FULL ASSURANCE

Hebrews 10: 19-25; 6: 9-12

Colossians 2: 1-7

AMB   I will be glad of the help of the brethren in enquiring into these references to full assurance of faith, of hope and of understanding.  I wonder if we might be helped to see the value of full assurance.  The expression conveys that we are utterly convicted as to the truth that we have to do with, the truth of God as made known in Christ.  Full assurance is particularly needed to guard against slipping away, which is what is referred to in Hebrews, and to be maintained in the truth and in faithfulness to the Lord and in His testimony.  These scriptures also refer to entering into God’s presence, suggesting that full assurance is so important in responding to Him.  It excludes doubts and fears, and brings us into the good of what God’s mind is for believers.  We are not to doubt or fear, but to be fully assured.  Another word would be fully convicted, and Paul also speaks about being “fully persuaded”, Rom 4: 21.   A meeting like this gives us the opportunity to encourage one another in these things. 

         The reference in chapter 10 of Hebrews to “full assurance of faith” was written to Jewish believers who were accustomed to a system of sight rather than faith.  The writer says earlier, “He takes away the first that he may establish the second” (v 9), so that the system of sight and religious observance was superseded by a system of faith.  That system of faith is established, meaning that it is more real than the temporal Jewish system that it replaced.  For us, as believers, it would provide fresh stimulation to appreciate that the great system of faith that we have been brought into through God’s sovereign mercy is far more real than anything that is human or of the world around us. 

         The “full assurance of hope” in chapter 6 is to help us not to be sluggish.  I think that the hope that is set before the believer is the coming of the Lord.  That vital and living hope and the assurance that the Lord is coming - how soon that will be - saves us from settling down and becoming lethargic in our Christianity.

         Then “full assurance of understanding” in Colossians seems to go further.  What is in mind in Colossians is full growth and “full knowledge of the mystery of God”. 

DAB   These are three things that are provided by God that I can place a lot more confidence in than I actually do.  We tend to think of them as partial counterbalances to our own uncertainty and so on, but they are rocks.

AMB   I feel that this ministry is for myself more than anyone.  Naturally we tend to relate things to ourselves and in ourselves we find doubts and fears, but the Christian has faith in the blessed Person of the Lord Jesus, Someone outside of ourselves who is absolutely unchanging - “the same yesterday, and to-day, and to the ages to come", Heb 13: 8.  We have complete confidence in that One.  We say these things, but the Holy Spirit would help us to enjoy the full reality of them.  Part of my exercise is that we should be established in the truth and in our faith, so that what we believe becomes operative in our souls.  We are responsible to believe, and as we do so and receive the truth of what God says to us He gives us faith that becomes operative; it changes us.

DAB   Hebrews 11 brings out that we naturally judge by appearances, as the world does; it is how the world of science operates, by deducing things from their appearance, although we do not learn the origin of anything from how it appears; but there are things that do not appear that are actually more substantial and more real than the things we tend to use as our reference points.

AMB   “Now faith is the substantiating of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”, Heb 11: 1.  Do I know about things being substantiated in my heart, and am I convicted as to things that are not seen?

RHB   Does the reference to Christ in verse 23, “for he is faithful who has promised”, give us a clue as to how we could be preserved from being wavering?  We may look for things happening in the world to confirm what we have been taught: if they all fall into place we are confirmed, and if they do not we might start to waver; but is the full assurance and conviction believing what God has said because it is God who said it, and because it is centred in One who is faithful?  I was thinking as you were speaking as to that reference, “No one believing on him shall be ashamed” (Rom 10: 11); does that bring assurance as we see the One in whom these things are centred?

AMB   What you say is absolutely true and very helpful.  We place our faith in a blessed Man; He is God incarnate.  As the writer to the Hebrews has been explaining in these chapters, He has fulfilled everything that was spoken of Him, and He has accomplished the work He was given to do.  He is ascended now; He is the One who is in heaven for us as our High Priest.  He is beyond all circumstances; He is unassailable in His exalted and glorified position.  Our faith is in Him, One who is utterly sure, the Man who is our Rock. These may all be obvious things to a believer, but we need to encourage one another that they might be worked out to a result in us.

