I wish to say a word trusting that the Lord may use it to lead us on a little into the apprehension of what may be described as the cardinal features of Christianity. There are two most important and characteristic truths in Christianity, the one is a new man in a new place, and the other, that the Spirit is given. What the Galatians did was to slip away from the first, and with that they were disregarding and ignoring to a great extent the presence of the Spirit here. The two truths are bound together, for we can know nothing whatever about the new man and the new place except by the Spirit. More than that, I do not see how the truth of a new man in a new place could come out while the Lord was here on earth, nor until He had passed out of our place of responsibility. Nothing fully came out until Christ was entirely separated by death from us and from our place. Then the truth came out by the Holy Spirit, the cardinal truth of Christianity, a new man in a new place; and the Spirit came down from that place to form us down here for that place. That is what I understand to be the true character of Christianity.
I desire if the Lord enable me to enlarge a little on this chapter. In this and the two succeeding ones we have three points especially to be noticed. The great point in chapter 3 is that the curse is gone and that the blessing of Abraham has come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus. In the next chapter we get liberty. Until you know the blessing you know nothing about liberty. "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father". Then in the succeeding chapter we have
walk, "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit". We are dependent on the Spirit at every point and can get nothing apart from the Spirit. Liberty lies in the Spirit, there is none apart from Him. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty". So the apostle exhorts in chapter 5, "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free", and in the latter part of the same chapter we have "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh".
The first point then is that the blessing of Abraham has come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus. What for? "That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith". I do not think the blessing of Abraham goes beyond the thought of justification. That is what is referred to, that we might be justified before God. But the point is this, we are justified that we might receive the promise of the Spirit, and when we come to the closing part of the chapter we see how it works out. In verse 23 we read "Before faith came we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith". What follows? "Ye are all God's sons"; all sons of God "by faith in Christ Jesus". "In Christ Jesus" marks our place. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise".
We have thus the place and state and inheritance of those justified. Now beloved friends, the first thing is, Christ Jesus is the new Man in the new place. The beginning of the truth is that He came into our place, not only to bear our judgment, but that He might glorify God in that place. The cross was not the place of man's responsibility, but the earth. Christ came to glorify God on the earth. That is the first thing in
connection with Him. God had to be glorified in man in every position in which He had placed him. Christ became Man that He might glorify God as a living man upon earth, in the place of man's responsibility. But further, on the cross He bore man's judgment, the judgment that lay upon man. But I do not think that was the place of responsibility; that was the place of substitution. He was lifted up on the cross, and there He perfectly glorified God in death. He had in life magnified the law and made it honourable, and had completely foiled Satan in every temptation. He had walked here upon the earth in the place of man's responsibility to God's perfect satisfaction, but all that is now over, and now He goes to the cross to take the curse, the judgment that lay upon us, and especially upon Israel. "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree". It was no question of responsibility with the Lord Jesus on the cross. He bore the judgment of those who had failed in their responsibility. He had glorified God in the place of man's responsibility, and on the cross we see everything taken up in which man had failed, and every question there settled. He was made sin. He was offered for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant. He was made a curse for us to redeem from the curse of the law, and all ended in death; every part and every element of judgment resting on man from God was borne upon the cross, and God was completely glorified. That is the work of the cross. Now what has come to pass as the effect of that work? God has got in Christ a man, a new man, in an entirely new place for man with God. Not only there the object of perfect love, dwelling in the love of God, but in the place of righteous acceptance on the ground of the work which He had accomplished, there in divine favour and acceptance, but in the place, too, where He ever was personally
the object of divine affection. He could make known, here on earth, what it was for a man to abide in the love of God. As He says, "Even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love". Where was ever a man before that could say he abode in the love of God? Never till the Son of God came. But then there was this, that He was actually in the place of man's responsibility, and going on to bear upon the cross the judgment that lay upon man. But now all this is completely finished, and the Lord has passed for ever out of this place. He is eternally in the full light of the love of God, and the "light of the knowledge of the glory of God" shines in the face of Jesus Christ. The moral effulgence of God shines out there. More than that, He is the supreme and eternal object of divine love, and divine acceptance is witnessed in Him. Think of it, He is, as Man, the perfect adequate object of divine love. He is in the full delight and enjoyment of it, and in the place of acceptance, on the ground of that work in which He perfectly glorified God; the work of the cross, where not only sin was borne away, the curse and judgment removed, but where He perfectly glorified God; so that in Him, man could enter on an entirely new footing with God, on the ground of that accomplished work.
I feel for myself how poorly one can speak of it. The end was that the "blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles in Christ Jesus; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith". The barrier between Jew and Gentile is broken down, the Gentiles are completely relieved. The judgment of death was universal, the curse was limited to those under the law; but in the removal of it the blessing of Abraham has come to the Gentiles. This is justification. We are relieved of the burden of judgment lying on man. So long as Christ was here, the barrier remained, but in His death it is gone, and now the blessing of Abraham has reached us, and the Gentile
is as completely justified as the Jew, and we receive "the promise of the Spirit through faith". What for? The object of the Spirit is, that they who are justified might be conformed to Christ in the place where Christ is. That is the wonderful thing. That is the office and function of the Holy Spirit down here, we have not only the washing of regeneration, but the renewing of the Holy Spirit; that man might be entirely different from what he was and completely conformed to Christ in the place where Christ is. Now at the close of the chapter the saints are set in the place. The law was our schoolmaster unto Christ, and now "ye are all God's sons by faith in Christ Jesus". That marks the place; the sonship was in Christ Jesus; and the way into it was faith. There is a hymn that gives it exactly:-
Do you know what it is to be a son of God? We talk of relationship, but we are apt to take too much from human analogy. It is to be the object of God's love; that is "In Him we stand". Does anybody ask me where my place is? I answer in the love of God. I am the object of His love and formed by it. I am more and more convinced we are all formed by the place in which grace has set us. If the grace of God has set us in the love of God, we are formed by that love, and He looks for us to be formed thus. Why are we so little formed? Because we have so little sense of the place. If we knew, in our souls, the good of the gospel in the light of the love of God, that love would be far more formative through the Holy Spirit in us. If in the place, I must have the enjoyment of the place; and you have not only a title, but you are in the place; and if in the place you are formed by it. Formed in the ways of heaven, and it is a great place to be in, not only in the acceptance, but in the love revealed in Christ; a place man was never in before till Christ
became a Man. He brought it to us in this way, and removed the judgment on us, that we might have entrance into it. He brought love to this world and left it here, and now man's place is in the love of God, and if in it, having received the Holy Spirit, he is being formed by the place in which He is. This is a great power to separate people from this world. I know the world, its temptations, and the power of it. But it is of no use bringing the world to the one in the love of God; you cannot offer him anything compared to what God gives. The grace of God has given him such enjoyment in the love that nothing down here could compare to it. What is the world but a sham, a keeping up of appearances, with a seething mass of misery underneath? That is pretty much what the world is; it is not good enough for the Christian. Another thing is that when you fear the world you are under the power of it. But we are to be in the place of liberty where God has set us now to serve in the world according to God.
The next verse brings in our state "For ye, as many as have been baptised unto Christ, have put on Christ". It is what we are with God in Christ, all one. Why? Because we all have one common Spirit of life. We have our individualities, but not different Spirits. All one power of life, all alive in the Spirit, for we have all received the same Spirit, and therefore we are one in Christ Jesus. I know as long as we are down here we cannot get wholly out of earthly distinctions, but in what we possess in Christ, we are all one, because we have all one Spirit. Then "if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise". Now we come to the lower thing, the inheritance. Sonship is greater than inheritance, though that will never so appear to one who does not know sonship. It is the greatest thing with God. What is the meaning of sonship? You are the objects of the love of God. The next chapter brings out
another truth. In the power of the same Spirit you respond to God's love. Abba, Father, is the expression of affection and the answer to love: no one could cry Abba, Father, without an idea of God's affection. People may take it up in a formal way, but to cry Abba, Father, does not mean the truth of sonship merely, but the response of affection to the love which we know God has towards us. I would I could impress everyone here with even the poor sense I have of it, but I cannot if you do not take in what I began with. Think of the love of God in bringing us into this place that we should be formed by it. What a wonderful thing to get before we reach home! We could not be formed in heaven. We are put into it now in faith, in order that we may be formed by the place before we get to heaven. That is the thing I wanted to indicate, how the blessing of Abraham has come to us and its consequences. Justification has come to the Gentiles, a poor dog of the Gentiles is brought from the distance to be placed before God here upon the earth. Where? In the place of the Jews? Nothing of the kind; brought into the most wonderful place a man could be set in, in the love of God! What never could have been the case except by the Son of God becoming a man, but by becoming such, He puts man into that place in the love of God, but it would not have been available for us unless the judgment had been removed, that we might receive the Spirit of God's Son, and then go in, in company with Him, and be formed there by the Spirit. May the Lord give us a real taste of it, and enable us to learn what we are to Christ, and what the love of God is. I am only now speaking of the gospel, not of the mystery. My soul is brought into the love of God from which the gospel came, and the mighty power of the Spirit has come down from heaven to earth to bring us to that place, and to conform us to that Man in the place where God has set us.
Romans 8:1-17
I do not touch on the latter part of this chapter, it shows us the way in which the Spirit of God connects Himself with the experience of the saints. I desire to say a word, looking to the Lord to enable me, in reference to the Spirit, and in connection with what I sought to speak on two afternoons since, what is really the essential truth of Christianity; a new man in a new scene. I did not say much then as to the Spirit. Here we have the office of the Spirit in us as individuals, to make good in us that which is already true of us, before God. I do not say one word this afternoon as to what is corporate or collective, only as to what is individual. It has often been remarked as to the epistle to the Romans, that it never goes beyond what is individual for the Christian. The apostle takes up the Christian in his individuality, and carries that thought through the epistle. In other places we get the Christian circle, and what the Christian is as united to Christ. I would make one remark more, every epistle without exception I believe assumes the complete work of God in the Christian in principle. Every Christian does not know it. The epistles are not given us to explain the work of God, they assume the work of God. Every Christian is regarded as justified and as having the Holy Spirit, and is by the Holy Spirit united to Christ. Every epistle assumes that, but the object of the epistle is to make practically good in souls what is already true of them in principle before God. As I said, not to teach the work of God, it assumes that. The epistles are all written to Christians, to those who had everything God confers; forgiveness of sins, justification, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and if I have the Holy Spirit I get no more from God.
Henceforth, all is the work of the Holy Spirit in me. To anyone who understands what Christianity is, this is an important point. There is another point I would mention, and I trust nobody will be startled by it; that is, that Christianity is not a system of actualities, it is a system of realities, but not of actualities. As to the positive side of it, it is a system of actualities in Christ, and of faith in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. People who try to turn Christianity as to our side into actualities, get on to a kind of millennial ground which is not the truth. To saints on the earth during the millennium the blessing of God will be in actuality, but Christian blessing is not actuality but is reality to faith by the Holy Spirit; and I believe anybody who accepts that will find it a great help in understanding the Scriptures. It leads on to what I have to say as to the Holy Spirit. In the passage before us we have the Holy Spirit presented to us in three aspects -- for deliverance, for life, for sonship. I ask anybody who would tell me that Christianity is a system of actualities, whether for all sense of deliverance, life, and sonship, he is not entirely dependent on the Spirit? Could you tell me then that Christianity is a system of actualities while you are entirely dependent on the Spirit for all sense of what it is? I think there are many Christians who know little or nothing about sonship. They may have received everything God can confer upon them, but they are not in faith, and therefore do not understand. I am not saying the Spirit is not in them, but they are not in the power of the Spirit, and outside of that power we can know nothing at all about sonship. It does not belong to earth, "Ye are all sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus". Therefore it is not a blessing connected with earth, it belongs to heaven. I get into the reality of it on earth, just as far as I am in the power of the Spirit of sonship. The apostle in announcing the truth says, "Ye are all God's sons by faith in Christ Jesus".
Then afterwards he says, "But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father". That is, we cry, "Abba, Father", exactly in proportion as we are under the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, beloved brethren, what I say is immensely important, and why? Because christendom has practically put out the Holy Spirit. I know they cannot do it actually, but practically they have. Look at the dark days of christendom and see how the Holy Spirit was put out; He had little or no place with men, and in the present day what does the prayer for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit mean, but practical unbelief in His presence here? But the true secret is unbelief in Christ's Person. If there was real faith in Christ, the presence of the Holy Spirit would be known. But when you see the Holy Spirit thus practically displaced by christendom, it is no great wonder if people do not enter into the character of the Christian's place. It is important to insist upon the presence of the Holy Spirit with the saints.
I desire just to say a few words on these three points in the passage I have read, the Spirit for deliverance, the Spirit for life, and the Spirit for sonship. In the second verse of the chapter we read "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, hath made me free from the law of sin and death", and in verse 10, "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness". And in verse 14, "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God". Now just think what are the three things necessary to you as Christians. You first want deliverance, then life, and with that sonship, and you get all in the Spirit. First, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from
the law of sin and death". Now life in Christ Jesus is to my mind an objective thought. What the expression reveals to me is this, that before God, there is a complete new order of life in man in a new scene, life in Christ Jesus. We can understand what life in man down here is. It really is death morally. Talk of life in this world, while the sentence of death is upon man! For the Christian, Christ has "annulled death, and brought life, and incorruptibility to light through the gospel". What hinders entering into life is because people are not free of death. The two things must go together, but nine out of ten do not realise the fact that death is the judgment of God upon man. The infidel says, Yes, he must die, but man was ever mortal. He thus denies the moral aspect of death, and proves what a fool he is, for when you look at death in its connection with relationships down here, it is evident man does not die as the beast. Death breaks up the whole system of human relationships here with the affections proper to them, and brings a whole course of serious changes in its train, and yet you deny any moral aspect of death in connection with God. You accept the moral aspect of death in relationships down here, and know that when a beast dies there is nothing of the kind, and yet refuse to accept it in connection with God. Death is the judgment of God upon man. It is not that men were made to die, or pass away by natural dissolution. It is the sentence of God upon man by reason of sin, and until free of death he does not enter into life. It is not to get rid of death in its actuality, but we pass out of death into life.
Well now, how is deliverance brought about? By the revelation of life in Christ Jesus. Never was brought to man before what is brought now to the Christian by the Holy Spirit. The report of life in man in another scene. Where? In the presence and in the love of God, in the glory of God. We get beyond that in 2 Corinthians 3, we "looking on the
glory of the Lord, with unveiled face, are transformed according to the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit". We see here the true Moses, the expression of what God's thoughts are about man. The Spirit of God has come down to report the great truth of life in the Man Christ Jesus, the true ark of the covenant and mercy-seat; the glory of God that shines in His face, the moral effulgence displayed in the Person of Jesus. Well, He is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus; and when that is revealed to me I am delivered, and you never get deliverance otherwise. How do you get deliverance if not thus? The secret of deliverance is the revelation to my soul of life in man in another scene, the scene of the glory of God; and I look at the glory of the Lord and am changed into the same image. What is the divine thought as to man? Adam, perfect in his place, and for his place, was not the full divine and final thought about man. Now we see in Christ in glory, the divine and final thought of God about man. He is the true ark of the covenant, and the veil being rent all is revealed, and I look at the glory of God, and I am delivered from what is here. I am set free. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death". That is the first point, the second is later on in the epistle. "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you". These two verses involve a good bit of surrender -- surrender of the flesh, that is what it comes to. I have to surrender because I am not now in the flesh but in the Spirit. Everything now is to spring from the Spirit; not simply that I am to be guided by the Spirit in divine things, but in all. I do not expect the direct guidance of the Spirit in the
business of this world, but I do expect that in every circumstance my mind may be under the control of God's Spirit, and thus to do my business a great deal better, to do it according to God. I want to be a capable man down here, but not according to man's ideas. I was once ambitious to be a successful man in this world, but I have lost the desire of it now. Still I have the desire to be a capable man here for God, only in the power of the Spirit. I do not want to be ruled by the flesh any longer in the least thing, nor by the will, but by the Spirit of God. I am to be like a house under new management, the management is to be entirely of the Holy Spirit. "You are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his". He is not regarded as being a Christian, he is not in the spirit of Christianity. But "if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness". The Spirit is in the normal condition of the Christian the spring of thought, feeling and affection. There is nothing more wonderful than a man down here indwelt by the Holy Spirit. The state in glory is hardly so wonderful as this. What more inconceivably great, than to be actually down here in flesh and walking about here in flesh, and yet my body the temple of the Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit takes the control and management; we are completely identified with the Spirit, and this because of righteousness.
One word more, it involves having the senses exercised to discern both good and evil, to distinguish between what is of the flesh, and what of God. If people will live after the flesh, they greatly hinder the Spirit of God; for "the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh". This is the position which the Spirit assumes in regard to the flesh. He will not countenance it in any shape or form. "These things are opposed one to the other, that ye should
not do those things which ye desire". There is many a thing that flesh is after, that you would not call grossly wrong, but there is no neutral ground, we are either controlled by the flesh or by the Spirit. There are a vast number of Christians trying to live between the two. They are not carried away by the gross things of the flesh, but I do not think they live in the Spirit practically; and what that means is poor testimony and but little enjoyment or joy. One word now on the third point. "Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God". What we get here by the Spirit is a cry that expresses affection. Affection is the moral outcome and the real good of relationship. "Abba, Father" is the language of affection. We are placed in affection, and the love of God is revealed in the heart. We get that side in chapter 5, "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us"; but here we get the Spirit of liberty and the cry of affection. I not only enjoy, but I respond to the love of God. People do not like the expression 'in it', but it is a very important expression in regard to Christianity, and rightly so when it is a question of faith. If you ask what I am in, I answer in the love of God. The love of God is a reality to my soul. I not only know what God has done for me, but I am in His love. It is a present subsisting love and I am with the Father in that way. I cry, Abba, Father, the expression of affection. "The Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father", that is our response. Thus we have the great and blessed function of the Spirit, which places us in fellowship with Christ. The revelation of God is in Christ, but we have not only the revelation, but Him as the object of divine love in man in the place where He is. We are in Him there, in the fellowship of God's Son, called to it, all
a blessed stream of eternal affection. We know God as Father and are in His love, and more than that respond to it in the power of the Holy Spirit. We cry Abba, Father, in fellowship with God's Son in that circle of affection, and I thank God we are in it, and the practical effect is in our becoming more capable for the will of God here upon earth. "Not conformed to this world: but ... transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God". It is just this I wanted to say. I honestly believe before God that it is of vital moment to accept the place which God has been pleased to give us by His Spirit down here, and to learn that our blessings, while not actualities, are good for faith by the power of the Holy Spirit. They are spiritualities, if you like, for they are in the power of the Holy Spirit. The first traces are brought before us in the Romans. There are three steps in the work of grace in man; first man is born again, what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Man's soul is thus placed in touch with God. The second is, the love of God is revealed to the soul through the Son of man lifted up, and lastly the believer receives the gift of the Holy Spirit. Then the Holy Spirit takes the place which I have tried to bring before you this afternoon. First for deliverance, then as life for righteousness to take the rule, and lastly as the Spirit of sonship, whereby we respond in the language of affection to the love of God to us and cry Abba, Father.
Romans 6:1-11; Romans 7:4-6
I desire to say a word in reference to one point which has been before us this morning. It is in connection with the subject of these chapters -- namely, deliverance. The point I want to refer to for a moment is that it is of the very essence of Christianity that you must 'change your man'. I have no doubt whatever that we are all hindered through failing to apprehend the first lesson impressed upon us in connection with the wilderness. It is of vital moment to apprehend that we must change our man, the simple reason for that being that God has changed the man before Him. Scripture presents to us two men; that is a truth so familiar that there is no question about it; and my point is that God is no longer testing the first man, but has revealed the second. He has changed the man. I think that comes out in Romans 6. People talk about this chapter and about death in connection with it, but they do not understand its bearing. I believe the object is to show how death is effected in us. We do not apprehend what it is to die except as we apprehend the Man that is before God; therefore we must change our man. There is no doubt about what God has done, and what He has done with regard to us. Our old man has been crucified with Christ. Then of necessity we change our man.
I want to point out, if I can, how it is brought about in us. But whether I can make it plain or not, I am perfectly certain of the importance of the subject. The Spirit of God does not as to us bring out the truth of life in Romans until chapter 8. "If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live". I think that is where we come to life. There are certain things you have to learn before you can enter
on that ground; in fact, you cannot apprehend it until you see that one man is superseded by another, and that that other Man who is before God has to fill the vision of the Christian.
