"Now on the first day of the week." - John 20:1.
"When therefore it was evening, on that day, the first day of the
week." - John 20:19.
"And after eight days again..." - John 20:26.
It is the spiritual meaning of that statement, "The first day of the
week" which we have in mind. It is not just the day as a part of
time, as a part of our calendar, it is what is there signified by
and included in this statement. We have pointed out before, that
with this first verse of the 20th chapter there has almost
imperceptibly crept in the changing of the dispensation. We read it
and we are not struck by the tremendous thing that has happened.
"Now on the first day of the week." We have not been impressed with
the fact that this statement cuts clean in between the whole of the
Jewish dispensation and the Christian dispensation. Here the eighth
day has become the first day, the day of the Lord's resurrection.
Eight, as we know, is the resurrection number, the number of a new
beginning, and on the day of His resurrection the dispensation has
been founded, the Church has been born, and the Sabbath day is no
longer the Sabbath in its etymological sense, the seventh. The fact
is that in the old dispensation six days were worked upon and the
seventh day was rested upon. In the new dispensation the first day
is rested upon and six days are worked upon. Everything begins, not
ends, on the first day, and the meaning is this spiritually, that in
the death of the Lord Jesus God has finished all His work of new
creation, and in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus He rests in a
completed work and then begins operations out of what is already
perfected. He builds His Church, He brings His Church to birth upon
the ground of a perfect work, and the Church has not to work toward
perfection but to work out of perfection; not to work toward
victory, but out of victory; not to work toward accomplishment, but
out of accomplishment.
The Church is founded upon God's complete triumph and utter
achievement. Resurrection is this feature of the assembly. God's
rest, God's satisfaction, God's good pleasure; He can survey all and
say, "It is very good," and now in effect He says, "We can work all
that out in perfect assurance that it will be reproduced in the
Church because it has already been consummated in the Head." When
you get there spiritually you have come to understand the tremendous
power and confidence and assurance which characterised the first
days. Why was it that they were people who were beyond defeat? Why
was it, that, let hell and earth combine to do their worst, it was a
forlorn hope? Why was it that being persecuted from one city to
another, being beaten, imprisoned, they could pray and sing in
dungeons? Because the victory was already theirs on the ground of
their resurrection union with the Lord Jesus. They were not hoping
for victory, they were resting in victory; they had the assurance of
it and so they could go on, and although faith was tested as to the
position which they had taken up in Christ's victory, tested in
circumstances and conditions, and they might have been tempted from
time to time to question their position and ask if after all it was
true, yet holding on, and in spirit maintaining their attitude that
it was victory, invariably it worked out as victory, and the dungeon
saw the very jailer converted, and his household. What had happened
in general in the birth of the assembly, so to speak, universally,
in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, was reproduced in localities
far and wide.
Wherever they went they were met with a challenge to their position,
their standing in His victory, their grounding upon His
resurrection. Hell rose up to cast a doubt and to try and make them
believe it was otherwise, but standing their ground, the local
assemblies were born in relation to the universal assembly, on the
ground that Calvary and the resurrection was complete triumph. So
you see what was at the beginning in the universal sense, was
reproduced everywhere upon the same principle, and that is the
principle for the whole age, specially for the end-time.
The Church Carries Forward What has been Done
The Church, the assembly, the company of the Lord's own, is
established, constituted by Him for the object of being a vessel of
His testimony, and the testimony in that vessel is the power of His
resurrection. The new cruse of which we have often spoken here, the
new cruse which was called for by the prophet in the day when death
was raging - you will recall the incident - was brought to him and
he said, "put salt therein," and the new cruse with salt in it was
emptied into the place of death and death was swallowed up in
victory, in life, and they could go on. The cruse is the cruse of
the assembly, and the salt is the power of His resurrection, and
that is the testimony. We encounter death, active, mighty, terrible,
awful, death, and the Lord does not protect us from it.
