Christ is God’s eternal horizon, polarising all His interests and activities.
We began these meditations by observing that the Bible focuses everything upon a primal rift and rupture in heaven, before the creation of this world, and then after the creation.
We do not get far into our Bible before we are confronted with that situation. First, there is an antagonism in the universe; then that antagonism is introduced into this world.
From that point, the Bible opens up and pursues its course to the end, where all that has been divided is settled and removed, and all is in Christ.
We are shown that the cause of that universal rupture in heaven, and on earth, was insubordination to the will of God: a will rising and asserting itself against the will of God.
“I will exalt myself.”
It was independence—breaking away from the government of God. There, all issued from a desire for superiority, for pre-eminence, for ascendancy, for power.
All these things, which we find all through the Bible and through history, are the evil brood which has come out of that. They are first found in the great archenemy, and then in man, poisoned by him unto the same thing.
After seeing this, we noted exactly what happened when that revolt took place—when that course of insubordination and independence was adopted, first in heaven and then on earth.
What happened was that those concerned in it, involved in it, implicated in it, and victimised by it, fell out of their place in God. Up to then, originally, there was that one realm: one realm of unity, of harmony, of concord.
From that time, there became two realms.
God brought forward at that point His whole purpose: the horizon within which full restoration was to be made; in which the old, original harmony and glory was to be found; in which all that evil was to be destroyed. And that horizon was His Son—His Son.
He became that boundary, the mark of demarcation, between what is in God and what is not in God; what is of God and what is not of God; what is like God and what is unlike God.
God established that horizon in His Son. Everything henceforth of God and for God must be bounded by Christ. His Son, being what the horizon is to this earth in the natural, was made the measure, the range, the scope, and the limit of God’s interests.
Moreover, His Son was made the character, the nature, and the constitution of all that which is to be, eventually, within the range of God’s eternal purpose.
Before we go a step further, it might be as well if we indicated something of the significance of this for ourselves.
We are all familiar with, aware of, convinced of, there being a rift in this relationship between heaven and earth, between God and the devil, and the two systems and orders which they respectively represent.
We know that this is not something objective only. It is all about us; it is everywhere. But we know that it is within ourselves. We know, from our own human hearts, that there is an inborn antagonism which only needs to be given sufficient occasion to show itself.
Perhaps, first of all, it appears in the simple form of its beginning in the Bible: a question about God—just a question. From entertaining that question comes the development of this whole system, until antagonism and enmity show themselves, if it goes on. But it is already there in the nature, in the race.
So Adam—I say, we are aware, well aware. But have we recognised sufficiently? Have we really grasped, other than mentally, the great implications of that for our time?
I do not mean, for the moment, in the world. It is there, so patent, so obvious: the futility, the heartbreak, the exhaustion, of all in this world apart from Christ trying to harmonise this universe and bring about a state of complete accord.
There is no more desperate and heartbreaking vision. One feels infinitely sorry for the men whose lives are given to that work. They are destined and doomed. Every bit of machinery set up for that breakdown becomes a contradiction in its very name: “United Nations”—not nations.
But that is not what I am thinking about. Have we really, dear friends, grasped within our very being the significance, the real meaning, of the Church of God, the Body of Christ?
To many Christians, teaching in the New Testament about the Church and the Body of Christ is very interesting. It may be fascinating.
But this that we have in the New Testament about the Church, about the Body of Christ, links right back with that primal rupture in this universe—that division.
This Church, the Body of Christ, is chosen of God and intended by God to embody His Son in the destruction of death. Hence, immediately you get really and truly—not mentally, not merely theologically, but truly—onto Church ground, Body ground, you are in the conflict of the ages beyond any other kind of conflict.
The same one who brought about the rift in heaven amongst the angels, and then brought about the same rift on earth between God and man, is set upon this thing as upon nothing else: that in Jesus Christ that work is undone and that mischief is repaired.
Hence the battle is intense. Whenever the enemy can succeed—and I think that he succeeds enough by getting people to adopt Church truth mentally and then violate it spiritually—he laughs. He loves hypocrites. He laughs at the Church. He congratulates himself that his original work is not so much undone after all.
Oh, we are involved, and we ought to recognise that when the revelation of the Church comes in through the Apostle Paul, and is documented in the greatest documents ever given to humanity, you find yourself right there in conflict with principalities and powers of wickedness concerning the Church.
It ought to enlighten us. It ought to set us on our feet. It ought to be a great warning to us. We are not in mere teaching. We are not in a doctrine, though it be a very great doctrine of teaching and truth. We are in the desperate battle of all the ages.
