But now do ye also put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, railing, shameful speaking out of your mouth.
Lie not one to another; seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings,
and have put on the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that created him:
where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all, and in all.
May I say, dear friends, as we approach the message that is in these words, that my very strong concern is that we shall touch reality at this time. We shall go beyond theory, beyond teaching as such, and meet the Lord at the point of deep reality, where His need in us is really met—our need of Him. Amen.
We are in a time when the buildup of Christian truth, teaching, and knowledge is immense, and the corresponding reality in life is by no means commensurate. There is a margin, a gap, between what is known and what is lived.
We want to get into that gap, as the Lord may enable us, and close it up—or let Him close it up—so far as we are concerned at this time: that truth and life shall come close together; indeed, become one.
That is the object which is in my heart at this time: not to say so much more, however true it might be, but really to touch very vital issues. There may be a lot said, but I have one thought and object that is governing everything that will be said. All will be gathered around just one issue, which I trust will become increasingly clear as we go on.
Having said that, let us look at this fragment of the Word which we have just read: Colossians 3:9–11. We will analyse it, break it up, and note the five very distinct points that are touched upon by the apostle.
First of all, there is a retrospect to the Creator and the creation:
Being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that created him.
That is a throwback to creation and the Creator. Just note it. We are going to take up each of these points separately. But number one is this retrospective touch upon the beginning of everything in the Creator and the creation: the image of Him that created.
Secondly, there is the pattern and purpose of the Creator in the creation:
Being renewed after the image of Him that created.
The pattern—the image; the purpose—the renewal of that image.
Thirdly, there is the real nature and effect of the crisis in the life of the Christian. Something has happened in the life of the Christian which marks the beginning of a process—a process indicated by these words: “being renewed,” made anew, made over again.
A crisis in the life of the believer: something happens; you put off and you put on. That is the nature, meaning, and effect of the great crisis in the life of the Christian.
Next, the occupation and energy of the Holy Spirit. Who is doing this renewing work—this being renewed? Well, we are not doing it, either for ourselves or for other people. Other people are not doing it for us.
This is the occupation and energy of the Creator Spirit—He who brooded over the chaos and brought out of the chaos the divine order. The same Spirit is now occupied with His own energy in making anew according to the image: renewing. It is the activity of the Holy Spirit.
And in the fifth place, there is the exclusiveness and the inclusiveness of Christ. Now, there is that last statement:
Where there cannot be.
That is the right kind of exclusiveness, or exclusivism. A whole realm, system, order, and nature is excluded: “There cannot be.” But the inclusiveness is just Christ: “Christ is all, and in all.”
That is the analysis of these words. Very simple, but how very comprehensive, and how very important and meaningful.
Well, let us begin to take them up one at a time: man and his Creator; the Creator and the created.
Perhaps it would be well if we ranged several other passages alongside of this one. Going back to the beginning of this same letter, Colossians 1:16:
For in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and unto Him.
And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
That in all things He might have the preeminence.
Through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself.
The centre and circumference of all things is Christ, the Creator of all things. Then there are the familiar words in John 1:3:
All things were made through Him; and without Him was not anything made that hath been made.
John and Paul are in perfect agreement on this matter: Who was the Originator of all things?
Then, in Romans 11:36:
For of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things.
And one more: 1 Corinthians 8:6:
Yet to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him.
Well, that establishes what we have called the throwback to the Creator and the creation.
Then we have, of course, in order to comprehend what is meant by renewing, or making anew, or starting again—a process of recovery—to contemplate that terrible disintegration of the man to whom these Scriptures are referring.
Yes, the disruption of human life—the disruption of every member of the human race. We need not argue from Scripture on this, because the argument is finished immediately when we consider ourselves and mankind as we know mankind.
We are perhaps more aware today than ever of this disruption and disintegration in human life. There is a fundamental schism in man and in mankind, and wherever it is found it always means frustration. Frustration is the evidence of a schism, a divisiveness in human life and in human nature.
We see this, of course, right from the beginning of history as recorded in the Bible, all the way through, and coming out in our time in a consummate way. There is frustration in human life—continuous frustration.