I am speaking now of death in its larger sense spiritually, which,
of course, works in many ways; in atmospheres, in mind, in heart, in
will, in soul, in body, in a multitude of ways death works; death in
a place where we are called to testify. Oh death, this spiritual
thing, we encounter it and hell rages and the issue is, shall death
triumph or shall Christ triumph? and then the assembly is on trial.
The two or three have their opportunity and are being tested out,
and are being allowed to be tested out by the Lord as to the power
of His resurrection. Faith is tried. The situation seems desperate
and well nigh hopeless; yes, but you have taken up a position, the
very fact that you are joined to the Lord says that you stand on the
ground of His resurrection. He is a living Christ, not a dead
Christ, that is your testimony, that is your portion; your standing
is being tested, your testimony is being tried out. Faith is being
well tried by a situation, condition of things, and the issue will
depend upon whether in spite of what appears, and what seems, and
what feels, you still believe that God raised Him from the dead and
in so doing broke forever the power of death. As faith holds through
the ordeal it emerges in His triumph. That is the testimony for the
end-time, that is the issue of today.
Some of you will be able to understand what I am saying, others may
not. The vessel of the assembly is established, constituted for
the purpose of the testimony to the power of His resurrection,
and that is to be the testimony at the end-time.
What the "Ministry" Is
The Apostle Paul, we have often said, was himself a personal
representation of the truth with which he was entrusted. The special
revelation given to him was the revelation of the Church of the Body
of Christ, and he had - as all prophets have - to be personally
constituted according to the message that he had to deliver, to be a
personal sign in life and experience of that which they were
teaching. I have said all prophets were, and I might say all
prophets are. My dear brother, don't you talk about "going into the
ministry." That is a mechanical way of talking. Let me say to you
that the ministry has got to get into you first, not you into the
ministry. That is, the thing has got to be wrought in you. You have
got to be a personal representation of the truth which God entrusts
to you, and that is costly, there is a price to be paid. Ah, but
that is effectual. That is the ministry. You cannot separate
the minister from his ministry if he is according to God. Well, the
Apostle Paul was so constituted, and so he represents from start to
finish the whole dispensation which is peculiarly marked as the
dispensation of the Church, the Body of Christ; and it is very
significant to notice that as the Apostle moved toward the end of
his life, one issue which was continuously raised in an intensifying
form was the issue of the power of His resurrection.
At the beginning he wrought mighty works outwardly in the power of
the resurrection. Toward the end he had himself, personally to be a
representation of that power in every part of his being, and no
external miracles were allowed to interfere with that spiritual
principle of the dispensation. That is, he could not work a miracle
for his own healing, and he could not get, by a repetition of appeals
to His Lord, deliverance from his infirmity. He had, by sufficient
grace, to live a resurrection life in a dying body, in infirmity,
and one of the last cries of the Apostle, which is a dispensational
cry, if you will, is, "That I may know Him and the power of His
resurrection." That will be of necessity the last cry of the
assembly. That is becoming, shall I say, wrung from the heart of
every spiritual man and woman today, being wrung from us as we go on
with God. There is nothing for it but the sheer power of His
resurrection inwardly and outwardly, that is the only thing.
Oh, yes, but that being so we are in line with the Lord. But you
notice it is an end-time thing as it was at the beginning. In the
beginning the principle was established on the first day, it was the
resurrection day. The Church, the assembly was found with the Lord
in the midst; in the end the assembly is "our gathering (or
assembling) unto Him" when the Lord descends from heaven with an
assembling shout, then to know Him in the power of His resurrection,
and that an out-resurrection in the ultimate expression, not a
general resurrection, but a peculiar resurrection. Well, you see the
assembly is constituted by the very resurrection life of the Lord
Jesus. John's Gospel seems to me to be peculiarly the Gospel of the
Church. In the similitudes of the cherubim it corresponds to the
eagle, always speaking of heavenliness and mystery. Ephesians is
that, it is the eagle aspect of things, the heavenliness of the
Church and the mystery of the Church; and John just fits into that
as Matthew fits into the lion, Mark fits into the ox and Luke fits
into the man. John fits into the eagle, and if that is the Church
aspect of things in a special sense, then it is not without
significance that John has so much to say about resurrection. Go
through John again with the thought of resurrection in mind and see
how often you come upon it. You come to chapter six for instance,
and in chapter six you know what the Lord is saying about Himself.
