Lecture II

The beginning of this chapter refers to the preceding chapter; there He is speaking of the manifestation of the light and life, for the life is the light of men. “If we say we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the trutL” Then in the second chapter he is speaking of the resources of a Christian when he &ils, as, alas! we know we all do fail. In the former chapter, as we were seeing, he speaks of three things: First, in the light, as God is in the light; second, fellowship with God; and third, the blood of Christ cleansing from all sin. There in the second chapter, the Christian having sinned, we have an Advocate with the Father, and this is bringing out quite another principle altogether. It is not merely having a divine nature, because that he has when he fails; but he is not walking in the power of it, and consequently fails, and therefore needs an Advocate with the Father, and this is quite another aspect; it is not joying in God, but the interference of God in grace in the person of a Mediator, one between God and us; but this is not a question of justification; there is no possibility of anything being imputed to me. He was made sin for us, and the Mvoik of Christ has put US in His presence without any question, and that we never lose. It is not that here, but another thing of importance to me — the daily exercise of affection. It ’s not that we fail hefort Him, but down here we do. In many things we offend all; we fail constantly, inwardly and outwardly; but there is the exercise of affections, according to what we axe down here, an increasing in the knowledge of God, and what His love is, and what our real state is. God demands righteousness; but it is not as many think, that the work has to be done over again; for the moment I believe I am God’s righteousness in Christ. There is no decay of it; it is always of the same value; it is a question of who He is; it is founded on the fact that in virtue of this sacrifice I can now exercise my conscience in a way I could not. He is Jesus Christ the righteous. The righteousness is always in the presence of God. He has not to look for that now in his dealing with us; He is always there. God has been perfectly displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and now I can go into His presence and not be afraid, because of this righteousness. How is my intercourse with God to be carried on by such a poor, failing thing as I am? It goes on in virtue of wtat I am in Christ. Christ’s righteousness does not need to be maintained, but I need to be sustained. Suppose I Ve foiled, well here the advocacy comes in; Christ’s intercession comes in to meet me; it does not acquire the but lifts me up if I fail. Tke

Christ as the Advocate with the Father leads me to judge myself accordmg to the light I have been brought into by this righteousness. My judgment of good and evil increases as I grow up into God. Here are two things needed — grace to keep us in the way, and mercy to restore us to communion. There ’s all the grace we need by the road, and He ’s assuring us constantly of the certainty of our position before God. Peter did not lose his trust and confidence in God, though he denied his Master. Satan might come and say to the soul, “It is all over with you; you are too bad; his sentence is gone out against you, and there is no hope.” So confidence in God may be lost; but before Peter failed Christ had prayed for him, thus he learned what he was in himself, and knew the grace that sustained him, and then he uses it to profit. “Strengthen thy brethren.” He was competent to help those who were weak and failing like himself. It is exactly the same grace that met us at the first that sustains us all the journey through.

Here is the government of God, as a father with his fjGunily. It is not like “Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone;” no, (rod having an interest in us will never leave us alone or give us up; but He will deal with us according to our ways. As I have before remarked, this is sometimes made to depend on our acts and doings, as in John xiv. 3; XV. 10; but God’s love to us is not made to depend on OUT love to Him, on our conduct iot Stet V» is grace that enables us to go on welL God, and Christ as a Son over His own house, deals with the children. If we speak rashly to our brother, or walk abroad carelessly through the streets, and see some vanity, we shall find the effect of it in our own souls at the end of the day with God. If any angry word escapes me I feel the effect at the end of the day with God; grace will restore us; He will follow us and bring us back. If we had a child that was unruly we should not give it up, but wait upon it in love, and correct it in hope of reclaiming it. I might see a chUd go wrong and leave it; but because it is my own child I must go after it and bring it back. This is the patience of His grace. At the same time God can never give up His Holiness; no. He could not pass by or suffer imholiness in His child, therefore it was needful Christ should die. Thus God was debtor to Christ, on account of His work for the glory of His character. “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again.” “I have glorified thee on the eartL”

The same thing is true in regard of His advocacy in virtue of the propitiation. Christ exercises His advocacy for us. If there is failure God sees it; but Jesus comes in and intercedes for us. Some say that we have to use the advocacy of Chiist, but it is not so. Christ uses it for us. Why do I turn to God when I have failed? It is because He uses it, and fresh grace ia oyJVi’eidL, ix ^^wvr*^ ia wrought in my mind. Tlier la TiopiX5ili%lsi>s»^^^^^^

