Jewish prophet receives a visitation from an angel of G-D, reveals devas...

God's Battle, Not Ours - Ephesians 6:10

BY D. MARTYN LLOYD-JONES

‘Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.’ Ephesians 6:10

In our last study we considered something of the content of the expression ‘the power of his might’. The next question that arises is: How exactly are we related to all this power and might? It is one thing to remind ourselves of our Lord’s almightiness, of the glorious power that resides in Him, and that He has triumphed over all; but how is that related to me, how does that help me, how does that avail me in my own personal problem and conflict and wrestling with these powers and forces that are set against me? This is what we must now proceed to consider.

The first thing we must ever remember is that the Lord Jesus Christ is what the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews calls ‘the Captain of our Salvation’. In the second chapter of that Epistle verse 10 we read, ‘For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings’. We meet the same idea in the second verse of the twelfth chapter also, where we find, ‘Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith’. He is a kind of File-Leader, the Originator, the One who continues to lead - ‘the author and the finisher of our faith’.

That is the first thing we have to realize. In other words, we must have a true conception of this salvation which we are enjoying. The danger, always, is to look at it in a purely personal and subjective manner. That, of course, is essential. There are some people who never realize the personal side, and they are equally wrong. But it is wrong to go to either of these extremes. The danger, so often, is that we think of the Christian life as something that we have to do. I am about to emphasize that we have a great deal to do; but before we come to that we must never lose sight of the fact that salvation is primarily of God. It is God’s great plan, it is God’s scheme. It is something that God is doing. It is something that God has planned and originated. He has initiated the movement and He is carrying it on. This is a fundamental principle of our faith. God is involved in this question of our salvation much more than we are ourselves. We so often tend to think of it as primarily something which we have to do, and that we only turn to God for help occasionally. But that is to put things the wrong way round. Salvation is God’s plan and we are simply brought into it. We are never to forget that we are individual units in a great army. We are not fighting some personal, private war. That is not the position at all. We are simply individual soldiers in a great army which is fighting a great campaign. In other words, the real, the ultimate issue is not so much my fight with the devil, as God’s fight with the devil. That is the way to look at it.

To look at the matter in this way immediately gives you great strength. Take the obvious analogy. The private soldier in the ranks or in the trenches during a great battle in a great war is not fighting a private battle, he is not there because he has some personal quarrel. He is just a unit in a great campaign. He does not decide the strategy, he does not even decide the tactics. All that is in other hands. He is in it, he has been called into it, he has been put into his position; but it is not his battle. It is the battle of the King or the Queen or the country, and there is a General commanding and controlling the activities of the army and directing the fight. Now that is the idea that is taught everywhere in the New Testament; and I know of nothing that is more comforting and solacing, more encouraging and uplifting, than the inward realization of it. If I may borrow a phrase that is used in the Old Testament in connection with King Jehoshaphat: ‘The battle is not yours, but the Lord’s’. This did not mean that he, Jehoshaphat, had nothing to do; but he was being reminded that what he was involved in was not some purely personal matter, but rather God’s. All the battles of Israel, if they could have seen it, were not their battles, they were the battles of the Lord. They were involved because they were His people. Their main trouble was that they always tended to forget the Lord and to regard matters as their own battle and their own problem. So they indulged in their politics and in their alliances with Egypt and so on, and found themselves in trouble. If they had only realized that they were fighting the battle of the Lord the entire position would have been transformed. That is the first principle which we must always grasp - ‘The Captain of your salvation’; ‘the battle is the Lord’s’. Or look at that other astounding phrase used in the tenth verse of the second chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews: ‘It became him’ - that is, God–‘in leading many sons unto glory’. It is He who is doing the leading. You and I are not fighting an individual battle trying to get salvation. It is God who is bringing us to glory. It is His scheme, it is His plan. It is something that He is doing. It is not ours primarily. ‘It became him in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation’ - He was appointed a Leader, a Captain - ‘perfect through sufferings’. Take note of the expression, ‘It became God’. In other words, this is God’s method, this is God’s plan. The moment we realize this truth, the whole position becomes immediately transformed.

Think of soldiers in an army fighting in their little sector. They are being hard-pressed and things are going against them. If they think that it is just their own private fight they will soon be defeated. But when they remember that they are only a part of a great and mighty army, and that at the back of it all, and directing it, is the Captain, their Leader, immediately the situation is entirely transformed. In other words we have got to realize as we fight this fight of faith and wrestle with these principalities and powers and face the assaults of the world and the flesh and the devil, that God is involved in it with us. We would never have been in it but for that. The ultimate battle is the battle between God and the devil, between heaven and hell, between light and darkness. That in turn should make us realize a further truth, that this campaign cannot fail, because God’s honour is involved in it. Lift up your minds and your hearts in the thick of the battle and call this to mind. You see the might and the power of the enemy and you are conscious of your own weakness. But say to yourselves, ‘This is God’s battle, we are given the privilege of being in it and of fighting as individual soldiers, but God’s honour is involved in it all. He cannot allow this to fail because His character, His glory, and His honour are involved at every point.’ ‘Be strong in the Lord’; remember that He is there, and that it is His battle. This cannot be emphasized too much. It is the theme of the Bible from the beginning of Genesis. God made a perfect world. The devil comes in, the woman and the man listen to him, and fall, and the devil becomes ‘the god of this world’. But it is not left at that. God did not turn to the man and to the woman and say, ‘Very well, because of your rebellion and your folly and your sin you have brought all this on yourselves. Now get on with it. You have brought it on yourselves, so you will have to fight for the rest of your lives against this evil power that has mastered you’. That is not what He said. He did say that there would be enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. That is the wrestling, the conflict. But He did not stop at that, He gave a promise–‘the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head’. He is involved because it is His world and they are His people. He is not going to allow the devil to defeat Him. God cannot allow the Evil One to mar His great work finally. Of course not! So God gives His promise about the seed of the woman that is going to bruise the serpent’s head. God is involving Himself in the conflict. The whole movement of salvation is for God’s glory; not simply for our deliverance, but for God’s glory primarily. Our deliverance is only one expression of this glory and honour for the great Name of God. That is one of the reasons why Paul says, ‘Be strong in the Lord’. Let us realize this! Get rid of the notion that it is just a little private battle that you are waging on your own: ‘Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might’.

But we must go further. That is the starting point, and I am loath to leave it for the reason that I know how ready we are to forget it. We are so subjective, and we live in this unhealthy ‘psychological’ gener- ation that starts with man and ends with man. Most of our troubles are due to that. We are always looking inwards and pitying ourselves and being sorry for ourselves, and looking for something to help us. Get rid of that outlook, forget yourself for a moment; the battle is the Lord’s! Salvation is His. It is for the honour of His great and holy Name. But go further and realize that because it is God’s battle this almighty power is being exercised on our behalf even when we do not realize it. Things are being done in this great campaign of which we are not aware. We may perhaps be half-asleep at our post, and we do not realize that the great Captain is planning something with respect to us. We are unconscious of it. But that does not matter. Thank God that He does it though we are unconscious of it. We would all be lost were it not for that. He, I say, is exercising this power on our behalf. The Scriptures are full of this teaching; and what we really need is to know our Scriptures. Later on we shall be reminded that ‘The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God’. Exactly! Take Psalm 34, verse 7: ‘The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them’. You think that you are doing it all yourself; but ‘the angel of the Lord’ is encamping round about you. He is a very powerful angel. He has great might and power, and he is encamping round about them that fear him. Even when we are asleep he is there, he is always on guard. He is watching because we are God’s people, and God’s honour is involved in what happens to us.

Listen to Psalm 91: ‘He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty’ (v. 1). What a place to be in! Have you seen little chicks at the approach of danger rushing to the hen? She just spreads her wings and under they go. ‘Under the shadow of the Almighty’! That is true of all who are Christians. ‘Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might’. Do not forget those wings! You shall ‘abide under the shadow of the Almighty’. I am simply selecting certain great words. Note how our Lord states the matter in John 10: ‘No man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand’ (v. 29). What a comfort! What a consolation! No man shall be able to pluck them, God’s people, Christ’s people, out of God’s hand. It is strong, it is almighty. Let man, let the devil and hell do what they will, it is impossible. Again, the Apostle Paul says in writing to the Romans, that he is ‘persuaded’ - he is absolutely certain, there is no doubt about it– ‘that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’. Our foes will try, they will do their utmost, and there will be times when we, in our folly, will begin to think that we have been separated, that we are cut off, and that there is no way of release and no way of escape. But it will never happen. ‘Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’. Why? For the reason that, if anything could separate us, God would be defeated, and the devil would be triumphant. Such a calamity cannot happen! To believe in the possibility of ‘falling from grace’ is to believe in the possible defeat of God by the devil. That is unthinkable and utterly impossible. The final perseverance of the saints is of necessity true in view of the glory and the character and the honour of God Himself. ‘Ah but’, you say, ‘this leads to danger; for a person will say, “I can do what I like”.’ No! the more you realize this great truth the more careful you will be. This is the truth that makes people keep to the narrow path - the realization that the honour of God is involved, and that I am not fighting my own battle, that if I fail the Name of God Himself is involved in it.

So there is no danger of Antinomianism when you truly understand the doctrine. It is the scriptural doctrine. All this means in practice, of course, that God cares for us, and that His care for us is greater than we will ever realize in this world. Scripture is full of this teaching. Our Lord Himself was constantly teaching it. He said that God cares for the sparrows: ‘Are not two sparro ws sold for a farthing? Yet not one of them shall fall to the ground without your Father.’ Oh how much greater is His concern for you! If God so clothes the lilies, if God is so concerned about the birds of the air, ‘how much more’ . . . There is no need to go any further. ‘How much more’ - of course! He has brought us into His plan, He is concerned about us, He is interested in us–‘the very hairs of our head are all numbered’. That shows His care. It is He who is really doing it; and we must never lose sight of this. Similarly the same Apostle is able to say in the Epistle to the Philippians, chapter 1, verse 6, ‘Being confident of this very thing’. Do not forget the context of that statement. Here was the Apostle in prison, and he does not know how much longer he has to live. He is in the hands of the capricious emperor Nero who may suddenly decide, on a whim, to put him to death. He does not know; he may be killed at any moment. He knows, furthermore, that there were troubles in the churches, even trouble in the church at Philippi. Yet he says, ‘Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ’. Old, ill, in prison, on the verge of death, leaving everything, is he troubled? Not at all; he is confident. Because ‘He [God] which hath begun a good work in you will perform it [He will go on with it] until [the end, the consummation] the day of Jesus Christ’.

