I have read these two scriptures, beloved, with the desire to speak a little on the fruitfulness of a soul in its early days, as also in the maturity of spiritual life. I need hardly add that the first scripture will only serve our present purpose as illustrating the thoughts I desire to present to you.
When the person of the Lord Jesus is before the soul at the early moments of spiritual life, I believe it generally follows that the tone of life is one of special, devotedness to Christ. It marks what we should call a happy conversion, and this is better than clear doctrine, good as it is, and we cannot do without it. When John cried “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world,” we do not read of any one having been converted. But when he uttered the last lovely strain of his ministry—his swan’s song” Behold the Lamb of God “there were two souls linked to Christ forever! “The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.” And more (for one of them doubtless was John), the Lord never had to say to one of them from that moment “Follow me.” There was fruitfulness as the result of that conversion.
Almost every Christian knows the story of David conquering the Philistine giant and delivering Israel. (1 Sam. 17) Israel was trembling before the hosts of the Philistines, and the challenging’s of the giant. The Valley of Elah (curse) lay between, and there was none to deliver David (so blessedly a type of the true David) came down to see the battle. He was the eighth son of his father Jesse. When he came, his brethren despised him (as the Jews did the Lord of Glory) attributing his actions to the pride and naughtiness of his heart. The great and decisive moment had come, and he who had walked with God in secret moments when no eye was on him but His, stands forth in the strength of Him who had delivered him out of the paw of the lion and the bear. He goes forward in the unhesitating confidence that He would deliver him out of the hand of this Philistine, who had defied the armies of the living God. It was a question of what God was; and faith always counts on what God is for His people, no matter what their condition may be.
Then you notice he tried Saul’s armor, and it crippled him. How man’s arrangements and man’s order cripple and hinder the soul that walks by faith.
David chooses him five stones out of the brook. The weakness of man where death put forth its power, was that which conquered in the hand of God. It was the weakness of God that was stronger than men; He who was crucified in weakness, by weakness won the victory. It was Satan’s last strong hold; Christ entered death, by entering defeated it, and discomfited the power of the enemy. David went forth and met the giant (the great power of Satan), who was six cubits and a span high; he went forth in the name of the Lord of hosts, slang the stone and sank it in the Philistine’s forehead, and destroyed him. And there was nothing in David’s hand. Then he took the sword of the Philistine and hewed off his head. The very power of death Christ took out of Satan’s hand and destroyed it forever, for faith and for God.
The stripling, flushed with victory, returned with the head of the giant in his hand; and when David had made an end of speaking unto Saul, “the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.”
This scene so beautifully illustrates the moment when the Lord Jesus came up from the dust of death, a mighty conqueror, bearing the spoils of His victory in His hands, and, making known to our souls what He has accomplished, He wins the heart to Himself. It is not so much the victory, as the Victor who touches the chord of the heart in this scene; then Jonathan’s—nay, the sinner’s heart is knit to the heart of Jesus, and “we love him because he first loved us.” “Jonathan loved him as his own soul.”
Now the result was, that all that which adorned Jonathan everything which he possessed as the son of a king lie stripped from himself and gave to David, “even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.” It is thus with a soul in its first early brightness, occupied rather with the person of its deliverer, than with what He has accomplished; the result is, that all that would clothe and give importance to self, is dropped and laid at the feet of Jesus!
So with the Queen of Sheba. She came to Solomon burdened with her hard questions, and when her heart was relieved, and “there was not anything hid from the king which he told her not,” she pours out all her treasures at his feet: then the king gave them back to her, and besides these things, “all her desire.” Thus, when the heart is determined to have naught apart from Christ, and all is surrendered, He deprives us of nothing which we can hold with Him. How sad to see souls tried, even if some little trifle has to be given up for Christ! When the eye is on Christ all is simple, and anything that comes in between the soul and Himself is treated as a hindrance, and is dropped. If one look of faith at Jesus has been followed by the soul’s salvation, how much deep blessing will come through continuing to gaze.
I have taken up this lovely Scripture to illustrate the fruitfulness Christ of a soul just born of God, and though we might o find many other like instances in the New Testament we will now turn to Phil. 3, that we may see the fruitfulness of a mature soul, who has not ceased to gaze on the Lord.
The epistle to the Philippians is the practical proof that a soul can walk in the Spirit so as to be in no way under the influence of the flesh, as we read in Gal. 5:1616This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. (Galatians 5:16), “walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.”
