Ministry by J. N. Darby
– Part Three

But, on the other hand, as Adam’s first act, when in blessing, was to seek his own will

• – and hence by disobedience he was, with his posterity such as he, in this world of misery, alienated from God in state and will –

• Christ was in this world of misery, devoting Himself in love, devoting Himself to do His Father’s will. He came here emptying Himself.

• He came here by an act of devotedness to His Father, at all cost to Himself, that God might be glorified.

• He was in the world, the obedient man, whose will was to do His Father’s will, the first grand act and source of all human obedience, and of divine glory by it.

• This will of obedience and devotedness to His Father’s glory, stamped a sweet savour on all that He did: all He did partook of this fragrance.

It is impossible to read John’s, or indeed any of the Gospels,

In John, the divine displayed in man, specially comes out. Hence his Gospel attracts the heart, while it offends infidelity.   JND

where what He was, His Person, specially shines forth,

• without meeting, at every moment, this blessed fragrance of loving obedience and self-renouncement.

• It is not a history – it is Himself, whom one cannot avoid seeing
  • – and also the wickedness of man, which violently forced its way through the coverture and holy hiding-place which love had wrought around Him, and forced into view Him who was clothed with humility –

• the divine Person that passed in meekness through the world that rejected Him: but it was only to give all its force and blessedness to the self-abasement, which never faltered, even when forced to confess His divinity.

• It was “I am”, but in the lowliness and loneliness, of the most perfect and self-abased obedience; no secret desire to hold His place in His humiliation, and by His humiliation: His Father’s glory was the perfect desire of His heart.

• It was, indeed, “I am” that was there, but in the perfectness of human obedience. This reveals itself everywhere.
  • “It is written”, was His reply to the enemy, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”.

• “It is written” was His constant reply.
  • “Suffer it thus far”, says He to John the Baptist, “thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”.

  • “That give”, says He to Peter, though the children be free, “for me and for thee”.

• This historically.

In John, where, as we have said, His Person shines more forth, it is more directly expressed by His mouth:

• “This commandment have I received of my Father”, “and I know that his commandment is life eternal”.

• “As the Father hath given me commandment, so I do”.

• “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do”.

• “I have kept”, says He, “my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love”.

• “If a man walk in the day, he stumbleth not”.

Many of these citations are on occasions where the careful eye sees through the blessed humiliation of the Lord, the divine nature – God – the Son, only more bright and blessed, because thus hidden;

• as the sun, on which man’s eyes cannot gaze, proves the power of its rays in giving full light through the clouds which hide and soften its power.

• If God humbles Himself, He still is God; it is always He who does it.
  • “He could not be hid”.

• This absolute obedience gave perfect grace and savour to all He did. He appeared ever as one sent. He sought the glory of the Father that sent Him.

• He saved whoever came to Him, because He came not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him:
  • and as they would not come without the Father’s drawing, their coming was His warrant for saving them, for He was to do implicitly the Father’s will.

• But what a spirit of obedience is here! He saves whom? whomsoever the Father gives Him – the servant of His will. Does He promise glory?
  • “It is not mine to give, but to those for whom it is prepared of my Father”.

• He must reward according to the Father’s will. He is nothing, but to do all, to accomplish all, His Father pleased.

• But who could have done this, save He who could, and He who at the same time would, in such obedience, undertake to do whatever the Father would have done?

• The infiniteness of the work, and capacity for it, identify themselves with the perfectness of obedience, which had no will but to do that of another.

• Yet was He a simple, humble, lowly man, but God’s Son, in whom the Father was well pleased.

Let us now see the fitting of this humanity in grace for this work.

• This oblation of God, taken from the fruit of the earth, was of the finest wheat;
  • that which was pure, separate, and lovely in human nature was in Jesus under all its sorrows, but in all its excellence, and excellent in its sorrows.

