The Unsearchable Riches of Christ

Chapter 1 The Riches Of His Grace “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past tracing out!”, (Rom. 11:33; A.S.V.).“Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach unto the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ.”, (Eph. 3:8).So, with the enablement of the Lord, we are going to move in these deep waters and seek to discover a little of the unsearchable riches of Christ, the depth of the riches of the wisdom, and the knowledge of Christ. The Apostle Paul, who used these words was striving against the limitations of language to give expression to something of what he had come to realize as to the Christ, as to the salvation in Christ, into which he had been brought. He does use these many superlatives, straining to find words to speak of the unsearchable, inexhaustible, unfathomable, infinite wealth of the riches of Christ. “O The Depth Of The Riches”This man Paul was able to speak in this way about the riches of Christ just for one reason: his sufferings in Christ; and you and I will never be able rightly to use such language unless we go the way that he went, the way of the Cross. You see, in order to find things which are deep, you have to go into the depth. You will never find deep things in the shallows. You have to go down and down, and get very low. And that in itself explains the Lord’s dealings with His people, it is the answer to the cries of the heart in deep and dark and difficult places and times. Why? If we could but realize it, we should hear the answer coming back to us: that you may discover and appropriate spiritual wealth. These riches do not lie on the surface at all: they are the hidden treasures of dark and secret places. And wealthy souls are ever and always those who have touched something of the depth in their walk with God.Now here is a man whom you know from the many things that he has placed on record, a man who had many otherwise inexplicable experiences. His catalogue of sufferings and adversities of every kind is written for us largely in his Second Letter to the Corinthians. We know that half of chapter six is taken up with the things which befell him.“Giving no offence in anything, that the ministry be not blamed: but in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Spirit, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.”, (2 Cor. 6:3–10).And in other places too, he makes reference to his sufferings in Christ:“Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. Beside those things that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches.”, (2 Cor. 11:23–28).And if ever a man had a reason to ask, “Why?” it was that man. "Why, Lord, are you letting me spend a night and a day in the deep? Being again and again and yet again thrashed with rods, imprisoned, dealt with treacherously by mine own brethren", and so on and so on. "Why, Lord? I am devoted to You. I have a heart for You. I am not seeking mine own ends, but Yours. I am utterly committed to Your interests. There are many who are not so committed, and they do not have to go the way that I am going." Why? For such a man with such a devotion, with such an abandon to the interests of his Lord, why is this man suffering more than any other man, perhaps even more than the whole apostolic company?! Not one of us will ever measure up to this man’s sufferings, although we may sometimes think that ours are just about the limit. I imagine that very few in this little company this afternoon have not had times when they have asked the big “Why?” as to the strangeness of the Lord’s dealings and the Lord’s ways with them.Now does it not strike you very forcibly, and very significantly that such a man cries for language to express what he has seen in the Lord Jesus and says: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!”, (Rom. 11:33). He says, “To me, not the greatest of the apostles, to me, not the greatest saint, to me, not as one more than any other, but less than all, to me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach... the unsearchable riches of Christ.”, (Eph. 3:8; A.S.V.). Yes, we know the riches came through this man, because for two thousand years, the Church has been drawing upon the riches which he reached and received through trials and sufferings. Riches are still coming to us today from that man, perhaps even now. May it be so Lord, today, for that reason. It may sound discouraging, but, dear ones, there is no other way to receive the riches than through suffering.Some time ago, on one of my visits to India, we came on the Persian Gulf; and as I looked on the Gulf of Persia, I saw the pearl fishers way out there in the depths, spending their long, patient hours seeking goodly pearls. This is a lonely and perilous business. For there in the water, I saw sharks lurking about and looking for prey. And then later that night, after dark, I went into the Persian market, the bazaar, and through the narrow aisles between the stalls, I saw displayed in those stalls glorious pearls and other priceless gems. There they were, having been brought in from the depths, now polished and displayed.And then, as I boarded the boat to go on to India, a pearl merchant came on with his cabinets of gems and pearls. These were bound in iron, with strong padlocks on them; and as that sheik sat in his seat, he kept his eye on those cabinets and would not take his eye off of them until we landed and he had delivered them to the merchants in India. These were valuable things, precious things, from the depths. They were costly, because they had cost. They were valuable, because there was painful and lonely vigil behind their obtaining. You see, perils had been associated with securing them.This is a parable, but this is what Paul is really talking about the perils, the loneliness, the long drawn out vigils, the sufferings and the afflictions to obtain the riches, and that not for himself, but for the Church. He said, “I now rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake, which is the Church.”, (Col. 1:24; A.S.V.). I say, there is no other way for us to do more than to talk about and read about and use the language of the riches. There is no other way for us to possess them than to go into the depth and find them. The unsearchable riches does that sound like a contradiction? You have them and they are unsearchable you have them and yet they are too deep to lay hold of, I know this sounds like a contradiction, but Paul simply means: all the meaning, all the value, all the wealth that is here, only a little of which we may know in this life, all that wealth is really beyond us, it is too big; it is past finding out; “it is past tracing out.” Well, that is where we begin with the riches, but we do not end there, for we are going to look, as the Lord will help us, at some of these riches, these unsearchable riches.So, if you at any time would care to look into your New Testament with that word “riches” in hand, you will see how it is connected with different things, because the riches are many-sided, as seen in:“The riches of His grace” (Eph. 1:7),“The riches of His Glory” (Eph. 3:16),“The riches of His Inheritance in the saints” (Eph.1:18),“The riches of the full assurance of understanding” (Col. 2:2).I do not know how far the Lord will lead us in this, but we can begin where the riches begin. Therefore we have to begin with “the riches of His grace.”There is another word linked with that phrase, “the riches of His grace.” It is “the riches of His goodness.” The apostle asks, “Despisest thou the riches of His goodness...?” (Rom. 2:4). That word of scripture will always be beyond us. We may as well settle it now and throw up our hands in utter despair right at the beginning. You and I are never going to fathom that depth nor comprehend that fullness nor understand that grace. I do not hope for a moment to be able to plumb the depth of that word; that is why we can only just dip into these depths “the riches of His grace” and “the riches of His goodness.”We have a very hackneyed way of defining grace. It has been put into a phrase, and we do not get very much further than that phrase. If we ask, “What is the meaning of grace?” the traditional answer is: “Grace is unmerited favor.” Yes, it is that, it is unmerited favor. That very definition does introduce us to the basic character of grace, but that is a weak definition. Yes, it is “unmerited favour,” and, yes, thank God for that. But what do you mean by that? Just this—you have no merit, and God just comes to you because you have no merit. Nothing can merit grace.Now, dear friends, I want to say to you, that grace is more than unmerited favour. First, on our side, it is worse than that because grace does not only come to where there is no merit, but grace also comes where there is a great deal of demerit, demerit. You can see that demerit is stronger than no merit. No merit may be negative, but demerit is positive. It is everything that is not only without merit but of the nature and character of that which is perfect demerit. You and I are not only without worthiness, but also you and I are worse than that. We are positively everything that we should not be!If you will turn again to this man Paul who is speaking this way about himself, not only does he say, “To me, who am less than the least of all saints.”, (Eph. 3:8), he also says: “I am the chief of sinners.”, (1 Tim. 1:15). Now that is positive: “not only less than the least,” but positively, “the chief of sinners.” “I persecuted the Church of God, and wasted it.”, (Gal.1:13), "I gave my consent to the murder of His beloved servant Stephen" (Acts 8:1). And he will tell you not only of his lack of merit but a great deal more about his demerit. Everything that was there in that man was an offence to God; and if anything could stand in the way of grace, it was there in that man. But, you see, grace just means that demerit, not only no merit, but demerit does not set grace aside. Grace is just grace, whatever the condition, however great the demerit, that is grace.As Christians, you and I have got to learn a great deal more about grace as we go on. Perhaps all this is something that the Christian has to reckon with even more so than the unsaved. If you and I are really moving with God, you and I are coming more and more to the place where we do say from the depth of our being, “But for the grace of God.” For me, even as a Christian, after all these years, I will not get through except for the grace of God. As I see and understand it, it takes a great deal more of grace for me now as a Christian than it did to save me at the beginning.Now to some, that may seem a strange thing to say, but again I am referring to grace. For are we not discovering all the time what we did not know even at the beginning, which is, the presence of the demerit in ourselves?! Oh, yes, but don’t you see that is just the character of grace, and that is what grace really means. Grace has no meaning unless that is true.So, then, let us note this second thing about grace. Grace never recognizes any debt. Grace is not a payment of any debt; grace is not in our debt at all. God is not dealing with us in grace because He owes us something. This is only another way of speaking about the absence of merit and the presence of demerit. You see, no one has a claim upon the grace of God. God is not our debtor; grace does not recognize any such thing as being in debt and having to pay its way with us. Grace is free, grace is not something for which God is trying to pay us back. It is all the other way around. We are the debtors, God is the creditor, and grace is just grace; and there is perhaps nothing else that we can say about it, because grace is just His free, spontaneous movement without any obligation. That is the basic nature, the character of grace.When we realize this true nature of grace and the positive demerit about ourselves, and that God is under no obligation to us, then we realize God just makes “grace abound” — “where sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly” (Rom. 5:20; A.S.V.). Now is that not true? “where sin abounded,” grace does so much more abound?! Then we begin to understand what the depth of the riches may be. We are introduced into a realm that is beyond us. Beyond us, is it not? And any soul that has not come to the time and state of just wondering in amazement at God’s voluntary, spontaneous, free, unmerited favor, the soul that has not come there, has not begun to know the meaning of such words as “the riches of His grace”; and that one can never truly be a wealthy soul.The Works — The Appreciation Of GraceSo much for the present about the character of grace, but you know that grace is always set over against works. Although we are so familiar with this truth, let us just dwell upon it for a moment upon works and grace. You see this represents a change, a complete change and reversal of position. Grace changes place with works, or changes the place of works. Grace does not obliterate works. Grace does not say there are never to be works. Grace will demand works; and if it is rightly appreciated, grace will get much more and much better works than any before. But grace does just change the place of works, the works of the Law. What were the works of the law? What are the works of the Law? They are the works in order to get merit, are they not? To get merit, that is the idea. To get merit, to obtain merit, to pay God back with your merit.Look at the scribes and the Pharisees. O, how abhorrent, how obnoxious, was their behavior, their activities and pretenses to the Lord Jesus Himself. They sought merit by works. Giving God something for His enrichment?! Yes, works of the Law to obtain merit were works to give as currency to pay God, thus putting God into our debt and making Him our debtor?! And are we doing all these things to get ourselves out of discredit and give our credit to God? When grace comes in, you see, grace puts the works in another place altogether and takes them out of the first place and puts them into the last. And instead of Law being first, it is grace first. Instead of works for merit being first, it is just God’s own grace without any works whatsoever to obtain any satisfaction and pleasure of God.And then what? All works have not been ruled out of the universe. When grace has come in, if we have really grasped the meaning of grace, we will work more than anyone else has ever worked. But now they are the works of appreciation of grace, not to obtain it, not to merit it, but the works of thanks to God for His unspeakable gift of grace. It changes the place of things, puts things right around the other way. Someone has put this into a rather cryptic phrase: Works do not justify, but the justified person works. Well, that is quite true. “I laboured,” said the Apostle, “more abundantly than them all” (1 Cor. 15:10). And that was true, but was he talking merit? Then he had no right to talk about grace. But he is the man who does talk about grace, and he “laboured more abundantly than them all” because of the overwhelming grace of God to him. The position was entirely reversed, not law and works to obtain favour, but works of love and devotion because of favour obtained. It is a complete reversal.God’s Work Of GraceNow then, what about God’s work of grace? What was true in the first material, natural creation is true spiritually in the new creation. You know that so well. It only needs to be mentioned, and at once you will see it. There was chaos, there was darkness, there was the absence of God. But God moved in and dispelled the darkness and turned the chaos into cosmos order and got to work: He got to work, step by step and stage by stage, upward, upward all the time, creating, ordering, providing a beautiful earth, a wonderful place. So is the description of it. Now He could look upon all His work and pass His verdict, it was “very good.”This was the verdict of an infinitely perfect God Who is so meticulous, Who is so exacting, Who will never pass anything that is imperfect. When He has finished it all, He puts man right into the middle of it, and says: ‘There you are, that is your inheritance, your inheritance is what I have already done. What you have come into, is not something that you have got to make, but what I have already made. Not what you have to do, but what I have already done. You begin your vocation in gratitude where I end My work on your behalf.’You can clearly see the corresponding truth in the New Creation where it is not working unto something, but it is working after everything has been done. You and I come into God’s perfect work. Of course, the simple form of preaching the gospel is to speak about “the finished work of Christ,” but do we understand these glib phrases? All that God has done in and through and by His Son Jesus Christ in the perfecting of salvation, of redemption, of His work is so that the reception of His Son back into heaven is complete. And that reception of His Son is simply because God has nothing more to do so far as providing the ground of His work is concerned. The Lord Jesus could never have gone back to heaven unless the work was full and final and perfect. If there had been one further touch or stroke, He would not have gone back. They would not have received Him in heaven. If we may so speak, they would have said, "Look here, You have left something undone." “I have not found Thy works perfect before My God.” And He would have had to come back again, but He did not. God had in Him perfected and finished His New Creation.And then He began with us, to bring us into it and say, "Look here, you have not got to work unto this, you have got to inherit the New Creation, take possession of it, and live in the good of it and learn to understand what you have got and appreciate it." These are the works of God. They are finished so far as the Lord Jesus is concerned—The works of grace.If that garden and that first material creation is something grand, beautiful and glorious from the hand of God, and wholly satisfies His heart, then His Son is more than that. More than a symbolic creation, an earthly thing, His Son is the final fullness of perfection. He gives us His Son! Perhaps you and I have not fully grasped that, and this is where we are in so much trouble, dear friends. There is no doubt about it. I would go so far as to say that nine-tenths of our spiritual troubles are here, because we are listening all the time to the accuser and the condemner.When things go hard, get difficult, and go contrary and against us, then the devil is saying, "It is because of something about you, your demerit, something is wrong with you." And you go and plead with the Lord, and say, ‘Lord, what is it that you have got against me?’ You spend your hours pleading with God to show you what He has got against you, and why your circumstances are the way they are, and what the thing is that He has got against you that is resulting in His dealings with you in this way.It is just here that the enemy is turning us aside from this work of grace. But why was a work of grace going to be done? And we will come to that presently, but it was done in order to conform us, to change us. We are not now under judgment and condemnation. We are under grace! And Satan will never cease in this life to try and undercut grace and bring us back under law and to bondage. But you and I really do need to grasp and believe the unsearchable riches of His grace.God’s work is completed for us to inherit. There will be a battle, a tremendous battle, as there was with Israel in the land after they crossed the Jordan and got through the death of Calvary, the battle in the land is to get the possession of our inheritance. It is so familiar that before ever we get a foothold, the Lord has said, "I have given you the inheritance." “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, to you have I given it” (Joshua 1:3; A.S.V.). It is secured in Christ for us.Now, then, I must leave this for the present. Although these are truths with which we are so familiar, I think the great truth remains. You and I as the Lord’s Own people, beloved of Him, you and I have got to learn more and more deeply the meaning of this first thing the grace of God. We must learn what grace really is and what grace really means. Withal we must learn how deep, how vast, how unfathomable and unsearchable are what the Word calls, “the riches of His grace.”

