The Knowledge of the Son of God
Later Ministry by G. R. Cowell
– Part Five

I am sure that it is a verse that rings a note of exultation in every one of our hearts. We can lift up our heads in face of every foe.

• “We know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we should know him that is true”.

Earlier in the epistle John tells us that the Son of God has been manifested to undo the works of the devil.

• What a tremendous thing that is! What a colossal task to undo the works of the devil!

• But we know that He is going to do it, for He has done it for us. He has taken away our sins; our sins are forgiven for His Name’s sake.

• He is going to take away the sin of the world. The sin of the world is not yet taken away in actuality,
  • but the sacrifice necessary to remove it from before God’s eye has been made by the Lamb of God of whom John the Baptist said,
    • “that this is the Son of God”.

• Had He not laid that basis in sacrifice, then the taking away of the sin of the world in power could only have been in judgment.

• But because of His sacrifice the world to come is spoken of as the habitable world. That is, it will be inhabited with redeemed people, but with sin taken away.

• At the present time He is operative in freeing us from the law of sin in our members, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Not that we will ever be able to say that we are without sin.

• He has taken away our sins, but He is operative to deliver us from the power of sin. All this is involved in undoing the works of the devil.

• How will He take away in power the sin of the world?
  • By making God the Centre.

• The very principle of sin is that man has made himself the centre.
  • “Let us build ourselves a city and a tower … and make ourselves a name”.

• Man has made himself the centre, and the Lamb of God has come so that, eventually, self will be displaced as the centre of man’s life and activities,
  • and God placed in the centre; God known in Christ. ‘Our God the centre is’.

• In a world where our God is the centre there will be righteousness instead of sin.

• Everything will revolve around God made known in the Person of His Son.

• The divine thought is that that should be true of Christians now, as well as true finally in a universe of bliss, and true for ever, beyond the possibility of corruption, in the eternal state.

• But the Son of God is operative that it might be true of us now, that self, whether religious self or any other kind of self, might be taken away as the centre and spring of our lives,
  • and God known in Christ become the very centre of everything for us, as the operative spring of all our actions.

• That is the taking away of sin in power, and we have been given the Holy Spirit, almighty as He is, to dwell in us that God may now be supreme in us,
  • that we may think God’s thoughts and have God’s feelings instead of the thoughts and feelings of the flesh, which are sin.

What a colossal task then is the complete taking away of sin, and therefore the undoing of the works of the devil in every sphere including

• includingthe religious sphere where, alas, we have increasingly witnessed the works of the devil!

• The power of the Son of God and of the Spirit of God can meet all these.

• The Son of God has wrought redemption that we might be set free, not only from our sins,
  • but from this terrible principle of sin, so that with triumphant note we can say that the Son of God has come.

• You may ask, how can we be in the good of this? Well, by living by the faith of the Son of God. Paul tells us in Galatians chapter 2 how he was free of it all.
  • “In that I now live in flesh, I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”.

In the next chapter he shows that living by the faith of the Son of God is synonymous with walking in the Spirit, because when he applies it to the Galatians he says,

• “having begun in Spirit are ye going to be made perfect in flesh?”

• He showed them how he was walking in the Spirit, that is, living by the faith of the Son of God; that is how you walk in the Spirit.

• We receive the Spirit on the principle of faith and we get the benefit of Him on the principle of faith.

• You may say, what is the faith of the Son of God? Well, it means that self has gone from before your vision and the Son of God controls you, God made known in His Son.

• It means in a practical way that we are freed from the dominion of sin, that though the sin of the world is not taken away yet, it is not operative in regard to you. So you are living by the faith of the Son of God.

• Mr. Raven said that one of the great weaknesses in Christians is that they recognise that they must be justified on the principle of faith
  • but they do not accept the fact that they can only live on the same principle.

• Living by faith means that I am living on that principle every moment of every day and night. I cannot say I am on that level. But the apostle Paul could say it,
  • “in that I now live in flesh” – he was not governed by the flesh – “I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God”.

  • The result was “no longer live, I, but Christ lives in me”.

• That was the result; not Paul, but Christ. No feature of the old man in evidence. What a triumph that is!

The Son of God came to undo the works of the devil, and Paul preached the Son of God as soon as he was converted,

• and you see the works of the devil undone in Saul of Tarsus as an example for us all; a man from whose vision self had gone.

• Up to a certain point in his life he did not know a better man on earth than Saul of Tarsus. He had never met one; in his own estimation, Saul of Tarsus was the very best man living.

• You know, if you analyse your own heart by nature, if you get to the bottom of it, you will find that is true of you.