But this truth is not confined to the teaching of the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Peter says exactly the same thing in his first Epistle chapter 1, verse 5. Referring to the Christians he says: ‘Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time’. What could be stronger? We are kept by the power of God! ‘Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might’. Such is the power that is keeping us. Then one other word, which we so sadly neglect as Christian people - the ministry of the angels! Again go back to the Epistle to the Hebrews. What are these angels? Christ is greater than the angels, ‘but what are the angels? The answer is, ‘Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?’ That is, for Christian people. We are ‘the heirs of salvation’. And the teaching is that God uses these mighty angels whom He has created, in order that they might minister unto us. We are ignorant of this ministry, we forget it; but thank God that makes no difference. He has appointed them to their tasks and they perform them. They do His will, they are ministering spirits; and their work is to minister to us, because we are the heirs of salvation. Our position is this: we are comparable to the children of some great squire, some lord who has a great estate. He has a son and heir who one day is going to inherit all. But the son is now a babe or but a boy. What does this great man do? He appoints servants who look after this child; he pays them to do so and tells them what to do to pro tect the child from harm, to prevent his doing things that would injure him, to instruct him and to guide him.

That is what the angels do. They are round and about us, though we do not see them. How foolish it is of us to neglect this teaching that is given in the Scriptures! ‘In heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven’, says our Lord Himself about little children (Matthew 18:10). It is exactly the same teaching. The reason why we are so often in trouble, and why we become despondent, and why the devil defeats us, is that we forget these things. We forget that we are being ‘ministered unto’ by these angelic powers, these good angels created by God largely for this purpose. Such then are some of the ways in which we must realize that this almighty power is working for us. All this, so far, is outside us, round and about us - the angel of the Lord ‘encamping’, the angels ministering, God exercising this care and this power for our welfare. This is a part of being ‘strong in the Lord’. We must realize that this is the way to be strong, to know always what is taking place. We must have confidence in the Author of our salvation, confidence in the One who has initiated the whole campaign and whose Son is involved in it all. But we can go even further. This power is also working, not only round and about us, but in us. And this makes it still more wonderful. This aspect of the matter has already been given a good deal of attention by the Apostle, but it can never be repeated too frequently. Some of the most glorious things in the whole of Scripture are said with res- pect to this matter. To start with, we would never have been in the Christian life at all were it not that this power of God had begun to work in us. That is stated clearly at the beginning of the second chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians: ‘You hath he quickened, who weredead’ - dead!–‘in trespasses and sins’. And in order to impress it upon them he repeats it again in verse 5: ‘Even when we were dead in sins, hath [he] quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved)’. That is the origin of it all. No-one ever becomes a Christian except as the result of the working of the almighty power of God within him.

No man, as he is, can decide to accept Christ, for he is ‘dead’! spiritually dead! And in addition, and as a result of that, as the Apostle has reminded us in chapter 4, verses 17 and 18: ‘This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart’. These words describe man by nature. ‘The natural mind is enmity against God; it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be’ (Romans 8:7). The natural man can do nothing, he is utterly helpless, spiritually dead. What makes us Christians? He hath ‘quickened us’. He has done it by His power, the power of the Spirit. What brings us into salvation is that the Spirit of God begins to work in us and to act upon us, to convict us of sin, to open our eyes. He does it all–‘by grace ye are saved’. It is ‘the power of God unto salvation’. And there would be no hope for anyone but for this. It starts in that way by the power of God working in us and bringing us to a knowledge of salvation.

But he does not merely start it, He goes on with the work. This is the ultimate comfort and consolation. Look at the way in which the Apostle puts it in his first chapter. He starts with this great truth in chapter 1. Then, as is so often his habit, he interrupts his line of tho- ught by working out some subsidiary point and then takes up again the original matter. That is exactly what he does in chapters 1 and 2 of this Epistle. Chapter 2 in many ways is a kind of digression to elaborate the point that he hinted at in the first chapter. The Apostle is writing to these Ephesians and he thanks God for them. He tells them that he is praying for them, ‘that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Fat her of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: The eyes of your understanding being enlightened’. What for? ‘That you may know what is the hope of his calling’ - what His ultimate purpose for you is–‘and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints’. Look ahead, he says, look forw- ard, see what His inheritance in the saints is, as well as your inher- itance. But more: ‘And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe’. He says in effect; I am praying that you may have understanding, that you may know the exceeding greatness of this power of God which is working to us-ward who believe - ‘according to the working of his mighty power’. Notice how he brings out his adjectives, how he piles one superlative upon another because there is no limit to the power and the might of God.

But he adds, What I am praying for, is that you may know that all this great power is working toward you, it is working in you, it is working for your good, if you could but realize it. Now this is what we need to pray for ourselves. We need this enlightenment, we need this understanding. If you only knew God’s purpose with respect to yourself, and that He is working in you to bring this to pass, and what His ultimate objective for you is, your whole outlook would be revolutionized. But the Apostle returns to it again in chapter 3. He is once more praying for them. Look at verse 13, which is an introduction: ‘Wherefore I desire that you faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory’. These Ephesians, like so many other early Christians, we- re in grave danger of depending too much upon the Apostle Paul. He had preached the Gospel to them, and they had been converted under his ministry. Now he is in prison and is ill, and is becoming old, and they say, What shall we do if Paul goes? To whom shall we be able to write? from whom shall we get advice and help? If Paul goes, we are undone. Such were their feelings. But he says, ‘I desire that you faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory. For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man’. The power of the Spirit within the inner man! ‘The exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe!’ It works in the inner man and it strengthens the inner man. You need not faint, says Paul; it matters not what happens to me, the salvation goes on, because it is His power, not mine. I am a mere instrument, just a little servant running here and there to give a message along the trenches. But when I have gone He will carry on His work, He has other servants, He will produce other men. Go on! It is His power you need, and you have got it in the inner man, and I am praying that you may have it more and more. Then he comes back to his theme again in verse 20: ‘Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.’ It is working in us, and it is a power which is measured in these terms - ‘exceeding abundantly’. Work out these words for yourselves! They imply that Paul has come to the limits of language. He was fond of superlatives. You must be when you are talking about God; nothing but superlatives will do. But even they are inadequate.

It is all entirely ‘above all that we ask or think’. Even imagination fails, everything fails. The theme is altogether above it all. ‘According to the power that worketh in us.’ It is not only working round and about you, it is working in you. In the believer! ‘According to the power that worketh in us.’ But consider also statements found elsewhere in Scripture in order that we may never fall into a fainting, hopeless condition again. I have already quoted from Philippians chapter 2, but let us go back to verses 12 and 13: ‘Wherefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence.’ It does not matter whether Paul is there or not. They thought it did; but it was not so–‘much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.’ His power is working in us. This is the power that, suddenly, when you are doing something quite different, turns your mind to the Lord; this is the power that works in us and makes us desire to pray. What made you feel that suddenly? You do not know. But the answer is - the Spirit! His is the power that is at work in you; it is there the whole time. Thank God it is! How hopeless we would be but for this!

He brings us back, reminds us, calls us to the Word, calls us to prayer, calls us to service, calls us to some duty - ‘it is God that worketh in you’. This energy, this power, ‘the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe’! Another wonderful statement of it is found in Colossians 1:29. Here the Apostle is describing himself as a preacher. ‘Whereunto’ he says, ‘I also labour, striving according to his working.’ The Apostle is striving, but he is striving ‘according to his working’. You see, he does strive. I shall deal with this question of the balance later on, bec- ause so many go wrong there, but I am now emphasizing God’s pow- er. ‘Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily’, says the Apostle. What was Paul doing? ‘Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus: wher- eunto [to this end] I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.’ He was aware of the power working within him. There is no higher or more glorious experience than that. You feel that you are just looking on. It is not you; you are being used. It is He who is doing it, and you are almost a spectator.

This is the language the Apostle always uses. In writing to the Thessalonians in his first Epistle, chapter 1, verse 5, he says. ‘Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance.’ He knew it; he was conscious that the Spirit was working mightily and overwhelmingly in him. And it is the same power that is in us, that is working in us, and working mightily. The Apostle John has the same teaching in his first Epistle, chapter 4, verses 4-6: ‘Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them’ [the antichrists]: Why? ‘because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world, therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.’ Then in the last chapter of the First Epistle of John, in verses 18 and 19: ‘We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not’ - that is to say, he does not go on, he does not habitually sin–‘but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself’ - which the authorities tend to agree means that he is kept by God–‘and that wicked one toucheth him not’. The devil can shout at you, he can make you tremble, but he cannot touch you. ‘We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the wicked one’ - in his embrace and in his clutches. We are not there; we have been taken from him. We are ‘of God’, and that is why the devil cannot touch us. He can molest us and try to frighten us, but he will never get us back into his embrace again, for that is impossible. ‘We are of God’, we are ‘safe in the arms of Jesus’, we are in the arms of God, the everlasting arms are underneath and round about us. ‘We are of God, and that evil one toucheth us not.’ He will never touch us; he cannot do so. We have been taken out of his realm, ‘translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son’. Finally, let us look at it thus. This power works in us. But then it is put in another way, for the whole doctrine of the Church is involved in this matter. What is the Church? Let me remind you of the teaching in this Epistle. The Apostle gives us a hint in chapter 1. He talks about this ‘power that worketh in us’. It is the power ‘which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church - [that is where we come in] - which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all’.

