Ephesians 4:10:
He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.
We have been taking, already, that last clause. In a parenthesis, the Lord’s servant has packed the mighty fullness of his apprehension of Christ.
We have tried to enter into the tremendous emotions in which the apostle sets himself to write this circular letter, having at last the opportunity to be free from all his travelings, journeyings, and constant occupation with affairs and churches, being now detained and shut up in his imprisonment.
He found the occasion for which his heart doubtless had often longed: giving expression, as far as he could, to some of that mighty store of accumulated spiritual knowledge of the Lord Jesus.
And this letter is an opening of those floodgates, pouring out superlative upon superlative, taxing language to find some way of expressing what Christ had become, as revealed to him.
Here, in this fragment—indeed, fragment—there is a coming up of it all: the final vision of that wonderful Lord.
“He might fill all things.” This Lord Jesus, at last, filling all things. We have seen this great theme to which the apostle refers. It is the subject of the whole Bible.
We have traced the unveiling of Him through the seven great stages, that unfolding from eternity past, through time, to the ages of the ages. In each stage, the apostle has been seeing depths of meaning.
Well now, we come from that wide range, that vast course, and seek to fasten down on one or two particular emphases as we go on.
Firstly, quite clearly, this phrase is itself indicative of the greatness of the Lord Jesus:
That He might fill all things.
The final “all things.” It is impossible to get outside of that. That is final. There is no more; there is nothing to be added. All things. What is it? Everything. Just all things.
And this eternal determination and design has been revealed to the apostle: to bring that Christ should fill all things.
It is the predetermined counsel of God that He shall. God has, it is said elsewhere, designated a day in which He will judge the world in the Man whom He has appointed. That is, this Lord Jesus.
It is indicative of the greatness of Christ. How can one Person fill a universe, fill all things? Well, it is not so difficult a question to answer.
You will not go to any part of this world, in all its length and breadth, without finding traces of the evil one.
Wherever you go, you will find that which indicates and betrays that the evil one has been there. Evil, by the evil one, fills this world—anywhere, everywhere.
And we may say, in its natural condition, he, the devil, has filled all things. Though you do not see him in personal form, you know he has been there; and very often, you know that he is there.
He has filled this world with his evil self and his evil marks and traits. He has filled the very atmosphere with himself. He has done it. That is unchallengeable, I think.
We can meet that one anywhere, in anything in the creation which he has had from Adam. All right, is that true? You meet him in his nature; you meet him in his disposition; you meet him in his evil atmosphere of presence.
In exactly the same way, Christ is going to fill all things. That is going to be purged up, by divine time, completely purged up. No traces will be left of that.
But God has done His work in this creation, and it will not be a void. Christ is the One Who is destined so to fill all things that you may go anywhere in His created universe and know Him by His footsteps, sense Him, feel Him, recognise Him.
But what a difference! What a different atmosphere!
This present time in which we live, though so poorly serving that picture, is a time in which just some little reflection of what is to be can be found.
It is a very blessed thing to see where Christ is. It is a good atmosphere to be in when He is present and He is filling all hearts. There is a behaviour, a conduct, and a disposition that is so different when He has His place in a company, in a life.
We do not have too much of what is sometimes called heaven on earth. There is a lot of room for more of that. But we here tonight know just a little—very little—of this changeover. The enemy is still present and about to spoil and mar everything.
If only the Lord has people in whom really He has His lordship expressed, His place fully given, it is a very blessed place to be in, and a condition to enjoy in the middle of this world already. Would there were more! But there it is.
What I am saying is leading to something else, of course. But here is the indication of what the Lord intends.
And one says that, dear friends, because you will understand that we very much dislike living in abstractions and visionary words—beautiful ideas, that sort of thing, that realm of imagination.
We must always have some practical ground on which to build these great conceptions. And so, when we speak about the time when He will fill all things with Himself—in this way of character, disposition, conduct, and behaviour—we must have something on which to put our feet.
And so it is. The great delight of our Christian hearts is found in that kind of fellowship and relationship where Christ is everything. And it is a real thing. It is a real thing. It is possible to know that now, is it not? It is.
But, as I said, it is all too small. It is not by any means in all things. Yet that is the determinate counsel of God: that it will be so; that He, the beloved Son, shall fill all things with Himself—His own wonderful character, divine nature.
So here is something that sounds perhaps difficult to grasp and understand. But notice the context of this phrase:
He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.
It was never necessary to have the incarnation if God wanted to fill all things merely as God, as Deity. God could very well clear everything out and just fill everything with Himself in sheer Deity—sheer Godhead.
