“For the rest, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord,” and (ch. 4). “Stand fast in the Lord, beloved.” “Rejoice in the Lord always: again, I will say, Rejoice.” The key-notes for a song in the wilderness:
Rejoice in Him, again, again,
The Spirit speaks the word,
Stand fast in Christ, ah, yet again,
He teacheth all the band.
We may compare this with a former word of encouragement given while the people were in the wilderness: “Moses my servant is dead; now, therefore, arise, go over this Jordan.” “Be strong, and of a good courage”: “I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.” Again, ah, yet again, God speaks the word: “only be thou strong and very courageous.” “Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage” (Josh. 1:6, 7, 96Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them. 7Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. (Joshua 1:6‑7)
9Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. (Joshua 1:9)).
Thus spake the God of all encouragement, when announcing the death of His servant Moses. Here it is the Spirit of Christ, in His servant Paul, encouraging the saints to rejoice in the Lord.
These words, we well know, were but the fruit of the joy poured by the Spirit of Jesus Christ into the heart of His prisoner, and what so fitting channel on earth as the heart of that prisoner of Jesus Christ for the nations? The circumstance of his position, his prison-house and chain, were far from being hindrances to joy in the Lord. And what were those of Christ when He said: “That my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full”? This kind of joy, blessed be God, is independent of earthly circumstances, though realized in their midst, and our strength therein.
But “beware,” he says, “of dogs [shameless ones], evil workmen”; the secret of the Lord is not with such. It is only the “circumcision” who boast in Christ Jesus; the answer in them to God’s boasting in heaven, when, having brought Him from the dead, He gave Him the great name above all creature names, a position, as Man glorified, which claimed universal homage. Yet this is far from being the fullness of the divine mind concerning Him. The blessed and only Ruler, King of kings and Lord of lords, is going to show the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father has glorified Him with Himself. Boasting in Christ Jesus is the mind of God Himself in the saints.
It has just been remarked that having the mind of Christ—this mind which was in Christ—is the secret of power; but the same may be said of this joy in the Lord; we shall presently see how this comes out.
But what a blessed description of our practical state under the term “circumcision”: (and how blessedly and wondrously he illustrates it in his own spiritual history!) worshiping by the Spirit of God, boasting in Christ Jesus, all confidence in the flesh for ever gone.
It reminds one of another scripture in 1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7), which presents a different but equally precious aspect of our state and standing. “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” There we have a blending of both standing and state. We Christians are in the light as He is in the light; clouds and darkness are not found in this revelation of God; darkness is no longer His secret place (Psa. 18), He is in the light, but we are walking in it; where else could we walk? (he goes on to add, “The darkness is past,” or “passing”. ) And see the blessed result, “we have fellowship one with another,” and the blood of Jesus Christ is of unchanged and unchangeable efficacy. This is said here in connection with our walking in the light.
What a roll of blessings these two passages bring before us! We walk in the light as He is in the light, having fellowship with one another; we worship by the Spirit of God; we boast in Christ Jesus; and we have lost all confidence in the flesh; henceforth it is the Lord who possesses our confidence.
All this is very blessed, and it is easy to see that the Lord Jesus is the center and immediate object before the soul of the apostle. It is no longer a question of the mind that was in Him being in us now, but of being with Him where He is, having Himself there as the soul’s exceeding great and eternal gain. This is the one thought here, supreme and governing, before which all the thoughts of the flesh disappear. What possible connection could there be between a Hebrew of the Hebrews and the glorified Man in heaven?
This Hebrew was of the former things, the old creation and the first man; Christ was the second Man out of heaven, and gone on high, the Head there of the new creation. Could you speak now of circumcision or of uncircumcision in any relation to Him? These were former things, and are nothing now, the apostle states elsewhere; but “in Christ,” is new creation (Galatians). Again, in the thought of the “new man,” the names “Jew” and “Greek” &c., have disappeared, and only that of Christ is found, as in the words of Col. 3. “Christ is all.”
I think the apostle was full of this thought when he says here, “My Lord!” My Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things; the answer of his heart to the purpose of God the Father, that every tongue should confess Him Lord, to God the Father’s glory. With like readiness he expresses his sympathy with others in their wants by: “My God shall abundantly supply all your need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” The chain of the prisoner had not weakened the confidence of the saint; he knew whom he had believed, and was persuaded He was able to keep for that day what he had entrusted to Him. He had many interests connected with that day. We may not know what the “deposit” was, but we do know there was that which would be a boast and crown and joy for him when that day came.