It is a matter of God having appointed His Son to be the horizon within which all that primal revolt, rift, and rupture is finally to be undone.
You and I are to abide in Christ. We are not to get out into the natural man. There could be no more glorious testimony to the truth of Christ as Head and His members as His Body.
You are tired of Church truth, tired of doctrine, tired of the Body of Christ; you say you know all about that? God have mercy upon you. The enemy will play havoc with you if you have not, in your heart, recognised that thing which happened in heaven and on earth is here present today as the battleground—the battle of the ages.
Well, that being the setting of everything, we have seen then that there follows the twofold work of God right through from the beginning: on the one side, God’s destructive work to undo this thing.
Whenever God got hold of anyone in line with His ultimate purpose in His Son, there started up in that life, or in that people, the discipline—the discipline of undoing.
I can offer you, on that side, no happier prospect, dear friends, than this: if you really do come into line with God’s purpose, one side of God’s dealing with you is that you are going to be undone, and utterly.
The hour will come when you will cry, “Woe is me, for I am undone!” “O wretched man that I am!”
That is one side. The discipline of God must be the undoing of that in which there is antagonism to the will of God, independence of life, and contradiction to the absolute oneness and harmony of Christ in His Body.
But, thank God, there is the other side: the reconstituting on the divine basis according to the divine vision.
These two things go on in every true Christian life. On the one side: weakening, emptying, undoing, making us more and more aware of helplessness and impotence. Yet, on the other side, Christ becomes more and more the light, the wisdom, the everything.
Christ is God’s horizon.
This is all foreshadowed in God’s choice of Israel and His dealing with Israel, His chosen people. We must study the Old Testament from that standpoint: the foreshadowing of this—how God did discipline, did break, did undo, did bring down that people; and, on the other side, how He sought to redeem them according to His own purpose.
We have referred to some of these men, like Abraham, Moses, and David. We should recur to David again. These two things are so apparent in his case.
Very human—very human—with all the weaknesses of the poorest humanity in himself; yet God’s estimate of that man is marvellous. It is ever astonishing:
“I have found David, a man after Mine own heart, who shall do all My will.”
Well, you see the two things in his life as an example and representative of the whole nation. God, on the one side, has a man broken, humbled, down with his face before Him; a man who, even when guilty of the saddest and most tragic sin, goes down before God with those sounds of penitence, those cries from a broken heart.
There they are—the terrible Psalms of a man broken before God: “My sin is ever before me. Create in me a clean heart, O God.” And so on.
On the other side, how much of Christ we find in David and in the Psalms. They are just full of Christ. His great prophetic, Messianic Psalms came out of his own heart. He entered into the experience of Christ very deeply.
The very words that the Lord Jesus used in His passion came from David—came from that broken heart:
“My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
There is so much of Christ that comes to us through David, after all. And that is just it: breaking to make room for Christ. Christ is God’s horizon, and on the basis of Christ, on the line of Christ, God works in the life of every committed child.
Every committed child may not be able to do what he wants to do, mainly because he is committed. This is what happens when we are committed.
In the fullness of the time, God sent forth His Son: the full embodiment of all this history, and the full embodiment of all that is to be universal in kind, in nature, and in constitution, in God’s ultimate purpose.
Notice certain very distinct features of the earthly life of Christ.
First, it is so clear: His life in God, His life in the Father, was one of absolute dependence and absolute subordination.
From the very beginning, He takes up this undoing work of all that mischief. It is in His Person. He is the perfect subject of the will of the Father. In other words, He is in God; He abides in God.
Another thing that is so clear as you read His life is the lifelong and many-sided effort of the adversary to get Him out of His place in God; to get Him out of that position which He had; and to get Him, as the last Adam, where he got the first Adam—out of God’s horizon, out of God.
Everything is concentrated upon that by the adversary’s evil power: getting Him to move out of His right sphere in God.
But the third thing is also very clear: His full victory by the uttermost, the bottommost, obedience to the will of God—even unto the Cross.
The infinite cost which it cost the Son of God is something which you and I, however much we may come to understand here, shall never know until eternity reveals it. What obedience meant as a cost for the Son of God!
But by that infinite cost, it is completed. It is written by the Apostle:
“The Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.”
So often, when we have thought of that, we have thought of Him doing something objective. You must remember that whatever there was in the objective realm, it was done in His own nature; it was done in His own heart; it was done in His character.