Chapter 2 The Spirit of Grace “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past tracing out!”, (Rom. 11:33; A.S.V.).“Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach unto the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ.", (Eph. 3:8).We begin again, with the Lord’s help, with “ The unsearchable riches of Christ.” Having noted that this word “riches” is linked with a number of things in the New Testament, we have commenced our meditation with the first of these connections, “the riches of His grace.” We have said a little about the basic character of grace. Something about the works of grace and the works of law, and we have gone on to look at God’s work of grace, of His finishing His work for man before ever man comes into the picture at all and is then called into the work which God has finished. This is the grace of God.Now, for a few minutes, let us look at the free action of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Grace. You know, do you not, that the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Grace? (Heb. 10:29). What does it mean that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Grace? It simply means that the Holy Spirit is that Spirit of grace which came from God and is freely given to us through faith. Again, here is the Grace of God. We shall never earn nor merit the Holy Spirit. He is freely given to faith. Although it may sound like repetition and labouring the point, I do want that we should be impressed with this: that the Holy Spirit is given freely as the Spirit of Grace. He is the One Who brings to us from God all that Grace means. If we have the Holy Spirit in possession, in-dwelling, we have in Himself, in His very Person and Presence all that Divine Grace means. He is That Spirit of Grace.Now, with Him, we have the free action of God. The Bible begins in a very simple way, so simple that you hardly notice it. It is something written, something set down, and you read it and you hardly know or notice what you have read. "Now the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God brooded upon the face of the deep", and on you go. What was there in that condition of things to merit the Presence and action of the Holy Spirit? The initiative was all with the Spirit of God over against a set of conditions utterly contrary to Himself. Yet this brooding was a very active thing, a very energetic thing, a very purposeful thing; in a word, the Spirit of God brooding, hovering over that state of things was the Presence of God to change the whole situation, because God wanted it changed. That was all. He just wanted it changed. So He took the matter in hand and there was not only the lack of merit, but plenty of demerit. We do not know, but there has been surmising, perhaps guessing, perhaps right guessing, that that state of things was due to some judgment which had come upon the creation, which we may not speculate about at all. But, nevertheless, there was a state which was altogether contrary to the mind of God and the state of things could do nothing about it for itself. It took the free action of the Holy Spirit, just the free, voluntary, unearned initiative and action of the Spirit of God to bring about a new beginning.Now, dear friends, you and I were here in such a state, and we believe that there are multitudes in that position, but as we believed, we were saved, were born anew, became children of God. Who would say we are a new creation in Christ? And how did it happen? Did we go up into heaven to call Him down? Did we go into the deep to bring Him up? Did we go into the uttermost parts of the earth to find Him and persuade Him? We really did nothing about it at all. We are where we are and what we are by an action of grace altogether apart from anything that we did in the matter. He did it, He did it all. We did nothing toward it, indeed our condition was all against God’s thought and God’s mind and yet He took the initiative and He did it by His Spirit. That is the Spirit of Grace, you see, taking things in hand to have them changed, to make a beginning in order to have things not as they were, but as God intended and intends them to be.That is all very simple, is it not? But there is much more in that for our heart-ravishing than we are aware of, because perhaps our salvation is taken too cheaply, or taken too much for granted. It is those people who know best, more than most, what a ruin they were, what a chaos they were, what darkness they were in, what disruption there was in their lives, it is those people who know that their salvation was nothing of their doing; it was the free action of the Spirit of Grace.Therefore, the Holy Spirit has brought God to us. He is God, and as God He has brought God to us, but what does that mean? In other words, what are the riches of His grace? Now we are going to dwell upon that in part. We will begin with another three things with which we are so familiar: The Spirit of Power, The Spirit of Wisdom, and The Spirit of Life.(1.) The Spirit Of PowerFirst of all, let us begin with the Spirit of Grace coming as God to us; He comes as the Power of God into our lives to do all that God wants done. Now that is a simple statement, I know, but He has come to do it. It is no more of ourselves to do that than it was of the first natural, material creation that brought about the change. No, it is no more of ourselves, it is the Power of God that has taken this thing up to do it. Now, is this too common place as to evoke no response in our hearts? Are we not more and ever more aware that whatever has been done or is being done or has got to be done in our lives is by the Power of God. And what great power it took, what Great Power of God!Now is there another power at work? Is darkness a power? Is it a power? Well, perhaps you have some experience as to be able to make it possible for you to say, “yes.” I know that when you have got to move into this world, where the Lord is neither known nor recognized nor acknowledged, and apparently not wanted, you realize that darkness is an awful power, “darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the people”, (Isa. 60:2). You see, the people are in darkness, and what can you do about it? You can talk, you can do all that is in your power, but you cannot break this dark thing until the Spirit of Power as the Spirit of Light breaks in upon that soul, on that life in that realm of darkness: it needs the Power of God because darkness is an awful power.If that is true in this side of the world where there has been so much light given and so much truth given, and there is so much Christian tradition, you just go to the other side of the world—you go to those dark places of heathendom, and you have only got to move in a country where the gospel has not touched that side of the world, and you can feel the darkness. It is evil. It is positively evil. It is like that.Now you may even feel the darkness in a traditionally Christian world or realm. I will never forget my first visit to the city of Rome; and I wanted to see the various things. I went to the Colosseum to see the place where the Christians were flung to the lions. I went to this place and that place and then I went into one of the most well-known and prominent churches in the world, and, you know, I just could not stay. After a very short time, I had to go out. I felt physically ill, a sense of awful death had come upon me physically, and I was glad to get out of the place. It was an atmosphere of death and darkness to the spirit. But, if that is true there, you go to other parts of the world and you can cut the darkness. It is so strong. It is a terrible thing.When the Spirit of God as the Spirit of Light entered into this darkness which was over the face of the earth, the Spirit met an awful power, it was dealing with an awful power, and it called for the exercise of the Infinite Power of God to break that reign of darkness. It called for the Divine Fiat, “Let there be light”, the Word of His Power. Oh, how our hearts cry and crave for more of the knowledge of That Power in His Word. If the smallest percentage of all our speaking had the real Power of God in it, something would happen. It would be a Fiat, an act of God to speak. That is why the Lord Jesus is called “the Word”, because where He comes as the Word something happens, something happens! The devil is exposed, as when He was here and the evil spirit cried out, “I know Thee Who Thou art, the Holy One of God”, (Mark 1:23–24). Hell felt the impact of the Word. Men, sinful men, cried out in His Presence like that. But the point is, darkness is a terrible power.The disruption in our humanity is a terribly strong thing. We are every day, almost every moment of our lives, up against that breakup in the humanity which is ours, or the breakdown of it, the disorder of it, the disintegration of it, the disruption of it. We know that our humanity is a broken down thing. We are all the time striving to pick it up and build it up and hold it up. We know it is a power, it is a terrible power, the disorder and chaos in ourselves. The Spirit of God came of His Own accord as the Spirit of Power to deal with what no other power in this universe could deal with; He came to change it. And that is where we are in the new creation; it is what the Spirit of God has undertaken to do with us. And surely there are many in this place tonight who would echo the words of the apostle, “Kept by the power of God”, (1 Peter 1:5). You know you would not be a Christian today, you would not be going on with the Lord, you would not be standing true to the Lord, but for the keeping Power of God. In a world like this, there is such a power against what is the Lord’s.Well, this is the Spirit of Grace, you see, that has come to take it over. The Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Grace is the custodian of the Divine Perfection. The Spirit of Grace has taken responsibility for realizing God’s End. Oh, thank God for that. Knowing ourselves and the awful forces that there are in our nature; knowing the world, or something of it, and the awful forces that there are in this world; and knowing the devil and something of his inimical hatred and opposition to what is of God, to anything that is of God, we certainly have to say, “Well, the only possibility is if God Almighty does it, if God sees to it.” And that is the Spirit of Grace that has come to take up God’s End and to do it. It is the free action of the Holy Spirit.Now I wonder if I were to ask you what is in John 16 if you would be able to answer. Well, you know John 16 says, "I am going away, I am going away. You see Me now, but you will not see Me anymore. I return unto My Father... for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send Him unto you." And it goes on to say what He will do, when He is come. It is all so natural it seems; it is all effortless; it is just going to be in the order of things. He is coming and He is going to do this and that; and that is all there is to it. It is just that He is coming, "I am going to send Him." And when we read John 16, we know the content of the Word, but do we realize that all this means that the Holy Spirit is taking over all that Christ came to initiate, and to carry it right through to its End. He is just going to do that for which He has come for. He is the Spirit of Grace, and grace is just God doing all that God can do without asking for any merit or any payment. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of that Grace as the Power of God, but that is one of the riches, you see, it is the riches of His power through grace.We ought to get down our Bibles and have a word study, and a passage study on that word, “Grace.” Perhaps if I only just remind you, it will start off something. Have you not noticed that grace is many-sided in the New Testament, and one of the sides, or aspects of grace is that it is an energy. It is a power. It is a power-force in our lives. “There was given to me the messenger of Satan to buffet me.” And although these are not the exact words that the apostle used, this is what he meant, "I cried out to the Lord, take this away, because I cannot endure it. I shall not be able to go on with this thing. I will not be able to get through; this is too much, this is too great a burden. It is going to limit me; it is going to spoil my life." And He said unto me, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Grace there is introduced as over against the conscious inability of the apostle to go on with what he had been called for, and what had been put on him to do. His natural reaction was “I just cannot. If I have got to have this thing, I just will not be able to go on. Take it away, Lord. I asked Him three times to take it away. Lord, take it away. Lord, take it away, life is impossible.” He said, “My grace is sufficient for thee”, everything is possible to grace. It is a power, you see. It is an energy in the life. Perhaps, we do know this in measure, but not as much as we ought. We have had to say many times, but for the grace of God I should have acted very differently than from what I did. But for the grace of God, grace saved me. Grace kept me. Grace held me. It is the Power of God that is the Spirit of Grace. But that is where the riches began.(2.) The Spirit Of WisdomBut what is the second thing? Well, He is called the Spirit of Wisdom. Later we will have something more to say about Wisdom. But for the moment what does that mean, "What is Wisdom ?" To begin with what is Wisdom? Wisdom is more than knowledge. You know, you may have a lot of knowledge and have no wisdom at all. The people that have the most knowledge have got the least wisdom. They are the most foolish people with all their knowledge. What is Wisdom? It is knowing how to do it. That is a simple formula for wisdom. But as I have said, there is more to say in another connection about wisdom, and here it is.I remember many years ago I heard or read of a little incident of a firm of engineers who were given a contract to do a certain job, and when it was done they sent in their account, more or less general, and it was a very big account. And the people who had to pay the bill sent it back and said, "Look here, this is not good enough, I want you to explain this and tell us how you made up this bill." The firm sent back, "Materials so much, time of workmen so much, and one or two other practical things"; but when those things were added together, they did not come up to the whole account. And they wrote underneath: the balance—‘knowing how to do it.’Ah, well, knowing how to do it. It is quite a big part, you see, in the whole business, is it not? They might have had the materials, and they might have had the workmen, and they might have had all the other things, but not knowing how to do it, what would have been the good at all. They never would have done it.Wisdom is knowing how to do it, and here is the Spirit of Grace. In this way Grace knows how to do it. We have to learn a lot about that. But Grace knows how to do it. Grace knows how to take up the problems and handle them and solve them and negotiate the situation to a successful and triumphant issue. Grace knows how to handle the people concerned and, oh, to handle a thousand other things which requires knowing how to do it.Now I am quite sure that I am speaking the truth, that you and I are brought many times to the place where we do not know how to do it, or what to do. We just do not know, we have not got the wisdom for the situation. Perhaps you are in it now, as I am. But the Spirit of Grace is the Spirit of Wisdom, and He knows how to do it. We have had some experience upon which we can say, "I never thought it would be done, and I never imagined it would be done like that, the way the Lord has done it. What the Lord has done, and how He has done it. That never would have occurred to me to do it like that." And when you think of it, was there any better way that it could have been done. No, the riches of His grace is the riches of His Wisdom.If you and I do believe in the grace of God brought to us by the Spirit of Wisdom, and I almost hesitate to say it because I know I am involving myself as well as you, we ought never to despair of a situation. He knows how to handle that difficulty. He knows how to get us through that dilemma. He knows how to resolve that matter. We do not know what to do, and in the presence of this quandary, this problem, we cry out because it wants something so deep and so great that it is altogether beyond us. It may be that way in time, but certainly in eternity we will say, "O the depth of the Wisdom, how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out."(3.) The Spirit Of LifeThe Spirit of Grace is the Spirit of Power, and the Spirit of Grace is the Spirit of Wisdom, and the Spirit of Grace is the Spirit of Life. You may know that He is called the Spirit of Life, “the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus”, (Rom. 8:2). By the Spirit, we are told that Jesus was raised from the dead, through the eternal Spirit—the Spirit of Life (Heb. 9:14).We need not go back again for our analogy to the first creation, the operation of the brooding Spirit, and the result of the life in the creation. In the animate creation and in man is the other kind of life. So the result of the presence of the Spirit in the new creation is like that. But here again, it is not just a Christian truth, a Christian doctrine, the gift of eternal life is not just one of those things that we come into when we become Christians. This Resurrection Life is a continuous abiding from day-to-day in power and experience. It is put in all the tenses of the Christian life and salvation: "We were raised together with Him, that we should walk in newness of life." That is in the past tense. We are now living in the good of that, so that the life whereby Jesus conquered death should be manifested in our mortal flesh. That is in the present tense. And this goes on to the future, the future of the great revelation of life in its final, full and perfect expression. This Resurrection Life is not something only that happened when we are saved. It is a Power to work in us continually now. Well, you know it so well in hearing and teaching, but this is the Spirit of Grace.Oh, thank God for the Power of this Divine Life, which is demonstrating itself so continually. And it seems to me, and I ought to have said this in the past, but it seems to me, more and more to be the case that the further you go on, the deeper this life has to go, because you are taken so much more deeply into death. It seems the experiences of going down become deeper and greater than ever they had been before and, therefore, the Power of His Resurrection becomes greater all the way along. This is a very hopeful thing for us. Perhaps some of you are feeling today that you are touching bottom and perhaps you say, "Well, this is the end." But do not forget that Resurrection is a reality. It is not a theory. It is not just a doctrine. It is an experience; it is a continuous experience. And, dear friends, the great revelation in the Word of God is that in the end it is going to be up and not down.We know how it is going to finish, it is an elevated life that we have. However, we may from time to time descend, but we are going to ascend as many times as we descend. But, as the Lord’s people, the final movement is an ascension. Although this life is that way, it must seek out and find its own Source of Life. Now where it began, it will End. It began in God, and it will End in God. This is the Spirit of Grace, and the Spirit of Life.I know, dear friends, that I have only said things with which you are familiar. But sometimes our most familiar things, because of their familiarity, lose their power and it is well to be reminded of them.Now I have mentioned these three aspects of grace as three great and primary riches of grace and of how rich they are. What I have next to say, if the Lord wills, would take considerable longer than we would have time for this evening, because they really do take us into the depths.So I will leave it there for now and take it up later, but you have enough to get on with what I have said this evening, or what I trust the Lord has said. You go away and let your hearts, as well as your minds, dwell upon this that has been said; because we can really miss a lot, dear friends, if we only hear and go away and do nothing with what we have heard. All is for our good. But the real value will be if, after tonight, we just recall these things, and go to the Lord very quickly and say:“Oh, Lord, if what is said is true, if this is the truth, I look to You to make that good in me. The Spirit of Power, and the Spirit of Wisdom, and the Spirit of Life: You have said that these are features of Your grace brought in the Person of the Holy Spirit. This is the teaching of the Word of God. It must not stay in the Book. It must come into reality in my own life. Lord, I count on You to make this true, to make this real, and so, more than ever, make this a reality in me.”

