THE FAITH ONCE DELIVERED TO THE SAINTS
by J. N. Darby
Jude 3
It is a great thing for us, beloved friends, in all our
path to know where we are, and then to know the mind of God, not only as to
where we are, but as to our place in the path in which we find
ourselves.
Not only has God visited us in grace, but we have to take
into our minds what the actual present result of that grace is, so that we hold
fast the great principles under which God has set us as Christians; and at the
same time be able to apply those principles to the circumstances in which we
find ourselves. These circumstances may vary according to our position, but the
principles never vary.
Their application to the path of faith may vary
and does. I mean such a thing as this: in Hezekiah's time they were told, "In
quietness and in confidence shall be your strength", and the Assyrian should
not even cast a bank before Jerusalem. They were to stay perfectly calm and
firm; and the host of Assyria was destroyed. But when a certain time of
judgment was come, in Jeremiah's time, then he that went out of the city to the
Chaldeans, their enemies, should save himself.
They were still God's
people as much as before, though He was saying for the time in judgment
"not my people", and that made the difference. It was not that God's mind was
altered or His relationship to His people changed that never will be.
Yet the conduct of the people was to be exactly the opposite. Under Hezekiah
they were protected; under Zedekiah they were to bow to the judgment.
I refer to these circumstances as a testimony, to show that while the
relationship of God with Israel is immutable in this world, yet their conduct
at one time had to be the opposite to that at another.
Look at the
beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, as regards the Church, God's assembly in
the world. There I find the full display of power; all had one heart and one
mind and they had all things in common; the very place was shaken where they
were. But suppose I take the Church now, including the Roman Catholic system
and all, if we look at all that and own it, we bow down to everything that is
evil at once.
While God's thoughts do not change and He knows His
people and so on, yet we need spiritual discernment to see where we are, and
what the ways of God are in the circumstances, while never departing from the
first great principles which He has laid down for us in His Word. Another
thing, too, we have to take account of as a fact of Scripture, is that wherever
God has set man, the first thing man has done has been to spoil the position;
we must ever take that into account.
Look at Adam, Noah, Aaron,
Solomon and Nebuchadnezzar. God goes on in patient mercy, yet the uniform way
of man, as we read in Scripture, has been at once to upset and destroy the
thing which God set up good.
Consequently, there cannot be any walking
with a true knowledge of our position if this is not considered. But God is
faithful and goes on in patient love. Thus in Isaiah 6 we find "Make the heart
of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes" and so on,
but it was not fulfilled for 800 years, and when Christ came they rejected Him.
Patience went on in that way, individual souls were converted, there
were various testimonies by the prophets and a remnant was preserved still. But
if we should plead the faithfulness of God, which is invariable, to put a
positive sanction upon the evil which man has brought in, our whole principle
is false.
That would be exactly what they did in Jeremiah's time when
judgment was coming, and what Christendom is doing now; they said, "The temple
of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, are these", and "The law shall not perish
from the priest, nor counsel from the wise," when they were all going to
Babylon. The faithfulness of God was invariable, but the moment they applied
that to sustain them in the place of evil, it became the very ground of their
ruin. The same principles which would be our security become, if we leave out
the sense of where we are, our ruin.
We get the Word, "look to the
rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. Look
to Abraham your father and unto Sarah that bare you; "for I called him alone,
and blessed him, and increased him", Isaiah 51: 1; a passage constantly
misapplied. God is saying there, Abraham was alone and I called him. Israel, to
whom God spake this, was then but a little remnant Do not let that make
you uneasy, I called Abraham alone. Their being little was of no consequence
God could bless them alone as well as Abraham.
Now in Ezekiel,
a similar statement by the people in different circumstances, is denounced as
iniquity. They said there, "we are many", "Abraham was one and he inherited the
land", Ezekiel 33: 24; God blessed him and so He will bless us still more. From
want of conscience, really, they misapprehended the condition in which they
were, and with which God was dealing. So now, if we leave out the sense of our
condition I mean that of the whole professing Church in the midst of
which we stand we shall be utterly wanting in spiritual intelligence.
We are in the last days, but sometimes I think people do not weigh the
full force of that. I think I can show you from Scripture that, the Church as a
responsible system down here was, from the very outset, that which had got into
the condition of judgment, and the state of it was such as to require
individual faith to judge it.
The great thought that is current among
hundreds and thousands is to get away from the present confusion to a kind of
resource, that the Church teaches and judges and does this and that; but, on
the contrary, God is judging the Church. Patience He does show and grace,
calling souls to Himself as He did in Israel; but what we have to look in the
face is that the Church has not escaped the effect of that principle in poor
human nature, that the first thing it does is to depart from God, and ruin what
He has set up.