• You may not be able to say that you are the cleverest man on earth, but you would not change with the cleverest man. You would not change your personality. You love yourself a bit more than the cleverest man.

• You may think you would like to be the king but that does not mean that you would change your personality with the king. You are much too good a man for that.

• You would like to be in his job, that is all. You would think you could do it a lot better than he did.

• If we analyse our hearts we are all more or less like Saul of Tarsus in that we have never met a better man than ourselves.

• But God’s grace operates; and it operated in Saul of Tarsus till he came to it that he had never met a worse man than himself. That is a great triumph of grace.

• He found that the man he had admired so much was a wretched man. All he could think of was how to get rid of him. And then he found that God had got rid of him at the Cross.

• The Son of God had in love taken his place; had borne the curse which, he now realised, was all he deserved; that proud, that insolent, overbearing man.

• The very fact that he thought he was the very best man living only proved what a bad man he was, that all he merited was the curse; and then he realised that
  • the Son of God bore the curse upon the Cross for him out of love, and that the Son of God loved him when He died, in taking his place and bearing the curse for him.

• And so when he comes to it that the one he thought was the best man was, after all, the worst, his great anxiety is to get free of him.

• Then he finds that God has already freed him, and from all the condemnation; and the way God has freed him is that His Son has borne it all.

• He realises that he was in the heart of the Son of God when the Son of God died; that among the myriads of the saved it was Saul of Tarsus the Lord Jesus was actually thinking of when He died.

• He said ‘I am going to live for Him for evermore’. No more thought that self was anything of any value. As far as self was concerned he was crucified with Christ.

• He said, ‘That is the finish, I am not reviving that man; how thankful I am that I am crucified with Christ. It is the way I have got deliverance from this wretched man’.

• And so from henceforth self was removed from before his vision and the Son of God filled it. That is what living by faith means.

Some people think that living by faith is living by trust, that it is just a question of trusting God about your circumstances, and that such a man is a man of faith;

• but living by faith means that Christ is substituted before your soul as the Object of your soul and your life.

• And as you have Christ, the Son of God, as the Object of your soul and your life to the exclusion of yourself, the Spirit of God is free to enlarge your soul in the glories of the Son of God and the vast system of which He is the Centre,
  • so that you begin to live now, as living by the faith of the Son of God, in that system of affections and relationships of which He is the Centre and which are eternal.

• And the more you live in that, living by faith thus, the more you trust God in your circumstances here, but you do not put it the other way round.

• Do not think that faith is only trusting God in circumstances here. You have not got very far if you are only doing that. People say, ‘Look what a man of faith he is, he is trusting God in his circumstances’; and yet that is not the idea of a man of faith.

• As you live by faith you live by the Spirit in relation to the eternal affections centred in the Son of God. Then you can trust God for every detail of the pathway here, that is a simple matter.

• If trust is the rule of a man’s life, his prayers will centre round himself and his circumstances. But the man who is truly living by faith is thinking of God and the glory of His Name and the extension of His Kingdom.
  • As the Lord said, “Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done”.

• In praying thus there is no thought of self. And then when you come to your things, well, you can trust, so you say,
  • “Give us this day our daily bread”, Matthew 6: 10-11.

• One sentence as to your needs, because you know that is a very simple matter for God; and you leave them all in His hand.

• All this and much more is involved in the Son of God having come, and His having come to undo the works of the devil.

• We know He has come because in some measure at any rate the devil’s works have been undone in us and we are living in relation to God’s eternal system of glory,
  • and affections which will go on through all eternity are flowing into our souls, the love of the Father and the Son, and the love of the Spirit known to us, sustaining us.

All this is very wonderful. So one would desire that we might be in victory.

• “Who is he that gets the victory over the world?”

• You see, if we know something of what I have been saying, the next way Satan would entrap you is by the world, and he will use that also all along the line.

• When he cannot ensnare you any more on the line of self and pride, because the Spirit of God is bringing it about that Christ is your Object as a permanent matter, then he will try to lead you away by idolatry.
  • “Love not the world nor the things in the world”.

  • “Children, keep yourselves from idols”, John says at the end of his epistle.

• What will give us the victory over the world is living faith in the Son of God; and that is what we need, victory in every way.
  • Victory over Satan; victory over the power of sin; and then victory over the things of the world, which is perhaps the last matter we get victory over.

• The way of it is believing, livingly, on the Son of God as the One, as we each can say,
  • “who loved me and gave himself for me”.

• What therefore can I do but live for Him and to Him? Now Hebrews develops this, and of course it involves the great theme of the incarnation.

• You cannot conceive anything greater than the incarnation. I am not suggesting it is greater than the death of Christ or His resurrection; but it is inconceivably great.
  • “We know that the Son of God has come”.

