I return you to the letter to the Colossians, Chapter 3:8-11.
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.
Now, just hurriedly, for the sake of those who were not with us last night, let us run over the five points which compose that paragraph.
The first is the retrospect to the Creator and the created: “after the image of Him that created him.” Going back to the Creator and His creating.
Next, the pattern and the purpose of the creating: Christ, the pattern—“renewed after the image of Him.”
Then, the real nature and meaning of the crisis in the life of the believer: “Ye have put off,” and “put on.”
Then, the occupation and energy of the Holy Spirit: “being renewed after the image.”
And finally, the exclusiveness and inclusiveness of Christ: “there cannot be,” and “Christ is all, and in all.”
We had some time upon the first of those things mentioned: the man and his Creator—the Creator and the created.
We spoke on the disintegration of the first man, and the invasion of schism into human life, resulting in the long history of human frustration.
That on the one side; and, on the other, the intervention through incarnation of God in Christ to reintegrate and reunify human life, to redeem man from that state of schism and frustration.
That leads us to the final emphasis, which is really the focal point of all our consideration and concern at this time.
The dominant idea in all is God’s supreme interest in man. God is supremely—there is a sense in which we could say exclusively—wholly concerned with this that is called man: human life, manhood, according to His Son, Jesus Christ.
God is not concerned, or interested, or active in relation to mere things. We are concerned with things, and we are tremendously affected by things.
I mean, a lot of our time and energy is taken up with systems, and with society, and with institutions and organizations, and with, perhaps, even our Christian life and worship—friends, the outside.
God is not so concerned as we are with all that. If we could just cut in there between these interests, we would be saved from so much.
We are almost harassed by the things of Christianity: meetings, ministers, worship, how things are done—all the things which have been built up around Christianity. We are concerned with and affected by the things of Christianity. God is not.
God goes right through all of this and looks inside of all of this. He does not look on the outside as we do. He goes right in, and what He is interested in, concerned with, and seeking for is that human life which satisfies His creative thought.
He is dealing with you and with me as people. As we have said sometimes, He seems to be so concentrated as to single us out as though we were the only individuals in His universe.
It seems as though the whole world is something that relates to us only. You understand? He isolates us by our experiences, shuts us up, and imprisons us into spiritual history, in order to deal with us.
Yes, God is supremely concerned with man—men, if you like—looking for men in order to make men after the image of Him that created him. That is Jesus Christ.
The only possible reunification and reintegration of human life is Christ—is in Christ.
And it will be, to state a simple and obvious thing, but one which we very much overlook, just in the measure and degree in which Christ, the Man, the heavenly Man, is in us, that we shall be united with one another.
Put it the other way: the measure in which Christ is not there in our relationships will be the measure of our schism and the measure of our frustration.
Well now, for the few minutes we have this morning, let us go on to the second of these points in this paragraph: the pattern and the purpose—“renewed after the image of Him that created him.”
We have to focus our attention, our heart’s attention, upon Him Who is the image, and after Whom we are to be renewed.
So we find the image introduced, inducted, and presented. He is officially and historically presented to us at His baptism, foreshadowing His cross:
This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.
That marks the point at which He assumes His official position as the image unto which this renewal is to take place—presented, inducted, introduced into the world before heaven, earth, and hell.
He is made the central type of God’s intention for all creation. With this object, here is the image introduced and presented, to which humanity is to be conformed, or perish and pass out.
It is all governed by this presentation. After the presentation, or the induction, there came immediately the testing.
It is spiritually important to recognize the sequence: introduced, inducted, and tested.
You know, there ought to be no break between Chapters 3 and 4 in the Gospel by Luke. Jesus is baptized, comes up out of the water, the Spirit descends, and the voice from heaven attests Him. Then immediately the Spirit leads Him into the wilderness to be tempted, or tried, by the devil—the other central figure in creation.
After the identifying, “This is My beloved Son,” comes the testing.
And I want you, in these few moments, to note again the inclusiveness of this testing, this time of temptation.
It must have been, in the mind of Christ, something tremendously important to take account of, because it is recorded in all the Synoptic Gospels and referred to in the later New Testament.