But this statement, “He descended and ascended in order that He might fill all things,” indicates this: it indicates the incarnation.
How did He descend? Well, we know. By incarnation He came down in flesh, in humanity. He humbled Himself and took the form of a servant, and being found in fashion as a man—that is His descent into humanity, into the incarnation.
Why? That He might fill all things humanity-wise. In other words, have people in whom and through whom He would fill all things; have a race of human beings through whom He will fill all things, who will be His fullness and who will minister and transmit His fullness.
Now, that is one of the great arguments of this letter, you remember:
The church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.
It is to have people—people, human beings—all the expression of His fullness in His whole created universe. You and me.
That is why He descended first and then ascended: that He might fill all things, in order that He might fill.
This great cycle—the deepest descent to touch the heart and root and core of all the trouble, down to its very depths—and then He ascends far above all, far above all. There shall be no realm left where He is not its fullness.
He did that through incarnation, which itself means, by way of human life, in order to have human life like that.
Well now, this is very great indeed. It is the greatness of this One Who is able to do that. He must be very great.
But that leads us to this law which governs all spiritual history and experience. There is a law governing all our spiritual history and experience.
Our spiritual history and experience is not just something that is, of its own free will, happening to us. It is under this law. It is controlled and governed.
The experience that we are having, the spiritual history that is being made in our case spiritually, is held by this law. And the law is: “That He might fill all things.”
You see, if it is this matter of men, of people, of humanity, of human life, then there must be something behind and over what happens to us when we get into God’s hands. And this is what it is.
God is taking us the way in which He is taking us with this one object in view: that His Son, Jesus Christ, shall fill us—shall fill all things.
But, you know, He cannot start from zero with us, unfortunately. We are already so full. We are already so full—so full of our own ideas, of our own desires, of our own ambitions, of our own interests, of our own strength.
Oh, beloved, a lot there is of which we are full. You see, that is just the trouble. That is where it began with Adam.
Adam made this great bid to have all the fullness in himself. Well, the Lord let him have it. And Adam is more than one person who lived so many centuries ago.
Adam is a very big corporate person who has filled the world and is still making a bid to have everything in himself. He is very full, very full of himself—very full of his own cleverness, ability, power, wisdom, and whatnot. He is filling himself more and more with his own fullness.
Let that be as it may with the big Adam, but what about the little Adams that we are—you and me?
Well, we do not know, we would not believe, until the hand of the Lord comes upon us, just how much there is of us in the picture.
And when the Lord begins to work upon us, we begin to discover that there is a lot more of us than we would have suspected or acknowledged. Indeed, this is an endless matter. It is a bottomless pit.
All the trouble is there—that there is something, something there, that has got to be got rid of and got out of the way. Is it true?
Our simplest troubles with the Lord are on that basis, and our biggest and most serious conflicts. So, if He is to fill all things with Himself, there is going to be a history—a deep history—of making room for Him completely by an utter clearing out of everything that is not Christ.
It is not just negative. It sometimes seems negative—it is undoing, breaking, and all that—but this law is operating.
It is a law in nature. It is a law of nature. God put every tree in the garden into the hand of the husbandman, and it has to be cultivated.
It was not necessary for evil to be present in order that the pruning knife should be used. That was a natural process to produce something better.
You have to get rid of something not that much good to produce something more. You have to reduce a great deal. It is a law in nature. See it everywhere.
Unto the better and unto the more, there is always a process of reduction—what looks like destruction. You know, in the long run, it is not destruction; it is constructive fruitfulness.
That law operates everywhere. But here in the spiritual realm, just as God has written this law in the creation, spiritual experience is like that.
He is working, dear friends, with you, with me: on the one side, emptying, breaking down, cutting up, seeming to be reducing, emptying us of that other fullness which is, in His own way, not His fullness; but always with His object: more of Christ, more of Christ, more of Christ.
Now perhaps some of you may say, “Well, there ought to be a very great deal of Christ if that is the explanation, because I am having a pretty bad time.”
But here is where faith and patience are called for. And you may take it as a fixed law: that any kind of work on His part which has an emptying effect, an undoing effect, a weakening effect, where we in our natural life are concerned, is determined by God to produce more of His Son.
It is going to be. It is the eternal law; it is the law which is governing. Now you can see that the Bible is on record of this very thing.
We have seen that Adam led in all the trouble of this self-fullness, which is the curse of humanity—the curse of humanity—and is going to prove the utter undoing of humanity. Make no mistake about it.
Little indications of this occur almost weekly. The cleverness of man can be his undoing, and what he calls his wisdom and knowledge increasing can just be to his own hurt.
