BEING CONFORMED TO THE IMAGE OF GOD’S SON
Romans 8: 28-30
Philippians 3: 20-21
1 John 3: 1-3
JL The thought in mind for this reading was to consider the blessed divine proposal that we should be conformed to the image of God’s Son. The first section read in Romans seems rather to present the thought as an answer to the purpose of God, and outlines steps taken by God to accomplish what He has designed according to His own love and predestinated us to be brought into.
In the second passage in Philippians we have a particular reference to our bodies, currently bodies of humiliation, being brought into conformity to His body of glory, and the section there rather seems to be presented as an act of power to be finally accomplished by the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, who will bring about that necessary transformation in order that what is suited to the mind of God in the eternal state of blessedness, that we will be brought into shall be fully prepared for.
And then in 1 John it is very much identified with the Father’s love: some fine thoughts connected with what God has been pleased to do bringing us into the family, the children of God, and indicating that the finality of what will apply has not yet been fully disclosed, except that we know “we shall be like him”. How comforting that thought is: “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”; but while in Philippians that final conformity will be brought about by an act of power on the part of the Lord Jesus, John also brings in this additional thought that it should create personal exercise with us now to become more like Him, everyone having “this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure”.
No doubt there are many other scriptures that can be drawn upon to help in the enquiry but that may provide a basis for us to look at the thought.
RWMcC It is a wonderful contemplation, is it not, conformity to His Son? We know that the Father’s delight is in His Son. We are brought into a place of nearness in His love but in a sense it is more than that, is it not? It is conformity to: where it says when “we see him we shall be like him”. It is the same order, is it not?
JL I think it is a very blessed step forward in relation to what engaged us in our earlier reading, because clearly Christ will remain our Object throughout eternity, but this is a further thought that He will not only be before me as the blessed Object of my affections, and the Object too of the assembly’s affections, the blessed Bridegroom.. We know “we shall be like him”, we shall “be conformed to the image of his Son”. I suppose the full answer to that is sonship for the saints to be brought into and nothing less would satisfy God. It is a marvellous thing to think of an entire universe that will speak to God of Christ in its every feature.
RWMcC It is all secured on moral grounds. There is no question to be raised is there? Questions all done away with; everything will be in perfect accord with the Father’s mind, God’s mind.
JL Yes, that is a very important thing to carry forward in our thoughts as well. We often say that what will, in that respect, be accomplished will be in no way a veneer over something which is rather unsuitable, but in depth and fullness everything will be in perfect accord with the mind of God because of the way it has been brought about. Not only is it based on the purpose of God, but through His calling, alerting us and bringing us into the understanding of what He has in mind in being justification, and then being glorified. These steps we may get help on as we enquire together.
RDP Ephesians speaks about “until we all arrive …at the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ”, chap 4: 13. It speaks about the work of the ministry, what has come down as the result of an exalted Christ, the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, “with a view to the work of the ministry … until we all arrive … at the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ”. I have been thinking about that. Somewhere in ministry (JT vol 33 p 266-7) I have read that that is the Christ of the gospels, that God will have the features of that Man seen all over again in myriads, and then His triumph will be complete: He will have Christ again.
JL Yes, that is very attractive. We can understand that God would not be satisfied with anything less, and it is altogether marvellous that He should purpose that for us, to bring us into the blessedness of His own delight in Christ. I think these are steps taken in the process of us all arriving are proceeding now, are they not?. I think that is what was in your mind, and we trust in some way even today there is progress forward to that point of increase in stature until there is final conformity brought about. Nevertheless we have this assurance God will not be defeated in His purpose and it will be brought about, will it not?
RDP I think we think of the ministry as being behind a desk or something but “the work of the ministry” involves the apostles, it involves the evangelists, it involves the shepherds and teachers: all are part of the work of the ministry coming from a heavenly One, do you think, with a view to the unity of the Spirit, the unity of the faith, the knowledge of the Son of God, and the result will be that, perhaps in some small way, Christ will be seen here in the bodies of those who love Him for God’s pleasure?
