Need power and light for the days ahead?
Paul, writing to Philemon, wished that the communication of his friend’s faith might become efficient by the full knowledge of every good thing that was in him in Christ Jesus (v. 6). There was evidently a danger of inefficiency, through ignorance of his spiritual inheritance. This incident gives rise to the question: Is efficiency the characteristic of our lives and of our assemblies? It will be agreed that, with an enthroned Saviour, an indwelling Spirit, and an inspired Scripture, we are without excuse.
An analogy may be found in the dismal state of affairs prevailing in Haggai’s day, when there were abundant sowings, but scanty harvests; great feasts, but no satisfaction; much clothing, but little warmth; and hard-earned wages disappeared into a hole-ridden bag. We are the heirs of the ages of experience, but have we possessed our possessions or learned our simple line-upon-line lessons?
The strenuous nature of our earthly occupations is increasingly apparent. Haphazard business methods have given place to systems of ruthless efficiency in view of the inevitable statement of profit and loss. Since this need is felt among mere shadows cast on the shifting state of time, how much more urgent should it be with us who deal in the realities of eternity!
Do we not sanction practices in our assembly which we would count disgraceful in our business, practices which must result in shame and loss at the judgment? We have taken high ground and inherited noble traditions, but these rare gifts must dissolve into dust and ashes unless a living faith keeps them clean and virile.
The suggestion is ventured that a faulty faith is responsible, with the consequent failure to appropriate personally all that has been so dearly secured to us by the past and present work of our Lord Jesus Christ. In short, the righteous have not lived by faith, they have merely existed. The initial process of regeneration has not developed into an abiding principle. Infancy has not given place to adolescence, much less to full-statured manhood. The history of the Christ, cramped by unbelief at Capernaum, is paralleled by the mystery of the Spirit hindered by the same fatal tendency in our midst.
What is the remedy? A revival of a deep-rooted, quiet faith, faith daring but pre-eminently enduring. Faith resting, not even on the best apologetics, but in the reality of an efficient, expectant Lord. Faith nourished by the effectual Word, exercised by effectual prayer. The result? Lives devoted and developing from faith to faith, from strength to strength, from glory to glory.
We may go to the New Testament for our principles and to the Old for our pictures. In the Ephesian letter the discerning eye looks into the very springs of divine efficiency. The word chosen by the Holy Spirit as the channel of His thought is that from which we derive our word “energy” (energees). The modern physicist’s unit of work is the erg. In Ephesians 1:11, we are taken back to the eternal councils, to His presence who “effectually works all things according to the council of His own will,” and that will decreed that the ruined potsherds of the earth should be to the praise of His glory. Then a tremendous step lands us, from the light unapproachable into the twilight dawn of a human day to witness “the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe according to the energy of the strength of His might which He effectually wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead…And you who were dead…quickened, together with Christ…raised up together…made to sit together” (Eph. 1:18-20; 2:1-6, Newberry).
The standard of heavenly energy is forever established when the Man who sank under the world-weight of sin is raised from dishonored death to the throne of sovereign glory. This standard abides today, and has its trustee in every saved soul. But nothing less than the limitless energy of the Father would serve to empty the grave and fill the throne; nothing less would suffice for the digging of one sinner from the horrible pit to be accepted in the Beloved and sealed with the Holy Spirit of Promise. Nor has anything less been provided for our pilgrim needs. The same exhaustless stream invites our priestly vessels for cleansing and overflow.
What shall we then say to these things in view of the present distress? What shall we do in view of coming judgment by the supreme standards of grace?
The expression of His regnant purpose and the exhibition of His resurrection power at the commencement of the letter are followed by an example in the person of the inspired penman himself, as he explains his position as guardian of the sacred secrets which he risked life to share with his friends. “I was made a minister according to the grace of God given unto me according to the effectual working of His power, unto me who am less than the least of all saints” (Eph. 3:7-8). The divine energy had short-circuited the persecutor’s path and transformed the high caste Pharisee into the menial servant of the Man of Galilee. His task henceforth: the honoring of the Head and the edifying of the body. Ours is a slow, sure resurrection, not from vicarious death and an uncorrupt sepulcher all fragrant with spices, but Lazarus-like from repulsive graves where death had reigned so long, unchallenged–the king of terrors.
To be stripped of grave clothes, taught the manners of the Heavenlies, conformed to the likeness of the Head, and enabled for witness–these were pressing needs at Ephesus, as now with us. Nothing but a continuance of the original energy will do it.
Specious substitutes abounded, making a fair show in the flesh and demanding a witness blended with warning against all secondary sources. The supremacy and sufficiency of the risen Lord was the double secret of efficiency. “Grow up into Him in all things, which is the Head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of each one part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love” (Eph. 4:15-16).
Here is the ideal of the general assembly and Church of the firstborn, and therefore the ideal for every believer. This model of efficiency in all its unspoiled beauty, does it not challenge us? How it humbles us, “till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). All this is graphically set out in the experiences of Ezekiel.
The Voice He Heard (Ezek. 1:24): The sound of wings like the noise of great waters accompanying a display of angelic majesty left him amazed yet unbowed. But when the restless wheels and wings were stilled, see Ezekiel on his face, for the succeeding silence was broken by a voice of human speech proceeding from the sapphire throne, the throne of the Eternal, occupied by the appearance of a Man in radiant apparel. Then the lowly servant learned how inscrutable wisdom had passed by sinless cherubim, the acme of heavenly efficiency, to choose him as the messenger of a forlorn hope. So the missionary received his marching orders and entered upon that war in which there is no discharge, his very name publishing his personal weakness, and his sure sufficiency–“God will strengthen.”
If we should be moved to envy such a commission, recall that never in the highest reaches of his prophetic flight could he have attained to what has become almost commonplace with us–herald of a coming King; that his Man of the throne should be our Man of the Cross; those high glories exchanged for the dreadful glooms of Golgotha; that private glimpse and awe-struck worship for the derisive stare and scorn of the mob; the word of power for the exceeding bitter cry of One tasting death for all. The days of despair, the dawn of hope and the Easter music of the same voice saying, “As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.”
The Victim He Became (Chs. 4, 24): Called with such a calling, Ezekiel is henceforth a man under authority. Time and again he is on his face in the place of subjection and victory. The apparent whim of his Master is his rigid law as he becomes a living warning and entreaty to his people. There is his body, refused the common decencies of manhood, laid in the insanitary dust of an Eastern city. His household stuff is claimed, and men look on the messenger of the Lord of hosts playing the porter and mason.
It was not enough that his body should be afflicted to prove his humility, or that his goods should be taken to prove his sincerity. The wife of his heart was taken with a stroke, and he was refused the mere comfort of tears. So he moved among the people with dry eyes and unfaltering lip, bearing the sign of his God.
Are such victims needed today to pay the uttermost farthing of the price of efficiency? “I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God…”
The Vision He Saw (Ezek. 47): Ezekiel saw waters from under the threshold of the house, flowing past the south side of the altar, and out towards the sunrising, picture and pledge of the boundless purposes of God for Ezekiel and all who follow in his train. What a contrast to the insignificant Chebar which was probably only a man-made canal, long since erased by the desert’s drifting sand. “Oh, that thou hadst hearkened unto Me! Then had thy peace been like a river and thy righteousness as the mighty waves of the sea.” Deeper and ever deeper and wider flowed the healing flood, in its beauty, fruitfulness, and healing properties–the model of spiritual efficiency. “And everything whithersoever the rivers shall come shall live … because their waters issued out of the holy place” (Ezek. 37:9-12). “Out of his innermost being shall flow torrents of living water.”