Teachings of John Robert Stevens

Dedicated To Unity

The Lord has given the Word that we are to stand together as one, willing to lay down our lives for the brethren, contending for the unity of this Body in the name of the Lord. We will not break ranks nor thrust one another (Joel 2:7, 8). This is the key. We will not sin against the Body of the Lord. No matter how anyone would offend us or what anyone would do to sin against us, we will not respond with the greatest sin of all—withdrawing from our brother and breaking the unity of the Body. At any cost, at any price, we must become one in the sight of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we live; so we move.

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah show that the Feast of Tabernacles was the feast of unity, the feast of oneness. This is the key of everything before us. God is saying to us, “I have dealt with each one of you separately, individually. I have dealt with the things in your life that are wrong. By virtue of the prophecies I have thrust you into the dealings of the Lord.” We have come to the place where the death of self brings an end to ambition, to individuality and individual striving, and we all flow together, one in the Lord. The expression of the Body of Christ is come for the earth to receive, and it can only be seen as we repent of independent action, of our own individual feelings, and even our reactions to wrongs against us, and we become dedicated to our brothers and sisters in the Body in which Christ has set us. Only in this way will the Body of Christ be what God wants it to be on the earth. Only in this way will it even come forth.

God wants every little church to repent of even thinking like a little church, like a local, independent group, even though He has laid down a pattern of local church order which we will follow very carefully. It is so easy to think like a little church instead of thinking like a living part of this great organism God has raised up—a part of the Kingdom. Wherever you are, you are an expression of the King. You are an expression of the life of the Lord. Open your heart to be that.

The trouble with little towns is that the people in them begin to think like a little town. People who live in a certain locality begin to think like that locality. Even though you live in the midst of Sodom and Gomorrah, you must be determined to be the vanguard of the Kingdom that is to be established, as you renounce everything that is related to the circumstances and environment round about you, and dedicate yourself wholly to be that expression of the Kingdom of God.

Paul spoke about this to the Philippians. (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) For our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. Philippians 3:18–21.

The Moffat translation uses another expression instead of saying that we are citizens of heaven. It reads: “We are heaven’s colony.” The Romans understood what that phrase meant in their days. Rome’s influence was seen wherever Roman colonies were established. Roman baths, Roman roads, Roman justice—all were signs and evidences that Rome had a colony in that area. Paul understood this too. Tarsus was a free city, and because he had been born there, he had Roman citizenship, even though he was a Jew. At the time he needed his life spared in order to go on and do the will of God, he used his Roman citizenship with all the privileges it entitled him to, so he could bring the Word of God and the witness of the Lord to Caesar, the emperor. He knew what a Roman colony meant.

We are heaven’s colony, a transplant from an age to come. We are a colony of the Kingdom here on earth, and we live as citizens of the Kingdom. We will have to live by different rules than the world round about us. It is a time of love, a time of oneness in the Lord, and a time of dedication to the King. As we pledge our allegiance to the flag and to our government, even more so, from the very depths of our being, let us pledge our allegiance to the Lord of lords and the King of kings and to the Body which represents Him in the earth today, as we become citizens of the Kingdom and members of the great colony that the Lord is establishing in the earth. We are a transplant from an age to come, set here to do the will of God. We should open our hearts and say with everything within us, “Lord, we will never again walk as individuals.”

The day of the individual is over, and I have to confess frankly that in a way I am sorry. I liked the day of rugged individualism, when men sometimes stood alone, accomplishing great things in the earth. However, that day is not to be compared with this day, in which it takes even greater courage for a man to resist striving for a personal identity, as he strives instead to glorify Jesus Christ. To stand forth, rugged and strong in your own strength and convictions, living by what you believe, ready to live or die, survive or perish, is wonderful. But it is better to be dedicated to be on the scene unrecognized, where no glory will ever come to you, where all the glory and all the praise goes to Him.

As the age of the Kingdom draws closer, we will pray the Lord’s Prayer with even greater understanding. How often we will proclaim, “Thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever!” All of it belongs to Him. We will lift Him up and exalt Him as we never dreamed we could lose ourselves in anything.

Young folks have wondered if the frontiers are gone. Yes, say good-bye to the old days of the covered wagons and frontiers, and say hello to the frontiers of the Spirit. Come on, you pioneers. We are ready to go in not to forge a place for ourselves, but to recognize that for two thousand years there has been held in abeyance the victory that Jesus Christ won over principalities and powers. For two thousand years the Father has declared that all authority in heaven and earth is His. Finally has come that full complete hour when God will raise up members of the Body of Christ to go forth and bring into being what the Lord won many years ago.