Every new step which is thought to be a step of progress, of advancement, of development, brings with it its own frustration. No matter how far advanced, how fully developed, how phenomenal the enlargement of knowledge and ability to do and achieve, the frustration goes with it in the same measure.
Until we reach a point in the world’s development which we have reached in our own time, when discovery, invention, and the mastery of forces in this universe bring them into the service of man—terrible and completely amazing things which you would never, never have believed only a few years ago—right alongside of it is its own undoing.
Those who know most are most terrified at what they have put their hands upon: fearful possibilities and potentialities which they wish they had never discovered, never learned.
Frustration runs hand in hand through history with every fresh development and movement. It is there in human life, in the creation, and in the universe as it now is.
And God Himself has taken pains to bring this out for man’s realization.
For instance, the law, as we have it in the Old Testament, was vested in a nation chosen for this very purpose: to be God’s object lesson to all the nations and to all the world.
Paul puts his finger upon that whole system—its long history and its meticulous application—and says that the law was given in order to show how impotent man is.
If ever there was a thing employed by Almighty God to demonstrate experimentally the weakness of man, it was the law of Moses—the law of God.
And the apostle, this same apostle who has made such a terrible declaration as to the effect of the law—that it has only brought to light man’s weakness, impotence, and helplessness; that it has not done anything to save him, but rather to condemn him—that man writes a whole chapter in these terms:
The good that I would, I do not.
And the evil which I would not, that I do.
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?
However did I know that the thing was right and should be done? However did I discover that the thing was wrong and that I should not do it? The law made me know right and wrong, and left me paralysed—utterly incapable of rising to it, either to say no or to say yes.
Oh, wretchedness! Is not that frustration? And is not that history up to date?
You and I, dear friends, are living in a time in the world when there is not a law, of all the multiplications of laws, which can cope with human nature as it is. All the time, lawlessness is only another way of saying man’s utter inability to answer to the law—or, shall we put it this way, the law’s utter inability to cope with man.
There is this schism in human nature, this dividedness in personality and constitution, which works out in frustration. That is the world today, is it not? Frustration.
This division is personal, because I have just cited Romans 7: “The good that I would, I do not; and the evil which I would not, that I do.” It is also personal—this division, this schism in us.
It is in the social realm. I need not dwell upon each of these. Society—what a disruptive thing human society is; what an unstable thing it is; what a restless thing it is.
The competitiveness—oh, it makes you heartily sick, does it not? See how, in society, no one can show something new and fresh without the other person eyeing it and trying to go one better: “I’ll do the other.” Oh, the many-sidedness of this conflict in the social order of people.
It is in the economic realm. We are not here to talk about economics; let us put another word in place of that: money. Surely the love of it is a root of all evil, but is it not the cause of conflict, strife, rivalry—everything that speaks, on the one side, of schism and divisiveness, and, on the other, frustration?
Never before have people in this world had so much money in this country. Never before in the history of this country have people had so much money, and never before was there so much dissatisfaction and grasping for more.
Day by day, the papers are full of this grasping after money and more money. What does it mean? It does not mean rest and peace and satisfaction at all—more, and still more.
How divided human nature is! You would think if people had so much, they would be content; that human nature would settle down and say, “I have all this; let me be satisfied.” It just works the other way, though.
In the economic realm, in the political realm, there is this schism that works in frustration and frustration. There is a lot we could say about frustration in politics, but we are not going to stop at that.
As I have said before, in the matter of science, no matter how far man goes to the moon or to the planets, he has some drive that will send him beyond all the time. He never, never comes to rest. There is something in him that defeats him. He tries, and then he has got so far—and so very far—yet still he is a restless being, never satisfied.
So we could go on: frustration in the industrial world, frustration in national life, and frustration in international relationships. Well, it is all true. And why?
Come back to where we started. At some time, at some point, for some reason, human nature became disrupted and disintegrated and schismatic—divided, in conflict, even in the individual. We all have loads of conflict in ourselves.