• Ages and generations awaited that event; and when the fulness of the time was come God sent forth His Son. All God’s operations looked on to this great event, the incarnation.

• Knowing that the Son of God has come means that we know that a Person of the Godhead has become flesh and that in so doing He chose to enter into the relation of Son. So that the epistle ends,
  • “he is the true God”;

• the One who in manhood is known as the Son of God is Himself no other than “the true God” and we worship Him thus.

• I hope we all know what it is, in prostration of soul, to say what Thomas worshipfully said,
  • “My Lord and my God”.

• That Jesus is “the true God” is what the incarnation means; the true God, co-equal with the Father and with the Spirit in eternal Godhead;
  • but He is also, in coming into manhood, the “eternal life” in the very expression of God’s thought of life for men.

• That is, God’s thought of life for us was that we should live for ever in relationships and affections which are eternal and incorruptible.

Now Hebrews deals, among other things, with the incarnation; and one thing that is very wonderful is that

• we are allowed to be brought into the secret of what passed between Divine Persons in their communications in relation to One coming into the world.

• I would advise everyone here to read what Mr. Darby says in the Synopsis on Hebrews chapter 10 and what Jesus says as “coming into the world”.

• We are privileged to have this disclosed to us.
  • “Sacrifice and offering thou willedst not; but thou hast prepared, me a body”.

• His language is that of a Person of the Godhead making this great move. As JND says, something which could not be imposed upon Him. A move taken in willing accord with eternal counsels.
  • “Coming into the world he says, Sacrifice and offering thou willedst not; but thou hast prepared me a body. Then I said, Lo, I come (in the roll of the book it is written of me) to do, O God, thy will”.

• That is His great committal as coming into the world. Nobody could impose that upon Him. He commits Himself to do the will of God which meant that He would be the great Anti-type of all the sacrifices of old.

• He was to bear the fire and the wrath, He was to be the sin-offering and the burnt-offering and the oblation and the ram of consecration and the peace-offering.

• He was to be the fulfilment of them all and He has come with that great mission.
  • “A body hast thou prepared me” – for that purpose. “Lo, I come to do thy will”.

• And having thus committed Himself, and having come, He was ever obedient; He never swerved from His committal. What a wonderful thing to contemplate!

• Jesus never swerved from this great committal, and coming into the relationship of Son, all was fulfilled in the true affections of the Son.

• If a Person of the Godhead takes up any position He will be perfect in it.

• Therefore Jesus became a Man and He was a perfect Man – it could not be otherwise, and entering into the relationship of Son He was perfect in it; and yet had to be ‘perfected’.

• You say what do you mean by that? Hebrews says that He had to be perfected – it speaks of Him as
  • “having been perfected” and

  • “a Son perfected for ever”.

He was perfect in it, but being perfected means that He had to go through experiences as Man which He could not have had in Godhead, in order to be qualified for certain offices.

• So if He was to be the Redeemer, or the High Priest, or the Minister of the Holy Places, it all depended upon His being perfected; that is,
  • carrying through the mission and going into death and suffering, going right through with what He had committed Himself to do, so that He might be perfected as High Priest and as Leader and as Redeemer.

• Having “learned obedience from the things which he suffered” He was perfected in being competent by experience to sympathise with those suffering for God’s will in a sinful world. He entered into it beyond measure.

• Many are suffering this way today; suffering in ways they never expected, through being here for God in a religiously sinful world.

• The Son of God knows all about what it costs because He suffered more from religious men than from any others;
  • but then while we are allowed to know what He said we are also allowed to know what God said to Him,

  • “Thou art my Son: this day have I begotten thee”.

• Ordinarily, a child would not understand what you said to it on the day of its birth; but here was a Divine Person coming into manhood and this was the answer from God in this holy converse, as we may say, between Persons of the Godhead.
  • “Thou art my Son: this day have I begotten thee” –

• He had come into that relationship on that day.

And then may we move on to other expressions which are disclosed to us – I am not referring to them all. At the end of Hebrews 1 it says,

• “And, thou, in the beginning, Lord, hast founded the earth, and works of thy hands are the heavens. They shall perish, but thou continuest still”.

• That is quoted from Psalm 102. It is the answer from God to what the Son said as Man in the hour of Gethsemane. What were the Son’s words,
  • “My God, take me not away in the midst of my days!” and the answer to Him was,

  • “Thou in the beginning, Lord, hast founded the earth”.

• What an answer! reminding Him as it were, of the glory of His Person which could never change.
  • “Thou in the beginning, Lord, hast founded the earth, and works of thy hands are the heavens. They shall perish … but thou art the Same” – a divine title – “and thy years shall not fail”.