Brother Manfred,After reading and soaking up both chapters of your posting of "The Unsearchable Riches of Christ", i for one was very blessed and ministered to. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you brother for the encouraging words.Brother Sparks shares some vital light here. How great are the riches of Christ toward us who believe !Manfred

Chapter 3According To The Riches Of His Grace: Redemption And Wisdom “In Whom we have our redemption through His blood, ...according to the riches of His grace.”, (Ephesians 1:7).We are going to consider another aspect of the riches of Christ in connection with “our redemption according to the riches of His grace.” This matter of redemption is a very big one, and it could take many hours of consideration, because like election, it is a matter which has been misunderstood and in some ways it has been distorted. There has been a good deal of confusion over the matter of this priceless wonder of our redemption, and the meaning of that word. The confusion arises when redemption is pictured as a matter of taking a slave out of bondage by paying the redemption money. Well, I say, there may be an element of truth in that idea of interpretation, but the difficulty and the confusion arises when you ask the question: "To whom is the money paid? Has God got to pay the devil something to get back that which he has taken? Is God a debtor to Satan? Has God got to go into Satan’s slave market and put up a price to redeem that which Satan has captured?" You see, it is an untenable idea, an unthinkable thing to ever contemplate that God is at the mercy of Satan, that Satan is in the position of saying, "If You would like to pay me an adequate price, I will let you have what is in my possession." We will never recognize that. So we have got to revise our idea of this matter of redemption. I say there may be an element of truth in it. It may go just so far, as we shall probably see, but that is really not the whole truth, and if we are not clear about this matter of redemption, we shall be in some confusion.So, I want to try and make this thing clear, for it is important that we have a right understanding of things. We rejoice in redemption and we sing about redemption and we can never make too much of redemption, but there is some real value in understanding what we are talking about by having a right apprehension of the words and the terms that we use so commonly. So, I just trust that what I say about this may not make it seem to be a complicated thing, but rather to help us to appreciate the real meaning of redemption.“Hath Redeemed Us Unto God”Now let us begin where it does begin. Redemption begins with being “unto God.” It is redemption “unto God.” No, the great word at the beginning of the Book of the Revelation says: “hath redeemed us unto God, unto God.” That means that something has been taken from God which is God’s right. And, as a result, if something has been taken from God, then the balance of things has been upset. Therefore, things are not equal, and things are not complete, because there is something lacking which belongs to God. And that being the case, then of course, things are unequal and things are unbalanced. If there is a family, and in that family there are two sons belonging to the one father, and one son is removed then the balance of the family is upset. It is lopsided, you see. It is one-sided, and the father’s possession is divided and incomplete, and an unequal position obtains. If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and that is his complete lot, that is everything he owns — his fulness — and one of those sheep is lost, the balance is upset and the thing is not complete, and his possession is interfered with and disturbed. Then, consequently, things are out of proportion. If a woman has a necklace with ten pieces of silver hanging from it, and one of those pieces of silver is lost, then the balance is upset and she has not got all that belongs to her. So, then, things are unequal, and the balance is disturbed.However, the bringing back of those lost things, whether it is a son or a sheep or a piece of silver restores the balance to the owner, and that is redemption unto God. God has all that belongs to Him, all that is His right, and there is completeness restored “Redemption unto God.” But what is it really that has been lost? Of course we have the parables and the illustration in the Scripture, it is like an illustration of a son, a sheep, a piece of silver. Many other things are employed to illustrate the truth, but they are only illustrations. What is it really that has been lost and that has, by being lost, upset the balance? It is life. It is life. Now here is the deep mystery of redemption.This is what we are met with in the Bible throughout, and, of course, I cannot trace this thing in half an hour, but what we are met with in the Bible throughout is the very matter of the disturbance of the balance of life. And God’s demand is that that balance shall be restored. He is the Author, the Fountain, the Origin of the Whole Sum of Life. Life is God. He alone is the rightful Lord of Life. Life is God’s, and so, it belongs to God. It is as though, if I may put it this way, God has so much Life, so much Life—which is a complete measure of Life, a fulness of Life, an ultimate of Life—Life is just so much in God and with God, it is not less, not more, but just so much in God that if something of That Life is taken away, you upset the balance of life. The whole thing is out of proportion. And redemption means restoring that balance, by restoring the fulness. Well, then, there you have your Bible.We are in these days very much occupied, or shall I say the government is, or perhaps the country is occupied with this matter of capital punishment. A life has been taken, therefore, another life must equalize the situation and put it straight, put it right, the balance of life must be restored. That is the heart of capital punishment as in the Law of Moses—or before the Law of Moses—in the law of the first covenant, “Whosoever taketh man’s life, his life shall be taken.” The law of capital punishment. Oh why, just for revenge? Just for judgment only? Just for malice? You do that to me, I will do that to you? Is it just that? No, there is a deep principle illustrated here. So much life has been taken by the slaying of that man. That God says, "That has got to be put straight, that has got to be equalized, the balance has got to be restored." That is the law of capital punishment. And then there is the law of the cities of refuge for the manslayer. A very interesting matter is that of the manslayer, and the cities of refuge provided. Because the manslayer has taken life, and the avenger of blood is on his track to equalize this by taking his life. It is done in order to put it straight, to put it even, to measure everything up again. Of course, that is negative, so far as the Old Testament is concerned. But we have not finished yet. I think that you can see the principle is quite clear. It is just a matter of restoring the balance of things.Now it is like that through the Old Testament, and it is all a wonderful illustration of great Divine truth. The point is, life has been taken which belongs to God, because He is the Author of Life, it has been taken, and God demands that it be restored, because He is an equal God.Equality or equity or righteousness, which is a perfect balance of things, belongs to God. And things must be even in God’s universe. Things must not be out of order, not out of proportion nor out of measure, but just perfectly even. When we come to the end of redemption, everything will be even because everything will be straightened out. There will be nothing out of balance or out of proportion, but all will be right, and righteousness will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. And no one will have any ground for a quarrel with God. It is just right.Now that is the point, you see, over this matter of redemption. It is a question of life. There is, in God’s order, in God’s universe, in God’s system of things, a great equalizing principle. You can never be in fellowship with God and be unrighteous in a detail. Your fellowship with God, your oneness with God, is upset, is unbalanced. It is like a dislocation of a limb in the body if there is a point of unrighteousness in life, in business transactions, or in relationships. Well, that is unrighteous. All right, the balance is upset, and God is going to demand that that be straightened out, evened out. Righteousness is a tremendous thing with God, because it just means that God has things balanced, perfectly balanced. Now the focal point then of this, as we have said, is life. Now the Old Testament tells us that the blood is the life. You and I can never, never straighten this matter out. Man can never put this thing right with God. Man can never give back to God that which has been taken from Him. Therefore, His Own Son took on flesh and blood and Christ’s Infinite Blood has atoned for it. You and I have never yet fathomed the depth of the wonder of the Blood of Jesus Christ, it is a term for His Life. His Infinite Blood is given to God to restore the balance, to make up for what has been lost, and what has been taken from God by ruthless hands, by the murderer himself who has come in. He restores all things to God by His Own designated Infinite Blood, because it has got to be sufficient to meet the demands of an Infinite God on the one side, and of all men on the other side. Yes, it is sufficient, Life has been poured out by Jesus Christ, for God’s satisfaction, in order that God shall have all that He has a right to. God’s Son has poured out His Life to meet that demand of God in all men from Whom This Life has been taken. The payment is not to Satan, but it is to God. It is redemption by His Blood unto God.There follows this: that man is in bondage by this terrible thing that has happened. He is in a position of weakness, of defectiveness, of helplessness, and because of this he is helplessly in bondage.Now you, of course, can take your illustration from the Old Testament, Israel in Egypt is always referred to as the land of bondage. They were in bondage, that is the word which governs their position there. Now how were they delivered from that bondage? Oh, we say it is by the blood of the lamb. That is true, but the operation was two-sided. On the one side, it depended entirely upon the attitude of the heart, the attitude of faith. And on the other side, if unbelief and rebellion of heart persisted, as in Pharaoh and the Egyptians, the blood testified against them; it was their undoing. But Israel was just as much in bondage to sin and to the world as Egypt was. Just as much, there is no difference. But the difference which did come about was by their attitude toward the blood. If any Israelite had refused by unbelief or rebellion of heart to take that shed blood and sprinkle it upon the doorposts, the lintel, making a circle of blood, they would have gone the same way as the Egyptians. They would have remained in bondage and death and under judgment. But we need to recognize that they did not understand, they did not know what we are talking about. However they had the simple prescription, the simple command, that they should take that blood of the lamb without spot, without blemish, and sprinkle it upon the doorposts. Therefore, with that simple command, there arose the demand for the obedience of faith, and thereby that blood answered for them God’s requirements.God knew the secret, the mystery of that blood. God Who is the Timeless, the Eternal God was not moving, so many hundreds or thousands of years before, on the ground of that symbolic lamb. No, He was moving then and there on the ground of His Own Son at Calvary, the Passover Lamb (1 Cor. 5:7b); and He knew the meaning of it, while Israel did not have the understanding. But God knew, and He just made His simple requirement, but bound up with this deep, this fathomless mystery of life, God has a right to life. God must have that which is His Own Life, and so the lamb with its shed blood symbolically answers to God’s demand and in that life’s blood poured out, it is unto God. You remember, that through all the Old Testament ritual in Israel, the blood belongs to God; it is sacred unto God. It is God’s, it represents the life which belongs to God, and in the giving of that, God has His right, His portion, what belongs to Him.So, when we come to this word in Ephesians 1, and at verse 7, it says: “We have redemption through His Blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.” “And hath,” says John, “redeemed us unto God by His Blood” (Rev. 5:9). If you would like to change the word you can, “We have redemption through His poured-out Life, redeemed unto God through His poured-out Life,” that is the meaning of it. The Lord Jesus, because of the infinite value of His Blood, the infinite measure of that which He gave in His Cross unto God, has satisfied God perfectly in this matter of His requirement, His demand. And, although the explanation may sound a little complicated and difficult well, of course, it is,it is the unsearchable riches, oh the depth of the riches is beyond us, but after all in experience it is very simple.You know, dear friends, when you and I at the beginning of our Christian life take by faith the virtue of the Blood of Jesus Christ, we do not understand that, we do not comprehend its meaning, but in simple faith we see that it is by way of the Blood of Jesus Christ that we are saved, and in that simple but genuine heart-faith in the efficacy and virtue of the Blood of Jesus Christ, we take it and give ourselves to God on the ground of it. What is our first consciousness? Everything is all right, the dislocation has been adjusted, the unbalanced state of things has been put straight, we call it peace with God. This is only another way of saying the same thing, God has what He requires for His satisfaction, and if God is satisfied, you and I will be well satisfied. If there is that in us which satisfies Him, the Spirit will bear witness.And, although I say again, we do not understand, we are in the depths, the mighty depths, a depth which it will take eternity to comprehend, there is a simple beginning with this fact, everything was distorted, deranged, unbalanced, there was something lacking that was essential, that was vital to our peace, all that sort of thing, and now we have peace with God, the balance is restored, God is satisfied, in our hearts we feel, although we cannot explain it, we feel, well somehow or other a great adjustment has taken place. Things are equal now, things are straight now. Put it as you will, but it is a consciousness, is it not?And what is true in that sense of the initial aspect of our salvation will be an abiding law throughout our Christian life. If on any matter whatsoever, God’s rights are being withheld, if He is not getting that which is His due, in that measure we shall lack the fulness of His rest and His peace. Now there is sort of an unbalanced state of things, there is an oscillation in the balance. Do you know something about that oscillation in the balances of your heart? Is there something just not steady in your heart? Something here that is uncertain, that is wavering, that is not sure about this yet? But immediately, when you and I get that thing cleared up with God, it may be only one thing, but get that straightened out and God gets what He is requiring, peace is restored. It is a wonderful truth in the Christian life, is it not? It is simple in that way, but that is the explanation. Oh, why have I been holding out so long. Why did I not get that thing cleared up before now? I have been spoiling everything for myself, because the Lord has not had what He had a right to.Now redemption is initial, redemption is progressive, and redemption is