as a member of that family. This was demonstrated when He was twelve years old.
Evidently, He was brought by His earthly parents to Jerusalem, and there He was made a son of the law. In other words, it was the time when He became a full-fledged member of the commonwealth of Israel. From that time onward, He had every right and privilege to ask questions and answer questions, and that is what He did.
When His parents returned from the feast, He stayed in Jerusalem. On the third day, His parents found Him in the temple. There He was asking questions and answering questions, exercising His rights and privileges as a son of the law.
When His mother said, “Son, do You not realize what You have done to us? Your father and I have been so anxious about You,” you remember how the Lord Jesus said, “Why were you looking for Me? Did you not know that I must be occupied with My Father’s business?”
“I have been initiated into the house of God, and I have to be occupied with My Father’s business.” But the Scripture says that He went home with them, and He was obedient to His parents. Perfect relationship.
It was not until He was thirty years old that He began His public ministry. We do not know why He waited until He was thirty. Probably one reason was that Joseph died early, and being, from the human standpoint, the firstborn, He had responsibility for the family.
But when He came to thirty years old, He stepped out into the ministry of God. Once He took up that ministry, you find that His relationship with His mother changed somewhat.
He and His disciples were invited to that wedding in Cana. Evidently, His mother Mary was very familiar with that family and was probably helping with the wedding arrangements. She was on the inside of the whole matter.
Because the young couple must have been very popular, more people came than they expected, and very soon the wine was exhausted. Mary came to her Son and said, “Jesus, they have no wine.”
You get the point. She certainly suggested that her Son should do something. She believed that her Son was special. She believed that her Son was able to do something to rescue the situation. She believed that her Son was of such a compassionate nature that He would not simply let down this young couple at the very beginning of their life together.
So, as a mother who had full confidence in her Son, she came to Him and said, “They have no wine. Will You not do something?” You remember what our Lord Jesus said. The Lord said, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.”
Now, “woman” is not a bad word. It is a very affectionate word. But instead of saying, “Mother,” He said, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? My time is not yet come.”
Evidently, before our Lord Jesus stepped into His public ministry, while He was still at home, He was such an obedient Son that it was as if His mother could ask Him to do anything, and He would do it. That must have been the case.
So He gave His mother such boldness and confidence that she thought, surely, her Son would continue to do that. To her surprise, she was really taken aback. “Now You do not call me Mother; You call me woman. What do You mean by that? You say, ‘What have I to do with thee?’ Do You not know that I bore You? Do You not know that I have a right over You? I can demand something from You.”
Oh, the Lord said, “No more. No more. I am now in My Father’s business, and the only One to whom I listen is My Father. You cannot interfere with the things of God.”
“At home, I am your Son, and I will give you My obedience. But in the work of God, I have nothing to do with you.” Not in any ugly way. That is a very gentle way: “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Do you not know that I cannot do anything? My hour is not in My hand. I have to wait until My Father gives the order; then I will do it.”
Oh, brothers and sisters, what a relationship! That is the right relationship, you know.
Even when our Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross, there He was suffering intensely—not only physically, but mentally too. Yet from the cross He looked at His mother and made provision for her, that she might go to John and have a home there.
That was His relationship with His earthly parents. In the things of God, He would not allow any human relationship to interfere. But in the human realm, even though He was dying, He thought of His mother and provided for her. Perfect relationship.
So also was His relationship with His brothers in the flesh. These brothers in the flesh did not believe Him. On one occasion, His brothers said to Him, “If You want to make Yourself known and become famous, why do You not go to Jerusalem at the time of the feast? That is when there are people there. You can show Yourself to them, do something to them, and they will follow You. Why do You hide Yourself here in Galilee?”
His brothers did not believe in Him. Think of that. Our Lord Jesus was teaching and ministering to the multitudes, to many people, yet His own brothers did not believe Him.
At one time, when He was serving the people and had no time even to eat, His family thought He was mad. So they came and wanted to call Him out. Yet our Lord Jesus was so patient with His brothers.