We have sometimes heard it stated that this is conflict, but that is a mistake. We think too, that because we have got “flesh” in us, that it must always be a warfare. It has been remarked that “sin” is not once mentioned in the Philippians, nor “flesh,” but to say that he had no confidence in it.
Paul has his eye upon a glorified Christ, and we are to be “followers of” Paul, and to do the same. It is not to have your eye upon Paul, but upon Him upon whom Paul was looking, while he ran in the full energy of the Spirit of God. He is walking in the power of those verses in John 12, ending with, “if any man serve me, let him follow me, and where I am, there shall also my servant be” (vv. 23-26).
From thirty to forty years had passed away when this Scripture came freshly from God, through the experience and pen of Paul. Thirty years (or so) before, he was physically blind for three days from the sight of a Saviour in the glory. He was morally blind to all else that this world could afford from that day.
All was judged that stood between them; all was dropped which could not pass into that scene where Christ was. “What things” were gain then to Saul the chief of sinners, the new man counted loss for Christ. He had eclipsed them all as the stars are eclipsed by the light of the sun. Did thirty or forty years bring a change? Did the prison in Rome, and the neglect of the saints, make any change in what he once expressed? No! More full of Christ than ever, his undimned energy bursts forth in the words, “yea, doubtless, and I count all things (the range had increased) loss” for Christ! It was indeed with him, “my soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me.”
Beloved friends, this is what we need; a heart going out after Christ in this vigor and energy; enabled to count all things dross and dung to have Christ for gain; to win Him where He is, and as He is, in glory. “And be found in him;” so always when in the race, all is to be attained at the end. No question or uncertainty in the course, but then I must run to win all there. Thus, the soul drops the weights and hindrances, and does not think of them as sacrifices at all. There never was one yet, who having given up something for Christ, has not found a vigor and energy imparted, of which lie had no conception until the hindrance was gone.
Christ as He was, is still more wonderful than Christ as He is! Glory is the natural sphere for God. Bat God, humbled and obedient, is more wonderful still: This you have in chapter 2. It is Christ as He is, he seeks to win, and he throws all aside that he may do so. In chapter Christ puts all aside, humbles Himself, and comes down to obedience and death. In chapter Paul puts all aside, and looks for obedience unto death, if found by the way in his track to glory! See what different motives actuated each in the surrender of all! He desires to know the power of His resurrection, to lift him outside of all here below, that he may live and walk as a man who has died and risen with Christ. If suffering came, he looked for the fellowship of His; if death came, he would have nothing else, because he found it on his track to glory. It was very near too to his soul (ch. 1:20).
“If by any means,” here an “if” comes in, because it is the race which leads to glory which is before us; the responsible course which ends there. “If” ten thousand difficulties came in the way, he would not shrink from one, because they were found in the pathway which ended with complete conformity to Christ on high.
Not as though he had already attained, or were already perfected. There are two ways in which perfection is looked at in Scripture. Positional perfection on high in Christ; and moral perfection, i.e., the heart’s response to the former, walking in consistency with the place, on high. It seizes the purpose of God as to complete conformity to Christ in glory, and the heart is governed by this purpose, and asserts in practice the course and conduct suited to the end in view.
In this chapter you find moral perfection (v. 15) which is the response of the heart to the place which we have on his, while in the race which leads to complete conformity to him; and enables him to apprehend that for which he had been apprehended of Christ.
“This one thing I do”; one thing governing the heart all day long. A simple undivided heart that can in loneliness and toil, whatever it may be, think of Christ and the things of Christ in unbroken communion and joy.
No doubt the poor heart discovers how feebly it can do this; but it discovers Christ’s heart increasingly in the measure it discovers its own. When a soul is thus simply engaged with Christ, others see it, and that which ought to have been the state of the whole church, is produced in the individual by the Spirit of God; the answer below to the glory of Christ in heaven. That is Christianity!
If there were this unbrokenness of occupation with Christ in our souls, there would be more unity amongst the saints, more power, more faithfulness, more forgetfulness of selfless of man and more of Christ.
Thus beloved brethren, you have a sweet picture of the fruitfulness of a soul in its maturity—the first object is the object still—things once judged and surrendered, are judged and surrendered still; and the growing appreciation of what Christ is, brings more deep conformity, more energy and grace. Then when the eye is turned for a moment from Christ to serve the saints who are His, it carries with it the interests of His heart for His own, discerns the faintest line His hand has traced on the souls of His people, and is enabled to rejoice in the fruits of His grace in those whom He has made the objects of His love, and the travail of His soul.