final. There are the three tenses. You can change the word from redemption to salvation if you like, it is the same thing. We were saved, we are being saved, and we shall be saved; those are the three tenses of salvation. Well, the first is what He has done for us perfectly and completely and which we have accepted. The second of the process of redemption or salvation is that God is getting more and more of that requirement of His in our lives, and as He does, we are knowing more and more the balanced, the steady life of rest and confidence. But thank God, for as we go on to the end of our days—salvation will continue right to the last breath— there is that ultimate, that perfect salvation when with that throng around the Lamb on the Throne, we shall sing, “And hath redeemed us unto God by His Blood.” That is the final aspect and phase of redemption. It is all in the Infinite value of the Blood of Jesus. See how great this is?! Well might the apostle here include this in the riches of His grace, the unsearchable riches of His grace, “the depth of the riches of His Grace,” providing God with that which we could never give Him, answering to God for His righteous demands which we could never do. All these words are bound up together. “Who of God is made unto us Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification, and Redemption”, (1 Corinthians 1:30). Righteousness: the Righteousness which is of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Thus, God has provided it all in His Son.The Heart Of Wisdom And ElectionNow, I will add just a word here as to the next thing in this group, this fivefold group of the riches of His grace, — Election, Adoption, Redemption, Wisdom and Consummation — it will not take me more than a few minutes to do this, because it is so closely linked in with what we have been saying. Election, adoption, and redemption. The word that I want to add is found in Ephesians 1, at verse 8, “Which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence.” Oh, dear ones, one of the riches of His grace here is this “wisdom” which He has made to abound unto us. Of this so many-sided and full matter of wisdom, which He made to abound unto us, Christ is made unto us from God “wisdom .” I am only going to say one thing in this context with what we have said, and what the rest of this chapter contains. What is wisdom in its meaning here? Well, we will put it this way, when the apostle had tabulated these five profound things, these five unexplorable things, he goes down on his knees. Now that was something extraordinary, for a Jew very rarely knelt down to pray, he always stood up to pray, if it was in the synagogue he stood up to pray. The Bible refers to this in Mark 11:25, “When you stand praying.” The common attitude and posture of prayer for the Jew were standing and lifting up holy hands. It is only occasionally that you find such an one on his knees. You will find Daniel on his knees (Dan. 10:9). And now here in Ephesians 3:14 Paul says, “I bow my knees unto the Father.” “Bow.” What is this? Why this unusual attitude of position? Something unusual is at stake or is involved. It is an occasion for something extraordinary. You will agree that that was so with Daniel, you remember when he prayed there was something tremendous involved.Now the apostle says, “I bow my knees,” there is something here that is a tremendous matter. And what does he ask, what does he pray for? He has said all these things about the riches of His Grace, he knows how incomprehensible they are: “I bow my knees unto the Father that He would grant unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your heart being enlightened, that you may know.” Now you have gotten the heart of wisdom. What is the heart of wisdom? It is the gift and ability of seeing right into the heart of things, the ability given to see into the heart of things. That is the spirit of wisdom and revelation.Now Paul is writing in this letter of Ephesians about the mystery hidden from ages and generations, hidden from before times eternal in Christ, but now brought out from the hidden place and committed and conveyed. Paul is trying to explain this, to speak about this mystery. And these things are in the mystery: “predestination, foreordination, redemption...” Anybody here doubt that they are mysteries? And men have been putting themselves into natural distortions through hundreds of years to explain just these words, “predestination, foreordination,” and they are still going on with it. Paul knows how deep are these riches of His grace, what a tremendous thing is brought to us in Christ, and before it all he falls down on his knees and says, “I bow my knees unto the Father, that He would grant unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him”,(Eph. 3:14, 1:17). Wisdom and revelation, that is, the ability to see into the heart of things, and all I can add to that is that the Holy Spirit has come and is with us in order to disclose to us the heart of these things.Perhaps the greatest need of Christians today is to see the meaning of the things that they believe, to see the meaning of what true Christianity is, to see the meaning of all these things that make up our Christian faith. They are depths beyond all reaching, they are immeasurably great things. These things are unfathomable, and we need an ability, a God-given ability to be able to see into the heart of this. But thank God that is possible. Thank God the Holy Spirit is given for that very purpose. And what I am saying to you, dear friends, is just this: “That you and I may have this same Spirit and this work of the Spirit to open our hearts, the eyes of our heart to give us this wisdom to see into the heart of the things of Christ.” And what a wonderful thing it is, just to see in a little way. To be able to say, “My, I never saw that before, that is light, that is indeed illumination, that is revelation, that is the truth, it has an effect, it is not just the mental pleasure, fascination, it does something in us, it puts us into a position where we cannot throw that away easily, it has become a part of us, we will never say we can do without that.”We will never say: “Well that is all very wonderful, that is all very nice, but let us come back to the simplicities, to the things easily understood.” You cannot do that once you have seen into the heart of things, you cannot throw it away, you cannot part with it easily, to do so would be to do irreparable damage to our own spiritual life. “I and this truth, this light are one, it is not some thing that I have got, it is myself, my very self, my very life, I have seen it, because God has made it known to me. No use trying to explain it all, I just cannot do it, but there it is, it is myself. He has made it a part of myself.” And that is wisdom, seeing right into the heart by the opened eye, knowing in an inward way, an interior way, the meaning of the things that we have heard and read and, perhaps, believed.But dear friends, as I think you will see from what I have said this afternoon, there is a depth, a fulness in such a word as redemption. A word which we have only just touched the fringe of. And everything else in our salvation is in the same category, it is of the dimensions of God Himself. And it is going to take eternity for us to comprehend it. But it is given to us here to know, and to know more and still more of the depth of the wisdom of His grace!

Chapter 4 The Exceeding Riches Of His Grace: Selection And Adoption I will read again the passages which are basic to our present meditation. In the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Romans, at verse 33,“Oh the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God, how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out.”The Letter to the Ephesians, chapter three, at verse eight,“Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints was this grace given to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ.”Now seeing that we have not yet said all that we have to say for this present time about the first context of riches, that is, “The riches of His grace”, we will just look at one or two other passages in that connection. In the Ephesian letter, chapter one, and verse seventeen: “ That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.” That scripture comes after what we have in verse seven of that same chapter: “In Whom we have our redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.” Then at the end of chapter three, we have the apostle’s prayer for a spirit of wisdom and revelation, a prayer which has to do with the apprehension of the riches of His grace, found in verses fourteen through twenty-one:“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of Whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend (or apprehend) with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.Now unto Him That is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages world without end. Amen.”Now let us come back to chapter two, and verse seven,“That in the ages to come He might shew the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” — "the exceeding riches of His Grace.”We have already considered some of the things related to this grace, the things which are the riches thereof. We have seen the nature of grace. We have seen God’s work of grace, and we have set grace over against our own works for merit. And we have seen that the great initiative of Divine Grace is, in the free action of the Holy Spirit, to bring us into that grace.Before we go on to look still more deeply into this fathomless, unsearchable ocean of Divine Grace, let us remind ourselves that just as Grace is the beginning of everything for us, and with us, so Grace is the continual basis of everything to the end. You see, what is true at the beginning, is true throughout the whole life of the child of God. This sounds like a contradiction, yet it is not, to say that the Law of Grace governs the whole life of the people of God. What Grace begins, Grace carries on, and Grace crowns. We will never be off the basis of Grace. And we shall discover, as we go on increasingly, how we are bound to Grace for everything that comes to us from God. Grace for everything that we know of God, and Grace for everything that we can be or can do; it will always be by Grace, and nothing else. We will never move from that place of Grace, and from that ground of Grace, on to any other. That sounds very simple, but this is something which confronts us every day of our lives, and all the way along, we shall be compelled by the Holy Spirit to recognize this, and to accept it, and to take this position: "Now this is all a matter of the Grace of God, or we will never get by this, we will never get any further than this, but only by His Grace." So, we are steadily moving, but we are really moving in a very practical way, toward that passage which we have just read: “That in the ages to come, He might shew the exceeding riches of His Grace in His kindness toward us.” Oh, how wonderful is this: that in the ages to come, the riches of His Grace will be exceeding and displayed in us!Well, I think we are beginning to realize that this is a fact. I think more and more we are becoming aware that it has got to be more grace, and still more grace. And if we have any difficulty about that, let us put this climactic statement over the whole life in the ages to come: “To shew the exceeding riches of His grace toward us.” Now you cannot get to that point where it is so great, so complete and perfect, so full and final, you just cannot leap there in one day or in one experience. No, the whole of the life of the people of God is a pilgrimage of grace.A Pilgrimage Of GraceNow, I expect you know that Peter’s letters are founded upon this one word: “Grace”. And, I think it is worth our pausing here to note it, because grace is mentioned a number of times in his letters. Here they are just to remind ourselves of them: 1 Peter 1:2, 10,13; 2:19,20; 3:7; 4:10; 5:5,10,12. And in 2 Peter 1:2; 3:18. However, it is a great pity that the translators have not given us the correct translation of this word “grace” in every case in Peter’s letters. But Peter, as you also know, represents the Church as in its pilgrimage. Paul represents the Church as in the heavenlies, having arrived very largely there, because he is viewing it from above. But Peter is viewing it here, and he says, “I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims”, (1 Pet. 2:11). Pilgrims, that is Peter’s standpoint. For him it is the pilgrimage of the Church. And the great word of the pilgrimage with the people of God is the word: “Grace”.Peter has so much to say about grace. When I referred to the unfortunate translation of this word, you will probably remember that he said, “If you take persecution, opposition, ill treatment joyfully, this is (and the translators have put the word) acceptable with God.” But the real word there is “grace”. The word in the original is, “This is grace with God.” The pilgrimage contains: persecution, opposition, misrepresentation, and what not. And if any man knew about that, Peter did. And if any man knew the meaning of grace, it was that man who had denied his Lord three times, in such a way as to feel that he had sinned beyond the possibility of forgiveness. If ever you had done a thing like that, in a vehement, angry way, and declared that you did not know Jesus Christ after having been with Him for three years, in the closest contact, you would despair of yourself. No wonder Peter went out and wept bitterly. No wonder the Lord had to make a special mention of him by name when recalling the scattered disciples after His Cross, "Go to My brethren, and say unto them, and to Peter", (Mark 16:7) — and to Peter, mentioning him by name.Well, that is old ground and so familiar to us, but now we can understand why Peter’s great word was grace. Yes, grace is for the pilgrimage. And what Peter is saying so much about in his first letter is “the sufferings”, the sufferings of this present time; and it is grace all the way along, the whole journey calls for grace. However, and this will belong to a further consideration, “It is grace unto glory.”Well, I think it was worth reminding us of that word: “Grace”. But what grace begins — and we all know that it is through grace that we begin, the grace of God that brought us into salvation — grace is going to perfect the work; it is going to carry it right through and crown it at last. And I am quite sure that the top stone will be brought forth with shoutings of Grace, "The grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.", (Zech. 4:7; 1 Pet. 1:13).Now when we talk about the riches of grace within the realm of the unsearchable, the inexhaustible, and, although we shall never be able to fathom these depths, I think we can still go a little bit deeper. I want you to come to this first chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians. I am not going to make anything of this — it may be a coincidence and there may be really nothing in it — but you know that in Bible numbers, the number of grace is five. And here in this chapter, we have five of the exceeding riches of His grace. And when I say exceeding, I am quite sure that as we look at them you will say, “That is beyond me. I cannot comprehend that, that is too big.” But, nevertheless, you know we are allowed to look at the big mountains, even if we cannot compass them or master them, and it sometimes does us good just to look at them. But, thank God, these are not just objective things that are presented to us here, we are in them, and so we will look at these five great, I think the greatest, “riches of His grace.”