Turn to Psalm 2 where we read, “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and his Anointed (or Christ), saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.” Here we find a confederacy between Gentiles and people of Israel, the kings and rulers, to reject the authority of the Lord and His Christ. Turn now to Acts 4:24-26, where we find this Psalm quoted by the Holy Spirit as far as we have read, and the comment then added, “for of a truth against the holy child (servant) Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.” He was presented to Jew and Gentile, rulers and kings and people, as king in Zion, and rejected. The Lord is represented in this psalm as laughing at their impotent rage. “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision.” But with all their rage and rejection of Christ, He says, “Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.” They could not turn His purpose aside.
Now while we are assured that the full rejection of Christ, as their Messiah, by the people of Israel, was at the cross, when they said, “We will have no king but Caesar”; still when we examine the gospel narratives we find that the spirit which showed itself in full hostility at the cross, had been exhibited in various ways, especially amongst the rulers and chief ones of the nation, during the Lord’s ministry amongst them. This caused Him, after declaring the new era that His rejection would introduce, to desire His disciples to say no more that He was “the Christ”; (there was no further good to be had by this testimony to the people, that is, as to His rights as the Messiah). He adds immediately, “The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day.” This latter clause He adds to the declaration of His rejection and sufferings. Consult Matthew 16:20,21; Luke 9:20-22, which convey, I doubt not, the truth we are about to see.
In considering Psalm 8 in connection with other subjects, we saw that there was a “Son of man” to whom dominion was bestowed over all creation, which Adam had sinned away and lost. He, we saw, was the Lord Jesus Himself as Hebrews 2 informs us, even as His inheritance will be enjoyed in an age to come. This title the Lord takes to Himself according to that Psalm, after His rejection as King in Zion according to Psalm 2 taking it in resurrection. He takes the headship and inheritance, with its load of sin and guilt upon it; and inherits it not only as His by right, but by redemption also. He takes it as the Redeemer-Heir. “We see not yet,” says Hebrews 2, “all things put under him; but we see Jesus... crowned with glory and honor.” Men said, “We will not have this man to reign over us”; God said, “Sit thou on my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool.”
We turn to Ephesians 1, and there we find that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ (looked upon here as the exalted and glorified Man), had raised Christ from among the dead, and “set him at his own right hand in the heavenlies, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things in subjection under his feet, and given him to be head over all things to the church which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all.” Here we find Him raised and seated in the heavenlies, as the glorified Man, all things not yet visibly put under Him, but His title declared; and while as the expectant Heir, He is seated there, a work is going on of quickening, raising up, and seating together in Him, the second (last) Adam, in the heavenly places, the joint heirs of all his glory.
It is a work, that, the more we search into and meditate upon its depth and magnificence, humbles us to the dust at the “exceeding riches of God’s grace.” Human words can but feebly convey to us just thoughts of a work which takes up the Magdalenes, and outcasts, and vile ones, lost and defiled through sin, and sets them in the same glory as the Son of God! Not only blessing them through Him and His blessed work on the cross, but with Him! conferring upon them every dignity, every glory, and every honor, conferred upon Christ Himself as the risen, and exalted, and glorified Son of man! and yet a work in which God is glorified, and in which He will, in the ages to come, exhibit to the heavenly hosts the exceeding riches of His own precious grace!
This serves truly to level every pretension of man, to think on these things. We look at ourselves, and we are inclined to ask the question, “How can these things be?” But we look at God and His purposes, for the glory of His Son; and that we serve now to manifest to the principalities and powers in the heavenlies, the manifold wisdom of God, (Eph. 3:10) and to teach them in the ages to come the meaning of “Grace!” May we learn to be silent, and to submit ourselves to Him, who does all things well!
The Epistle to the Ephesians is that Scripture which so fully brings out these things. We find there the purpose of God, and the execution of that purpose: His own counsels and the good pleasure of His will revealed; Himself the source of the blessings; His Son Jesus Christ the measure of them; ourselves by nature dead in trespasses and sins, the objects of them!