DCW   The last verse of chapter 10 is an expression of full assurance, “we are not drawers back to perdition, but of faith to saving the soul”, v 39.

AMB   It is an exhortation not to draw back.  Conviction would help us as to that.

DCW   Following comes into it; the Lord’s last words to Peter in John 21, “Follow thou me”, v 22.  So if we are following we are not drawing back.  Hebrews 11 brings out the faith line, as we speak of it. 

AMB   We are responsible to follow and responsible to occupy ourselves with Christ.  That is a very important matter; it is fundamental to the spiritual health of every Christian to occupy ourselves with Christ.  We are responsible also to believe the word and as we exercise that responsibility we get help.  Is that where the power of the Spirit comes in to confirm our faith?

PJW   Do you think what Paul says to the Corinthians would confirm what is being said?  “Now he that establishes us with you in Christ … is God”, 2 Cor 1: 21?  I was thinking of the word, “in Christ”.  As we lay hold of the fact that we are in Him that would keep us steady.

AMB   It would indeed.  What you are saying is helpful - everything that God is doing is in Christ.  He has no other man in mind and God is operating in this present time of faith and responsibility to develop features of Christ in believers, and we need to be with God in that.  As our outlook is towards Christ and our desire is to be formed after Him, to be more like Him, we have the resource and the power for that in the Holy Spirit within us.  We need to use the divine resources that are available to us.  As we do so, the result is assurance; we are convicted as to the truth of what we are speaking of. 

AM   Does the reference to the Lord as the great Priest whom we have bear on that?  There is One above whom we have; we can, in that sense, lay hold on Him.  Does that help us with our faith?

AMB   “We have not a high priest not able to sympathise”, Heb 4: 15.  He is a sympathetic High Priest, having been “tempted in all things … sin apart”.  What resource is available to the believer.  In these four chapters leading up to chapter 10, the Hebrew Christians are being reminded of how Christ is the answer to everything.  They were in danger of slipping back into religious legality, and Christ was the answer to all of that.  He is the One who has made the new and living way through the veil, that is His flesh, and who is our High Priest.  What resource!  We have to prove the reality of that; it is personal experience and communion with the Lord, going into His presence.  It is good to ask Him for His help as our High Priest.

DAB   You read two references to assurance of faith, and together they are very general, but this one in Hebrews 10 is about approach to God, and it is also addressed to the company: it is not only personal but something that should mark the company.  I wondered if you could say something as to that, especially as to the idea of approaching in faith.

AMB   The Hebrew believers were accustomed to thinking in a particular way, ritual and so on, but this is a new and living way that Christ has made through His flesh, that is, through His incarnation and His dying, because we have the blood brought in.  God’s great desire is that believers in Christ should come into His presence and we have to know that individually, but what is collective is greater than that.

DAB   Restrictions being placed on the brethren gathering have affected the way they conduct the service of praise, which no doubt has been a focus of our prayers.  The brethren have sought to maintain what they could, but, with those restrictions removed, we need to be revived in the full assurance of faith in our approach so that there is increase and advance in the praise service. 

AMB   This is for God: “boldness for entering into the holy of holies by the blood of Jesus”; the object is praise: it is that God might have a response from hearts that are fully assured and set free.  The effect of full assurance here is our approaching on the basis that the Lord has indeed made the way for us into the presence of God.  He is active in leading the praise to the Father. 

DAB   This has an immediate application; it was addressed to Jews who believed that they did not have the right to approach.  It would be a very sad thing for those who do have the right to approach not to do so in spiritual vigour.  Paul suggests here that one of the things that is needed is full assurance of faith in the company, developed and sustained by a mutual desire that the service of praise should have its allotted place.

AMB   It is a strengthening matter and liberating as well, and that is essential.  What you say is very practical and needed. 