It is evident that he lived much in spirit with the Lord, much in His coming day, making little account of the judgment of man’s day; of this kind of life how much, or how little do we know? The things before are not in view, while the things behind, in a religious and social aspect, are what Christians seem to be for the most part “reaching after.” Their labors are chiefly directed to the advancement politically, socially, and morally, of this present evil world; to modify, as far as may be, peradventure to remove altogether, the reproach of the cross. Many thus prove themselves to be its enemies, their professions notwithstanding.
Could Paul, who said, “God forbid that I should boast, save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by which I am crucified unto the world and the world unto me,” be of that company? He was a fanatic in their eyes in saying it; at least he was the true servant of Him whom he called my Lord; bearing in his body the brands of the Lord Jesus. But when these professors come to this passage, they are silent for the most part, in the silence of spiritual death.
It can hardly fail to be noticed, that, in this most interesting chapter, we have again before us, one emptied, not as in the preceding chapter, in the power of divine grace to man, but here through grace given to man: not the Son of man out of heaven, but one who had been of earth, taken possession of by Jesus Christ for heaven, and glory with Himself there.
The fullness of Saul of Tarsus had been what might be termed the fullness of the flesh; in principle, all that it most glories in; what the man in the flesh had counted gain to him was there. There was nothing to be desired in respect of race, tribe, or nationality, circumcision, law, zeal, or righteousness of his own. There was a seven-fold completeness in this gain to him, which gave him his place and standing before men. He was an important personage there, a Jew of Tarsus, a citizen of no mean city, a Roman also, educated according to the exactness of the law, brought up at the feet of Gamaliel. Such were the varied and splendid advantages which the man in the flesh counted gain to him.
But, as he was drawing near to Damascus, about midday there shone out of heaven a great light round about him, when he fell to the ground, having heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” To the query, “Who art thou, Lord?” came the answer, “I am Jesus the Nazaraean, whom thou persecutest.” That voice has reached his inmost soul. It pleased God to reveal His Son in him; in a moment all is changed! He refuses to take counsel with flesh and blood; all that constituted the gain of Saul of Tarsus fell to the ground with him. He understands it now.
But this was the voice of One, not out of the earth, “but out of heaven (New Trans.), the second Man.” Such as he (Adam), made of dust, such are they also made of dust (hitherto that had been his state); “and such as the heavenly one, such also the heavenly ones” (henceforth this is to be Paul’s state). The Man of heaven announces Himself to him who was of the earth, as “Jesus the Nazaraean, whom thou persecutest.”
Was it to this goal, that the advantages, already detailed, had led the man of the earth open hatred and persecution of the Nazariean, now speaking from that light, the glory of which rendered Saul sightless? What affinity then had these privileges of his earthly position with that place of light and glory of which Jesus the Nazaraean was the center? They were but the strength of that enmity in which he raged against the name of Jesus; even as the law itself is the strength of sin.
But the voice from heaven has reached him. The God who separated him from his mother s womb, and called him by His grace, and was pleased to reveal His Son in him, has begun a good work in him. The starting-point of this chief of sinners, in his new and wondrous career, was Jesus glorified on high. Of what he then saw, and of what this voice conveyed—Jesus glorified, one with His suffering saints—he was to be a witness. Henceforth his heart, unwearied, will never suffer him to rest until he has gained Him in that glory from which His voice had reached him.
It is no question here of soul salvation; but oh, how unlike everything that one sees or hears of! The subject is not one of doctrines or divine reasonings, yet who was more used in these lines than Paul? It is the history of a whole heart for ever won, and henceforth for ever to be engaged with one supreme object, in the affections and thoughts of a new nature, of which the Holy Spirit was the strength; for in Him, and in Him alone, were concentrated all the counsels, all the promises, all the mercies of God towards man: His beloved Son, in whom was all His delight—God had highly exalted Him, and. here was the least of all saints, exclaiming: My Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and whom I have alone before me in His place on high for mine eternal and unspeakable gain!
Was not this, so far, fellowship with God? the expression of His mind in His servant at any rate. God’s appreciation of His holy servant Jesus was shown in setting Him over all; the least of all saints showed his appreciation, in suffering for Him the loss of all things.