He destroyed the works of the devil in Adam. He destroyed the works of the devil in heaven—in the rupture—in this completeness, this perfection, of heart for the will of God.
No divided heart; no divided life. His heart is whole; His heart is one. And it is kept one through every hour of testing, trial, pressure, and temptation, maintaining oneness to the last:
“Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit.”
He has undone in Himself the works of the enemy—in His own Person.
Now that leads us to the next step in this earthly life: for a little while, the temptation of the Lord.
Yesterday we were occupied with His baptism in connection with this primal thing. It is very important that you do not just take these as incidents in the life of Christ on earth, but that you relate them to the one supreme thing. They are all related.
Then we come to His temptations in the wilderness, and these are all of a piece—one thing in their meaning and relationship. You have to see how closely connected the temptations in the wilderness were with His baptism. These are counterpart: two sides to one thing.
As He came up out of the water, the heaven was opened, the Spirit lighted upon Him, and the voice out of heaven said:
“This is My beloved Son.”
The Spirit, first of all—the anointing. That was the basis and the dynamic of conflict. At that moment of committal to the will of God in His baptism, He was going to live, work, walk, and do everything in and by the Spirit.
But what was the significance of the Spirit coming upon Him at that time, resting upon Him and taking up His abode in Him? Was it not the establishment of this very link with the Father?
As Man and as the Servant of God, the Son of Man, He accepted a basis of dependence and accepted the law of submission. The Holy Spirit came and established that link, that union, in the Son of Man with the Father.
The Spirit formed that union, created that union, established that union. It is a matter of being joined to the Father in the Spirit—not now in His deity as the eternal Son, but now as Son of Man in His mission, His love, for our redemption.
The attestation of sonship came upon that: the Spirit forming the link, the fellowship, the union; and then the attestation:
“My Son, My Son.”
At once, you must throw your eyes right back there. His baptism and His temptation take us right back there, for this is God’s horizon for the undoing and for the doing in this universe: “My Son,” the One eternally appointed and designated to be the sphere of divine purpose and experience.
It goes right on progressively in time and consummately in eternity, reaching right on to the ultimate nature and relationship of God’s children—sons of God by the operation of the Holy Spirit, beginning in new birth.
Now, that is perhaps the most glorious truth that ever mortal could know. That ought to be the most glorious thing which you and I know: in Christ, God’s truth concerning Jesus, with all that is bound up with that from eternity.
But, on the other hand, that is the most terrifying thing, the most disconcerting thing, for the adversary. There is nothing that he fears more, and nothing that rouses him more, than that. He sees in that relationship, sealed by the Holy Spirit, with the Father of the Son and the many sons whom He is going to bring to glory, the final undoing of all his works.
If that goes on, then hopelessness, futility, and frustration are written large over all that he has done before the world was, in heaven, and all that he has been doing after creation and through the ages. It is all undone if this becomes actually true: that this relationship between the Son of Man and the Father becomes the relationship between a whole race and God on the basis of sonship through the Holy Spirit.
No wonder there is conflict on this ground.
It is good to be able to pinpoint the meaning of things. So you come to this temptation in the wilderness.
It is impressive that it is Mark who really gives us the full force of what happened. Matthew and Luke tell us that Jesus was led of the Spirit into the wilderness. Mark, who is more original than the others, as you know—and we believe that Peter had much to do with the writing of the Gospel which bears Mark’s name—says that Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness.
Peter was one of the most intimate associates of Christ, and this story of the temptation could only have come from Christ Himself. No one else was there. He must have given it, therefore, to His most intimate associate.
And coming like this, as the most original of the records, Mark’s statement is that Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
The Spirit who had come upon Him in anointing now girded Him and compelled Him into the wilderness to be subjected to this universal trial—universal because it is sonship which is at the heart of it.
“If Thou be the Son…”
You see, what the enemy in those temptations was trying to do was to thrust a wedge between Christ and His Father.
He was trying to put this last Adam outside of God’s horizon, as he had done with the first Adam; to get Christ to move, to act, to proceed in independence, without reference to the Father and without deference to the Father.
To get Him to act of Himself—that is the root of the temptation: to get Him out of God. Out of God—that is it.
If you do not understand that, whether you have much spiritual experience yet or not, you will learn it: all the activity of the enemy is to get in between us and God. Somehow, somehow, to get in between us and the Lord; thrust the thin edge of the wedge in, and then drive it home—away from the Lord, apart from the Lord.