JL That presents it most attractively. I think too the section here includes the thought that the present exercises of discipline and grief and sorrow passed through according to God’s wonderful ways all contribute to this glorious end for Himself. “We do know that all things work together for good to those who love God”. Some of these things may be very trying meantime, but the love of God lies behind all and His assured purpose at the basis of all His operations.
RDP I remember preaching once from that scripture, “All things work together for good to those that love God”. An old brother took me aside after the preaching: he said ‘You must complete it’ – it says “to those who are called according to purpose”. Things do not work together for the sinful man for good, but to those who are called according to purpose.
HTF Do you think that we do know? Where we began to read “we do know”: from the context it is more about formation, a cumulative formation rather than knowledge. It would not exclude knowledge but there is a substantiality to it, do you think?
JL Yes, and I think there is a lot too, and we were saying a little about this in private conversation before the meeting, that we do know and cling to, but a process of it being worked out often very greatly tests us, and we feel for some of our brethren who are going through present sorrows and griefs at the moment, and they too would know that these things according to God’s mind work out for such blessing, but it calls for patience and much grace and endurance in the process of this glorious end being arrived at, does it not?
PM Could you say please why it is “conformed to the image of his Son”?
JL I would like help myself about that expression. I was pondering over it a little and wondering what all might be involved, but at least I can say I had this thought that it would be some representation of what yields delight to God, so that all that God beholds will represent in some way features of Christ that His heart can delight in; but can you please add to it?
PM Does it link with what the apostle says that when He comes He shall be “wondered at in all that have believed”, (2 Thess 1: 10), that there is a full and complete representation of what has come out in Christ?
JL Yes, I do think that is right. What a wonderful answer there will be then in coming glory bearing its own witness to the triumph of divine workmanship, that God has brought about a full representation of all that delights His heart in Christ, the One who men sought to get rid of and crucified. It will be a triumph over all that came in by way of evil, will it not, that God will have a full representation of that blessed Man to delight His heart eternally?
DCB So is that what is in view in “so that he should be the firstborn among many brethren”? We are not to be conformed for our own sakes exactly: we are to be conformed for His sake, so that He has a suitable company and He has a fresh glory surrounding Him, a company that would entirely conform to Him.
JL Yes, that is very good. It is not only in that respect that we shall be brought into conformity to the image of God’s own Son but that He, while finding all that suits Himself in everyone will at the same time have the place of supremacy in glory among them all. That is a marvellous thought. I almost hesitate to use language that is too common or degraded but it is not the idea of some mass production, but there is distinctive workmanship in each and Christ supreme among His own.
RWMcC Again, it is not robotic either, is it?
JL It never could be. Life and love lie below all this: perhaps I should say love and life. Love is really the heart of it all, is it not, springing from God’s own affection? Why else should we be predestinated were it not for the surpassing sovereign activities of divine love?
RJG That is Corinthians, “such as the heavenly one, such also the heavenly ones”, 1 Cor 15: 48. Does that link with your thought?
JL It does very much; that is a good link, thank you. That would bear on the thought of the image. There will be a representation of heavenly character seen in the saints corresponding to all that came out in such full perfection in that blessed heavenly Man.
RDP Romans is essentially to the individual really but Christ in totality could not be seen in one person; it would take every believing saint.
JL That is essential.
RDP So it comes into Ephesians when you start to get the company. This is where it begins, does it not? This is the truth set out in what God had in His heart in the preaching of the glad tidings.
JL I think what you say is very interesting. I feel happy to confirm that it could never be secured in any one individual, but equally true it could not be secured without each individual, and that will be part of the triumph of God’s operations that there will not be one single vessel, we may say, left out of the completion of all His marvellous ways according to His predestination and purpose in love, would you say?
Have you got something to say about these steps: called, justified, glorified?
RWMcC I am glad to get help: what you have in mind is sequence to them, is that right?