• He was in a position where He knew what days and years were from experience as a Man. God made time but as God He has never been under the rule of time.

• Think of a Divine Person coming here in Manhood and understanding in experience what the rule of time was.
  • “The great light to rule the day and the small light to rule the night”

• and in that rule, too, of the sun over the earth the years coming in. Learning what years were as experience as Man here.

• The Lord will always be able to sympathise with those who are under the rule of time.

And then if you go on to resurrection we are again led into divine communications,

• “Sit at my right hand, until I put thine enemies as footstool of thy feet”.

• What a glorious thing! What a relief to our souls as we think of all that Jesus went through in suffering. That is how He was greeted in resurrection.
  • “Sit at my right hand, until I put thine enemies as footstool of thy feet”.

• And then there is this further word,
  • “Jehovah hath sworn and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek”.

  • It says in Hebrews, “If then indeed he were upon earth, he would not even be a priest”.

• He could not be an official Priest before He died, for as on earth He did not belong to the priestly tribe.

• He was morally Priest but not officially, and His installation as the great High Priest awaited His death and resurrection.

• So in resurrection not only is He seated at God’s right hand as King –
  • “I have anointed my king upon Zion, the hill of my holiness”; and in that very Psalm – Psalm 2 – it says, “Thou art my Son”,

• but as Son there He has been saluted by God as Priest,
  • “Thou art a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedek”, Hebrews 5: 6.

• Well, does not that make our hearts rejoice, to think of the installation of Christ as King and Priest in this glorious way?

• How real it must have been to Him to hear the word, “Sit at my right hand, until I put thine enemies as footstool of thy feet”.
  • “This Jesus”, as Peter said, “whom ye have crucified”, whom they hanged upon a cross, hailing Him with a crown of thorns – “This Jesus … God has made both Lord and Christ”.

• He said to Him, “Sit at my right hand”; and then the further word to Him from the One who had said, “Thou art my Son: this day have I begotten thee”, saying – after all the work was done and the commission fulfilled –
  • “Thou art a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchisedek”.

And so we see that Jesus the Son of God is the centre of a vast system.

• He is both the King and the Priest; and that is what rejoices the heart of God, that His Son is King and Priest.

• King and Priest are official titles and great, essential offices from the divine standpoint.

• But Sonship is a relationship, and God’s heart could desire in a way nothing more or greater than that those great offices of universal King and Priest should be held by the Son,
  • thus ensuring that those offices will be carried through for Himself and His people in perfection without possibility of breakdown.

• What a triumph for God that, at last, installed in the greatest offices of state in the universe, is His own Son.

• Offices that belong to manhood but are too great to be filled by a mere man. It is a glorious thing to grasp that in our souls.

Paul’s ministry is to bring us to it that the Christ might dwell, through faith, in our hearts. What does that mean?

• God’s Christ dwelling by faith in our hearts as the King and the Priest.

• Christ means the Anointed, and the anointing involves both the King and the Priest.

• Paul labours to bring us to realise that the Son of God is now occupying these greatest offices;
  • that He is the King and the Priest, and therefore nothing can break down;

  • and that as King and Priest we might love and cherish Him in our hearts’ affections.

• So Paul begins with the Son of God, and ends with the great offices He fills as the Christ.

• John, in his gospel, begins with knowing Jesus as the Christ – because as sinners we must begin that way, knowing Him as Lord and Christ, bowing the knee to Him –
  • and then John is concerned that we should realize that He is not only the Christ but the Son of God. It works both ways you see.

• Paul’s concern is that we should realize that the Son of God is the Christ,
  • and John’s aim is that we should know that the Christ is the Son of God.

• So we see that He is the centre of a vast system.

Hebrews 8 speaks of “the sanctuary a worldly one” meaning as JND points out, the holy universal order, that is

• the first tabernacle was a representation of things in the heavens and is a type of the great universal order of things in which Christ is the King and the Priest;

• or, as Paul would say, in writing to Gentiles, ‘He is the Head’.

• The title Head involves both King and Priest; “Head over all things”; Hebrews develops that.

• That is the system to which we belong. I do not like to hear too much talk about leaving the old system as it is called; I want to get back and hold to the divine system.

• I want to grasp, and live, by the faith of the Son of God which will involve, as I go on by the Spirit, having the whole realm that centres in Him opened up to me.

• Hebrews develops the divine system; it abides; it is not man-made:
  • “the true tabernacle which the Lord has pitched, and not man”.

• There is nothing man-made about it; there is no intrusion of man.

• The only man-made system that had divine approval was the Jewish one, and to serve that now involves that you have no right to eat of the Christian altar.