The Church is the body of Christ, and the Head of the body is Christ Himself. But let us go to the elaboration of this truth in chapter 4, especially in verses 15 and 16: ‘But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.’ That means that Christ is the Head and we are the parts, individual parts and portions of the body. But every single part and portion of the body derives its strength and its nutriment from the Head. I am not an isolated unit, I am not just mechanically attached. The blood that supplies the head goes through the little finger, and all the nervous energy and the power comes from the head. We are ultimately related to the Head and to each other through these joints and ligaments and these means of communication. Paul is saying that the power that is in the Head is working also in all the members of the body. The energy in us is His energy. This is the power that worketh in us mightily. Work it out also in terms of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That is why in chapter 5, verse 18, Paul says this to us: ‘And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit’, with all the power of the blessed Holy Spirit Himself. In addition we have His companionship - ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship [the communion] of the Holy Spirit’. The Spirit is in us: ‘He shall be in you’, says Christ in John 14 to the disciples who had become disconsolate because of His departure. ‘I will send you ano ther Comforter. He will not only be with you, He will be in you.’ And so it is. He is with us and in us - the companionship, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit working as a power within us. Moreover, as Paul says in Romans 8, verses 25, 26 and 27: the Spirit even ‘maketh intercess- ion for us with groanings which cannot be uttered’. When we are so hard pressed that we know not what to pray for as we ought, ‘the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered’. He stimulates prayer, causing us to ejaculate some petition, not always understanding what we are saying. But it is He who is doing it, and working in us. This power of the Lord is not only round and about us, and not only caring for us and planning for us, but it is in us. ‘The exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward that believe.’ We are wrestling ‘not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places’; we are fighting and having to stand against the devil. So let us ‘Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might’. Remember the energy and the power that is working in us, and remember that it is invincible because it is His. Let the devil and all his powers come, we can ‘Stand in His great might, with all His strength endued’.

Faith On Trial: The Problem Stated

By Martyn-Lloyd Jones

THE GREAT VALUE of the Book of Psalms is that in it we have godly men stating their experience, and giving us an account of things that have happened to them in their spiritual life and warfare. Throughout history the Book of Psalms has, therefore, been a book of great value for God's people. Again and again it provides them with the kind of comfort and teaching they need, and which they can find nowhere else. And it may well be, if one may be allowed to speculate on such a thing, that the Holy Spirit led the early Church to adopt the Old Testament writings partly for that reason. What we find from the beginning to the end of the Bible is the account of God's dealings with His people. He is the same God in the Old Testament as in the New; and these Old Testament saints were citizens of the kingdom of God even as we are. We are taken into a kingdom which already contains such people as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The mystery that was revealed to the apostles was that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs and citizens in the kingdom with the Jews.

It is right, therefore, to regard the experiences of these people as being exactly parallel with our own. The fact that they lived in the old dispensation makes no difference. There is something wrong with a Christianity which rejects the Old Testament, or even with a Christianity which imagines that we are essentially different from the Old Testament saints. If any of you are tempted to feel like that, I would invite you to read the Book of Psalms, and then to ask yourself whether you can honestly say from your experience some of the things the Psalmists said. Can you say, "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up?" Can you say, "As the heart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God?" Read the Psalms and the statements made in them, and I think you Will agree that these men were children of God with a great and rich spiritual experience. For this reason, it has been the practice in the Christian Church from the beginning for men and women to come to the Book of Psalms for light, knowledge, and instruction.

The Value of the Psalms

Its special value lies in the fact that it helps us by putting its teaching chiefly in the form of the recital of experiences. We have exactly the same teaching in the New Testament, only there it is given in a more didactic fashion. Here it seems to come down to our own ordinary and practical level. Now we are all familiar with the value of this. There are times when the soul is weary, when we feel we are incapable of receiving that more direct instruction; we are so tried, and our minds are so tired, and our hearts may be so bruised, that we somehow cannot make the effort to concentrate upon principles and to look at things objectively. It is at such a time, and particularly at such a time, and in order that they (pay receive truth in this more personal form, that people who feel that life has dealt cruelly with them have gone-battered and beaten by the waves and billows of life-to the Psalms. They have read the experiences of some Of these men, and have found that they, too, have been through something very similar. And somehow that fact, in and of itself, helps and strengthens them. They feel that they are not alone, and that what is happening to them is not unusual. They begin to realize the truth of Paul's comforting words to the Corinthians, "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man" - I Corinthians 10: 13), and that very realization alone enables them to take courage and to be renewed in their faith. The Book of Psalms is of inestimable value in this respect, and we find people turning constantly to it.

There are many features about the Psalms which might detain us. The thing I want to mention especially is the very remarkable honesty with which the authors do not hesitate to tell the truth about themselves. We have a great classic example of that here in the seventy-third Psalm. This man admits very freely that as for him his feet were almost gone, his steps had well-nigh slipped. And he goes on to say that he was like a beast before God, so foolish and so ignorant. What honesty! That is the great value of the Psalms. I know of nothing in the spiritual life more discouraging than to meet the kind of person who seems to give the impression that he or she is always walking on the mountain top. That is certainly not true in the Bible. The Bible tells us that these men knew what it was to be cast down, and to be in sore and grievous trouble. Many a saint in his pilgrimage has thanked God for the honesty of the writers of the Psalms. They do not just put up an ideal teaching which was not true in their own lives. Perfectionist teachings are never true. They are not true to the experience of the people who teach them, for we know that they are fallible creatures like the rest of us. They put their teaching of perfection forward theoretically, but it is not true to their experience. Thank God the Psalmists do not do that. They tell us the plain truth about themselves; they tell us the plain truth about what has happened to them.

Now their motive in doing so is not to exhibit themselves. Confession of sin can be a form of exhibitionism. There are some people who are very willing to confess their sins, so long as they can talk about themselves. It is a very subtle danger. The Psalmist does not do that; he tells us the truth about himself because he wants to glorify God. His honesty is dictated by that, for it is as he shows the contrast between himself and God that he ministers to the glory of God.

That is what this man does here. Notice that he starts off with a great triumphant note, "Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart," as if to say, "Now I am going to tell you a story. I am going to tell you what has happened to me; but the thing I want to leave with you is just this-the goodness of God." This comes out particularly clear if you take another, and probably better, translation, "God is always good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart." God never varies. There is no limitation at all, there are no qualifications. "This is my proposition," says this man, "God is always good to Israel." Most of the Psalms start with some such great burst of praise and of thanksgiving.

Again, as has often been pointed out, the Psalms generally start with a conclusion. That sounds paradoxical, but I am not trying to be paradoxical: it is true. This man had had an experience. He went right through it and reached this point. Now the great thing to him was that he had arrived there. So he starts with the end; and then he proceeds to tell us how he got there. This is a good way of teaching; and it is always the method of the Psalms. The value of the experience is that it is an illustration of this particular truth. It is of no interest in and of itself, and the Psalmist is not interested in it as an experience qua experience. But it is an illustration of this great truth about God, and therein lies its value.

The great thing is that we should all realize this big point that he is making, namely, that God is always good to His people, to such as are of a clean heart. That is the proposition; but the thing that will engage us, as we study this Psalm in particular, is the method, the way, by which this man arrives at that conclusion. What he has to tell us can be summed up like this: He started from this proposition in his religious experience; then he went astray; then he came back again. It is because they analyze such experiences that we find the Psalms to be of such great value. We all know something about that same kind of experience in our own lives. We start in the right place; then something goes wrong, and we seem somehow to be losing everything. The problem is how to get back again. What this man does is to show us how to arrive back at that place where the soul finds her true poise.

This Psalm is only one illustration. You can find many others that do exactly the same thing. Take Psalm 43, for instance, where you find the Psalmist in a similar condition. He addresses himself, and says, "Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me?" (v. 5). He talks to himself, he addresses his soul. Now that is just what he is doing in Psalm 73, only here it is elaborated and brought before us in a very striking manner.

This man tells us all about a particular experience that he had passed through. He tells us that he was very badly shaken, and that he very nearly fell. What was the cause of his trouble? Simply that he did not quite understand God's way with respect to him. He had become aware of a painful fact. Here he was living a godly life; he was cleansing his heart, he tells us, and washing his hands in innocency. In other words, he was practicing the godly life. He was avoiding sin; he was meditating upon the things of God; he was spending his time in prayer to God; he was in the habit of examining his life, and whenever he found sin he confessed it to God with sorrow, and he sought forgiveness and renewal. The man was devoting himself to a life which would be well-pleasing in God's sight. He kept clear of the world and its polluting effects; he separated himself from evil ways, and gave himself up to the living of this godly life. Yet, although he was doing all this, he was having a great deal of trouble, "all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning." He was having a very hard and difficult time. He does not tell us exactly what was happening; it may have been illness, sickness, trouble in his family. Whatever it was, it was very grievous and hurtful; he was being tried, and tried very sorely. In fact, everything seemed to be going wrong and nothing seemed to be going right.

Now that was bad enough in itself. But that was not the thing that really troubled and distressed him. The real trouble was that when he looked at the ungodly he saw a striking contrast. "These men," he said, "we all know to be ungodly-it is quite clear to everybody that they are ungodly. But they prosper in the world, they increase in riches, there are no bands-no pangs-in their death, but their strength is firm, they are not in trouble as other men." He gives this description of them in their arrogance, their deceitfulness, their blasphemy. He gives us the most perfect picture in all literature of the so-called successful man of the world. He even describes his posture, his arrogant appearance, with his eyes standing out with fatness, and his pride compassing him about as a chain-a necklace. "Violence covers them as a garment," he says, "they have more than heart could wish," "they speak loftily"-what a perfect description it is.

Moreover, not only was it true of people who lived at the time of the Psalmist, but you see the same kind of person today. They make blasphemous statements about God. They say, "How doth God know, and is there knowledge in the most High?" You talk about your God, they say; we don't believe in your God, yet look at us. Nothing goes wrong with us. But you, who are so godly, look at the things that happen to you! Now this was what caused this man his pain and his trouble. He believed God to be holy and righteous and true, One who intervenes on behalf of His people and surrounds them with loving care and wonderful promises. His problem was how to reconcile all this with what was happening to himself, and still more with what was happening to the ungodly.

This Psalm is a classic statement of this particular problem-God's ways with respect to man, and especially God's ways with respect to His own people. That was the thing that perplexed this psalmist as he contrasted his own lot with that of the wicked. And he tells us his reaction to it all.

Perplexity Is Not Surprising

Now let us content ourselves for the moment with drawing some general but very important lessons from all this. The first comment which we must make is that perplexity in the light of this kind of situation is not surprising. This, I would say, is a fundamental principle, for we are dealing with the ways of Almighty God, and He has told us so often in His Book, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways" (Isaiah 55:8). Half our trouble arises from the fact that we do not realize that that is the basic position from which we must always start. I think that many of us get into trouble just because we forget that we are really dealing with the mind of God, and that God's mind is not like our mind. We desire everything to be cut and dried and simple, and feel that there should never be any problems or difficulties. But if there is one thing that is taught more clearly than anything else in the Bible, it is that that is never the case in our dealings with God. The ways of God are inscrutable; His mind is infinite and eternal, and His purposes are so great that our sinful minds cannot understand. Therefore, when such a Being is dealing with us, it ought not surprise us if, at times, things take place which are perplexing to us.