13 UBTfTiaB OS

Inngs OS back Id God bet 6esii gnce wvxkmgin our eooadenee. T hnefij ie it is smd, * If my man sin we hsre an Airocate widi the Fatfaer.* It is not if any man rvpralL* It is just as much pure grace as at the fiist locdced iqMm ns when we were in our sins. In the case of PeCier the hoftd foietold him what would take jdaoeL “Satan has desired to haTC thee that he maj sift thee as wheal* We all want siftii; “but I haTe prayed tar thee.” Before Peter got into the daier the Lord had prayed for him, and His grace is in exerdse, and at the moment when it is needed. “He looked at Peter,” and his weeping was an avowal of Christ’s intercession. The grace and intercession of Jesus is towards us in all the grace and wisdom of (jod. It is grace which makes our very failure the occasion of Grod’s coming in with more grace. The righteousness is not called in question; it is not touched. It is through the intercession of Christ that I can get to Grod about my evil thoughts. All the consciousness of failure, all the exercises of heart, are the occasion of my going to the Father, and so many links to link my soul to Grod. We learn it in our everyday wants and failures; we are all astray if we don’t see that God has a holy foundation for all this. It does not follow that we must fail any more than that we must sin. We ought not to fail, though we all do. Our wretched self-confidence makes us fail, and then comes in the advocacy. In a similaT manner it was Aaxoioi to lkt swallowed up eveiy other rod, shewing divine power in Priesthood; that’s the way grace takes away the murmuring of the heart. Two years Israel was in the desert, and thirty-eight years more because they did not go up and take the land as they had been told, and if we, like Israel, won’t go up it detects our state; we are making the way long. Israel had not the faith to go up to the Anakims. If we would break with the world, and take up the cross properly, it would give us the enjoyment of the full power of communion with God at once; if not we must learn by its daily mortification in the desert what flesh is. If we think to escape dangers by leaving the path of faith, we shall surely get into sin. Israel found the same people were there, the giants still there, when they got into the land at last that frightened them at the first, and hindered their taking possession. What is the reason Christians have often more joy on a death-bed than all their life through before? Why, the reason is they had never till then surrendered up all for Christ, had never before learned Christ to be everything, and everything else to be dung and dross. Israel’s raiment had not waxed old for forty years in the wilderness, neither did their feet swelL They learned in all this way the wonderful detail of all God’s goodness. The manna never ceased, and the patient grace never failed to the end; but our foolish hearts will not trust God, aA “Ow^^^ shows us the patience of H.is gwe.^. o

US wherever we go, even in our failures, and if our hearts have experienced the exercises of the desert, we have learned the vanity of earthly things, and after all find it better to give it all up, and trust God that He may be every thing to us, and if we have done it at first we should have had it at once. And now as to the constant exercise of Christ’s intercession; it is carried on in heaven in connection with our heavenly standing, and is also made to bear on our actual daily state down here. Christ was a man down here; we are joined to Christ by one Spirit “He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit” — mark the effect. What was Christ? Not only the obedient Man, the perfect Man under the law, but He was the perfect manifestation of the divine nature in man; there was in a Man all the effect that Godhead could produce of goodness in a man. I am not speaking of miracles, patience, endurance, love, &c. It is not that we can be as Christ was because sin is in us; there was none in Him; but we are called to walk as He walked; we are called not to walk in the flesh, but to walk as He walked; but we do not walk as He walked; there is not a willingness to walk, there is a will in U8. He must break our will so long as our walk does not flow from the word of God. There is flesh working and must be weakness. Well, but one may say, T am so young a Christian, I am so weak. It is not a question of age in grace; Chtist would not suffer you to be tempted above that you are alila,W.^Qvil,V3a.

the temptation, make a way for you to escape. We may be weak, but that is no hindrance to our walking as He walked; for His strength is made perfect in weakness; but He cannot be the strength of our wilL One born only yesterday may follow Christ as much as an old Christian, and Christ is as much for him. There may not be so much wisdom, but in the child there is often more singleness of eye, and more of undividedness of heart; the great thing is, that the will does not work. There again we see where Christ was so perfect. The will of God was the spring of all Christ’s conduct. He came to do His will — “Lo, I come to do thy will, God.” “Mine ears hast thou opened,” put Himself in the place of obedience. “A body hast thou prepared me,” became a man, took the place of a servant He was to walk by what He heard: He was willing to do this: “Lo, I come,” not my will, but “thine be done.” The will of God was the spring of all His conduct. He was not only the obedient One, conformed to it — “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word,” &c. “As the Father has sent me, and I live by the Father,” &c. We are not only so to walk, as He walked, but the way He walked. The spring of Christ’s conduct was never His own will, not that His will had to be corrected, but He came to do His Father’s wilL Satan tried to hinder, man tried to hinder, but He goes through it all. He takes the ^^lae. first. He must go first in the diffi.c3ABa ^’VjkKiJL’^^ pnttetb forth His own sheep He goelilieSOT^^^’^’