• It says in chapter 13, “We have an altar”; it is part of the divine system. The Holiest, too, is part of it and we can enter there.

• But the altar is part of it outside the camp. God says it is nothing to do with the camp.

• You say ‘What is the camp?’ It is easily defined. The camp is every man-made thing. God’s system is not man-made. The Lord pitched it and not man – Hebrews 8: 2.

• It is, “not made with hand” – Hebrews 9: 11. Christ has entered into heaven itself, not into “holy places made with hand” – Hebrews 9: 24.

• There are no bricks in that structure, only living stones, if we view it from the point of view of a house. There is nothing man-made.

• We have to go outside the camp because the altar relates to our responsibilities down here.

• We can enter the heavenly sanctuary at any time, to the very centre of it where Christ is, our great Forerunner;
  • but we are disqualified if we are not true to the altar, and that is outside the camp; and that is where we have to be – we have to find the altar.

Some may prefer a mixed kind of Christianity; there is plenty of it all around us, but it is not the Christian altar.

• You may get something there as an individual, from the Lord in His goodness – there is His mercy, but you are not eating at the Christian altar. You are not feeding on the real food.

• As the Christian altar is outside the camp, if I see anything man-made I know it must be wrong; and I know I have to get clear of it otherwise I forfeit my right to eat at the Christian altar.

• Every sect is man-made. God would never make a sect. He has formed one body. If anything is sectarian I know it is man-made; man’s opinion pressed even to the point of division.

• That is what makes a sect: Man’s opinion about anything. He may be a Christian, but if he presses his opinion to the point of division that is sectarian.

• It is something man-made; certainly not of God; so I stand clear of all those things. I would not recognize a sectarian position.

• I would not recognize a man-made priest; even if he were a real Christian I would not own him as a priest. I would not listen to him at all in the exercise of his office as such. The truth is, it is an abomination.

• To think a priest of God can be made by a so-called bishop laying hands on him! It is nonsense. That priests can be qualified by three years at college! It is nonsense.

• They may not – the bishop may not – be converted. I would have nothing to do with such a system.

• I want the divine system; free of man and man’s opinions. Well, there it is set out for us in Hebrews, and they are the things to cleave to and not be led away by various and strange doctrines;
  • but let our hearts be strengthened with grace, not meats nor any doctrine about meats, but established with grace, for the divine system is a great system of grace.

So chapter 4 views the Lord Jesus going in from our side. It speaks of what we have,

• “Having therefore a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast the confession”,

• that is, hold fast the whole thing; the confession is the whole thing, both the Son of God and the system of which He is the Centre. Let us hold it fast.

• Jesus in passing through the heavens was typified by Aaron going through the holies with the blood; that is what Jesus has done.

• He has offered Himself on the altar, and He has gone right through and entered into the very presence of God as our Forerunner so that we have,
  • “a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens”.

  • He has “not entered into holy places made with hand, figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God for us”.

• That is the One we have got. Well, let us hold fast the confession. Let us believe in the Son of God; live by the faith of the Son of God.

You can understand that anyone living in the faith of this would be in victory.

• What would he want with the world? The world is far beneath him; he would have no time for that at all. Look at the system he is living in! Something that will last for ever.

• And so we have our great High Priest who has passed through, involving what we have been dwelling on, what His passing through meant; having made a way through for us – the new and living way – so that we can go straight in.

• We do not go in on any merit of our own or through any service we could render at the attar. We go through on the ground of the service He has rendered at the altar.

• We go straight through into the holy of holies, and come out to serve. That is Christianity. We do not work our way in – Christ has done that for us.

• He has made the way in by the sacrifice of Himself. No sacrifice of ours could ever have done it. He has made the way in, and we can go right in, right in to the presence of God – our home, our eternal home –
  • we can then come out and make our sacrifices and serve God acceptably with reverence and fear.

But then there is God’s side of the matter and the Lord’s side, and I just read in Psalm 110 on this account.

• “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power”.

• I rejoice at God’s willing people who have ‘come out’.

• It is a joy to go to morning meetings where you see His willing people in the day of His power; people full of joy and ready to cause the high praises of God to resound. That is what the Lord loves to have.

• You see, as Priest He is after the order of Melchisedek, a Priest for ever. How sad it would be, speaking reverently, if He had not the willing people available for the exercise of His Priesthood Godward. So it says here,
  • “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in holy splendour”.

• Let us be like this, dear brethren. No looseness or slackness or indefiniteness, but a willing people as we come together to remember the Lord.

• A people willing in the day of His power; His power known in our souls – the power of the Son of God, in holy splendour.