The Bible opens with a picture very different from that: everything good. The Father Almighty, who is meticulous and perfect in His requirements, utter in His standards of satisfaction—the infinite God—being able to look at all the creation and say, “It is very good. It is very good.”
It is something if the Lord can look upon one little bit and say, “That is very good,” is it not? You and I would feel very happy if there were one little thing about us that He could say was very good. But looking on all things, He said, “It is good. It is very good.” That is the opening picture of the Bible.
Something happened. A disruptive thing shot through this universe, and this is frustration.
And what is the ultimate frustration? The ultimate frustration is death. There is nothing that speaks more of frustration than death. It says that nothing is perfect, nothing is finalised in this life.
They are talking now about science arriving, perhaps before long, at the point where they will be able to destroy death. Well, that will be difficult. It is difficult to imagine such a thing.
Everything in this universe is saying, “That is a lie.” Death has an appointment with every mortal being, and you will never evade that one. It is defeating you all the way along.
You may say that science will prolong life, and to your tenure; but that is not always a blessing, you know. A lot of people today wish the Lord would take them. This may not be true of all you very old people, but you know that the prolonging of life is very often a doubtful blessing.
I remember many years ago reading something on a sundial in Stirling Castle, Scotland. It ran like this:
Our life is like a winter’s day:
Some only breakfast and away;
Others to dinner stay and are full fed;
The oldest man but sups and goes to bed.
Large is his debt who lingers out the day;
He that goes soonest has the least to pay.
Well, that is not survival; not Scripture. I do not know who wrote it. It may be a morbid view of life, but there is some truth in it.
It is possible to have a long life with the blessing of the Lord. Length of days is no guarantee of happiness. They think they can destroy death. Does that mean that they are going to be benefactors of humanity? Maybe very much the other way. Men may long to die all the more because of conditions.
Well, see that as it may, the point is that the final consummate outworking of frustration is death.
When we have all this about the schism and frustration in every realm, to where do we trace it? To man himself. It is just man, is it not? It is this that has happened in man—this devastation in human nature and human life.
Indeed, the image of God has been lost. The purpose of the Creator in the creation has suffered frustration. As we see human life today, the divine purpose in the beginning is under frustration.
That is the dark side of our subject. It is so true. We have to look at it before we can get on the other side.
The Scriptures, while they touch on that, turn us to the other side:
Being renewed after the image of Him that created him.
There is the reintegration, the reunification, in the Creator—in Christ.
Christ is all. Notice that every schismatic element is touched upon here—every divisive element in man’s nature, and then, at the end of the paragraph, all the racial divisions: Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman.
Every disintegrating element is excluded. The unified and the unification of all begins in the individual and is ultimately manifested in the whole race, beside which there will be no other race, because you cannot have something extra to all. If you come to all, there is nothing more—nothing more than all.
How we underline that phrase in all these passages: all, all, all, all. That final consummation: everything reunited.
It is at that point that we begin the great positive consideration of the meaning of Christ, and the real significance of the incarnation: the Son of God becoming man—made in the likeness of man, says Paul; Himself man.
His own favourite, chosen, cherished title for Himself was “Son of Man.” Son of Man. He loved it, evidently, constantly using it in preference to every other title: Son of Man—the representative Man.
His person, His incarnation, the very object of His coming out of eternity and entering into history—the very meaning and purpose, His explanation of Himself as having come from glory—is found in this word: man. Amen.
That is not just a proper name, “Son of Man.” That is a purposeful title. That is a meaning, an explanation, a definition: Man, Christ Jesus.
This Son of Man is a unity in Himself. There is no schism in this Person, in this humanity. He is one—not two, but one: a unity, an integration.
You know, the Lord Jesus, in all His life here, never suffered from conscience. I do not mean that He did not have a conscience; conscience is a constituent of our whole personality. But Jesus never, for a split second, suffered from conscience.
If He had done that, He would not have been a unity in His personality and in His nature, because conscience is always a divisive element, is it not? It suggests conflict. Paul says it either accuses or excuses. Whichever it does, it speaks of something to be contended with in the person concerned.