The wonderful thing was that when our Lord Jesus was resurrected, He appeared to James, His brother. Tradition tells us—and we do not know how true that is—that James, the brother of our Lord in the flesh, was such a devout Jew that he prayed so much he developed what was called camel’s knees.
He was such an upright person that later he was respected not only by Christians, but also by the Jews. Evidently, he was a very upright person, but he did not believe in Jesus. Yet when our Lord was resurrected, He appeared to James.
The wonderful thing was that among the one hundred and twenty people gathered together in the upper room, giving themselves to continual prayer with one accord, were Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the brothers of Jesus. Perfect relationship.
How much our Lord must have endured from the hands and the lips of His brothers, that He won them over. Here is the relationship of our Lord Jesus with His earthly family.
Now, of course, our Lord Jesus gathered around Him His own family. He was the Head of that family. His disciples—the twelve whom He gathered around Him—formed a family. How do we know they formed a family?
When they had the Passover, according to the Old Testament, every family gathered together to eat the Passover feast. Here you find our Lord Jesus gathered with His disciples. Why? Because they formed a family.
You may think this must have been a very happy family. But if you read the Gospel records, you will find that this family did not seem to be a very happy family. There was much quarrelling, striving, politics, jealousy, and ambition among them.
As a matter of fact, if it were not for the love of Christ for these disciples and their devotedness to Christ, they probably would have scattered long ago. They would not have been able to stay together. It was the Lord who really held them together.
But the relationship of our Lord with His disciples was perfect. He was their Master, yet He did not rule them with an iron fist.
He knew that God had given all things to Him and that He was returning to God. Yet He took off His garments, girded Himself with a towel, poured water into a basin, and washed His disciples’ feet.
After He had finished washing their feet, He sat down and said, “It is true: I am your Master. I am your Lord.” He did not lose His dignity at all when He washed His disciples’ feet—the work of a slave at that time.
Our Lord Jesus was able to do these things without losing His dignity as Master and Lord. On the contrary, He showed Himself to be truly their Master and Lord by washing their feet.
Our Lord Jesus never shrank from His responsibility. While He was with His disciples, He took care of them. He provided for them. He was their Paracletos—their Comforter, Patron, and Guardian.
Whenever they had problems, they came to Him, and He solved them. He protected them. Even when people came to seize the Lord Jesus, the Lord said, “Let these go.” Dear brothers and sisters, the relationship of our Lord with His disciples was perfect.
Whenever there was a need for discipline, He disciplined. He was never influenced by emotion or earthly attachment. Yet how tender, how gentle, and how forbearing He was with His disciples.
You know, dear brothers and sisters, if you know the twelve—and I believe we know something of the twelve—and if you had them as members of your family, how much our Lord must have endured. It is easy to endure people outside, but to endure those of your own family takes much more patience.
Yet look at our Lord. Even to the very last, none of the eleven knew who would betray Christ. When our Lord Jesus said at the table, “One of you is going to betray Me,” everyone began to ask, “Is it I? Is it I? Is it I?” Even Judas asked, “Is it I?” Nobody knew.
Peter signalled to John, because John sat next to the Lord. John leaned upon the Lord’s breast, looked up at Him, and said, “Who is it?” The Lord said, “The one to whom I dip the morsel and give it—that is the one.”
Could He have been clearer? After the Lord said that, He dipped the bread in the vinegar and handed it to Judas. Yet none of the disciples understood.
When the Lord said, “What thou doest, do quickly,” and Judas went out, they thought that the Lord was sending Judas to buy something or do something because he had the purse.
According to Jewish custom, when the host dipped the bread and handed it to a person, that person was the honoured guest at the table. The Lord gave Judas the last opportunity. He knew Judas was going to betray Him, yet He treated him as the most honoured guest.
Yet Judas’s heart was so hard that Satan entered into him. His relationship with Judas was perfect. No human being could do that. There was only one Man who could maintain such a relationship with His betrayer: our Lord.
Look at the relationship of our Lord Jesus with the world. He came into the world not to condemn, but to save. Yet the world hated Him. The world said, “Get rid of Him! Away with Him! Crucify Him!” The world was hostile and most unkind to Him.