We tend to think, of course, that God should be blessing His own children always, and that they should never be chastised. How often have we thought that! Did we not think it during the war? Why is it that God allows certain forms of tyranny to persist, especially those that are absolutely godless? Why does He not wipe them all out, and shower His blessings upon His own people? That is our way of thinking. But it is based on a fallacy. God's mind is eternal, and God's ways are so infinitely above us that we must always start by being prepared not to understand immediately anything He does. If we start with the other supposition, that everything should always be plain and clear, we shall soon find ourselves in the place where this man found himself. It is not surprising that when we look into the mind of the Eternal, there should be times when we are given the impression that things are working out in a manner exactly opposite to what we think they ought to be.

Perplexity Is Not Sinful

Let me now put a second proposition. Perplexity in this matter is not only surprising; I want to emphasize that to be perplexed is not sinful either. There, again, is something that is very comforting. There are those who give the impression that they think the ways of God are always perfectly plain and clear; they always seem to be able to reason thus, and the sky to them is always bright and shining, and they themselves are always perfectly happy. Well, all I can say is that they are absolutely superior to the apostle Paul, for he tells us, in 2 Corinthians 4, that he was "perplexed, but not in despair." Ah yes, it is wrong to be in a state of despair; but it is not wrong to be perplexed. Let us draw this clear distinction; the mere fact that you may be perplexed about something that is happening at the present time does not mean that you are guilty of sin. You are in God's hand, and yet something unpleasant is happening to you, and you say: I do not understand. There is nothing wrong with that-"perplexed, but not in despair." The perplexity in and of itself is not sinful, for our minds are not only finite, they are also weakened by sin. We do not see things clearly; we do not know what is best for us; we cannot take the long view; so it is very natural that we should be perplexed.

Perplexity Opens the Door to Temptation

Now although that is not sinful as far as it goes, we must hurry on to say that to be perplexed always opens the door to temptation. That is the real message of this Psalm. It is all right up to a point, but as soon as you get into this state of being perplexed, and you can stop and dwell on it for a moment, at that moment temptation is at the door. It is ready to enter in, and before you know what has happened it will have entered in. And that is what had happened to this man.

That brings us to what the Psalmist tells us about the character of temptation and how important it is to recognize this. Temptation can be so powerful that not only does it shake the greatest and strongest saint; it does, indeed, get him down. "As for me," says this man of God, "as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped."

"But that was in the Old Testament," you say, "and the Holy Spirit had not come then as He has come now. We are in the Christian position whereas this saint of God was not." All right, if you like you may have it in the words of the apostle Paul, "Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall!" Paul, in explaining the Christian position to the Corinthians - I Corinthians 10, goes back for an illustration to the Old Testament; and lest some of those superior people in Corinth might say, We have received the Holy Spirit, we are not like that, he says, "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall" (I Corinthians 10: 12). The man who has not yet discovered the power of temptation is the veriest tyro in spiritual matters. Temptations can come with varying degrees of power and force. The Bible teaches that it comes sometimes to the most spiritual as a veritable hurricane sweeping all before it, with such terrific might that even a man of God is almost overwhelmed. Such is the power of temptation! But let me use again the words of the apostle: "Take unto you the whole armor of God" (Ephesians 6:13). For you need it all. If you are to stand in the evil day you must be completely clothed with the whole armor of God. The might of the enemy against us is second only to the power of God. He is more powerful than any man who has ever lived; and the saints of the Old Testament went down before him. He tempted and tried the Lord Jesus Christ to the ultimate limit. Our Lord defeated him, but He alone has succeeded of all ever born of woman. Go back and read this Psalm again and you will see that temptation came when this man was least expecting it. It came in as the result of what was happening to him, it came through the door that was opened by the trouble he was experiencing, and by the contrast between that and the successful, apparently happy life of the ungodly.

The next point to note about temptation concerns its blinding effect. There is nothing more strange about temptation than the way in which, under its influence and power, we are made to do things that in our normal condition would be quite unthinkable to us. The Psalmist puts it like this-and notice that his wording is almost sarcasm at his own expense. Look at the third verse, "For I was envious at the foolish." He was envious of the arrogant. "You know," he seems to say, "I hardly like to put it on paper, I am so heartily ashamed of it. But I have to confess that there was a moment when 1, who have been so blessed of God, was envious of those ungodly people." Only the blinding effect of temptation can explain that. It comes with such force that we are knocked off our balance, and are no longer able to think clearly.

Now there is nothing of more vital importance in this spiritual warfare than for us to realize that we are confronted by a power like that, and that therefore, we cannot afford to relax for one moment. The thing is so powerful that it makes us see only what it wants us to see, and we forget everything else. This is the blinding effect of temptation!

Again, we must not forget the subtlety of Satan. He comes as a would-be friend. He had obviously come to the Psalmist like that. He said, "Don't you think you are cleansing your heart in vain, and washing your hands in innocency?" As the well-known hymn puts it so perfectly:

Always fast and vigil?
Always watch and prayer?

"That is what you seem to be doing," says the devil. "You seem to be spending your time in self-denial and prayers. There is something wrong with this outlook of yours. You believe the gospel; but look at what is happening to you! Why are you having this hard time? Why is a God of love dealing with you in this manner? Is that the Christian life you are advocating? My friend," he says, "you are making a mistake; you are doing yourself grievous damage and harm; you are not fair to yourself." Oh, the terrible subtlety of it all.

Again there is the apparent logic of the case temptation presents. When it comes thus with its blinding effect it really does seem to be quite innocent and reasonable. "After all," it makes the Psalmist say, "I am living a godly life, and this is what happens to me. Those other men are blaspheming God, and with 'lofty' utterances are saying things which should never be thought, let alone said. Yet they are very prosperous; their children are all doing well; they have more than the heart could wish. Meanwhile I am suffering the exact opposite. There is only one conclusion to draw." Looking at it from the natural human point of view, the case seems to be unanswerable. That is always a characteristic of temptation. No man would ever fall to temptation if it were not. Its plausibility, its power, its strength, its logical and apparently unanswerable case. You know that I am not speaking theoretically. We all know something of this; if we do not, we are not Christian. This is the kind of thing to which God's people are subjected. Because they are God's people the devil makes a special target of them and seizes every opportunity to get them down.

At this point I would stress that to be tempted in that way is not sin. We must be clear about this. That such thoughts are put to us, and insinuated into our minds, does not mean that we are guilty of sin. Here again is something which is of fundamental importance in the whole matter of spiritual warfare. We must learn to draw a distinction between being tempted and sinning. You cannot control the thoughts that are put into your mind by the devil. He puts them there. Paul talks of "the fiery darts of the wicked one." Now that is what had been happening to the Psalmist. The devil had been hurling them at him, but the mere fact that they had been coming into his mind does not mean that he was guilty of sin. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself was tempted. The devil put thoughts into His mind. But He did not sin, because He rejected them. Thoughts will come to you and the devil may try to press you to think that because thoughts have entered your mind you have sinned. But they are not your thoughts, they are the devil's-he put them there. It was the quaint Cornishman, Billy Bray, who put this in his own original manner when he said, "You cannot prevent the crow from flying over your head, but you can prevent him from making a nest in your hair!" So I say that we cannot prevent thoughts being insinuated into our mind; but the question is what do we do with them? We talk about thoughts "passing through" the mind, and so long as they do this, they are not sin. But if we welcome them and agree with them then they become sin. I emphasize this because I have often had to deal with people who are in great distress because unworthy thoughts have come to them. But what I say to them is this, "Listen to what you are telling me. You say that the thought 'has come to you.' Well, if that is true you are not guilty of sin. You do not say, 'I have thought'; you say, 'the thought came.' That is right. The thought came to you, and it came from the devil, and the fact that the thought did come from the devil means that you are not of necessity guilty of sin." Temptation, in and of itself, is not sin.

That brings us to the last and very vital point. It is that we should know how to deal with temptation when it comes, and we should know how to handle it. Indeed, in one sense the writer's whole purpose is just to tell us this. There is only one way in which we can be quite sure that we have dealt with temptation in the right way, and that is that we arrive at the right ultimate conclusion. I started with that and I end with it. The great message of this Psalm is, that if you and I know what to do with temptation we can turn it into a great source of victory. We can end, when we have been through a process like this, in a stronger position than we were in at the beginning. We may have been in a situation where our "steps had well nigh slipped." That does not matter so long as, at the end, we arrive on that great high plateau where we stand face to face with God with an assurance we have not had before. We can make use of the devil and all his assaults, but we have to learn how to handle him. We can turn all this into a great spiritual victory, so that we can say, "Well, having been through it all, I have now been given to see that God is always good. I was tempted to think there were times when He was not; I see now that that was wrong. God is always good in all circumstances, in all ways, at all times-no matter what may happen to me, or to anybody else ... .. I have arrived," says the Psalmist, "at the conclusion that 'God is always good to Israel.'"

Are we all ready to say that? Some of you may be passing through this kind of experience at this moment. Things may be going wrong with you, and you may be having a hard time. Blow upon blow may be descending upon you. You have been living the Christian life, reading your Bible, working for God, and yet the blows have come, one on top of another. Everything seems to be going wrong; you have been plagued "all the day long," and "chastened every morning." One trouble follows hard after another. Now the one simple question I want to ask is this. Are you able to say in the face of it all, "God is always good?" Yes, even in the face of what is happening to you, and even as you see the wicked flourish. In spite of the cruelty of an enemy or the treachery of a friend, in spite of all that is happening to you, can you say, "God is always good; there is no exception; there is no qualification?" Can you say that? Because if you cannot, then you are guilty of sin. You may have been tempted to doubt. That is to be expected; that is not sin. The question is, Were you able to deal with the temptation? Were you able to thrust it back, and to put it out of your mind? Were you able to say, "God is always good," without any reservation at all? Are you able to say, "All things work together for good," without any hesitation? That is the test. But let me remind you that while the Psalmist says, "God is always good to Israel," he is careful to add, "Even to such as are of a clean heart."

