The Fulness of the Christ

THERE are three special names or designations of Him who in the eternal purpose is presented to us as the Christ. The first of these is the Wisdom; and the divine description of this we have in the eighth of Proverbs. The second is the Word; and it is of this that the Evangelist John speaks in his first chapter. The third is the Son; and of him the Apostle Paul writes in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Each of these three takes us hack into the past eternity. The Wisdom is eternal; the Word is eternal; the Son is eternal.

As the eternal Wisdom, He possessed all that we call knowledge or truth, in every form and every kind. In Him were ‘ hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’ (Col. ii. 3). He was ‘ the Wisdom of God; ’ and because He was so, ‘He is made unto us wisdom’ (1 Cor. i. 30), so that we are ‘wise in Christ’ (1 Cor. iv. 10). As ‘the Wisdom,’ He is ’ the Truth;’ not simply the depositary or dispenser of the truth, but Himself ’ the Truth;’ as He said, ‘I am the way, and the teuth, and the life ’ (John xiv. 6).

As the eternal Word, He is the revealer of the mind of Godhead; for as it is by words that we come into contact with the invisible mind, and know the thoughts and feelings within, so it is by Him, as the Word, that we are made acquainted with the mind of God. It is through Him that God speaks to us, and it is in Him that God shows us what He is. ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father;’ without Him, the character of God would have been to us a blank, or utter darkness. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the same was in the beginning with God.’ As the Wisdom, and the Word, He is the Light of the world (John viii. 12); ‘for in Him was life, and the life was the light of men’ (John i. 4). As the Revealer of Godhead, the utterer of the divine mind, He is both the light and the life of men: that life and light which speak to us of the holy love of God, and invite ns to become partakers of that love.

As the eternal Son, He is ‘ the brightness of Jehovah’s glory, and the express image of His person’ (Heb. i. 2); distinct from the Father, yet one with the Father; holding filial fellowship with the Father, and inviting ns to enter into that same fellowship and relationship as sons; as the Son, giving to ns ‘ the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father’ (Rom. viii. 15); and making ns not only children, but heirs of the inheritance, ‘ heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ’ (Rom. viii. 17).

The unfolding of the divine purpose was through this eternal Wisdom, this eternal Word, and this eternal Son. Thus hath ‘ God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor. iv. 6). Thus, too, the ‘ mystery ’ is unfolded, into the ‘ fellowship ’ of which we enter (Eph. iii. 9), f which from the beginning was hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: to the intent that now, unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places, might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord ’ (Eph. iii. 10, 11).

In the above passages there are two great truths that fall specially to he noticed. The first is the divine glory as seen in the face of Christ; and the second is the divine wisdom in connection with the Church. These two are closely linked together. They are the counterparts of each other.

I. The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. — Everything connected with the light and the glory is from above; not of man, but of God. For earth has no resources of its own to fall back upon, in its day of darkness and evil. Man can create shadows, but he can dispel none: he can quench light, but cannot create it. The creation of light belongs to God alone.

And man did quench the light, and reduce him¬ self as well as his world to chaos. As man’s earth was, so was man himself, ‘without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep ’ (Gen. i. 3). He is the wreck of a goodly and glorious world: for God did not create him a child of darkness, but of light; the essence of that light being love, and knowledge, and holiness. The curse lighted down upon earth, swept across it, brooded over it, dwelt in it, and still continues to dwell; and in that curse there is confusion, and blackness, and sorrow. For the curse is no mere tempest, fierce but passing. It is a spreading and deepening deluge. Man has let it loose upon himself; but in vain he tries to bid it subside, or turn it into a ’ pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal.’

Yet light exists somewhere, and darkness surely is not everlasting. Heaven is not dark, though earth is; and angels are still bright, though devils have lost their purity. There is hope, because there is light; — light somewhere.

The source is God Himself; for ’ the light dwelleth with Him’ (Dan. ii. 22). He is light, as truly as He is love; and ’ in Him is no darkness at all’ (1 John i. 5). He is clothed with light as with a garment, even though He dwelleth, as is said, ’ in the thick darkness’ (1 Kings viii. 12). This God is the fountainhead of light. It was He who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, saying, ‘Let there be light, and there was light.’ Not merely does He shine into us, but He shines in us, ‘in our hearts; ’ He kindles a lamp, a sun, within us; nay, He comes into us, and is Himself the Sun. As His gift for the quenching of our thirst is not merely a full supply of water from without, but a well of water within, ‘ springing up into everlasting life ’ (John iv. 14), so that ‘ out of us there flow rivers of living water’ (John vii. 37); so His gift for the removal of our darkness is a sun within us, filling us with light, and distributing its radiance around, making us to become * lights in the world.’ He lighted up the old creation; He lights up the new. In enlightening, He creates us anew; and in creating us anew, He enlightens us. He who lighted up stars and suns, lights up souls; and as He loveth to do the one, so no less does He love to do the other. Thus every star in the firmament preaches to us, not merely ‘ the being of a God,’ but His liberality and love; His willingness to give us light; as if He said to us, f As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure that you should remain in darkness, hut rather that ye should become light in the Lord.’ And as it needed but a word to light up the universe, so it needs but a word, 0 man, to light up your whole being!

