Let us turn to the book of Acts.
Acts 3:15:
And killed the Prince of life; whom God raised from the dead, whereof we are witnesses.
Let us take note of the title: the Prince of life, or the Lord of life.
Acts 5:31 says that God exalted Him with His right hand as a Prince and a Saviour.
Now turn to Hebrews 2:10, where He is called the Author of our salvation. Then Hebrews 12 speaks of Jesus as the Author and Perfecter of faith.
In the portions of Scripture we have just read, we find different descriptions of the Lord Jesus. In some places He is called the Prince of life, or the Lord of life. In other places He is called the Author, and the Author and Perfecter.
Yet in the original language, these descriptions come from the same root word. Whether translated as Prince, Lord, Author, or Perfecter, the original word is the same.
This word is used four times in the New Testament, and all four occurrences refer to the person of the Lord Jesus.
What does this word really mean? In the original, it means a leader. But He is not merely a leader. He is also the Author, the Originator, and the One who will bring the matter to perfection.
The translators found this word extremely difficult. If they translate it only as “leader,” that is true, but the word includes other meanings. He is the Author, and He is the Perfecter. This is our Jesus.
As we consider spiritual leadership, we want in this concluding session to look at the perfect spiritual Leader, the Lord Jesus. All of God’s intention and thought concerning spiritual leadership are seen in this Person.
Hebrews 12 tells us:
Looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.
To look unto Jesus means that we look away from everything else. We behold Him alone. He is the true spiritual Leader. We ought to behold Him, listen to Him, and follow Him.
God has an eternal purpose, and this matter is fundamental to all Christians. If we do not know God’s eternal purpose, we will never truly understand what God is doing.
What is the Lord doing on this earth today? There is a centre to all His work, and there is a direction in all His work. We need to see this.
If we fail to see it while serving the Lord together, we will discover that we have no direction. We will be directed by the needs of the environment, by external pressure, or by our own judgment. We may ask, “Can we do it this way?” But if we do not know the Lord’s purpose, all the labour of our lives may one day be burned up.
Therefore, if we serve the Lord together, we must know what God desires to do on this earth. What is His eternal purpose?
All God’s works are related to His eternal purpose. God is not like man. When we do things, sometimes we act merely because an opportunity arises, or because circumstances compel us. But God’s work is different. Before He works, He already has a plan.
Our God is a God of purpose, and all His works are related to His eternal purpose. Often we want to know the will of the Lord only in personal matters: “Should I go to this place?” or “Should I do this work?” We may seek the Lord concerning problems in our lives, but we must see that God has an eternal and unchanging purpose in all things.
This purpose did not begin with Genesis, when God created heaven and earth. It did not arise because man failed. Before creation, in eternity past, God already had a purpose. Because of that purpose, He controls everything.
What is God’s eternal purpose? Briefly, we may say it this way: God’s eternal purpose is concentrated in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
God desires His Son to occupy the first place in all things. He desires all things to be summed up in His Son.
God also prepared for His Son a helpmeet—the church—to be joined to His Son, to work together with Him, and to share His glory.
In this sense, God’s eternal purpose is Christ and the church. Christ is central, and the church is to be fitted to Him. The church is joined to Christ; therefore, the church also belongs to God’s eternal purpose.
For the fulfilment of this purpose, God is seeking men through whom He may work.
God created Adam in His image and gave him authority to rule over the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. God intended that this man would obey Him, receive His life, subdue the world, destroy the work of the enemy, and fulfil all His will.
Through man, God desired that Christ would have the preeminence and that all things might be summed up in Him.
But we know that man failed. Adam failed to listen to God’s voice. He desired to satisfy his own will and was concerned only with his own interests.
When Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he refused to allow God to be his very life. He wanted to be like God. Because he thought only of his own interest, God could not fulfil His purpose in that man.
But thank God: He continued working for His purpose. God can never fail. In the first man, Adam, there was failure; but God continued until He obtained the second Man.
In Genesis, man was given dominion, but that dominion was captured by God’s enemy. Yet God did not change His purpose.
Psalm 8 asks:
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man, that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him but little lower than God,
And crownest him with glory and honour.
Thou makest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet.
God’s purpose concerning man never changed. In Hebrews 2, we see the second Man, Christ. All the prophetic words are fulfilled in Him.
But we behold him who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour.
What could not be carried out in Adam was fulfilled in the Lord Jesus. God could not find a man who, in himself, could be used to bring glory to Him; therefore, He sent His only begotten Son into the world to become a man.
When the Lord Jesus came to be a man on earth, He did not come merely by His own initiative. He was sent into the world.