Now we must be careful. We must be fair to ourselves; we must be fair to God. The promises of God are great, and all-inclusive. But they always have this condition, "to them that are of a clean heart." In other words, if you and I are sinning against God, then God will have to deal with us, and it is going to be painful. But even when God chastises us He is still good to us. It is because He is good to us that He chastises us. If we do not experience chastisement, then we are "bastards," as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews reminds us. But, let us remember, if we want to see this clearly we must be of a clean heart. We must have "truth in [our] inward parts," and there must be no hidden sin, because "if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me" (Psalm 66:18). If I am not true and straight with God I have no right to appropriate any of the promises. If, on the other hand, it is my one desire to be right with Him, then I can say that absolutely "God is always good to Israel."

I sometimes think that the very essence of the whole Christian position, and the secret of a successful spiritual life, is just to realize two things. They are in these first two verses, "Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped." In other words, I must have complete, absolute confidence in God, and no confidence in myself. As long as you and I are in the position in which we "worship God in the Spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh" all is well with us. That is to be truly Christian-on the one hand utter absolute confidence in God, and on the other no confidence in myself and what I may do. If I take that view of myself, it means that I shall always be looking to God. And in that position I shall never fail.

May God grant us grace to apply some of these simple principles to ourselves and, as we do so, let us remember that we have the greatest and the grandest illustration of it all in our blessed Lord Himself. I see Him in the Garden of Gethsemane, the very Son of God, and I hear Him uttering these words, "Father, if it be possible." There was perplexity. He asked, Is there no other way, is this the only way whereby mankind can be saved? The thought of the sin of the world coming between Him and His Father perplexed Him. But He humbled Himself. The perplexity did not cause Him to fall, He just committed Himself to God saying in effect, "Thy ways are always right, Thou art always good, and as for what Thou art going to do to Me I know it is because Thou art good. Not My will, but Thine, be done."

Christian and Non-Christian

By Martyn-Lloyd Jones

HERE WE COME TO A dramatic and almost an abrupt statement. The Apostle has been describing the kind of life which is lived by the "other Gentiles", the kind of life that these Ephesians Christians themselves used to live - the life still being lived by those of their compatriots and fellows who had not believed the gospel of Jesus Christ. And having finished his description he suddenly turns, and uses this word But. Now to get the full force of this, let us look at the statement again as a whole. "This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you have not so learned Christ"; and then Paul goes on to say, "if so be that you have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus".

We come, then, to this extraordinary, dramatic, vivid, almost, I say, abrupt statement which the Apostle makes here. And it is obvious that he put it in this form quite deliberately, in order to call attention to it and to shock them, and in order to bring out the tremendous contrast that he has in mind. And therefore the emphasis must be placed both upon the but and upon the you. "But you" - "you have not so learned Christ": the you in contrast with those other Gentiles; and the but standing here as a great word of contrast to bring out this marked antithesis. What then do those two words suggest to us?

The first thing, surely, that they should convey to us is a feeling of relief and of thanksgiving. I start with this because I think that it is the thing that we should be conscious of first of all. We have followed the Apostle's masterly analysis, his psychological dissection of the life of the unbeliever, the pagan, the man who is not a Christian, and we see how it goes from bad to worse because his mind is wrong. He is in a state of darkness, the heart is affected, and he is alienated from God. We have also seen men giving themselves over, in their foulness and lasciviousness, to work all kinds of iniquity and uncleanness with greediness. We have been looking at it all and seeing it. And then, Paul says, "But you"! And at once we say, Well, thank God! we are no longer there, that is not our position. And this, I repeat, is the thing that must come first; we must feel a sense of relief and profound gratitude to God that we are covered by this But, that Paul is here turning from sin to salvation, and that we have experienced the change of which he is now going on to speak.

I emphasize this point because it seems to me that there is no better test of our Christian profession than our reaction to these words "But you". If we merely hold the truth theoretically in our minds this will not move us at all. If we have looked on at the description of sin merely in a kind of detached, scientific manner, or as the sociologist might do; if we have put down groups and categories of people, and have done it all in an utterly detached way, then we will have no sense of relief and of thanksgiving as we come to these words. But if we realise that all that was true of us; if we realise that we were in the grip and under the dominion of sin; if we realise that we still have to fight against it, then, I say, these words at once give us a sense of marvellous and wonderful relief. It is not the whole truth, of course, there is more to be said. But as we respond to these words, in our feelings, in our sensibilities, as well as with our minds, we are proclaiming whether we are truly Christian or not. We read these words of Paul, and then we read our newspapers, and as we look at what is going on all around us, we say, Yes, it is absolutely right and true, that is life in this world. And then we suddenly stop and say, Ah! but wait a minute, there is something else - there is the Christian, there is the Christian Church, there is this new humanity that is in Christ! The other seems to be true of almost everybody in the world, but it is not, for "there is yet a remnant according to the election of grace"! Thank God! In the midst of all the darkness there is a glimmer of light. Christianity is a protest in that sense; something has happened, there is an oasis in the desert. Here it is; thank God for it! And therefore I am saying that we test ourselves along these lines. Here we have been travelling in this wilderness, in this desert, and it seems to be endless. There seems nothing to hope for. Suddenly we see it - "But you"! After all, there is a bridgehead from heaven in this world of sin and shame. But you! Relief! Thanksgiving! A sense of hope after all!

The words, "But you", of course, also mark the entry of the gospel. And I must confess that I am increasingly moved and charmed by the way in which this particular Apostle always brings in his gospel like this. We see him doing it in the fourth verse of his second chapter. He always does it in this way. There we read that terrifying passage in the first three verses, then suddenly, having said it all, Paul says, "But God"! - and in comes his gospel. And he is doing exactly the same thing here. This but, you see, this contrast, this disjunction, this is the Gospel, and it is something altogether different, it has nothing to do with this world and its mind and its outlook; it is something that comes in from above, and it brings with it a marvellous and a wonderful hope.

The Gospel always comes as a contrast. It is not an extension of human philosophy, it is not just a bit of an appendix to the book of life, or merely an addition to something that men have been able to evolve for themselves. No it is altogether from God, it is from above, it is from heaven, it is supernatural, miraculous, divine. It is this thing which comes in as light into the midst of darkness and hopelessness and unutterable despair. But it does come like that; and thank God, I say again, that it does.

The position we are confronted with is this. We are looking at the modern world in terms of this accurate description of it, and we see that everything that man has ever been able to think of has failed to cope with it. Is political action dealing with the moral situation? Is it dealing even with the international situation? Can education deal with it? Read your newspapers and you have your answer. Hooliganism is not confined to the uneducated. Take all your social agencies, everything man has ever been able to think of. How can it possibly deal with a situation such as that which we have been considering in verses 17, 18 and 19? When you are dealing with a darkened mind, with a hardened heart, with a principle of lasciviousness controlling the most powerful factors in man, all opposed to God, all vile and foul, what is the value of a little moral talk and uplift? What is the power of any legislation? You cannot change men's nature by passing Acts of Parliament, by giving them new houses, or by anything you may do for them. There is only one thing that can meet such a situation; and thank God it can! "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ," says this great Apostle, as he looks forward to a visit to the imperial city of Rome with all its grandeur and its greatness, as well as its sin and its foulness. "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ", he says, and for this reason, "it is the power of God unto salvation". And because it is the power of God it holds out a hope even for men and women who have given themselves over, abandoned themselves, to the working of all uncleanness with greediness.

I have often said that there is nothing so romantic as the preaching of the gospel. You never know what is going to happen. I have this absolute confidence that if the vilest and the blackest character in this city of London today hears this message, even if he is the most abandoned wretch in the foulest gutter, I see a hope for him, because of the gospel, this but that comes in, this power of God! The gospel comes into the midst of despair and hopelessness; it comes in looking at life with a realistic eye. There is nothing, apart from the gospel, that can afford to be realistic; everything else has to try to persuade itself like a kind of self-hypnotism. Here is the only thing that can look at man as he is, at his very worst and blackest and at his most hopeless, and still address him. Why? Because the power of God is in it. And this is a power that can make men anew and re-fashion them after the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Apostle is about to tell us. It is the work of the Creator. So the Gospel comes in this way, and the words "But you" remind us of the whole thing.

But even more, and this is the point in particular that the Apostle himself is stressing here - these two words "But you" at once provide us with a perfect and a comprehensive description of the Christian. Paul has described the "other Gentiles"; he is now describing the Christian. What does he tell us about him? Obviously, in the first place, he tells us that the Christian is one who by definition has been separated from and taken out of that evil world. The "other Gentiles"? - that is how they are living. "But you"! There has been a separation, the Christian has been laid hold of, he has been dragged out of that, and he has been put into another position. He was once like others, but he is no longer like them. Clearly, becoming a Christian is the profoundest change in the world. That is where, I suppose, the final enemy of the Christian faith is morality. And that is why I sometimes feel that Thomas Arnold, of Rugby fame, was perhaps of all men in the last century the one who did the greatest harm. His teaching and the teaching of his followers has obliterated this particular point, this complete change, this translation, this movement. But it is this truth that is emphasised everywhere in the Bible about God's salvation. You find the Psalmist speaking of it; he talks about being lifted up out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and his feet being established upon the rock. He has had to be hauled up out of the slime, the horrible pit! the miry clay! taken hold of, lifted up, and set upon a rock, while his goings have been established on a different level. Now that is Christianity, and it is only as the Church comes back to the realization of it that there is any hope for revival at all.

To establish the point I am making, let us hear Paul, at the beginning of his Epistle to the Galatians. He is thanking God for His wonderful grace in the Lord Jesus Christ, and he puts it like this: "Who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us from this present evil world" (1 :4). That is why Christ died. The first object of His dying on the cross was that He might deliver His people from this present evil world; He takes hold of them and pulls them out of it. Listen to the Apostle again as he writes to the Colossians: "Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son." When you become a Christian you change your realm, you belong to a new kingdom; you are no longer in the kingdom of Satan, you belong to the kingdom of God and of His Christ; you are no longer in the kingdom of darkness, but you are in the kingdom of light. These are Paul's terms and every one of them emphasizes this movement, this translation. You are not simply improved a little bit just where you are; that is never the business of Christianity; it never does that. It is something new. And it is going to end in a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

The business of Christianity is not to improve the world. No! it is to take men out of the world, to save them from it, and to form this new realm, this new kingdom, and this new humanity. We must get hold of that idea. It is not a kind of Christianisation of the world that is taught in the Bible. People are to be taken out of it, to be separated from it, and to be translated into a different position. Peter puts it like this in the second chapter of his First Epistle: "Who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." The Lord takes us out of Egypt, and puts us into Canaan! It was not an improvement of the conditions in Egypt that happened under the Old Testament dispensation: on the contrary, the Israelites were taken out of Egypt, taken on their journey, and brought into Canaan. Peter very rightly goes on to address Christians as "strangers and pilgrims". "Dearly beloved", he says, "I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul." We are only strangers in this world if we are Christians. Paul says the same thing to the Philippians in his third chapter: "Our citizenship is in heaven." Someone has translated it, "We are a colony of heaven", which amounts to the same thing. It means that our polity, as it were, our homeland, our seat of government, is there; our citizenship is in heaven! We are in this world still, but if we are Christians we do not belong to it; we do not belong to its mind, its outlook, its organisation; we are strangers and pilgrims, we are people away from home, we are people who are simply living here on a passport; we do not belong here. Our Lord has said it clearly for us in His great high-priestly prayer; He says, "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world."