• No tracking back to the little things of Judaism. No mere outward ordinances. But spiritual holy splendour under the eye of God who looketh at the heart.
  • “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in holy splendour: from the womb of the morning shall come to thee the dew of thy youth”, i.e. young men.

• It means that the Lord has those under His hand who will never get aged spiritually, but maintained in eternal youthfulness. That is what is needed in the service of God – eternal freshness of youth.
  • “Our outward man perisheth yet the inward is renewed day by day”.

• I have seen brothers approaching the age of 90 who have moved ‘out’ to the Lord in the present exercises, and what I have seen has been an expression of the freshness of youth, fadeless youth, in the part they have taken in the meetings.

• It all comes from the womb of the morning. The death of Christ, that empty tomb, is the womb of the morning. The corn of wheat has fallen into the ground and died, and is no longer alone.

• Out of that “womb of the morning”, the death of Christ, has come a deathless throng, marked by eternal youth, soon to have bodies equal to it.

Then in verse 7. “He shall drink of the brook in the way”.

• That is the Lord’s own portion. He drank of the brook in the way in the fourth of John.

• He said to the woman out of Samaria, “Give me to drink”, and His heart was refreshed in the response from that woman – nothing outwardly striking, just a brook in the way, but He drank of it.

• He was so refreshed that He was free to speak of worship to the woman, as the One who was about to be installed as
  • “Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek”.

  • So, “He shall drink of the brook in the way; therefore shall he lift up the head”.

• So that if we can provide the Lord with the response which is due to Him at the Lord’s Supper, though it be only a brook in the way – nothing much in the public eye –
  • it enables the Lord, as it were, to lift up His head as wearing the priestly turban – that is what is meant here. It refers to the

  • “Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedek”,

• that He has those under His hand in relation to whom He can lift up His head, with the priestly turban on, and conduct the holy service Godward;
  • and that is what His triumph, and what He has accomplished in undoing the works of the devil, secures for Himself and for the heart of God.

• He drinks of the brook by the way and loves to be among such as afford Him that refreshment,
  • for there He can lift up His head as the Priest after the order of Melchisedek, and as the Minister of the holy places He leads in the service of God.

Well, may we know this in abundant measure, not merely for our sakes but for His sake and for the sake of God’s great Name!

The scriptures read in Corinthians refer to the position, that is something established in a concrete way down here, namely the body of Christ and the house of God.

• The body of Christ is of course the house of God, it comprises the same persons, every Christian who has the Spirit.

• It is suitable to be the house of God because it is the body of Christ, and this position is established by the presence of the Spirit.

• Therefore, on the divine side, the position never breaks down.

But then there is the path; this involves fellowship, as it says,

• “Shall two walk together except they be agreed?” Amos 3: 3 – that is the path.

• As to the fellowship, we are in it if we are; we are called into it by God.

• We are called out of the world, but we may not be out of it. We are called into this path that is pleasing to God,
  • but the fact that we are called into it, does not mean that we are in it; that depends on how far we have answered to the call.

• Similarly we are also called, for instance, to eternal life,
  • “Lay hold of eternal life to which thou hast been called”,

• but that does not mean we are in the gain of it, though called to it.

• The idea that every Christian is in fellowship is false. They are called into it, but it involves a path and 1 Corinthians 10, speaking of communion or fellowship, says,
  • “Are not they who eat the sacrifices in communion” or, fellowship “with the altar?”

• this refers to the path, and in 2 Timothy 2 it is the path in a day such as this.

  I thought we might get help on these thoughts.

Commonly when we speak of the system nowadays we mean a system gradually built up over the years and in which we have moved, and which we have had to leave.

• It helps us, however, to look at the divine system.

F.A.B. Would you say that although the tabernacle that was set up has ceased to exist, what it represented goes through?

G.R.C. Yes, what it represented is the true tabernacle, the other is only a type and a shadow, but we belong to the real thing, the true tabernacle which the Lord has pitched and not man.

• We have discovered that the system we have left has become man-made.

Ques. Do I understand that every believer belongs to the body?

G.R.C. Everyone who has the Spirit, yes.

A.W. Was the tabernacle pitched in Acts 2?

G.R.C. Yes, the Lord pitched it then. In fact, He had already put it together, as it were, because the disciples were all together with one accord in one place;

• they were set together; and the Spirit came upon a company already set together by Christ and pleasing to the Spirit, but the coming of the Spirit set the whole system in life.

F.A.B. Would you say in regard to Acts 2, whether the Spirit given consequent on the Lord’s ascension, involved the economy?

G.R.C. Yes, I suppose it required the Spirit to be given to enable us vitally to enter into the gain of the economy, but the economy was seen at the Lord’s baptism, for instance.