But to return. We have seen for a moment the work that is going on while the Head is seated in heaven — of quickening, raising up, and uniting to Him the joint-heirs. This is the work of the Holy Spirit since His descent at Pentecost. Now it is most freely admitted that saints were born again in all ages and dispensations. Sinners have been, since the fall of man, newborn by the Holy Spirit, through the word of God, and led to trust in the promises of God for salvation by a coming Redeemer, faintly seen in types and shadows of old. Still the saints were born again; they trusted, lived, and died in faith, and were saved. But individual salvation is not the Church of God. Every individual of that Church, no doubt, is a saved one; still, collectively, they occupy a place, as we shall see, beyond all that went before, and peculiar to the interval in which we live. It was reserved for the day when the Lord Jesus, rejected, crucified, dead, buried, risen, ascended, and seated at God’s right hand; not only as God’s eternal Son, but as a glorified Man, who had fully accomplished redemption in His own person, had put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, glorified God to the utmost as to sin, substituted Himself for His people on the cross, and had been thus seated far above all heavens — it was reserved for such a time, to bring out this mystery, which, from the beginning of the ages, had been hid in God, — the mystery of “Christ and the Church.”
The first notice of this work we find in Matthew 16, where the Lord declares the foundation in Himself, as Son of the living God. He speaks of the Church as that which was to come. He says, when Peter confessed Him to be “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” “Upon this rock I will build my church.” The Apostle afterward learned the true meaning of the foundation here declared, when he says by the Spirit, “To whom coming as unto a living stone... Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house,” &c. This, however, is by the way, as to Paul’s ministry, and to it alone, is entrusted the revelation of the mystery of Christ and the Church. The Lord Himself does not reveal it. He had disciples during His ministry here, but not disciples baptized into one body and united by the Holy Spirit to a glorified Man in heaven.
In the days of Judaism, it was an unlawful thing for a man that was a Jew to have any dealings with those of any other nation. He was separated from amongst the other nations of the earth to God. “You only have I known of all the families of the earth,” says God, by His prophet to that people (Amos 3:2).
When we look upon the Lord’s life and ministry here, we find that He was constantly going beyond the middle wall of partition which surrounded the Jewish enclosure, in the outflow of His own blessed grace, to those who had no relationship with God even in an outward way. Witness the woman of Canaan in Matthew 15, and the woman of Samaria in John 4. “He was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers, and that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Rom. 15:8,9). Still, the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile was not really destroyed till the cross, however our Lord’s actions may have shown what was coming, We find the position of Jew and Gentile forcibly contrasted in the following scriptures: “Who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever, Amen” (Rom. 9:4,5). And again, “Wherefore remember, that ye being in times past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:11,12). We find in this epistle, that the apostle speaks in the first chapter of the purpose and counsels of God, and the redemption of His people, the latter being an accomplished thing; adding His future purpose to be executed in the dispensation of the fullness of times, when all things shall have been gathered together, in heaven and earth under the headship of Christ; and when those who believe shall have entered on their inheritance with Him and in Him in these things. He goes on to show that the Head, who had been in death (he sees Him only thus) was alive again, raised up and glorified, Head of all principality, &c., set there as “head over all things to the Church, which is his body.”
In Ephesians 2 he sees both Jew and Gentile dead in trespasses and sins, as children of the first Adam. In Ephesians 2:1 and 2, he states what the Gentiles were, and then turns round upon the favored Jew and writes, “Among whom we also and... were children of wrath even as others.” This was the position of both Jew and Gentile by nature. We go on and find that Christ “hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in his flesh the law of commandments contained in ordinances: for to make in himself of twain, one new man, so making peace; and that he might reconcile both to God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.” There could be, and there was, salvation for individuals, as we have seen, before the cross, by virtue of what Christ would accomplish there; but the cross itself is the foundation of this unity of Jew and Gentile in one body by the presence of the Holy Spirit come down from heaven. “He came and preached peace to you which were afar off and to them that were nigh. For through him (Christ) we both (Jew and Gentile), have access by one Spirit unto the Father (Eph. 2:17,18). Here we learn this unity, of which the cross was the basis.
The Holy Spirit, constitutes by His presence upon earth, individually dwelling in every believer, uniting him, and all Christ’s members collectively in one body to Christ in heaven.
Now it is freely admitted that everything good, and of God, that ever has been done in this world, was by the Holy Spirit. But, dear friends, it was reserved for that day when God’s people, by virtue of an accomplished redemption, would have their consciences so perfectly purged, that God could come and dwell by the Holy Spirit in the believer’s body; and that the Holy Spirit could be given in such a sort, as in this interval, since the day of Pentecost (see 1 Cor. 6:17).