Now, Jesus was reticent about speaking of His own inner history. He alone could have told about this experience. No one else was with Him; He was in the wilderness alone. He alone knew about this. But at some subsequent time, He must have told it, or it could not have been recorded.
It is one of the greatest experiences of His earthly history. But surely it held a very great significance in the whole meaning of the incarnation.
And that is the point I want you to notice. Take careful account of this: it stands in a position of very great significance in the whole meaning of the incarnation of the Son of God. It is so inclusive of everything.
Every subsequent temptation that came to the Lord Jesus—and this was not the only one. Remember, it says at the end of this, “Then the devil leaveth Him for a season.” In other words, the devil said, “I will be back again.” This was not the end of it.
How true it was. Every subsequent attack of the enemy would take up the very things included in this one temptation, in different ways. By different means, along different lines, in different forms; but it was the same thing again in principle.
We have here temptation in three forms—not three temptations, but the temptation in three different realms with three different aspects.
First of all, the body: hunger. The tempter came along the line of physical demand, physical need, and physical interest—first through the body.
And then, failing there—for this body had already, in principle, made the whole sacrifice; in the body there was utter obedience—he came along the line of the soul.
He took Him up to the pinnacle of the temple: “Cast Thyself down. It is written.” The devil can quote Scripture.
He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee.
But he left out one very vital fragment of the statement in Psalm 91. He did not say, “in all Thy ways.” “In all Thy ways”—that would have been dangerous.
There are ways in which you cannot even claim the Scripture. There are ways in which even God’s protection is not available, if they are the ways of presumption. If you are presuming upon God, you cannot claim the protection of His Word. It is not “in all thy ways,” only as all thy ways are in God.
However, that is by the way. Here the point of the temptation was this: if You do this—cast Yourself down—everybody will acclaim You at once. “This man has come out of heaven. Here He is! They will acclaim You. The world will accept You, will applaud You, and the world will be won.”
The world, the world—the thing that is called popularity. That is the soul. That is the test.
If you do not get the world’s approval, that is difficult. It is rejection; it is persecution. You do not get a place, understanding, favor, or acceptance with the world.
Sometimes that can be exceedingly testing. Many a man has to put everything into the balances: loyalty to God on the one side, and whether he is going to get the favor of men, position, promotion, and all that, on the other side—by some way that is a bit crooked, that is not straight, not right before God.
This matter of standing well with the world sometimes becomes a very acute thing. The god of this world makes it so: a real temptation in the realm of our soul, to stand well with men—a temptation to compromise on this or that in order to get an easier way in the world, the favors of the world.
Having failed again there, the enemy swung round to another end. He took Him up into a great high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory thereof, and said, “All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt worship me.”
He had moved from the outer circle of the body into that inner place of the soul. Now he had gone right for the heart. That is the spirit: worship, the place of God. Who is to be God? Who is to occupy that inner sanctuary of man’s being?
Well, I am not dwelling upon these three things in particular, but I am trying to show you the inclusiveness of this temptation: the whole man was involved—body, soul, and spirit.
You know, the Lord allows us to be tried in all these realms. Sometimes the physical is the realm of very definite testing and trying—very low down about physical life for God.
But the Lord said on another occasion, “He that saveth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life shall find it.” And that often becomes a physical issue, a real physical issue, as it has been for many in recent days.
It comes back for us whether we will sell the interests of God and spiritual interests for the sake of physical interests involved. Or whether we will bring under the body, so that it is not the master but the servant.
Well, it is all real testing. And the soul, I think, is perhaps a much greater realm than we imagine: the whole matter of reputation, standing, favor, and advancement in this world.
Gaining the world means gaining its favor, its smile, its pleasure. It is an acute temptation for young people—indeed, for all Christians, but particularly for young people—whether they are going to compromise in order really to stand well with the world.
And in spirit, the most acute form of temptation comes to us. Well now, I have pointed it out. We cannot deal with everything connected with these things, but what I am saying is that here, in this temptation of the Lord Jesus, you have an inclusiveness of all temptation: the whole man—spirit, soul, and body.
And in that comprehensive trial, the image was tried and really confirmed.