However, leave that as it may be, but Adam opened this door to let in this accursed self-sufficiency—self-sufficiency.
Now, whenever you find that God comes on the scene in relation to His end, His eternal end, and puts His hand upon any man or any instrument, He takes that instrument or that man through a history which, for a long time, is a thoroughly undoing history.
Who comes to mind? We are going to start with Abraham.
We have every evidence that Abraham, or Abram, was a great man in Chaldea—a great man, a man of considerable substance and standing, possession, and sufficiency.
Stephen tells us that the God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham.
And how did the God of glory begin to work? Well, He just took him right out of that place and brought him into a condition where all his own erstwhile fullness and sufficiency gradually left him.
He gave him not a foothold in it—no, not any place. A tent, and moving from place to place; no continuing city; a life of utter dependence upon God. He is being emptied.
Notice the various stages of God’s dealings with him, right up to the point of requiring him to offer Isaac. Did ever a man get nearer to the great heart of Calvary in that self-emptying than Abram was asked to give up that which was all in all to his love?
Now this man is being emptied. Very well, but God appeared unto him and said, “Look abroad. If you can count the sand on the seashore, so shall thy seed be. Lift up thine eyes to the heavens. If you can count the vast constellations of the heavenly firmament, so shall thy seed be.”
Empty, empty, and then fullness. Spiritual history—that is no mere teaching. Prove it after Abraham, whether it is real.
Jacob—Jacob is elect, destined to build the tribes of Israel by his twelve sons. Fullness is to come that way, tremendous fullness. This seed of Abraham has got to come through this man.
All right, Jacob, as we meet him, is a man very self-sufficient, full of his own cleverness and artfulness. He can do it. He is sufficient for the situation.
And for the twenty years of his life with his uncle Laban, that is the kind of life he was living—tricking and triumphing by his own ingenuity, cleverness, and artfulness, all the time getting the advantage himself simply because he could do it.
Very well. What about Jabbok and Peniel? One of those theophanies of which we were speaking this afternoon met him there and said, “Now then, we are going to settle this matter once and for all.”
“I have allowed you plenty of scope, plenty of rope, given you all these years to extend yourself. But I have chosen you for something better than that. Now then, the issue is: tonight we settle this.”
Jacob started out again to try it on the Lord. He found he had met his match, and more than his match, that night.
Now, that story is very often put the wrong way. Jacob never did wrestle with the angel until the angel wrestled with him. There came a Man and wrestled with him. God took the initiative in this matter. God took this thing into His hands.
It was God Who said, “We are going to settle this mighty issue. Oh, you go back to that place, Jacob. We are going to settle this thing.”
Oh, what an emptying that night! Not all at once, perhaps, for there are some traces of Jacob afterwards. But when at last you meet him in the presence of Pharaoh, what a poor, poor creature he is as he talks to him.
Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life.
Leaning upon his staff, he is a very empty man, a very broken man.
Now the Lord can do this. Out of death will come the purpose of God. We just mention that; it is so patent, is it not?
What about Joseph? Well, our first introduction to Joseph: a good, nice young fellow in many ways, the head of his father, no doubt more than a son; very conceited, very indiscreet.
Telling his brothers about his dreams, and implying, “You are going to be the ones who bow down to me,” provoking the situation which gave sovereign opportunity for starting up this work of emptying.
A dungeon is not much of a place to live in for thirteen years, being forgotten and enduring all the hardships and difficulties of such a life.
So that it is written, “The iron entered into his soul.” You know about the iron entering into your soul under the discipline of God’s hand.
Well, if we need that language, here is this man indeed being emptied, is he not? Of all his conceit. But at last, fruitfulness—fruitfulness for Egypt and fruitfulness for his own brethren and for the rest.
What about Moses? Now Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. What a man Moses was in the first forty years of his life! How full of everything, how full!
So full that he thought he could do it. He smote the Egyptian, challenged the Hebrew; he thought he could do it. All right, he is very full.
Forty years on the backside of a desert—a desert is well calculated to empty you of that sort of thing. And you are not surprised that, in his eighties, he says, “I cannot. I am not able.”
“Very well,” says the Lord, “come here, and I will show you My fullness in everything.” And to Moses, Israel.
So we could go on, and dwell upon Israel as a nation, the Lord’s hand upon Israel, and David.
One thing about the Lord’s dealing with David is this: the working of this law—emptying, humbling, making so utterly dependent—in order to bring him to the highest place of Israel’s fullness in the Old Testament.