I will try to draw the contrast for one instant between chapters 5 and 6. In chapter 5 Christ is viewed entirely, and the Spirit, too, on the divine side. We have expressed in Christ and in the Spirit the attitude in which God is toward the Christian. Everything comes to the Christian through our Lord Jesus Christ. He is presented as the last Adam, through whom all the grace of God is ministered to us, and it is remarkable that even the Spirit of God is brought in, in the same way as on God's side: "The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit". It is the only allusion to the Spirit in that chapter. You run down the chapter at your leisure and find how everything comes to us from God, and all through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the last Adam come in. If I want to know what God is to the whole believing family I have to learn it in the One who is Head to the family. I have sometimes said, though it is not always accepted, that I would not admit that the child could be greater than his father -- that is, as before God. It is not the way of God, for properly the child derives all from his father. What God is to the head He is to the family. With the head (Adam) of the human family came in sin and the judgment of death, and sin and death became true to the whole family. So also if I want to know what is true to the believer I have to learn what is established in the Head, the last Adam. We learn thus in chapter 5 what God is toward the believer through our Lord Jesus Christ.
In chapter 6 we are on different ground altogether. Christ is brought in as second Man, not as last Adam. The same divine Person, but in another aspect. In connection with this you have to change your man;
the second Man is to fill the vision of the Christian. I not only have to learn that I am superseded in God's sight, but I am superseded in my own sight -- a much more difficult thing. I am not very apt at illustrations, but I can give you one from Scripture. In John 4 the woman of Samaria was superseded in her own sight; she went to the men of the city and said, "Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?" The proof to me that it was so is in her boldness in going to the men of the city. If her vision had not been filled by another I do not believe she would have thought for a moment of doing what she did.
There are two points on which I touch in connection with Romans 6. We have there Christ entered in as man in resurrection to the perfect, eternal satisfaction of God, and in divine acceptance. These two points I want to dwell on for a moment. Christ has entered in as man on the ground of the work He has accomplished for God's glory as typified in the burnt-offering. He fills the eye of God. He is "raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father". One could not find a stronger expression. He has entered into perfect acceptance with God on that ground. "He lives to God". People say, Did not He ever live to God? Of course He did, but it is not simply a question here of Himself in His personal perfectness. The point is that He lives to God in connection with having died to sin. How otherwise could we live to God? Because the point of the chapter is to pave the way for the family to come in. He "lives to God" on ground on which we can come in with Him.
I have sometimes thought that the chapter presents to us the idea of the tree of life, but there is one difficulty to my mind. There is the thought in Scripture in connection with the tree of life that it is, so to say, indigenous -- it is proper to the scene in which it is. The tree of life was proper to Eden; when you
get it again it is in another scene to which it is proper -- the paradise of God. Christ is there the tree of life. But you get the principle, I think, in Romans 6. A Man has come in who has perfectly solved the question of good and evil, unvaryingly maintaining the good in the presence of evil. He has put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself; He has been raised again from the dead, and to man is now the tree of life. You have the whole question of the two trees settled, and in this chapter you have the One who is the tree of life to the Christian, in the divine, eternal satisfaction in which man is as raised from the dead. That is God's man. He lives unto God. That brings in the thought of acceptance. I ask you to carry your mind back to the moment when Christ rose from the dead. Do you not think He came out from the dead to the infinite satisfaction of the Father, and that He entered into the acceptance that was due to Him on the ground of the work He had accomplished for God's glory? That is the ground for us. But I do not think anyone will accept it unless he is delighted with the Man who has entered in upon that ground. When it is accepted we reckon ourselves dead to sin. We part company with the first man because we are satisfied with the second Man. It is a hard lesson. I know it as well as anybody. It is a long time before we learn it. We are superseded in our own sight by another; and He is the One who has entered in to the eternal satisfaction of God.
Just a word further. In chapter 6 I think sin is regarded as the great dominating principle in the first man. I part company with that man because now the thought in my soul is to join the One who has died to sin and who lives to God. In chapter 7 is another point -- we are joined to Him. It is a question of law and husband now, that is, of a bond that God has formed. We die to sin, and we die to the world; but we are "become dead to the law by the body of
Christ". The first bond is dissolved by the death of Christ, that a new bond may be formed that "ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God". It conveys to me a great deal. The Christian is lawfully subject to Christ, and is to take character from the One to whom he is joined. That is the idea of a wife. She is to take character from the one to whom she is united. The one who has been raised by the glory of the Father lives to God. It is not only that I have found an object of delight and admiration in Him, but that I am joined to Him, and I am going by Him to bring forth fruit unto God. I am to be a living representation of Him here, because I take character from Him.
We have to die to sin and to the world in the experience of our souls, because we have lived in them; but in regard to the law the bond is dissolved in order that another bond might be formed.
All here this morning would be very tenacious of this point -- that we are joined to Christ. Every Christian is joined to Christ. Can we all say we have taken character from Christ in order that we might bring forth fruit unto God? Or, as it puts it lower down (verse 6), "That we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter". Not under law, like Israel, but in newness of spirit, all according to the pattern of Christ. I believe Christ inaugurated a wholly new order of things for man here. He was a man on earth, truly here as man; but such a man as He could not have been unless He were a divine Person. And now He has entered in according to what He has accomplished for God -- He lives to God. That is the man for God, and that is the man now for the Christian. To take your character from Him and bring forth fruit unto God is not preaching; it is not testimony (it is testimony in one sense), but it is love. As we read in Galatians 5:22,
the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, and a variety of other blessed moral qualities.
I am perfectly aware there is now no vine on earth. Christ was the true vine; that is passed away; but I should be sorry to think there was no such thing as fruit to God. We are married to another that we should bring forth fruit to God.
That is all I want to say, taking up what was brought before us by our beloved brother. I am not talking of lack in other people, I feel it in myself. If we want to get a real start in our Christianity we must accept the truth that we have to change our man. Not only has the second Man accomplished all for God's glory but the first man is set aside, and is superseded by Him who has entered as Man into the glory of God.
No truth, perhaps, has been so effective in us as the truth of the one body. It has brought us out of the systems around, out of the things in which we were brought up, and which we felt to be inconsistent with the truth. But if we fail to answer morally to what is in the mind of God as to the one body -- if we become merely ecclesiastical, and are not exercised about answering to God's mind and purpose in the one body, we become the worst sect, and the most objectionable, because the most pretentious.
The one body is a practical truth, not a mystical idea. The sects admit the truth of the one body, but they take it up as a mystical idea, and not as a practical truth. With the exception of the church of Rome, which in a sense holds the truth of the one body, all the rest hold that because there are Christians in all the systems the one body is but a mystical idea. But though a mystery it is a truth of great practical force. Testimony to the world is by the one body. See John 17:21. How could you get that if the body were not a practical truth? It has to be verified down here. "We, being many, are one body". It is a truth that has, as I have said, had a great effect in separating us from the systems of Christendom; but has there been an answer in us to what we are set here for according to the mind of God? Are we exercised as to answering to His mind in the truth we hold?
I do not think we can understand the truth of the body if we are not established in the truth of sonship. The body hangs on the truth that we have all been made to drink into one Spirit. By the very fact of partaking in one Spirit we are all members of one body. Christians are united in the Spirit of sonship and so constitute one body. We all stand before God in one
common relationship to Him. All have put on Christ; that is, every member of the company stands in the same relationship as Christ, as sons, and therefore the whole body is to be descriptive of Christ; not simply the vessel of the manifestations of the Spirit, but the vessel itself to be descriptive of Christ, having spiritual affections to carry saints clean above all the distinctions that exist in the flesh, and able to rise superior to them.
The one body is to be descriptive of Christ, and man is completely displaced. The body is the vessel of the Spirit, and the Spirit is the energy of the vessel; but the body is to reproduce Christ down here. The Son of God was cast out of this world, and down here, where He was cast out, there was to be a vessel descriptive of Christ. That is the idea of the body. It is Christ's body, His fulness, not a trait of Christ was to be lacking.
The great testimony is unity, not in the flesh, or in any levelling down, but in the Spirit, and spiritual affections. "As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us", etc. There is reciprocity of affection.
It is of great moment for us to understand this truth, because our position, called out as we have been, is a most critical one, and easily forfeited. The one body is for testimony on earth till displayed in glory; but if we hold the truth of the one body, we must not be content with a mere ecclesiastical unity; we ought to be exercised as to entering into the mind and purpose of God, which is, that the body should be a reproduction of Christ here.
Hebrews 2:9-13; Hebrews 9:11, 12, 24; Hebrews 10:19-25
I have read the above scriptures, counting on the Lord to supply anything in the way of exposition that may tend to the better understanding of them.
I would begin with pointing out that in studying Scripture you have to distinguish between the way in which God presents Himself to man and the way in which man is presented before God. I am sure that throughout the word of God the distinction is maintained, and that a good deal of confusion arises from overlooking it. It is in the first instance the work of the evangelist to present, as light to souls, the truth of what God is toward man, for the greatest evangelist that ever lived could do no more than enlighten, and all we have, or can have now in grace, comes to us as light from God to our souls.
When once we are established in grace then there is the blessed truth of what we are for God, but unless we are clear as to the first we cannot apprehend rightly the second, and it is natural for man to suppose that God is toward him according to what he feels towards God, and that is the way he judges.
And in connection with what I have said there is another point, and that is as to what Christ is personally. We find that He is presented to us in Scripture in two aspects, and this holds good not only in what He is now but in what He was here as Man on earth. It is hardly necessary to say that all that He was or is as Man, takes its character and has its lustre from what He is as divine. The two aspects to which I have referred are as presenting God to man, and as presenting man to God. The distinction may, I think, be put in a very short and simple way, i.e., in
the two terms, the "last Adam" and the "second man". The "last Adam", the Lord Jesus Christ, is the One through whom the grace of God is presented to man, the mediator between God and men. In the second Man we get the first and the pattern of the heavenly family -- we see what man is before God.
We find in 1 Corinthians 8:6, the way in which Christ is presented to us in what I may call the economy of grace. To us there is "one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him". This has its true force and application to Christians, because the fruits of the grace of God have been administered to them mediatorially through our Lord Jesus Christ. I may say that it is not a question here of the truth of His Person, but of the place He has taken in the administration of grace. Hence I can very well understand Paul and Silas saying to the jailor, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved". He is thus an object of faith; and if Christ were not divine He could not be presented as an object for faith, but nonetheless He is presented in what He has become.
You will find the same principle coming out in Romans 5, which is occupied in presenting what God is to the believer, and so we have constantly in the chapter the expression, "through our Lord Jesus Christ", peace with God, favour, joy in God, reconciliation, and eternal life. Every good thing made ours from God must necessarily come to us through our Lord Jesus Christ. The point in this chapter is not what the believer is before God, but what God is to the believer.
In Romans 6 we have, on the other hand, what Christ is before God as Man, and such as we can be, and hence we have "in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God", and we can be on this ground. He is the first of the heavenly family to enter in, and that in His personal excellence.
I think you can see the two aspects I have mentioned illustrated in the head of a family; if I am what I ought to be in my house in a sense I represent God to my family. I stand there for the Lord, and I ought to present a true testimony on the part of God to my household, but on the other hand my house is identified with me in the presence of God.
To refer now to Hebrews 2 you will find in verse 10 the divine proposition brought out, that which God has proposed to Himself to accomplish, the counsel of His will, to bring many sons unto glory; but so far as believers are concerned, I do not think you get it effected in their souls till we come to chapter 10, that is, the purpose is not made good in us until then, it is here that the believer is brought to what God started from in chapter 2. In connection with this, I think that I see Christ presented in chapter 2 on God's part as in the communion of His counsel, and in chapter 9 in what He is to God on our part, as having entered into heaven to appear in the presence of God for us, and then in chapter 10 we come to our privilege, that is, we have boldness to enter into "the holiest", by the blood of Jesus, through the veil.
If Scripture makes clear the thought of God toward you, are you never going to respond to it? Is He to have no part? When I take up my privilege to enter the "holiest", God then gets His part; I apprehend my privilege and answer to the great love which God has made known to me; I enter into the scene of divine rest and glory in the blessed apprehension of what God is toward me.
It was ever the pleasure of God to be known by man, and it is to this end He is bringing many sons to glory, and they are those who are close to God, who can enter into His wisdom and respond to His love. It is a poor son who does not respond to the father's love.
But to go back for a moment to verses 11 and 12 of chapter 2, we see, as we have said, the communion of
Christ in the divine proposition. "For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren". Being thus in the communion of the divine counsel, in verse 12 He says, "I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee". The place He takes there is not on our behalf but on the behalf of God.
The Son makes known the Father's love, and the Holy Spirit makes it effective in us, and thus the perfect unity of the Godhead in action is maintained, apart from which there is no work of God. That is the blessed way in which God presents Himself to us in connection with the divine proposition, and it all had its rise in the counsel of God. All is for God.
I want now to refer a little to the other side of the truth, namely, how in Christ man is presented before God, and that leads me to chapter 9, particularly verses 11, 12. "But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption". Now you can well understand the difference between Christ's coming out and His entering in. He came forth from God, but now I get the wonderful truth that He has entered in, "having obtained eternal redemption". He has entered in as Man, to the eternal satisfaction of God, on ground on which we can enter in, too. Suppose it were simply a question of saints entering in, I would ask, Who would be bold enough to enter in first? Christ has entered in first, as Man, to occupy this ground, to the glory of God, and to His eternal satisfaction; and now we can be bold to enter in.
Even when on earth Christ presented in perfection man before God in the place of man's responsibility.
He now presents man according to the counsel of God. And that, blessed be His name, is the ground on which we can go in. He has entered in, having obtained eternal redemption, having established that ground according to the will of God -- He is the Forerunner.
I would here notice, in regard to chapter 9: 24, "For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us": that the idea is not quite the same as in verse 12, where "neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption". In this passage it is the moral idea, the ground He has taken; while in verse 24 He has entered into the place, "heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us". I think it is the idea of the high priest, as the representative of the priestly family in the place where they are not yet; it is the place we belong to, and He is there for us.
Now in chapter 10 we are brought back to the thought of chapter 2 in our apprehension of the will of God. "By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once". You come now to the effectuation in us of the 'divine proposition', we are sanctified and thus "of one" with the Sanctifier. Now we have the believer, as perfected for ever, brought into the place of the divine will through the offering of Jesus Christ. He is "a son", that is the will of God; and that is the place we are brought into; our place of sanctification is the place that God has willed for us; and being by one offering perfected for ever there can be no imputation of sins, nor any question of our responsibility raised, because all has been completely and eternally settled.
Now we have boldness by the blood of Jesus to enter the holiest, the blessed scene of the divine glory, where it is not a question of the actings of men, but
where the very glory of God reposes; surely there no such subject as sin, defilement or aught of that character can find place.
It is the home, too, where divine love finds its satisfaction in man, and you enter into "the holiest" to respond to that love that has displayed itself in Christ, and that now rests on Him as Man. He says, "I will declare thy name unto my brethren". That scene is filled with the glory of God. What I understand by the glory of God is the effulgence of God in the accomplishment of the purposes of His love. His wisdom and love have shone out in their accomplishment, and God has thus reached the purpose of His will, not only in Christ, but also in us.
Further, it is by the new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say His flesh, that we enter. That is, you enter in on entirely new ground. If we are in the company of Christ we must be correspondent to Him on the ground of the glory of God. He has been raised from the dead by the glory of the Father; and our place is not after the flesh at all: it is "a new and living way ... through the veil, that is to say, his flesh", which refers to His death, and in that death the responsible man has been ended as before God. As the risen and glorified Man He has taken up new ground in the presence of God according to God's counsel, for God's eternal glory; and that is the ground on which we go in.
It is utterly impossible to bring man in the flesh "into the holiest", where everything is of God; and it is nothing but divine power that can sustain us there.
Thus it is not only that we are brought into the place of sons, but we are called to the enjoyment of the heavenly scene to which that relationship belongs.
And it is thus that not only is the grace of God ministered to us through Christ, but that He now represents believers before God in heaven. You go in
by that new and living way, and it is apart from every question and thought of what we are as in the flesh.
I trust we may all see more and more clearly the importance of apprehending the distinction between Christ as presenting God to us, and the presentation of man in Him before God; that is what I have been trying to set before you.
1 Timothy 6:11, 12
I feel constrained to follow up what we have had before us by adding a few thoughts in connection with "the man of God". It is very important to understand the import of this expression, and to see how the man of God is formed morally for the place that he has to occupy. The expression is not limited to New Testament times. The course and action of the man of God in any one day being what was suited to that day would not however be descriptive of the man of God in another day.
What I understand by "the man of God" in the present time is characteristically what continues till the Lord comes. Timothy represents the ministry until the Lord should come. He is to continue in the truth till the appearing of Christ. Paul being an apostle is not designated a man of God. We cannot be apostles, but we can be men of God, and for this we need to be more individual. It is not sufficient to maintain in a collective way what is orthodox. I think we have, in the present time, in the ruin all around, to be to a large extent individual. We shall not be any real help if we are not this, for we shall be looking for support from others. If we are not strong individually there is not much power in our fellowship.
One thing is certainly true of the man of God -- he becomes manifest in a day of apostasy -- he stands in the breach. We see this in the case of Moses when Aaron had made the golden calf, and afterwards in Elijah and Elisha in the darkest days in Israel, they had to stand in the truth of God in the apostasy of Israel. I think, as I said before, that the man of God in this day abides until the Lord comes. He can stand in the ruin of Christianity, when all has become like a
great house, and alone, when there is no outward support. It is not a question of doing great things. We have to withstand in the evil day and having done all, to stand. No one will stand in an evil day but by divine support. Then it is that you are a real help to others. If one could not be a help to the people of God, it would not be worth while to be here at all.
What comes in in connection with this is that the church is now God's object here. A man will not have much experience of divine support if he has not God's object in view. A man of God is one who can act for God because he is in the truth of the calling. It is noticeable that in the first epistle Timothy is addressed as "thou, O man of God", in the second the man of God is more general, that is, typical of a class. It is of great moment in our time.
I will refer now for a moment to the qualifications of the man of God. The first thing is that his soul must be consciously in the full light in which God has shone out. There are comparatively few who are in the enjoyment of the place in which God in His grace has set them before Him. In Romans I see a sort of progress in apprehension in chapters 4 and 5. In chapter 4 we get deliverance from the judgment of death by Christ risen. I am in the light of this. In chapter 5 we get a point further, we joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. I am now in the light as God is in the light. The distance which was the effect of sin has been removed, and God has made himself known in the greatness of His love. As I understand it, that is the light in which we are -- God has come out. The second point is, that to be a man of God you must have gone in. You cannot come out from God if you have not gone in to God. This is not quite so simple as the truth that God has come out. If you are to go in you must travel the path by which Christ has gone in. He has gone in for us by death
and resurrection, and we go by that road. Death and resurrection have to be realised in the soul, not simply accepted doctrinally. You have to die to sin, to part company with the man that is here both as to his nature and his culture. The former is more simple than the latter. But by human culture you can never get hold of the clear knowledge of the mystery of God. This is not gained but by conflict. We get hold of it in apprehending the purposes of God centred in the Head. You must die as to the man that is here. When I die, I cease to live in regard of the judgment and culture of man. I reckon myself dead, and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
These two points are simple. The first that God must be known as revealed in love. The second that if you go in you must go in by the way that Christ has gone in. We heard in the former address that life was that by which imitators such as Jannes and Jambres were confounded. It is in this way that I understand the admonition to Timothy to "lay hold on eternal life". You must first go in to God if you are to come out from God. You can then stand for God in the breach. A man who is always looking for props for himself is no help to others.
And in regard to difficulties that arise in the assembly -- where do you expect to get light? From men or with God? The great importance of what I have said, that is, of going in to God, is that you get true light in regard to things here. Moses had light as to what was going on in the camp before he came down to it. Many are content with Christian privileges who have not been exercised as to the thought of going in. It is blessed to know that if I am with God I can stand here supported by God.
May God give to us to see what is the great thought of the man of God, and the means by which he may be thoroughly furnished unto every good work.