TJH   Verse 24 speaks of “considering one another for provoking to love and good works”.  I wonder if this is on this line that if we consider one another in faith rather than in sight, we may see something of the work of God in one another that may promote what it goes on to speak about, “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together”; that is assembly life.  Is what this verse commences with, “considering one another”, to be with the eyes of faith?

AMB   I read on to these verses that you are referring to because I think they are a consequence of full assurance of faith.  What is primarily in view is approach to God in response to Him, and there is a practical consequence which comes in from verse 23 onwards: “Let us hold fast the confession of the hope unwavering”.  As we consider the faithfulness of Christ and of God, certain practical features are expressed, and we consider one another with a view to stimulating to love and good works.  We come together and encourage one another.  Full assurance comes out in a practical way.  What is before the writer is that there should be a full response to God from those who are set free in His presence in full assurance of the work of Christ.

PM   Is it a very blessed thing in seeking approach to God to be conscious that there is a living Man there?  I wondered whether that underlay assurance of faith: that there is a living Man in the presence of God and that Man is real to us because we know Him.

AMB   Experience of living reality is very closely connected to full assurance.  Full assurance in the heart enables the Christian to enjoy the living reality of Christ in glory, and to know His help towards us individually and company-wise as well.  We have to spend time in His presence individually, and then as full assurance is built up in the believer’s heart, a result is worked out in a company.  But we have to be assured and convicted of the living reality of what you say, that there is a blessed Man in the presence of God.

CHS   It says in the psalm, “Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be constantly praising thee”, Ps 84: 4.  God has given us a home and an origin outside of this world and He would draw our hearts to it.

AMB   We have to lay hold of what God has given us in Christ.  We are not to see it as something that is distant or to be worked up to, so that we do not get there until we are old, or until some stage has been reached.  God’s desire is that we should be before Him in the liberty of sonship and experiencing and responding to His love now.  So that full assurance brings us to the appreciation of God’s thoughts for us, and for Himself. 

AAC   Do you think the truth of reconciliation helps us in the full assurance you have been speaking of?  What I was thinking of was the completeness of the work of Christ in reconciliation.  It says in the early part of Colossians, “has it” (that is, the fulness), “reconciled”, and it brings us “to present you holy and unblamable and irreproachable”, chap 1: 22.  If I lay hold of that, then maybe I can see how full assurance can be mine, because the work of reconciliation underlies it all.  He has reconciled us to the fulness of God.  That is a wonderful and absolute thing which then allows me to think that faith is not just something I start with, but it is a complete thing?

AMB   That is most helpful.  It is God’s desire that we should be reconciled to Him, and Christ has fulfilled that desire, He has done all that was needed to remove the distance and bring us to God.

DAB   That has been done by putting the believer on entirely new ground.  It is not an improvement; it is not incremental.  I was thinking about the Jewish believers, that the idea that they had access to the holiest of all would have seemed too good to be true; so that if they laid hold of it, they must have understood that the ground on which they approached God was entirely new; and it is that entire newness that we put our faith in.

AMB   It is “the new and living way”.  He has taken away the first, “He takes away the first that he may establish the second”.  What is new, having been established in and by Christ, is maintained and upheld by Him for God’s pleasure.  We have to recognise the truth of that.  We need to be preserved from going back to what is old, such as depending upon ourselves naturally, and have our faith in a living Man in heaven.  Christianity is wonderful and it takes us out of this scene altogether.  I would covet to be more in the living gain and reality of what we are connected with: Christ in heaven and the Spirit here helping us as to what is real.

DHB   Would you say something as to the approach?  We have to approach with a “true heart”.  Would you open that up a little please?

AMB   It would refer to the affections of the believer acted on by the truth, as the truth is received in faith.  Our hearts can then be engaged with the things of God.  Not having a true heart would be falling short of what God has in mind for us; it would mean that we had not accepted all that God says to us in His word.  What is in mind is a true heart, the affections in line with full assurance of faith. 

DHB   I was thinking of what Paul says to Timothy, “with those that call upon the Lord out of a pure heart” (2 Tim 2: 22), and wondered if that was a similar thought.