He was led by the Spirit to be tempted; everything that could put His obedience to the test must be tried on Him. We see the difference in the gloiy of Christ’s person from another. Moses had to fast forty days to be with God on the mount Christ as a living man on earth was always with God. He fasts forty days to be with Satan tempted in the wilderness, and you could not see Him in those circumstances without seeing who was there. If all the glory of the world was offered to Christ there, it is offered to you every day, and we see in a day like this people are hurrying after it with all their hearts. Well, Christ meets himu ‘’ Make these stones bread,” satisfy your hunger by your own will. He had no word from God for it. His will was never showed; it was perfect obedience; the humble, holy, patient life that does not stir without God. If you will not do anything without a word fiom God, then you are sure to have the strength of God in what you do. “Cast thyself down.” No; He would not put God to the test. He was not going to tempt God by trying whether He would protect Him. He had confidence in God; so we read, “The people tempted God, saying, Is God among us?” They would prove whether He was among them or no, and this is called “tempting God.” He was sure in the way of obedience to find Him. When Mary and Martha sent to the Lord, saying, “Lazarus is sick,” He did not stir. He had no word from God, and Lazarus died. Mary might think it ciuei. >Jti«A. lEL^ ^^xil abide two days in the same place, and not come immediately to heal him. If He had been there He might have wrought a common miracle; but His raising Him fix)m the dead is for the glory of God. Satan then tries Him in another way. “If thou wilt fall down and worship me, all shall be thine.*’ “Get thee behind me, Satan.” He again takes the word “It is written.” Satan has power against pretension, against knowledge, but no power against obedience — if we are acting by the Word, ho will of our own. He ordered his conduct from the Word. It was the source of His conduct. “K we say we abide in Him, we ought to walk even as Christ also walked.” Satan was baffled, the strong man was bound, and that is how He bound him, by simple obedience. (The exercise of power is a distinct subject; healing the sick He would have set men right if they had been capable of happiness and prepared to enjoy God.) Christ passed through everything that could be put before Him to hinder Him in the path of godliness, everything that could test the divine life. Christ knew in that sense what it was to be tempted; it was all the exercises He went through which prepared Him to be our High Priest. We need sympathy in the exercises of the divine life in our souls, not sympathy in our lusts; those we must mortify. Everything that could try a living man, He passed through perfect in all, and He learned twe wg’^’^^’^ ^^”^ all in the peace which He expei:lsiic.^> sA ^^’^’^

He can say, “My peace and my joy.” “K the world has hated me it will hate you; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” He knew, and understood experimentally and practically, as a man in passing through this world, how the grace fix)m above, in the comforts and applyings of divine grace to His soul, was suflScient for every soul’s need to live in holiness, not applied to a testing from sin, but a life of holiness. “He suffered being tempted.” The Lord knew what trouble was; His soul was bowed down with trouble; but the first word is, “Father.” The first moment we are in sorrow, instead of looking around for comfort, for sympathy, or looking to the actings of the flesh, as to what I have done, or what I have not done, and pouring forth our sorrow in nothing but fleshly murmuring, let us turn immediately to God, and then the heart would be cast down in perfect submission to the will of God, and thus the sting of the sorrow would be removed. The instant there is perfect submission there is perfect peace. “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: not my will, but thine, be done.”