What is before me in speaking at this time is summed up in the expression, "the testimony of our Lord" -- not that I have any idea of attempting in the course of an hour to compass that; but I want to take up one great feature of it, that which is spoken of here as "God's glad tidings". I hope on another occasion to speak of the ministry of the new covenant, but at this time I confine myself to what the apostle opens with in this epistle, "God's glad tidings ... concerning his Son ... Jesus Christ our Lord", and desire to give an idea of God's glad tidings, looked at not from our point of view, but from God's point of view. It is perfectly natural for us to look at everything from our point of view; but here the gospel is looked at from God's point of view, for it is "God's glad tidings ... concerning his Son (come of David's seed according to flesh, marked out Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection of the dead)".
Now there are three points which come before us as characteristic of God's glad tidings: first, they are "concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord"; secondly, He is "marked out Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness"; and thirdly, "by resurrection of the dead". That is, there are in the passage three thoughts first, position or relationship; secondly, order or condition; and thirdly, what I might call (using the expression for want of a better) line or generation.
I want to show that when God speaks of His glad tidings concerning His Son Jesus Christ, it is not simply a question of what is true in Christianity, but of the basis of all God's ways in blessing; and the
great results which God intends to produce in blessing all really depend upon the same thing, for everything must begin from the head, and the head is God's Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. And I think you get the three points I have spoken of in connection with Him demonstrated in and running through all.
Now, if we look at things from God's standpoint, what God has in view is the recovery of everything, not to set things again on the old footing, but the reconciliation of all through Christ. That is brought out clearly in Colossians 1, and you get it figuratively in what took place on the day of atonement. And there is another thing intimately connected with it, and that is the introduction of life into all, because there could be nothing for God in the universe if life were not brought in. If I look abroad on earth, everything is under death. The more you know about things the more you see that. Where then is life to come from? I think this passage shows us. A great many people failing to apprehend the figurative sense in which birth is used in the New Testament, and arguing from the analogy of nature, fancy that they have in new birth the solution of the question of life. + I do not believe it. I do not think there is life without new birth, it is the beginning of all for God. If Christ is to be written in the heart, there must first be fleshy tables; but new birth does not, in divine things, solve the question of life. If you want to reach that solution, it is essential to see the conciliation in Christ of the two trees in the garden of Eden, and that is not what is effected in new birth. The two trees stood out from the beginning: one, the tree with which responsibility was connected; and the other, the tree of life. And man having taken of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the question of life depends upon the clearing of the question of
+By "life" I understand power to live before God in the position or conditions in which it may have pleased God to set me. For Christians it is in the place of children; 1 John 3:1
responsibility by one in whom the knowledge of good and evil was perfect. And I say that what is represented by those two trees is conciliated at one point, and at one point only; for there was only one who could meet the question of man's responsibility, and at the same time be a source and sustenance of life to man, and that is what Christ is, and what none other is or can be. And therefore if you want to understand anything about life, or the reconciliation of all things, you must begin from the top, that is, from Christ. The last Adam is a quickening spirit. It is no use beginning from you or me; you will get no understanding at all -- you have begun at the wrong end.
I will try and make the matter plain to you. When I look at Christ, the first thing I see about Him is that He is the living bread come down from heaven, and it is for man to eat; so that you have a completely new and distinct source and sustenance of life for man, as the Lord says in John 6"He also who eats me shall live also on account of me". He was the living bread that came down from heaven, not as their fathers ate manna in the desert and died, "He that eats of this bread shall live for ever". But there was another thing in connection with Christ, He entered on a condition down here in which, Himself perfect, He could take up the question of our responsibility. He connected Himself here with man in becoming the Son of man, so that having met the question of man's responsibility He could remove the judgment of death which lay upon man. Thus you get the conciliation of the two trees. And what marks the present moment is this, that the responsibility question has been met, and Christ as Man, as the living bread come down from heaven, is the source and support of life to all those who are drawn to Him of the Father.
If you come to man's part, we have of necessity to appropriate His death before we can appropriate Him as the living bread come down from heaven: "Except
ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life".
Therefore in Christ, as He has met the question of our responsibility and removed the judgment that lay upon us, we get the conciliation of these two trees, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, with which responsibility was connected, and the tree of life.
I dare say some may not quite understand the point; but I want you to think over it, for I see increasingly that we have all been dreadfully obscure as to the whole question of life, because we have been so accustomed to begin at the wrong end. If you want to get a right idea of the teaching of Scripture with regard to life, you must begin where God begins, that is in Christ. For when God propounds His gospel, it is not about us, nor even simply about the work of Christ, but it is His glad tidings "concerning his Son (come of David's seed according to flesh, marked out Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection of the dead) Jesus Christ our Lord". Therefore I take up those three points, because my conviction is that "God's glad tidings ... concerning his Son ... Jesus Christ our Lord", is the basis of all His ways in blessing for man -- the germ of all lies there.
Before dwelling on the three points, I would notice this, that the necessary links according to the flesh are duly maintained in Christ. These links, in regard to Israel, are very important, and as I have said, they are maintained in Christ. Although Christ has died and risen again, yet He does not lose anything which properly belonged to Him according to promise, and therefore He is spoken of as the seed of David according to the flesh. He is not only David's root, but He is the offspring of David, as He speaks of Himself in the Revelation, "I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star". That belongs to
Him. The question whether Israel could trace their genealogy would not exercise me very much, because the true genealogy for Israel is traced now in Christ. There is no mistake about His genealogy. It is noticeable how careful Scripture has been to trace and record it. And it will stand good for Israel in the future, because genealogy in regard to an earthly people is excessively important. He is "of the seed of David according to the flesh".
But the first great point now is this -- He is "declared to be the Son of God with power", because the bearing of God's glad tidings is wider than Israel. And therefore, in the apostle Paul's testimony, everything is placed on a much broader platform. Directly after he was converted we are told that "straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God". In Galatians 1 we get his own account of it, "When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen". So, too, here, it is "God's glad tidings", it does not say 'about Christ', but about "His Son"; He is "marked out Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection of the dead".
Let me say here in order to guard it, that is not a question of the eternal relations between the Father and the Son; that is carefully enough stated in other parts of scripture, but the point here is of the relation that subsists in Christ as Man, that is, as Man He is spoken of as God's Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Really, the passage is the bringing into view the last Adam. It reveals that man is placed in that position now in relation to God in the Person of Jesus Christ our Lord. And mark this -- everything really hinges upon it. It is not only a question of Christianity, but that all blessing for the universe hinges upon the great truth of "God's glad tidings ... concerning his Son ... Jesus
Christ our Lord". And I will tell you why. When I speak about God's Son Jesus Christ our Lord, the first thing I think of is this, God is revealed, the love of God has come to light, "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us", God "spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all". There was the proof of divine love. Divine love has come out, and having found its rest in Christ is now the basis of all. Everything in blessing is secured, because all rests on the full revelation and satisfaction of God's love. "God so loved the world", is the great basis of everything now for heavenly or for earthly blessing. It is not the question of how far people may enter into it, but I am looking at the thing from God's side, it is "God's glad tidings ... concerning his Son ... Jesus Christ our Lord", and the first point is that God is perfectly revealed, and revealed as love towards the world.
But there is another thing connected with it, and that is, that there is now a point where God's love has its perfect rest and satisfaction in man. This is a very great point. Not only has the love of God towards the world been manifested, but it has its adequate object in man, the Person of God's Son Jesus Christ our Lord -- that is the starting point. When it comes to Christianity, we are called into the "fellowship" of God's Son Jesus Christ our Lord, to be companions of Christ; so that a Christian can say in the language of the apostle at the end of Romans 8, "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord".
But I say that the same revelation of God in Christ will hold good for earthly blessing. All earthly blessing depends upon the revelation of God as God has revealed Himself in His Son. Earthly saints will not
enter into the revelation in the same way that we do; but the revelation stands good for them. I have often said that what is displayed in the church is the pledge of the stability of all blessing, because all now rests on what is known in the church, that God has been pleased to reveal Himself, according to all that He is, and in the perfect satisfaction of His love in Christ -- that is the real starting point of everything. Every family will not be put upon the same platform. There will be a difference of families even in heaven. The church will be one circle, and there will be other circles in heaven. There will be different families, too, upon earth. Each will enjoy what is peculiar to itself, but the basis of the blessing of all is the revelation which God has been pleased to give of Himself in the Person of His Son. Every family is named of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I believe that every revelation of God that has ever been given will be made good, but all will be coloured by the supreme revelation. The supreme revelation is of His love in the Person of His Son, and every other revelation of His name, whether it be Jehovah, or Almighty, or Most High -- all take their place, and come out in the light of what I have called the supreme revelation.
There is another point which I only touch upon now, and that is that every family derives its character from Christ. What is peculiar to Christians, as I hope to show when speaking about the new covenant, is this, that it is not the law, but Christ written in the heart, as the apostle says, "Ye are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read of all men, being manifested to be Christ's epistle ministered by us, written, not with ink", -- referring to the two tables of stone -- "but the Spirit of the living God; not on stone tables" -- like the law -- "but on fleshy tables of the heart". That is, that what had come to pass so far in the Corinthians was that there was a writing of Christ in their hearts as plain as the
ten commandments upon the two tables of stone. That is the ministry of the new covenant in Christianity. The tables of stone given to Moses were hard enough, and what was written upon them was written with ink by the finger of God; but in Christians, the tables are rendered soft and fleshy by the power of God, and then it is they take an impress of Christ, Christ is written in the heart, that is, the heart comes to know and welcome and delight, in some little degree, in what God has revealed in Christ, how that every question of responsibility has been met, the judgment that lay upon man completely removed, and the will of God established, and further, the living bread come down from heaven is placed within the reach of faith's appropriation, so that the believer eats and lives. All the good of heaven has been brought into manhood in Christ, and the soul becomes familiar with the grace that meets it there. I have no great pleasure in man as he is here in this world, for I see that he is bent on exalting himself; I do not see any thought of going down in man. And I find other elements there, such as lust, the desire to use all to gratify himself, a violent will which would carry everything before it, and hence man does not please God. But when I look at Christ, I see the very contrast to all this. I see One who is divine content to become a man, because that is what coming down from heaven meant for Him. And instead of lust, the very principle of His being was love. He came down here full of love. He did not come down for His own will, but to do the will of Him that sent Him -- everything just the contrast to man here. That is what has come down from heaven, and that is what the soul of the Christian feeds upon: we eat Him, and we live by Him.
I have so far spoken of two things -- one, God's revelation of Himself in Christ, and the other the satisfaction of His love in man in the Person of Christ. All blessing starts from that point, and the more I
have to do with that point the more conscious my soul is made of blessing.
Now I come to the second point, namely, the order or condition -- for I do not know what better expression to use -- "according to the Spirit of holiness". That is in contrast to the "according to flesh" in the previous verse. "According to flesh" Christ was of the seed of David. "Flesh" is constantly used in Scripture to denote an order or condition, and Christ entered upon that condition, and in entering upon it He was of the seed of David. But now we get another condition fully revealed in Christ risen, and that is "according to the Spirit of holiness". Now what I want to make clear is this, that every family in blessing, whether in heaven or upon earth, is to derive from the Head, from Christ, for He is Head over all, and that the Spirit of holiness is that by which they derive from Him. In a Christian, the Spirit of holiness is an indwelling Spirit. That is peculiar to Christianity; it never was true before; the power of the Spirit came upon men, but there was no indwelling Spirit in Old Testament times, nor will there be in the millennium, though there will be the pouring out of the Spirit upon all flesh. It is perfectly certain to me that every family in blessing in heaven and upon earth is going to live by Christ in greater or less spiritual power, and every family will present some feature, some trait, of Christ. The earthly family will bear this trait, the law written in the heart. That was true of Christ, "Thy law is within my heart". But what is peculiar to the church is this, it is the fulness of Christ; every feature of Christ is written there, and everything proportioned. That is what the Spirit is effecting in you and in me. He dwells in us and feeds our souls with Christ, and in that way He practically forms Christ in the heavenly one; and then by being occupied with Christ we grow up into Him in intelligence as to all things. Every feature of Christ is reproduced in the church.
But I want to call attention to the connecting link, "the Spirit of holiness", the great subduing power in blessing. Power is connected here with Christ; He is "marked out Son of God in power"; He has power to subdue all things to Himself. But in the administration of blessing, the immediate subduing power is the Spirit of God. We have the Spirit as an indwelling Spirit; and that is of the greatest importance, because in connection with it is the forming of Christ in the believer. It is the Spirit of Christ in the Christian that forms Christ in him. The apostle says to the Galatians, he travailed in birth as to them until Christ was formed in them. They had the Spirit indwelling, the power was in them that could form Christ in them, but Christ was not yet formed in them. The truth of an indwelling Spirit in the Christian is of the last moment, for in connection with it is the renewing of the Holy Spirit. With an earthly family, as Israel in the millennium, the Spirit of God is upon them, but there is no question of forming them at all. What will be effected in them by the power of the Spirit is that the law will be written in their hearts; that will be their measure; not only will they consent in mind to the law of God that it is holy, and delight in the law of God after the inward man, but they will have a nature which is really according to and therefore capable of fulfilling the law. Thus they derive from Christ, from the Head, but not in the way in which the church does. He is the Head of everything, and the Spirit is to be poured out upon all flesh. What I want you to consider is this, that if you desire to understand things aright, you must see things as God sees them, and measure things from the top; you must get to the point where the questions of responsibility and life have been conciliated, that is, in Christ, and every thought must start from there. There are families which are nearer to the Head than others, like the church, which is united to Him, there
are other heavenly families, and there are earthly families; but in God's ways in blessing, they all derive from the Head, from Christ. And therefore it is "God's glad tidings ... concerning his Son", which is presented to us.
There is one point more, "By resurrection of the dead". That is in contrast (and the contrast helps greatly in understanding it) to "of David's seed according to flesh", or -- using the expression for want of a better one -- it is the lineage or genealogy, the line on which we trace our descent. The point to my mind is this, though I dare say some here may find a difficulty in understanding it -- we trace our descent really from the dead. Even Christ is declared in resurrection to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness. He begins again in resurrection in connection with man. It is not at all a question of His divine Person, that is not the point for a moment; but that as Man He starts again from the resurrection; He is the last Adam and the second man. But He does not come out in that way until the resurrection, until the judgment had been removed that lay upon the first man.
Now as regards ourselves, we trace our lineage from death. If I understand that the judgment of God once lay upon me, how can I attach importance to my genealogy in this world? A man may have a long pedigree in this world, and be able to trace back his ancestors for many generations, but what is the use of attempting to trace my pedigree when I see that I was under death? Scripture traces it back as far as death, and if I have come out of death, that is the proper beginning of my real existence for God; I have passed out of death into life in the resurrection of Christ; and that is where every one of us began with God. And if that is the case, you cannot make very much of genealogy. As I said before, the true line of genealogy for God in this world is maintained in
Christ. Our genealogy is resurrection from the dead. I was a sinful man upon earth, with the wrath of God upon me, I lay under judgment of death. But what now? I have found life out of death; by faith I have found Christ; God has given to me the light of life, and now I am linked with Christ by the Spirit of life. In regard even to Israel hereafter, the principle on which they are reinstated as a nation is revival from the dead.
All these great principles are brought to light in the glad tidings of God's Son, and I have sought to show their application to us, and not only to us, but to every family which receives blessing from God. But the point of the passage before us is that all these principles are demonstrated in God's Son Jesus Christ our Lord. The resurrection of Christ according to the Spirit of holiness, is the starting point of all God's ways in life, and reconciliation, and blessing; and that is, I judge, the reason that Scripture speaks in the way it does here of "God's glad tidings ... concerning his Son ... Jesus Christ our Lord". I want you to see what God has substantiated in Him, not what God has effected in you; because if you are looking at that, you are looking at the wrong end. If you see what God has effected in Christ, you will understand what your part is to be in it.
In John 20, when Christ was raised again from the dead, the first thing He did was to send an announcement to His disciples by Mary Magdalene that they were on a completely new footing before God, that He ascended to His Father and their Father, to His God and their God. Later on He comes into the midst and announces to them "peace", that every question of responsibility had been settled and judgment completely removed from them, so that there was peace towards them. And then He breathes on them, and by the gift of the Spirit livingly connects them with Himself, so that it might be true of them, "not I live, but Christ liveth in me". Everything was solved, the two trees were conciliated, the question of man's
responsibility had been met, and Christ was the food of life to all those who were drawn to Him of the Father. That is what came to pass in John 20.
And if you want to get right thoughts of things according to God, and rightly to understand God's glad tidings, you must not look at yourself or the effect in yourself; but you must see what God has brought to pass in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Then you will learn the application of it to yourself -- that the platform upon which each of us stands is the revelation of the love of God, and that we have a living link with the One in whom the love of God is satisfied. Now, is that true of everybody here? Is your soul conscious that the love of God is revealed? I trust that is the case; but are you conscious, too, that by the Spirit you are eternally and livingly linked with the One in whom that love has its perfect satisfaction, and that nothing can "separate you from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord"? And if you want to trace your genealogy, you can trace it back just as far as death, and no farther, because you are linked with Christ as risen from the dead.
I wish I had been able to bring it more distinctly before you; but the point here is to see how in the ways of God these two great principles of responsibility and life are conciliated in Christ, and God delights to bring under the attention of saints the truth of what He has brought to pass here in His Son, and that all these principles which are true in Him are true now in those who believe in Him, and they indicate the ground upon which we are with God.
Another time, if the Lord enable me, I shall have a little more to say as to the ministry of the new covenant, which enables us to see not only the great principles which have come to pass in Christ Jesus our Lord, but the application of them to us -- not the law written in the heart, but Christ in the heart, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God.
My subject tonight is the ministry of the new covenant. There are two aspects in which the apostle speaks of ministry in this epistle -- in chapter 3 the ministry of the new covenant, God "has also made us competent, as ministers of the new covenant"; and in chapter 5 "the ministry of reconciliation". The first is, in a sense, more positive than the second, because it speaks of what is substantive; the ministry of the new covenant is in effect, "the Spirit quickens", that is, makes alive. What I understand by the word of reconciliation is the testimony that all that which was contrary to God or that stood in the way of the accomplishment of God's purposes of grace has been completely removed on God's part. At the close of chapter 5, we have "Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us, that we might become God's righteousness in him".
I do not purpose at this time to go on to the ministry of reconciliation, but to say a little about the ministry of the new covenant. The apostle is led to it by the thought of a letter of commendation. The question which he raises in the beginning of the chapter is, Do we need to be commended to you, or do we want a letter of commendation from you? The answer to it is, You are our letter, because you are manifestly declared to be Christ's letter, "ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart". The writing was of Christ, made legible in the power of the Spirit, and is in contrast to the writing of the law on the two tables of stone; and this leads the apostle to speak of the ministry of the new covenant. The ministry of the new covenant is
of the spirit in contrast to the letter, and the Lord is the Spirit. It is not simply an announcement, for it is said in connection with the Lord, "the Spirit quickens". It is not exactly the Holy Spirit that is spoken of here, but the Lord is the Spirit. It is the spirit in contrast to the letter; the letter kills, the Spirit quickens. I will draw attention to that presently, because it does not do to confound the spirit with the thought of the Holy Spirit.
There are three distinct thoughts in the chapter. The first is the writing of Christ, you are Christ's epistle, His writing. The second is, "the Lord is the Spirit". And the third is, "looking on the glory of the Lord". And on those three points, I desire to speak, for the ministry is a very important matter. But first let me say one word about the gospel, as spoken of in chapter 15 of the first epistle. It is an announcement of facts; the ministry is not simply an announcement, but refers to patient labour, which never ceases until the saints are alive in Christ. It is distinct as far as I understand it, from the truth of the church. It may lead on to it, but in itself it is a perfectly distinct ministry, the ministry of the new covenant. The work of the ministry is not done until you can say of saints that they are alive in Christ. There is a new plant there. I may illustrate it by Israel in the millennium. When the law is written in the heart of Israel in that day, then it is that Israel will live. I could not say that they will live in Christ, because the expression "in Christ" is hardly applicable to them, but they live, and that to God, in a state of things on earth in which life is possible. To use a figure which is employed in the gospels, they will carry their bed. The Lord said to the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda, "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk". And that points to what Christ will do for Israel in the future, and refers to the moment when spiritually they will live. But the contrast to it here is Christ written
in the heart. In the old covenant the law was written on two tables of stone, which were put in the ark. It is not that now, and it will not be that in the millennium. Then it will be the law written "not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart". Now it is not the law, but Christ written. You are Christ's epistle "ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart".