Yet, to the very end, He loved the world and gave His life for it. He was not of the world. At the beginning they tried to absorb Him, to bring Him into their circle and into their mode, but He refused. Because He refused, He was rejected.
Even though He was rejected, He wept over Jerusalem. A perfect relationship with the world.
Dear brothers and sisters, life has its expression. How do you know what kind of life it is? You know a life by its character, and secondly, you know a life by its relationships.
Here you find our Lord Jesus maintained a perfect relationship all around. Wonderful! Our Lord, our Master. But do you know that this is something He wants to do in us?
Even more than using us to do a work for Him, He wants to recover that relationship in our life. If that relationship is not being recovered and readjusted, remember: even if you can do things for Him, you will destroy all that you build up. You will end up with nothing.
First of all, our Lord Jesus demonstrated in His own life that perfect relationship. Our Lord Jesus never teaches anything until He has demonstrated it. First, He sets Himself as an example to us; then He begins to teach us.
That is John 15. What is John 15? In John 15, you find relationships: first, our relationship with the Lord; second, our relationship with each other; and thirdly, our relationship with the world.
After He had demonstrated what His life could be like in relationship, He began to teach His disciples. Why? Because He had already given His life to His disciples. With the life that He has given, we are able to have the same relationship, because it is life that produces a kind of relationship.
Our old life will never be able to have this perfect relationship, no matter how we try. But it is the new life in us, which He has put in us. He wants to bring that life out and apply it in relationship. That is what He will do, and what He can do.
He said, “I am the vine; ye are the branches. My Father is the husbandman.” Here you find relationship: “I am the vine; ye are the branches.” The branches and the vine are vitally related—related in life—because the branches, being in the vine, share the life of the vine. That is the basis of our relationship with the Lord.
Because we are related to the Lord—He in us and we in Him—therefore, naturally, we are to bear fruit. But in order that we bear more fruit, the husbandman will purge and prune the vine.
For the vine to produce more fruit, pruning is necessary. You cannot allow all these twigs to come out, and all these leaves to grow in abundance. If you allow all these things, they take away the nourishment; they waste the nourishment, and the grapes will be small and not good.
So the husbandman prunes the vine. If a branch bears fruit, He prunes it. If it does not bear fruit, He cuts it off.
We who are related to Christ through the redemptive work of our Lord Jesus—He in us and we in Him—are supposed to bear fruit. If we do bear fruit, He will not simply let us alone. If we bear fruit, He will prune us.
If He does not prune you and leaves you alone, evidently you do not bear fruit. He simply cuts you away. Now, do not misunderstand this to mean that you lose your salvation. You do not, because John 15 has nothing to do with initial salvation. It has to do with discipleship, with fruit-bearing.
But anyway, you find that pruning is part of your relationship with the vine. If the Father, the husbandman, does not prune you, something is wrong. He has to take away all the extras, all the externals, all those things that waste the nourishment.
They may give you a kind of importance, but they do not give God more fruit. Dear brothers and sisters, oftentimes we think, “Oh, if we have more twigs coming out and more leaves, how wonderful we are!” But the Lord looks for fruit.
He has to prune. Pruning is reducing you, making you small, cutting you down to size. Brothers and sisters, that is your relationship with the Lord. If He is pruning you, your relationship is right. If the pruning knife stops, something is wrong.
Let all these extras go. They may make you beautiful, but they are of no use to the husbandman.
Then He said, “Abide in Me, and I in you. Then you will bear much fruit.” First, being in Him; second, being pruned by Him; and third, abiding in Him.
You abide in Him. You make your home in Him. It is not merely a matter of fleeing to Him as a refuge whenever you have trouble, and then coming out after the trouble is over.
You abide in Him. You make Him your home. If your relationship with the Lord is such that you make Him your home and He makes His home in you, then you bear much fruit.
If you abide in Him, His words abide in you. The word is rhema. He will speak to you. He will speak personally to you. The written word that He speaks will become fresh, living, new, and operative in your life.
Then whatever you ask, you pray, and your prayer will be answered. The Father will be glorified, and you will be a disciple of the Lord. That is your relationship with the Lord.
