ADJUSTMENT
G John Richards
2 Corinthians 5: 1-10
Revelation 3: 18-19 (to ‘love’)
1 Corinthians 13: 12-13
When, from time to time, I have occasion to meet brethren I do not often see, I am accustomed to a friendly greeting and to being asked, ‘How are you?’ and, ‘How are you getting on?’. I generally give an answer along these lines: ‘My great desire is to be found agreeable to the Lord’. I am sure you would all share with me, that to be agreeable to the Lord has, on our part, to be a desire above all others.
I think it would be fair to say (and I have gained this, in part, from others) that whenever the Lord Jesus is presented as having come into a situation - as He entered from time to time into someone’s house - He is seen to adjust things. Sitting here before the meeting, my mind went to the assemblies whom the Lord addresses, and in particular, those two assemblies where there is no rebuke: Smyrna and Philadelphia . Smyrna is that suffering, persecuted, representation of the church which still exists today. Though I might not have much (if any) part in it, it exists today The Lord Jesus has no rebuke for that assembly; neither does He have any rebuke to the saints in Philadelphia; and I thought I had stumbled on one or more exception to that rule - that the Lord Jesus always adjusts what He has to do with. But I now realise He does adjust in those assemblies too. Certainly in Smyrna He adjusts the saints. He says to them, “Fear nothing of what thou art about to suffer”, Rev 2: 10. What a welcome adjustment that must have been! You see adjustment is not necessarily a rebuke. I think of adjustment as something refined: as a clockmaker might adjust a clock, so that it chimes on the hour. It is a gentle thing. I am sure the brethren would share with me in the awareness of the need for adjustment.
Where we read as to Laodicea, He says, “I rebuke and discipline as many as I love”. Who of us here does not know something of the Lord’s discipline? I know something of His rebuke. And He says, “I rebuke and discipline as many as I love”.
The apostle Paul is sharing with the Corinthians one of his great personal burdens and that is that he might be agreeable to the Lord. This section which leads into where we began, is very much the here and now. We have been occupied earlier today with the coming of the Lord and the two aspects of it: the blessed prospect of being translated and being with Him, and then the prospect of Him coming again, everything being regulated by Him universally. But this passage is the ‘here and now’. Conditions of weakness demonstrate our being in this earthly tabernacle house - and the brethren all know what this means; it is a view of the weakness of our condition here. Then he speaks about it being destroyed. This has recently become so for a number of brethren that we knew and loved; yet they, with us, have in prospect a “house which is from heaven”; they are awaiting it. While they wait, they are ”present with the Lord”. The apostle says, “we are absent from the Lord”. We who remain are literally absent from the Lord; He is absent from this scene, and we are absent from Him.
But this is really what I wanted to share with my brethren: “Wherefore also we are zealous, whether present or absent, to be agreeable to him”. I am persuaded there echoes in the hearts of all my brethren here today, the desire to be, in everything, agreeable to Him. Now I wanted to add a word, if I may, as to a very precious truth that we have not touched on in speaking in our readings of the Lamb’s wife making herself ready, but which is included in our consideration; and that is what is described as “the judgment-seat of the Christ”. There are other scriptures, such as Romans 14: 10 and 1 John 4: 17, which speak of a time of judgment which believers will have part in. But this is another one of them and I commend it to us: what a comforting scripture this is.
Allow me to speak freely of the ‘loose ends’ which exist in our experience: in our own lives, with our brethren, with our families. How many exist! There are those things we do not understand, things which we cannot control, things which are distressing. This scripture, beloved, is an assurance that none of that will be a hindrance when we are finally with the Lord. In Revelation 21, it says God “shall wipe away every tear from their eyes”, v 4. Nothing will be carried over. From this scripture, it is evident that, after we have departed this life by death or the Lord having come for us, each one of us will have this experience. “For we must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of the Christ, that each may receive the things done in the body”. This thought of being ‘manifested’ means that there is nothing hidden, everything is open. I was very touched by a remark of Mr Stoney that ‘every part of our history from babyhood’ will be reviewed before the Lord. We will receive His assessment of it, and because we will be in glorified bodies, we will fully agree with that assessment, JBS vol 1 p194. We read, “that each may receive the things done in the body, according to those he has done, whether it be good or evil”. This is solemn. I am not sure whether it is the same experience to which the apostle refers when he writes to the Corinthians (though it may well be), “If the work of any one shall be consumed, he shall suffer loss, but he shall be saved, but so as through the fire”, 1 Cor 3:12-15. It is a question of that in which we have laboured, what we have built up; is it going to stand in the presence of God? If it is not, it will be destroyed, but each of us shall be saved, “but so as through the fire”. He goes on to say, “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord we persuade men”. (Perhaps that is a reference to the “great white throne” where the lost will be arraigned.) This is a word for me, “we persuade men”. But what I wanted primarily to bring out from this scripture is the blessed consideration of divine Persons that there should be this provision so that everything might finally be according to the divine mind in our own awareness.
The exercise I have continues on into Revelation, where the counsel of the Lord Jesus is that we should buy certain things. I wanted to emphasise the availability of the eye-salve, “that thou mayest see”. I think as we go on in the Lord’s ways with us, He adjusts our ‘vision’; that is an aspect of our thinking; He certainly adjusts my thinking, and rightly so. I would like to commend this thought of the eye-salve that we might already now, see all things as He sees them. It may well involve adjustment: surely it would! This is what He has available to us, so that we might see everything as He sees it and thereby be agreeable to Him.
I refer now to the other scripture in Corinthians because of this; it might be said that I may think that my relations with the Lord are so open (and I know something of this eye-salve), so I might not need the experience of the judgement seat of Christ. I once heard it suggested that it might be like going through Customs and having nothing to declare. I do not agree with that. The apostle Paul himself said, “I am conscious of nothing in myself; but I am not justified by this: but he that examines me is the Lord”, 1 Cor 4: 4. But he who surely lived characteristically in such clarity in his relations with the Lord, and certainly knew what it was to judge himself, he himself says, “we see now through a dim window obscurely, but then face to face”. I commend to the brethren from this that, no matter how clear our links are with the Lord, we shall need this experience. Why? Because our being now in flesh and blood is effectively a filter that obscures our vision. See how difficult the translation is: in the King James Version it says, “through a glass darkly”; Mr Darby says, “through a dim window obscurely”, and we still have only a vague idea of what it means. It is a filter which means that, on account of how we are in our condition, we shall still need this profound experience of being placed before the judgment-seat of Christ, and we shall fully be in accordance with His mind. I greatly desire that for myself and for my brethren; and commend to them these scriptures for comfort: that nothing loose is going to be carried over, nothing dark, obscure, regrettable or questionable. Everything is going to be in the light. And the marvellous thing is that divine grace will hold us and we shall see like we have never seen before. I do not think I can add anything to that.
May the Lord encourage us and bless the word.
Grimsby
10th June 2023