Last week, in connection with the two or three introductory verses of the epistle to the Romans, I dwelt upon the glad tidings, seeking to show that what God has to say to us is His glad tidings concerning His Son. Christ is the resource of God, and God's power of redemption or recovery is in Him; and therefore what God has to say to man in the glad tidings is concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. There is the point of recovery; not only has He effected the work of reconciliation, but all is to be reconciled in Him. Then I dwelt a little on some of the detail which comes out there, that He is "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness; by the resurrection from the dead", and referred to those three expressions as really giving to us the great principles of God's ways in grace.
Now I pass on to the ministry with a remark which I believe to be of great importance, that is, that while God speaks to us from the height of His glory, no one can at first take in the full import of what He says. The same thing may be seen when the Lord Jesus spoke to the woman of Samaria. He spoke according to the height of the glory of His Person, but she could not take it in. God can speak to man of His glad tidings concerning His Son, but you cannot at once take it all in. Every one of us in our history with God has to begin at the beginning, and the beginning is small. I have heard it said that a soul has to go back from Christ in glory to Christ at the cross. I do not
believe there is any truth in it, for the simple reason that a newly awakened soul cannot take in all that God presents in the gospel. The apostle speaks in chapter 1 of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among the Corinthians by himself and Silas and Timotheus; but you do not really take in the thought of the Son of God when first converted.
I will tell you in a few words what I believe is the real progress of the soul in that respect. I am not speaking now of what people can repeat as a creed. Most of us have been familiar in that way with Christian doctrines from the time we could speak, because we have been brought up in the midst of Christianity. Anyone can repeat a creed, and in a country like this, where people are instructed in Scripture, they could tell you a great many of the truths in it. A class of children could do so, if they were catechised, and they might be simple and not question that they are truths. But when it comes to what a man's soul really apprehends, it is quite another matter. The first thing which a soul under exercise really takes in in regard to God is the sacrifice of Christ. At the beginning, Abel, divinely taught, came to God through sacrifice; he brought the firstling of his flock and of the fat thereof, and there was no type of resurrection there; the fat simply refers to the excellency of the offering. And so now, if a soul comes to God, it comes by the sacrifice of Christ: that is the beginning, and in that stage of its history it is all that a soul can really take in. God has set forth Jesus to be a mercy-seat through faith in His blood. The thought that God has to be met by sacrifice is almost innate in man, and when he is brought into exercise as to his responsibility to God or as to his state, his first apprehension is that God has provided a sacrifice. The first thing for faith is the blood, and I do not believe anybody really begins except there. People may say that they have apprehended other truths, but I doubt it. They may
think so, but their real beginning with God is that they have apprehended the sacrifice of Christ, that is, they approach God, like Abel did, by sacrifice. I quite admit there must be a work of God in them antecedent to this, but I do not go into that now. I am speaking of what the soul apprehends. You find the same order in the history of the children of Israel. The first thing they learned was shelter from the judgment of God, that they were under the shelter of the blood of the lamb when the destroying angel was passing through the land of Egypt.
I venture to say that until the work of Christ is apprehended, that is, until the thought of the offering is taken in, a soul cannot really apprehend the truth of the resurrection. It is not natural to man to believe in resurrection. Resurrection is of the supernatural power of God, and the real moral link with resurrection is in the value of the sacrifice. I doubt if any person really has faith in the resurrection of Christ if he has not first learned that He was delivered for their offences. The Scripture order of it is this, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. What brings about the resurrection is, that as sin came in by man, so sin has been removed in man. There was no annulling or setting aside of death until sin was gone. Sin brought death into the world, and therefore if death is to go, sin must be taken away. Sin is taken away from before God by the offering of Christ, and therefore death is annulled. "By man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead". When the offering is apprehended, when the value of the sacrifice is seen, then the truth of resurrection, and the victory over death is taken in.
The next thing which I believe a soul apprehends according to God is the lordship of Christ. Its eyes are opened to see that Christ is the revelation, the
embodiment, so to say, of all God's thoughts with regard to man. It thus gets peace; but no soul ever gets peace until it apprehends Christ as Lord, and Christ is apprehended as Lord when the truth of His resurrection is accepted. We believe on Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. His lordship is based in Scripture on resurrection. For this purpose Christ both died and lived again, that He might have dominion, might be Lord, over both the dead and the living. I can understand resurrection when I apprehend sacrifice; and when I see the resurrection of Christ, then I understand His lordship, that He is in dominion as man in order that He may administer to men in power all the good that is in God's thoughts for men. It is not now His going about in the world doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him, but the bringing in of good in power, for lordship implies power. If you want it detailed, you can read the beginning of Romans 5, "We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also" -- that is, by our Lord Jesus Christ -- "we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God". "We are making our boast in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom now we have received the reconciliation". Peace, grace and reconciliation are through our Lord Jesus Christ. He has brought to us with authority as Lord all the good that God has for man. He is the true ark of the covenant and the mercy-seat, the One in whom God addresses Himself to man, and the recognition in my soul of His authority brings into it all the good of which I have spoken. It is a practical truth, for just in proportion as your heart is subject to Christ as Lord you are really in the enjoyment of all the good which God has brought into effect in Him. It is a wonderful thing to be subject to Him, so that "whatsoever
ye do in word or deed", you "do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him". The administration of all that God has for man is vested in Christ as Lord; all power is given to Him in heaven and upon earth -- and what for? To subjugate all evil, and to introduce peace, and grace, and blessing, and joy, and reconciliation.
There is the third great truth which the soul learns in regard to Christ, but not I think till the Spirit is received -- He is the Son of God, that is His glory. The soul then apprehends His glory. It sees that were He not the Son of God, there would not have been virtue in the sacrifice, there would not have been ground of resurrection, nor suitability for His place as Lord; the whole stands together, and for the support and filling out of the other thoughts, it is really necessary to apprehend His glory, and His glory is that He is the Son of God. He is the last Adam, a quickening spirit.
I believe that is the way in which the soul is led on. And a simple illustration of it is seen in the case of the woman of Samaria. The Lord speaks to her according to the height of His glory. He says, "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink" -- Who was it said that to her? It was the Son of God, the Giver of the Holy Spirit. That is brought out in chapter 1 of John's gospel. The Spirit abode upon Christ, and John the baptist says, "I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptise with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptiseth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God". The Lord spoke to the woman according to the height of His Person, but she does not take it in in that way. The first thought she gets about Him is that He is a prophet. The second is that He is the Christ, the Anointed. She says, "Come,
see a man which told me all things that ever I did" -- that is the prophet -- "is not this the Christ?" She is led on thus, but as far as we can tell from the chapter, she did not then apprehend the glory of His Person, and I doubt if she was in a condition to do so until she received the gift. There is a great deal of difference to be made between the mode in which God addresses Himself to us, and the power for apprehension in our souls, because each of us has to begin in a very small and feeble way; but we are led on by these steps, first to take in the sacrifice, then the resurrection, then the authority or lordship, and then that which is the final thought in a certain sense, and the background of all -- His glory, He is the Son of God.
I say this much by way of introduction, and pass on to speak of the three great points that come out in this chapter, which are very intimately connected with what I have been saying -- the first point being the writing of Christ in the heart; the second, the Lord is that spirit; and the third and final point, "looking on the glory of the Lord" we are all "transformed according to the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit".
The apostle could say to the Corinthians, 'You are Christ's epistle ministered by us'. Mischief had been at work among the Corinthians, and there had been an effort on the part of evil workers to undermine the authority of the apostle. But it is not possible to efface what is written by "the Spirit of the living God". I do not know whether all quite apprehend the force of that expression. The writing is not exactly spoken of as the work of the Spirit of God, but the Spirit of God is put in contrast to the ink; that is, that every line of Christ which is written in the heart of the believer is written efficaciously, so to say, in spiritual lines; that, I take it, is the idea of the expression. The writer is Christ; you are Christ's epistle, the letter that He has written, "ministered by us", for
the apostle was the agent; and as to the manner of the writing, not with ink, but with "the Spirit of the living God", and then, "not in tables of stone", referring to the two tables of the first covenant, "but in fleshy tables of the heart".
The fleshy tables of the heart show the work of God as the foundation of all at Corinth., This was not the apostle's work. Man's heart is hard enough by nature, and if God had not prepared man's heart, you could not speak about "fleshy tables of the heart". It indicated a divine preparation for the ministry; it was not the ministry, but the preparation of God for the ministry. So, too, we get the same thing prophetically spoken of in regard to Israel; God takes away the heart of stone and gives them a heart of flesh. Before anything can be written for God in the heart of man, the heart must be prepared.
When you read the many things that the apostle has to disapprove in the first epistle, it is striking that he can say to the Corinthians, that they were "Christ's epistle", and "manifestly declared" to be that. What do you suppose Christ writes? It was not the law in their hearts, the time has not come for that. I believe that in the issue of God's ways, every family will bear some trait of Christ. When the law is written in the heart of Israel, they will bear that trait of Christ. But the present is not the moment for writing the law in the heart; but if Christ writes in the heart, He writes Himself; it was Jesus Christ that the apostle ministered; Christ was written in the heart of the Corinthians, and Christ was the writer. The result was real faith in Christ. He was appreciated in their hearts.
Now that involves a very great deal. It involves, to begin with, the practical displacement of self; for it Christ is come in, it is another man, from another source, another character of man altogether; that is what is presented to us in Christ. In Christ, as here in the world, we see a man anointed of God, bringing
to man every thought of good that God had toward man, going about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him. We see Him, a Man here in the power of the Holy Spirit, for the will of God, maintaining what was due to God, and at the end offering Himself by the eternal Spirit without spot to God. That is what Christ did and was. We see the perfect contrast to all that was here in the world -- man here seeking his own things and his own will, and Christ here simply and exclusively for the will of God. The One that had title to please Himself did not please Himself, but the reproaches of them that reproached God fell on Him. We see Him here in the presence of the hatred of man, bringing heavenly good and grace into this world, full of zeal for God, maintaining the righteousness of God, and bringing to man relief from all the pressure under which man lay. The Lord could say, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord". That is what He was here for. And then He offered Himself to God to put away what was contrary to God, giving Himself for us "an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour". That is what Christ was, and that is another man; for, although men had often acted in the power of the Holy Spirit before, there never had been a man anointed by the Holy Spirit and thus characterised by the Spirit. But that is what the Lord was. Every word He spoke, every act He did, and every miracle He performed, was by the Spirit of God; and He could say, "I do always those things that please him", speaking of the Father. That is the Christ, the anointed of God, who has effected all for God and for man.
Now I want everybody here to apprehend by the grace of God, the contrast between such an One and yourself; and I ask you one simple question, do you not prefer that Man to yourself? You cannot have the two together; you cannot have Christ and yourself, and if Christ comes into the heart, self will have to go out. Isaac and Ishmael cannot be in the house together; and if Christ is written in the fleshy tables of the heart, you have practically to be displaced to make room for Christ. Isaac the child of promise is to be in the house, and Ishmael the child of the flesh has to go out. And so it is with each one of us. If Christ is written in the heart, it is not that I delight in the law of God, but I delight in Christ. A man delights in anything which is written in his heart. When the law is written in the heart of Israel in the future, they will delight in the law of God. For there are two things God gives them: His laws into their mind, that is, they get an understanding of them; and He writes them in their heart, thus it becomes their nature, they delight in it. If Christ is written in my heart, I delight in Christ. And there is power, too, connected with it, because it is written by "the Spirit of the living God". But then, on the other hand, if Christ comes in in that way, we are displaced. Christ will rule there supreme, and all unsuitable to Christ has to go. I have to reckon now that it is not I that live, but Christ lives in me.
May God give us all grace to accept it, because it is not God's thought that something is to be seen of Christ, and something of us; but we are an epistle of Christ known and read of all men. If you have any estimation of what Christ is, you cannot fail to delight in Him. The apostle says at the close of the first epistle: "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha".
Now I pass on to the next great thought, "the Lord is the Spirit". It is the thought of the writing of
Christ which leads the apostle on to the new covenant; because the thought of the writing led him back to the two tables of stone connected with the first covenant. The apostle says, "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament"; or covenant, "not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life". I want you to miss the following verses, and to go on to verse 17; the intervening verses are parenthetical, and you cannot understand the run of the passage if you do not for the moment leave them out. "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life ... Now the Lord is that Spirit". It must be perfectly plain to everyone here, that you cannot be with God on the ground of the old covenant. It has grown old, and is ready to vanish away. You must be on the ground of the new covenant. But you have not to do with the letter of the covenant, but with the spirit, and the spirit is Christ. In the first covenant they had the ark of the covenant, and the mercy-seat. And in the new covenant Christ represents that to me; that is, Christ as Lord in glory is the true ark of the covenant and the mercy-seat. If you want to know anything at all about God's thoughts in regard to man, you must learn what is true in Christ as Lord. You will find it in the first verses of Romans 5. It is not what Christ was in His solitary path upon earth, beautiful and perfect as that was; but what is brought now to man in the lordship of Christ. We get peace with God, as I pointed out just now: it is what God is towards us, and access into the grace of God, and reconciliation. We have everything brought to us now in the Lord Jesus Christ. The thought it presents to me is this, that everything has been established for God, and to His glory, in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that it is now in Him as the mercy-seat, that God is addressing Himself to man,
and if I want to know what the bearing and attitude of God is towards man, I have to learn it in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not only that I appreciate what He is as Christ, but I apprehend Him as the Lord, and in Him and by Him I get all the good which God has for man. "Lordship" is an expression connected with administration, and the administration of all good which God has provided for man is placed in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. All things are to be put under Him. "He is Lord of all", that is the title He has, and He is Lord to the Christian; and as we have seen, it is when my soul has really taken in in faith the truth of the sacrifice, and I apprehend Him as risen, that I come under His authority and my soul enters into the enjoyment of the great good which is established of God in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a blessed thought that all the power of evil is to be set aside, and that all authority for this is vested in Christ. That is what God has brought to pass in His great grace. All authority is given to Christ in heaven and upon earth. Christ is Lord of all to suppress all evil, and set aside its power, and to introduce all the goodness of God's heart for the blessing of man.
Now we get to the point of living. It says, "the Spirit quickens", that is, makes alive; it is not exactly the Holy Spirit that is referred to, but Christ is in the heart in power, He is accepted in the heart as Lord, and the acceptance of Him as such is the power of God to quicken. When Christ comes into this world as Lord, He will bring life into it. When He is accepted as Lord in the heart of the Christian, He brings life into the heart: "the Spirit quickens". The Christian lives because Christ lives.
Then it goes on to say, "and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty". There you get the distinction between the spirit of Scripture and the Holy Spirit. All the Old Testament, every type and shadow
of the first covenant, speaks of Christ. The children of Israel could not see it, "their minds were blinded"; they could not see what God was about when He gave the law, nor the import of the glory in the face of Moses; in fact they were not permitted to see it, as we are told here. We see in Christ the end of that which is annulled and have liberty in the Spirit.
There is one thought more. "But we all, looking on the glory of the Lord, with unveiled face, are transformed according to the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit". It is a truth which has always been accepted, that when Christ was here upon earth His glory was veiled, in other words, He was here in humiliation. But when we look at Christ raised again from the dead, sitting at the right hand of God, and all power committed to Him in heaven, and upon earth, His glory is no longer veiled, we look at the glory of the Lord with unveiled face. Can you have any doubt about His Person, that He is the Son of God? Moses had to veil his face so that the children of Israel should not look on the glory of his countenance; it was typical of Christ. But now that is not the case. We look at the glory of the Lord with unveiled face. Following in the steps I have marked out, His sacrifice, His resurrection, His lordship, have you any doubt about the glory of His Person? Could all those things be true of anyone except a divine Person, One who came from heaven? Can you have any doubt that He is the Son of God? I am sure you could not. And therefore now you behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled face. And what is the practical effect of it? "We all", the "we" is not merely apostolic, we all are transformed according to the same image -- there is no longer divergence between us -- "from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit", that is, as we apprehend the glory of the Person of Christ, what He is as Son of God, as properly heavenly, coming from heaven, and "the
firstborn among many brethren", all of us are transformed to "the same image from glory to glory"; we all practically become superior to everything down here, and enter by the grace of God into what belongs to the circle where Christ is, into the fact of what He is as the perfect and sufficient object of divine affections, and that we are identified with Him where the love of God has its perfect rest and satisfaction in man. This is all individual. It is not the truth of the church but of the gospel, it is gospel ministry.
I have not much more to say. I only look to God to make the truth good in all of us. What we very often have to do is to go a good way back over our spiritual history, for we pick up divine things in such a disorderly fashion, that it takes a long time for the Spirit of God to put them in their proper place in our souls. We get a little bit here and a little bit there, and a great many things which we do not understand at the time. But if we speak of the orderly work of the Spirit of God, I have no doubt it is according to what I have said.
May God give us to have our hearts full of heavenly light. That is the province of faith, faith brings light into the heart, and in proportion as faith is in exercise, the heart is full of light. May God grant that we may have in our hearts the light of the glory of the Lord, not only to see the authority with which He is invested -- though that is a very important thing -- and "whatever we do in word or deed, to do all in the name of the Lord Jesus", but also to see the glory of His Person, the heavenly effulgence which shines there. For then we are changed into the same image, we become more familiar with the scene in which He is, and we get a proper understanding of the love of God resting on an adequate and worthy Object; and learn that nothing can "separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord".
It is a mighty thing, and one great effect of it on us is that we begin to think much less of everything down here; it is practically eclipsed in our souls, and we shall be content to go through this scene according to the will of God, and seeking to please Him. And then we become more at home with heaven and the scene where Christ is, and when the Lord comes and we enter the Father's house, we shall not enter as strangers, but as having already become familiar with what is there. For when I speak of Christ, and the glory of His Person, and the affections of which He is the Object, I speak of the Father's house, and it is a place in the Father's house that He has gone to prepare for us, and into which He will bring us. May God give us to see the glory of the Lord, and to look at it stedfastly.
My first thought was to have turned at this time to another subject; but I felt that something more was to be said on the subject of ministry. And what led me to it was this, that we get two distinct parts of ministry spoken of in this epistle. One I referred to last week in connection with chapter 3: the new covenant ministry. In this chapter it is "the ministry of reconciliation". The apostle evidently presents the two things as distinct the one from the other. Of course they are both parts of one ministry; but they are treated as distinct. I desire now to say a little, as the Lord may enable me, in regard to the ministry of reconciliation, and its object.
I may in passing observe that the ministry of the new covenant connects itself with the eighth chapter of Hebrews, and the ministry of reconciliation with the tenth. I do not want to go largely into that point now, but some may care to follow it up at their leisure. If you read 2 Corinthians 3 in connection with Hebrews 8, you will find that there is a certain correspondence. In Hebrews 8 we read that Christ has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as "He is the mediator of a better covenant"; the terms of the new covenant are then given, but to show that the first has grown old. In 2 Corinthians 3 the apostle says that God has "made us competent, as ministers of the new covenant; not of letter, but of spirit", and he shows its application to Gentiles. Because, as Gentiles, we could not be strictly under the terms of the new covenant, and yet we have the good of it. In Hebrews 8 the point is, that the first covenant having grown old, was ready to vanish away. Christians could not be before God on ground which
was ready to vanish away; but we are with God on the ground of the new covenant.
Then in chapter 10, in connection with this, the result of reconciliation is presented to the Hebrews in language to which they had been accustomed, "the holiest", and so on. They were familiar with the idea of the tabernacle and the holy place, and the priests, and they are now taught that they have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus". I think we get practically the same thing taught in 2 Corinthians 5 in the ministry of reconciliation. The apostle deals with Jews in divine wisdom, according to where they were, and the thoughts with which they were familiar. But in dealing with Gentiles he presents things in a rather different way; but I think he presents practically the same things. I have just indicated the correspondence between these passages, and will leave anyone to follow it out at his leisure.