AMB   I think a true heart would be a pure heart.  It is a heart that has been filled with the love of God as expressed in Christ, and thus set free.

RHB   It says that those who draw near to God must believe two things: “that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them who seek him out”, Heb 11: 6.  We might think that that is very basic, but it is those two things which bring the assurance that you are speaking of, that God exists and that approaching Him will be for blessing.  I do not want to be irreverent, but there would be no point in praying if God did not exist or if there would be no result from it; but to prove the reality of those things brings assurance into the soul.

AMB   We are responsible to believe that God is and that He rewards those who seek Him out.  We have full evidence of it.  By faith we lay hold of who God is, and that is solid rock in the soul of the believer.  I do feel that this is really important, especially for young people.  The world is full of the notion that everybody’s opinion is as good as everybody else’s, and that if we do not express our own opinions and our own wills, then we are curtailing ourselves in some harmful way.  But the believer does not think like that.  We have put our faith in God, who has borne witness to us in His word and in what Christ has said and done.  All this is confirmed by the Holy Spirit; it does not depend on the world at all.  That needs to be laid down as bedrock in the soul of every one of us. We have particular sympathy for young people because of the world through which we all have to pass; believers are in it, but not of it.

RMB   I just wondered if you would say something about “the holy of holies”, what that is.  It seems a very distinctive thought.

AMB   It is good to speak of that - it really is the presence of God.  Jewish Christians were accustomed to think of “the holy of holies” as a physical place.  It was beyond the second veil and nobody could go there except the high priest and that was only once a year and he had to take blood in.  The writer has been saying that the way in to God has now been opened up by Christ.  It is a new thing; it is the second - part of what is meant by taking away the first and establishing the second.  So that the presence of God has been opened up by Christ coming into manhood and laying down His life, and His blood being shed.  It is a new and living way into that blessed presence.  We can only go in there as sanctified persons, sanctified by faith in Him.

RMB   I think that is helpful.  It is a particular aspect of the presence of God.  We get earlier in this book about approaching the throne of grace and that is in connection with our need, but that is not “the holy of holies”, is it?  Is it right to say “the holy of holies” is the presence of God enjoyed for its own sake?  In “the holy of holies” the important thing is what God says, do you think, not what we say?

AMB   Yes.  We need to desire to go into His presence, and then seek the power of the Spirit to help us experience it - we cannot go in naturally.  Then we must listen to what God says to us.  Thinking of the service of praise on a Lord’s day morning, that is what we say we do, and I think we experience it when we are together.  God may speak to us in a hymn, or in what a brother says on his feet.  That stirs up a holy response in the hearts of those that love Christ, and desire to be in the presence of God for His glory.

RMB   Your thought is as to full assurance - there is nothing that is more establishing to our souls than the experience of the presence of God because there we see what God has before Him.

AMB   That is very helpful.  Part of my exercise was to speak over what leads to full assurance and maintains us in it.  What you say as to experiencing the presence of God, experiencing its blessedness, is vital.  The more we enjoy that the more we are going to exhibit the features that full assurance brings.

TJH   Would what the Lord says in His prayer in John 17, “where I am they also may be” (v 24) link with this idea of being brought into “the holy of holies” where He is, that is, in the presence of the Father and that we also can be brought into that presence also in the service of praise, the Lord leading the praises, and with Him we are brought in where He is in the presence of the Father. 

AMB   It is a very, very blessed matter.  We are speaking about what is in God’s mind and has been established by Christ for the Father.  The saints are necessary for the fulfilment of God’s thoughts.  Our thoughts rarely rise to the level that God has in mind, which is the full thought in sonship; God’s thoughts do not fall below that.

TWL   Does full assurance stem from the knowledge of what it is to be “taken us into favour in the Beloved”, Eph 1: 6?

AMB   It would, yes.  I think full assurance is needed to enjoy what God has set before us.  We need to believe that that is what God has in mind for us.  He acts to save us from our sins and from the world, He has that in mind, but the objective in view is that He should have sons in the enjoyment of His favour in Christ before Him.  Full assurance enables us to enjoy things that God has in mind for us; the two go together.

