by Theodore
Austin-Sparks
Chapter 2 - The Natural and the Spiritual
The Wisdom of the World and
the Things of the Spirit
Human Predilections,
Sympathies and Antipathies
The Tragedy of Arrested
Growth
Chapter 3 - Why the Foundations Should be Soundly Laid
Why the Foundations Should be
Soundly Laid
Individual Responsibility for
Building
Resurrection more than
Elevation
Reading: Psalm 11:1-7 (Note verse 3); 1 Cor. 3:11; 2 Tim. 2:19.
“If the foundations be
destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
“For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus
Christ.”
“Howbeit the firm foundation of God standeth...”
In
referring to this eleventh Psalm we cannot be sure exactly as to when it was
written; that is, as to exactly what the incidents were, or the historic events
which gave rise to it; but whenever it was written, it was clearly written in a
time of very severe stress, when the circumstances were very difficult, and the
Psalmist’s position from man’s standpoint was a very precarious one, full of
peril, and as man judged, full of pending disaster. It was a time when whatever
those foundations were literally, the foundations were assailed; the very
foundations had become subjected to a bitter assault; and again, from the human
standpoint the foundations were destroyed; as man looked at things, the
foundations had been destroyed. David was in the vortex of that tumult with
which we are not unfamiliar, made up of all external things seeming to prove
that the situation was hopeless. Yet inwardly there was something holding which
would not give consent to that, simply an unexplained, undefined reality in the
heart which in effect said: It is not so. Because of the appearances and all
the external evidences which would go to prove that it was so, David was counselled to flee, to abandon the whole situation to save
his face, to save his very life; to flee to the mountain, to take refuge in
some earthly place of security. A mountain sometimes appears to be a very
secure place. It is not always so from the spiritual standpoint, and here is
one of those occasions when however substantial a refuge a mountain may appear
to be, it is a place of weakness if hiding in it is the result of fear. They
advised him to flee to the mountain, to take refuge in the mountain, and David
refused the counsel and said: “In Jehovah do I take refuge.”
We
gather from the Psalm, and the one preceding it, that a wicked one, or wicked
men occupied position and power. The tenth psalm contains some half-a-dozen
references to the wicked, the wicked one. Whoever this was, or whoever they
were, they occupied a place of great power and were menacing the heritage of
God, and striking at the very foundation of God’s inheritance. Now in the midst
of it all one question arose. It is the only question; and the whole situation
is gathered up into this one question: “If the foundations be destroyed, what
can the righteous do?” That does not mean that David consented to the
suggestion that they were destroyed: although there is a marginal rendering
which would make this verse a part of the advice and counsel of his fearful
friends. The marginal rendering would make it follow on as a statement: “For
the foundations are destroyed”; if so, “what can the righteous do?”
Well,
if that is the right way to read it, it all the more exempts David and shows
that he is not involved in it. But if it is a question into which David enters
simply as a matter of consideration—for it is perfectly clear that he does not
yield to it—it gives us some very valuable basis for a very important
consideration. “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
The answer, of course, is obvious; there is only one answer to that question:
“Nothing.” If the foundations are destroyed the righteous can do nothing, the
situation is utterly hopeless; then the advice of
these men is good advice. Abandon the situation and take some ground of earthly
security, give it all up, abandon your vision, your vision is a false one, it
offers nothing. Now that is one line along which consideration must be pursued
for a little while. The other line is by placing a very strong line underneath
the note of interrogation. That is, it is still a matter of question: “If the
foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” “If the foundations be destroyed...”. Are they after all, in spite of all appearances, are the
foundations destroyed? No matter how things seem to be and what men say about
things as to the hopelessness of the situation, and as to the great power as
well as the treachery of the Evil One, are the foundations destroyed? Is there
reason for abandoning the vision? Should we take what men would call a safer
course, and find ourselves some line of greater security in this very
precarious situation?
I
am quite sure that those of you who are thinking, and looking with your inner
eyes into things as they are today, have already caught the meaning of this
psalm, and of this verse. There is undoubtedly a tremendous onslaught from the
Evil One upon the foundations; the foundations of God’s heritage are assailed
bitterly, fiercely, and treacherously—for you notice in the Psalm the elements
of treachery associated with the activity of the enemy, of the Wicked. He
shoots in the dark. He does not come out into the open, and his is not warfare,
his is murder. He is hiding himself. He does not give a fair and square chance
of battle. He keeps out of the way and shoots in treachery from dark places.