JL It springs first of all, from being predestinated, which takes it clearly back to God’s own sovereign purpose in love, does not it? But then we were entirely in the darkness and out of keeping morally with all that God was looking for; so in comes the thought of His calling. We should be awakened and then this moral step taken to bring us into suitability through justification, discharging every liability that would have brought out a hindering element to this proper representation of Christ in the saints. Every hindering element has been removed, has it not?
AM I was just pondering the fact that the apostle takes these details. There are many things he could have said, could he not? He could have said ‘reconciled’ for instance, but he takes these matters; called, justified and glorified. Is it that they should be seen: that which entirely speaks of Christ for God?
JL In a way it is entirely morally right. I just think it is a very precious thing that despite all that Satan brought in to frustrate the designs of God’s love there will be a perfect evidence of the total triumph of God in Christ over every opposing element. The saints before Him without a charge against them, brought into conformity to the image of His Son and glorified in perfect suitability to be before God eternally and Christ supreme among them. What a marvellous triumph!
KJM Is a difference between the children of flesh and the children of promise in the next chapter? I wonder whether these steps that you speak of could only be true of the children of promise.
JL Yes, I am sure that is right. What can we say but give God thanks for that? We had no way of electing ourselves into that: it is because we have been predestinated: foreknown and predestinated. That is because of God’s actions bringing us into that area of sovereign blessing, is it not?
RDP Initially we may come into blessing as a result of real deep conviction of sin and conscious of the need of a Saviour - thank God for that - and we find that in Christ, but Mr Darby speaks in his poem about another call. He speaks about an earlier call that drew him from sin, but he says, ‘In other accents now …’. Do you think ‘calling’ is a kind of mature thought in the believer, linking not only with the relief of salvation but the sense of what is for God?
JL Yes; it would be my impression that the calling here is distinctive and specific, and not like the universal outgoings of grace in the glad tidings, which in one sense would be a calling of God alerting men to all that is in God’s heart in providing opportunity as a consequence of the work of Christ for all to come into blessing, but this is very specific to those predestinated. It shows how God has operated with each to awaken, just as Abraham so specifically was awakened by the calling of God, calling him out from his kindred and land. It would be something very specific, that we are brought into the understanding of and appreciation of, were you thinking?
RDP Yes. In Mr Darby’s The Call, we have the hymn in the book but go back to the poem, he speaks about a voice that had earlier called, and then he goes on to what we have in our hymn book:
Blest Lord, Thou spakest! ‘twas Thy voice
That led our hearts to Thee;
That drew us to that better choice
(Hymn 47).
Then he speaks about another call which, ‘Calls me from earth apart”. I wondered if there is a certain growth of maturity in the believer’s appreciation of God’s dealings with him in relation to the call here.
JL Yes, I think all that is very interesting. Some of these early brethren seem to have a very great appreciation of that. Mr Stoney speaks about the calling connecting with the race from earth to heaven, calling us apart out of this scene in our affections and interests altogether to another world where Christ is the Centre, vol 3 p143. There is something very gripping, if that is a suitable word, about that distinctive call, is there not?
RDP I think so. If the brethren go back to Mr Darby’s poem, he says,
Thy word; but now Thyself …
as if there is an onward further step in relation to the believer’s course down here. If the brethren go to the poem ‘The Call’, he sets it out really.
JL Yes, these touches are very interesting, embracing necessarily the value of the work of the Lord Jesus, but bringing us by the divine calling to the appreciation of the Person Himself, learning of God’s pleasure to bring us into conformity to the image of His Son. There is something supremely blessed about that.
JBI And God said to Abraham, “to the land that I will shew thee”, Gen 12: 1. Was it not blessed that God’s purpose and God’s ways with him were exactly as what God was going to show him?
JL Yes, very good: he responded to that call and it is important too that we have some appreciation of it. Our brother here has been referring to Mr Darby’s evident appreciation of that call, and his growing appreciation of it. Abraham and many others are outstanding examples of those who moved in response to the divine call, but part of my exercise today is that we might just appreciate the blessedness of it, and God’s purpose lying behind it, to bring us into conformity to the image of His Son for God’s own delight.