“Election”: To Serve God In A PurposeChapter one, at verse four, “Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love.” He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. Do you understand that? Can you comprehend that? This is election. In the Word it is definitely stated that “He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world .” There was an election, which took place in those eternal counsels of God, which included us if we are today in Christ Jesus. We are in Christ Jesus, because we were chosen in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world.You see, to begin with, you are dealing with a Timeless God. As far as time was concerned, what was some four thousand years ahead, was present with God before time began, because He is Timeless. Everything which for us is future time, is always present time with God. And so, for Him in effect, Christ was then, and in effect we were then, and God acted on eternal ground. So let us look at this matter of “election”. I am going to change the word election, because I do not like that word, although in certain forms it is in the New Testament, which is found in 1 Peter 1, at verse 2: “Elect, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.” That is Peter, and the elect is there mentioned as a body, but let me say again, I am not fond of this word election because of its associations. So I am going to change it and speak about "selection".Selection, it is the same thing in meaning and in word. Now, then, when we get that word we are helped. The nation of Israel was “selected” out of all nations. They were selected and chosen. If you like: “Elected”. But God looked on all the nations of the earth, and selected Israel among the nations. Did that mean that God rejected all the other nations, because He selected this nation? Did it mean that He selected them to be saved, and all the other nations to be lost, because they were not selected?Now, by way of illustration, let us come into this room where we are a little company of people. Allow me, not to take the place of God, but just to take this place by way of argument, of wanting something done. I want something done, and I look over this company, and I say: "brother,I want you to come alongside of me for this thing that I want done. I select you from this company, for the thing that I want to do. Now do not jump to conclusions, either you or the others. Do not jump to conclusions that you are more important than all the others, and that you are better than all the others, that you are more worthy of this than the others, for that is not true.”And you others: “Do not jump to the conclusion that because I did not select anyone, or all of you, that you are rejected by me and have no place in this plan of mine. Do not conclude that you are less worthwhile than this one, or less worthy, because you are not selected for this thing. Do not come to such a conclusion.”The Lord selected the nation of Israel and said, “I have chosen you, not because you are better than the other nations, not because you are more worthy, but I have acted sovereignly and chosen you, or selected you, from among the nations, because I have a purpose that I want fulfilled. Now My purpose is just this, to use you to the good of all the other nations. All these other nations are going to come into blessing through My use of you, through My selection of you.”Let us go to the Bible. What was the covenant with Abraham, who was the first of this nation? “In thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed.”, (Gen. 12:3). That does not sound as though all other nations were rejected and consigned to be lost, because they were not the selected ones—in thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed.We have a great illustration of this in Joseph, the beloved of his father. “Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children... and when his brethren saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him...”, (Genesis 37:3–4). Joseph was sold into Egypt. Hence, it was through Joseph, that Egypt was saved from famine and from death. It was not only his brethren, the children of Israel his father who was saved, but it was through Joseph that the blessing of life, salvation came to the nation of Egypt. So Joseph, a chosen one, a selected one out of a nation took real blessing to the nations of the world.Whatever word you like to use, “Election, chosen, selection”, just means: “To serve God in a purpose.” It does not mean that you should be saved, and others are appointed to be lost. See the twist that has been given to this word, and how false it is?! And we know right through their history that whenever Israel forgot, or lost sight of, and failed to fulfill their vocation to the nations, they were put under a state of suspension as to their very calling. They were in the nations for the nations, and when they made themselves an exclusive body, shut up to themselves, and despised the nations, and called the Gentiles dogs and had no dealings with them, and said we are the people, and we are the only people, God so heartily disapproved that He withdrew their vocation, and sent them into captivity.And mark you, dear friends, the two thousand years of Israel’s history since their rejection of the Son of God is because they failed to recognize their own calling, that through Jesus Christ they could be made a blessing to all the world. They put a hedge around themselves and said, “We are the beginning, the end of everything, God is only interested in us, the other nations are doomed.” This was just the reverse of their calling, “In thy seed” - and That Seed, says Paul in Galatians 3:16, is Christ — “shall all nations of the earth be blessed.” And, when, instead of being a blessing, they really became a curse amongst the nations. God said, “That is enough, you have canceled out your own vocation, your own calling, your own election. You have canceled it out.” So Israel for these two thousand years has been in the outer darkness with much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth. That is how it is, is it not?! Why? Because in the Son of God, their vocation for the whole world was secured, and they rejected their own vocation when they rejected Him. That is history. And that is the meaning of “election or selected”, not to be saved as over against all others to be lost, but for a purpose, the blessing of all others, the salvation of all others who will be saved.Now, we come to Ephesians 1:4, where “the Church was chosen in Him before the foundation of the world.” Chosen. What for? To be a blessing! The vessel and instrument of God is to be a blessing to the whole world. Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, speaks of the Church as the “ Jerusalem which is above, the mother of us all”, (4:26). John, in his vision, sees " the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven”, (Rev. 21:2). Paul has seen it there, the new Jerusalem, our mother. John sees the coming down of the new Jerusalem from above, our mother, and he goes on to say: “The nations shall walk in the light thereof”, (Rev. 21:24). So there are nations that are extra to this selected nation. And of this selected nation, says Peter again, “Ye are a chosen nation”, (1 Peter 2:9). This selected nation, which is the Church, has been selected to be a light to the nations in the ages to come. “The nations shall walk in the light thereof.” This is, as I see it, the true doctrine of election.Now, if you and I in Christ, as a part of that nation, of that Jerusalem which is above, that holy city, if you and I have been called and chosen in Christ to form this body, which is symbolized as the city, to diffuse the light of grace in the ages to come to the redeemed nations in order that they shall see the full manifestation of the grace of God, which is the exceeding riches of His grace to us-ward, then you and I will have to learn the meaning of grace very deeply.So, dear friends, while I am saying these things, I am all the time catching my own breath. I know quite well that I am involving myself in something that will be a very real test, the ground of very deep testing. And, I say this again, that because of the greatness of the vocation, which is to display the exceeding riches of His grace, not only to angels, but to the redeemed nations in the ages to come, because of that vocation, you and I will have to learn the meaning of grace in a greater depth, if it is to be displayed in its fulness. My, how you and I are going to be made to know the necessity for grace, the greatness of grace. It is all grace. May that not explain the fiery trial of which Peter speaks in connection with grace? “ Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you...”, (1 Pet. 4:12). “Though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness, through manifold trials ”, (1 Peter 1:6). Why? Well, he just says there, “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.”, (1 Pet. 4:10). Chosen— what grace! Grace to know it and grace to show it.How deep is this grace! If this is true, and not imagination, and not only visual ideas, but if we could see with John the nations, the redeemed nations of the earth walking in the light of what God has done in us, deriving their blessings through this vessel, if we could just see that, then we should bow and say, “Oh the depth of the riches, the unsearchable riches,” how great is grace, “that in the ages to come, He might show forth the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness to us.”“Unto Adoption As Sons”Well, I have taken a lot of time on only one of the five of these riches of grace, but it needs a great deal more, does it not, to explore that one realm. Perhaps, I might take another one of the exceeding riches of His grace this evening; and if we do not get further than that, it does not matter. But for the time being, let us go into the next one in Ephesians 1, at verse 5:“Having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will.”“Foreordained us unto adoption as sons unto Himself through Jesus Christ.” Now that needs breaking up, but let us just be content with this one phrase, this part of the whole scripture: “unto adoption as sons.”Selection? Adoption? Now what does that mean? Paul has more to say about that in his Letter to the Romans in chapter 8, where he is defining sonship. He is saying, These are the sons of God, that are led by the Spirit of God (v. 14). “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His”, (v. 9b). And he is explaining that it is by the Spirit that we become sons of God. Now here he goes right back and says, “Having foreordained us unto adoption.” And one meaning of adoption is certainly this: that an adopted one does not stand upon the natural ground of sonship, but is brought in from the outside.As you know, this Letter to the Ephesians was written almost entirely, if not entirely, to the Gentiles. The Gentiles were brought in from the outside, they were called outsiders by the Jews, but this adoption goes far back before Israel was a people. These Gentiles existed, having been foreordained, to be brought in from the outside and made sons. "You are not sons by nature, and you are not sons, or children of God on natural grounds at all." This disposes of the whole theory that everybody by natural birth is a son of God, is a child of God. This whole theory is not true.Now, the sons of God are brought in on other than natural ground. They are not the “born ones;” they are the “adopted ones.” The Church is an adoptive Body. We are not of the Church by nature. You know, this has been a controversy both in the natural realm, and in the religious realm, for hundreds of years. In the natural, the scientific realm, a controversy has raged, or did rage for three hundred years on the question of life, or the origin of life.Now one side of the argument was represented by highly qualified intellectual scientists, who argued and tried to prove, that life is spontaneous. That it is there naturally, and it just comes about of itself. They wrote wonderfully high-browed books about this matter, and argued and had their conferences that life is just there, and it comes about of itself. The other side took this position, "No, not at all. Life can only come from life. It does not come from nothing; it can only come from life. And if life springs up, if life comes into being, then you will track it down to some living organism." You see, the whole science of microorganisms, the very air, the very dust of the air, is impregnated with some organism, minute, too minute for the natural eye to see, but put under certain tests in the test tube, you will see it. You will discover there is a living organism there. Life is always coming out of life. It does not come out of nothing, but it comes out of life. In the end the second side won.Now this same thing, this same kind of argument or contention has gone on for hundreds of years in the religious realm. It is a very large school of people, of theologians who say we are sons of God by natural birth. Humanism is built upon that, human good, natural good, and you have only got to develop the natural good in people, and it may take a few millions of years, but in the end they become gods, the deification of humanity is in the very nature of man. How under the experiments of two world wars that theory can stand, I do not know? Knowing what man can do to man, and is doing today, how can you speak about the natural sonship of God inherent in man without any special intervention or operation.Well, here is the other side. You come to the Bible, the Word of God; and it says, ‘Only from Him Who has life can life be derived.’ Life, eternal life, can never be unless it comes from a Living Source. There must be life, eternal life, somewhere before you can have it; it must come from there, it does not come out of what is dead. The simple cry of the angel on the resurrection morning has a profound meaning, “Why seek ye the living among the dead ?” That is incongruous, contradictory, belonging to two different worlds, there is nothing of life where there is death. And there is no use seeking life amongst the dead. You can only seek life where life is from the Living Source, the Eternal Life, in Him was the Life.Now, you see, there is sonship. Oh, no, we are not sons of God by natural birth, but by adoption. Sons are being brought in from the outside and given life where you have not got it. Of course, you people do not need such an argument, do you? But, perhaps, it is helpful for us to recognize that we are brought out of nothingness, so far as a relationship with God is concerned, and given that which makes us children of God—sonship which we do not have, which we cannot have, but only by adoption. I know there are other full meanings of adoption besides this one, but this is its basic meaning: we were brought in from the outside and made members of a family to which we do not belong by nature. No, only by new birth are we adopted and brought in. What a wonderful thing this is, the grace of God. “Ye who were once afar off are now made nigh, who were not children, but now made children.” "You were not sons, but now made sons."And what a terrible plight and state is represented by that word “not” and by “were afar off.” God only knows the great chasm that was between us and Him and His family. By nature, there is a terrible chasm. It has got to be bridged, and we have got to be brought over that chasm; and it is the grace of God that does that. And the bridge is in Christ Jesus. Our adoption is in Christ, as our election is in Christ. He is the bridge Who comes over and brings us to God. How unsearchable are His judgments, oh the depths of the riches, the riches of His grace. We are truly in deep waters, we can only wonder and worship. If this is true, if this is what the Word of God teaches, and I believe it does teach this, if it be so, then how deep are the wonders and the mysteries and the riches of His grace in His kindness unto us. “ You who were once afar off, by His kindness, are made nigh.” In other words, we are made nigh by His grace.