TWL   I was thinking in the light of what has been said because a true heart is fidelity to Christ, fidelity to God, so that is our love Godward, but full assurance of faith is God’s love man-ward.  And, the level of that is the Beloved.  Would that be right?

AMB   That is a very helpful suggestion.  The faithful and true heart - we are responsible for our hearts, and at the same time we are responding to what God has shown us.  He has first loved us.

DCW   He has everything underpinned by the Lord’s own assurance, “And behold, I am with you all the days, until the completion of the age”, Matt 28: 20.  The Spirit will be with us forever.

AMB   What assurances these are.  It is good to ponder them and to understand that the One who made them is able to fulfil them.  It gives us wonderful assurance to have our faith in what is upheld by a Man who has been through death and is now on the other side of it in the glory in God’s presence.  The Spirit would assure us of the reality of these things. 

DCW   The Lord is the One who is the Same and we can rely implicitly on what He says and has said and should yet say.

AMB   It is interesting that that comes in later in this book.

         We might just have a word on “the full assurance of hope”.  In faith we are able to lay hold of hope, the hope that has been set before us.  I thought that the scripture we read in Hebrews 6 would particularly relate to the great hope of the believer, the coming of the Lord.  I find that brethren both privately and in meetings are speaking more and more about the coming of the Lord.  We could pray that many more believers might become clear as to that hope and might have the light of the soon coming of the Lord.  Thoughts about this are confused in Christendom.

DAB   Although hope relates to things as to which we do not have the actuality yet, they are present realities so that we do not postpone our blessings or the certainty of them in our thoughts, but hope makes unseen things a present reality. 

AMB   If we truly believe in the coming of the Lord, and we have full assurance as to it, that will have a great effect on the way we lead our lives now.  One of the effects is that we will not be sluggish, and I say this to myself.  We need to be marked by energy of faith and zeal.  Would that I was marked by it more; but the assurance of the coming of the Lord has that effect.

DAB   I was thinking about what has been said about being in the presence of God and seeing what God rests upon.  Paul says to Timothy, “Christ Jesus our hope” (1 Tim 1: 1), and I understand that “Christ Jesus” refers to the Man of God’s purpose in whom the accomplishment of every divine thought has been secured.  Our being brought into that literally and bodily we await; Christ Jesus will do that: the Man who has accomplished everything for God, has that work of redemption still to complete, but it is as certain as everything that He has already done.

AMB   As we go over this together, may we be increasingly assured as to the certainty of it.  The Lord will come and He does not delay His coming.  It has been said, rightly, that we should not be looking for things around us, actual events, to indicate His coming.  Yet we can see that the world is going on to its end.  That might cause depression or anxiety but our hope is in One who is above all circumstances and entirely superior to them, the Man in heaven.  The next move will come from heaven and it will be soon.  We know that it is not right to make predictions about these things, but we wait for the Man, the Man who will appear and come for His own and it will be soon; scripture tells us that.

PM   We have often been taught that the hope of the church is not an event but a Person, and is that hope living because the Person lives in the heart of His own?

AMB   Yes.  To be maintained in that requires exercise; it requires us to overcome to firmly and truly believe that the Lord is coming and He is coming soon.  We have to be maintained in it.

DAB   The Man in whom God came out is the Man who will bring us in.

PJW   Can I ask if, in what we are saying, we can look upon the Lord Jesus as a Model for us as to the assurance of faith and the assurance of hope?

AMB   The Lord was supremely the Man of faith in His pathway here; He trusted in God for everything, trusted that He was able to save Him even from death, that is, from among the dead.  The Lord is the full, complete and perfect Model of full assurance of faith.  He is unique, but He is also the Model.

PJW   I was thinking of the way He rested on the Father’s love, “On this account the Father loves me”, John 10: 17.  He could say, and prophetically, “For thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol”, Ps 16: 10.  That was, we could say carefully, a hope, full assurance of hope, do you think?