He, who is the Head, who sits at the right hand of the Father, henceforth expecting until His enemies be made the footstool of His feet, is waiting for us, the army of the Lord, to bring all things to that footstool (Hebrews 10:13). To what are you dedicated? Not your own name, not your own place. You are dedicated to “Operation Footstool,” seeing that everything be made the footstool of His feet, until all other rule and authority and power is brought down, and we live as the Body of Jesus Christ, as the citizens of the Kingdom and the army of the Lord. We live not for ourselves, but for one thing alone. There will be the greatest glorifying of Jesus in the earth, in the hours of judgment and in the mercies of grace. Whether it be when the Lord plows Zion like a field or when the Lord brings the former and the latter rain upon His vineyard, He will be glorified. We will be instruments of that, and thereunto we work, striving mightily with the working that is within us.

Are you impressed by what Paul told the Philippian church about Timothy, whom he was about to send to them? He said, “For I have no man like him” (Philippians 2:20). All the others were seeking their own interests, their own ministry, their own place; they were seeking what God could do through them. None sought the things of Christ and His interest. Timothy was a young man with many needs himself. Paul spoke of his oft infirmities; yet Timothy was there to comfort the Apostle Paul. An apostle himself, Timothy was there to do anything that was necessary. Even more important, there was never a time in the ministry of Timothy that he was not concerned about the interests of Christ, of the Church, and of the people. Can you say the same thing? Can you forgo your own interests? The Lord grant that the people in this day will be like a company of Timothys.

We always think of Timothy as a young man, but don’t forget that as the years went by he was no longer a young man. At the time he was hazarding his life for the gospel, he had reached what amounted to old age in those times. At the approximate age of fifty-five, Paul called himself “Paul the aged.” In those days a person who reached the age of forty or fifty-five was considered an old man, especially when we take into account all the rigors they went through. Imagine all the sufferings Timothy endured during his thirty to forty years in the ministry. Timothy probably was in his forties and Paul about sixty when Paul was martyred. As a teenager Timothy joined Paul at Lystra, a city of Asia Minor, where Paul had earlier been stoned. Timothy had witnessed that event and it was there that he was chosen to go forth and to minister. Although he was then only a young man in his teens, he was always concerned about what belonged to Christ.

We labor not for human interests. Who can say what is his own? Who can say what his own interests are? You say, “I wish I could be out of this problem or that problem so I could be happier.” If you want to do the will of God, keep praying through this battle, but don’t think that things will then be easier; they will be more difficult. More and more it will be a remnant, a small minority, upon whom will rest more and more responsibilities as God opens every realm that His Kingdom shall invade.

God will take a handful of corn and scatter it on the tops of the mountains, and the harvest thereof shall shake like Lebanon (Psalms 72:16), where the mighty cedars grew. When the winds blew in from the storms on the Mediterranean, those great beautiful cedars would sway with it. God says, “That is the kind of harvest I will bring. The mighty plantings of the Lord, like mighty cedars, will come forth. The winds cannot shake them; the storms cannot bring them down. From them can be built temples and mighty palaces.” This is what the Lord will do.

It will not be a lesser future that we will face; it will not be lesser responsibilities and battles, for we are not on the defensive, but on the aggressive. God has given us a Word, and step by step we have invaded the realms of one principality after another. We recognize that it all belongs to the Lord, and we have set about to move into one area after another, taking beachhead after beachhead, to displace these squatters who have no right to the Kingdom and the glory and the power, to bring for the Lord the reward of His sufferings that is duly His.

We can sit and whine and talk about our own interests and wonder about ourselves. Forget that! Let us be lost in the interests of the King, giving ourselves wholly unto the things which belong to Christ, as we say, “His is the power, His is the Kingdom, His is the glory forever.” Nothing could be greater than to live for this end, to give ourselves for it, to live for something so much bigger than ourselves.

Who is the greatest—Christ or you? Which is the most important—His Kingdom or your little interests? Move from the lesser to the greater. Lift your hearts unto the Lord and say, “O Lord, in these days, whatever You speak to all of the brethren, speak, O Lord, to my heart. Rebuke everything that rises up within me—every independent, rebellious, withdrawing tendency within my nature. Deal with every part of me that is not wholly involved with God, not wholly given unto the Kingdom of the Lord.” Let there be no greed, no selfishness, no self-centeredness. Let there be only one desire in our hearts: “O God, to live for You with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, with all our mind.” There must almost be a violence within us—not that we are violent with our God so much as we are violent with everything within ourselves that is passive, that withdraws, and is uninvolved. O God, deliver us from the lethargy of this hour that makes us neither hot nor cold. What a sin falls upon this age and upon the church in this age. We will not be cold; we will not be lukewarm. Somehow God will help us, not through human effort or zeal, but because we become involved with the battle.

Let us be fervent in our love for God and fervent in our love for the brethren. Everything of self must go. Down with everything that hinders, everything that possesses, every wall that has confined us to the area of selfishness. Down with the walls that let us think as one little local church instead of seeing ourselves as the expression of the Lord in the earth. We will speak His Words; we will do His deeds; we will take the things that belong to the Lord.