Another thing. He could have raised Abraham and Isaac as He did Lazarus, and have brought in all the promised blessing at once; but men did not like Him to be there. Man showed himself to be alienated from God, and was proved utterly incapable of enjoying happiness. ‘JVbir have ye seen and hated toVSi me «ol Tsi

Father.” Christ could not have anything to do with the world in its moral state. He now had to meet the effect of sin in the power of Satan, holding man captive under death to the judgment and wrath of God against sin to redeem man, and now He takes His place in resurrection to apply redemption. The righteousness was worked out that we should take our place in heaven. We must be broken off from the world. He gives us everything in the way, but never presents it as our end; it is neither Canaan nor Egypt, but a wilderness. By clinging to it we are not in the wilderness but in Egypt, and that is why so many need chastening; for if we would make a Canaan of it, then it will become Egypt to us. The moment we make it our home, and settle down in it, it s our Egypt. The Lord must break our wilL He says, “A little while and the world seeth me no more.” It ’s all done witL He puts a distinction between Himself and the world, therefore if we take Him we can’t have the world, and if we take the world we can’t have Him; we can’t have both. “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.’’ Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.” Men are everjrwhere playing into the infidel’s hands in thinking to make the world better with their brotherly love, their arts and sciences, their social intercourse making themselves happy without Grod; for while they make a show of their cleverness, and taXki^afty^^jfi acknowledging God’s gift in tlkft ^sSX ^xA ^^^3&^

He has bestowed upon man, they continue still to reject both God and His gifts, “and will not have a God in Christ*’ Men think the world can be set right by cultivation and science, by encouraging the arts, and such like. Why Christ could not set it right Infidels are saying, Christianity is all a figment, for it has not set the world right; and men are taking the words of Christ in their mouths, saying, “Men should love one another as brethren,” and bringing all nations together to cultivate amity and good will, and the very words that they tdce in their mouths while they are thus seeking to make the world happy are the words that the infidels use. The world, its day is over. Christ was rejected by the world, and its day is closed. God’s grace is gathering out sinners; but as to the world the Lord said, “It seeth me no more.*’ Either it’s to get better without Christy or not to get better at all. “It has hated both me and my Father,” and its day is over. “I have got one Son; it may be they will reverence my Son.” They took Him and slew Him, and said, “The inheritance will be ours,” and are making the world comfortabla The Lord preserve us from all the deception which by the side of Christ we so soon detect. He has taken a heavenly place. “Such a High Priest became us, who is holy, hemnless, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens.” He exercises His ministry where we belong. I don’t belong to the earth; we have a heavenly cctffing, wA xvafc heavenly Priest, who has gone up on high to take our hearts up with Him; our body is not gone up yet, but we have our place with Him up thera Christ Himself, who was a man on earth, manifested a heavenly character down here. Christ having given us our place down here, and taken away all our sins, sends down the Comforter, that we may manifest Him in our walk down here, being “living epistles of Christ, known and read of all men.” God loved us when we hated Him; we are to love those who do not love us, and thus show the character of God down here. Christ was the living expression of it as a man. “He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself so to walk even as He walked.” By His intercession Christ obtains for us all we need, and lifts us up if we do fall; but He sustains us to walk as He walked, having the word of Qod as the source of our actions, as God was the source of all His thoughts; but if we fail there is grace to restore us.... ‘’That ye sin not. And, if any man sin, we have an Advocate,” &c. Mesh ought never to work; your life ought never to be an expression of the flesh, but the obedience of a child; the youngest child in Christ can’t walk as a father in Christ, but he can walk in the obedience of a child with Christ. We have the flesh; but if I ‘m in the light practically with God I know all about the flesh; but then all that I am is judged. A child of two years old can be as obedient as a dm<3L ol 7«^^<b ^<^kss» It ‘a not a question of age, ol ^lxeck^2cL^Vo5^ ^JvsRftJ^- ence. We have the pattern of Christ at twelve years old, who was obedient to His father and mother, and went home with them, being subject unto them. “He that saith He abideth in Him ought himself so to walk,” &c. Is this the delight of your soul, to walk as He walked, as self-denjring, as separated from the world, with as much love? or would you spare something — a little bit of the world, a little bit of comfort? Christ never did, or you could not have been saved Peter said this, “Be it far from thee, Lord; spare thyself.” His reply was, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” How often does our wretched heart say, “Spare thyself?” That is not walking as Christ walked, not doing His bidding as our Master. Have your hearts been attracted by the beauty of Christ? It is

real liberty. The world is merely a snare to entrap us; not that I d scorn the world. Christ did not scorn it; but the world is just this, Satan using all manner of things to seduce the flesh, and that s the world. Satan attracts us by his snares, and has the soul in bondage; but the liberty in which the Son has set us is to be free from the flesh, the world, and sin, and Satan, not only to walk as He walked, but to walk with Him in the perfect freedom, and in the comfort and consciousness of walking with Him. May we find our joy in Him, not pursuing a life of our own hearts, but a life of His grace and goodness, and may He keep our hearts fixed on Him and a crown with