AMB   What you say is right; the Lord lived here supremely the life of faith, depending on the Father for everything, turning constantly to the Father in prayer and wholly dependent upon Him.  He did not speak or act unless the Father indicated.

PJW   We have been reading Hebrews; He is “the leader and completer of faith” (chap 12: 2), the One that sets it on.

AMB   That scripture would fully confirm what you are saying.  I was interested in what the writer says in chapter 6 as to the effect of full assurance of hope.  His earnest desire is “that each of you shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end”.  That is, that we are maintained in living vital reality of hope.  The writer does not define the hope that is in his mind; so it would embrace all that is set before the believer in our heavenly blessings.  But I do think that at the moment, particularly, we need to be assured of the certainty of the Lord’s coming.  If there is certainty in our hearts, full assurance of hope, then there will be a practical effect in us, and we will not be sluggish but “imitators of those who through faith and patience have been inheritors of the promises”.  That was written to Jewish believers and the writer was reminding them of those who had lived by faith previously.  We should be able to observe one another.  Younger ones should be able to observe older ones who are living the life of faith and who have full assurance of hope.  It is a test whether a young person can see that in me.

HTF   I think some of us have heard it ministered more than once as to hope that we tend to be short of it; as believers we tend to be vacillating in it and even in our view; it is a term that is used in the world, in the aspirational sense, but that is not the believer’s portion.  1 Corinthians 13 says, “And now abide faith, hope, love” (v13); do you think that abiding character of hope is what really we are assured about?

AMB   It is absolutely vital.  The hope that the writer to the Hebrews was speaking about, nearly two thousand years ago, is the same hope as we have now.  God has no reason to modify it; the blessings that He has in mind and the certainty of the coming of the Lord for His own, these remain the same, and the question is whether we are abiding in them as assured of them.  What you say, that the word hope is often used now to express uncertainty, is true.  For us, hope is certainty.  Our hope is in Christ, and everything about Him is certain.  Speaking about it is one thing; knowing the reality of it is another.  We might encourage ourselves and we might be examples to one another as to this.

PM   The two on the way to Emmaus said, “we had hoped” (Luke 24: 21), but it was not an enlightened hope, but they found that their hope was in the One who caused their hearts to burn within them, v 32. 

AMB   So the first was taken away and the second established for them.  They were not sluggish - they got back to Jerusalem in record time to be with the others where they could share the joy of the fact that Christ was risen.  What a hope this engenders in our hearts.

RHB   There are a lot of things that could make us sluggish and the antidote here is faith and patience.  You have spoken of the coming of the Lord as our hope and we are to be patient in relation to it, but is it right to think of the Lord Himself in patience as waiting?  In Thessalonians Paul exults that our heart should be directed “into the patience of the Christ”, 2 Thess 3: 5.  That brings assurance into the heart, to think that it is not only that I am waiting for His return but He is waiting to have the fruit of the travail of His soul.  Is that a right way of looking at it?

AMB   He is waiting for the completion – He is awaiting the Father’s time.  Again, it reminds us of the perfect manhood of the Lord Jesus. 

CHS   We do not see Him yet but we hear His voice.  The hymn writer says:

         It is not with uncertain step

              We tread our desert way;

         A well-known voice has called up

              To everlasting day

                          (Hymn 244).

We hear it, gathered in this company; I wondered whether that was something to help us along these lines to hear His voice?

AMB   We have to be on the qui vive.  Having ears that are attuned would help to preserve us from sluggishness.  How often the Lord does speak to us.  He speaks to us in occasions like this, locally too.  He may speak to us in circumstances.  We need to build these things into our hearts, by faith.

RJF   Do these things that you are bringing before us bring in movement?  I was thinking of the reference in Proverbs about the sluggard, and telling that sluggard to go and look at the ant (Prov 6 :6) “having no chief, overseer, or ruler” (v 7), but faith and hope brings about what is the “chief, overseer, or ruler” for the one who is in movement.