We must be clear about this. I am not saying that because of all that I have been quoting a Christian should not take part in politics or anything like that. It does not mean that at all, but it does mean that he is entirely separated in his being, in his essence and in his outlook. Because the Christian knows that this is still God's world which God is finally going to redeem, he believes that sin and evil must be controlled. In his view, politics and the whole of culture are negative and are simply designed to keep sin and evil within bounds, and to keep their manifestations from running riot. But what he does, he does as a stranger; he does it as a man who belongs to another realm, but who has pity upon this realm; and thus he gives his time and energies in an endeavour to keep evil within bounds. He does not put his faith in earthly things, he does not think that you can bring in a new Jerusalem by Acts of Parliament, as so many foolish people thought at the beginning of this century. He has no use for the social gospel, because it has always failed and always must fail: for it is based upon the fallacy of not realising that man's heart is hardened, and that his whole outlook is darkened. It is of all teachings the most fatuous. But the Christian has been separated from all such hopes. He has been translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God's dear Son.

But these words of Paul show us another thing about the Christian and his character. Because of this translation that has taken place, the life of the Christian is to present a complete contrast to that other life. "But you; you have not so learned Christ." Paul puts the emphasis on the word so. It is not thus that you have learned Christ, says the Apostle. You have not learned Christ in such a way as to say, Well yes, I believe in Christ but I still go on living as I did before. Impossible! he says, Out upon the suggestion! He again uses litotes, one of his favourite figures of speech. "You have not so learned Christ" - that is a negative, is it not? What he means is something very positive. Litotes is a very good figure of speech to employ if you are anxious to bring out emphasis. Let me give you another familiar example of it. Take the one I have already quoted from in Romans 1:16 where the Apostle says, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ." What he means is that he is tremendously proud of it, that he has absolute confidence in it, and that he makes his boast in it. But he expresses it by an emphatic negative, not ashamed. Similarly, he says here, "You have not so learned Christ." By which he means that the very suggestion is utterly impossible; it is unthinkable; the thing is ludicrous, he says, you cannot possibly hold it for a moment if you have really understood these things. The Apostle is emphasising that the life of the Christian is to be altogether different from that of "other Gentiles". It is to suggest and to present the most complete and striking contrast to everything that is represented by that kind of worldly life. The life of the Christian is not to be something vague and indefinite, not something which is difficult to define, and difficult to recognise. According to Paul's teaching, and the teaching of the entire Bible, it is clear-cut and obvious - it stands out, it is perfectly definite, and anybody should be able to recognise it at a glance.

Let us look at some of the terms which are used in the Scripture to bring out this very point. Take the words that were used by our Lord Himself. He says that the Christian is to be the "salt of the earth". He says also that Christians are to be "the light of the world". The Apostle Paul uses similar words in writing to the Philippians. In the second chapter he tells them that they are to "shine" as "lights in the world" (A.V.). The picture is that the whole world is in darkness, absolutely dark, and would be universally dark were it not for the occasional star here and there shining. Lights in the heavens! The contrast between Christians and people who are not Christian is the contrast between light and darkness. Again, Christ says that when a man lights a candle he does not put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick that it may light the whole house. And He also says that His disciples are like "a city set upon a hill, which cannot be hid". It is there for all men to see. A Christian should be as impossible to hide as a city set on a hill. The whole terminology is designed to bring out these very contrasts. The whole thing is put again so perfectly in the passage in 2 Corinthians 6, where Paul writes, "What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? What communion hath light with darkness? What concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an unbeliever? Or what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?" So the Christian is one who stands out in society because he is a Christian. This does not mean that he will be angular or delight in being odd or make himself eccentric or foolish, but it does mean that as we read about our Lord that "He could not be hid", it is equally true about the Christian. When purity appears in the midst of impurity there is no need for it to exaggerate itself or to send a trumpeter before it to announce its presence, as the Pharisees did, as they made broad their phylacteries. No! Purity advertises itself: the contrast does it all.

Now this is the kind of thing that the Apostle is here stressing and impressing upon the Ephesians. He says, as it were, to them: It is unthinkable that you should live as the unbelievers do; your whole life and behaviour, your demeanour and deportment should suggest something which is marvellously and strangely different. I am emphasising, you see, that it should not be difficult for people to know that we are Christians. But I wonder whether it is? I wonder whether sometimes they are surprised when they are told that we are Christians? Is not this one of the tragedies of the age in which we live, that the line of demarcation between the church and the world has become so obscured and ill-defined and uncertain? I know that there is undoubtedly a reaction against a false Puritanism and I am not here to defend a false Puritanism; God forbid that I should! You notice that I call it a false Puritanism - a mere morality that has really lost contact with the truth.

It was much in evidence at the end of the Victorian era, and God forbid that we should have that mechanical religion back! But I am suggesting that in our reaction we have gone altogether too far to the other extreme and we have obscured something that is absolutely vital in the New Testament, namely, this line of demarcation between the world and the Church.

At one time it was customary for Protestantism to criticise Roman Catholicism on the ground that it mixed the two, and it undoubtedly does; but alas Protestantism has followed suit and has done the same. The modern Christian seems to think that he is doing something wonderful when he behaves very much like the man of the world; he tries to argue that this is the way to win him. But he is not winning him! Our Lord could mix with publicans and sinners, but He was never mistaken for one of them; He was called the friend of publicans and sinners, but the contrast was there even in the criticism. And the point is that the true Christian, because of what has happened to him, because of this regeneration, because of the work of the Spirit, because he has been made anew, is of necessity a different man, and should show himself to be a different man.

But I will go further. Not only does the Christian know that he is different, the non-Christian also knows it. At once the Christian and the non-Christian are aware of a difference between themselves. They are aware of a lack of affinity. I want to press this, because it seems to me to be one of the most thorough-going tests we can ever apply to ourselves. Unless we are conscious of a lack of affinity with people who still belong to the world I cannot see that we are Christians at all. That does not mean that we cannot share certain things with them, that we cannot be pleasant, that we cannot pass the time of day with them, as it were. But it does mean that we are aware of a difference, of a barrier, that we belong to different realms and to different positions entirely. We can have social relations with non-Christians, but the whole time we are aware of this difference, we are not at home in that atmosphere. We may, for various reasons, have to be with them occasionally, but we are aware that we do not belong to their world. And they too are equally aware of the fact that we do not belong to it. And that is the thing that is so valuable, that even the non-Christian, the man of the world, expects the Christian to be different.

One of the greatest fallacies I have ever encountered in this respect was one that came in during the First World War. I describe it without mentioning the man most responsible for it; the individual as such does not matter, for we are not concerned with personalities but with principles. There was an outlook propagated by this particular man who argued like this. "Take those men in the trenches in the first world war; now" he said, "if we are going to influence those men when we go back into civilian life, we must show them that we really belong to them; so the way to do that, the way to win men to Christ, is to sit down and smoke Woodbines with them, and to use their language. If they curse and swear, let us curse and swear too; we are doing it for a good object, with a good intention; we will fraternise with them, we will show them that we are, after all, all of the same bunch, we belong together; and then if we only do that with them they will come crowding to our churches to listen." But, you know, they did not! And thank God they did not! The man of the world, the man who is still a sinner, expects the Christian to be different, and he does not respect very much the kind of Christian who is not different. We read the Gospels and we find that the most desperate cases drew near to the Lord Jesus Christ. Why? Because He was so different! I am not suggesting that there is a spark of divinity in fallen human nature, but I am suggesting that there is always a hopelessness in the life of sin, which somehow or another pays its tribute to purity and holiness and Christ-likeness. It knows it is different. And so you will often find in novels and stories that when certain brutal men are trying to make fun of a Christian, perhaps the greatest bully of all will come along and stop them and say, You must not do that, he is a good fellow. There is the difference, and I say that it is recognised on both sides.

But what are the things which thus differentiate us? Let me give you John Bunyan's answer to my question. I am saying that the Christian, because he is a Christian, is altogether unlike the man of the world and that he and the man of the world are aware of it. Let John Bunyan say it in his Pilgrim's Progress.

"Then I saw in my dream that when they were got out of the wilderness, they presently saw a town before them, and the name of that town is Vanity"; (Paul speaks of men walking in the vanity of their minds!) - "and at the town there is a Fair kept, called Vanity Fair; it is kept all the year long; it beareth the name of Vanity Fair, because the town where it is kept is lighter than Vanity; and also because all that is there sold, or that cometh thither, is vanity; as is the saying of the wise, All that cometh is vanity".

"This Fair is no new-erected business, but a thing of ancient standing. I will shew you the original of it." (and he then quotes Ecclesiastes 1:2 and certain particular verses.) "Almost five thousand years ago, there were Pilgrims walking to the Celestial City, as these two honest persons are; and Beelzebub, Apollyon, and Legion, with their companions, perceiving by the path that the Pilgrims made, that their way to the City lay through this Town of Vanity, they contrived here to set up a Fair; a Fair wherein should be sold all sorts of vanity, and that it should last all the year long. Therefore, at this Fair, are all such merchandise sold, as houses, lands, trades, places, honours, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, and delights of all sorts; as whores, bawds, wives, husbands, children, masters, servants, lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not. And, moreover, at this Fair, there is at all times to be seen, juggling, cheats, games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that of every kind." (This is wonderful literature, is it not? It is still more wonderful spiritually.) "Here are to be seen too, and that for nothing, thefts, murders, adulteries, false swearers, and that of a blood-red colour."