When we speak of the last times it is not a new thing,
but one which we have in Scripture, one which God in sovereign goodness has
given us before the closing of the canon of Scripture. He allowed the evil to
come up so that He could give us the judgment of Scripture upon it. If you look
at Jude and I take now merely some of those principles which the Church
of God wants he says, "Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto
you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and
exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the
saints". The faith was in danger already, they were obliged to contend for that
which was slipping from them, so to say, for there were "certain men crept in
unawares", etc., so that you must look at judgment now. God saved the people
out of Egypt and afterwards had to destroy them that believed not. So, too,
with the angels in like manner.
Then again Enoch prophesied of those
of whom Jude speaks, the ungodly, on whom the Lord will execute judgment when
He comes again. These were then, and the starting point of it in the Apostles'
days was sufficient to give the revelation of God's mind by His Word. The
ground of judgment when the Lord comes again was there present already. If you
take John's first epistle, chapter 2: 18, he says, "Little children, it is the
last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there
many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time". So that it is not
a new thing that is developed, but it began at the first, just as in Israel
they made the calf at the outset, yet God bore with them for centuries, but the
state of the people was that which a spiritual man judged. John says, "we know
that it is the last time". I suppose the Church of God has hardly improved
since then. In verse 20 he adds, "But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and
ye know all things" you have that which will enable you to judge in
these circumstances.
Again, take the practical state of the Church as
seen by Paul in Philippians 2: 20-21, "I have no man like-minded, who will
naturally care for your state. For all seek their own, not the things that are
Jesus Christ's". That was in his day. What a testimony! It was not that they
had given up being Christians.
He tells Timothy, "At my first answer
no man stood with me, but all men forsook me; I pray God that it may not be
laid to their charge", 2 Timothy 4: 16. Not one stayed by him! Peter tells us
that "the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God", 1 Peter
4: 17. I name these as the authority of the Word of God, showing even then, at
the very beginning, there was that going on outwardly which the Spirit of God
could discern and testify to as being the ground of final judgment, but already
manifest in the Church of God.
There is another thing that shows this
principle strongly, and that is the ground of action, under the circumstances
disclosed in the seven churches in Asia; Revelation 2 and 3. I do not doubt but
that it is the history of the Church of God, but the point is, "He that hath an
ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches". The churches could
neither guide nor have authority, nor anything else of the kind but whoever had
an ear to hear God's Word had to judge their state. That very evidently is an
important principle, and a very solemn thing it is. Christ is speaking to the
churches, not as Head of the body, though He is that for ever and ever, but
they are being looked at as responsible down here on the earth. It is not the
Father sending messages to the Church, as in the different epistles; it is not
that, but it is Christ walking in the midst of them to judge them. He is here,
therefore, neither the Head of the body, nor the Servant. He has His garment
down to the feet I tuck it up if I want to serve. He is walking in the
midst to judge their state. That is a new thing.
It is a question of
responsibility, and so you find some approved and some disapproved. Their
condition is the subject of judgment on the part of Christ, and they are here
called to listen to what He has to say. It is not the blessing of God properly,
which you get in the churches, though they had many blessings, but the
condition of these churches when these blessings had been put into their hands.
What use had they made of them?
Look at the Thessalonians in their
freshness the work of faith, labour of love and patience of hope are
manifest. But in the first epistle to the churches, that to Ephesus, we read,
"I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience". Where were the faith and
the love? The spring was wanting. The Lord had to say "I will
remove thy
candlestick
except thou repent". They were put in a place of
responsibility and He deals with them according to it. The first thing is,
"thou hast left thy first love"; so the time was come when judgment should
begin at the house of God.
Peter's words allude to Ezekiel, when he
says, "begin at my sanctuary", Ezekiel 9: 6; God's house at Jerusalem, for that
is where God looks first for what is right to His own house. I feel it
is an exceedingly solemn thing, and one that should bow our hearts before God.
The Church has failed in being the epistle of Christ it was set as such
in the world but now is it anything like it at all? Can a heathen
that is the way to look at it see anything of it? Individuals may be
walking blessedly; yet where do we get faith like Elijah's, though he knew no
one in Israel who was true, while God knew seven thousand. Blessed man he was,
but even his faith failed and God asks him, "What doest thou here, Elijah?"
This should not be discouragement either, for Christ is sufficient for us.
Nothing reaches the full perfect faithfulness of God's own grace, and our
hearts ought to be thoroughly bowed as to that.