• Objectively the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit were on that occasion all in evidence.

• Then there are other allusions to the three Divine Persons in the gospels, especially John.

• In the commission in Matthew 28 there was a formal setting out of the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

• That Name conveyed two truths –

1. one, the truth of the economy, the manifestation of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, the Persons being brought before us objectively in their relative places in the economy;

2. and then as that Name is one, it means that the Persons thus known in the economy are co-equal in the oneness of Deity, commanding our worship. It is a wonderful Name!

T.F. Would it be right as to Hebrews 8 to say that the Lord is the One distinguished in this system, having in mind the verse, “We have such a one high priest”?

G.R.C. Well, there is what we have and what God has. From our side “we have such a one high priest”.

• What God has, that the One who is High Priest is the Minister of the holy places, assuring that God will be served because the whole system centres in God.

Ques. Is it stabilising to see that our apprehension of God’s thoughts may vary, but His thoughts never fail,

• “Thou canst be hindered in no thought of thine”?

G.R.C. That is right. Our apprehension may vary, and does; and gifts are given with a view to our arriving at the unity of the faith.

• The unity of the faith is not a test of fellowship, because none of us can say we have got there yet, to the fulness of the faith.

• But we are moving on, and the more we take in divine thoughts, the more there will be the unity of the faith amongst us.

• But we need patience, because persons are being converted and coming in whose apprehension is small, and ministry is needed all the time in that great work to bring us all to the unity of the faith.

• The system is not measured by the extent of our apprehension of it. The system exists.

H.B. Is that suggested in the note to the word “summary” – in chapter 8: 1 – in the reference to the substance of what is in the speaker’s mind?

G.R.C. Yes, because however young we are in the faith, if we once apprehend the Person who upholds the system

• – He inaugurated it as the Apostle and upholds it as the Priest –

• we are on the road to understanding the whole system;

• whereas anyone who does not apprehend Christ as the High Priest and as the Minister of the holy places, may fail to apprehend the system at all.

• But once you apprehend the One who is the great active Administrator of the system both Godward and man ward, then the way is open for you, as held in faith in Him, to apprehend the system more and more clearly.

• We have not, any of us, fully apprehended the true tabernacle yet, have we?

W.B.F. Does a person give character to a system? At the outset Nimrod gave his character to a system of things.

G.R.C. Yes, and what is so precious is that the Person who gives character to this system is a Divine Person in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, so that it must be in every way in accord with God.

A.F. Is that why it is stated that He is Minister of it?

G.R.C. Say some more.

A.F. I was thinking that if He is the One who inaugurated it, He is the One capable of being the Minister of it.

G.R.C. That is just it. He is the Inaugurator in chapter 1; we see that He inaugurated the physical creation too –

• “By whom also he made the worlds”.

• Then you have Him as the Centre of this system, because it says that He is the effulgence of God’s glory.

• This system is for God and His glory, and He is the effulgence of God’s glory, and the expression of His substance;
  • and He has made the purification of sins, so that there might be an unchallengeable moral basis for the establishment of this system.

• But then it is also stated that He upholds all things by the word of His power.

• As Apostle He inaugurated, and as High Priest He upholds, and as Minister He is active in this divine system, that it might all be according to God.

F.A.B. So you would say that it enhances the dignity of the saints to take account of the glorious Person who is the Head of it all.

G.R.C. It does. Some days ago I was thinking of that beautiful hymn:

and I thought, a thousand thousand, that is a million, and we know there are many more than that,

• and I said to myself, however can I be sure of being maintained in God’s system; I am only a little speck, among thousands upon thousands, and thousands of thousands.

• Then I thought of the One who upholds all things by the word of His power. Astronomers now say that there are probably a trillion galaxies of which even the Milky Way is but one;
  • and I thought of Jesus upholding all these physical galaxies, with their countless myriads of suns,

• and then I said, ‘Well, He will uphold me. How glorious is the One who is the Centre of the spiritual system; He can uphold even me among the myriads that are His’.

F.A.B. It has been a great comfort to me to consider the dignity that attaches to having any part at all in this glorious system, in which God is served.

G.R.C. And that would stimulate us to attend to the priestly office. It says in Numbers,

• “And Aaron and his sons shalt thou appoint that they may attend to their priest’s office”, Numbers 3: 10.

• They were appointed. Well now, God has appointed everyone here, you and me, brothers and sisters, to attend to the priestly office; and
  • there is this glorious Person, the Minister of the holy places, and the High Priest is there to uphold us in attending to the priestly office every day.

• Our first thought every morning should be that we are priests; the priests encamped before the tabernacle eastward, toward the sunrising so that when a priest awoke in the morning the first thing he would notice would be the sun rising.