That is what he is doing, and that is what he tries here in the wilderness. It was this whole matter of abiding in God—abiding in God—that was the battleground: living in God, living out from God, and not even using God-given powers for personal ends.
Evidently, the Lord for forty days and forty nights was going over all that was implied by the setting of these things—the vision that He had received. He had committed Himself in His baptism, committed Himself to the will of God, to be utterly for God. He had there seen, by the Spirit of vision, what lay at the end. He understood the meaning of sonship.
Now then, the vision was going to be subjected to great testing.
He apparently, for this whole period of forty days and forty nights, was giving deepest consideration to what was involved in this tremendous undertaking. It was not, mark you, until the end of the forty days and forty nights that the devil came to Him.
What had been happening all that time? Well, I can only conclude that He had committed Himself to something which He was facing up to. This means to be understood. There needs to be a real apprehension of what it means.
Dear friends, it is true to the Christian life. If you take any step of committal to the Lord, if you are given any vision of the Lord’s great purpose and you commit yourself to it, it is not long before you are subjected to the most terrible testing on your vision.
We shall see in another connection how that applied to others, but here is Christ. Then came the devil.
There had been long-drawn-out consideration, contemplation, weighing up, and, of course, a trying time in this undertaking. Alone—alone. No one else near. No one else there. Perhaps there was even a sense of God’s withdrawal from Him.
Then came the devil, and we have these temptations.
I am not going to dwell upon the first; you know it so well. In His hunger, His exhaustion, and the weakness of His body:
“If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”
That is where it begins: use Your own God-given power for Your own selfish ends, for Your own salvation, for Your own good.
A right thing to do, a legitimate thing: save Your life. You hear the Lord Jesus later saying:
“He that saveth his life shall lose it.”
Save Your life. That is all right, is it not? Why throw Your life away?
Well, ask any truly committed and consecrated servant of God, gone out perhaps to a distant land and laid down his life. And not only there. If this is the cost of the great purpose of God—the undoing of the work of the enemy—then:
“He that saveth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.”
Save your life: a most legitimate and proper thing to do. Why waste your life?
The question is: does the Lord want us to lay down our lives? Not what reason says, not what men say, not what the devil says, but does the Father ask us to pour out our life, to let go our life?
Is not that the great principle, the basic principle, of this ultimate universal purpose—people who let go their lives, who count not their lives dear unto themselves, who pour out their lives in the will of God?
This does not argue for any foolhardy, presumptuous action, but it must come in the way of our relationship with the Lord.
The second temptation—and it has to be treated so hurriedly. I think, dear friends, that the only way to rightly and adequately measure the force of the second temptation is to read a part of Scripture.
The second temptation: the devil takes Him to the pinnacle of the temple and says:
“If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down.”
Then the subtlety of it all:
“It is written,
He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee,
And on their hands they shall bear Thee up,
Lest haply Thou dash Thy foot against a stone.”
To quote Scripture, to take up his temptation from the Bible!
What did this mean? I say, the only way to understand it adequately and rightly is to read something. I will read it from the New Translation; I think it makes it more vivid.
Then they led Jesus away to the High Priest’s house, where the chief priests, elders, and doctors of the law were all assembled.
Peter followed Him at a distance, right into the High Priest’s courtyard.
There he remained, sitting among the attendants and warming himself by the fire.The chief priests and the whole council tried to find evidence against Jesus to warrant a death sentence, but failed to find it.
Many gave false evidence against Him, but their statements did not agree.
Some stood up and gave this false evidence against Him: “We heard Him say, ‘I will throw down this temple made with hands, and in three days I will build another not made with hands.’”
But even on this point their evidence did not agree.Then the High Priest stood up in his place and questioned Jesus. “Have You no answer to the charges that these witnesses bring against You?”
But He kept silence and made no reply.
Again the High Priest questioned Him: “Are You the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”
Jesus said, “I am; and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of God, and coming with the clouds of heaven.”Then the High Priest tore his robes and said, “Need we call further witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy. What is your opinion?”
Their judgment was unanimous: He was guilty and should be put to death.
Some began to spit on Him, blindfolded Him, and struck Him with their fists, crying out, “Prophesy!” The High Priest’s men set upon Him with blows.Meanwhile Peter was still in the courtyard below. One of the High Priest’s serving maids came by and saw him there warming himself. She looked into his face and said, “You were there too, with this man of Nazareth, Jesus.”
But he denied it. “I know nothing. I do not understand what you mean.”