Chapter 5 The Exceeding Riches Of His Grace: Consummation We have been contemplating “the unsearchable riches of Christ” and their fivefold presentation in the first chapter of the Letter to the Ephesians. We have looked at election to adoption, from adoption to redemption, from redemption to wisdom, and the ability to see into the heart of it all. We now come to the fifth of these. We come finally to consummation in verse ten:“Unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth; in Him, I say, in Whom also we were made a heritage .”“To sum up all things in Christ.” That is the consummation of the riches of His grace, for grace is the first great context of that word “riches”.It is helpful if we remember the standpoint of this great letter. The apostle who wrote it had in his other letters, or in most of them, been dealing with things now. All the problems, the requirements, the affairs of present life were pressing upon him continually. So because he had been in close contact with the present conditions in all places where he went amongst the Lord’s people, in the numerous localities where the churches had been born, most of his letters up to this time were occupied with those present times of alarms and needs and problems and situations. But when he was released from all that, and that phase of his life and ministry was closed, when an end to his journeying and his scattered preaching had come, and he was shut up in the prison in Rome, it was more than a release from local responsibilities; it was a release of his spirit out into the all-comprehending, the vaster ranges of all that in which the local things were set. He was now able to release all that was pent up in him, the accumulation of experience, of knowledge, of revelation. He had only been able to give it, so to speak, piecemeal, here and there and there, but now all that he had in his knowledge of the Lord could be set forth and given out in these final letters, and in this one in Ephesians particularly. When he is so able to unburden himself, his reach and range is no less than from eternity to eternity.So he immediately, in writing this letter to the Ephesians, in what we call the first chapter, although there were no chapters when he wrote it, it was just one continuous outflow, here right at the commencement, he plunges into the eternity past. He says: “ We were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world.” We were “ predestinated, foreordained in Jesus Christ unto Himself.” Paul is right back there in the past eternity, and before he had got through unburdening himself, he will have leapt right over into “the age of the ages.” You see, that is his phrase in this letter: from eternity to eternity. He is comprehending all that lies between the two eternities of what he calls the eternal, the timeless purpose of God in Christ.It is both important and helpful for us to recognize that eternal standpoint. Helpful in this way, while you have got to face all that is in these other letters, as Paul did, all the problems of the Letter to the Romans, which took a tremendous effort on the part of the apostle to solve some of the fundamental problems of life, and the whole question of sin and of death and of justification, it is a tremendous letter. And what about the problems in Corinth? There were terrible problems in Corinth, which might have well-nigh made him despair, and give up everything and say, "It is useless, just look at this, and see what these people are doing. Now look at these professing Christians, what is the good of anything, or what is the good of it all"; and he nearly goes down in despair.And, then he has all the problems in Galatians, and my, what problems they were. He says in chapter four, at verses 11 and 12: “ I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain. Brethren, I beseech you, be as I am; for I am as ye are: ye have not injured me at all .” Again in verses 19 and 20: “ My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, I desire to be present with you now, and to change my voice; for I stand in doubt of you.”But then you have got to take notice of those things, because they are facts, they are realities and terrible realities at that. As I see it they are calculated, they are designed, to take all the heart, and all the hope, out of you. Although we need not think back into those days, we have only got to look into the state of things amongst Christians today in what is called the church, and we could easily give it all up and say, “Well, what is the good of it as we know it?” You have got to face it and take account of it and know that it is real. It is not at all imaginary. No, it is very real.Now what are we going to do with it? Well, we are going to look back into the past eternity to see what was intended, and look into the future eternity and see it realized. God from eternity to eternity — through all these vicissitudes, all these difficulties and problems — at last is shown here to have exactly what He had planned back there in past eternity. It is going to be. The consummation of all things in Christ. O, yes, it will be as God intended before time was.Does that help you? It ought to help us. But here it is positively stated, and we are not far on in the letter where it says this: “Unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth .” Let us stay for a moment with this word "dispensation"just to get clear about it. The margin here says “stewardship,” so the root of the word means “a house order,” or “a household order, the order, the system, which obtains.” But the word grows and is enlarged and it comes to mean something more than that. It comes to mean, “a carrying out, and putting into effect of the purpose.” Dispensation or stewardship means, “the carrying out, the carrying into effect of the purpose of everything.” In the fulness of times the whole purpose will be carried out and put into effect. And the apostle said that there was given to Him a stewardship of the mystery. He meant that he was called to have something to do with the putting into effect of what was in the mind of God.So much for the moment, for the word here, “dispensation,” if so translated, what is this putting into effect? Well, it says, “to sum up all things in Christ.” And that is not satisfactory, because it is not adequate. Here it means, “to gather together, to reunite all things in heaven and in earth in Christ.” And the emphasis is upon that word “together.” That is a thrilling thought, that in the fulness of the times—the putting into effect of the purpose—means everything will be at last together. You may argue, we are together in this place. I wonder if it could be said of us all in an inward way, that we are absolutely together here. It is a grand thing, is it not, when we really are together in an inward way, in spirit, in heart, in object, in purpose, in outlook. That is a mighty thing. That is a grand thing. That is a fruitful thing. That is a joyous thing, being together as one. It is everything we desire. When you think of the opposite, that is, when you are not together, when two people who have to live under the same roof are not together, it is a miserable life. It is only an existence. Mark you, a company of people who have to meet outwardly together, but are really not inwardly together, it is not a happy state. There is a strain, there is an atmosphere, there is a lack. But it says that the putting into effect of God’s purpose will be found at last in togetherness universally; that is the riches of His Grace. But see the setting of that? My, what a history stands over against that.The Bible from one standpoint is a record of the opposite to that togetherness. It is the record of the effect, or the result of an interference with God’s purpose. It began apparently outside of this world, what we could call the cosmic disruption in this universe. Various hints of it are given to us in the Word. In the Book of Jude, the apostle speaks about the “ angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation and are now bound in everlasting chains”, (v. 6). Angels which “ kept not their first estate.” What a hint as to Lucifer’s primeval position. And then what?—coveting, just the next step up for him, coveting the place of the Son of God, coveting equality with God. And through that pride and ambition, he was bringing about that terrible disruption in the very realm of God Himself. There was a disruption in the heavenlies. And that is not just something that happened, and was concluded in some undated period called, “before the world was,” or “before times eternal.” That very realm today, which is called the heavenlies, is the very atmospheric realm occupied by principalities, powers, world rulers of this darkness, hosts of wicked spirits—it is a realm of utter confusion and conflict. And sensitive believers know that it is an atmosphere of conflict and strife and disruption.It began there, and then its repercussions came down to this created earth when God had made all things to His Own pleasure and satisfaction and said, “It is very good.” So He put man into it and gave man his “helpmeet,” the one meet (suitable) to help him. But it was not long before that thing which had happened above, broke in and disrupted the first human family, and Cain murdered his brother. So, family life is broken.And you move on to the race, which has grown, and multiplied and expanded, and you come to Babel and the disruption of the human race, and the breakout into conflicting nations with the strife and confusion of tongues. The whole earth is just full of confusion, that is Babel. On you go, and there arises the story of Israel, a family, and then that is broken. It came as the tribe was divided into two, fighting each other. There became schism in Israel. Then further on, there was the awful disintegration, disruption of the exile. It is a long story with everything being contrary to what God intended it to be. There is the breakdown of human relationships, the state of confusion. And this story did not stop with the Old Testament, and with the exile. It is there when you come into the New Testament. It is there in the heavenlies, a terrible atmosphere of conflict. When you meet together, immediately you open your gospels, it is there. And God brings in something very beautiful with Pentecost, "they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching, the breaking of bread and prayers." And now, as we said before, this terrible disruption of Satan breaks in again, to divide it all, to spoil it all. And the rest of the New Testament is so baffling with this, this thing called division, schism, strife, disintegration. But the great appeal is for fellowship and oneness in Christ.And what about today? Well, the world has grown so much bigger than it was in those days. It is a much bigger world altogether, where new countries have been discovered and populated. It is a far greater world, and with the literal, historical expansion and growth, what has happened? Was there ever a time when there was more conflict, more confusion, more strain in relationships than there is now? Truly the prince of the power of the air is very busy. Today this world holds more of this confusion, divisiveness, and strain in relationships than ever before. Despite every effort of every counsel, and every union and every effort of man to bring the nations together, it all breaks down every time. Is not that true? Well that is how it is, and it is not, of course, all right. No, it is very wrong. But do you see what the Apostle Paul is telling us here in Ephesians. By revelation to him, the Lord Himself reveals that the great work of God in Christ through grace is going to see that whole historic system of disruption brought to a complete end. The Lord reveals that in the fulness of times, the things in the heavens, and the things of the earth are reunited in Christ — all brought together again in Christ. And the emphasis is upon that word “together.” This means everything that God purposed in Christ will be at last together. That is what the apostle says, what the Holy Spirit says, is the consummation of it all — “to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth.”In Christ, what a tremendous phrase this is. Mark you, it is “in Christ.” We are talking about what is in Christ. We are not talking about universalism or humanism where all things get better. No! “...we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His Grace”, (Ephesians 1:7). Of course this does not need arguing. We know quite well that if there is any hope at all for anything like this now, it will only be as we really are in Christ. If we get out of Christ into ourselves, we get into disruption and confusion. If we abide in Him, if all of us abide in Him, then we are together in an inmost way.Hence, there is the great necessity in the first place for our position in Christ. And then abiding in Christ, and then growing in Christ, and then perfected in Christ. It is a process; it is a work of grace to abide in Christ. The trouble is, dear friends, that we do so often meet one another in ourselves; you meet me and I meet you, and you have to say so often, “that is him,” and I have to say, “that is you.” You know what I mean? It is just ourselves, our way of thinking, our way of talking, our way of expressing ourselves. It is just the outcoming of ourselves, or the forthgoing of ourselves in some way. And it is a real joy and relief and pleasure to meet a person and not meet them, but meet the Lord. Just to say, when we have been with them, "Well, I was not struck and impressed by them, but I was impressed of the Lord in them and about them. What really impressed me was the grace of God in them." Grace is bringing Christ out and making Christ the impression. It is grace doing it all.Now this is exactly what Peter means by growing in grace. It means the diminishing of all that is outside of grace, and a growing of ourselves in grace. When we do come into contact with one another, it is more of Christ as the effect and the result than ourselves. It is not what we want and what we think, and how we think things ought to be and all that whole gambit of self-interest and self-life, but everything is to be Christ unto the consummation. The Spirit of Grace is seeking to displace that which is not gracious, and thus to bring Christ Who is gracious more fully into being where we are concerned. For the consummation is that all things will be united in Him and He will fill all things; it will just be Christ. We have heard this so often, but it is true—it will just be Christ.Oh, what a grand day it will be when the ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands of redeemed individuals are utterly one person, because it is all Christ, and no more of this ugly self. It is Christ. Now that, says the Word, is what God intended from the beginning, and that is the eternal purpose of God, and also the explanation of all the conflict in this universe to spoil it, to hinder it, to contradict it. But that is what the Word says is how it is going to be in spite of everything.Dear friends, we shall absolutely agree with one another then, for we shall all be saying the same thing, and all be doing the same thing, and that will not be monotonous and uninteresting to be all the time occupied with one thing. What will that be? And there are various ways of putting it, but I think it will be: Oh, what a lot we owe to the grace of God! That will be our eternal occupation, the wonder of His grace, the marvel of His grace. If the Apostle Paul was able to say, in the presence of his large and yet so imperfect apprehension and knowledge and realization of the grace of God, if the apostle was able to say, “Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out”, if he could say, “It was given to me, the least of all saints to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ”, if in the imperfection even of that knowledge and ministry he could speak like that, what about when we come into the utter fulness of it in the age of the ages?! We will be saying all the time, “Oh the depth of the riches, the unsearchable riches, the riches of His grace.” But do you notice that between the eternities of the past intention and purpose of God, and the ultimate consummation and realization—the apostle does say, “Walk worthy of the calling wherewith you are called in all meekness”, that is, selflessness and lowliness. “Walk”, he would say, “in the grace,” which is going to lead at last to this oneness. Yes, we must learn to walk in grace as far as people will allow us to do so, and as far as we can make it possible for them to do so with us.Let us ask the Lord that this grace, this grace of fellowship, of oneness, may be found in us increasingly now. Of course, there are a lot of Christians who will not let us, who will make it impossible for us to have fellowship, and to be together. But, as far as it is in our power, let us seek by the grace of God to live in the light of the day when He will reunite in Christ all things in heaven and on earth.