We do not find in the experience even of a David, the possession of a purged conscience (Heb. 10:2). There was the most blessed and perfect trust and confidence in God known in grace, displayed and enjoyed, but a purged conscience never. That was reserved till the cross had made it possible.
We read in John 14 of the Lord, before He departed, promising His disciples the Holy Spirit, as the Comforter. He says, “I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter (He had been that when with them), that he may abide with you forever... he... shall be in you.” “In that day [when He was come], ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” This was the knowledge and consciousness the personal presence of the Holy Spirit would bring.
The Holy Spirit had wrought before He came; He came at Pentecost. Just as the Son of God had wrought before He became a man; He came down from heaven then. The Holy Spirit never dwelt here until redemption was accomplished. His presence thus was a new thing, and although there were believers before His descent, still it was on believers, as such, that the Holy Spirit was to be bestowed. “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive for the Holy Ghost was not yet; because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:37-39). We find an example of this in Acts 19. Long after the Pentecostal gift of the Holy Spirit, Paul finds certain disciples at Ephesus. He asks the question, “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?” They reply, “We have not so much as heard if the Holy Ghost was come.” (Compare John 7:38). He asks again, “Unto what then were ye baptized?” They reply, “Unto John’s baptism.” “Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.” He found here a company of disciples, believers as far as they had heard, but who had not yet received the Holy Spirit. Far from the center of the Pentecostal gift of the Spirit, they had not yet heard if He had come, not “whether there be any Holy Ghost.” Our English Bible is faulty here and might lead to wrong conclusions. As soon as “they heard, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus; and when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them.” It is sought to show that the great distinguishing feature between the state of the individual believer, under the period of the Holy Spirit’s presence, dwelling upon earth as now, and the saint in that, which is past, is, that he now receives the Holy Spirit to dwell in him; that “in the Spirit” is his proper state as a Christian, and the power which unites him with Christ risen. The corporate blessings we shall see again.
In the instance quoted there was the laying on of the apostle’s hands; but, doubtless, God was showing to us that there is a twofold thing — the new birth and the indwelling of the Spirit, the latter belonging specially to the present time.
Not seeing this, is much of the reason for the low state of numbers of God’s children. They think that Christianity is a sort of spiritualized Judaism, and that saints are only a little in advance of those before the descent of the Holy Spirit, as to their state.
Consequently you have in the lips of many a one of the prayer of David — “take not thy Holy Spirit from me”; while others are ever praying for the Holy Spirit to be poured out upon them. Now the least intelligent saint who has been instructed in Christianity, as such, could not use such prayers. He knows that he receives the Spirit now, as he does eternal life, from God and by faith, and consequent on redemption (Eph. 1:13). As the apostle asks the Galatians, who were getting under law, “Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?” And again, “That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” A Christian may, doubtless, sad to say, by his unfaithfulness, grieve the Holy Spirit much, indeed so much so, as almost to think he had never had the Spirit at all; but he could not with the least intelligence in Christianity say, “ Take not thy holy Spirit from me.” In Romans 8 the Spirit is the principle of our relationship with God, and Christian life is life in the Spirit, which depends on redemption being accomplished.
This is a fact assumed to be the case in all the apostolic teaching to the Church. In Ephesians 1:14 He is given as the seal of redemption, and an earnest of the inheritance yet to be enjoyed, till its redemption out of the enemy’s hand, the price for its purchase having been paid.
In no epistle are the official glories of the Holy Spirit brought before us more fully than this, which reveals the heavenly calling of the Church of God. In Ephesians 1:14, He is the seal of redemption. Ephesians 2:18, He is the medium of access by Jew and Gentile, through Jesus Christ unto the Father. Ephesians 2:22, the Church is the habitation of God on earth by His Spirit. In Ephesians 3:16, He strengthens the saints in the inner man, enabling them to lay hold of and enjoy their position and standing. In Ephesians 4, precepts are founded upon doctrines; the saint is told not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God, whereby he has been sealed till (for) the day of redemption. In Ephesians 5 he is told to be filled with the Spirit In Ephesians 6 is the power of the warfare in the heavenly places, and his prayer is to be “in the Spirit.” To multiply examples were needless.