Then he went outside into the porch. The maid saw him there again and began to say to the bystanders, “He is one of them.” Again he denied it.
Again, a little later, the bystanders said to Peter, “Surely you are one of them. You must be. You are a Galilean.”
Then he broke out into curses, and with an oath he said, “I do not know this man you speak of.”
Then the cock crowed a second time. Peter remembered how Jesus had said, “Before the cock crows twice, thou shalt deny Me three times.” And he burst into tears.
When morning came, the chief priests, having made their plan with the elders, lawyers, and all the council, put Jesus in chains. Then they led Him away and handed Him over to Pilate.
Pilate asked Him, “Are You the King of the Jews?”
He replied, “The words are yours.”The chief priests brought many charges against Him. Pilate questioned Him again: “Have You nothing to say in Your defence? You see how many charges they are bringing against You.”
But, to Pilate’s astonishment, Jesus made no further reply.At the festival season, the governor used to release one prisoner at the people’s request. As it happened, a man known as Barabbas was then in custody with the rebels who had committed murder in the uprising.
When the crowd appeared asking for the usual favour, Pilate asked, “Do you wish me to release for you the King of the Jews?” For he knew it was out of spite that they had brought Jesus to him.
But the chief priests incited the crowd to ask him to release Barabbas rather than Jesus.
Pilate spoke to them again: “Then what shall I do with the man you call King of the Jews?”
They shouted, “Crucify Him!”
“Why? What harm has He done?” Pilate asked.
They shouted all the louder, “Crucify Him!”So Pilate, in his desire to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and he had Jesus flogged and handed Him over to be crucified.
Then the soldiers took Him inside the courtyard and called together the whole company.
They dressed Him in purple, and having plaited a crown of thorns, placed it on His head.
Then they began to salute Him, “Hail, King of the Jews!”
They beat Him about the head with a reed, spat upon Him, and then knelt and paid Him mock homage.
When they had finished their mockery, they stripped Him of the purple, dressed Him in His own clothes, and took Him out to crucify Him.
We need not go further than that.
“Cast Thyself down from the temple, and You will avoid all that. You will find acceptance in Your nation. You will become the popular figure of the time. You will gain a great following. No Cross will come Your way. You can have it all without paying that price.”
Did Jesus know what was coming? We have many evidences that He knew what was coming. He knew the Bible. He knew that the Old Testament described all this. He knew what was coming His way.
Oh, the temptation—the effort to get in between Him and the Father’s will! Eventually He says:
“The cup which the Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?”
My Father’s will.
What does it mean? Well, in the balances: on the one side, popular acceptance; on the other side, complete rejection. On one side, a cheap and easy way; on the other side, the most costly cost. On one side, a high reputation amongst men; on the other side, despised and rejected of men.
On the one side, temporal position, status, acceptance, and emoluments; on the other side, the loss of all that for eternal fullness.
On the one side, Himself, just by Himself; on the other side, the world. He could save Himself—but what about the world? What about the world?
That temptation was just for His own personal interest. The refusal of it was the taking of the world.
On the one side, compromise—compromise for success. “You can have it.”
Is it not strange how, when anybody refuses the cost of going on with the Lord in His full way and power and chooses the lesser thing, the devil gives them a lot? You notice that? Get on in this world. There are other people who have the difficult time—people utterly for God—and the devil just gives them quite a lot.
If only, if only, you will serve him, go his way, all the time being he will pay you well. But God help you in eternity.
That was what confronted the Lord Jesus. The third temptation I dare not stay to speak about; I have gone on too long. Mind you, he showed Him all the kingdoms of this world and said:
“All this will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me.”
Oh, it is out now. The cosmic secret is out. That is what he was after; that is what he said. What he was after in the great revolt was to win everything over to himself, to worship him in the place of God. It has been all the way through. Now it is out.
The devil, in desperation, betrayed himself. He let out the ultimate secret.
The principle, we repeat, in every relation to the ultimate fullness of God, is the principle of self-renunciation: the renunciation of this self-life, of all self-interest and self-preservation, for the Lord and in the will of God.
Always have that positive objective: for the Lord, in the will of God.
Go to many a monastery, and they will tell you that they are living on the basis of renunciation of the world. But it is negative; the whole thing is not for the Lord.
But that is the principle: in the will of God, in the will of God. No compromise. No letting go of ground. No acting on independent ground. Standing from God Himself; standing forth on the ground of our union, in the Holy Spirit, with the will of God.
That is an abrupt end, but you can see far beyond what I have said.