7th March, 2025
“God, sending His own Son … condemned sin in the flesh: that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.” ….Romans 8:3
What does it mean to walk after the Spirit? It means two things. First, it is not a labour of work, it is simply a walk by your will. Praise God, the burdensome and fruitless effort I incurred when I sought “after the flesh” to please God gives way now to a quiet and restful dependence on Him and “His working which works in me mightily.” That is why, in Galatians, Paul contrasts the works of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit. Secondly, to “walk after” is to follow and not to boss God about! Jesus Christ is not our butler, He is our Lord and Saviour! This implies subjection, for is He not in the lead?
Today in the Church as the body of Christ, we see many walking after all sorts of ideas of Christianity and possessing different attitude problems towards others but to walk after the Spirit is to be subject and submissive to the Spirit of Christ alone in all things. The initiative of our life must from now on be His. There is one thing the man who walks after the Spirit cannot do, and that is to run ahead of Him!
19th February 2025
“Therefore they cast their nets, and now they were not able to draw it back in because of the multitude of fish. That disciple therefore whom Jesus loved said to Peter, It is the Lord.” …John 21:6
As the risen Lord Jesus stood there on the shore, the strange thing was that none of them knew Him; not even Peter and John who had been His most intimate friends, nor Thomas who so lately had identified Him by His wounds. The risen Lord was not to be recognized merely by human eyes, nor by hands of flesh. Even when he spoke to them of familiar things, still they did not recognize Him. But when the net was full to overflowing, John suddenly knew.
Later, when on shore He said “Come and eat breakfast,” none of them, we are told dared ask Him “Who are you?” knowing it was the Lord Jesus. Here is a paradox. In the ordinary way, if you ask a question it implies a lack of knowledge; if you dare not ask, it suggests a fear of displaying that lack! But here we have both fear and knowledge. With the outward man they feared, but with the inward man they knew. Often you cannot explain or even begin to understand, yet there is an inward God given assurance and we know. This is Christ in us! This is real Christianity! This is the real Church!
Today in the Church as the body of Christ, many do not recognise the resurrected life of Christ in others, let alone in themselves, for exactly the same reason. At best they look for a perfect “outer man” (soul) in others and themselves; at worst they look for a perfect “exterior,” whilst all the time they neglect to discern and detect the “inner man” where Christ dwells in their heart. The Pharisee does this all the time; but he can’t help himself because he has taken on board an evil religious spirit that will not allow him to behave in any other way. It is only the inner man who really knows these things because they are spiritually discerned, the outer man merely speculates or presumes according to his self-opinionated ideas with all its inaccurate self-preconceived notions and self-prejudiced feelings. As Christians, we are the dwelling place of God on this earth despite all our failures and limitations! We are the Zion of God. It is “the Christ in us” that is our truth, our reality and our accuracy now and therefore our one discerning faculty that is absolutely reliable. This is real Christianity!
11th December 2024
“He looked upon Jesus as he walked, and said, Behold the Lamb of God!” …John 1:36
When John first announced Jesus as the Lamb of God, he added “which takes away the sin of the world” (verse 29) thus emphasising his redeeming work. The second time he did so, however, he simply said “Behold the Lamb of God!” Here the accent was not so much on the work as on the Person. Real appreciation means that people are precious to us for their own sakes. We come to love them more for what they are than for what they have done for us. So it should be with our appreciation of the Lord Jesus. We thank the Lord Jesus for His gifts, but we praise Him more for His own worth. Christ on the Cross calls forth from us our eternal thanksgiving. Christ on the throne calls forth our everlasting praise! We look at what He has done for us and we are profoundly grateful; we behold who He is and we can do none other than just adore Him!
Today in the Church, we talk much about faith, but how many of us really recognise that in this business of real Christianity, there is nothing we can do of ourselves other than to enter into all that Jesus has already achieved for us by simple acceptance. The out-working of this is to thank Him for what He has done for us and to praise Him for all that He is to us. This then is the fruit of faith but not faith itself. To really know what He has done at the cross, and to really know who He is to us now, is faith itself! Those that walk this way do not have to try to make an effort to thank and to praise Him because it is virtually automatic, meaning that it is the spontaneous outworking from their mouths out of an inner happening in their hearts. The reason why we confess with our mouths is because we believe in our hearts!
I know your tribulation and you poverty (but you are rich).” …Revelation 2:9
Today in the Church as the earthly body of Jesus Christ, when we look around us we cannot but sorrow over a tragic lack in the experience of so many Christians. There is so little about their lives to indicate growth, let alone fullness. They have scarcely sufficient for their own needs, much less anything to spare for others. Why are they so poor? Is it because they do not know what the discipline of the Holy Spirit is designed to lead them into? The Psalmist says, “In pressure you have enlarged my heart” (Psalm 4:1, J. N. Darby trans.).
The real object of God, for all temporary poverty, is to provide eternal enrichment. God never intended that pressure and poverty should issue in nothing. His purpose is that all pressure should lead to enlargement, all poverty to enrichment! God’s goal for His people is neither continuous chastisement nor continuous poverty. For these are never God’s end in themselves; they are only the tools of means that God uses to achieve His end result. Pressure is the pathway to the expansion of the heart; poverty is the pathway to the real eternal wealth! Through both tribulation and poverty, God is causing us to be rich forever!
7the March 2025
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