This being established, we will now look into those Scriptures which speak of the Body of Christ and the unity of the Spirit. We saw that the Lord speaks of the Church as a future thing during His own ministry here (Matt. 16:18). He had disciples, but not disciples gathered into one body, constituting the “fullness” of a glorified Man in heaven, by the power of the Spirit, uniting them in one. Such, and such only, is the Church of God. It was reserved for the ministry of the Apostle Paul to bring out this grand central truth of the Church.
He tells us that he had it “by revelation,” and not therefore from others.
After the rejection of the Lord and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost we find the Church gathered in Jerusalem, and principally composed of Jews, affording a wondrous spectacle to the world around, united in one heart and soul, a dwelling-place of God by the Holy Spirit. The Lord lingered, in His longsuffering love, over His beloved, though now cast-off people, to see if even the testimony of the Holy Spirit to a risen and glorified Christ would touch their hearts. The enmity of the Jews and the religious leaders of the nation increased every hour, till it arrived at its full height, when the agents of the Sanhedrim (the great council of the nation) gnashed upon the witness of the Holy Spirit to a risen and exalted Christ, in the person of Stephen. This man, filled with the Holy Spirit, sees heaven opened, and, stoned by his murderers, is received by the “Son of man standing at the right hand of God.” The Church at Jerusalem is broken up as to its outward manifestation and dispersed. Saul of Tarsus, the young man at whose feet the murderers laid their clothes, on his journey from Jerusalem to Damascus with the high priest’s commission in his robe, and the purpose in his heart of wiping out, so to speak, if it were possible, the very name of Jesus from the earth, is struck down at midday with the vision of the glorified and exalted Jesus. He hears the wondrous truth, for the first time now proclaimed, that the poor persecuted Christians on earth were members of the body of Christ. “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me... I am Jesus whom thou persecutest” (Acts 9:4). He arises and straightway preaches Jesus that “He is the Son of God.”
The short period of its earthly manifestation at Jerusalem having passed, the Church henceforth fully assumes its position as the Body of Christ; locally expressed by saints gathered (together) in the name of the Lord, by the power of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 18:20). It is the habitation of God through the Spirit.
To the Apostle Paul is committed the testimony of the mystery, hidden in God in other ages, but now revealed (Col. 1:26). He tells us that he had it by revelation (Eph. 3:3). We will briefly notice some of the testimony by him as to this. The Epistle to the Romans being chiefly confined to the revelation of Christianity and the individual relationship of the saints with God and His dispensational wisdom in His dealings with the Jew, the subject is but shortly and practically referred to in Romans 12:4,5. He writes, “For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we being many are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” And shortly in Romans 16:25,26. In 1 Corinthians 12:12-17, this subject is brought out more fully. The bare reading of the passage should be sufficient: “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit,” &c. Nothing can be clearer to the mind subject to Scripture. The Holy Spirit is the center and living power, of the unity of the body, Christians are “members of Christ” and “members one of another.”
How this overturns the ideas of men, who speak of being members of such and such a church (so-called) or religious association! This is the only unity a Christian is bound to acknowledge and own, and to endeavor with all his heart to observe, and to witness for the unity which exists by the presence of the Holy Spirit, constituting every believer on earth a member of one body, united to Christ The Holy Spirit is, we may so say, the soul which animates the whole body, dwelling not only in the individual believer, but in the whole church. When saints are thus gathered together, owning this unity, and this alone, they form the sphere for the manifestation of His presence, in the ministry of the word, “dividing to every man severally as he will”; taking up and using, according to His divine pleasure, those who have been gifted and set in the Church for the building up and edifying of the body, and for the perfecting of the saints. “God hath set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him (1 Cor. 12:18). So of Christ, “when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men... And he gave some apostles; and some prophets; and some evangelists; and some pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, &c.” The assembly on earth is the habitation of God by the Spirit (Eph. 2:22). “In whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God by the Spirit.”
We are now, of course, looking at the Church as the ‘louse of God; others (other Scriptures), as we have seen, view it as the body of Christ. Both are true. Ephesians 1 speaks of the latter; Ephesians 2 of the former.
Such being the calling of the saints, the apostle founds upon it his exhortations, in Ephesians 4:1-6. He puts their privileges first before them, and then looks upon their responsibility. “For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles... beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called... Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit.” This then is the Church of God — this the unity we are exhorted to endeavor to keep: not to make a unity for ourselves, or choose one out of the many existing factions around, that best suits one’s education, thoughts, feelings, circumstances, &c., but to endeavor, with hearts subject to Jesus as Lord, to keep the unity which has been here by the Holy Spirit’s presence since the day of Pentecost — the body of Christ (actually, the unity of the Spirit).