The Lord teaches us that our relationship with Him is the relationship of the vine and the branches. You have to maintain that relationship, because without Him you can do nothing.
Brothers and sisters, are we in the right relationship with the Lord? We are in Him, but when the husbandman begins to prune, how do we react?
We may think that God has left us because He allows these things to happen to us, not knowing that it is necessary if we are to bear more fruit. But more than that, not only must these external things be cut off, but inwardly there must be a constant, continuous abiding.
Make your home in Him, and let Him make His home in you. That is our relationship. When you have that kind of relationship, He will speak to you, His word will be powerful in you, your prayer will be answered, you will bear much fruit, and the Father will be glorified. Then you truly become disciples of Christ.
Then the Lord begins to turn to the relationship among the believers, among the branches. He said, “If ye keep My commandments, ye shall abide in My love. This is My commandment, that ye love one another.”
Here our Lord Jesus teaches us a new relationship within the family, between brothers and sisters. The basic relationship is love. He said, “Love one another, as I have loved you.”
How does He love us? “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Our Lord Jesus loved us to the extent that He gave His life for us. So He says, “Love one another to the degree of laying down your life for one another.”
That is the right relationship to expect in His own family.
Then He proceeds to the matter of the disciples’ relationship with the world. What does He say? He says, “The world will hate you.”
Do not be surprised if the world hates you and persecutes you. Why? Because before they hated you, they hated Me first. They will hate you because of Me.
Why? Because you are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. If you were of the world, the world would love you. But because I called you out of the world, the world will hate you. They will do all these things to you because of Me.
Dear brothers and sisters, that is our relationship with the world. But does it mean that because the world hates us, we should hate the world? The world is hostile, so do we consider the whole world our enemy?
The world hated the Lord, but the Lord loved the world and gave Himself for it. No matter how the world hates us, we love them. We share with them the most precious thing that we have: our Lord.
So here you find in John 15 that the Lord is teaching us concerning our relationship with Him, with one another, and with the world.
Now, look at the twelve. What was the relationship of the twelve with the Master? It is true that in John 6, when our Lord said something hard and many of His disciples left Him, the Lord turned to the twelve and said, “Will ye also go away?”
Simon Peter said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have believed and know that Thou art the Holy One of God.” Wonderful. This is our relationship with You.
But if you look a little closer, what do you find? Even though they called Him Lord, oftentimes they climbed above the head of the Lord.
When the Lord Jesus, in Matthew 16, began to share with His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, be killed, and on the third day rise from the dead, Simon Peter took Him and said, “Not so, Lord.”
Now, who is Lord? Immediately, our Lord disciplined Peter. You cannot find stricter or quicker discipline than this. In that second, the Lord said, “Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art a stumbling-block unto Me: for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men.”
What if He had listened to Peter? Not only would the Lord not listen to him, but the Lord proceeded to say, “Unless you lose your life for My sake, you will not gain your life.”
Even after the Lord was resurrected and ascended—even at Pentecost—if you read Acts 10, you find Peter praying on the roof of the house by the seaside. It was noontime, and he was hungry. Because he was hungry naturally, even while praying he thought of food.
Sure enough, he saw a vision: a sheet coming down from heaven, held by four corners, with all kinds of four-footed creatures and creeping things. A voice told him, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.” Do you know what Peter said? “Not so, Lord.”
Fortunately, he repented quickly.
On the Mount of Transfiguration, the Lord was transfigured before them. Moses and Elijah appeared, and they spoke of the Lord’s departure. The glory must have been such that the three disciples could not bear it; they went to sleep.
At the very end, they barely woke up. Moses and Elijah were leaving, and Peter could not allow this thing to happen. He did not know what to say, but he had to say something. So he said, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three tabernacles: one for Thee, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”
Immediately, God took Moses and Elijah away. A cloud came down, the Shekinah glory of the Lord, and they heard a voice: “This is My beloved Son: hear ye Him.”
Oh, brothers and sisters, when we come to the Lord, how we talk! We rarely hear because we talk too much. When you are talking, you cannot hear.