He has come down from heaven and has come down from heaven as bread,
"which cometh down from heaven and giveth life...."
Life in the Place of Death
The great illustration of the spiritual truth is His feeding of a
multitude in a wilderness. A multitude has left the world, the
multitude has left the formal religious system behind, is found with
Him in the wilderness, in a wilderness where no bread is, according
to nature; where the world can make no provision, and they will
perish unless bread is found for them; and He becomes their Bread in
the wilderness, their very life as out there separated from the
world. And then He explains the literal event in the light of His
own person as the "bread which came down from heaven" to be the life
of His own, called out from the world, separated from everything
merely formal in religion, joined in vital union with Himself. He
becomes the life of that. In that sixth chapter of John, four times
repeated He says, "I will raise it (him) up at the last day." This
is resurrection in relation to the life which He has implanted;
Himself, as the Life, "I am the life," "I am the bread of life," "I
will raise up at the last day." He is the Life of His own and
because He is that, He is the Resurrection of His own, and
resurrection is implicit in His indwelling as the Bread of Life.
When you come to the last chapter of John which was an appendix
(John closed with the 20th chapter undoubtedly, and then added
something) you have the instance of the fishing. Peter said, "I go a
fishing," and they went fishing and caught nothing. In the morning,
one of His resurrection appearances, the Lord stood on the shore,
gave a word of command resulting in a miraculous draft of fishes,
and true to the Holy Spirit's genius the number of the fishes is
given to the very last one; one hundred and fifty and three, and I
seem to see a connection between "I will raise it up at the last
day" and "one hundred and fifty and three." The precision and the
exactness linked with the repetition, "This is the Father's will
that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing": "All that
the Father giveth me shall come to me": "I will raise it up at the
last day." He will be the Resurrection to the last one of His elect.
The assembly will be complete in the power of His resurrection to a
unit. It is to be right to its very last member, whatever is meant
by one hundred and fifty and three; the power of His resurrection
will work out to precision, nothing lost; the completeness of the
triumph of Christ in resurrection.
The Church is constituted in the power of His resurrection. You come
to John 11 and you have resurrection there brought in specially
related to the person of the Lord Jesus, "I am the resurrection."
Mary, Martha, yes, they believed in resurrection. They believed as
most of the Jews believed, in a general Resurrection. What the Lord
sought, strove to do, was to bring resurrection in relation to His
own person and say, "Resurrection is not some distant event upon the
horizon, resurrection is Myself, and where I am and when I am there,
that is resurrection." He is in the midst. Do we believe it? He is
here today; nay, we can go further, many of us, I trust all of us,
and say He is within. Can we? If so, resurrection for us has in Him
already taken place. He is the resurrection and we are brought into
relationship with Himself upon the basis of a life which has
triumphed over death. He is that Life triumphant over death, already
resident within us, and resident within the assembly. Yes, this is
true. These are statements of fact; but oh, here again, it is a
question of faith.
Faith Laying Hold of God's Facts
We said with regard to the truth that He is in the midst, there has
to be an attitude and an action of faith. Yes, an attitude and
action of faith. It will often be that we have no sense of His being
in the midst, either in us or in the midst of us. We may have
oft-times an entirely opposite sense but He changeth not, "For I am
the Lord, I change not," "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and
today, and forever," "...another Comforter, that He may abide with
you for the age (Gr.)." "Oh, but today I feel anything but that the
Lord is within, everything today says the Lord has gone, has
departed." You will have those experiences, they are dark tunnels
where every bit of the spiritual will be frozen, every bit of
consciousness of the Lord will be dead, faith will be tested, but
have we not been through enough of such experiences already to make
us at least begin to believe that when we get a little further on we
shall emerge from this tunnel and know that He has been there all
the time, and He will just perhaps gently chide us and say, "I was
there all the time, I do not come and go," and faith has to take up
that position. So it has to be in the matter of the fact that in the
power of His resurrection, He is in the midst, and as faith takes
that position, that attitude, and stands, the fact breaks out, the
fact becomes manifested and we emerge into the joy of it.