And his antagonism, his treachery is directed at the very foundations of the
life of the people of God.
Now
there are two ways in which we have to look at this question of the destroying
of the foundations. In a sense, and in the deepest sense, that is an absolute
impossibility. It is impossible to destroy the foundations. The other two
passages have been drawn in to support that side of things. “For other
foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Can
that be destroyed? Never! Everything has been allowed to test its power of
destruction upon Him, every hammer of satanic bitterness and treachery has
fallen upon that anvil and the anvil has broken the hammer and remains itself
without a scar: “Howbeit the firm foundation of God standeth.”
So that from one standpoint, the true standpoint, the foundations
cannot be destroyed.
But
there is another standpoint from which this has to be regarded which does
amount to a virtual destruction of the foundation, not an actual destruction,
but a virtual destruction, it amounts to it in effect.
I mean this, that the enemy is so against the foundations for their destruction, that he is doing everything he can to get the
people to put up a superstructure of profession, of a supposed Christian life,
of an assumed relationship to God without any foundation at all. And that is a
treachery in the train of which will come unspeakable disaster, because all
those who do that are bound to come down, they are bound to collapse, and then
they will blame God. The enemy will rush in at once into their minds and say:
You put your trust in God; He has let you down. In that sense the foundations
are destroyed, they are nullified by being kept out. There is a great deal of
that going on today.
Now
it is from those two standpoints that we for a moment have to look at this
primary proposition: “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous
do?” That means that right at the outset we have to give very special attention
to the matter of having God’s foundation. That foundation will become
impregnable and indestructible once it is established, but it is of importance
beyond any other importance for you and for me that we have God’s foundation,
and that foundation well and truly laid. The whole situation is entirely
hopeless unless that is so.
We
are fast entering into the period of this world’s history when the foundations
of faith are to be subjected to the ultimate test. God’s great emphasis today
is being brought to bear upon the state of His own people. He is centering His
attention upon His people. There have been great periods when His whole
attention was directed through His people upon the multitudes of unsaved; they
were great days of ingathering through the evangel. There may yet come in the
ordering of God’s purposes still further emphasis of that kind when again He
will reach out in a special way to gather in lost sheep. He is not entirely
ignoring that work today, and He will not have us ignore it. But anyone who
knows the present situation will see that God’s main work today, for which He
is giving Himself, is not for the ingathering of multitudes of unsaved souls;
but you do find that everywhere there is a growing movement of God in stirring
the hearts of His own people, deepening the hunger, making manifest weakness
and need, and putting Christians everywhere to the test. Are you facing times
of spiritual trial and testing? Are you finding it easier today to live the
life of the saint than it used to be? If we are honest in our hearts we will
say: No, it is certainly more difficult and our spiritual lives are very rarely
out of the fire. We seem constantly to be brought back to the place of testing,
and every testing seems to be a deeper one than that which preceded it. The
Lord is centering upon His people and the effect of it all is to get down to
foundations, and, in a day when God is focussing upon
foundations, the Devil is particularly concerned to get people without
foundations, and that explains great movements of today which have no
foundations. We are passing swiftly into a time of the ultimate test of our foundation.
The question for every one of us will be as to really whether we have God’s
foundation adequately, sufficiently laid as the basis of our faith. We have to
see, of course, what those foundations are, or what that foundation is
inclusively, but I simply now draw attention to the necessity. Superficiality
of spiritual life will not last long; it will go. The winds of God are going to
blow and then we shall discover how deep our roots are. Therein then is the
need for considering the question of foundations.
Then
on the other hand, the other point of view: the foundation being laid, whatever
may be the appearances, the circumstances, the human vortex, man’s opinion,
there is no reason whatever to abandon the vision. It is just there that I want
to place my finger for a minute or two, not intending to go into the nature of
the foundation at present, but just to point out what is raised by this
question.