Neither is it the
thought of attacking or blaming, for we are all in it in one sense, but our
hearts should take notice, that what was set up so beautiful in the power of
God's Spirit what has it all come to? It casts us on the strength that
can never fail!
When the spies returned to Israel, the faith of ten
gave way. Caleb and Joshua say, "neither fear ye the people of the land for
they are bread for us". It is the same for us in view of difficulty and
opposition now. We are called to see where we are, and what the path and the
place are, in which we have to walk, and to have a consciousness of the state
all is in around us. Yet if the Church has utterly failed, the Head can never
fail. Christ is just as sufficient for us now, in the state of things in which
we find ourselves, as at the first when He set up the Church in beauty and
blessedness. It may require us to look at His Word and see what His mind is,
but we are not to hide our eyes from what the state is in which we are.
In reading the Acts it is most striking to see that there is power in
the midst of evil. When we get to heaven there will be no evil at all, we shall
not want faith or conscience in exercise then, but now we do, and the only
thing we have is the power of the Spirit of God where evil is dominant, and by
it we should be dominant over the evil in our path.
It does not say
that every Christian will be persecuted, but it says, "all that will live godly
in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution", 2 Timothy 3: 12. If a man show the
power of the Spirit of God, the world will not stand it; that is the principle.
In the Acts, when we get the power of the Spirit shown in miracles, as in
Christ before, what did it draw out? The enmity which crucified the Lord. What
we have now is good in the midst of evil that is what Christ was,
perfect good in the midst of evil; but the effect of the display of God in Him
inasmuch as the carnal mind is enmity against God was that it
drew out hostility, and the more the display, the more the hostility drawn out;
and so for His love He had hatred. As yet we have not come to the time when
evil is removed that will be when Christ comes again and that is
the difference between that time and this time; that time will be the coming in
of good in power, so as to bind Satan and put down evil. But Christ being in
this world, and afterwards His saints, is on the contrary, good in the midst of
evil, while Satan is the god of this world.
When once these became
mixed up, the good was swamped and all floated on together. Take the wise
virgins and the foolish; while they are asleep they can all stay together
Why should they not? But the moment they trim their lamps comes the
question of the oil, and they do not go together any more. And we shall find it
the same. Again in Joshua it was a time of power. True they fail at Jericho and
get beaten at Ai, but the general character is power. Enemies were subdued and
cities walled up to heaven were taken, faith overcame all, and that is a
blessed picture good in the midst of evil and power carrying on the good
and putting down enemies. In Judges it is the contrary; God's power was there,
but power was manifested by the evil because the people were not faithful. They
got at once to Bochim Judges 2: 1-5 i.e., tears, weeping, while
in Joshua they went to Gilgal, where the total separation of Israel from the
world had taken place; they had crossed Jordan and that was death, and then the
reproach of Egypt was rolled away. But the Angel of the Lord went to Bochim; He
did not give up Israel though they had left Gilgal. It was grace going after
them. And on our part, if we do not go to Gilgal, if we do not go back to the
utter humiliation of self in God's presence, we cannot come out in power.
If a servant's intercourse with God does not surmount his testimony to
men, he will break down and fail. He must renew his strength. The great secret
of Christian life is that our intercourse with God should make nothing of
ourselves. God, however, did not give up Israel, and they built an altar to the
Lord, but they were weeping at the altar; they were not in triumph, but were
constantly being triumphed over.
Then God sent them judges and He was
with the judges, though the people had lost their place. That is what we have
to consider in the same way. "All seek their own, not the things that are Jesus
Christ's". Was not that losing their place? not that they had ceased to
be the Church of God, I do not mean that. Unless we consider this, we, too,
shall get to Bochim, the place of tears. The whole state of the Church of God
has to be judged, only the Head can never lose His power, and there is a grace
that fits the condition, too.
What I see in the beginning of the
history of the Church is first this blessed power converting 3,000 souls in one
day. Then came opposition; the world put them into prison, but God shows His
power against that, and I do not doubt that if now we were more faithful there
would be a great deal more of the intervention of God. But the power of the
Spirit of God was there, and they were walking in a blessed unity, showing that
power, and that in the midst of the power of evil, though we do not leave that
scene until we find, alas, evil working within, as seen in Ananias and
Sapphira. They got credit for giving up their goods falsely. The Spirit of God
was there, and they fell dead and fear came upon all, both inside and outside.
Then, before the history of Scripture closes, the time has come that judgment
must begin at the house of God. It is a most solemn thing characterising the
present time until Christ comes, and then His power will put down evil a
very different thing.