Spiritual leadership does not originate with man, nor does it come through human ambition. In the Lord Jesus, it was God who sent Him into the world.
The Father desired to give all things to His Son, that His Son might occupy the first place. God has no past and no future; as far as He is concerned, everything is present. Yet, speaking in human terms, when the Father purposed to fulfil His will, He knew there would be many obstacles.
The angels would fail, and man would fail. There would be many difficulties in the way of God’s purpose.
Speaking in human terms, the Son responded to the Father: “If this is Your will, I am willing. I will come into the world. I will work for You. I will come to fulfil Your will and to allow Your will to be worked out.”
The Spirit, as it were, responded: “If You are willing to go into the world in order to fulfil God’s will, I will be Your strength and energy.”
Of course, this is only a human way of describing the matter. Our God is the Triune God; He does not need a committee to discuss these things. The moment the Father had this purpose, the Son was willing, and the Spirit fulfilled it.
Still, we see one thing clearly: when the Lord Jesus came into this world, He was sent. Scripture says that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.
In Philippians 2, we see the heart of Christ. Though He was in the form of God and equal with God, He did not regard equality with God as a thing to be grasped.
For the fulfilment of God’s eternal purpose, He emptied Himself.
Who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped,
But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men;
And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.
Within Him were glory and majesty, power and authority. He sat at the right hand of the Father. Yet He emptied Himself. He did not empty Himself of His deity, for He is eternally God; but He took the form of a slave and came to be like one of us.
He humbled Himself, even unto death on a cross.
This Man is the incarnate God. This Man was willing to empty Himself. His heart was absolutely given to the Father. When He came into the world, He was not here to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.
This is the standard of spiritual leadership.
The Lord said that, in the world, rulers lord it over others and exercise authority over them. But God’s conception of spiritual leadership is entirely different.
Whosoever would become great among you shall be your minister;
And whosoever would be first among you shall be servant of all.
For verily the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
The Lord Jesus is God’s chosen Leader. When He came into the world, He was not here to be served by men. In Him we see true spiritual leadership.
One thing is very interesting. The first man, Adam, was created as a grown man. He never passed through childhood. The moment he was created, he was a full-grown man; yet God wanted him to learn one lesson—the lesson of obedience. In that one lesson, he failed.
God could have sent His Son into the world as a thirty-year-old man, ready to begin His ministry. But when this spiritual Leader came into the world, He lay in a manger. He grew up from infancy.
The Gospel of Luke shows us that He grew in a balanced way—in wisdom, in stature, and in favour with God and men.
At the age of twelve, He knew His relationship to the Father. When His parents brought Him to Jerusalem and then departed, He remained behind. After three days they found Him in the temple.
Mary said, “Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I sought thee sorrowing.”
He answered:
How is it that ye sought me? Knew ye not that I must be in my Father’s house?
Yet, though He was only twelve years old and knew that He must be about His Father’s business, He returned home with His earthly parents and learned the lesson of submission until the age of thirty.
Luke tells us that His wisdom increased, His stature increased, and He increased in favour with God and men.
Though the Lord Jesus was sent to accomplish a spiritual work, He did not immediately appear as a leader. He was chosen to be a Leader, but He came as a baby and passed through childhood development to become a full-grown man.
He had to grow up in this world. He had to learn all the lessons that human beings need to learn. He was an obedient youth.
Though the Lord Jesus had no formal rabbinical education, when He began His public ministry people asked, “How does this Man know these things, having never learned?”
The Lord answered:
My teaching is not mine, but his that sent me.
If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from myself.
He did not grow up in Jerusalem, among the great teachers and professors of Judaism. He grew up in Nazareth, a rural place. He never attended the school of the rabbis.
From the age of twelve to thirty, Scripture tells us very little of what happened. That period is sacred. Yet we know this: although He was sent by God to be a Leader, He had to learn in the school of God.
He was still a human being. He listened to His parents and learned a vocation. He was a carpenter. In the secret place, He had fellowship and communion with the Father, and He learned all the spiritual lessons.
If God has chosen you, do not immediately assume that you should go out full-time. If God has truly chosen you, you must spend much time in the school of Christ.
Our Lord had thirty years of learning. Moses needed forty years to learn. I do not mean literally that everyone must spend thirty or forty years learning, but we need to see the principle.
Even if we have much knowledge, natural ability, zeal, or a charismatic personality, if we go out in ourselves, we will only use our natural resources. God cannot be served that way.
On the one hand, to be chosen by God is a matter of His sovereignty. On the other hand, the person chosen must give himself wholly to God, be willing to receive the work of the cross, and pass through death and resurrection, so that he no longer relies on himself but knows the Lord and relies upon Him completely.