"And, as in other Fairs of less moment, there are several rows, and streets, under their proper names, where such and such wares are vended; so here likewise you have the proper places, rows, streets (viz. countries and kingdoms), where the wares of this Fair are soonest to be found. Here is the Britain Row, the French Row, the Italian Row, the Spanish Row, the German Row, where several sorts of vanities are to be sold. But as, in other Fairs, some one commodity is the chief of all the Fair, so the ware of Rome and her merchandise is greatly promoted in this Fair; only our English nation, with some others, have taken a dislike thereat." (That was, remember, three hundred years ago!)

"Now as I said, the way to the Celestial City lies just through this Town where this lusty Fair is kept; and he that would go to the City, and yet not go through this Town, must needs go out of the World. The Prince of princes himself, when here, went through this Town to his own Country, and that upon a Fair-day too. Yea, and as I think, it was Beelzebub, the chief Lord of this Fair, that invited him to buy of his vanities; yea, would have made him Lord of the Fair, would he but have done him reverence as he went through the Town; yea, because he was such a Person of Honour, Beelzebub had him from street to street, and shewed him all the kingdoms of the world in a little time, that he might, if possible, allure that blessed One to cheapen and buy some of his vanities: but he had no mind to the merchandise, and therefore left the Town without laying out as much as one farthing upon these vanities. This Fair, therefore, is an ancient thing, of long standing, and a very great Fair."

"Now these Pilgrims, as I said, must needs go through this Fair. Well, so they did; but behold even as they entered into the Fair, all the people in the Fair were moved, and the Town itself, as it were, in a hubbub, about them, and that for several reasons; for,

'First', The Pilgrims were clothed with such kind of raiment as was diverse from the raiment of any that traded in that Fair. The people, therefore, of the Fair, made a great gazing upon them. Some said they were fools; some, they were bedlams; and some, they were outlandish men.

'Secondly', And as they wondered at their apparel, so they did likewise at their speech; for few could understand what they said: they naturally spoke the language of Canaan, but they that kept the Fair were the men of this World; so that, from one end of the Fair to the other, they seemed barbarians each to the other.

'Thirdly', But that which did not a little amuse the merchandisers was, that these Pilgrims set very light by all their wares; they cared not so much as to look upon them; and if they called upon them to buy, they would put their fingers in their ears, and cry, 'Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity'; and look upwards, signifying that their trade and traffic was in Heaven."

Notice Bunyan's three reasons. I believe they are as true and as valid today as they have ever been! The Christian is careful even in the matter of dress and appearance. He is not governed by Vanity Fair, with all its sex appeal so-called, and all its enticements to evil and all the inflaming of the passions. The Christian is careful and modest in dress. And likewise in speech: not only in the things he talks about, but the way in which he talks about them. And thirdly, the Christian is not interested in the vanities and the trinkets that are being sold still in Vanity Fair. He is interested in the merchandise of heaven. His treasure and his heart are in heaven. "But you have not so learned Christ!" Thank God for the gospel of salvation that delivers us from the enticements of Vanity Fair!

Breadth, Length, Depth, Height

By Martyn-Lloyd Jones

We now come to the actual petition which was offered by the Apostle for the Ephesians. It is that, having been rooted and grounded in love, they may be fully able to comprehend with all saints "what is the breadth, and the length, and the depth, and the height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge". We must remind ourselves that we are dealing, not with our love to God and to Christ and to the brethren, but with His love to us. So far we have looked at it very generally. We now proceed to consider it in a more detailed manner. Before we examine the nature or the character of that knowledge we must consider the knowledge itself, and find out what can be known of the love of God. The Apostle sets this before us in an extraordinary manner in the words I have just quoted.

The terminology used by the Apostle in and of itself suggests vastness. And there is no doubt that he chose to describe it in this four-dimensional manner in order to give that very impression. It is interesting to speculate as to why he decided to do this. I agree with those who say that probably he had still in his mind what he had been saying at the end of the second chapter, before he began on the digression which occupies the first thirteen verses of this chapter. There he had been describing the Church as "a holy temple in the Lord", as a great building in which God takes up His abode and in which He dwells. I am ready to believe that that was still in his mind, and that as he thought of the vastness of the Church as an enormous temple, he felt it to be a good way of describing the love of Christ to His people. It is similar to the breadth, length, depth and height of such a great building.

Whether that is so or not, the Apostle was certainly concerned to bring out the vastness of this love. Indeed in doing so he almost contradicts himself by using a figure of speech which is called oxymoron. He prays that we may "know" the love of Christ "which passeth knowledge". How can you know something which cannot be known? How can you define something which is so great that it cannot be defined? What is the point of talking about measurements if it is immeasurable and eternal? But, of course, there is no contradiction here. What the Apostle is saying is that, though this love of Christ is itself beyond all computation, and can never be truly measured, nevertheless it is our business to learn as much as we can about it, and to receive as much of it as we can possibly contain. So it behoves us to look at this description which he gives of the love of Christ.

We are about to look into something which is so glorious and endless that it will be the theme of contemplation of all the saints, not only in this world, but also in the world which is to come. We shall spend our eternity in gazing upon it, and wondering at it, and in being astounded by it. But it is our business to start upon this here and now in this life. It has ever been one of the characteristics of the greatest saints that they have spent much time in meditating upon the love of Christ to themselves and to all God's people. Nothing has given them greater joy. Indeed this is a characteristic of love at all levels; it delights in thinking not only of the object of its love, but also of the love it receives. Nothing therefore should give greater joy to all God's people than to meditate upon this love of Christ. Indeed, our chief defect as Christians is that we fail to realize Christ's love to us. How often have you thought about this? We spend time thinking about our activities and our problems, but the most important necessity in the Christian life is to know Christ's love to us, and to meditate upon it. This has always been the spring and the source of the greatest activity that has ever been manifested in the long history of the Christian Church. So let us try to look at it in terms of the dimensions which the Apostle uses.

Have you ever considered the breadth of this love? There are several places in Scripture where this particular dimension is put before us in a striking manner. In the Book of Revelation, for instance, we find the words: ". . . and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue and people, and nation". And again: ". . . and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands" (5:9, 11). The Book of Revelation seems to be particularly interested in the breadth of Christ's love. As it gives us the picture of the glorified saints, and of the Son of God with His redeemed, it uses these figures: "After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the Lamb" (7:9). One day, in the glory, we shall see that perfectly. But in a discouraging time like this in the history of the Church, what can be more encouraging and more exhilarating than to think of this breadth of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ? As Christians we are but a handful of people in this country today, a mere small percentage. That thought sometimes tends to depress us and to discourage us. The antidote to it is to consider the breadth of Christ's love.

The ultimate cause of the failure of the Jews was that they never grasped this particular dimension. They thought that salvation was only for the Jew. But those of them whose eyes were opened by the Spirit, including the Apostle himself, who was "a Hebrew of the Hebrews", and had once held this exclusive view, had come to see that that narrow, naturalistic dimension was altogether wrong, and that in Christ there is "neither Gentile nor Jew, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free" (Col 3:11). Nothing is more encouraging and invigorating than to recollect that even in these days of religious declension there are in the world, in every country, in every continent - though differing in colour, in culture, in background, in almost everything men and women meeting together regularly to worship God and to thank Him for His dear Son and His great salvation. In the glory we shall all be amazed at this, as we realize what the love of God in Christ has accomplished in spite of sin and hell and the devil.

Ten thousand times ten thousand,
In sparkling raiment bright,
The armies of the ransomed saints
Throng up the steeps of light.
'Tis finished, all is finished,
Their fight with death and sin;
Fling open wide the golden gates,
And Jet the victors in!

That is the glorious prospect on which we must dwell and meditate.

We have no conception of the greatness of this plan of salvation and of its scope. In Luke's Gospel we are told that certain people came to our Lord one day and asked the question, "Are there few that be saved?" (13:23). I do not know the precise answer to that question, but I do know that Scripture teaches that we shall be astounded when we see all the redeemed gathered in - the "fulness of the Gentiles", the "fulness of Israel", "all Israel" saved, and the redeemed standing in the presence of their Redeemer. It is not surprising that the Apostle should pray so earnestly that these Ephesians might know this because this changes your entire outlook when you tend to feel depressed, when you are tempted to doubt whether there is any future for the Church seeing that we are but a handful of people. The answer is to look at the breadth of Christ's love, to look ahead, to look into the glory and see the final result of His finished work. Once you begin to realize the breadth of His love you will lift up your head again, your heart will begin to sing once more, and you will realize that you are having the precious privilege of being one humble member in a mighty army, one in this thronging multitude who will spend their eternity in the presence of the Lamb of God, and enjoy Him for ever. The breadth of His love!

But let us attempt to look also at the length of His love. I am convinced that the Apostle specified these particular measurements in order to encourage the Ephesians, and us through them, to work this out in our minds. To meditate upon the love of God in an abstract manner is not very profitable. We have to work it out in detail as it has been revealed. The length surely conveys the endless character of the love of Christ. Sometimes we read in Scripture about the "everlasting" love of God -"I have loved thee with an everlasting love" (Jer 31:3)- Have you ever considered the eternity of Christ's love towards you and towards all the saints? The dimension of length reminds us that this is a love which began in eternity. It was always there. The superiority of the Reformers, the Puritans and the evangelical leaders of the eighteenth century over us is seen in the fact that they were more theologically-minded than we are. We foolishly think that the most important thing is to be practical. We agree that the practical is most important; but the men who have accomplished most in this world have always been theologically-minded. A man who rushes into activity without studying theory is finally seen to be a fool. Think of a man who desires to begin to play with atomic power without knowing something about it!

The great evangelical leaders of the past saw the importance of theology and doctrine, and they spoke and wrote much about what they called the Covenant of Redemption which led in turn to the Covenant of Grace. What they meant was that, before time, before the world and man were ever created, an agreement was entered into between God the Father and God the Son. It was an agreement concerning the salvation of those who were to be saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. The Fall of man was foreseen, everything was known; and the Son, as the Representative of this new humanity, entered into a covenant with His Father that He would save them and redeem them. The Father covenanted with the Son to grant certain privileges and blessings to the people who were now given to the Son.

How important it is to meditate upon such a theme! To do so brings us at once to the realization that the love of Christ to His own began before time, away back in eternity. Christ's love to us did not suddenly come into being, it was there before the beginning of time. Hence we read that our names were "written in the Lamb's book of life from the foundation of the world" (Rev 13:8; 17:8). This is, to me, one "of the most staggering things of all, that I was known by Christ in eternity. l, in particular, and every one of us who belong to Him, in particular. We were known to Him, and our names were written in His book. What a dignity it adds to human life, and to our existence in this world, to know that He has set His heart upon us, that His affections rested upon us even in eternity! That is the beginning - if such a term is possible - of the length of His love towards us. Before time!