We have in the same chapter (Eph. 4) the care of Christ for His body. “When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive.” He went into the domain of Satan and bound the strong man; but before He exhibits the results of His victory amongst men, in the blessing of the millennial earth, He does so in His body, bestowing gifts on men for the setting free of those captive under Satan, and the building up of those who have been delivered, “till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ (Eph. 4:13).” Then, when the last member of Christ has been gathered in; the Church will be taken away to be, in actual fact, with Christ in heaven. Then will be the resurrection of the sleeping saints, and their translation with the living saints, when all shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thess. 4:15-18).
The Scriptures are full of this blessed hope of the Church. In the earliest Epistle (1 Thess.) we find that, however unintelligently it may have been understood, the saints had been converted to this blessed hope. “Ye turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven (1 Thess. 1:9).” It was the hope set before the sorrowing disciples, as they gazed up into heaven after the vanishing form of the Lord, in Acts 1:11, that He “would so come in like manner.” The Corinthians came “behind in no gift, waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:7). In Ephesians, the saints are looked upon as already seated in the heavenlies in Christ, there waiting for the gathering together of all things in the fullness of times. Their blessing is in the heavenlies, Ephesians 1:3; their position, Ephesians 2:6; their testimony, Ephesians 3:10 and their conflict, Ephesians 6:12. In Philippians 3:20,21, the citizenship of the saints is in heaven, from whence they look for “the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body,” &c. In Colossians 3:4, the life of the saints is so bound up with Christ’s, that, when He is manifested to the world, they are manifested with Him. In Thessalonians, the whole epistle is taken up with the hope. In 1 Thess. 1, it was connected with their conversion; in 1 Thess. 2, with the labors of Christ’s servant; in 1 Thess. 3, with practical righteousness and holiness; in 1 Thess. 4, the whole matter and the manner of its accomplishment is detailed. 1 Thess. 5 shows the desire of the apostle for their practical sanctification, and their being preserved blameless till the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Thess. sets the hope aright in the minds of the saints, which had been disturbed by the receipt of a spurious epistle; and distinguishes the coming of Christ for His saints and their gathering together unto Him, their proper hope (2 Thess. 2:1), from His manifestation in judgment to the world, in which, we know from other Scriptures, He is accompanied by them.
I forbear to quote other Scriptures on this subject. It is almost sad to be obliged to press so blessed a hope on the hearts of the Lord’s people — a hope, of which the Scriptures of the New Testament are so full. Sad to say, it has become necessary to do so: even God’s people have imbibed so much of the character of the evil and worldly-minded servant, who said in his heart, “My lord delayeth his coming” (Matt. 24:48), and of the scoffers of the last days who say, “where is the promise of his coming?” (2 Peter 3:4).
In considering our first subject — “The general purpose of God” — we referred to three places in the New Testament where Psalm 8 was quoted. The first was Hebrews 2:7, where the “Son of man,” to whom all dominion was given, is seen in heaven “crowned with glory and honor,” all things not yet put under Him — the headship to be enjoyed in the habitable earth to come. The second was Ephesians 1;2, when the body was being prepared for the glorified head. The third remains now to be quoted again. “For he hath put all things under his feet” (1 Cor. 15:27). This will come to pass, as the chapter shows, in the day when the scriptures of Isaiah 24-26 are fulfilled, in the day of the first resurrection. “Behold I show you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed... So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory (Isa. 25:8) (1 Cor. 15:51-55).” The whole chapter treats of this resurrection, of which Christ was the first fruits, it is a resurrection in power and glory. “It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.” There is no thought in the chapter of the resurrection of the wicked. We have before considered shortly, that, at that time, the restoration of the nation of Israel will take place — the veil will he removed from all nations. And it will be a period of universal judgment of the powers of the earth, and in the heavenlies, introductive of the kingdom in Zion and the renewed earth, which the saints of the first resurrection (Rev. 20:4,5) will inherit and reign over, in the heavenlies, as joint-heirs with Christ.
In short, it is the time of the “restitution of all things which God bath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3:21). This period of universal judgment is, as we may see, synchronous with that spoken of in considering the “Times of the Gentiles” and their judgment.