Next we get the testimony to the gross evil where
good ought to be: "in the last days perilous times shall come; for men shall be
lovers of their own selves" and so on; 2 Timothy 3: 1-2. There the professing
Church for such it is has the same description as is given of the
heathen in the beginning of the epistle to the Romans. It is a positive
declaration that such times should come, and that the state of things would
return to what it had been in heathendom. It goes on to say that "evil men and
seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived", 2 Timothy 3:
13. But Paul tells Timothy to continue in the things he had learned.
People say now the Church teaches these things, but I ask, Who is that? The
Church? What do they mean? It is all something in the air there is no
inspired person in the Church now to teach. I must go to Paul and Peter and
then I know from whom I learn. Just as he said to the elders from Ephesus, "I
commend you to God and to the Word of his grace". Evil men and seducers had
waxed worse and worse, but the apostle casts Timothy on the certainty of the
knowledge he had received from particular persons; to us now, it is, "the holy
scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation". We have to learn
all this, when the professing Church is a judged thing, and the mere form of
godliness characterises it. Here we get, I think, what Christians must look in
the face. Do we not see men now turning away who were once called Christians;
such turning infidels?
Mere formality is turning into open infidelity
or open superstition. It is notorious, even in an outward way, how things are
going. In itself, Christianity is Christianity as God gave it, but outwardly,
as seen around us, it is gone. It is Christianity that we want, as it is in the
Word of God. Not that there is anything to fear it is a blessed time in
a sense, casting us upon God, only we must look at these things simply and
steadily.
There is not a more blessed picture of lovely faith and
godliness, before the gospel came in, than you find in the first two chapters
of Luke. Amidst all the iniquity of the Jews, we see Zacharias, Mary, Simeon,
Anna and other like minded ones. And they knew each other, and Anna "spake of
him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem"; just as we ought to
be in another way.
But as to the present state of things taking
the side of man's responsibility man departs at once from what God sets
up, and then comes in a growing corruption, till judgment is necessary. John
spoke of the last days being come in, because there were then already many
antichrists; but God's patience has been going on, until at the close perilous
times have come.
Now I add a Word as to how we are to walk in the
midst of such a state of things. It is clearly by the Word of God by
immediate reference to it. Not that God does not use ministry ministry
is His own ordinance but for authority we must turn to the Word of God
itself. There is the direct authority of God, as determining everything; and we
have the activity of His Spirit to communicate things. Yet it is an unhappy
thing if a person goes only to Scripture, refusing help from others, or looks
at men as direct guides and denies the Spirit's place.
A mother ought
to be blessed in the care of her children, and so should a minister among
saints; that is the activity of the Spirit of God in an individual he is
an instrument of God. But while owning that fully, we must go to the Word of
God and that directly, and that is what we have to insist upon. We all say that
the Word of God is the authority, but we have to insist that God speaks by the
Word. A mother is not inspired and no man is, but the Word of God is, and it is
direct, "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the
churches". I never get the Church teaching the Church is taught and does
not teach; individuals teach. But the apostles and others whom God used in that
way, were the instruments of God, to communicate directly from God to the
saints, so it is, I adjure you by the Lord that the letter be read to all the
holy brethren", 1 Thessalonians 5: 27. This is of all importance, because it is
God's title to speak to souls directly. He may use any instrument He pleases,
and you cannot object "the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of
thee", 1 Corinthians 12: 21; but when you come to direct authority, it is a
most solemn thing to touch that. Neither do I talk of private judgment in the
things of God, I do not admit it as a principle. You have to discern about
other things, but the moment I get into divine things am I going to talk of
judging the Word of God? That is one sign of the evil of the times that are
come in.
When I own the Word of God, brought by His Spirit, I sit down
to hear what God will say to me, and then it judges me, not I judge it. It is
the divine Word brought to my conscience and heart, and am I to judge God when
God is speaking to me? It would be denying that He is speaking to me. To have
real power it must be the Word of God to my soul, and then I do not think of
judging it, but I sit down before it to have my heart drawn out and my
conscience exercised. Then I must take it up, as that which gives me what was
from the beginning. Why? Because God gave that. At the beginning we have not
the thing as it was spoiled, but that which God set up.
It will not do
to bring me the primitive Church; I must have that which was from the
beginning. I then get the inspired Word and the unity of the body. But after
the beginning, the very next thing in ecclesiastical history was all wretched
division. John says, "If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall
remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son and in the Father", 1 John 2:
24. You lose your place in the Son and in the Father if you go away from that
which was from the beginning. It is evident, then, in applying this, that I
must take notice of the circumstances we are in, for in them I get, not what
was from the beginning, but what man has made of what God set up at the
beginning. People say the Church is this and that, but if I take what God set
up, I see the unity of the body, and Christ the Head, and that is what the
Church was manifested to be on earth. But do we get it now?