Chapter 6 The Riches Of His Glory - The Pathway Of The GloryWe are going to spend a little time in these remaining hours with another one of “the unsearchable riches”, and that is, “the riches of glory.” There are two passages of Scripture that I want to read. To begin with, the Letter to the Romans, chapter nine at verse 23, “That He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He had afore prepared unto glory.” The Letter to the Ephesians, chapter three at verse 16, “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, that ye may be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inward man ”, (A.S.V.). “According to the riches of His glory.”I think it only needs to be mentioned for you to call to remembrance that grace and glory go together very much in the Scriptures. “He will give grace and glory”, (Psalm 84:11), and we are “to be unto the glory of His grace”, (Ephesians 1:6). The glory is the result of the grace; grace is unto glory.As to this word glory, which is not easy to understand, and if I may just remind you is first of all attached to each Person of the Godhead, the Triune God. God is spoken of as the God of Glory. Stephen said, “ The God of Glory appeared unto our father Abraham”, (Acts 7:2). Paul in his prayer said that it was to “ the Father of Glory” that he bowed his knee (Eph. 1:15–17). “The Father of Glory”, which simply means, the Source of glory, the very spring and beginning of glory, the Father of Glory.The Lord Jesus is more than once referred to as “the Lord of Glory.” In writing to the Corinthians, the apostle, when speaking about the folly of the wisdom of the princes of this world, said had they really had true wisdom, they would not have killed “the Lord of Glory”, (1 Cor. 2:6–8). The Lord Jesus is “the Lord of Glory.” If the Father means Source, the Lord means Government. The government is committed to Him, and it is upon His shoulders and He will govern all things with glory in view, which we shall see shortly.And, then, as to the Holy Spirit, He is distinctly called, “the Spirit of Glory”, that “the Spirit of Glory may rest upon you ”, (1 Pet. 4:14). So the whole Godhead is compassed and characterized by this one thought of glory. It is the Triune God of Glory.Think again, and you will see that the whole Bible is horizoned by glory. It begins with God as the God of Glory, moving into a very inglorious situation and turning it into a glorious one. God was able to say, “It is very good”, (Gen. 1:31); and whenever it is like that, as again we shall see, that is glory—when it is “very good.” The end of the Bible is “the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God”, (Revelation 21:10–11; A.S.V.). The Bible is thus bounded by this thought of glory. Christianity is compassed by this same thing. Its inception was glorious, and it came in with glory, and the last thing about it is glory again. The Church is horizoned by glory. It was born in glory on the day of Pentecost; indeed, that was a day of glory (Acts 2). And again the last thing about the Church is in that great burst from the heart of the apostle, “Now unto Him That is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be the glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus unto all the generations of the age of the ages”, (Ephesians 3:20–21; A.S.V.). That is glory in the Church forevermore.Christ is bounded by glory, although from the earthly standpoint, His coming into the world was in humility, in poverty, in weakness. However in heaven, it was “Glory to God in the highest ”, (Luke 2:13–14). From heaven’s standpoint it was a glorious day when God’s Son became Incarnate, for heaven knew what that meant. He passes by the way of suffering and sorrow, humiliation and the Cross, but it is only a circle, or a cycle, because then it is back up to the glory. Here you have a bigger view of Him, that He had glory before the world was, “Father”, He prayed, “Glorify Me with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was”, (John 17:5). The Son was equal with God in the glory before this world was founded in its order. And God has received Him back to the glory and has “highly exalted Him, and given Him the name which is above every name”, glorified. Do you see how everything has this encompassment, this horizon, of glory, and that is the end, that is the object?Now we have to stop and break this up. What is glory? Perhaps this is the most difficult word to define, and explain, although it is not the most difficult thing to understand and to know. There are two aspects of glory: one is its expression, its manifestation, its effect, its power, for whenever you come into the presence of the glory, you are affected by it, and powerfully affected by it. But mainly in the old dispensation, when things were more sentient than spiritual, that is, in the realm of the human senses, when God was dealing with man on that basis of his sentient life, in that dispensation, it was something that could be seen. There was a radiance, it was a breeze, it was a terrific power that men were aware of by their senses. They could see and feel something in their souls. The expression of glory was not nebulous and abstract; it was something to behold. You will recall how true that was when the glory was manifested, when the glory appeared, it was often a terrible thing, but it was always a very powerful thing. However, this was only one side. It was the expression or manifestation of glory.Now, it is thought that before Adam sinned and fell, there was something about his body that was like a robe of glory, something glorious and beautiful. And when he fell and sinned, he lost that covering of glory and knew that he was naked, and God had to cover him with the symbols of redemption. If you have seen someone really born again, out of the depths, there is something about the face that speaks of glory. Or to put it round the other way, when somebody is living out of touch with the Lord, that something, that glory, about their face has gone. Is not that true? You say, “There is something gone out of their face, it is not there what was there before, they have lost something.” Put it as you may, you mean the glory in expression has departed.Well, this is the manifestation side, but there is something that accounts for that. There is the other side, the deeper aspect, and that is the basis of glory. What is the basis of the glory? what is the essence of the glory? the reason for the glory? the very nature of the glory? What lies behind any manifestation at all of the glory. Glory now or glory forever? Glory is the expression of the satisfaction of God’s nature, and that is a definition that you might well stay with, think about, and dwell upon. And if you do, much will come out of the Word that will show you how true that is.Now glory is the expression of the satisfaction of the nature of God. God’s very nature, being what it is, holy and righteous and true, and everything that the very nature of God is, if it is satisfied then there is a state of glory. If God finds that which corresponds to His very being, His disposition, His nature, His way of thinking, His way of acting, and all that which is just God in essence, then there is a state of glory. If God finds that which answers to Himself, then there is a state of glory. There is a state of glory when things are as God wills that they should be, then it is glory.Earlier, we referred to the creation, and God had made all things and was able to say of His work, “It is very good.” It was a glorious state, a really glorious state. It would really have been good to be there at that time, dear friends, for it was such an atmosphere of contentment and satisfaction and rest and peace and joy. It was heart-ravishing, nothing present to irritate, to distress, God was completely satisfied. It was a state of glory in the creation.Let us follow that thought through to another of the many connections of glory, take the Tabernacle. God gave a precise, meticulous, detailed prescription of the Tabernacle, for the simple reason that it was not just a Tabernacle that God had ultimately in mind at all, but it was His Son. Therefore, the command was: “See thou make all things according to the pattern which was shown thee in the mount.” And when it was done, and all things were so made to a detail, to a thread, to a pin, then glory came down and filled the Tabernacle. All things answered to God’s mind, and so there was glory. Every part of it was glorious, and the whole was glorious, because in every part it was as God willed it to be.The same, of course, obtains in the case of the priests, the high priest and his sons. As we are told, they were clothed with garments of glory, prescribed by God Himself. As to the clothing everything about them, the material, the colors, the shape, the size, everything was shown to be of heaven. And when the priests were so clothed according to God’s mind, this clothing was called garments of glory, satisfying God. And what was true of the Tabernacle in all its parts and its priesthood is true also of the Temple later.When David received the pattern for the Temple, and it is distinctly said that he did, then he said, "everything I have received from the Lord", when the Temple was done, glory so filled the house of the Lord that the priests themselves had to go out. All this about the Tabernacle, the Temple, the Priesthood and everything else that stood approved before God was leading up to the New Testament, to the One Who was the fulfillment of all this in His Person. Everything in the Son was so fully satisfying to God that He could be transfigured and clothed with glory. His raiment was white and glistening, glorified on the Mount of Transfiguration, because at that point He had satisfied the Father God on every detail (Matt. 17:1–2). If from that moment He must come down from the mount, go to the Cross and suffer all its agony and humiliation and sorrow, that was not because He had disappointed the Father, but it was in order to bring us to glory, to bring us to God’s satisfaction.This is the basis of glory, which is God’s satisfaction. And you can see, from the afore-mentioned things, that you get to the point that the glory came in and filled everything. For that to happen, man had to go out. And that is basic to glory, the absolute exclusion of man by nature. Man is the trouble; he is the one that spoils and limits the glory; it is the natural man who keeps back the glory. Whenever he takes a place in Divine things, then the glory is either removed or limited. However, there is nothing about the Lord Jesus that corresponds to the natural man. In Christ, that first Adam, that whole race, has gone out, and has been put out of the way; and Christ is a new order that answers to God’s thought about man. And only in the Person of Christ can man stand in the Eternal Light of God and be in His Perfect work and, therefore be glorified.The glory is spontaneous when God is satisfied; it just happens. It does not have to be invoked nor implored. It just happens when God is satisfied. If God is satisfied, there is in part a spontaneous witness by the indwelling Spirit of Glory to God’s satisfaction in the sense of wonderful rest, quietness of heart, and a sense of joy. This is quite inexplicable in a way and, yet, it is because the Lord is well pleased. This state of satisfaction to God and the full pleasure of God and the answer to the very nature of God is what the Spirit of Glory is working toward in the Church and its members. Does not this explain all the activities of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the people of God, collectively? The Lord is working, dear friends, or trying to work, according to how much we will let Him work. It is according to how we answer to Him, and obey the dictates of the Spirit of Glory. The Lord is working with us and in us as members of His Church, so that in the end the Church may be presented to Him “a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing”, (Eph. 5:27). It is a glorious Church. “Now unto Him be the glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus unto all the generations of the age of the ages.” Yes God’s object is glory in His dealings with us!We do not always feel like that do we? It does not always seem like that. Very often, it seems just the opposite, and yet it is true. But it is here that we, as the Lord’s people, have got to have some understanding and recognize and accept that discipline is a part of the work of glory. Now God’s glory, the reaching of His glory, the manifestation of His glory, is only along the line where His glory alone can have its opportunity and occasion. This means that if there is any state whatever that limits the glory, spoils the glory, hinders the glory, then that has got to be dealt with in discipline, that has got to be put out of the way. That is a very important thing that we have got to recognize that discipline is a part of the work of glory.God’s Glory Is Reached Through AdversityBut another thing that we have got to recognize in that very connection is that God’s glory is usually reached along the line of adversity. Now you take up the Book of the Acts, what do you call this book? Well, you can call it by different names, “The Acts of the Apostles, The Acts of the Holy Spirit,” or simply “The Acts.” However, I wonder if you have ever heard it called, “The Book of the Glory of God, The Glory of Christ?” It does not always look like that, but let us look at it again, from that very standpoint. We have said that it begins with the Church being born in glory. There is no doubt about it, the day of Pentecost was a day of glory, and heaven came down. The Spirit of Glory descended and it was a state of glory, a state of joy, a state of life, a state of new hope and prospect. It was a day that Peter could say, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”, (1 Pet. 1:3). That was the very atmosphere and nature of the day of Pentecost: “Begotten again unto a living hope”, after that terrible despair just a few days before; now it was a day of glory.But let us pursue the course of the glory through the Book of the Acts. It will not be long before we arrive at the terrible story of the martyrdom of Stephen, the hatred, the malice, the wrath, the wickedness, the evil, against Christ, against this “Way” as they called it, venting itself, blazing out against this young man Stephen, ending in the dragging of him outside of the city and stoning him to death (Acts 7:59). You say, "tragedy, defeat, reverse, set-back." Ask Stephen who said: “I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God ”, (Acts 7:56). “And all beholding him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel ”, (Acts 6:15). It was glory, and glory so real and so terrible that the chief witness against him Saul, who became Paul, and supporter of his death was smitten to the heart, stirred to the depths of his being and forced to redoubt his antagonism to save himself, to save his own conscience.However, out of Stephen came Paul. Is this despair? Is this defeat? God is very ingenious: the Lord Jesus, if I may use the word of Him, is very clever. Let men and devil, earth and hell combine against the Christ of God, the glorified Christ. How does it work out? Do not be too quick, too soon in drawing your conclusions and passing your verdict. Look to the end. We are dwelling in this letter to the Ephesians, the most wonderful document that has ever been penned by man. It came out of Stephen’s death, Stephen’s martyrdom. You see, that is the kind of thing that glory does. And if you think that still needs strengthening, well, all right, pass on to the next confrontation.Herod seized James and executed him. This seemed to be a terrible set-back, a terrible set-back. My, the devil has done something now, successful and triumphant; he has struck at this apostolic company, and slain one of its members (Acts 12:1–2). But Herod is up against the Glory. And before you end the chapter in which his act against the Lord of Glory is recorded, Herod himself is smitten and eaten of worms, and the next thing in the next verse is, “But the word of God grew and multiplied”, (Acts 12:21–24). See the reaction of the Glory? This is glory is it not?!You can see how the glory comes along the line of adversity, and it is only along that line that you really do know what the glory is. Well, Herod thought that it was a good thing he had done when he smote James, because it pleased the Jews; and so he seized Peter, and put Peter in prison. Now, if Peter goes, this is going to be something tremendous. Well, he takes all the precautions that a man in his position could take to secure Peter. Oh, he throws him, or has him thrown into the inner dungeon, his feet made fast in the stocks, and four quaternions of soldiers to guard the prison. It seems as though there is no hope for Peter so far as hell and men are concerned, but what does the Glory say? The Lord of Glory is interested in this matter, and He simply says to the whole thing, "Oh no, oh no, not a bit of it!" The angel of the Lord, as you know, visits Peter, and his chains fell off. He was bidden to gird his garment about him, and told to follow, and the iron gates opened (Acts 12:7–10). What has happened to the four quaternions of guards? They are hardly mentioned, they are as though they did not exist, and out comes Peter.Now here is something very strong on the part of the evil powers against the Lord of Glory, and how simply the Lord of Glory answers it, for “prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him.” The Church was tremendously stirred and concerned that night, giving itself to prayer in a stretched out way before God. The word says that “prayer was continually and earnestly being directed by the Church to God concerning him. The word ceasing means: “stretched out.” The Church was fervently praying by the taking of this matter so seriously. The Lord of Glory moves in and solves the big problem so simply. Infinite power can work in such a simple way, as shown in Peter’s deliverance from the evil powers.And next, in the Book of the Acts, Saul of Tarsus in his rage, he calls it rage himself, a choleric anger, wrath, hatred, like a boiling caldron overflowing against those of “this Way”, (Acts 9:2; 18:25,26; 19:9,23; 22:4; 24:14,22). Saul of Tarsus goes to the High Priest and says that, ‘If you will give me documents of authority, I will go to the farthest city and I will have arrested all who are of this Way. I will bring them to prison and judgment and, if needs be, to death,’ And he obtains the documents, the parchments of authority, the warrants of arrest, and starts out on his way to the distant city of Damascus, where he knows there is a company of these people of “the Way.” Saul, “breathing out threatenings and slaughters”, went to Damascus; and the Lord of Glory stepped across his path. And the Glory smote him to the ground. (Acts 9:4). Forever afterward, this man Paul, knew the meaning of the glory and could speak about it so fully.Again, the point is that the glory comes along the lines of tribulation, suffering, and sometimes apparent defeat; that is, the apparent success of the devil himself and his emissaries. Sometimes it just does look as though Satan has done it. Now, he has succeeded, but that is not the end of the story. And so you go with this man Paul from place to place, go with him to all these cities which he visited and see what happens. He later said that the Holy Spirit had witnessed to him that in every place bonds and afflictions awaited him. How true it was. We cannot follow his course, but we call to mind Lystra and such places, and pick out Philippi. Philippi he went, and the reaction of the evil forces of Satan found Paul silenced in the prison, again fast in chains, backs bleeding from their thrashings. Surely Satan has won now, gained the day now, surely this is reverse and defeat. But we know the story now, the Lord of Glory had an interest in this matter, and when it is necessary, the Lord of Glory can create an earthquake and shake a prison to its foundations and loose all prisoners and save the jailor and his household and establish the Church in Philippi, to whom the Apostle Paul will later write, “My beloved and longed for, my joy and my crown...”, (Phil. 4:1). He would say “crown of glory”, and remember how it started, the way along which it came. He referred to this when he said to the Thessalonians, “We had suffered before, and were shamefully entreated, as ye know, at Philippi...”, (1 Thess. 