HTF In connection with the call the allusion to Abraham is important, because I was thinking of this reference, ‘calls me from earth apart’. It is remarkable, is it not; that God specifically spelled out to Abraham, “Lift up now thine eyes” (Gen 13: 14)so that in the Old Testament this was what was set before the patriarch, who is the father of us all, Rom 4: 12.
JL Yes, Abraham regarded it with deep interest. It was a major step in his life to leave his country and leave his kindred, leave his people. I think Mr James Taylor uses three different expressions in that. He said men might criticise him for being unpatriotic (vol 5 p8), anti-social and unnatural but Abraham in effect said, ‘No, the call of God has gripped my soul: I must move’. It is a fine thing to have an appreciation of the blessedness of the heavenly calling.
RWMcC Is the calling something we can resist or not?
JL It might be. In some way we might attempt to do so, but if the suggestion is that it could defy the purpose of God, I have to say that is impossible: so it may be it is not sufficiently appreciated by us at the start, and sufficiently responded to, but you ask me a difficult question because God cannot be defeated and He will work with us in view of His end being reached and He will not be defied about that, will He? I think as we get some impression of it, it surely begins to mean something vital in our souls, leading to appreciation of the work of Christ enabling us to be justified, set up in righteousness before God and glorified, which I suppose is a consequence of divine operations but with the added thought of the gift of the Holy Spirit too, glorified by such a gift.
DAB Mr Coates describes ‘foreknown, predestinated, called, justified, glorified!’ as ‘a golden chain reaching from eternity in the past to eternity in the future, and between the two dipping down’ into time (The Believer Established (vol 15) p11); as you might say, that it is unchangeable. The purposes of God cannot be affected by time here.
JL Yes, that is very good. That just confirms my thought, and shows how God will work despite, we may say, the poverty of the material, but God will ensure that there is an answer suited to Himself.
DCB Would you say something about the fact that “these also he has glorified”?
JL In my own mind I think it reflects two different things: the excellence of divine workmanship but also the gift of the Holy Spirit. The saints have been glorified through that, and by that means God has put the spirit of sonship into our hearts. What a wonderful glorious position to be brought into but is there more to it than that?
DCB I wondered if that related to sonship. We see the way in which the Lord says, “the glory thou hast given me I have given them” (John 17: 22), which has a strong relationship to sonship, but then the Spirit’s power making the spirit of adoption active in our hearts, Rom 8: 15.
JL Yes, very good.
Perhaps we should move on to the passage in Philippians. I rather connected the thought there with the wonderful final action of the Lord in power, transforming our bodies. We are awaiting “the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour”. It is an act of Christ as Saviour to bring about this transformation of our bodies, so that even in regard of the bodies of the saints there will be perfect conformity to His body of glory, and in that an answer for God’s delight as well.
RWMcC That will be another irresistible call.
JL Yes. I think we probably wisely would refer to 1 Corinthians 15 in that respect. I am quoting now from verse 53: “For this corruptible must needs put on incorruptibility, and this mortal put on immortality”. That belongs to God alone but by His operations we are brought into the good of that: immortality: “But when this corruptible shall have put on incorruptibility, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall come to pass the word written: Death has been swallowed up in victory”, v 54. It is a marvellous witness to the triumphant work of the Saviour, bringing about this complete overthrow of every attempt of Satan to disrupt God’s proposals in love and secure an answer in saints, even as to their bodies, conformed “to his body of glory”.
AM There can be no greater contrast than our body of humiliation and His body of glory, can there?
JL Many of the saints are feeling that, and to some extent we all do, and perhaps become a little more aware of it too as we grow older, though not necessarily on account of age; but we do feel we are in bodies of humiliation. What a wonderful prospect - bodies of glory. I read a remark of Mr Darby’s once that somewhat arrested me. He said in regard of his present body, ‘What a hut I am in’, comparing it with the house from heaven (Collected Writings vol 16 p397): it will be such a transformation. It was just the language he felt free to use at that juncture but it left an impression with me as if he was just thinking of a wonderful transformation, awaiting a house from heaven.