When the Lord Jesus came out to serve, He was a Man of vision. He knew the purpose of God. There are many works to be done on this earth, but He did not work merely for the sake of work. All His labour was for the purpose of God.
Psalm 40 gives us a prophetic word concerning the Servant of the Lord:
Sacrifice and offering thou hast no delight in;
Mine ears hast thou opened:
Burnt-offering and sin-offering hast thou not required.
Then said I, Lo, I am come;
In the roll of the book it is written of me:
I delight to do thy will, O my God.
The Lord Jesus came in order to fulfil the will of the Father. He knew God’s will, and therefore He faced the cross. His way was the way of the cross. He was born to die.
When He began His work, He offered Himself as a living sacrifice because He knew that this was God’s will. For God’s purpose, He obeyed even unto the cross.
The Lord was very clear concerning His way. He knew what He was doing and why He was doing it. He had a direction before Him.
Strictly speaking, the direction or goal was not the cross itself. The goal was God’s purpose. The cross was the way by which God’s purpose would be fulfilled.
In the garden of Gethsemane, the Lord prayed:
My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.
Does this mean He was afraid of the cross? This is a mystery. But we see at least one thing: even though He came to die on the cross, His goal was the Father’s will. He had no personal will apart from the Father’s will.
Sometimes we look for crosses everywhere. We think that if something is difficult, it must be the cross. But the cross is not merely suffering. The cross is related to the will of God.
The Lord drank the cup willingly because it was the cup the Father gave Him to drink. He did it only for the will of God.
Through the cross, God’s eternal purpose was fulfilled. Therefore, though He drank the cup willingly, He was under the discipline of the Father.
He said:
I can of myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge.
The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing.
He could perform wonders. He could speak words of eternal life. He is the eternal Son of God. Yet He willingly submitted Himself to the Father’s hand.
The Lord receives strict discipline. He willingly submitted Himself to the Father’s will. He said:
Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
In service, we often become restless because we are doing our own work. We labour, struggle, and become burdened because we seek to establish something for ourselves.
But when we receive the yoke that the Father gives, we find that His yoke is easy. The Lord Jesus gave Himself wholly to the Father’s will. As long as the Father received glory, He was satisfied.
If we labour simply for our own work, we will become restless. But if we take His yoke, we find rest.
Though the Lord Jesus was under such strict discipline, He was courageous. No man was more courageous than the Lord Jesus, even though He was humble.
He knew there would be suffering in Jerusalem, yet He set His face toward Jerusalem and went. The disciples wondered why He continued in that direction when danger lay ahead.
When warned that Herod sought to kill Him, the Lord said that a prophet could not perish outside Jerusalem. He had work to do that day and the next, and when His work was finished, His time would come.
He was full of courage. When He was under judgment, He did not open His mouth. That is courage.
Sometimes we do not have the courage to remain silent. When people misunderstand or accuse us, we immediately want to defend ourselves. But the Lord Jesus did not defend Himself. He was crucified, and He did not speak one word in His own defence.
Sometimes silence displays great courage.
The Lord Jesus was also very humble. Can you find a man more humble than the Lord Jesus?
Before He left this world, John 13 tells us that He washed the disciples’ feet. Foot washing was the work of a servant or maid. When guests entered a house after walking dusty roads in sandals, their feet would be washed so that they could recline and eat comfortably.
The Lord was about to teach the disciples a lesson in humility. Everything had been prepared—the water, the basin, and the towel—but no servant was present.
The disciples looked at one another, but no one was willing to move and wash the feet of the others. Then the Lord took off His outer garment, girded Himself with a towel, and washed their feet.
Is there anyone more humble than the Lord? He said, in effect, “If I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”
He was teaching them the lesson of humility. Yet humility cannot be separated from love. If there is no love, we can never truly be humble. If there is love, humility becomes natural. It is not humiliation; it is the expression of love.
Our Lord’s patience is real patience. He was with the disciples, taught them, and told them many things, but they could not understand. Even on the last evening, they still did not understand.
If the Lord were not patient with us, we would all perish. We are still here today because His patience is without limit.
Patience is one of the conditions of spiritual leadership, and all these qualities are manifested in the Lord Jesus.
Our Lord was not only a Leader; He was able to train others. A real leader is not merely one who can do things himself. He can also bring others to do the work with him.
If you are the only one doing the work, then when you are gone, the work is over. But a true leader helps others and trains them to work with him, so that the work can be passed from generation to generation.
When the Lord was on earth, He was not only a person who could do things. He was also the One who trained others to do them.
The twelve became second-generation leaders. In themselves, they were not much, but because they were in His hands, they became useful vessels.