Now what place in the unsearchable riches of Christ had the privileges of race, and nation, and circumcision, advantages social, moral, or carnally religious? These were the riches of the man out of the earth, but such was Paul no longer: grace and divine power had changed all that. Such as the heavenly one, such also the heavenly ones, and of these was Paul.
It was remarked before, that this is not the place to look for doctrines and reasonings, and yet the chapter is full of both; but they are the doctrines and reasonings of a heart full of Christ, and led by His Spirit in giving them forth. Is there no doctrine in: “What things were gain to me, these I counted, on account of Christ, but loss”? Is not this the calculation of right reason in the highest sense; a reasonable thought, as elsewhere he speaks of a “reasonable service”? Yet the words express the emotion of a heart drawn in the deepest way towards its divine and heavenly object.
But these reasonings of the affections, when in spirit before God, were, so far as he was really there, the reasonings of the Spirit of Christ, and it is a solemn thing to be allowed to hear them. “What things were to me gain, these I counted, on account of Christ, loss.” “But surely I count also all things to be loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.” “I have suffered the loss of all, and count them to be filth, that I may gain Christ.” That which could not be found in the second Man out of heaven, or connected with Him, was rejected by Paul, or regarded by him with utter contempt.
Here then we have another man; not the Man out of heaven, but one of those who are such as the heavenly One, and find again in measure the same characteristics: emptied, humbled, and obedient. All of self seems to have disappeared; lost in the all-subduing energy of spirit in which he cast aside all that reminded him of the things behind, pressing ever onward towards his one and only object.
Yet was he ever full of interest in the things and persons in the midst of which his pathway lay; but they were solely Christ’s interests on earth, the kingdom and house and testimonies of God, the souls He had quickened, laboring amongst them and preaching the gospel to every creature which is under heaven. But this was work by the way; his object was Christ in the glory of God; his path led straight as an arrow to that divine goal. From that he never swerved. Who else of the children of men ever addressed his brethren in terms like these? “Be imitators all together of me, brethren, and fix your eyes on those walking thus, as you have us for a model.” What a wonderful path for man on earth! a path whose moral heights the creature had not before contemplated. With what interest we fix our eyes, not only on the new position, but on the new man; who, understanding its meaning, walked at its height, sustained by the power which took man in the person of Christ, and set Him in glory on high, Head of the new creation.
Now let us look at the position in relation to the wilderness path; for we are not sitting in heavenly places here as in Ephesians. Thus then the position in the wilderness is developed, old things passed away, former things forgotten, the things before not yet reached, while all around is enmity and moral death, the blessings as yet unseen, and known only by faith; for now was the judgment of this world, Christ not yet gained, that is, Christ where He is, glorified on high; eternal life a hope, as in Titus 1:In a word, all the blessings, which replaced the old things passed away, are regarded here (characterizing the salvation) as gained or possessed at the end; the result of blest ways and energies in the wilderness.
These blessings, beginning with Christ Himself, are also seven in number, as were the old privileges in the flesh. To gain Christ; to be found in Him; to have the righteousness of God; to know Him; to know the power of His resurrection; to know the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death; to attain by any means unto the resurrection from among the dead. All this would be the glorious result of working out his own salvation with fear and trembling, and belongs to Christian responsibility.
In another aspect, we receive eternal life when we believe, as it is written: “In whom ye also have trusted, having heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, in whom also, having believed, ye have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the earnest of our inheritance, to the redemption of the acquired possession, to the praise of his glory.” The acquired possession is what the saints inherit with Christ. Thus Christ Himself, with salvation and the Holy Spirit as its seal, and as earnest of our inheritance, characterize our present position. As to his position in the wilderness, through which his pathway led, Paul could not say that he was already perfected. He had not attained to the resurrection from among the dead (the power that wrought in that resurrection he realized much of), he had not gained Christ, was not with Him in His glory; how then could he say he was perfected?
Yet, in speaking thus, he places himself, according to his own teaching, amongst the perfect or full-grown. It was not a babe, needing milk, that desired to be with Christ in glory, to gain Him there. “Let us be thus minded (think this),” he adds, addressing the full-grown (perfect); yet not forgetting those otherwise minded, God would reveal it unto them.