If anyone were to ask me what the great object of the second epistle to the Corinthians is, I should say that it is to lead the saints into the apprehension that they are a company of priests, a worshipping company. I very much doubt if the Corinthians had yet learnt it. I think in the first epistle saints are taught that they are "a spiritual house", and in the second epistle that they are "a holy priesthood", both which thoughts are taken up as regards Jewish Christians in 1 Peter 2, "To whom coming, as unto a living stone ... ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood". In chapter 3 of the first epistle, the apostle had said, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" And in chapter 12 he brings forward the truth of the body, but in connection with the manifestations of the Spirit, because all the gifts of the Spirit are set in the assembly, but in the assembly as the body; and I do not think that apart from the truth of the body the presence of the Spirit in the temple can be understood.
I have referred to the temple as being the great point in the first epistle. The saints were a spiritual house, the dwelling-place of the Spirit. I think that Christians up to the time that the apostle laboured at Corinth, had been accustomed in their minds to connect all light with Jerusalem as a centre, not with the temple, but with Jerusalem. When a difficult question arose at Antioch, the matter was referred to the apostles and elders at Jerusalem for decision. And after that, Paul and Silas went about confirming the different assemblies by the decrees of the apostles and elders. And this was doubtless according to divine wisdom. But in 1 Corinthians Paul takes the ground of having laid a foundation as a wise master builder, and presses upon the saints the truth that they were the temple of God, that the Spirit of God dwelt in them; and therefore there was not occasion to refer to Jerusalem, because where the temple of God was, and the Spirit of God in the temple, there was light. That is I judge the great idea connected with the presence of the Spirit of God in the temple -- the light of God was there. The epistle to the Hebrews has the same character really, for we there have, "Whose house are we", that is, Christians. The temple at Jerusalem had ceased to be God's house, He dwelt not in temples made with hands, but the apostle says We are God's house.
In the second epistle to the Corinthians, as I have said, the object of the apostle is to lead the Corinthians into the apprehension of the truth that they were a holy priesthood, and he would bring their souls thus into contact with God, and it is for that purpose he brings in, in the way he does, "the ministry of reconciliation" as leading to new creation, where all things are of God.
As far as I can understand it, he could not unfold to them properly the ministry of reconciliation unless he first unfolded to them the ministry of the new
covenant. I do not think anybody can really understand reconciliation if he does not know something about the new covenant. I was bringing out last week how the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth of Romans unfold to us all the good that we get from God through our Lord Jesus Christ, that is, that the Lord is the spirit. He is the spirit of Scripture, the spirit and (if I may use the expression) the principle of God's ways towards men. Nobody will get a right thought of the new covenant if he does not see that all the good which is in the heart of God towards man is administered in power by the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is no other way by which anyone can get it; it is God's way of administration. The first introduction of Christ as Lord is at the close of Romans 4, where it says, "If we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification"; that is, that when every effect of sin had been annulled in Christ by His resurrection from the dead, for the last effect of sin in that way was death, then you find He is Lord as risen: I do not say He was not Lord before, but it is in resurrection that He is thus presented to us. The first covenant was one of requirement on God's part; the new covenant does not speak of requirement, but of what God has effected for men and ministers to them through the Lord, who is the spirit of Scripture -- I do not say the spirit of the new covenant, that is hardly the thought, but the spirit of Scripture.
I come now to what completes the ministry, that is the ministry of reconciliation. And this connects itself in my thought very intimately with "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus".
The last item of blessing referred to in Romans 5 is that "we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement", i.e., reconciliation. The effect of receiving the reconciliation
is that we joy in God. I will try and give you the idea presently if the Lord enable me, of what reconciliation means. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, 18, we read, "If any one be in Christ, there is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new; and all things are of the God who has reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and given to us the ministry of that reconciliation". It is a strong expression that is used there, new things have come to pass; the word employed for "new" is the same word as that in new covenant; and it is "new" in the sense of different, not only new things, but different things have come to pass, things that have a completely different character. One thing is very evident in the passage, that there is a most intimate connection between reconciliation and new creation, because in new creation "all things are of the God, who has reconciled us to himself" -- that is what new creation means.
What the apostle referred to as the old things was, I think, the things connected with the responsible man. The apostle had done with the old man, and all the system of things with which the first man was identified. The first man was man on the footing of responsibility before God, and in that sense Christ came after the flesh, He came on to that ground "made of a woman, made under the law". Now the apostle says, "Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more". With the apostle it was practically true that he had put off the old man and put on the new, and the new man was created after God, was a new creation, in righteousness and holiness of truth. When you get on to that ground you apprehend that new things have come to pass, that God has begun completely anew, and that the starting-point with God is Himself; God has begun from Himself by Christ in all these new things. God did not begin in that way at the first; man was made out of the earth, earthy, and God breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life. Now, in new creation, God has begun from Himself; "all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation" -- that is the starting-point, I have no doubt it will be carried out to the utmost limits. We read that there are to be new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells; everything will be from God. And so the new man is created after God in righteousness and holiness of truth; there is a new creation. But the point is that we are to reach the knowledge of God who is acting in this way; and the way by which we come practically into that knowledge of God is by reconciliation -- that is what I want to bring before you.
I will tell you the great idea of reconciliation -- reconciliation means the removal of moral distance. God has by the judgment of sin removed the distance that existed between Himself and man by reason of sin. He was the only One who knew the distance or could measure it, and He has removed it. When Adam and Eve were turned out of Paradise, although God clothed them in coats of skin, yet the distance was immeasurable, and so far as man was concerned, irremediable. Man had fallen under the power of sin, and the distance between God and man was infinite. When I come to the ministry of reconciliation, I find that all that is gone. It is not that man has bridged the distance, nor has God bridged the distance, but God in grace has removed it. If you want to know the great proof that the distance is gone, it is that He has raised Christ, who was made sin, from the dead. There could be no resurrection to life if sin had not been put away -- that is perfectly certain, because resurrection is the annulling of the sentence of death, and the sentence of death could not have been annulled if sin, which brought death in, had not first been put away.
The moral settlement of the question of sin was upon the cross, where Christ was made sin, and death
did not come in till sin had been completely put away as before God. Christ now once "in the end of the world hath ... appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself". Therefore, when Christ died, the first thing that came to pass was that the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. It was not that man went into God, but the wonderful thought is that the distance between God and man was so completely gone that God could come out to man. It was not man getting back to the garden of Eden; man never could get back that way; God placed Cherubim and a flaming sword that kept the way of the tree of life. But in the cross God comes out in grace to man, because He has annulled by Christ the distance that existed between Himself and man. That is what was done by the cross; that was the effect of Christ being made sin.
Having spoken about reconciliation, I want now to convey a general idea of the purpose of it, what the great end of reconciliation as to persons is; and you will see how it connects itself with the thought of man going into the holiest. The first thought in reconciliation is that God may have His pleasure in man; the other is that man may joy in God. The apostle says in Romans 5, "We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement", i.e., reconciliation. The reception of the reconciliation, the knowledge that God has annulled the distance that stood between Himself and man, enables us to joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
I will give you just one illustration of it which is so perfectly simple and familiar that no one can miss the idea; that is, the case of the prodigal son. He was reconciled outside the house, but he was brought into the house in order that the father might have his delight in him, that he might be there to the father's entire pleasure and satisfaction, and that he might joy in the father. That is the good and gain of
reconciliation, and really that is the great thought of the holiest of all. The prodigal must have been delighted at the thought of what his father was to him, but his delight was not greater than the father's delight; the father was delighted to have the prodigal at his table. I cannot press it too strongly that reconciliation means that distance is gone, and the good and gain of reconciliation is first on God's side, that He may have His pleasure in man, and then on our side, that we may joy in God. You will understand, I think, why I connect it with the thought of the holiest of all. Where reconciliation is apprehended you get a worshipping company. You could not worship God acceptably unless you first knew that God has His pleasure in you, and your delight is in God. The Lord lightens up the subject of worship in John 4. He says, "The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him". When I know that it has been the Father's pleasure to call me into the place of a child which I occupy before Him, and my joy is thus in the Father, then it is I can understand worship; but I cannot understand worship apart from the holiest. The holiest is where the glory of God is, where His perfect satisfaction rests. Heaven is a place, but you cannot talk of the holiest as being a place, it is a moral thought.
There are two expressions to be noticed in this passage, first, "the ministry of reconciliation", and then "the word of reconciliation"; and as I understand it, the ministry is the larger thought of the two. The apostle says, "All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation". Then in verse 19 you see what the ministry is, "to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath
committed unto us the word of reconciliation". Mark those two parts. There is first that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them". As I understand it, the coming of Christ into the world put everything for the moment on a completely new footing. Previously the Jew had been on the footing, so to say, of law, but the presence of the Son of God without abolishing law, put things on a new ground. When He was born into the world, the angels sang, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good pleasure in men". God was not pressing home the claims of law and prophets, but "was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them". I believe we little understand how the very fact of Christ being born as man into this world altered for the moment the whole aspect of things before God. I believe that in the coming of Christ God overlooked in His people the broken law and the persecution of the prophets, and everything else. He gave them Christ, and if they had accepted Christ they would have come into the promises. But they rejected Him, and the rejection of Christ served to increase the responsibility they had previously been under; God exacts from them the ten thousand talents, the whole debt. We can understand this from the parable of the king that would take account of his servants in Matthew 18. The Jew did not act as he had been acted to. But then the fact that the world rejected Christ, and that things therefore go back in a sense to the old ground does not alter the great truth that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses"; that is, that in the presence of Christ here upon earth there was a way of reconciliation; that had it been possible for the world to have accepted Christ, the world might have been reconciled; but God knew that it was not so to be. That is the first part.
Then the second part is that he had given to the apostles the word of reconciliation. I understand that to be the testimony that reconciliation has been effected. You could not talk about reconciliation if reconciliation had not been effected. "The word of reconciliation" is the testimony that it exists, because things are much in advance of what they were when "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses". What marks the present moment is that reconciliation has been effected, and that the great distance that existed between God and man, as the result of sin, has been annulled by the Lord Jesus Christ, and in order that God may have in Christ His pleasure in man, and that man may find his joy in God. If you do not understand the new covenant, as the footing on which you are before God, that Christ has ministered to you every benefit from God, I do not think you can enter into the great truth of reconciliation. I may be asked, Did not the apostle preach reconciliation to unconverted people? I admit it; but no unconverted person could enter into it. Many people take up the idea of reconciliation as though it meant a change of feeling in them. I do not believe that is the thought. You must reach the ground of the new covenant, and learn the great good which God has brought to you in the Lord Jesus Christ before you can understand that reconciliation has been effected, that God has annulled the infinite distance that stood between Himself and man, in order that He may have pleasure in man, and that man may joy in God. That is what I understand the apostle to mean in beseeching people, on the part of the Lord Jesus Christ, to be reconciled to God. If you want to know either the measure of God's delight in man, or to understand anything about joying in God, you must look at the Lord Jesus Christ. It is there you learn the whole truth of it. To enter the father's house, the best robe had to be put on the prodigal. And it is
that into which you are to enter. The apostle says, "We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us"; we want you to enter into all that greatness which is displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and the reconciliation which God has effected through Him. "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him". That is what the apostle brought to people, and he brought it to them as an ambassador for Christ.
I believe the great climax of it is that God will display saints as the expression of His righteousness. If we want to understand what the righteousness of God is, we must learn it in Christ; there only can we see an adequate expression of the righteousness of God. I do not speak of righteousness being shown when Christ was a substitute for us, when He bore our sins. It was holiness in God that led to His being forsaken, but righteousness comes out, to my mind, in the resurrection and glory of Christ. And therefore the Lord says the Spirit will convict the world concerning righteousness, "because I go to my Father and ye see me no more". But the point here is He was made sin for us, and we get all the results that flow from His having been made sin for us, and it is in the church that the righteousness of God will be perfectly displayed and vindicated; that is, that when the universe sees the church in glory with Christ then it will understand the righteousness of God, in the great answer which He has given to the work that Christ accomplished for us when He was "made sin".
I know what people will say, You put it off to the future. No; I say everything that will be displayed in the future is true to faith now. The great principle of the present moment is that God gives us now as heavenly light what soon will be our part. Therefore it is good to faith, although as to the actual display of it I do not doubt at all it refers to the time when Christ
is manifested; then everything will come out. But the practical bearing of it in our souls is this, that there is nothing inconsistent with our being in the holiest; because if we are the righteousness of God, we cannot be more. It is not here the thought of Romans, that you are justified as men living on earth, but you are become the righteousness of God, and if you are that, surely you are entitled to be in the holiest, where everything is the display of the glory of God. But then, it is not only that you are there as the righteousness of God, but you are there in Christ, as reconciled, there as in the One in whom God has His delight, and there too as privileged to "joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now" -- mark that word 'now' -- received the reconciliation, that is, you have received the word of reconciliation.
May God give to us to see the greatness of the apostle's ministry, that the great end and aim of it was not simply that the saints might know that they were a forgiven people here in the world, but that they might know how God had annulled the distance which existed between Himself and man, that everything might be put on an absolutely new footing, "All things are become new. And all things are of God". That is what I want you to understand. It is a new starting point from God Himself; the whole thing originated in the thought of God, and God has brought it into effect. I would to God every one of us might enter into the thought. It is the knowledge of reconciliation which really constitutes us a holy priesthood. May God give to us to understand it better in His great grace, and to see the great purpose and end of the apostle's ministry in the gospel, which I think comes before us in this second epistle.
On previous occasions we have had before us the subjects of the gospel and the ministry. In regard to the gospel, what I was anxious to make clear was the importance of apprehending the truth of it from God's side, as God's glad tidings concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
We had before us on two occasions the subject of the ministry, first the ministry of the new covenant, that is, in the spirit of it, "the Spirit quickens"; then the ministry of reconciliation, how that God had by Christ completely cleared the distance that existed between Himself and man by reason of sin, to the intent, that, on the one hand, He may have His pleasure in man, and on the other hand, that the believer may joy in God.
Now I purpose touching on another subject. I think anyone can see that there is in Scripture the idea of a certain progress, and an order in the apprehension of the truth in souls; and the points I want to dwell upon, by the grace of God, are what come before us in this passage, namely, progress and growth. The first comes out in verse 13, "Until we all arrive". That I call, for want of a better word, progress, moving forward. Then in verse 15 we have growth, "That we ... may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ". The apostle is speaking here of the purpose for which the gifts are given, but first refers to the exaltation of Christ, for it is one great point in the epistle to the Ephesians that Christ is viewed in His exaltation as Man, as the One who is to fill all things. We read in chapter 1, the church is "the fulness of him that filleth all in all". And so here in chapter 4: "He that descended is the same also that
ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things". I want you to bear the two thoughts in mind, that He is the One that fills all things, and that the church is His fulness. What I understand by the expression 'His fulness', is that which is proportioned to Himself. You can understand that if my body were out of proportion to my head, it would be a malformation. But it is proportioned to my head. So the church is proportioned to the Head, it is "the fulness of him that filleth all in all".
The first thought is that Christ has "ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things". And then the gifts are given till we all come "unto a perfect man unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ"; that is, the church is to be proportioned to Him who fills all things. I would like everybody to get hold of that thought. I do not know anything much more important than to learn to look at things from the divine side. The fact is, that we always err when we judge of things from our point of view, we never get a true thought. To look abroad at the present time on the confusion of christendom and at what is passing under the name of Christ upon earth, would only confound one. I should get no right or true thought of anything, and should not be any help in the midst of it. Anyone would be bewildered by the confusion, and division, and strife. The relief is to see the church in the thought of God. So also to understand the gospel we must look at it from God's standpoint. Further, to understand the responsibility of man before God, we must look at man from the point of his departure from God. And the truth as to the church is not gained by looking at the church, or the history of it, as man might describe it, but by looking at it from the divine point of view, and it is only then one can really be of any help.
Now I want to speak about the gifts in that way, and the purpose of them; for we are told what they
are given for, the end in view. It says, "He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in 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 fulness of Christ". You see that the first and general object of the gifts is "the perfecting of the saints", by which I understand their completion. The verb from which the word comes is used sometimes in the sense of restoration. Evidently that is not the thought here -- but that the saints might be so fitted or complete as that there should not be any deficiency. The gifts are given for that end; they all come down from the One who fills all things. He has "ascended up far above all heavens", that is, as I understand it, He is exalted to the right hand of God, to fill all things. What belongs to Him, is that He is to fill all things, for not only have we to see what has been removed in Christ, but what is established and effectuated in Christ. Christ is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world; but there is another thing true also of Him; He baptises with the Holy Spirit. The One who removes all that is contrary to God, brings in what is of God, He baptises with the Holy Spirit. That is the office of Christ. Everything is to be brought into moral accord with God; He fills all things; He has ascended up far above all heavens for that purpose.
Now we learn from 1 Corinthians that every gift is set in the church. And while the first object of the gifts is "for the perfecting of the saints", their effectiveness branches out in two directions, has a twofold bearing, "for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ". Not only have the gifts their application to individuals, but the ultimate purpose which is served by them is the edifying, or building
up, of the body of Christ. All the gifts are to that end; not merely one gift; you cannot in that way distinguish between different gifts as though they had different ends; they are all the evangelist as much as the apostle, and the pastor, and the teacher, for "work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ". If souls are converted, it is that they may be brought into the body by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. If they have part in the Holy Spirit they must be in the body. Every believer who receives the gift of the Holy Spirit is baptised into the body.
Now I come to the point at which we are to arrive, and I dwell on the verse because of its importance. "Till we all come in 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 fulness of Christ". There are three main thoughts in the verse. The first is unity; the second is perfection, maturity or full growth, a perfect man; and the third is stature, that is, the height (we are accustomed to speak of the stature of a man), "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ". I wish that I might be enabled to make these three thoughts clear to everyone, because a real apprehension of them will be of great good to us, we shall be more useful here. It might be said, But what little opportunity there is for carrying out the truth. I admit it, but it is a very great thing to be in the mind of God down here. The opportunity for carrying out the mind of God may be very limited; that is just according as God may appoint; but to be here in the mind of God is very important for every one of us. It is really the only light there is. And whether the sphere which God appoints to me be small or great, what I covet is to be here in His mind.
Now the gifts are till we all arrive at unity, that is the first thing, and that is a very great point in Scripture, "Till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God". By "the
faith" I understand the revelation on which Christianity is based, the system of Christian truth; as we get earlier in the chapter, "There is ... one Lord, one faith, one baptism". We are to arrive at the unity of the faith, that is, the unity which lies in the apprehension of the faith in the soul, that which the faith is calculated to produce, and there is another point: "of the [clear] knowledge of the Son of God". The thought of unity governs both ideas; it is "the unity of the faith, and of the [clear] knowledge of the Son of God". Some would tell us that we are not to know the Son of God at all; that no one can know the Son; but the very point of the passage here is, "the unity of the faith and of the [clear] knowledge of the Son of God". I accept as fully as anybody that no one can grasp or comprehend the mystery of His Being; "no one knows the Son but the Father"; but "the [clear] knowledge of the Son of God" is of vital importance, for in Him is the revelation of the love of God; no one can understand the love of God except by the clear knowledge of the Son of God. Peter speaks in connection with Christ of the righteousness of God and the faithfulness of God; but to know anything of what is essential in Christianity, that is, the love of God, we have to get to the Son of God, for it is in the Son that God's love is revealed: "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son". And then again it is in the Son that we see the satisfaction of God's love, where that love rests in man. The grace of God attracts our souls to the point where the love of God finds its rest and perfect satisfaction in the One in whom the judgment has been removed. We sing sometimes
And I need hardly say, that just in proportion as the faith and the clear knowledge of the Son of God govern the soul, so far, of necessity, unity is produced;
we come to the unity of the faith and of the clear knowledge of the Son of God. Why do you think that differences exist among saints? Why do divisions come in? I believe it is because souls are not going on to the unity of the faith and of the clear knowledge of the Son of God. Then again, we are often distressed at failure on the part of individuals, cases calling for discipline; do you think any discipline would be needful if souls were really gaining ground in the clear knowledge of the Son of God? I am convinced of this, that it is the unspiritual who bring in trouble, it is not those who are advancing in the knowledge of the Son of God. If we were really gaining ground in that knowledge it would have a mighty effect upon us.
The first thing then to be produced by the action of gifts is unity, the unity of the faith and of the clear knowledge of the Son of God. It is not common agreement, it is not alliance or any expedient of man, but it is unity in the soul, unity in faith, unity of heart. The more we know of the Son of God and of all that has come to light in Him, the closer we are drawn the one to the other. The secret of unity evidently, from this passage, lies in "the faith" and in "the [clear] knowledge of the Son of God".