PM We have been reminded in the last week that even a babe has a body of humiliation. It does not await old age to have a body of humiliation; it is that order of man, but that was never so with Jesus.
JL No. Just so, it never was so: that body could not see corruption. He went into death, His own marvellous act in love, but these bodies of ours may well see corruption yet, and in any case they are bodies of humiliation, and there is to be a wonderful change brought about.
PM Death will never apply to that body of glory.
JL It could not possibly.
PM He lives in “power of an indissoluble life”, Heb 7: 16. What a Person He is.
JL Very good.
RDP One of the ways by which the devil thought he could thwart the work of God in Job was if he could touch Job in his body. I suppose we have to learn lessons, however committed, however bright we are. However your thought is that sometimes the fact of the body and its breakdown and its humiliation might look as if it gives the enemy an opportunity to overthrow God’s work, but He is going to change that body. It will never do, will it, but Satan’s challenge was against the body of Job?
JL I think the scripture is very interesting in that regard. We have seen, not the end of Job: maybe that is what Satan was hoping to accomplish to bring all Job’s thoughts and life and work to an end, but we have “seen the end of the Lord” (Jas 5: 11), the wonderful triumph of God’s workmanship - preserving through those awful trials that he passed through - a vessel for His own pleasure: one coming out with priestly grace, still at the end enriched and so blessed of God: what a marvellous victory!
HTF Thus “humiliation” is a purposeful word, is it not? It is intended to have a humbling consequence, do you think? We regret that; then it helps us in the acceptance. It is easy to say that, but it actually does have that intention. God has that intention in the present condition, do you think?
JL I think that. Do you think part of the effect of that is to increase the longing with us for the coming bodies of glory, to make us long for the appearing of the Saviour? We are not looking for continued blessing in that respect down here on this earth, “our commonwealth has its existence in the heavens”. Our true life is in association with Christ above, is it not, the Spirit giving us a present foretaste of what our true commonwealth is?
PM Is the service of the Spirit currently in quickening to give us a foretaste of what will actually be?
JL Well, I do think that, but say more please about how that actually operates because we still are in these bodies of humiliation, are we not?
PM I do not know that I could say very much about it at all, but do we not prove, perhaps in the divine presence and in contemplation, the quickening of our affections, and even sometimes you feel it in your body, that the Spirit is moving you in relation to the Man who is the object of the Father’s affections?
JL So we sometimes use on that account these two different words which I think I used in the previous reading, the actuality we await, but the reality we enjoy now by the Spirit, and that is our present situation, is it not? These real and living touches are communicated by the quickening power of the Holy Spirit, but the actuality of what we have to enter into we still await from the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour. I would like to just know what the brethren think about the use of the word Saviour there. What is your understanding of that?
DCB I think it is my father-in-law I quote saying that Christ’s last act of saviourhood is the transformation of our bodies.
JL What a wonderful action it will be. It will be an action of power; it will be a triumphant victory over every opposing thing that the enemy has brought in. Sin has deformed bodies: that is very evident all around us, all the effects of sin and bringing in death, but what a wonderful evidence of the triumphant victory of the Lord Jesus Christ finally as Saviour, even to the transforming of these bodies of the saints.
DCB I was wondering about the reference in 2 Corinthians, “For we know that if our earthly tabernacle house be destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens”, chap 5: 1. We are associated, are we not, with that body that will be provided which is entirely heavenly in origin and entirely suitable to that place?
JL That is new creation workmanship, is it? The bodies we have now are connected with the old creation, but this body we await forms part of God’s work in new creation, does it?
DCB Yes.
JL These will be bodies made suitable for the eternal state of things. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit God’s kingdom” (1 Cor 15: 50): bodies of flesh and blood are not furnished with the capability of enduring eternally in the blessedness of all that God has proposed, but our bodies of glory from God are able for that, “eternal in the heavens”. That will be one of the blessed consequences of what will yet be accomplished by Christ in transforming power,
RSH The preceding verse to the one you have just quoted in Corinthians is, “as we have borne the image of one made of dust, we shall bear also the image of the heavenly one”, 1 Cor 15: 49. Would the thought of “the heavenly one” link with this body of glory?
