The Way to God's End # 5

The Way to God's End # 5

The Demand For Reality

The demand here is that we be found in the light of reality, of facts as God sees and knows them to be. The verse is placed among other verses which repeat the phrase: If we say ... if we say ... If a man says ... Obviously the contrast is between a man who says things and thinks that they are true, and a man who comes to the light to find out what the truth really is. Our danger is that by saying things we may come to take it for granted that we are in the experience of what we say. But the light is the cleansing, checking, challenging - what we are in the light of what we say. We all do a lot of speaking about the things of the Lord, either to one another, or in prayer, or even from the platform. "If we say ..." The trouble is that our theorizing and our saying has the unfortunate effect of making us imagine that we are what we say. But we are not; none of us are! Hence the Lord's call, not so much to go on saying things, but to come to the light, that we may be checked up - not as to our beliefs, but as to our behavior; not as to our theories, but as to the spiritual reality. If I may speak for myself, I think I can say that the little that I have learned about myself, I have learned more from my critics than my friends; more from the things that I have disliked, and perhaps repudiated, than from anywhere else. But the whole point about a man or a people who walk in the light, is that they welcome light wherever if comes from, so long as it is light.

To walk in the light means to walk in the light of the Lord's Word. John goes out of his way to remind  his readers that he is not writing any new things to them. He says: 'the things that ye heard from the beginning ... I write no new things to you' (1 John 2:7). The whole purpose, I believe, of this challenge as to walking in the light is to people who have a considerable amount of understanding, and right understanding, as to the things of God. John says: I am not going over again the things that you have heard, and I am cerainly not going to teach you new things; I only want to know, how is it working out? how is it tallying with your experience?

It is the light, too, of His presence. 'If we walk in the light, as He is in the light,' How important that is! To know that we are not coming to scrutinies and questions, and criticisms - we are all coming to the Lord; we are all coming together in humility and simplicity of heart on to the Lord's ground. Oh, for a new awareness of what the Lord thinks about us; what the Lord feels; how the Lord judges things; how the Lord wants them. Oh, for a new warning, as we have here, of those who have things to hide, and so there is no fellowship - there is a contradiction; there is a false position. "If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in the darkness, we lie, and do not the truth" (1 John 1:6). There is a contradiction, not only in word but in fact. But - and that is the turning-point of this verse, and it is always the turning-point of greater spiritual fulness - "but if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another."

It is the light of love. Love is very understanding; love is very patient; love is very tender; but love is very faithful. The light that shines to us may be a painful light; a humbling light; in some matters a perplexing light. But all I can say is: Lord, shine on! However bruised and batteredI may feel,  Lord, shine on! At all costs, not for my sake only, but for all that it means to Thyself, not for time only but for eternity - Lord shine on!

The Way

"But Saul, yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest, and asked of him letters to Damascus unto the synagogues, that if he found any that were of the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem" (Acts 9:1, 2)

"But when some were hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way before the multitude, he departed from them" (Acts 19:9)

"And about that time there arose no small stir concerning the Way" (Acts 19:23)

"I persecuted this Way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women" (Acts 22:4)

"But this I confess unto thee, that after the Way which they call a sect, so serve I the God of our fathers, believing all things which are according to the law, and which are written in the prophets" (Acts 24:14)

"But Felix, having more exact knowledge concerning the Way, deferred ..." (Acts 24:22)

"The same following after Paul and us cried out, saying, These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim unto you the Way of salvation" (Acts 16:17)

"This man had been instructed in the Way of the Lord;and being fervent in spirit, he spake and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, knowing only the baptism of John and he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the Way of God more accurately" (Acts 18:25, 26)

"Enter ye in by the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction,and many are they that enter in thereby. For narrow is the gate, and straitened the Way, that leadeth unto life, and few are they that find it" (Matthew 7:13, 14)

It is very interesting, to say the least of it, to recognize that in New Testament times the Christian life and walk became resolved into a term like this, to be spoken of as "THE WAY." It would seem strange to our ears, no doubt, if we heard people talking about us as "the People of the Way," but that is evidently how it was then, and it would be interesting to know just how that came about; and I think we shall not be very wrong if we come to an opinion about it. Evidently people in those days were very much like people today. They were given to summing things up in a terse, brief manner, and affixing labels.

You see, the very word "Christian" was their way of summing it all up. At times we have that word meantioned. "The disciples were called Christians first in Antioch" (Acts 11:26). Then the Apostle says, "If a man suffer as a Christian ..." (1 Peter 4:16). Clearly, it was the outsiders who gave believers that name, and, as we know, it simply means "Christ-ones," and it was shortened into Christians; it was the world who coined that title for belivers in the Lord Jesus. "They are Christians."

Evidently it was something like that that resulted in Christianity becoming known as the Way, but it was apparently the result of something they were always saying. They, or at least the chief men among the Apostles at the beginning - Peter, James, John - had heard the Lord Jesus say, "I AM THE WAY ... no one cometh unto the Father but by Me" (John 14:6); and they had gone out preaching to the world and proclaiming that Jesus was the Way and that there was no other way. So people had taken it up and said, These are the people of the Way. What an admission! Whether or not they meant it as a slight and said it with a sneer, what a lot there is in it for truth! 'These Christ-ones are the people of the Way.' And in both cases, whether it is Christ-ones or the Way, the result is that it is all bound up with, and inseparable from, the Lord Jesus. If we are right in surmising that that is where the phrase comes from - "I AM THE WAY," and these men had preached Jesus as the Way - then it comes right back to that - Christ-ones, people of Him WHO IS THE WAY; that is, not people who just have away of their own, who take a way different from others, but people of a Person Who is the Way. It is the Person Who gives character to the Way. It is the Person Who makes the Way, it is the Person Who has pioneered that Way and blazed that trail. They are in the Way of the Person.

And do you not think that is probably why the devil hated it so much? It is strange how many ways people can take with seeming success and without very much trouble. Think of all the ways that people take today, even religiously. You cannot cope with all the fantastic courses that people adopt. They go all their strength, peculiar ways - ways that you think no commonsense person would ever look at - but they go and they get crowds to follow them; and nobody bothers to oppose them. But here it is different. We come to that in a minute.

We are not going to say a great deal about the Way - what it came to mean so far as the Church and believers were concerned. We just look right on the surface of it, at one or two things that are very simple.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 6 - An Exclusive Way