Now Acts 1 says that by the space of forty days He appeared unto
them. Here, again, is one simple little fragment of symbolic
language. We know that forty throughout the Scriptures always speaks
of testing and proving. Moses in the mount for forty days tests
Israel down below and proves them, but unfortunately they break
down. Israel in the wilderness forty years, tested, proved, breaking
down. The Lord Jesus in the wilderness forty days and forty nights
tested, proved, triumphant! Resurrection - forty days - what for?
Testing and proving. Appearing; yes, something to go on.
Disappearing; nothing to go on; or, He may be here any minute.
Appearing; disappearing; proving, testing. Proving, testing
throughout the complete period until it was established through
testing and proving that He was alive. Perhaps no more wonderful
forty days in history! Oh, that we could live there where those
disciples must have been, through the forty days, "You never know
one minute from another when He will be here, when you may see Him."
He does not seem to be here now! What is to be our attitude? We may
never see Him again? He has gone for ever? Oh, no! Not that
attitude; at any moment we may know that He is here! And we live,
not on the negative, that, having disappeared we may never see Him
again, but on the contrary, that having so constantly appeared He
may be here at any minute. Faith can always take the negative side
and become doubt, but faith has to live on the positive side.
Testing, proving, until established in the fact that He is alive
there is no doubt about it, "...by many infallible proofs" He has
proved this, and I think that that explains John's twenty-first
chapter. He has disappeared, chapter twenty, disappeared! It looks
as though the story is closed with that, He has disappeared. But He
re-appears as upon the shore when they are upon the sea, and it
seems to say, "Yes, though He has disappeared He is on yonder shore
watching all the operations; He is not out of touch." And the
appendix was worthwhile if it was for that alone.
You see the point is they were constituted upon this. Their very
being was based upon that, the fact, the reality, not as a doctrine,
not as something that was merely reported. He is a living, personal
reality in vital association with their experiences, and He
established them upon that; and that is the assembly. What is true
of the assembly has to be true of every member of the assembly. Oh,
beloved, that we might take the faith attitude on the positive side
toward the abiding presence of the Lord, according to His Word, in
resurrection. The Lord is here, and yes, but more, He is here in all
the virtue and potentiality of His resurrection, and the Holy Spirit
would bear witness to that, for He is here to seal the testimony of
Jesus in the hearts of those who believe; for, says the Apostle,
"the exceeding greatness of His power which He wrought in Christ" is
"to usward who believe." "Thomas, because thou hast seen me thou
hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen and yet have
believed." He is risen, and the fact of His resurrection as a power
within the life and within the assembly is the testimony for which
the assembly has been constituted, and we have no justification in
existing as the Church if that testimony is not in us. There is no
justification for assembling together unless the issue is life, an
expression of life.
Every time we assemble together there should be such a faith
attitude toward the Lord as present, and a taking hold of Him as
present in the power of resurrection, that this assembly should once
again feel that power at work. We ought to go away from our
assembling together revitalised, re-energised, renewed, feeling
marvellously refreshed and not worn out, tired to death; and it
depends very very largely upon our attitude toward the Lord. Oh, if
we come together to judge the messenger, to criticise the message,
to take account of things present outwardly and to have a meeting
for conscience sake, or bound up with religious legalism or anything
like that, we will be glad when it is all over. But if our hearts
are directed toward the Lord and we are laying hold of the Lord as
present in the power of resurrection, we can go away as giants
refreshed as with new wine. It depends upon the faith attitude. I do
not say everything depends upon this. I can conceive of
circumstances when, with all the exercise of the Lord's children,
there might be a disorder which arrests the Holy Spirit, but a great
deal depends upon that for which we come, and the faith we exercise
when we do come. Try it and see how it works. Get the Lord into view
and exercise faith in relation to Him.