This light has its centre or source in * the glory of God.’ The ‘ glory ’ is the outshining perfection or splendour of Godhead, spiritual or material. Of this the Shekinah which dwelt in the Holy of Holies was an expression or symbol; and it is this glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. That face is radiant with the glory; and that glory is radiant with the love of God. ‘ The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among ns; and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth’ (John i. 14).

The Christ of God is thus identified with the glory. It is the glory of Godhead: and in it we see God coming down to us in love; bringing His love to our very side; embodying that love in our flesh; pouring it into a vessel that we can always have access to; — always near, and always full. In the face of Jesus Christ, thus radiant with the divine glory, we learn the meaning of the words, f He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?’ (John xiv. 9, 10.) In it we find God Himself approaching us as the God of peace, and the God of grace, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing unto men their trespasses; putting an end to all distance, and distrust, and variance; drawing us into fellowship; welcoming back His prodigals to home, and heart, and table; giving them the best robe, and providing for them the feast of fat tilings; nay, bringing them into peculiar nearness through His incarnate Son, and imparting to them a new, more divine, more glorious light than that which they had lost.

4 Look unto me ’ is the message! Look unto me, and behold the glory; — the glory of love, the glory of peace, the glory of acceptance in Him in whom we are complete! The 4 God of glory ’ is the 4 God of peace,’ and 4 the God of all grace.’ The 4 glory ’ and the 4 light ’ are connected with 4 the Word made flesh,’ and they are seen in His

4 face.’ That face is the face of Him who, though

He was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we by His poverty might be made rich. There is no frown upon that brow. There is no anger in that eye. There is no scorn upon that lip. There are no words of coldness or of repulsion proceeding from that tongue. The whole of that face is lighted up with love, the perfect love which

casteth out fear, the love which passeth know¬

ledge, the love which bids the sinner welcome, which invites the touch of the sinner’s hand, and the trust of the sinner’s heart; for there is no fear, nothing to cause fear, in this love, — nothing that is not fitted to remove all fear, and awaken all confidence. The brightness of His countenance does not alarm, for all that brightness is upon the side of the sinner. It is no scorching brilliance, but the placid dayspring from on high, the healing light from the Sun of righteousness, of which every ray speaks peace, and in which there is life, and not death, to the sons of men. The ‘ King of glory ’ is He who f receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.’

That which we preach is f the glorious gospel,’ or rather, ‘ the gospel of the glory’ (1 Tim. i. 11), the glad tidings concerning the glory; for all that glory in every part contains the message of forgiveness, and the invitation to life eternal. To gaze upon that glory, so full of grace and truth, is to receive into the soul the sunshine which illuminates and warms, which comforts and heals. There is no terror in it. It does not turn our comeliness into corruption (Dan. x. 8), nor make us fall at His feet as dead (Rev. i. 17), nor make us ‘ hide ourselves in the dust ’ or in the rocks for ’ the glory of His majesty’ (Isa. ii. 10); it is ‘the health of our countenance’ (Ps. xlii. 11), and it is the peace of our souls. It was ’ the God of glory ’ that appeared to Abraham when a dark idolater in Clialdea (Acts vii. 2); and as that GLORY was to him the mighty attractive, drawing him out of his idolatry and unbelief, so is it still the gracious magnet which draws the sinner from his sin, and wins his heart to God. For though it is holy, it is irresistibly attractive, as was the Son of God in the days of His flesh; though it is righteous, and cannot ally itself with sin, yet in it there is something so suitable and so loving, that every one who truly sees it, sees in it the enemy of terror and doubt. * On earth peace, and goodwill toward men,’ is the substance of the revelation contained in it. ‘Help us, 0 Lord, for the glory of Thy name ’ (Ps. lxxix. 9), is the cry of every one who sees and knows it. The glory of Jehovah’s name is the most powerful argument which the sinner can use in drawing near to God; and every other argument is included in it.