AMB   Full assurance brings about change in a believer, and that change leads to movement, movement of heart towards God and also movement in testimony.  Practical things are referred to in the first scripture, for example, “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together”.  That would be a practical consequence of full assurance in the soul.  Conviction that what we have to do with is real would lead us to want to be together with others so that experience can be shared and so that there is an opportunity for the Lord to speak.

DCW   Arising from what has been said have you some thought about “waiting for and hastening” the coming of the Lord, 2 Pet 3: 12?

AMB   We want to be with the Father and with the Lord in the anticipation of what is going to take place.  I think we can hasten the coming of the Lord in the sense that we desire to be in the good now of what has still to happen in actuality.  We accept that the timing is in the Father’s hand, but by being in the spirit and the good of what is coming we hasten what is coming.  What is your thought as to it?

DCW   It bears on our own conduct and our anticipation and appreciation of what is to come.

AMB   The word anticipation does not mean simply to expect, but we are acting in the light of what we believe and we are enjoying, in spirit and by the Spirit, these things that are in actuality still future. 

         We might just have a word about “full assurance of understanding” in Colossians.  It is a remarkable expression.  Paul combated in prayer as to this, and his desire was that hearts should be encouraged and united together in love, “unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding”.  It seems that hearts are affected first, and then comes understanding.  This is not some kind of intellectual appreciation of Greek texts; it is the heart affected by God’s love towards us in Christ and then the love of God being shed abroad in our hearts.  These hearts become, by the reception of the Holy Spirit, intelligent as to God’s matters and as a result we can enter into something of this full assurance of understanding. 

DAB   It does not say the assurance of full understanding.  We know in part and there is a tendency for our natural minds to dismiss something because it is beyond us, but this is in the sense of an objective, and my understanding of an objective is that it may be out of sight, but you can tell, over time, in your exercises whether you are getting nearer to it.  You might say as each step brings you into the possession of something you can be assured of it, even though there may be more still before you, that you have yet to grasp. 

AMB   Does it help us to see that the truth is one whole, and it is all in Christ?  The truth all fits together - that is what ‘one whole’ conveys.  We can be fully assured of that.  If we have the desire to learn more, and we can encourage one another in that, the result is that we are built up in the truth.  It is a process; it is to go on by the Spirit all the time.

DAB   I was recalling earlier today what Joshua said to Israel, “in three days ye shall pass over this Jordan”, Josh 1: 11.  They would not have possessed the land in three days, but in three days they could be sure that it was theirs; they could be fully assured in their understanding that this was God’s inheritance which He had brought them into.  The process of actually taking possession of it lay before them, but they could do that with the assurance that it was theirs. 

AMB   “Full assurance of understanding” - do you think one of the effects of it would be to whet our appetites to go in more for divine things?

DAB   I think it is something we work on together.  We must not fall into the trap that we all have to go away and try and beaver away at this.  It says, “united together in love” so that these are things that could be meeting exercises that we look at with one another.

AMB   It is “the full knowledge of the mystery of God”, which is a wonderful thing.  This is no system of philosophy: it is the living God made known in One who has become incarnate, the Lord Jesus.  He has made God fully known.  The mystery of God does not mean that it is mysterious; it is what is made known to those who are interested and in whose hearts God has operated first.

DAB   What I understand by these references to the mystery is that they are plain if you have the key.  They are completely baffling if you do not, but the key has potential to make it quite simple.  I was thinking of the two on the road to Emmaus “he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself”, Luke 24: 27.  That was the key; it had opened the treasure box.

AMB   It speaks of “all riches of the full assurance of understanding”; it is a treasure.

RHB   The mystery of God is referred to in Revelation when the angels sounded their trumpets.  It says, “the mystery of God also shall be completed”, Rev 10: 7.  Is that the full realisation of His purpose, and is it demonstrated in that God has not been hindered in any thought of His but has accomplished what He has set His heart upon?  I am trying to understand this expression, “the mystery of God”.  Is that how you view it?