• There was no unevenness in Jesus, no predominant quality to produce the effect of giving Him a distinctive character. He was, though despised and rejected of men, the perfection of human nature.

• The sensibilities, firmness, decision – though this attached itself also to the principle of obedience – elevation, and calm meekness which belong to human nature, all found their perfect place in Him.

• In a Paul I find energy and zeal; in a Peter ardent affection; in a John tender sensibilities and abstraction of thought united to a desire to vindicate what he loved, which scarce knew limit.

• But the quality we have observed in Peter predominates, and characterises him.

• In a Paul, blessed servant though he was, he does not repent, though he had repented.
  • He had no rest in his spirit when he found not Titus, his brother. He goes off to Macedonia, though a door was opened in Troas.

  • He wist not that it was the high priest.

  • He is compelled to glory of himself.

  • In him, in whom God was mighty towards the circumcision, we find the fear of man break through the faithfulness of his zeal.

• John, who would have vindicated Jesus in his zeal, knew not what manner of spirit he was of, and would have forbidden the glory of God, if a man walked not with them.

• Such were Paul, and Peter, and John.

But in Jesus, even as man, there was none of this unevenness. There was nothing salient in His character,

• because all was in perfect subjection to God in His humanity, and had its place, and did exactly its service, and then disappeared.

• God was glorified in it, and all was in harmony.

• When meekness became Him, He was meek; when indignation, who could stand before His overwhelming and withering rebuke?

• Tender to the chief of sinners in the time of grace; unmoved by the heartless superiority of a cold Pharisee – curious to judge who He was – when the time of judgment is come, no tears of those who wept for Him moved Him to other words than,
  • “Weep for yourselves and your children”

• – words of deep compassion, but of deep subjection to the due judgment of God. The dry tree prepared itself to be burned.

• On the cross, when His service was finished, tender to His mother, and entrusting her, in human care, to one who, so to speak, had been His friend, and leant on His bosom;
  • no ear to recognise her word or claim when His service occupied Him for God;

  • putting both blessedly in their place when He would shew that before His public mission He was still the Son of the Father,

  • and though such, in human blessedness, subject to the mother that bare Him, and Joseph His father as under the law;

• a calmness which disconcerted His adversaries; and, in the moral power which dismayed them by times, a meekness which drew out the hearts of all not steeled by wilful opposition.

• What keenness of edge to separate between the evil and the good!

True, the power of the Spirit did this afterwards in calling men out together in open confession, but

• the character and Person of Jesus did it morally.

• There was a vast work done – I speak not of expiation – by Him, who, as to outward result, laboured in vain.

• Wherever there was an ear to hear, the voice of God spoke, by what Jesus was as a man, to the heart and conscience of His sheep. He came in by the door, and the porter opened, and the sheep heard His voice.

• The perfect humanity of Jesus, expressed in all His ways, and penetrating by the will of God, judged all that it found in man and in every heart.

• But this blessed subject has carried us beyond our direct object.

In a word, then, His humanity was perfect, all subject to God, all in immediate answer to His will, and the expression of it, and so necessarily in harmony.

• The hand that struck the chord found all in tune: all answered to the mind of Him whose thoughts of grace and holiness, of goodness, yet of judgment of evil, whose fulness of blessing in goodness were sounds of sweetness to every weary ear, and found in Christ their only expression.

• Every element, every faculty in His humanity, responded to the impulse which the divine will gave to it, and then ceased in a tranquillity in which self had no place. Such was Christ in human nature.

• While firm where need demanded, meekness was what essentially characterised Him as to contrast with others,
  • because He was in the presence of God, His God, and all that in the midst of evil – His voice was not heard in the street –

• for joy can break forth in louder strains when all shall echo, “Praise his name, his glory”.

If your soul has been touched by the the perfect humanity of Christ in the above extract, you should read the rest ot the comments on Leviticus 2 in the Synopsis – and J. G. Bellett's classic, The Moral Glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.   GAR