II. The divine wisdom connected with the Church. — The words of the apostle are very remarkable concerning this. There was a ‘ mystery,’ or secret (for this is the meaning of the word), an eternal mystery, ‘ from the beginning hid in God,’ not revealed at first, when He f created all things by Jesus Christ,’ and yet wrapped up in that creationo o

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purpose and creation-act, as he says, ’ hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ.’ This ’ mystery ’ was not simply connected with Christ, hut with the creation of these heavens and earth, and still more with the Church. f The Church ’ is the great embodiment and exhibition of the divine wisdom. First ‘ the Christ ’ was such; then, in connection with Him, the Church. In the person of Christ was the sum of all wisdom; and in the Church, as redeemed by Him, is in another form the sum of wisdom, — that wisdom by which angels are to be taught, and from which they have learned, and are yet to learn, more of God than they have learned or can learn from aught else, either on earth or in heaven. It is not ‘ the Church’ without ’ the Christ,’ nor is it ‘the Christ’ without ‘ the Church, that is to form the wondrous lesson for ‘ principalities and powers in heavenly places,’ but both together: the Christ as the God-man redeeming His Church; the Church as His body, His bride, His chosen and loved from all eternity, redeemed by Him, and lifted up by Him out of the lowest condition of evil into the highest seat of heaven, beside Himself, as the royal priest¬ hood, no being receiving from Him the fulness of His love, but sharing with Him His honour and glory, His crown and throne.

It is the ‘ manifold wisdom of God ’ that is to be learned from the Church by the principalities and powers in heavenly places; as if, apart from the Church and its history, the wisdom of God could not have been known even by the angels. Their own history must have taught them much; for the history of a single creature, even for one day, is the revelation of divine wisdom; but all their own wondrous story, both in the case of those who fell and those who stood, could not teach them what the story of the Church has already taught, and shall continue to teach for ever.

It might have been said that they learn from the Church the love of God, the jpower of God, the truth of God, the righteousness of God, the holiness of God; and some perhaps ask, Why is it wisdom alone that is said to be learned in this way and from this source? Tor this clear reason, that all these other things are comprehended in this wisdom; and the wisdom is so marvellously and so manifoldly manifested in a purpose or plan, whose vast object is to reveal the whole of God in

a way which had not hitherto been done, and wliicli could not have been accomplished save by a fall and a restoration, such as we see in the Church, and in each individual member of that redeemed company, for whom, as for His bride, the Son of God gave Himself.

Angels (and we also) would have known but half the love of God, half the power of God, half the truth and righteousness and holiness of God, with¬ out the Church. I speak of half, but I might have said, not the half, but the thousandth part of these. For all these have come out in such new light and glory, by means of God’s dealings with the fallen, that what was known of them before seems as nothing when compared with what has thus been revealed. The whole fulness of the divine character could not have been unfolded, except in connection with the redemption of the fallen. That He loves the holy and the lovable had always been known to angels, but that He can love the unholy and the unlovable could not have been known to them; nay, from His treatment of their lost fellows, when He consigned them to chains irretrievably, it must have been supposed by them that He could not love the unworthy or the sinful, and that there was no possibility of such a thing as grace or mercy to the lost. The divine character was thus left unmanifested, not merely in so far as love was concerned, hut also in regard to power, and righteousness, and holiness. That He could love the lost was unknown; that He could love to such an extent, and with such a love as He has done, was still more unknown: and thus His infinitely loving and lovable character was hidden. But the extent of His power and the nature of His righteousness were equally undiscovered. His power in creation was known, but His omnipotence in redemption was only seen in the Church. His righteousness in caring for the righteous and condemning the transgressor was known; but His righteousness in His gracious dealings with the unrighteous, and in delivering the transgressor from his eternal doom, was something which could not have been even imagined before. What a veil was withdrawn from the character of God by the first promise of grace! And what a marvellous illumination of that character was given in the incarnation and crucifixion of the only-begotten Son of God! All was love, peace, righteousness, truth, holiness; yet all was wisdom, — profound and unsearchable wisdom, wisdom such as furnished angels with an eternal lesson and an endless song; wisdom such as shall, in the full expanding of its plan, fill heaven and earth, nay, all the universe, with new and glorious light. ‘ 0 the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!... For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things; to whom be glory for ever.’ Let the Church say, Amen! Let angels say, Amen! Let heaven and earth say, Amen I Let all the uni¬ verse say, Amen!

Israel’s Messiah the Christ of the Nciu Testament. 3 7