Conscience! Do we not know all about conscience? It is this conscience that is accountable for ninety percent of our misery. Is that not true? “Oh, my conscience! What a time it gives me!”
Jesus never suffered in conscience—not for long. There was no duality in His thinking. It was single. It was single. No fighting in His making.
You see, if there is perfect obedience—perfect obedience—there is no place for conscience. No place for conscience to trouble a perfectly obedient life.
And He was able to say what no other part of the human race could ever say:
I do always the things that are pleasing to Him.
“I do always”—what a claim, what a statement! In a world like this, a Man in the human creation, standing up before heaven and earth and hell and saying, “I do always those things which are well-pleasing to Him.” There is no schism. It calls for perfect obedience.
Now our time is gone. Good night.
Do you begin to see, perhaps a little more, and a little to your own heart’s satisfaction, why the apostle was always, always using one little phrase—and what he meant by it, what it meant to him, how heart-ravishing it was for him? It means: “in Christ,” “in Christ.”
There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
Conscience is redeemed in this matter. Condemnation carries with it, more than anything else, frustration. In Christ, there is no condemnation.
And he uses that phrase always. It is really interesting: “a man in Christ,” “in Christ.” Position—position in the realm where all that terrible contradiction and conflict is arrested, and we are put into a position in the righteousness of God through faith in Christ.
The righteousness of God in Christ, through faith. Would to God that we could all grasp that as a reality, because there is never a time when the saints of God are more assailed and harassed by accusation and condemnation than at this time.
Frustration in the Christian life is very largely due to a failure to apprehend and grasp what it really is to be in Christ—in this One in whom there is no conscience worrying, in whom there is no schism.
That is the position into which we have been brought. I have more to say about this when we come to the crisis.
Oh, the infinite blessedness, if only we grasp it! We are all defeated here; we all fail here—every one of us—failing to grasp this initial, fundamental blessedness of being placed in Christ, where, so far as God and we are concerned, there is no conflict.
God is not against us. Yes, we believe so often that He is, and the devil tells us a thousand times every day, “The Lord is not for you; He is against you.” Anything that he can use as a ground of argument, he uses to bring us under condemnation—the shadow again of that terrible havoc he has brought about in human life.
But what blessedness there is about our position before ever the work is taken up for perfecting us. Our position in Christ: a new humanity, a different kind of humanity.
In Christ, humanity has been regenerated. In Christ, humanity has been introduced into this creation, the destiny of which is conformity to His image—being renewed, made anew.
No wonder, with all that He had to lose, encounter, and suffer, He went tranquilly on His way.
Not until that day, that hour, that moment, when, being made sin for us and a curse for us, He took the place of this disrupted creation that is so torn upon Him—not until then was He ever disturbed by any kind of controversy with His Father, or His Father with Him.
Dear friends, I am saying tremendous things to you, but after all, what is it? This is, after all, the simple truth of our Christian position in Jesus Christ: no more controversy between us and heaven; no condemnation.
The Creator has established a position and a state, and He has come back to redeem from all that contradicts that state.
We will stop there. But what I want—and I said that I had one object, one thought at this time, around which all this is being gathered—is this one point precisely: it is man that God is after.
It is man that God is after—not things, not just an order, but man. He is after human life: to get it, to redeem it, to make it again.
It is our human nature upon which He has focused His attention. If I could go on, we should find this such a help in the explanation of His dealings with us—His attention upon us, His attention to us.
What has He got His eye upon? A humanity—a man, a human life—to be the expression of Himself, after the image.
We ask a thousand questions as to all He is doing and why He is doing so many things with us: “Why does He take me this way?” But all the questions are answered in this one thing: He is after our manhood, after our human nature, after our humanity.
This creation is truly a unique creation—human beings—to make them His own expression.
That is why He is dealing with us. Sometimes it seems to us as though we were the only individuals in the vast universe. It is all so real, sometimes so terrible, fantastic. Sometimes He seems to have singled us out from everybody else.
Here is the answer, in Colossians 3:9–11: “being renewed,” made anew, after the image of the Creator.