JL I am sure it does.
RSH What is not of this earth is heavenly?
JL It is a marvellous answer for God for the saints to be transformed into heavenly character, even as to the bodies of those that He will have before Him.
RWMcC Elsewhere the apostle speaks of it as a mystery, does he not? He says, “We shall not all fall asleep, but we shall all be changed”, 1 Cor 15: 51.
JL In what respect is it a mystery if he outlines what is to happen?
RWMcC Well, you can help us with that. It certainly is God’s action, is it not? It is the power with which He raised the Christ from the dead: I would like help.
JL I am just enquiring. It is clearly nothing common with man’s operations or activities or anything that belongs to this earth. In that respect, it is a mystery: it is something that is essentially from God. As was quoted a moment or two ago about the character of these bodies: they are heavenly, and there is no public evidence of them as yet. We are not going around with glorified bodies now: in that respect it is all a mystery but we have the positive assurance of the blessed reality of what is to come.
HTF We are not in conditions where we can understand that, but that is where faith is needed. Does that link to the mystery?
JL Yes; faith is essential meantime. We cling to these things, I am sure, and it is intended that we should do so in the midst of a world that is really collapsing all around us. What confidence it puts into the affections of the saints; what an uplift to our hearts as we see things deteriorating and going down hill. The whole world system is on the brink of collapse. How we have this wonderful assured mystery treasured in our souls!
JBI We come into the gain of it as we are subdued. Philippians 3 ends with the Lord subduing “all things to himself”. The light comes to those who submit to the Lord Jesus as Lord, do you think?
JL Yes; that is a very good thought. He has power to bring that about, but it would be a feature that is worked out suitably amongst saints at the present time, and not just a final abrupt intervention but something the subduing effect of which would be proceeding now, which Christ will bring to finality shortly as Saviour.
I thought in John’s epistle that there is a beautiful link with the Father’s love: “See what love the Father has given to us”. There is an element of mystery connected with these things but John says, “See”: “See what love the Father has given to us”. That would be in the eyes of our hearts, and by the Spirit’s help, that we are able to see these things, would you say?
RWMcC Yes, I think so. Do you think the Spirit’s hand would be in that?
JL Yes, surely, giving us to understand the immense privilege of being brought into the divine family. I am sure we have all noted before that the reference to children here is not a diminutive term, but is a reference really to the blessed relationship of being amongst the children of God.
PM Does the thought of “the children of God” involve character? They take after God Himself morally. Would that be right?
JL Yes, identified thereby; there are other reasons given, but they are identified thereby as being the children of God, because they are different in character: the family characteristics are completely different from what would mark a worldly family or something else that did not have its roots in the love of God. But “now are we children of God, and what we shall be has not yet been manifested; we know that if it is manifested we shall be like him”.
RDP This is something that the world does not understand: it says here, “For this reason the world knows us not, because it knew him not.” John says, “He was in the world … and the world knew Him not. He came to his own, and his own received him not”, John 1: 10, 11. There is a level of life which the world does not see, and it is a very affecting thing that this is something that can be known now, touched now by His Spirit.
JL In some way I think the world will ultimately see. The Lord Jesus makes reference to that in John 17, and I suppose the answer to that in some way will be when the heavenly city comes down, rendering witness to the world of divine workmanship, “having the glory of God”, Rev 21: 11. There will be something manifest then showing that the saints have been brought into conformity with the glorious conditions suited to God’s own mind, like Christ, coming down in all the heavenly excellence at that point. Would that be right?
RDP 2 Thessalonians says, “when he shall have come to be glorified in his saints and wondered at in all that have believed”, chap 1: 10. Christ will be seen in that world to come, and it will be manifested in those who believe. These are very precious things, are they not? There is an area of things that as far as the present time is concerned, the world does not see, it does not see the things of the Spirit, but when it does see, what it will see is Christ.