Is that our relationship with the Lord? Are we able to hear Him? Here you find the Lord adjusting the relationship through discipline.
Discipline is painful. When a person is disciplined, at the moment it is so humiliating, but it produces that proper relationship with the Lord.
You remember that even after the resurrection, on that seashore, the Lord asked Peter, “Do you love Me?” Finally, the Lord said, “Peter, when you were young, you went wherever you wanted. But when you become old, you will stretch forth your hands, and you will be taken to a place where you do not want to go.” That spoke of his death.
In other words, instead of being his own master, his relationship with the Master would be such that whatever his Master’s will might be—whether life or death—it should be done.
Dear brothers and sisters, what is our relationship with the Lord? Oftentimes we say, “Lord, Lord,” but we say, “Not so.” Our relationship needs to be adjusted through the working of the Word of God and by the quickening of the Holy Spirit.
Then look at the relationship among the disciples. As an entirety, none of the twelve came from the powerful or the wise, yet that was not the way they thought of themselves. You find that everyone thought himself the greater one.
None would give in to another. They constantly quarrelled among themselves. Yet inwardly they knew it was not right.
The Lord had to ask them, “What were you discussing?” They talked behind the back of our Lord Jesus because they knew what they were talking about was not right. Their conscience bothered them, but they could not help it.
How the Lord had to deal with these disciples! Even to the very end, at the last Passover feast, they were still quarrelling over who was the greater one.
But, dear brothers and sisters, wonderful! After the Lord had done some work in them, what do you find on the day of Pentecost? When Peter stood up, the eleven stood with him. There was no more striving over who was the greater one. They stood together.
There was such unity and such love among them. Their relationship was perfect. No more jealousy, no more envy; each esteemed the other as greater, as better. Their relationship was built on resurrection ground.
Brothers and sisters, this is what our Master can do. Do not give up. He is able to transform us and bring us into a relationship that will glorify Him. But it takes discipline.
It is very strange. If you look in the Gospels, you find that when the Lord called the twelve, He sent them out two by two. If I were in that position, and knew these twelve, I would send them out one by one!
But the Lord sent them out two by two. Why? To keep an eye on each other? No, to give them opportunity to rub against each other and to have their relationships adjusted.
Look at Peter: outspoken, impulsive, impatient, a natural leader. God gave him a brother, Andrew, just the opposite of Peter’s temperament.
Andrew was a quiet person. He did things in a very quiet way, but very effectively. He noticed very small details. God put these two together as brothers.
Later on, the Lord paired Peter with John. What kind of person was John? John was meditative, introspective, contemplative, and intense. The Lord put them together to create a relationship and to balance each other.
Think of James, the brother of John. Evidently James must have been an extrovert. He must have been someone who stood at the front, because he was the first one martyred by Herod in his persecution. He must have been a very aggressive person.
John was an introvert, and the Lord put these two brothers together.
Think of Philip. Philip was a calculating person. You remember the occasion when there were five thousand people there and they had nothing to eat. The disciples wanted to send them away, but the Lord said, “Give ye them to eat.” He turned to Philip.
Immediately, like a calculator, Philip calculated: five thousand people, two hundred denarii to buy all the bread—and that would not be enough.
But then look at Nathanael, paired with him. Nathanael was the kind of person without guile. He never calculated.
He said, “Can any good thing come out of Galilee?” But when he saw the Lord, he said, “Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God.” God paired these two together. Oh, so much suffering!
Then you find Matthew, the tax collector—the pragmatic man—paired with Thomas, the melancholy man. He always looked at things from the dark side: “Let us also go, that we may die with Him.”
We do not know much about James the son of Alphaeus. The Bible does not describe him much, but he was paired with Judas, the brother of James. We do not know whether they were actual brothers or not. This Judas must have been a very simple person.
At the very last, in John 14, four disciples asked questions: Peter, of course, was always the first; then Thomas; then Philip; and then Judas. Judas asked, “Lord, what is come to pass that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world?” How simple that person was.
But when the Lord paired Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot together, that was wonderful—because one was a patriot and the other was a traitor. That is a contrast.