First-Fruits of Resurrection
In connection with this resurrection you have this third thing, this
third principle. "Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not
yet ascended unto my Father: but go to my brethren and say unto
them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and
your God." Literally, "take not hold on Me for I am not yet ascended
unto my Father." "Ascended"; this is not the ascension, of course,
of which Acts 1 speaks, "a cloud
received Him out of their sight." This is something that came in
between His resurrection and His ultimate ascension as there
mentioned, and it carries with it one of the richest meanings for
the assembly. It carries many meanings. "I have not yet ascended";
"I ascend." Evidently between His appearing to Mary, and His coming
into the assembly He had ascended. What for? Well, He was the
first-fruits. He was the first-fruits of a harvest to be fully
reaped in resurrection, in the power of His resurrection. The
harvest was in view, spiritually; Pentecost, the time of harvest,
was forty-seven days hence, but before the harvest you always have
the first ripe grain, the first-fruits. The Jewish farmer, six weeks
before the harvest went into his field and plucked the ears that
were already ripe and took them into the temple, and they were
presented aloft, heaved before the Lord, with this two-fold meaning,
"Lord, inasmuch as you have given me these first-fruits, in faith I
receive the whole harvest: and Lord, inasmuch as I give You the
first-fruits I recognise that all the harvest is Yours." "Christ the
first-fruits," says Paul; and here was the presentation of Himself
in the presence of the Father as the first-fruits in which the whole
harvest is bound up, in which the whole harvest is secured in
faith's complete triumph in which all the harvest is for God,
everything is secured and everything is included in Christ the
first-fruits.
What has happened? Let us have a look at Romans 8:29 again, "For
whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image
of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren".
What has happened? He has gone right back in that act of presenting
Himself to the Father, right back to the foreordination of God; in
the foreknowledge of God every member of Christ was known, foreknown
and foreordained, foreknown in the attitude which they would take
toward the call which would come to them eventually. He has
foreordained them, not to salvation, but to be conformed to the
image of His Son, and having foreknown and foreordained to that end,
the Lord Jesus, in going to the Father in His resurrection-ascension
went right back, into the before times eternal and secured every one
of the foreordained, secured every one of them in the power of His
resurrection, the whole church in His own person, and presented them
representatively, as the Firstborn among many brethren, before God;
and then He came down and constituted His assembly and started to
work conformity to that which had been before the Father, as that
which the Father had determined from all eternity. First-fruits,
"...the Firstborn among many brethren." It is a tremendous thing,
this ascension, this going as the first-fruits into the Father's
presence. It says that all the harvest will surely come and be
there. It is not only something in the Father's intention before the
world was, but something secured now, literally in the Son, in the
power of His resurrection.
That which rose up in the face of the eternal intention and said:
"It shall never be," sin, death, the devil, said: "That inclusion of
that elect race in the person of Jesus Christ shall never be,"
Christ has come and met that challenge in His cross and broken it,
and in His representative Person as the first-fruits has taken that
whole company into the presence of God and secured them there. That
is no small thing. He says, "God intended - ". The Devil said "No."
"I have answered the 'No' of Satan and secured My Church." The
Church is constituted on that basis. In effect the Risen Lord said:
"Oh, do not make an earthly thing of Me, I am no longer related to
this earth, I am related to heaven now, My family is related to
heaven." "And as Head of the Church, the Church is a heavenly Body;
do not try to tie Me to earth, do not make something of Me here."
"No, I and My members are heavenly in life, in relationship, in
interests, in everything." That is the Church, that is the nature,
and basis of the Church, and Christ is the centre as the
resurrection, as the first-fruits, in the presence of God.
The Lord interpret His Word to us and bring us into the spiritual
value of it, just show us the fuller meaning and make us to see our
heavenly calling in Christ Jesus.