But then we come to "a perfect man", a figure taken, I do not doubt, from the human body; that is, a man where there is not only what one might call perfect articulation, the perfect junction of every member, but where every joint, every member, is in vigour; that is what I understand to be "a perfect man", and I connect the thought with chapter 2: 15: "Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace". I understand by it that the divine thought is -- and here again we are reminded of the great importance of viewing all these things from the divine standpoint -- that there is to be one man here, not many men; it
does not speak of our coming unto 'perfect men', but unto "a perfect man". And that is what made me refer to chapter 2: 15, it is "one new man". Looking at things from God's point of view, He sees one man down here; many saints I quite admit, but one man. You get the same thought in another passage in the same chapter: "That ye put off ... the old man ... and that ye put on the new man". It is not that you have become new men, but you have put on the new man. The thought of a perfect man takes in, I judge, the whole company of saints in God's point of view. You may say that such a thought as that can hardly be realised down here; but I say, that is not my business. My business is to see what the mind of God is, and, as far as God helps me, to seek to promote it; and therefore when I see this truth, I certainly would not connect myself with anything down here upon earth which systematically tends to divide Christians, because we are all to come in the first place to unity, and in the next place to a perfect man. People may retort upon me, But have you not helped to divide by the very fact of separating from all you were once connected with? My answer is, the reason that led me to do it was, that I declined to be identified with what in its nature divides Christians.
The perfect man is really where the Spirit is in full vigour and energy in the saints; that is to say, they recognise the bond that binds them one to another: "There is neither Greek nor Jew, ... Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all". I think that is a very important point, and I would like the question to be raised with every one of us, whether we are here in the power of the Spirit, whether our souls are really in healthy vigour. You know what it is for the body to be in healthy vigour; a man then has not his attention drawn to any particular member. So it is a very great point as Christians for the soul to be in healthy vigour, that is, in the power of the Holy
Spirit; thus we advance to a perfect man, a man full grown.
There is another point still: "Unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ". This shows what the stature is to be, the measure of the stature. Can anything be more wonderful than that it was the thought of God really to bring that to pass down here? For the passage, as far as I understand it, has not reference to heaven; but to a result to be effected down here upon earth; that by the ministry of gift there was to be a perfect man here, perfect unity, and the stature of the man was to be the fulness or completeness of Christ; everything, as I said before, to be proportioned to Christ; a man large enough in that sense for every moral quality of Christ to be portrayed in. That is the idea to my mind of the fulness of Christ; nothing to be displayed there but the moral excellencies of Christ. The idea is beautifully brought out in Colossians 3; seven traits of Christ are enumerated there, beginning with "bowels of mercies", and finishing with love, "which is the bond of perfectness"; making up, so to say, the perfectness of Christ; and then there is "the word of Christ", and "the peace of Christ". I think that gives to us an idea of what I would call the completeness of Christ, all the moral excellencies and beauty of Christ really portrayed, as it were, in one man down here upon earth, and that one man taking in the thought of all Christians.
Now the gifts are given to that end; and though it may be a perfect impossibility that that can ever be attained here, I would desire to be upon earth, not with the idea of impossibilities, but in the mind of God. I do not want to frustrate the mind of God, but, as far as God may give me opportunity and ability, to be acting in His mind, and not to be evading it by putting forward the idea of impossibilities. I remember being told when I left the Church of England, many years ago, that many things which are brought before us in
the epistles as to the original form of Christianity are impracticable in the present day. That may be or may not be; but at all events it is the only light we have. I have as keen a sense as anybody of the truth that God never restores a thing down here which has once failed; He may bring in something else, but He never restores a thing on the ground on which it first stood. So when the church has failed as the house of God there is no such idea as its being restored down here. The failure of the church, as Paul's ministry, was shown to John, because John was not minister of the church; John sees the failure but he brings the church out in the end as the heavenly city, all resplendent with the glory of God. It shows that God does not restore the church on its original footing in connection with responsibility; but if I stand in the mind of God down here, the great gain I get is to be a pillar in the temple of God, I shall be conspicuous in the kingdom when the church is in the glory: "Him ... will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out". Therefore it is the greatest privilege in a day like this, when everything is in confusion and ruin, to be here in the mind of God, no matter how small or obscure things may be.
I pass on now to the thought of growth. It says, "That we henceforth be no more children" -- the word 'children' would be better rendered 'babes' -- "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ". We leave the idea of a perfect man, and come now to another thought, and that is growth to the Head, we are no longer to be babes. I think anyone can understand the idea of a babe; a babe is one who is very easily blown over; a strong wind would suffice: we are no longer to be babes, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every
wind of doctrine. One of the most painful things we see, when troubles come along, is the sad way in which people listen to what this person says and that person says. The fact is, they are not established in the truth of God, and therefore they are liable to be blown over by any "wind of doctrine" and by "unprincipled cunning" -- that is what is spoken of here -- "with a view to systematized error". I believe that if we were established in the truth of God, we should reject all these efforts. Nothing is more pernicious to saints than the practice of listening to what everybody has to say, instead of seeking to get a judgment of things from God. We are no longer to be "babes", "but speaking the truth in love". Now that word "speaking the truth" is a difficult expression; "speaking the truth" or "holding the truth" does not give exactly the idea; the idea is nearer to this, being true in love; not simply being sincere, that would not adequately convey the thought; but being true as the effect of being under the power of truth. It may be asked, What is truth? I do not know that everybody has quite solved that question; but I will give you a very simple definition of truth which I could prove to you from Scripture: truth is what may be known of God. Therefore there may be a certain measure of truth even where there is no revelation; and God holds man responsible on that ground, because there is a manifestation of truth even in created things; I do not mean truth which could save a soul; that is not the point, but truth which forms a basis for the responsibility of man. "What is known of God is manifest among them, for God has manifested it to them"; that is truth. But the principle holds good in regard to revelation; truth is what may be known of God; that is, what is revealed of God; hence Christ is the truth. So, too, we have "the word of the truth of the gospel"; that is, the gospel is a revelation of God. Now what I understand by being true,
or holding the truth, is this, that the soul is under the power of truth, it is in the light of the blessed revelation of God, it holds the truth in love. I know what God is; the love of God is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit that is given to me; I am in the joy of the truth, the light of the knowledge of God has penetrated to and governs my heart, and I am in it and in response to the love, and I hold the truth, in that sense, in love. That is the first condition, what I should call the divine nature in exercise in the Christian. You have to begin there; you cannot talk about growth until you have got the first condition needful to growth, holding the truth in love. The word "holding the truth" is only used twice in Scripture. The apostle uses it also in Galatians, where he says, "Am I ... become your enemy because I tell you the truth?"
By growth I understand growth in intelligence; I do not think it is connected exactly with a perfect man; but you grow in spiritual intelligence to the head; because the head, as I understand it, represents the intelligence. My head represents my intelligence, but my intelligence really comes out through the body. And I think the same holds good with regard to the body of Christ, the Head is the intelligence; all the light is there, as is brought out in Colossians 2"Ye are complete" in Christ; all spiritual, all divine light is there. If you want to understand Scripture, the thought which must govern your soul is Christ, because all the Scriptures testify of Christ, all the light and intelligence of Scripture is expressed and centred in Christ; the Lord expounded to the disciples out of the scripture "the things concerning himself". Holding the truth in love, we are to grow up in spiritual intelligence, to be according to the head; we are to comprehend "the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know" -- mark those two words, "to comprehend" and "to know", in the prayer in
chapter 3; but it is a peculiar kind of intelligence, spiritual intelligence. If I might say so, the Head is the standard; the saints have to grow to the Head as the standard; we are to be enlarged and expanded in spiritual knowledge, in acquaintance with the mind and thought of God, the whole scope of divine purposes is to come before us. You can understand that in Christ, as Man at the right hand of God, is the fulness of intelligence of the mind and purpose of God; "the breadth and length and depth and height"; and we are to grow up into Him as to all things, to enter into the whole scope, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.
Then you get the truth of the body brought in. "From whom the whole body, fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth ... maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love". That is not exactly a question of the gifts, but it is what goes on in the body. I do not think one ever heard in natural things of joints supplying anything, but in the body of Christ it is "that which every joint supplieth". The apostle has left the subject of gifts; gifts have their effect upon the individual, although they have in view the edifying of the body of Christ. In the body it is the effect of what is derived immediately from the Head, tending to the compacting and knitting of the body, unto its self, edifying in love.
Looking abroad, I could not understand readily that the body of Christ is cared for. But I should make the mistake of looking at things from my standpoint. We must look at things from the divine standpoint; and when we do that, we understand that the Head cares for the body. My head cares for my body; what would my body do without the thought of the head? And so it is in regard to the body of Christ, the body would be very poorly cared for but for the Head. The confusion and division of Christendom does not alter the relation of the body to the Head, or of the
Head to the body; and the Head cares for the body; and in spite of everything there is what is spoken of here, "the edifying of itself in love". It may be greatly marred, nor can anyone tell how it works, only the Head knows; but still there it is.
It is a great point to have an ideal before you; and the ideal which I have endeavoured to put before you is a perfect man. What I mean by the ideal is what was before the divine mind in the gifts being given. And I say, let us by the grace of God seek to stand in the truth of it; not be discouraged, but seek to gain more acquaintance with the mind of God and, no matter how small things may be, seek to stand here in it. You may depend upon it you will exercise far greater influence than ever you thought. But let a man go against the truth of God, the effect of it will be he will lose almost all the influence which he once appeared to have. I have seen it, even in my short experience. Many a man has an amount of influence which he never dreamt of, merely because he sought to stand in the mind of God. Many a man that you would have thought was cut out to exercise a great deal of influence, has lost it because he did not continue in the mind of God. As the apostle said, "We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth". You stand for the truth, and you will find you have great power; you go against the truth, and you will lose the little you appeared to have.
May God increase to us in His great grace the understanding of the truth, and give us grace, however small and feeble we may be, to seek to stand in it, and not to be discouraged.
We have had before us, on former occasions, first the truth of the gospel as presented in the beginning of Romans; then the ministry of the new covenant and of reconciliation; and last time we had the subject of growth and progress in the saints. What I desire to speak of now as a close is the subject of display, because it is there that hope has its place in the hearts of saints. The apostle in the epistles to the Thessalonians introduces the three words, 'faith', 'love' and 'hope', in more than one connection. He remembers their "work of faith and labour of love and patience of hope"; and at the close of the first epistle he exhorts them to "put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for an helmet the hope of salvation". In the passage I have read the hope is again in view in connection with the government of God and the coming of the Lord, "when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe ... in that day". It is that point I want now to dwell upon, the hope of the Christian; that is, the coming of the Lord.
The occasion of the apostle's writing the first epistle to the Thessalonians was in part to allay their fear that those who had died would not share in the glory of the kingdom. From the second epistle it would appear that they had been deceived, through some pretended apostolic writing, into the idea that the day of the Lord was present; and the apostle consequently tells them in chapter 2 of that epistle what must of necessity take place before the day of the Lord can come. In chapter 1 he takes up the position of the saints as suffering for the kingdom, and if they suffered for the kingdom they would get the righteous answer in the
government of God, they would be "counted worthy of the kingdom" for which they also suffered; and when the Lord came to establish the kingdom, He would come "to be glorified in his saints and to be admired" -- the word really is "to be wondered at" -- "in all them that believe ... in that day". My point is therefore to bring before you the truth of display as the hope of the Christian.
But when I speak about the coming of the Lord, you must not misunderstand what I mean. I am not referring to the rapture, but to the coming of Christ in glory; He comes to establish the kingdom. For though it is well to be here in faith, and to cherish the privileges of Christianity, yet the apostle says, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable". It is well for the Christian to have on "the breastplate of faith and love"; but he wants "for an helmet, the hope of salvation"; he awaits in hope the crown of it all; if he is to suffer here with Christ, he needs to know that he is going to reign with Him. The Christian is not to be left out in the day of His glory, when He comes "to be glorified in his saints, and wondered at in all that have believed". The two marks of the people of God at the present moment are, they are saints, holy, and they believe.
Now it is needful to remark first that the present is not a time of display, save in a moral sense, and more than that, that display is not the great subject of the New Testament. It is necessarily brought in to complete the revelation; but the great part of the writings of the New Testament refer to Christianity, that is, to what is connected with the presence and power of the Spirit here. When we get to heaven, we shall not want Scripture; then we shall know as we are known, we shall not want guidance and instruction then as to Christianity and as to present things, the time of it will all be passed; but now we have Scripture as our
guide in the present. It says but little as to the future, but the future and not the present is the time of display.
There are one or two passages in Scripture which will, I think, substantiate what I have said. For instance, in the parable in Matthew 13 of the treasure hid in the field, the Finder who buys the field hides the treasure, it does not come out into manifestation. You get the same thought in Colossians 3, "Your life is hid with Christ in God"; it is not yet manifested. And again, in chapter 3 of the first epistle of John: "What we shall be has not yet been manifested". That marks the position of the Christian, and the position of the Christian properly answers to the position of Christ, for Christ is hid; Christ has been called to sit at the right hand of God until His foes are made His footstool; He is hid in God. The moment Christ leaves the Father's throne it will alter everything; there will be no more church here, the Spirit will have gone, but there will be the development of other things entirely. When Christ begins to exercise power, everything is changed. The first effect of His power is seen in Philippians 3. He will change our vile bodies into the fashion of His body of glory. But for the present, Christ is hid in God; and therefore it is the time when the treasure is hid. When in fact, Christianity became conspicuous in the world, it was inflated and corrupt. When it appeared as a mustard tree it was a corrupt system; it was "like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened". The fact of Christianity being a great conspicuous system in the world is nothing to glory in. It proves it to be false to the truth that the treasure is hid. Christianity is not a thing of the world, it does not belong to the world, it does not, in a sense, properly belong to time, but to another scene.
Just one word in regard to the consequence of this as to the path of the Christian. I think he ought to be
content to be obscure. It is perfectly natural to desire a name in the world; but it is false to the truth. If we become conspicuous, we do not answer to Christ; because Christ is hid, and so long as Christ is hid, we ought to be content to be obscure. The Christian may be active in the service of Christ, but a path of obscurity is the path which is suited to the present position of Christ. The path and ways of a Christian in the world are not understood; they are not suited to the age, nor is the age suited to them; and to be active in obscurity is what the path of the Lord Jesus was upon earth.
But it is a very great point to bear in mind that there is to be display. What I mean by that is that Christ is to be glorified in the scene from which He has been rejected. And the heart of the Christian cherishes the thought that He should be glorified here. The apostle says, "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing". The expression, "all them also that love his appearing" does not, I judge, refer to any particular class in Christianity; it is a description of the proper, normal feeling of the Christian; that is, the Christian loves the appearing of Christ. The same may be said of the passage, "Unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation". The point on which I am dwelling is, that the Christian loves and looks for the appearing of Christ; and if a person does not, I should doubt that person being a real Christian, he is but a counterfeit. There is another passage, giving us the voice of the bride, "The Spirit and the bride say, Come". All these expressions refer to His appearing, His coming in glory; John's great point in the Revelation is to bring Christ again to the earth, which is to be for God. In the beginning of John's gospel Christ is seen as "the Lamb of God,
which taketh away the sin of the world". In the Revelation we have the Lamb in the midst of the throne, and at the close John is shown the bride, the Lamb's wife, that which He has gained, which is seen as the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. In the meantime, "the Spirit and the bride say, Come". What I understand by that expression is that it is the characteristic cry of the Spirit and the bride; the bride cannot be content without the presence of the bridegroom, and therefore, "The Spirit and the bride say, Come". And then it goes on to, "Let him that heareth say, Come". The Spirit of God gives us in the first instance what is properly characteristic of the Spirit, and the bride; then the one hearing cries, "Come".
I pass on now for a moment to show how the coming of the Lord connects itself with the righteousness of God; it is so looked at in this chapter, and especially in regard to the saints. You do not get the display of the righteousness of God until the coming of the Lord; though faith may know it now. The apostle expected the crown of righteousness; he had not got it yet; he was justified by faith, but he waited, having finished his course here, for the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, would give him at that day; he looked for the consummation of the righteousness of God. As far as I understand the matter, the righteousness of God in its application to the saints is connected with two thoughts, namely, grace and government, and it is very important indeed to distinguish the two. When it is a question of grace, righteousness is seen in the answer which God gives to the work of Christ, and that is common to every Christian. When it is a question of government, the righteousness of God gives the answer to the Christian's course here, and thus connects itself with the kingdom. The one thought is connected with the coming of the Lord, and the
other with the kingdom. What I dwell upon in the first place is the righteousness of God as connected with grace.
We read in 2 Corinthians 5:21: "He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him". That is not a question of government, but of grace; "Whom he justified, them he also glorified"; "glorified" follows in the line of "justified". And the simple reason of it is this, that the glory of saints is just as much as justification the righteous fruit of and answer to what Christ has suffered for them. There is another scripture in which the righteousness of God is identified with grace; "so also grace might reign through righteousness". That is not a question of government: there is nothing of government in it; but it is the economy of grace founded on righteousness. God has already given the answer in Christ, to the work which Christ accomplished. We find in John 13, "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him; if God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him". But then it is not enough that the answer should be seen in Christ's glory, because "He hath made him to be sin FOR US, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him"; and therefore the answer is displayed in those for whom Christ was made sin. And I understand that God appeals to it as His righteous answer to Christ's work. Now that is no question of government, but to us of pure grace, which gives to every Christian a place in glory. That is the sense in which I understand the apostle to be waiting on the principle of faith for the hope of righteousness. It is a great thing to be distinct and clear in your thoughts of grace and government, and to distinguish between the righteousness of God as connected with grace and as connected with government; otherwise you may get into great confusion. I heard only today
that it is becoming a very common idea that only those who are really looking for the coming of the Lord will be caught up at the rapture. Such an idea is an entire falsification of the righteousness of God, because our place in heaven does not hang on our faithfulness, but is the pure fruit of the grace in which we are justified; it is of the righteousness of God, which gives full effect and a full answer in the saints to what Christ has accomplished; it raises the question of His having been made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. And to mix up the rapture with the question of our faithfulness, or anything of the kind, is practically to deny the truth of new creation; because if we are going to heaven, we do not go in connection with our faithfulness here; we go there as a new creation, "If any one be in Christ, there is a new creation". There is even now the putting on "the new man, which according to God is created in truthful righteousness and holiness". And it is in that connection that you are made fit for your place in heaven, that you are really glorified.
But in looking at the righteousness of God as it connects itself with the thought of government, I quite admit you have the answer in it to the path of the Christian here. This principle continually comes out in Scripture: "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him", "If ... we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together". The same principle is brought out in this chapter: "It is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; and to you who are troubled, rest with us". It comes out here as a question of righteousness. What we get in the kingdom is the recompense of God to our pathway here. God does not give up His government in regard to saints. It has been said of the thief on the cross that he has as good a place in paradise as any other, because that is a question of God's answer to the work of Christ; but he will not
be conspicuous in the kingdom, for his suffering here could not be spoken of as suffering with Christ; he was suffering for his misdeeds, and that is not suffering with Christ. We become conspicuous in the kingdom just in proportion to our faithfulness in suffering with Christ down here; but then it is a question of the kingdom, and the righteousness of God in His government; it is not a question of grace because that is founded on the work which Christ has accomplished, and is in a new creation.
And this point of the righteousness of God in His government is a very important truth to maintain. It comes out very specially in this chapter, and is what led me to take up the subject. These poor Thessalonians were thought nothing of upon the earth; they were persecuted on account of their faith and faithfulness; but the apostle gives them as the answer to it that Christ was "to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe". They were but poor things down here; persecution had been stirred up by the Jews, and had fallen upon them; but they stood firm, and their faith and patience in the persecutions which they endured were an evident token of the righteous judgment of God, that they should be "counted worthy of the kingdom"; it is not a question of grace, but of God's righteous government. Doubtless it was the power and grace of God that maintained them in faith and patience! Faith and patience are not principles in repute in the world; they will not tend to worldly progress, and the world does not appreciate them; but in faith and patience the power of God is displayed. You find the same thing in Hebrews 11; what comes out in the main part of that chapter is the endurance of faith.