You wonder why the Lord paired them in this way. He gave them plenty of opportunity to be readjusted in their relationships. Oh, how they must have rubbed against each other—not only the twelve together, but also two by two.
After all this discipline, what do you find? You find oneness. That is what the Lord is able to do. No man can do such a work. Our Master, our still Master, is the only One who can do such work.
Do not murmur against God and say, “Lord, why do You put that brother with me? Do You not know he is just the opposite of me?” Yes, because He knows he is the opposite of you, therefore He puts you together. You need him, and he needs you.
If you stay together long enough, you will be balanced. But unfortunately, many people part company before the Lord is able to do something.
How much of that self-likeness has to go to the cross until you begin to see your brother as better than you, until you begin to see Christ in your brother and Adam in yourself.
Dear brothers and sisters, relationship. If we do not have that kind of relationship among brothers and sisters, how can we bear witness to the world?
Suppose we are called by God to work for Him, and we cannot get along with each other. Do you think the work of God can be done? We destroy everything we build up.
Every responsibility in the church is carried together, as we have mentioned again and again during the last two days. Every responsibility in the church is shared together, and yet we cannot get along with one another.
Do you think the Lord will bless the church? Do you think the church will grow? We destroy everything that we build.
How important is relationship—not only relationship among all the brothers and sisters, but especially the relationship of those who work together, all who serve together in the church.
Throughout history, you find this is not a new thing. Even Paul and Barnabas had their contention. Euodia and Syntyche strove against each other in the church in Philippi.
But on the other hand, we also see some wonderful things. Even though Peter and Paul were so different, Paul was able to rebuke Peter in public when the truth of the gospel was in danger.
Peter was so gracious not only to accept it, but when he wrote of his beloved brother Paul, he said that Paul wrote many things that were difficult to understand. “I, Peter, cannot understand them. Do not try to understand; just accept them.” How gracious!
This is the kind of relationship we have to build up among ourselves. We have to build it up in our local assembly. All the brothers and sisters must love one another, forgive one another, care for one another, and give our lives for one another.
Especially among those in responsibility, there must be building together. Unless those brothers in responsibility are built together, you cannot expect the church to be built. The building must first begin in the responsible brothers.
The same thing is true with God’s work. If those who work together cannot get along with each other, the work can never be done.
Then there is the relationship with the world. What is our relationship with the world? The Lord has called us out of the world. Even though we are in the world, we are not of it.
In other words, we do not belong to the world system. Because we do not belong to the world system, we are otherworldly. The world does not understand. They will hate us.
Yet the Lord said, “As Thou didst send Me into the world, even so sent I them into the world.” We are not recluses. We are the witnesses of Christ.
When the world looks at us, they see the cross. They cannot touch us directly; when they want to touch us, they touch the cross. And when we look at the world, we look at the world by way of the cross. This is our relationship.
Now, brothers and sisters, this is what our Master is working in us. It is more basic than merely learning some skills or techniques. This is even more important than gifts.
Yes, we need gifts, but this is more important than gifts. You may be very gifted, but if your relationship is not right, you destroy everything you build up.
As we are under the training of our Master, dear brothers and sisters, this is an area that He will touch very deeply. If you do not allow Him to touch you in that area of relationship, may I say very bluntly, it is much better if you are not involved in ministry or in government.
But we look to Him because He is able. He is able to make you what He wants you to be. He is able to build in you that relationship out of His own life.
May God raise every one of you to be leaders in the church and in God’s work. Shall we pray?
Oh, Heavenly Father, we do acknowledge that we have neither the character of Christ nor the relationship that Christ demonstrated. Yet we do praise Thee and thank Thee that Thou hast given us the life of Christ.
It shows that it is Thy desire to develop Christ’s character in us and to build up Christ’s relationship in us. So we just commit ourselves to the Lord and trust Thy Holy Spirit to work it out even in us.
Oh, how we praise and thank Thee. In us, we cannot; without Thee we can do nothing. But we say, “With Thee all things are possible.”
So we do pray that Thou wilt develop Christ’s character in every one of us, and that Thou wilt build up Christ’s relationship among all of us. To Thee be the praise and glory, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.