It will be well to compare his state here with that of the rich man in Mark 10. He runs to Jesus, kneels to Him, and asks Him, as “good teacher,” what he should do to inherit eternal life. What zeal, and freshness, and beauty, and righteousness, too! but it was all his own! not found in Christ, indeed all was his own as much as his riches. The only real advantage he received from them was in this, that they helped him in the discovery that all was vanity: eternal life alone was not that. Yet, after all, the present possession of wealth was practically more important to him than life eternal; it formed the chain that bound him to earth, and was the only treasure his heart knew of. “Treasure in heaven,” was a dark saying; to sell what he had, take up his cross, and follow the Good Teacher in His lonely path, was a hard one, too hard for him to listen to. His soul’s present immediate want was salvation, but his own death in sins, and powerless estate as a lost sinner he was ignorant of. Riches and the good things of this life harden the heart and sear the conscience, hence the needed testing words: “Sell what thou hast, take up thy cross, and follow me.” His alacrity in coming to Jesus is turned into sadness: “at the word” he went away grieving; his assumed competency to do “was a vanity,” like everything else of man.
Compare this with Paul’s, My Lord, on account of whom I have suffered the loss of all, and count them to be filth, that I may gain Christ. Paul, from the beginning, had his treasure in heaven, and where that was, there was his heart also; the rich man wants to know what he must do to inherit eternal life; he has no thought of finding it in the Good Teacher, no thought that he is already a lost sinner, “without strength.”
Now what thought had Paul of life or righteousness, strength, salvation, or glory, or aught that is of God, and not vanity, apart from Christ? The grace, mercy, promises, and counsels of God, he found in Him. His Person rose gloriously above all that which He could bestow upon man, and to be with Himself (for ever with the Lord) was, for Paul’s heart, the chiefest of all that for which he was apprehended. When he said at, his conversion, “What shall I do, Lord?” it was not in the view of inheriting anything by his doings; what he had seen and heard had put an end for ever to all such thoughts. “For this purpose have I appeared unto thee,” said the Lord, “to appoint thee to be a servant and a witness, both of what thou hast seen, and of what I shall appear to thee in.” It was the right word for the servant, “What shall I do, Lord?” He “was not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” It is true, there was a doing on his part, and that of a most peculiar kind: “But one thing, “ he says, and then it comes out that for Paul the present consisted in forgetting the past (the things behind), and stretching out to the things before, pursuing for the prize of the calling on high of God in Christ. Such was the course he was running.
It may well be questioned whether such a present had ever been realized by man before, such a race run! The absence will be remarked of all effort to improve or change, or act in any way upon the scene he was passing through; it formed no part of his divine commission (Acts 22). Christ had given Himself for our sins, that He should deliver us out of this present evil world. He overcame the world, and all that has been begotten of God gets the victory over it also.
I know that this kind of testimony torment those that “dwell upon the earth”— to be told that they who refuse to be its overcomers will be found and judged as among its corrupters. But any such refusal on the part of Paul would have falsified his relative position towards it. By the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ he was crucified unto the world, and the world unto him. Those who do not know what this means, much less feel its power, are hardly to be blamed if they refuse to recognize in Paul a model for their Christian walk (and ways); only why call it Christian in this case? The enemies of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, and those who mind earthly things he classes together.
But Paul had been delivered, spiritually, from this evil world: “Taking thee out from among the people (the Jews), and the nations, to whom now I send thee,” forms part of the Lord’s address to him. He that had said to him, “Arise, and stand on thy feet,” had also appeared unto him that he might see, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. These three things mark his new position: set on his feet by Christ, seeing by the gift of Christ, and filled with the Holy Ghost. Thus, even his body is full of light.
The spirit of intelligence, by which he was thus distinguished, was not the intelligence of Saul of Tarsus, neither was it of, by, or from, man. The scales now fallen from his eyes, he contemplates, the world through the medium of the cross, and can find nothing in it but that which put Jesus there; it was thus he measured this world. The Lord must be everything to him who can use such a measure as this.
John has another measure for it; but one equally perfect: “All that is in the world . . . is not of the Father,” therefore we are not to love it nor the things that are in it: we cannot love the Father, and at the same time, the things that are in the world, any more than we can talk of citizenship in heaven, while we mind earthly things. “Boast in the cross,” and “love of the Father,” unite in condemning the world, quite as much as Noah s faith did.