I think I have now said enough to show you the great importance of distinguishing between the rapture and the appearing of the Lord. It is in the rapture that we get the answer to what Christ has accomplished;
it is in the rapture we get our place in heaven, it is then we are caught up to be with the Lord. The rapture does not raise the question of government, but is, as I understand it, a pure question of grace, that by which saints are ushered into heaven. Then comes the question of government; first, the judgment-seat of Christ, and then the kingdom. It is after we are taken to heaven that we have to pass before the judgment-seat of Christ, and that our places relatively are determined; after that we come with Christ when Christ comes "to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe".
Now I return to the thought that Christ is coming to be glorified and to be wondered at. In a certain sense, He was wondered at when He was down here upon earth, but He was not glorified; He was personally despised, but He is going to be glorified and to be wondered at in the saints. I think every Christian heart welcomes the thought that Christ is going to be glorified. He has been dishonoured here, and in every way treated with ignominy, known only as put to reproach and shame; but He is going to be glorified in the saints, those who come with Him, and to be wondered at in all them that believe, those who have suffered with Him. The universe, I suppose, will be astounded at what will be manifest in that day when the saints come in His company. Enoch prophesied of it: "The Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints". Those who have been thought nothing of here upon earth, and who have been looked upon and despised as saints and as believing, come with Christ, and He is glorified in them. Why? "Because our testimony among you was believed". It was the apostle's testimony which brought the Thessalonians into the place of faith; and now they had to look forward to the coming of the Lord. It is that with which the work of grace is connected, and hence you get the apostle's prayer in consequence of it, that God
would fulfil in them "all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power". If you and I thought that Christ was to be glorified in us, we should covet that the work of faith might go on, that His name might be glorified in us now. And if Christ is going to be glorified in me, I do not want to be glorified in myself, I do not want to have any present glory, to be conspicuous in the present; I would be content to be hid.
And mark this, He is to be wondered at in all them that believe; which proves that all must have part in it.
Now I want to say a word or two as to the effect of the coming of the Lord. To begin with, He comes as Lord, and as Lord He brings into the world the blessings which He administers from God, which faith enjoys now. What is true to faith now in the Lord will then be brought in a public way into the world; for instance, peace and favour and reconciliation are all true to faith now; but when the Lord comes to reign, He destroys the oppressor, and He comes in as the Prince of Peace; He brings peace and the favour of God into the scene, and all is reconciled in Him, the distance which separated the world from God is removed, and God is brought, as it were, into complacency with the scene, because all is administered here by the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the day of His glory; and, as I have sought to bring out on previous occasions, He is the minister of all the good which is in the heart of God towards man; He brings that good here into the scene. How could it be otherwise? He is "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world", and the One who does that is "He who baptises with the Holy Spirit". The two trees, the tree of responsibility and the tree of life are conciliated in Him; He took up the responsibility, and He is the Prince of Life; the two things meet in His Person. The good which is now known to faith He will bring
in a public way into this world; and that is what His coming means.
And then He brings into this world the blessings of God's kingdom. We are told that "the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost"; but those things that we enjoy in the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ will administer in a public way in the world: righteousness, peace, and joy will reign in the world in that day. It will be the reign of righteousness, "judgment shall return unto righteousness", and the effect of righteousness is peace and joy. When good is maintained publicly in power, and evil is repressed, then you get peace and joy, which are the proper effects of righteousness. To maintain what are called the rights of man in the present day needs very elaborate and constant legislation. Parliament has to meet, session after session, and for long sessions, not to seek to maintain the rights of God but the rights of man, and legislation becomes increasingly cumbrous and elaborate as the relations of men become more artificial. What does that prove? That God has not got His rights, and therefore legislation as to men is difficult and unsatisfactory. Supposing God had His rights, and men loved God with all their hearts, do you think elaborate legislation would be wanted as between men? When man loves God with all his heart it becomes simple to love his neighbour as himself; and when man loves his neighbour as himself, then you will not want elaborate legislation to maintain the rights of man; it will all be simple. But that means the establishment of righteousness; righteousness is to rule, and what the Christian enjoys now in the power of the Holy Spirit will then be publicly ministered in this world by the Lord Jesus Christ.
And there is another thing which will come to pass then. Christ is the Mediator of the new covenant which He will establish then. The law will be written
in the heart of Israel in that day, and the effect of it will be the knowledge of God in mercy and forgiveness, and a nature which is capable of keeping the law. It is not like a man in Romans 7 that delights in the law of God after the inward man, and consents to the law of God with his mind; but the law is written in their heart, and the consequence is that they not only delight in the law of God but they fulfil it: "I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more". Jesus comes in as the Mediator of the new covenant; He bore the transgressions which were under the first covenant in order that He might be the Mediator of the new covenant.
I come to one point more, the effect of the Lord's coming on creation itself. The earnest expectation of the creature will be realised, will have its answer, when Christ comes "to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe", and not till then. I suppose there will be an immense relief in this scene from the bondage of corruption. The whole creation labours in bondage until now; but we are told it will be brought "into the liberty of the glory of the children of God". Not into the glory of the children of God; it never can have that place, for the children of God properly belong to heaven; but into the liberty, as I understand it, which belongs to the children of God.
I have referred to these things just to show what the effect will be of the coming of Christ again into this scene. I think it is a point of the greatest moment, and what Christians ought to have before them. One would be thankful to see revived in all our souls the truth of the coming of the Lord, and what His coming means.
Now I do not want to say much more. If I just recall the points which have been before us, I think everybody will consent to them and not find any difficulty
about them. I think all will admit that the present is not a time of display on the part of God or as far as saints are concerned, but a time of suffering and reproach; but there will be a time of display, and in that display, as I said before, is witnessed the righteous judgment of God, in that Christ is glorified and wondered at, in the very scene from which He has been rejected and cast out. And the effects of His coming will be very great, the release of creation from the pressure which lies heavy upon it at the present moment, and the extreme simplicity which the law in the heart will bring into this earth, instead of elaborate legislation which is necessary now to maintain the rights of man in regard to his fellow. Things will never be right, as between man and man until things are right as between God and man.
Only one word more and I have done. The practical outcome of it to us is this, to seek that what is spoken of here, the good pleasure of God's goodness, may be fulfilled in us. It is a beautiful expression, "the good pleasure of his goodness"; I think the apostle delighted in expressions of that character. It is a great thing to get the idea in the heart that there is goodness in God, and that He fulfils in us "the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power". It is not simply believing certain truths, but there is "the work of faith", that is, there is a process going on in saints, what may be called the work of the Spirit in them. The work of faith cannot begin till the Spirit of God is in the saint; but once He is there, then the work of faith begins, and the object of it is "that the name of the Lord Jesus may be glorified in us, and we in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ".
May God give us really a great interest in what is going on at the present moment, and in the whole range of ministry. It is very important to understand what ministry is, and to see what the present effect of it is
in the growth and progress of the saints. And it is a great thing, too, to see what the end is to be, that is, in display. Christ is going "to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe ... in that day" -- the day when He gets His rights -- when He moves from off the Father's throne, and takes the place which is appointed to Him here. At the present moment He is glorified in God, but in that day will be publicly glorified; and the vessel in which His glory will be displayed is those who are saints and believe.
May God give to us to cherish the hope of it, and to have really and distinctly before us the great thought of the coming of the Lord and His kingdom, and the part which the saints are to have in it, and that the work of God, "the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith", has that day in view.
Ephesians 1:15-23; Ephesians 2:1-7; 1 Corinthians 12:13, 27-31
I wish to dwell a little on this and succeeding occasions, as the Lord may enable me, on the truth of the church, looked at in its different aspects, for it is very evident that the church is presented to us in Scripture in more aspects than one. For instance, in this chapter (Ephesians 2) it is noticeable that the apostle, beginning from the top, that is, Christ exalted as Head over all things, presents the church as His body, and afterwards as growing into a holy temple -- just the reverse order to Corinthians, where he begins with the temple, and goes on afterwards to speak of the body. In Ephesians the apostle presents first the body; then he gives us the temple at the close of chapter 2; and finally Jew and Gentile "builded together for an habitation of God by the Spirit". And I think I can understand the object in this order, for in unfolding the whole scope of what God has effected in Christ, it is necessary to begin from the Head, and then the thought of the body is introduced as His fulness, and from the body the Spirit works down to what is the present status of the church, that is Jew and Gentile "built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit". Each successive truth is dependent on the preceding.
Tonight I take up the truth of the body, first as it is seen in Ephesians, and then as it is viewed in Corinthians. The distinction is this: in Ephesians we get the truth of the body on the heavenly side, in what it is to Christ; in Corinthians we get it more on the earthward side (I do not know how better to put it), in its present aspect as the vessel of the Spirit here upon earth. For it is introduced in 1 Corinthians 12, as I understand it, in connection with the manifestations of the Spirit, "Ye are the body of Christ, and
members in particular"; and then, God has set various gifts in the assembly viewed in that way as the body. The subject of 1 Corinthians 12 is the manifestations of the Spirit.
I want just to notice, what I may enlarge upon on another occasion, that if we look at the apostle Paul's work (I do not speak now about his work in the gospel, but his church work), we find a foundation spoken of as laid in Corinth, and the chief corner-stone presented in Ephesus. Corinth was the beginning of the apostle's work when he went distinctly on his own line. Up to that point he had been working, to a very large extent, in connection with Jerusalem as a church centre. But Corinth appears to be the distinct starting-point of his work upon the line of the particular revelation given to him. In the first epistle to the Corinthians the apostle speaks of himself "as a wise master builder"; we sometimes render the word in English, by 'architect'. What I understand by the expression is, that when he laid the foundation he had the plan of the edifice before him. In natural things, when the first stone of the building is laid, the architect sees the whole building, while other people, who know nothing about the plan, merely see the first stone. Then he tells us what the foundation was, "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ". Ephesus was the climax of the apostle's work and testimony in connection with the church, and that is necessarily the point of departure when failure comes in.
It exercised my mind somewhat, in speaking of the church, on which side I should begin, whether from the top or the bottom. But I thought it better to begin from the top, that is, from the body as presented to us in Ephesians, and then to work down to Corinthians, because I think that is the divine way. If anyone wanted to understand in the type of the tabernacle what the brazen altar imported, he would
have to begin properly from the ark of the covenant and the mercy-seat. If you were approaching God from man's side, you must come by the brazen altar; but if you want to have intelligence about the brazen altar, then you have to begin from the divine end, from which God began in describing the tabernacle and its furniture, from the ark of the covenant and the mercy-seat. And therefore, on the same principle, in speaking of the body of Christ, I prefer to begin from the top, from what it is in its relation to the Head, as presented to us in the Ephesians.
By the Lord's help, I will try to give you two or three suggestive thoughts in connection with what comes out in these two chapters of Ephesians, and will then speak a little on the other side of the truth as in 1 Corinthians 12, where the truth of the body comes out in a very practical way. I do not think that Christians who ignore that chapter make very much progress. Sects and systems, it is very evident, ignore it, for the simple reason that they are avowedly sectarian. Every Christian denomination is sectarian. No state church can be universal, because it cannot properly go beyond the limits of the particular country to which it belongs. The only universal system is Roman Catholicism, which in the Christian point of view is apostasy. It is clear that in 1 Corinthians 12 you cannot find sectarianism, or any justification of it; it is "one Spirit ... one body". And I have no hesitation in saying that where there is the ignoring of this truth, and where restrictions are placed upon the liberty of the Spirit of God, Christians will not get much light. I do not un-christianise them for a moment; for if there had not been some light to be got, none of us would be where we are, nor even converted. But the professing church has lost the truth of the body completely, and has in fact ignored the presence of the Holy Spirit. And until Christians leave sectarianism, and all of that order, and come to
where there is liberty for the Spirit of God to act, they will enjoy but little light. Depend upon it, no greater evil has been done, no greater insult offered to the Lord than in ignoring the presence of the Spirit sent by Him from the Father. And it is astonishing how easily we too may drop into it. People will substitute all sorts of things for the Holy Spirit: a clergy, or a ministry, or formality or order; but I trust we have returned to the recognition of the presence of the Holy Spirit here, and with it to the manifestations of the Spirit.
I desire now to suggest two or three thoughts in connection with the truth of the body as it is presented to us in Ephesians.
The beginning of it is the Head; and the first thought that is introduced is the power which has set the Head in His place. That is, the power that "wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places", and "gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all". It is the power of God which has been effective in Christ, to set Him in the place of Head over all. There could not be any church until Christ was set in this place of Head; you could not talk about the body until the Head was there. God's power has come out in two special things: first in raising Christ from the dead, and secondly in setting Him at His own right hand as man in the heavenly places, far above all principality and every name; and He has given Him "Head over all things", which is the accomplishment, as has been often pointed out, of Psalm 8, "to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him which filleth all in all".
I dare say we are all instructed as to the Head; but I am sure one cannot do harm in recurring for a moment to the truth. It was in the eternal purpose of God that He was to be Head to the body: but now
God has set Him in His place as such, and every Christian is united to Christ.
Before I pass on to speak of the body, I want to give an idea of what union means, for it is a great point to start with. And I would remark here that we have no option whatever about our place in the church. A great many people in the present day -- I do not speak of people that we are more intimately connected with -- are taken up to a large extent with Christian activity, and ignore the church. But I say you have no option as to the church, because every Christian is united to Christ, though every Christian does not understand union, and does not get all the present good of it. But no one can rightly ignore the truth of the church as Christ's body, because whether you know it or not, you are united to Christ if you have the Holy Spirit. And hence the apostle can say to the Corinthians, "He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit". It is certain, in regard to the most uninstructed Christian, that he is united to Christ if he has received the Holy Spirit. It is a great thing to know the value of union, but that does not touch the fact of union. I should not be entitled to seek to understand union if I were not united; I could not understand it if I had not the thing itself, but being united I may seek to understand what the import of union is.
Now to guard against misapprehension, I feel it needful to say this -- that when I speak of union, I do not mean union in the sense of marriage. Marriage has sometimes been spoken of as the declaration of union, but I do not get that now. The church is espoused as a chaste virgin to Christ, and has the bride-place in that way; but when I speak of union I mean organic union as of the members of a body to the head. It is very evident the Head was there before ever there was the body at all. Christ was set at God's right hand in the heavenly places before the
Holy Spirit was given; and when the Holy Spirit was given, then union was effected; it took place on the day of Pentecost. I do not think the 120 in the upper room on the day of Pentecost understood union, but they were nonetheless united; for every one received the Holy Spirit, and by the fact of receiving the Holy Spirit, they were united to the Head in heaven. The revelation of the truth of it had not yet come out. It was given to Paul, not to Peter or John, to complete the word of God; and he completed the word of God, I believe, by the truth of the body. That had not come out at first, and yet the body was formed. And it is most important to hold this fast; because if union is made dependent on the intelligence or understanding of union, it would be turning things upside down. It is a very important principle in divine things, that you understand the words by the thing, and if you have not got the thing, you cannot understand the words. Unless a man is born again, he cannot understand what being born again means. It is so with a great many other things. And unless a man is united to Christ by the Holy Spirit, it is totally impossible that he could understand what union means.
The first great truth which comes out here as to the church is that it is the fulness of Christ; that is the place which the church has, "his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all". What I understand by it is this, that the church is proportioned morally to the One that fills all in all, it is His fulness -- a very wonderful thing. I do not think any vessel will adequately display Christ save the church. And when it comes out, no one will be able to say that the body is disproportioned to the Head; it will all be the work of God. The Head fills all in all -- that is what I might call the function of the Head; He will fill all things; Christ will fill the universe with good and with blessing, the fruits of redemption. He is the tree of life, and every family will live by Him; but every family will
not be His fulness, the church is His fulness, the vessel in which He is adequately displayed.
I do not think that anything short of the body could display the Head, or that Christ could be displayed in one saint. Christ may be displayed in every saint in measure, but for an adequate display of Christ you must have the whole body. The body is His completeness -- it is that which is adequate for the display of the Head. The thought of the body here is not as in 1 Corinthians 12there it speaks of the body at any given moment upon earth; but here it is the body in the very fullest sense, it tells you what the church is, its proper place, the completeness of Him that fills all in all.
I pass on to the next point, to see how the truth of the body has been effectuated in saints. It says in verse 5 of chapter 2, "Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved); and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus". There is one expression in this passage used as to us which is not applied to Christ. And there are two expressions applied to us which are first stated of Christ. Christ is not here spoken of as quickened, but as raised and seated at God's right hand in heavenly places. And we get in regard to the saints, "hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus"; that is, that the power which has been applied to Christ has operated in us, and what God has effected in Christ is true for the saints. Therefore you have to take the statement in two parts; first, as to what has been effected in us, in that we are quickened together with Christ, and then that what has been effected in Christ is true also for the saints.
Now I desire to show you where the truth of union lies. I tried to make it plain at the beginning that every saint is united to Christ, because every saint is
in possession of the Spirit. But where the truth and secret of union lies is in the fact of a moral being in the saints, which has been derived from Christ; that is, that having been quickened together with Christ, we have received a being which puts us in association with Christ. In other words, it is like Eve being taken out of Adam; she got, in a sense, her being from Adam. So, too, the church gets its being from Christ: it has often been said that the church does not add anything to Christ, because it is derived from Christ. And that is what, I judge, the apostle means when be says, He "hath quickened us together with Christ". It does not say, as in Romans, the Spirit is life; but in Colossians and Ephesians the saints are viewed not only as having received the Spirit of life, but the power of the Spirit has taken effect in them, and the apostle can go so far in regard to them as to say that they are quickened together with Christ, can view them as in a faith state in anticipation of what will be their actual state at the coming of Christ; and in this state they live with God in association with Christ, according as Christ lives with God; and that is where the secret of union really lies. As I said before, I am not denying the fact that every one that has the Holy Spirit is united; and the principle of everything that God has for us lies in the Holy Spirit. The apostle adds afterwards, "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them". He touches another side of the truth there; they had put off the old man, and put on the new, which after God is created in righteousness and holiness of truth, they were now partakers of the divine nature. The power of the Spirit had become not only effective towards them, not only were there fleshy tables of the heart, and a real writing of Christ, as in the Corinthians, but there was the actual formation of a moral being, in virtue of which they now lived in association with Christ.
Consequently what had been effected in Him held good for them. And that is where the truth of union lies.
The apostle is leading on to it when he says to the Galatians, "I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you", that is, until they were brought into the true Christian state. And that is what the apostle was continually labouring at. What a wonderful thought it is that a believer not only has the Holy Spirit communicated to him, but that the power of the Holy Spirit in him has made him a partaker of the divine nature. Union could not be but on that ground. How could you be joined to Christ save as quickened together with Him? I admit that the same power which quickens you together with Him unites you to Him; but I say the enjoyment or understanding of union with Christ could not possibly be if you were not conscious that you were of a new order by the power of the Holy Spirit. Union is not in the flesh; we are not united to Christ in the flesh, or as men in the flesh; "He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit", and the truth of union clearly lies in the Spirit. If the fact of being quickened together with Christ is once apprehended, I can soon take in the other points, that the power of God which has been put in operation in regard to Christ applies to me as being part of Himself and united to Him: Jew and Gentile have been raised up together, and made to "sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus". We never could have been united to Christ simply as Jew and Gentile, but we are united in connection with a totally new spiritual being from Christ, who is at God's right hand. You can understand it as I said from the figure of Eve. God took her out of the man, and builded her into a woman. And so it says of the church, "We are members of his body"; and that is where the truth of union lies.
One more thought in connection with Ephesians, before passing on to the other passage in Corinthians,
and that is, that God has effected all this for His own satisfaction. It says in verse 7, "That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus". The fact is, that the motive spring which led God to do it was love. God would have us in His own company, in His own place. It has been said that what love values is company. God acted from love. I could not possibly tell why God loved us in that way, but that is what Scripture states, "God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us", would have us there, in His own abode, in heavenly places; and therefore it is really for His own satisfaction. If you accept the truth that God is absolutely good and blessed, then what He does for His own pleasure must be absolutely good and blessed too, and He has done this for His own pleasure.
I hope you will bear in mind, by the grace of God, the two or three thoughts I have tried to bring before you in regard to the church on what I may call the heavenly side; for the more you enter into it, the better you will understand God, and the better you understand God, the more you will be able to apprehend the truth. It is remarkable how things act and re-act. The more I understand the truth of the church, the more I see that the springs are in God, and the more I enter into the knowledge of God, "the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him", the better I can understand the truth of the church. The first thing is the Head, and where God has set Him. Then the body, which is His fulness, proportioned to Him where, and as He is; and then how God has wrought to make it effective in us. And all is eventually for His own satisfaction. That is what the church is, as presented to us in Ephesians, and that is the climax of the apostle's work. Here you have unfolded the counsel of God, and how God has given effect to His counsel.