AMB   It must involve all His purpose.  The greatest thought of His purpose for us is that He should be known as Father by many sons.  That is what God is securing.  There is much that leads up to that, through which we learn a great deal about God and who He is.  It is all made known to us in Christ.  Everything that can be known of God has been made known in Christ.  What you refer to in Revelation would remind us too of what the apostle says, “I shall know according as I also have been known”, 1 Cor 13: 12.  That is the prospect in view for us.  At that time we will know the mystery of God, but at the moment by faith and with the help of the Spirit we are to be occupied with learning and with understanding.

RHB   “In which are hid all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge”.  Elsewhere in Corinthians the apostle speaks of “wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, who come to nought” (1 Cor 2: 6), but the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are bound up with that full assurance as to the mystery of God.

RMB   The reference to the mystery of God in Revelation includes the fact that God has allowed evil to triumph outwardly.  There is something of a mystery about that, ‘evil’s challenge long permitted’, but what that reference in Revelation brings out is that the time for that is now over and God is resuming His direct dealings and ordering things in a way that would be secured for His pleasure. 

AMB   The permitting of evil’s challenge has also brought out the glory of His grace.  We shall be “to the praise of the glory of his grace”, Eph 1: 6.  We are to be that now, as we shall be in the day to come.  That is a tremendous substantial response to the mystery of God being made known.

RMB   I wondered whether the reference to it in Colossians links with what has been said as to the accomplishment of God’s purpose, that you might say God has been working away at that behind the scenes in a way that the world has no conception of, yet He is bringing to pass His very greatest thought. 

AMB   Divine wisdom enters into all of that.

DAB   If we put those two references together we can see that in allowing all that has entered into God’s ways He has had to yield nothing of what He had in His purpose.  You might ask how that could be.  Surely there is a price to pay for allowing evil?  But God has secured everything He wanted in spite of taking that way and glorified Himself in doing it.

AMB   God has so arranged things in His wisdom and His love that everything that can be known about Him should be demonstrated and known.  The word ‘know’ may make us think of head knowledge, but God has made Himself known to us, He has manifested who and what He is, through what He has allowed and by what He has brought in in Christ as the great answer to every challenge. 

RMB   Not only has God not had to alter any of His purpose in relation to everything that He set His heart upon before the foundation of the world, but also He has not had to alter the way in which He would accomplish His purpose, which too was all predetermined before the world was.  That is a marvel that God has not had to alter one detail of His perfect plan.

AMB   It is, and what a heart of love lies behind it all!  God’s nature gives character to everything that He does, and also to how He does it.  Every aspect of that purpose has involved Christ.

RHB   It produces a worshipper.  The sense that God has used what has risen up to challenge His rights and to frustrate His will, that very matter has been used by God in the accomplishment of His will - there is nothing you can do but bow and worship.

AMB   Do you think the full assurance of understanding would lead to worship?  The more we know about God the more we love Him and the more we want to worship Him.  God wants us to know Him.  He has made Himself fully known, and He wants believers to be interested and vital and energetic in receiving that knowledge into our hearts.

GW   I was wondering about the early part of Acts, the man whose hope was to be able to walk, but his hope became something greater: he was leaping.  I was thinking of the responsible side; Peter gave him that hand to lift him up, and his ankles were made strong, but then he went with them, his hope was in a Man in another scene altogether, Acts 3: 7,8.

AMB   He was praising God.  He progressed very quickly; I think that full assurance in faith, hope and understanding, leads to growth and assured growth.  It gives evidence of itself in life, vitality and energy.  It is a word to myself.  What we are touching on as to the “full knowledge of the mystery of God” is not something that we should regard as being beyond us, because God has made Himself known in Christ and has given us resources to enable us to appreciate that revelation.  We should greatly desire to make progress in knowing Him and knowing the mystery of God.  It is a wonderfully attractive, but also an exercising matter, and should stir up greater exercise in myself to have this “full assurance of understanding, to the full knowledge of the mystery of God” before me.

Norwood

19^th March 2022