JL “I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and that thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me”, John 17: 23. There will yet be that remarkable witness come forth from God. I somewhat connect it in my own mind with the coming down of the holy city with its outgoing testimony to what God has wrought in the shining of His own workmanship. Would that be right?
RDP These are very precious things, but there is still much that we do not know, such as how it will be, do we? But you are thankful for these scriptures that say it will be, and this is part of the believer’s hope, is it not?
JL Yes; we know that it shall be, “for we shall see him as he is”. And then there is this present exercise. That was part of my reason for reading this scripture, “every one that has this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure”. We were noticing in Philippians what the Lord Himself as Saviour will bring about through an act of power, but this is something brought about through present exercise in the souls of the saints.
PM The reference in Colossians 3 is to the fact that “your life is hid with the Christ in God. When the Christ is manifested who is our life, then shall ye also be manifested with him in glory”, v 3, 4. That brings in the two sides, of what is hidden now that will be manifested then.
JL That helps, thank you, yes. And meantime, this exercise, is left with us in a practical way to work out. Final conformity will clearly be brought about, but steps towards moral conformity should be progressing now, should they?
RWMcC Yes, I was just reflecting that John presents things in black and white, does he not? “Every one that has this hope in him purifies himself”: there are no grey areas, are there? I might find in myself that I may feel I am not very conformed to this but that is the exercise raised. That is your exercise too that it should be so.
JL I am saying it should be so. Perhaps if John was here he would say everyone who has this hope is doing so. That is the black and white difference, is it?
RDP Abraham did not have the law; he went out under divine command and impulse. At one point it says, “this did not Abraham”, (John 8: 40), but there was no law or book that told him certain things he should not do. What filled his heart was that he was looking for ”the city that has foundations” (Heb 11: 10), and it made certain things incongruous to him as far as this world was concerned.
JL Yes, that is an interesting reference, showing that the fruit of the calling and the hope he enjoyed as a consequence had given him desires that sought after what was entirely acceptable and pleasing to God.
RDP Yes.
JL There were others too, like Moses; he did not want to have part in all the passing world in Egypt, did he? He would rather have a place amongst the people of God because something was operating there that has its end in glory; the end of Egypt was ruin, but the end of God’s work among His saints will be glory, will it not?
RDP It says, he saw “him who is invisible”, Heb 11: 27.
JL Yes, very good.
RDP To the eye of faith it was there, but it was invisible as far as man was concerned.
JBI Is it your exercise as to the first reading that the Lord Jesus becomes my true Object, and then that as He is my Object I see Him as He is? So that we shall be like Him, in conformity to Him, not only now, but spiritually now?
JL Yes, that in a way summarises my exercise. I was thinking in the first reading of all these several steps with their progressive thought in having Christ as my Object so that I might be preserved in every way in my affections, and increasingly drawn out towards Him, and I was thinking about all that was necessary for our preservation. But my thought in this reading was that, in a special way, this is for God’s delight. It will clearly be our delight as well, but it is especially in view of God’s own pleasure that He should have a whole universe reflecting Christ, and the saints who compose it bearing His image. What a wonderful answer for God’s delight! And Christ in His final triumphant action of power as Saviour of the body will transform these bodies of humiliation to ensure that that delight for God is brought about, even to our bodies. That is a marvellous thing!
HTF “Not that I have already obtained the prize, … but I pursue” (Phil 3: 12); is that a similar thought to this?
JL Yes, and in this respect too, how would you pursue? John would be saying, ‘As you pursue you should be exercised to be as He is’. We would not just gaily pursue our path in this world and make the best of things; it would be pursuing with definite exercise of soul to seek to be more like Christ day by day.
Grimsby
9th June 2018
Key to Initials:
D A Barlow, Sunbury; D C Brown, Edinburgh; H T Franklin, Grimsby; R S Hutson, Bedford; J B Ikin, Manchester; J Laurie, Brechin; A Martin, Buckhurst Hill; K J May, Maidstone; P Martin, Colchester; R J Gray, East Finchley, R W McClean, Grimsby; R D Plant, Birmingham