This is the ability of a leader: not only to do the work, but also to bring others to do it with him.
The price the Lord paid, no one else could pay. He became the example. He gave Himself up because of the joy set before Him, despising the shame.
What was the joy set before Him? The joy was that the Father would be satisfied. If the Father’s heart was satisfied, that was His joy.
A leader may need to sacrifice himself. He may be criticised, rejected, and become a lonely person. But these characteristics were manifested in the Lord Jesus.
On this earth, He was the loneliest Person. This does not mean that He did not want fellowship with people. He did. But people did not understand Him, because He saw more than the rest.
He was rejected, misunderstood, and crucified on the cross. Yet He willingly walked that lonely way. For the joy set before Him, He despised the shame and now sits at the right hand of God.
When the Lord was on earth as the Leader, He was tempted. Scripture says that He was tempted in all things.
Do not think that the Lord was never tempted because He was perfect. He was a man, though without sin. All the conditions and temptations of humanity came upon Him.
Though He was the Son of God, though He could raise the dead and multiply bread for thousands, He never became proud. He was always meek and lowly.
There was no jealousy or envy in Him. At the beginning of His ministry, He was welcomed by many. After feeding the five thousand, the people wanted to make Him king.
But the Lord sent the disciples away, dismissed the multitude, and went up into the mountain to pray. Success did not bring pride into His life.
Though He is the Son of God and is infallible, when He became a man He willingly accepted human limitation. Concerning the day and hour of His coming, He said that no one knew—not even the angels—but the Father only.
He knew that His time on earth was limited. Therefore, He trained His disciples so that, when He was taken away, they could continue the work.
All the characteristics of spiritual service are perfectly manifested in the person of the Lord Jesus.
We need to look unto Jesus. We are not here to look at men.
If God desires to do a work in your life, you need to look at Him continually. Behold Him until you see nothing else, because He is the Author and Perfecter of our faith.
At the beginning, by the Sea of Galilee, the Lord called Peter: “Come, follow Me.” Peter followed Him for three years.
After the resurrection, by the Sea of Tiberias, the Lord entrusted work to Peter. He asked him, “Lovest thou me?” Then, at the end, He said again, “Follow me.”
Today, before we begin any work, we need to follow Him. Even after work has been entrusted to us, we still need to follow Him. We must continue in the same way.
Then we may be used by the Lord.
May the Lord have the first place in all things. May all things be summed up in Him, and may the church become the Body of Christ.
We need to know God’s eternal purpose and its intimate relationship to our service today. These two things cannot be separated.
Hallelujah.
Dear brothers and sisters, this is the last session we will have together. We may not have this opportunity again. Before concluding this conference, I would like to say a few words.
First, I want to thank the Lord. We believe that this gathering is of the Lord. Men cannot bring people together from different places in this way.
Many of us encountered difficulties. Some had difficult circumstances, some had financial problems, some had family problems, and some faced obstacles that almost prevented them from coming. Yet the Lord brought us together.
We have had these days together to look unto Him. We thank Him and praise Him.
The brothers and sisters in Hong Kong were willing to assume this great responsibility. They laboured much for this conference.
We could see throughout the week that they laboured much. Even before the conference began, they had worked together for a long time. After we depart from one another, they will continue to labour because they love the Lord.
I want to take this opportunity to thank the brothers and sisters in Hong Kong. I am sure that their labour in the Lord is not in vain. I am sure that the Lord will remember them and reward them.
After this conference, we must not assume that we have already attained. We must not think that, because we have attended a conference, we are better than the rest of the saints.
If we have such an attitude, we have not truly seen the Lord. When we return to our various places, we must not feel superior to others.
Rather, we should be humble. We should learn to be slaves. If we do this, then this meeting and this conference will not have been in vain.
May the Lord use this conference for His glory. There will be an evaluation in eternity. Therefore, we need to be humble, and we need to pray more.
This is only the beginning. Even though our meeting is ending, this is the beginning of our giving ourselves to the Lord.
May the Lord give us vision. May He discipline us. May He lead us from this moment onward to walk in a straight way, with direction, knowing God’s eternal purpose.
Though we are separated, may we remember one another in prayer. The Lord brought us together, and He desires to preserve us together in spirit.
Some people ask whether we should have another conference. We can only say that we do not know.
We do not desire to establish a systematic arrangement of conferences. We want to follow the Lord. If the Lord shows that such fellowship is needed, then we will receive it.
Please pray concerning this matter. If the Lord leads you, share with the brothers, and we will know how to go forward and plan.
Whether there should be another conference, where it should be held, and which brothers can receive the other saints—we do not know. Let us all look to the Lord together.
I think our brother Michael has a few words.