But let us look at this dimension of length as it works out in life in this world. The love of Christ for His own is from eternity to eternity. It began in eternity, and it continues in time. We can therefore always be sure that it will never change, that it will never vary, that it will always be the same. "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever" (Heb 13:8). And His love is always the same. There are no interruptions in it. This "length" is an unbroken line. Whatever may happen, it goes on; it is not a variable, it is a constant. It does not suddenly cease, and then start again. "Thine is an unchanging love". It is a line, a straight line, it is not variable. It is a love that never gives us up or lets us go; it is a love that never despairs of us.

One of the most perfect expressions of this element of dimension is found in our Lord's own parable of the prodigal son. In spite of the fact that the younger son had been a fool and had gone to the far country, spurning the love that had been shown him in his home, and had wasted his substance on the gaudy and tawdry pleasures of that far country, his father still loved him and was waiting for his return and showered blessings upon him. This is the picture of the love of Christ towards His own patient, long-suffering, bearing with us, never giving us up. Nothing is more wonderful than to realize that, even when we in our folly turn our backs upon the Lord, and even sin grievously against Him, His love still remains. George Matheson's hymn expresses it perfectly: "O Love, that wilt not let me go". It is a love that follows us wherever we may go; it "will not" let us go. God has said, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee".

How important it is that we should meditate upon this love and contemplate it! It is because we fail to do so that we tend to think at times that He has forgotten us, or that He has left us. When troubles and problems and trials come, and we meet difficulties and disappointments, we tend to ask, "Where is His love?" The answer is that it is there, always there. The fault is in us, that we cannot see it, and have not meditated upon it, have not realized its eternal character, and have not grasped its dimension of length. The Apostle Paul expresses this truth in these words: "I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height, nor depth nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom 8: 38-39). Nothing can ever cause it to change or to fail. As Augustus Toplady says:

Things future, nor things that are now,
Not all things below or above,
Can make Him His purpose forego,
Or sever my soul from His love.

What comfort, what consolation, what strength it gives; what a stay in times of trial and adversity! If He has set His heart and His affection upon you, they will remain there. Nothing will ever be able to pluck you out of His hand, nothing will ever rob you of that love. Nothing! If hell be let loose, if everything goes against you, nothing will ever cause Him to let you go.

And this will continue even into eternity. It has started in eternity, it manifests itself in time, and it goes on again into eternity. This line is unbroken. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews states it thus: "Wherefore" - in other words, because Christ has an eternal priesthood -"He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them" (7:25). He will save us "to the uttermost". Nothing will be left undone. Whatever may happen, His love for His own will continue until the plan of redemption has been completed. Our Lord is in heaven making intercession for us now, and He will always be there. He is not like the earthly priests of the Old Testament dispensation who went in and out of the Holiest of all. They lived and did their work, and then they died and others had to take their place. "He ever liveth"; He is always there and always will be. That gives us some idea of the length of His love.

But let us look at the depth of His love. As we look at each dimension we are tempted to say that it is the most wonderful of all, the truth being that that is true of each one! As we consider the depth we can do nothing better than to read what the Apostle wrote to the Philippians in the second chapter, where he shows that the depth of Christ's love can be seen in two main respects. First, in what He did! How guilty we are of reading hurriedly and perhaps thoughtlessly some of the most staggering words ever penned. In eternity our Lord was "in the form of God". He was God the Son in the bosom of the Father from all eternity. But the Apostle tells us that "He thought it not robbery to be equal with God". That means that He did not regard His equality with God as a prize to be held on to, to be held on to at all costs. Rather He humbled Himself, He divested Himself of those signs of His eternal glory. And He came into this world of sin and shame in the likeness of man, in the form of a man.

This is entirely beyond understanding; as the Apostle says, it is "the love of Christ which passeth knowledge". These are facts. He deliberately did not hold on to what He had a right to hold on to, but rather humbled Himself, and entered into the Virgin's womb, and took unto himself of human nature, and came and lived as a man in this world. Recall what we are told about the poverty and the lowliness of the home into which He was born. Recall what happened to Him while He was in this world, how He performed a menial task; He who was equal with the Father, the Son of God eternal.

Next consider what He suffered at the hands of men, the misunderstanding, the hatred, the malice and the spite. Think of His suffering from weariness and hunger and thirst. Think of men laying cruel hands upon Him, arresting Him and trying Him, mocking Him and jeering at Him, spitting in His most holy face. Think of cruel men condemning Him to death and scourging Him. Look at Him staggering under the weight of the heavy cross on His way to Golgotha. Look at Him nailed upon the tree, and listen to His expressions of agony at the thirst He endured and the pain He suffered. Think of the terrible moment when our sins were laid upon Him. He even lost sight of the face of His Father for the one and only time, and gave up the ghost and died, and was buried and laid in a grave. He, the Author of life, the Creator of everything, lies dead in a grave. Why did He do all this? The astounding answer is, because of His love for you and me; because He loved us. Such is the depth of His love. There is no other explanation.

His love shows yet greater and deeper when we remember that there was nothing in us to call forth such love. "All we like sheep have gone astray". We all have "come short of the glory of God". In our natural state we all were hateful and hopeless creatures. That we may have some true conception of our actual state and condition, and the depth of His love, let us turn to what Paul tells us about the condition of mankind until the grace of God in Christ laid hold upon us. We find it in the third chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, where we read, "There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongue they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God" (vv. 10-19). It was for such people that Christ came, enduring the Cross and despising the shame. The Apostle makes the same point in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. Our Lord had said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends"; but says Paul, "God commendeth His love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" and "If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled unto God by the death of His Son. . ." He did all this for sinners, for His enemies, for those who were vile and full of sin and who had nothing to commend them. That is the measure of the depth of His love. He came from heaven, He went down to the depths and rose again for such people. It is only as we meditate upon these things and realize their truth that we begin to know something about His love.

That brings us, in turn, to the height of His love. By this dimension the Apostle expresses God's ultimate and final purpose for us. Or we may say that this is the way in which he describes the height to which God proposes to raise us. Most of us tend to think of salvation only in terms of forgiveness, as if the love of Christ only purchases for us the forgiveness of our sins. Anyone who stops at that has clearly never known anything about the height of the love of Christ. Something of this height is seen in the fact that He died not only that we might be forgiven; He died to make us good. He died not only that our sins might be blotted out, but also that we might be given a new birth; not merely to save us from punishment, but also that we might be made children of God, sons of God, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ. Such is His purpose for us, and all He did had that end in view. Furthermore, having given us this new birth, this new principle of life, He causes to dwell in us the same Holy Spirit that was in Himself. "God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him", we are told (John 3:34). He gives the same Spirit by measure to us. That is the height of His love to us.

But, as the Apostle has already been reminding these Ephesians, His love to us is so great that He has actually joined us to Himself. We are united with Christ, He has made us part of Himself, of His own body. That is why we were "quickened with Him" and "raised with Him" and are "seated in the heavenly places" with Him. In the fifth chapter of the Epistle he goes on to say: "We are members of his body, of his flesh and of his bones". It is His love that has done that for us. But we read in the Epistle to the Philippians that He is not only saving us in a spiritual sense, He is even going to save our bodies. He purposes to redeem us entirely, so we look for the coming from heaven of the Saviour, "who shall change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself" (3:20-21). Have we realized that Christ will not be satisfied until our very body is glorified as His own body was glorified?

We must go even beyond that, and remember how in His last prayer on earth to His Father, He prayed these words, "Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory" (John 17:24). Our Lord's love toward us knows no bounds; His desire for us is that we should be with Him and see something of that glory which He has shared with the Father from all eternity. He is not satisfied with purchasing our forgiveness and delivering us from the pollution of this sinful world, He wants us to be there with Him in the glory and to spend our eternity there.

The Apostle John in his first Epistle, describing this height, says: "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth, us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is" (3:1-2). A lover always desires that the object of his love should share all his privileges and blessings and enjoyments, and so our Lord desires that we should enjoy something of His eternal glory. He will not be satisfied until, as the Apostle says in the fifth chapter of this Epistle, we shall be "a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish" (v. 27). This is His ambition for the Church and for all whom He loves. We shall be glorified in spirit, in soul, and in body: there will be no fault, no blemish, no wrinkle. We shall be perfect and entire and filled with "all the fulness of God". The final word is, "and so shall we ever be with the Lord" (I Thess 4:17).

Thus we have tried feebly to catch a glimpse of the love of Christ to us. Have you been feeling sorry for yourself, and somewhat lethargic in a spiritual sense? Have you been regarding worship and prayer as tasks? Have you allowed the world the flesh or the devil to defeat you and to depress you? The one antidote to that is to meditate upon and to contemplate this love of Christ. Have you realized its breadth, its length, its depth, its height? Have you realized who and what you are as a Christian? Have you realized that Jesus is "the Lover of your soul", that He has set His affection upon you? Have you realized the height of His ambition for you? "Child of God, shouldst thou repine"? Are we but to shuffle through this world? We should rather respond to John Cennick's exhortation:

Children of The heavenly King,
As ye journey, sweetly sing;
Sing your Saviour's worthy praise,
Glorious in His works and ways.

One great cause of the present condition of the Church is that we do not know Christ's love to us. We spend out time with petty things, and in fussy activities and discussions. Were we to be full of this love and of the knowledge of this love we would be entirely transformed. It is this knowledge that makes us mighty. That is why the Apostle prayed without ceasing that these Ephesians might "with all saints comprehend what is the breadth and length and the depth and the height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge". Oh that we might know it, and grow in it and rejoice in it. Let us follow Cennick as he continues in his hymn:

Shout, ye little flock, and blest,
You on Jesus' throne shall rest;
There your seat is now prepared,
There your kingdom and reward.

Lift Your eyes, ye sons of light,
Zion's city is in sight;
There our endless home shall be,
There our Lord we soon shall see.

Fear not, brethren; joyful stand
On the borders of your land;
Christ your Lord, the Father's Son,
Bids you undismayed go on.

And then let us join Cennick in saying:

Lord, obediently we go,
Gladly leaving all below;
Only Thou our Leader be,
And we still will follow Thee.