On the
contrary we get warned. Paul, as a wise masterbuilder, laid the foundation, and
when others build he warns them not to build with wrong materials wood,
hay, stubble which will be destroyed; 1 Corinthians 3: 12. The building
work was put upon man's responsibility, and as such became the subject of
judgment. "Upon this rock I will build my Church", Matthew 16: 18, gives me
Christ's building, and that is going on; it is not finished yet. Again in
Peter, "To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but
chosen of God and precious, ye also as lively stones are built up a spiritual
house", 1 Peter 2: 4-5. There, too, it is seen as still being built up; then in
Ephesians 2: 21, Paul says the building "fitly framed together groweth unto an
holy temple in the Lord". Now all that is Christ's work, what men call the
invisible Church, and so it is. But on the other hand, "Let every man take heed
how he buildeth thereupon", 1 Corinthians 3: 10, i.e., upon the foundation laid
by Paul; there you have man's work as a responsible instrument.
Now
men confound these two things; they go on building in wood, hay and stubble,
and then they speak of the gates of hell not prevailing against that, because
they do not give heed to the Word of God. We have to look at God's principles
and the power of the Spirit of God, to hear what the Spirit saith to the
churches, and to discover truly where we are, so finding the path which God has
marked out and in which we are distinctly to walk and I add, faith in the
presence of the Spirit of God.
That Spirit will use the Word and make us
take notice of the state of things, not confounding God's faithfulness with
man's responsibility what the superstitious world is doing but
owning that there is a living God and that that living God is amongst us in the
Person and power of the Holy Ghost. All is founded on the cross, surely, but
the Comforter did come, and by one Spirit they were all baptised into one body.
Whether I take the individual or the Church, I find this is the secret
of power for all the good against the evil, outside or inside, this fact
the Word being the guide of the presence of the Spirit of God. "Know ye
not", Paul said, to people going on very badly, in order to correct them, "that
your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of
God", 1 Corinthians 6: 19. Do you believe, beloved friends, that your bodies
are the temples of the Holy Ghost? Then what kind of persons ought we to be?
In 1 Corinthians 3: 16, we get the same thing said of the Church,
"know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth
in you?" The presence of the Spirit gives power, and practical power, too, for
blessing, whether in the Church or in the individual, and He alone can do
anything for real blessing.
Again, it is only on the footing of
redemption that God dwells with man. He did not dwell with Adam innocent,
though He came down to him. He did not dwell with Abraham, though He visited
him and ate with him. But when Israel came out of Egypt, God said He brought
them to Himself "that I may dwell among them". And at once the tabernacle was
built, and there was God's presence in the midst of His people.
Of
course, now, we have true and full redemption, and the Holy Ghost has come down
to dwell in those that believe, that they might be the expression of what
Christ was Himself when He was down here. "Whosoever shall confess that Jesus
is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God", 1 John 4: 15; and
"Hereby know we that we dwell in him and he in us, because he hath given us of
his Spirit", 1 John 4: 13. Where a person is really a Christian, God dwells in
him; it is not merely that he has life, but he is sealed with the Holy Ghost
who is the power for all moral conduct. If we but believed that the Spirit of
God dwells in us, what subjection there would be, and what manner of persons
would we be, not grieving that Spirit!
Further, in 1 Corinthians 2: 9,
I find, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart
of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him, but God hath
revealed them unto us by his Spirit" "Now we have received, not the
spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God". The Spirit of God and of
the world are always in contrast. But then I find the revelation is in contrast
with what is our state. We have to say, "Eye hath not seen"; these things are
so great we cannot conceive them, but God has revealed them by His Spirit. The
Old Testament saints could not find out or know these things, but with us it is
the opposite; we do know them, and He has given us His Spirit "that we might
know the things".
In this passage the Holy Ghost is seen in three
distinct steps; first, these things are revealed by the Spirit; then, they are
communicated by words the Spirit taught; and then, they are received by the
power of the Spirit are "spiritually discerned"; all three are the
operation of the power of the Spirit of God.
If I were to take the
Word of God by itself and say I can judge of it and understand it, then I am a
rationalist; it is man's mind judging the revelation of God. But where we get
God's mind communicated by the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost the power to
receive it, then I get God's mind. There is just as much wisdom and power from
God for us to meet the state of ruin in which we now are, as there was at the
first when He set up the Church; and that is what we have to lean upon.