2:1–2). “How shamefully,” he says, “How shamefully I was treated in Philippi.” It was through shame, suffering adversity, that the glory came.Now I do not know where to end all this on the riches of His glory. The whole of the New Testament has now sprung into life for us. Do we see the point? The Apostle John has a lot to say to us about this glory in his gospel right at the very beginning. There is the marriage of Cana in Galilee and the failure of the wine. This shows forth an end of all human resources where man can do nothing. Then comes in the Lord of Glory, and it says, “This beginning of signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and showed forth His glory”, (John 2:11). Glory is seen where man’s resources end, where humanly the situation is quite hopeless. That is the pathway of the glory. And then Lazarus: “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified”, (John 11:4). And to the poor, baffled sisters, “Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God ?”, (John 11:40). But the necessity for the manifestation of the glory was the utter end of all human hope, where there is perfect helplessness on the part of man, then the glory comes in.I wish we could believe it, and always believe it, when things are so utterly hopeless, when it is quite impossible for us to do anything at all, we have to take our hands off and stand back and say, “Only the Lord God Almighty can handle this situation.” May that not be the way of the glory?! I wish we really could believe it. If only we could always believe that these situations, which seem to be so often the work of the devil with his complete triumph, are only the pathway of the glory, that in the end when the full story is told, it will not be all tragedy, all defeat, but the end will be glory through grace.What Is The Pathway Of The Glory ?Satan was determined to bring Paul’s ministry to an end by bringing that man to an end. Over this wide area in Asia, things moved toward that in churches. The churches, which owed their existence instrumentally to this man, and owed all that they had spiritually to him and to the Lord, had turned against him. In 2 Timothy, chapter one, at verse 15 he says, “All they which are in Asia be turned from me.” False brethren betrayed him. And what an accumulation of evil things gathered and focused upon that prison in Rome, all saying with their own meaning: Limitation, curtailment, shortening of tenure, of influence and life. That is the natural, satanic situation very imperfectly described and set out.On the human side, if looked at just purely as a natural situation, everything in that prison and those chains seemed to say what the enemy meant, and what men meant: this is an end! and this is a curtailment in every way. And yet, looked at from heaven’s standpoint, and from history’s standpoint, it is the most glorious triumph over the work of the enemy. They said, limitation; heaven said, enlargement. They said, narrowing down, curtailment. Heaven said, expansion. They said, death, agony. Heaven said, a new beginning, not only of the man in heaven, but of his ministry. For it was out of that imprisonment at Rome, and all that which was set for the ending of that ministry, his death, out of that has come the greatest ministry that he fulfilled.The letters from that prison embrace a fulness of Divine revelation that can be found no where else, an enrichment for the Church beyond, beyond our telling. An expansion of ministry far far beyond the whole range of his missionary journeys personally. Today, in every country of this world Paul is known; perhaps not in every spot in every country, but in every country. From far East to far West, far North to far South, that man is known and his ministry has gone forth.And today, through all the battle and the controversy over what is called Paulinism, the theological world, through all the battle of the years, you know, Paul is on top. They just cannot cope with this man, they cannot silence him, they cannot account for him. You probably will not know a great deal of that battle. Those of us who have read and studied through many years of this conflict, of ideologies and philosophies and theologies focusing upon this man Paul, know how at one point the whole thing became just this issue, “Away from Paul back to Christ,” back to Christ, or “back to Jesus” as they put it, away from Paul. “Paul has betrayed Christianity.” All this sort of thing is a terrific battle on that ground. But today, the very schools that were represented by that position are saying Paul is the interpreter of Christ, the supreme interpreter of Christ.You see, this man’s life started in a blaze of glory. Glory descended and struck him, as we said earlier, that glory went right through his life. And he never got away from that glory. He had seen the glory of the Lord at his beginning; and although the end of his earthly course seemed naturally to be so inglorious, so much speaking for apparent triumph of the forces which were against him, nevertheless, two thousand years have not quenched that glory. He shines with it today and we, a little minute fragment of a very great worldwide whole, are here at this time together, glorying in the glory which has come through that man. So, I say that the last chapter of the Book of the Acts is just the consummate and inclusive setting forth of the whole book, showing the pathway of the glory.What is the pathway of the glory? It has two sides. The one side is the reduction of the natural, the human element. It demands that; it will always work that way. It will always be the reduction, the nullifying, the weakening, the emptying, the undoing of the natural human element of man. And running alongside of that, there is always the positive increase of Christ. This is the pathway of the glory. On the one side, there is an ever decreasing and setting aside of the natural man, even as a Christian, and in the work of the Lord. Consequently, we must be getting more and more to the consciousness that it must be the Lord, or there will be nothing at all. The human factor is increasingly of no account. That is the pathway to glory.Now, this is not a very happy thing, perhaps, to contemplate, if you look at it on that side alone. But it is true. Here is this man Paul, naturally and humanly in weakness, naturally and humanly in limitation, as a man in bonds. However, there is the other side, the enlargement of what is of the Lord. There is the mighty, marvelous enlargement of Christ in this man, so that these letters from the prison are a matchless setting forth of the greatness of the Lord Jesus. And in this light, you ought to read your first chapter of the Letter to the Colossians and see the place the Lord Jesus is given.Now you can see this, and it is well that we do take at least a glance at the glory, by looking at the opposite. Go right to your Bible, and you will see that whenever man put forth his hand upon Divine things, the glory went out. That is a word written over Eden is it not? The Lord’s precaution in Genesis was “Lest he put forth his hand.” The Lord knew quite well that if man put forth his hand on Divine things, that was an end of the glory. And, as we know, that is exactly what happened.Right through your Old Testament, you can see this. Case after case, when man pressed in and put his hand upon Divine things, the glory went out. You know how Isaiah says, “The day that king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up, seated upon a Throne and His train filled the Temple”, (Isa. 6:1). This brings us to the tragedy of Uzziah. You remember that man, how he was one of the greatest kings, even an idol of Isaiah the Prophet. King Uzziah who reached great dimensions of power and influence and earthly glory, and then he presumed upon it and forced his way into the Temple, to the Sanctuary, to the Altar. Fear came upon men and they said, “It does not pertain unto you, king Uzziah, to offer incense,” but he spurned the warning and was smitten a leper and died in shame with all his own earthly glory gone. He forced himself into the Temple and laid his hand upon Divine things; and so far as he was concerned, and for that time, the glory departed. It was a great reversing of the situation when Isaiah saw the Lord on the Throne, for it was no longer Uzziah, but the Lord on the Throne. Then the glory comes back. When man usurps the place of God, the glory goes out. That is just one instance of this thing.You remember David and the Ark of the testimony? David had the best of motives concerning the Ark, and the Ark is always the Ark of the glory. Remember that it is always the Ark of the glory. The glory of Israel is focused upon and centered in that Ark. David with the purest and best of motives thought of bringing the Ark to Jerusalem, and he mistakenly formed a new cart after the Philistine manner. Upon this new cart he put the Ark. This was contrary to the Divine Word on how to bring the Ark back to Jerusalem; because, according to the Law of God, only the Levites were to carry the Ark upon their shoulders. Apparently they were having a very good time on the road until they reached the threshing floor. Then the oxen stumbled, and Uzza put forth his hand upon the Ark to keep it on the cart. So when he put forth his hand to the Ark of God, and took hold of it, the Lord smote him there for his error; and there he died by the Ark of God. Then the Ark was turned aside into the house of Obed-edom for a period of time (1 Chron. 13:1–14; 2 Samuel 6:1–15; 1 Chron. 15:1–15).Man had put his hand on Divine things. When the glory of life, the glory of joy, the glory of spiritual fulness, the glory of Divine power departs, and comes under a shadow, or is eclipsed or limited, it is usually because man’s hand has touched the testimony. Man’s nature has insinuated itself— that is, his judgment, his ideas, his thoughts, his will, his emotions—into this matter. David’s mind got to work, David’s emotions got to work, and it was a very emotional scene. David’s will got to work, so that his soul, mind, heart and will came out to touch Divine things. It was of man. And whenever it is like that, if our judgments and our emotions and our decisions lay hold of the things of God, we will be left without the glory. The glory will depart, or the glory will be under eclipse, or the glory will be limited. Yes, it is a long story, as it began in Genesis: “Lest he put forth his hand.”Well, that is the dark side, but it is well that we took a glance at that side, because that is so largely the trouble today. There is an absence of the glory, or a limiting of the glory, and our hearts are crying out for the glory to return. We are always praying that the glory of the Lord may be manifested, we are always asking the Lord that the glory might be known and felt. But, you see, we have got to get out of the way before that can be. We must give the Lord all the place in order for that to happen. It has to be all the Lord.So, on the one side, there are the limiting of human abilities and powers of mind and will. On the other side, through that limiting or excluding of that natural human element, there is the coming in of the Lord, the increase of Christ, because then Christ is our wisdom, Christ is our strength, Christ is our will, Christ is our all. Dear friends, that is the pathway of the glory. And that pathway is painful to the flesh, very painful, because this flesh is very strong, much stronger than we would believe, yet it is there.Nevertheless, we must finish, and finish on perhaps a much happier note. While we must understand what the glory demands and see the way of the glory, we do want to have at the end a final look at the ultimate glory. To do this we remember Peter’s word, “When the Chief Shepherd shall appear, you shall receive a crown of glory”, (1 Peter 5:4) “A crown of Glory,” that is the end. Of course, “A crown of glory” is a symbolic word. I am not very ambitious to have a little crown put on my head, and for the life of me I do not see how I am going to ever have three crowns on my head, literally; and there are three crowns mentioned in the Word. It means being crowned, having your life and your work crowned or capped with glory. That is the last picture, the crown of glory.What is it? Well, I have mentioned that there are three crowns, and you probably know them well. There is “the crown of righteousness” that we are to receive on certain grounds. “A crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give.” Paul says, “There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them that love His appearing”, (2 Timothy 4:8). What was his meaning? It was this, that at the last part of his life, in one of his prison letters, which was that beautiful letter to his beloved and longed for children in Philippi, he says, “Leaving the things which are behind... I press toward the mark for the prize of the on-high calling of God”, (Phil. 3:13–14). But then he also says, "I count not myself to have attained, neither am I already perfect: but this one thing I do, if by any means I may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of mine own, but the righteousness which is of God through faith ."The last longing cry of the apostle’s heart was that the righteousness of God through Christ should adorn him; that he should obtain unto it; that is, that he should stand before the Throne of the eternal One without any qualms, any fears, any flinchings; that he should stand justified, stand in a righteousness not his own, but stand perfect in righteousness. And that is what he meant by “ the crown of righteousness”, to stand at last before the Eternal Throne of Infinite Holiness, clothed with Divine Righteousness, with all his own unrighteousness and imperfection gone forever. “ Clothed in righteousness”, that is what he called the crowning thing for his life, and the fullest realization of his ambition, “ That I may stand perfect, lacking nothing. I am not already perfect, I have not already attained, but if only I can attain to being found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own, but His righteousness .” What a glorious end!That is a crown to covet, that is a crown to suffer for, a crown to live for, a crown to be abandoned for. A crown of glory indeed! That, dear friends, is something that you and I are in agreement on. If there is one thing we long for more than any other, it is the full and final escape from our own sinfulness, from this accursed fallen nature and all that it carries with it. How we desire to attain unto the crown of righteousness.And then there is the crown of life. “Be thou faithful unto death”, said the Lord, “ and I will give thee a crown of life.” A crown of life; what is that? “Faithful unto death”, is to be answered with a crown of life. All right that is perfectly clear, is it not; the crown of life means that death has no power. It is robbed of its power, death as a power is destroyed, and Divine life, Resurrection life, is mightier than all the power of death. Therefore, we must stand “in the Power of His Resurrection.”In that same letter, in the same part of that letter, as we have quoted, in the Philippians letter, Paul utters those words so familiar to us, “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection.” The cry at the end of his life is “the Power of His Resurrection.” That is the ultimate and final nullifying of death in all its forms and in its whole power, standing in the good of a Life which can never, never be touched by death again. You move over to John into the Book of Revelation at chapter 21, in verse 4 where the word says, “There shall be no more death”, but “a crown of life.”And then the third crown is the one we are speaking about, “the crown of glory.” You know what we have said about glory. Glory is the expression of the full satisfaction of God’s nature. Can that ever be for me, for you, that crown, the full satisfaction of God’s own nature? That is what He has called us to, and redeemed us for, and is working in us unto, and will work to the end for—this crown of glory. And although perhaps at the end of our longest life, we shall not have reached the place where we do at that point utterly, fully, and finally satisfy the nature of God. Well, in our last moment, in our last breath, there will still be a lot of imperfection about us; but, remember, when He takes the responsibility of ending the process, He makes up all that would have been if He had not done so.There is in a moment the twinkling of an eye, and “we shall be changed.” All that we lack then will be added. All that would have been if we had lived on and on and on under His grace, under His power and working, will be put to our account. “I shall be satisfied when I awake in Thy likeness.” I go to sleep not altogether in Thy likeness, but “ I awake in Thy likeness.” It is just that, a mighty thing that God is going to add to those who are faithful, and faithful to the end; not perfect, but in the way of being changed into the same glory, from one degree to another, from one image to another. The crown of glory is God’s final approval. It is God’s final approval when He says, “Come, ye blessed of My Father, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord”, (Matt. 25:34, 23).And, believe me, the Lord will never be really joyful over what is not according to His own nature. But when He says, “ The joy of thy Lord”, He will have got what His heart had been set upon, for the end will be “a crown of glory”, which is God’s full and complete approval, satisfaction. Oh, what a wonderful almost unbelievable prospect there is along the pathway of glory.Well, I must leave all the rest with you, all the other connections of riches, and this very very imperfect and limited setting forth of the riches of His grace and the riches of His glory. May the Lord Himself just follow on and teach all that we cannot teach, all that we have yet to know about this riches of His glory. But may He also use even this for our help, for our encouragement, in order for us to go on in the way of the glory, unto the everlasting glory.