There it is. And so we could go on, only taking out those illustrations.
The thing is, dear friends, the Lord is working by this law. He is working toward this end, that He might fill all things. But unto that, how we have to be emptied! What an emptying work He has to do.
There is nothing that stands in the Lord’s way more than self-sufficiency—only another way of saying pride. Pride! That stands in the Lord’s way.
When He has done with us, there will be no room or ground for any pride—no more—so far as we are concerned.
But, oh, look at the end, the designed end: the increase of Christ, that He may fill all things.
Now, this we know, as we close this for the present: this wresting of things from whatever fullness there is in ourselves, to make way for His fullness, has to have a crisis. It has to have a crisis.
Truly as the Lord met Jacob that night, as truly as the Lord met Moses in a crisis, truly as the Lord met Saul in a very real crisis, there has to be a crisis.
There has to be a time and a place where you and I come before the Lord over this matter of self-life and Christ-life, and we say, “The issue is settled.”
So far as position is concerned, so far as acceptance is concerned, so far as the foundation is concerned, now it is settled. God helping me, once and for all, that it is to be no longer I, but Christ.
No longer I, but Christ in anything. It is to be, “For me to live is Christ.”
It is a crisis. Everything does not happen in the crisis, but the position is secured, ground is taken, and it must be.
No doubt many of you know that. Now, you know there was a time—more or less extended; it may have been a day, a night, or it may have been a period—but it was a time in your life when the crisis was raised as to the self-life and the Christ-life.
It has to be life. But from the crisis, process begins—the process that the Christian life under the hand of the Lord is just this all the way along: deeper and ever deeper.
If it is so, take heart. Let us try and take all the comfort we can from it. Deeper and deeper is this self-emptying, to bring to that greater fullness of Christ in us. It is a process going on.
And, dear friends, it seems to me, both from the Word and experience, that at the end there will not be much of us left. There will not be much of us in any way at all.
If the Lord is everything—God help us—that is what we are coming to, probably coming to. It is going to be, but there will be nothing of us. He is working that way.
And when He has, by that process, He intends it to be according to His predetermined counsel: that He might fill all things.
A crisis, a process—God bless it be—a climax.
This very letter which we are studying reveals that day, that glorious day of the climax:
Unto Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever.
Now, if what we have said is true, there is another thing that we have to think about—at least think about. It is this: the measure now is going to determine the measure hereafter.
What the Lord is doing with us is not just an arbitrary thing. The Lord is creating capacity—creating capacity for spiritual things.
All the fullness of what is spiritual lies ahead, in the hereafter, in the ages of the ages. The measure in which that fullness is expressed in us will be the measure of the capacity which the Lord has been allowed to develop in us now.
It matters, you know. I do not understand the New Testament at all—the New Testament, to my mind, is a perfect enigma—if what I am now saying is not true.
Why all this in the New Testament? If, willy-nilly, we are going to come into all the fullness; if it does not matter at all about now; if we are going to have it if we belong to the Lord—we are going to have it all if we are the Lord’s.
What about whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth? All this about discipline and suffering—if it does not matter, we are going to have it. You see what a situation that raises.
It certainly says this most powerfully: that the Lord’s way with us now is going to determine our measure in the goal, our measure in the glory.
And none of you who know anything about the difficulty and suffering of the Christian life fails to see that the Lord is seeking, by painful means, to enlarge—to enlarge.
We start out with a very little spiritual capacity of having, receiving, knowing, understanding—very little capacity for spiritual things.
The Lord gets to work upon us, and this chastening business is all difficult, very hard. It is enlarging.
The psalmist said:
In my distress Thou hast enlarged me.
Pressure has enlarged me. Pressure enlarges, and it is painful business, is it not?
But the Lord is working to increase our capacity. Thank God that it is true, although it is so imperfect. We feel that we have not made very much progress in this yet.
But some others can see that today we can understand, we do know in an intelligent way, what at one time was altogether outside of us, beyond us.
We are learning, we are growing in understanding, we are becoming more and more capable of receiving the things of God. That is the normal Christian life—quite normal.
But the Lord is doing with us this very thing. This law, we are saying, of Christ ultimately filling all things is governing our spiritual history and our spiritual experience.
What then is to be done where we are concerned? Well, it is the old matter of applying our hearts very definitely and very honestly to learn the lessons of ourselves, to learn the meaning of our trials, and first to find out where more of Christ has to come in by this emptying of ourselves.
That is cooperation with God in the work He is doing.
He came right down here to take us in our humanity, and has ascended far above all things. Both things are governed by this purpose: in order that He might fill all things.