Think again of the closest of His disciples, the beloved Peter. When speaking of His coming sufferings, Peter said, “This shall never come unto Thee. Save Thyself.” Here we are back on the body level again: “Save Yourself. Do not put Yourself in the way of that.”
Then came Gethsemane: “My soul is exceeding sorrowful.” He was tried in His soul.
And finally, the cross: “My God, My God.” Tried to the last degree as to God His Father—the love of His Father, the faithfulness of His Father.
Testing was pressed into the deepest and closest area of His human life, like that all the way through.
But the point is this: note what is the heart, the core, of it all. Whether it is in the body, the trial; in the soul, the testing; or in the spirit, the deepest ordeal, there is one thing at the heart of all: His filial relationship with God.
The attesting, the presenting, was: “My Son, in Whom I am well pleased. My Son.”
“All right,” says the devil, “that is the focal point upon which I will concentrate.” And what is the essence of the temptation? It is the filial relationship to the Father—the relationship of love to the Father.
Are you ever tested through your body to doubt the love of God? Through your situation, the circumstances arising and surrounding you, and in your own being? Oh yes, we know a little of this, something of this.
The concentrated force of all the tempting powers is upon that issue, whatever form it takes.
See, the Lord Jesus went this way. In His triumph, it says, “Though He was a Son, yet learned He obedience by the things which He suffered.” He was made perfect through suffering.
Do not think of that word suffering in connection with Him as just being His physical sufferings on the cross. Probably that is where Rome focuses everything—on the crucifix, the wounds, that side of it.
No, no. His sufferings were here: in the realm of not serving His own interests in any way at all—body, soul, or spirit—and what it cost Him so to do. Those were His sufferings. He was made perfect through suffering.
And then, having been made perfect, He is installed in heaven as the Man Who satisfies God.
Stephen, in his last moments, said, “I see the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” The Son of Man—installed as the heavenly pattern, the heavenly Man.
There is a Greek word which is only used once in the New Testament. It is used by the Lord Jesus Himself. He said, “I have left you an example.”
Every time in the New Testament when that word example occurs, it is, like all other Greek words, a pictorial one. There is a picture behind it. It is taken from the classroom.
The classroom and the copybook. The master sets a pattern to be copied in writing—the top line, we used to call it.
I do not know so much about things in the infant school now, but I remember well how I plodded on trying to imitate that top line in writing, and how much I thought my success lay in imitating it.
Well, Jesus took this word, example or pattern, out of the classroom, where the child has been given a top line, has been given a pattern, an example, to copy the master’s writing.
Do you know, the Word says much about looking unto Jesus, beholding Him. But that does not exhaust it, because I think there is always some weakness—I have found it, at any rate—about this example idea.
Thomas à Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ, I never found wholly helpful. We try every day to take Jesus and make Him the top line, do we not?
But there was more in the Greek word than that, and I will show you this for the moment. The master not only gave the top-line pattern, but he drew some grooves in the clay upon which the writing was being done.
At that time, the only means of writing in school cheap enough to provide sufficiently was clay tablets. So the master would draw grooves—lines.
Now, that is very helpful, is it not? Having some lines to work on, you cannot go crooked. But if they are grooves, so that if you tend to go out of the straight, the groove holds you—that is an extra. That is all in the word example.
It means that not only has He become the pattern to which we are being conformed, but the Holy Spirit has given us, in our own hearts, grooves. When we do go out of the straight, the groove pulls us back again—something that holds us to the straight.
You understand? A very simple illustration, but that is the word, you see—the meaning of the word.
He has been set forth as the pattern, and the Holy Spirit has come to keep us on the line of the pattern. Kept by the power of God. If we go askew, something will pull us back again and get us back into the straight.
Now, for the moment, I must stop there, because that does introduce this activity and energy of the Holy Spirit in the matter of renewing after the image of Him that created him. We will hold that over.
And then, as we again return to the point with which we began: the Lord has focused His attention upon us as human beings to recover the image of the one perfect Man.
It is in us as people that He is concerned. He is concerned with us. It so often matters to Him about us, about you—not about getting a perfect system or a New Testament order, but people, just people.
We will never have any kind of heavenly or New Testament order until He gets the kind of people that He wants. When He has got them, or is getting them, everything else will follow, and we will have the right order.