The Lord had already pronounced its judgment (John 12), and. left it out in His prayer (John 17).
The wise preacher had no such measure: neither the Father nor the Son (in these relation-ships) were known to him; yet he, too, had taken note of all that was in it; he could not say that it was not of the Father, but simply declares that all that was in it was only vanity and vexation of spirit. Such was the rule by which he measured the world he was surveying: “Vanity and vexation of spirit.”
No such words as these ever broke forth from the lips of the prisoner of Jesus Christ. In their stead we have: “Rejoice in the Lord always: and again, I will say, Rejoice.” Moses never encouraged the people with words like these. They had seen the glory and the greatness, but where was the grace? But now these could not be contemplated by the believer apart from the grace; they were now seen united in divinest harmony: the greatness, the glory, and the grace of God. This, when fully understood, was told out in the voice from the glory. God had been glorified in man, even in relation to sin, and where sin was; and now man was glorified with God, where sin could not come.
Well might the heart of Paul burn within him, as filled with the Holy Spirit, he comprehended the meaning and bearing of what he had seen and heard, his wondrous mission, and the things in which Christ appeared unto him. Poor, blessed, wondering Paul, what could he say or think! His whole heart was won; Christ had gained him for Himself, an elect vessel indeed, to bear His name before both nations and kings, and the sons of Israel. How often, as he went on in his service, his full heart must have found relief in utterances like these: “My Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things”; and “God forbid that I should glory, save in the. cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!” how often bent the knee, whilst he prayed that the Christ he loved might dwell in his heart by faith!
It is very clear that the world has lost its power over the soul of one who can say, “It is crucified unto me.” Object or interest in it, save those which were Christ’s, Paul had no longer. His pathway out of it was a path of service, it is true, and there was no lingering by the way. When it pleased God, who called him by His grace, to reveal His Son in him, that he might announce Him as glad tidings among the nations, immediately he did not take counsel with flesh and blood; no, he only took counsel with God. It seems to have been a solitary journey into Arabia. Glorious solitude, where God is known as our everlasting portion! But he has in spirit left the world, not on the ground of its being corrupted, or only on the authority of such a word as “Depart ye, this is not your rest, for it is polluted.” Far other and deeper motives wrought in the spirit of Paul. In the light of the glory be had found Jesus of Nazareth; in His cross his own death to sin, law, and the world itself (Rom. 6, 7; Gal. 6). What was the world now to him? He forsakes it in all the liberty of a soul divinely and for ever freed.
In Rom. 8 we have him celebrating God’s victory over a greater than Pharaoh. What the law could not do, God had done: He had condemned sin in the flesh. In the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, he realized deliverance from the law of sin and death. No such deliverance was celebrated on the shores of the Red Sea! no such occasion for praise ever known amongst men! He forsook the world for the highest of all prizes, in the liberty and power of a soul thus divinely freed.
But this is Christianity. Phil. 3 gives us the new man (Kcxtvoc), walking according to its spirit and privileges, and showing us the way out of this world to Christ in the glory on high. In the next chapter we see how he bore himself in relation to surrounding circumstances. He was the “creature” of none of them; master, through Christ, everywhere; he had learned to be satisfied in himself (for Christ was there); had strength for all things in Him that gave him power. What he had learned, what he loved, followed after, hoped or feared, his sorrows and his consolations, were all for the service and encouragement of the saints he so truly loved; by grace he shared in Christ’s interests in them.
He reminds one of the eagle stirring up her nest, fluttering over her young, spreading abroad her wings, taking them, bearing them on her wings. From the lofty heights in which his spirit dwelt (the prison house was no hindrance here) he could swoop down to the weak or falling; then, spreading abroad his wings, take them, and, bearing them on his wings, mount up to those wondrous heights, not strange to him, though little known to them, and show them how to behold with steadfast gaze the light of glory as it shone in the “unveiled face.”
See the figures he employs himself in 1 Thess. 2. “We . . . have been gentle in the midst of you, as a nurse would cherish her own children. Thus, yearning over you, we had found our delight in having imparted to you not only the glad tidings of God, but our own lives also, because ye had become beloved of us . . . As ye know how, as a father his own children, we used to exhort each one of you, and comfort and testify, that ye should walk worthy of God, who calls us to his own kingdom and glory.”