• So when we awake in the morning, we think, ‘Well, the Lord may come today’.

• Then, the priest would look the other way and see the cloud over the tabernacle and the smoke ascending from the brazen altar, for the fire never went out,
  • and he might say, ‘Well, there is the opportunity today to attend to the priestly office’; and with what energy he would go and offer the morning incense and the morning lamb.

• We need to fulfil that every day, the priest’s office, because we belong to this system, and it is to work in practice.

• It is not only that the Lord Jesus is there by divine appointment as Hebrews 8 shews, but we too are moving by divine appointment and filling out our function as priests.

• And we have liberty, we have His support, to enter the holy of holies, that is our place in the system.

• We serve at the altar too. We offer sacrifices, the sacrifice of praise and of doing good,
  • “for with such sacrifices God is well pleased”.

• All that is priestly work, and fills out the day, but the first thing to do is to go right in to the holy of holies,
  • because all our service springs from Christ having gone into the holy of holies, which is thus the true Christian place in the system.

A.F. Are you thinking of chapter 10 now?

G.R.C. Yes, chapter 10 is our going in, and chapter 13 our coming out to the altar, “We have an altar”, and by Him offering the sacrifice of praise to God.

Rem. What you say encourages us to see that each one of us has the right and the privilege to go in.

G.R.C. Well, let us enter into the holiest far more often than we have ever done. It is the true Christian place to be there in the presence of the glorified Man who is before God.

A.F. In virtue of His precious blood – how blessed!

G.R.C. Yes, it is His sacrifice and service that takes us into the holiest; His offering of Himself on the altar; we can go straight in.

• Our service at the altar flows from our having gone in. We cannot work our way in by ourselves – His service takes us in.

P.S. Is that suggested in that He has sat down on the right hand of the throne of the greatness in the heavens? He is in the place of power.

G.R.C. His work is done; the way is open for us.

H.B. Is that why Peter sets out the holy priesthood first, and then the royal priesthood? You go in to God before you go out to men.

G.R.C. Yes, that is the point. Our place is in the holy of holies; that is true Christian ground; it belongs to only the Christian company.

H.V. Does all this come as a challenge to us? One feels for oneself the sense of failure to maintain that outlook.

G.R.C. Well, I wish I had more of a heart for Christ and for God, because I cannot say much about it. But truly it should be our first waking thought. Our highest duty is the priest’s office.

W.L.M. Would that link with what you were saying on Thursday night about the props being taken away. Have we not really been leaning on a man-made system?

G.R.C. That is just it. The system we have relied on has gone, but the divine system stands and will stand, in all its grandeur.

Rem. Daniel’s practice was not altered by the props being removed.

G.R.C. And we have often thought about the refugees from Jerusalem in Acts 8; saints were scattered through the persecution by Saul.

• They not only left their homes but they left the apostles. Think of what it meant to them to feel they might never see the apostles again.

• Then they left the big meetings, five to ten thousand strong; they had been having wonderful times in Jerusalem.

• All those things were providential spiritual mercies, and, when they had to leave them all, I have no doubt those refugees began to discover what they really possessed;
  • what they really had as belonging to the divine system must have become to them more real and substantial, when all the providential spiritual mercies were removed.

• They had not the twelve apostles, but they had the great High Priest with the Urim and the Thummim.

F.A.B. Does what you say help us to appreciate something of the wonderful things we have come to at the end of chapter 12, things that go through? So that the tabernacle, the system, is even referred to in Revelation – these things go right through.

G.R.C. That is right; the true tabernacle goes through into the eternal state.

P.S. I was thinking of the reference “which the Lord has pitched, and not man”. We need to seek divine help and discernment in relation to that.

G.R.C. We do not want to start again pitching any tent. It seems clear in the Acts that there was no human organisation.

• The twelve were never deluded into thinking they must set up anything in the way of a human organisation, although they were apostles.

• The Holy Spirit was the great Organiser in the Acts. The persecution arose – allowed in divine wisdom – and the scattered ones fled abroad.

• God did not wait for the apostles to say, ‘We will organise a missionary effort; we have been told to evangelise the nations, and so Peter and John ought to go there, and two more elsewhere’; but, as we see, God organised it.

• Through Saul of Tarsus the disciples were scattered abroad, and they went everywhere evangelising the word;
  • and this was much more effective through refugees who exulted with joy unspeakable and filled with the glory –

• they arrested people’s attention more than two apostles going through would have done; and so it prospered and the gospel went out.

The Holy Spirit said to Philip, “Approach and join this chariot” – He told persons what to do at the moment.