If you turn now to 1 Corinthians 12, we shall view the body on the other side. The subject of the chapter is concerning spiritual gifts -- "spiritual manifestations", gives more the right idea -- "concerning spiritual manifestations, brethren, I do not wish you to be ignorant"; the proof of this is in verse 7: "The manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal". Then in verse 11 it says, "All these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will". Then the apostle brings in the truth of the body, because the great point is that the manifestations of the Spirit are in the body, that there are no manifestations of the Spirit, nor are there any gifts, but what are set in the church as the body. He goes on to say, "For by one Spirit are we all baptised into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many". And then in verse 27: "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. And God hath set some in the church".
I think anyone reading the chapter would see that the prominent idea in it is not the body, but the Spirit. But as I understand it, the body is introduced as the vessel where the manifestations of the Spirit are set. I think the great subject of the first epistle to the Corinthians is the temple, and that God is actually here; but that identical with the temple there is a body in which are set the manifestations of the Spirit; they all come out in the members of the body. The idea I judge is, that the church is the glory of Christ. Some may not quite understand what that expression means, but I will tell you. The woman is the glory of the man, that is, that all that is of the man is reflected in the woman. There was no such complete reflection of man in any of the brute creation, God could not find anything among the inferior creation which was suited to be a helpmeet to the man. The
woman was taken out of the man, and therefore reflected every moral quality of the man. You get another figure of it in nature, the moon reflects the light of the sun. When the moon is opposite to the sun, you get a full moon; that is, all the light of the sun falls upon the moon, and the moon reflects it, and in that sense the moon is the glory of the sun. So the church is the glory of Christ. The expression is used in 2 Corinthians, where the apostle, speaking of brothers whom he was sending to the Corinthians, says, that they were messengers of the churches, Christ's glory. When Christ was here personally, everything that God had for man came out in Him by the Spirit of God. Anyone will recall that whatever Christ had to say to men, He said by the Spirit, and whatever Christ did for man He did by the Spirit. I do not think the Lord ever had any idea at all of operating here except by the Spirit. He says, "If I by the Spirit of God cast out demons"; Jesus of Nazareth, anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power "who went about doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him"; "In the power of the Spirit" He goes to Nazareth, and says, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor". It was in the heart of God to relieve man from the consequences that sin had brought upon him, and from the power of Satan; but all that beneficence and good from God came to man through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Now I venture to say, whatever God has for man comes out by the Spirit in the church as Christ's body. In the early days of Christianity if gifts of healing came to men, they were set in the church; or if God had light for men down here (and I think that is the great idea connected with the temple), it came out through the body. And that extends even to the revelation of God; for every bit of light that we get as to Christianity,
all the New Testament scriptures, came out through members of the body; "God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets". All that God has to say to men and to bestow upon men, the relief which God has in grace granted to man, was set in the church. I think it is in that sense the apostle introduces the body here, as the vessel of all the beneficence of God to man; all these various distributions of the Spirit were in the church; all that which really displayed the good of God coming out through Christ to men was set in the church, because the church is the body of Christ. Christ was no longer here personally, but the body of Christ was here.
Thus in 1 Corinthians 12 we get the earthly side of the church; it is not the church looked at as the fulness of Christ, and it is not union which is taught in the chapter, though unity is taught there, but the church as the body is the vessel in which are set all the manifestations of the Spirit; and it makes us all dependent one upon another. When I hear people saying, 'I never learnt anything from man', that is a pretty good proof to me that they do not know much. If they simply mean that they never learned anything from man as man, that may be the case; but if they mean that they never learned anything through the instrumentality or medium of man, then I say they must be very ignorant persons. Because had they known anything of Christianity, they must have known it through members of the body. Paul and John were members of the body, though they were apostles, and all the light that comes to us, the very Scriptures themselves, come to us through the apostles, and the apostles were set in the church.
The practical application of it in the present day is this, that we should recognise the truth of the one body, "By one Spirit are we all baptised into one body", "and have been all made to drink into one Spirit". That was not a kind of mystical idea; it was
a reality down here which saints were to recognise, that is, that they were one body by the baptism of the Spirit, so that the apostle could say to the body of saints at Corinth, "Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular". Christ could not have two bodies at Corinth, any more than Christ can have two bodies in London. There is Christ's body in London, and it is a very great point to recognise that fact. Because, if once I recognise it, I say I have done completely with anything which takes up distinctive sectarian ground. I will not be identified with apostasy, like popery, nor with a state church, nor with denominations, for the simple reason that I recognise the fact, "Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular", and "By one Spirit are we all baptised into one body", and the one body is the vessel here for the manifestations of the Spirit.
There is one point more, and it is that there must be room given for the Spirit, you must not place any kind of restriction upon the Spirit. For instance, if you have an appointed minister, if you do not give liberty of ministry, you put restrictions on the Spirit. You can never tell who may be a vessel for the manifestation of the Spirit, for the Spirit sometimes uses very unlikely people; He does not always employ the kind of vessel that would be naturally approved by man, because the Spirit is sovereign, and uses whom He will. You must recognise the truth of the one body, which sets aside all idea of sectarianism, and you must leave room for the free action of the Spirit, who distributes to every man severally as He will.
All this truth is as to the church on its earthward side, but it is vastly important; for if you do not recognise it, you cannot understand anything about the assembly as convened. The instruction is given to the Corinthians for the regulation of the assembly as convened, and to avoid confusion. We come together as mutually dependent, for we are all one body,
and every member of the body is dependent upon every other member of the body, as well as dependent upon the Head.
Suppose a man were to say, I am not going to concern myself about the body or about church principles, I am going to exercise the gift which the Lord has given me. My answer to him is this, God has set the gift in the church, and if you recognise that fact, you cannot ignore the church. Let a man be the most distinguished evangelist that ever was, he cannot ignore the church. An apostle could not, because God set apostles in the church. You have no option in the matter; you must, in the first instance, recognise the truth of the church, and that every gift is set in the church, and leave free room for the Spirit of God. And therefore, the most distinguished gift that a man could have, was not to overshadow every other gift. There may be members that are less conspicuous, and yet they are equally important. And it is not at all of God that the great gifts, the great luminaries, should overshadow everything else; because we are all set in the body in dependence upon the Head and upon each other. That is the principle of its constitution. May God give us to understand it better.
I have only one word more. People might say, What you have said may be a guide to us in regard to sects and systems, but what about those who profess to be on the ground of the one body? Well, beloved friends, it is not difficult to me. A great many bodies profess that kind of thing, but I say that though they have not given up ecclesiastical ground, they have given up the testimony, and I should have much more forbearance with those who have never seen the truth than with those who have departed from it. They have given up the testimony of the Lord in the sense of what is distinctive at the particular moment. They would assert quite as strongly as we would, and with quite as great zeal, that they
are gathered on the ground of the one body, but I say that the different bodies who have departed at one time or another have given up the truth which the Spirit of God was making prominent at the moment. If that truth is union in the real power of it, they give it up, though they do not give up ecclesiastical ground. I do not care to take up ecclesiastical ground, and not go on with the testimony of the Lord. I believe at the present moment that the Spirit is bringing us back to the truth of the church in its heavenly character, as the fulness of Christ, not simply to the fact that we have received the Holy Spirit, but that the truth of union lies in that which we have derived from Christ, as quickened together with Him. The power which has wrought in Christ has been effective also in saints, who are "raised up together, and made to sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus". Many other things I could say, too, for it is very clear to me how one truth after another has been given up by those who have departed, while there is the insistence in the strongest way on ecclesiastical ground; but I do not think anyone who is really going on with the truth in the power of the Spirit is taken in by it. May God give us in His great grace rightly to balance things.
Ephesians 2:19-22; 1 Corinthians 3:16-23
I was noticing in the previous lecture that in Ephesians you get the truth presented in many points in contrast to Corinthians, and in both somewhat in connection with the labours of Paul as related in the Acts of the Apostles. Corinth was Paul's foundation as regards church work and Ephesus was, in a sense, the climax or crown of his work. We learn in the Acts of the Apostles that Paul was a long time at both places. It was at Corinth that the Lord detained him. And he laboured, I think, three years and a half at Ephesus; it was long, patient labour. One can hardly read the Acts of the Apostles without seeing that Ephesus was really the climax of his work in connection with the assembly. The apostle tells the elders of Ephesus that he "had not shunned to declare to them all the counsel of God". In the Revelation the Lord makes known to John the defection of the church, and Ephesus is seen as the point of departure; it was Ephesus that had left their "first love". The Lord shows to John the decline of the church which had been the great work of Paul. I only just refer to this because it helps to the understanding of the relative place of the two epistles.
My thought at this time is to speak of the church as God's temple. In 1 Corinthians 3 the apostle says, "as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation"; I do not therefore expect to get the truth of the complete building in Corinthians, because what is presented is elementary, a foundation. If I want to get the completeness of the building, what it is in the mind and counsel of God, I have to go to Ephesians. It is in the main the same idea. Scripture does not present the idea of two temples, but in the one case we are
carried on to the temple in its completeness, and in the other you get it in a rudimentary way.
I am going to speak first as to what is presented as to it in the Ephesians, and then to look a little at what comes before us in the Corinthians, because the latter brings out what one might call the practical bearing of the truth, which is very important to us. It is very helpful in the present day to understand aright the truth of the temple, to recognise the presence of the Spirit of God here, and its consequences, for the practical result of it is that you become vessels for the manifestation of the Spirit. The practical denial of the presence of the Spirit is the great sin of Christendom. One can see all around in professing Christianity men really gifted of God, but not in the truth of the temple, not apprehending the presence of the Spirit. I do not deny for a moment that they are gifted men, and that God uses them. He uses them up to the measure of the light they have; but the light which should come through them is greatly obstructed, and the saints of God do not get from such persons the benefit which they ought. The light is obstructed to a very large extent by the human mind, for where the presence of the Spirit of God is not recognised the human mind is allowed, it is in activity in the things of God, constructing them into a system, and the consequence is that the light of the Spirit is very greatly obstructed.
As I pointed out last time, in Ephesians 2 the apostle is working down from the truth of the body, or I should rather say, from the truth of the Head to the truth of the temple. He says, "Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord". We find here much
the same contrast of thought to Corinthians that I referred to in connection with the body. The temple, as I understand it, is here identified with the glory of the kingdom. You get the same connection in the Old Testament. When God's people were wanderers, moving about from place to place through the wilderness, God walked with them in a tent; God did not dwell in a temple then. The idea of a temple did not connect itself with the wanderings of God's people in the wilderness, but with a city and a fixed habitation. It speaks of the temple in Psalm 78, "He built his sanctuary like high palaces". But so long as the people of God were wanderers in the wilderness, God dwelt in a tent, that is, in grace He came down to their condition. There is a beautiful feature of grace in that. The temple connected itself in the Old Testament with the glory of the kingdom, and it was not until the man of peace, Solomon, reigned, that the temple was built. David was not allowed to build God a house, because he had shed much blood; but when the enemies were subdued, and the kingdom was established in peace in Solomon, then Solomon builds God a house. David and Solomon both form a type of Christ -- David as subduing the enemies, Solomon as reigning in peace.
I believe what I say as to the connection between the kingdom and the temple is confirmed by the fact that when the eternal state is spoken of in the Revelation, the kingdom having been delivered up, the idea of a temple is dropped, and the expression employed is that "the tabernacle of God is with men". God does not cease to dwell with men, He is their God and they are His people.
The thought of the temple in Ephesians connects itself, as I understand it, with the counsels of God in their accomplishment in the kingdom, "the administration of the fulness of times", which is identical with the kingdom. So we find a later allusion to the kingdom
in chapter 5, that "no ... idolater hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God". In the kingdom Christ is supreme, Christ is Lord. It is the mediatorial kingdom, which, though not exactly a Scripture term, is one which conveys the idea well, for Christ is the Mediator, and all the good which God has for man is administered in power through Christ. What is true now to faith will be true then in a public way. We get the blessings of the kingdom; "the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost"; but when the kingdom is established, righteousness, peace, and joy will rule in a public way through the Lord Jesus Christ; He will reign; and it will be the kingdom of God and of Christ; "The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever".
Now we find here that "all the building fitly framed together groweth". The temple is not here looked at as complete, but as growing, that is, growing spiritually, "unto an holy temple in the Lord". The expression "in the Lord" appears to me to connect the temple with the kingdom. As I said before, what will mark the kingdom will be the glory and supremacy of Christ. He is Lord to faith now, Lord to those who believe, and in the kingdom He will be publicly supreme and Lord. What faith gets now, peace, and grace, and reconciliation, will be for the earth then, for God's people down here; He will be Head and Husband of His people, and Head of the Gentiles; and these blessings which faith now enjoys will be brought into the world through the Lord Jesus Christ. Here we have, that the whole building "fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord". When it is viewed in the light of the kingdom, there is no hand of man seen in it, there is no work of man recorded at all; it is "fitly framed together", it "groweth", indicating that there is a divine energy in
every part of it -- it "groweth unto an holy temple", where there is nothing which can defile, "an holy temple in the Lord", in the One Who is supreme in the administration of the kingdom.
That is the view which is taken of the temple here; and we are further told this, it is "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets", that is, on the foundation of their testimony, for apostles and prophets are viewed as identified with their testimony, and the chief corner-stone is Jesus Christ. Paul speaks in Corinthians of Jesus Christ as the foundation that had been laid; and in Ephesians Jesus Christ is the chief corner-stone. There is no decline in the character.
Just one thought in corroboration of this which we can gather from the Revelation in the heavenly city. I am not confounding the two ideas, for no two ideas presented to us in Scripture are to be confounded; many ideas in Scripture run parallel, and every idea is distinct and unique, but one often serves to illustrate another. Now in the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, the foundations are garnished with all manner of precious stones; that is, distinctiveness is maintained, but everywhere there is refracted light; that is the idea of a precious stone. And the gates of the city "were twelve pearls, every several gate was of one pearl". The foundation is the beginning, and the gates are the completion of a city, as we read in the Old Testament, that the foundations of Jericho were laid in Hiel's firstborn, and the gates set up in his youngest son. It is exceedingly beautiful thus to see that there is no diminution in the perfectness of the city. So, too, in the temple the foundation is Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ is the chief corner-stone.
I do not think we have exactly the same idea in Corinthians. It says there, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" I doubt if that will be the form in which God will dwell in the temple in the kingdom; but it is
the form in which God is now dwelling. The verse in Corinthians which I have just quoted connects itself to a certain extent with the thought in the last verse of this chapter, "In whom ye also are built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit"; that is present. It is the status of Jew and Gentile as builded together by human instrumentality; it is not "fitly framed together"; that is connected with the temple. There are thus two ideas; one is of the temple, which connects itself with the kingdom, and the other of the habitation of God, which is present; that is, that God is dwelling here Spirit-wise, by the Spirit.
I do not propose to say much more on that side. My object in referring to Ephesians 2 was rather to show the church as the temple of God; and I believe it is the temple of God, as being the body of Christ. Everybody here may not quite grasp the connection of the two thoughts; but each successive truth which comes out in Ephesians 2 flows from the truth of the body, or rather of the head and the body, with which the subject begins. The church could not but be the temple of God if it is the body of Christ, as the Lord's own body when He was down here could not but be the temple of God, for the simple reason that of necessity God was there.
Now we will turn to 1 Corinthians 3:16: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are". I trust the Lord may enable me to suggest a few thoughts in connection with this passage, which is of great importance to us practically. Here you come on to different ground from that in Ephesians. The counsel of God is not the prominent thought here; it is the prominent thought in Ephesians 2, and therefore the whole building is said to be fitly framed together, and to grow
unto a holy temple. Here it is somewhat different; the building is looked at in connection with the responsible work of man, and this is another side of the truth. It is a very great thing to see the two sides of a truth in Scripture; the same truth may be presented on the one side in connection with the counsel of God, and on the other in connection with the responsibility of man. Hence being viewed on the latter side you get here the possibility of the temple of God being defiled, and judgment coming upon the defiler.
Now I can understand the question being asked, in fact I have asked it myself many times, Why is the thought of the temple introduced in Corinthians? I believe it is because the kingdom is true to faith, though no one would venture to say that the kingdom is yet manifested. Christ is Lord to faith, and so the kingdom is true to faith. Therefore, on the same principle, the temple is true to faith; that is, that what will have its accomplishment, its full result hereafter in the day of the glory of Christ, is already true for faith. That is a great principle in Christianity. Everything that is established for God in Christ, is true to faith. Otherwise, how would you understand the passage in Hebrews 12, "Ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel". You could not understand that passage if you did not see that every item in it is established in Christ; you could not otherwise be said to have "come" to it; but the fact is, that having come in faith to Christ, you have come to all which is established in Christ. Therefore you have come to the kingdom in that sense: "We receiving a kingdom
which cannot be moved". It is my conviction that so far as God is concerned, every purpose and counsel is settled and established in Christ: "All the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us"; that is, by faith. You are entitled in faith to take up all these things; they are all good for faith, the kingdom is good for faith, and so, too, the temple, for Christ is in glory, and the glory of God is displayed in Him; and the Spirit of God being here, the apostle takes up the thought of the temple in connection with man's responsibility.
There is another point in connection with the church which I would like to bring forward by the grace of God, and that is, it forms as the temple a link between the past and the future. Do you think that if God has once established His temple upon earth He gives up the idea of a temple? Once God has set up His temple here, you may be sure man cannot abolish it. The temple at Jerusalem was God's sanctuary, in the place of His choice. One of the most instructive studies that I know of in the Old Testament is the close of Psalm 78. God had rejected Shiloh, and the tabernacle in which He dwelt among men. He chose not the tribe of Ephraim with which Shiloh was connected; but He "chose the tribe of Judah, the mount Zion which he loved"; He chose David; He took him from the sheepfolds to feed Jacob, His people, "and he built his sanctuary like high palaces, like the earth which he hath established for ever". That is what God did; and nothing can set it aside. Because of God's temple at Jerusalem, kings are to bring presents unto Him. But God could say to a stiff-necked people, "the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands", and hence in the setting aside of Jerusalem, the church, as God's temple, forms a link between the past and the future; that is, the thought of the temple is not given up, only instead of the temple being local and material, as it has been and
will be, it is now composed of living stones; "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"
There is another point of interest in connection with the church; you do not find the thought of the temple coming out until in a certain sense there was freedom from Jerusalem. In the first phase of the church, as is seen in the earlier part of the Acts of the Apostles, Jerusalem was looked upon as a church centre; and when a serious question arose at Antioch it was referred to the apostles and elders at Jerusalem, and Paul and Silas went about afterwards in every direction carrying the decrees of the apostles and elders. Doubtless divine wisdom was in it, but I think saints had to learn the truth that the Holy Spirit was sufficient for the assembly apart from Jerusalem. And that is the ground which Paul takes in the epistle to the Corinthians, when he says, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you". I think Paul was the first who began to build distinctly on that foundation, and a very important foundation it was, too; for the time came when, in the judgment of God, Jerusalem could be no longer a centre. God allowed it at first in divine wisdom, that the work should be consolidated in Jew and Gentile; but it was a state of things which was not destined to continue.
It is to be noticed that in the first epistle to the Corinthians there are three leading truths: the first is the temple; the second is the body -- "the Christ" really; and the third is the victory over death, in connection with the prophecy, "Death is swallowed up in victory". And these privileges, which belong to God's people upon earth in a literal way, belong now to the church in a spiritual way; for saints are the temple of God, a privilege which is proper to Israel; they have the Christ, for they are His body; and they have the victory given them over death.'In Him we stand a heavenly band,
Where He Himself is gone'.THE ESSENTIAL TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY
DELIVERANCE
THE ONE BODY IS CHRIST'S BODY
GOD PRESENTED TO MAN, AND MAN PRESENTED BEFORE GOD
THE MAN OF GOD
THE SERVICE OF GRACE AND ITS RESULTS IN THE SAINTS
THE GOSPEL
THE NEW COVENANT MINISTRY
THE MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION
PROGRESS AND GROWTH
'Eternal love their portion is,
Where love has found its rest'. (Hymn 178)DISPLAY
THE ASSEMBLY IN FOUR ASPECTS
THE BODY
GOD'S TEMPLE