Like Christ… in His use of Scripture: by Andrew Murray

“That all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me” (Lk. 24:44).

What the Lord Jesus accomplished here on earth as man He owed greatly to His use of the Scriptures. In them, He found the way in which He had to walk, the food and the strength on which He could work, and the weapon by which He could overcome every enemy. The Scriptures were indeed indispensable to Him through all His life and passion: from the beginning to the end of His life was the fulfilment of what had been written of Him in the volume of the Book.

It is scarcely necessary to give proof of this.

·        In the temptation in the wilderness, it was by His “It is written…” that He conquered Satan (Mt. 4:4).

·        In His conflicts with the Pharisees, He continually appealed to the Word: “What says the Scripture? … Have you not read? … Is it not written?”

·        In His fellowship with His disciples it was always from the Scriptures that He proved the certainty and necessity of His sufferings and resurrection: “How then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled?” (Mt. 26:54).

·        And in His communion with His Father in His last sufferings, it is in the words of Scripture that He pours out the complaint of being forsaken, and then again commends His spirit into the Father’s hands. All this has a very deep meaning.

The Lord Jesus was Himself the living Word (Jn. 1:1-4, 14). He had the Spirit without measure (Jn. 3:34). If anyone could have done without the written Word, it would have been Him. And yet, we see that it is everything to Him. More than anyone else, He thus shows us that the life of God in human flesh and the Word of God in human speech are inseparably connected. Jesus would not have been what He was, could not have done what He did, had He not yielded Himself step by step to be led and sustained by the Word of God.

Let us try to understand what this teaches us. The Word of God is more than once called Seed (Lk. 8:11-15; 1 Pet. 1:23). It is the seed of the divine life. We know what seed is. It is that wonderful organism in which the life, the invisible essence of a plant or tree, is so concentrated and embodied that it can be taken away and made available to impart the life of the tree elsewhere. This use may be twofold. As fruit we eat it, for instance, in the corn that gives us bread. The life of the plant becomes our nourishment and our life. Or, we sow it, and the life of the plant reproduces and multiplies itself. In both aspects, the Word of God is seed.

True life is found only in God. But that life cannot be imparted to us unless it is set before us in some shape in which we know and recognise it. It is in the Word of God that the invisible, divine life takes shape, brings itself within our reach, and become communicable. The life, the thoughts, the sentiments, and the power of God are embodied in His words. And, it is only through His Word that the life of God can really enter into us. His Word is the seed of the heavenly life.

As the bread of life we eat it, we feed upon it. In eating our daily bread, the body takes in the nourishment which visible nature – the sun, water and the earth – prepared for us in the seed corn. We assimilate it, and it becomes our very own, part of ourselves; it is our life. In feeding upon the Word of God, the powers of the heavenly life enter into us, and become our very own; we assimilate them. They become a part of ourselves, the life of our life.

Or, we use the seed to plant. The words of God are sown in our heart. They have a divine power of reproduction and multiplication. The very life that is in them, the divine thought, disposition, or powers that each of them contains, takes root in the believing heart and grows up. And, the very thing of which the word was the expression is produced within us. The words of God are the seeds of the fullness of the divine life.

When the Lord Jesus was made man, He became entirely dependent upon the Word of God. He submitted Himself wholly to it. His mother taught it to Him. The teachers of Nazareth instructed Him in it. In meditation and prayer, in the exercise of obedience and faith, He was led, during His silent years of preparation, to understand and appropriate it. The Word of the Father was to the Son the life of His soul. What He said in the wilderness was spoken from His innermost personal experience: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (Mt. 4:4). He felt that He could not live except as the Word brought Him the life of the Father. His whole life was a life of faith, a depending on the Word of the Father. The Word was not a replacement for the Father, but a vehicle for living fellowship with the living God. And, He had His whole mind and heart so filled with it that the Holy Spirit could, at each moment, find within Him, all ready for use, the right word He needed to hear.

Child of God, do you want to become a man of God, strong in faith, full of blessing, rich in fruit to the glory of God, full of the Word of God? Like Christ, make the Word your bread. Let it dwell richly in you. Have your heart full of it. Feed on it. Believe it. Obey it. It is only by believing and obeying that the Word can enter into our inward parts, into our very being. Take it day by day as the Word that proceeds – not has proceeded, but proceeds – out of the mouth of God. Regard it as the Word of the living God, who, in it, holds living fellowship with His children and speaks to them in living power. Take your thoughts of God’s will, God’s work, and God’s purpose not from the church or from Christians around you, but from the Word taught by the Father – and, like Christ, you will be able to fulfil all that is written in the Scripture concerning God’s will for you.

In Christ’s use of Scripture, the most remarkable thing is this: He found Himself there. There, He saw His own image and likeness. And, He gave Himself to the fulfilment of what He found written there. It was this that encouraged Him under the bitterest sufferings, and strengthened Him for the most difficult work. Everywhere, He saw the divine waymark traced by God’s own hand: through suffering to glory. He had only one thought: to be what the Father had said He should be, to have His life correspond exactly to the image of what He should be as He found it in the Word of God.