There
is a counsel of despair today over spiritual conditions, and David was not
exclusive in this sense, one by himself; we all know what that counsel is. I
mean that we all know what it is to have the suggestion made to us: “You are
seeking to realise an impossible thing, your standard
is an impossible standard; that which you have set up as your goal is
impossible. Your vision is the vision of an idealist, but it is altogether
impracticable, impossible of realization. Look, look at the havoc that the
enemy has made. Wherever there was that which represented something extra,
something fuller, something larger, deeper, greater of Christ, whenever there
was that which aimed at the ultimate end of God and went beyond what obtained
in its day, the enemy made an awful mess there, the enemy assailed and made
havoc. History has repeated itself again and again and again in that way, and
look at the mess that the enemy has made on the earth amongst the Lord’s
people. Look at the situation, the power, the cunning and treachery of the
enemy, and how he is in the place of power, how much he has things his way, how
hopeless, how weak you are in the presence of this. Look at the spiritual state
of the Lord’s people today. By far the greater majority of them are without
real spiritual hunger, are content with their merely formal religion, and even
where there are any who are spiritually hungry and honestly want to go on with
God, when they are put to the test they will not pay the price. Somehow or
other that hand of tradition, long standing acceptance, that hand of a historic
system, reaches out just as they are beginning to move out with the Lord, and
although they have indicated their desire, their wish, their longing to go on
with the Lord, and have really honestly intended to do so, just at the moment
when some step is to be taken which will lead them out and lead them on with
the Lord, something happens, some subtlety of the enemy, some treachery of the
Adversary, some fear within them at the consequences of their step, and that
hand brings them back. You had better abandon your vision,
you had better take some lower ground. You had better find some place of
greater assurance, some mountain of a more normal and natural course of things.
You are aiming too high, the situation is hopeless, abandon it!”
I
suppose most of us know something of that counsel from within and from without.
The Lord Jesus knew something about it. That was the sum total of His
temptation for forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. He had stepped
out into a realm which was the highest that this world had ever known, and the
enemy’s whole object was to bring Him down—by suggestion, by treachery, by
argument—to take a lower level. He would say: Your course is an impossible one.
Have more sure ground under your feet than that. He would turn the Lord Jesus
aside. The whole question arises in the presence of such arguments: “Are the
foundations destroyed?” If they are, well then the counsel is good advice, we
had better give it all up; if they are not, then there
is no reason for abandoning the vision. Are the foundations destroyed? Let us
press that in this practical way. Has God laid a foundation? We may lay many
foundations and find that they are no good. The question is: Has God laid a
foundation? The Word tells us quite clearly that He has. Does God lay a foundation without intending a superstructure? Surely
that would be folly, and who would charge God with folly? Then if God has laid
a foundation and His foundation is indestructible, He intends that foundation
to be built upon, and intends to have a building upon it. Can God’s intention
eventually and ultimately be frustrated by the enemy? No more than His
foundation can be destroyed! He will have His object. What is God’s foundation?
It is Jesus Christ. He is now beyond reach of all the forces of destruction.
What is God’s superstructure? It is Christ. Call it by other names if you like:
the Church which is His Body, the Company conformed to the image of His Son;
but whatever you may term it, it is in the intention of God, Christ
developed to fulness in the saints. That can never be
destroyed. That can never be overthrown. God will have it.
If
we are thinking of the superstructure as some movement, some organisation, some formulated system of Christian work and
enterprise, well, we have a wrong conception of God’s superstructure. God’s
superstructure is saints growing in the image of His Son, and while Christ
remains, the purpose of God concerning those who are Christ’s remains, and
God’s purpose can never be defeated. If we have abandoned ourselves to see
something on the earth achieved, accomplished successfully, well then we shall
come to the place where the counsel will be quite
good counsel to let it go, and we shall be very unwise to hold on to it. But if
we have abandoned ourselves to presenting every man perfect in Christ, we are
not on a hopeless line. That is God’s intention, fixed and settled before ever
this world with all its changes and its Devil came into being. “...The works
were finished from the foundation of the world.” Are you trying to make work
for the Lord? Are you trying to increase the Lord’s work? Give it up. Enter
into the works that have already been finished and you have got a clear way
right through.
If
you are contemplating some call which the Lord has given you to ministry, let
me tell you the secret of getting through, coming out at the other end in
triumph, with fruit. Yes, certainly—you may not see it—but you will do so.
Start by saying: “Lord, this was all done before the world was; I am coming
into the things done and I am working with You in the realisation of the accomplished thing. I am going to enter
into the thing that has been done in eternity, in the counsels of God, which
relates to this specific ministry. I enter into it by faith; working out from
the settled purpose of God in eternity past.” And you will come out of that
ministry with fruit. God will never send you anywhere by His Holy Spirit, where
there is not fruit. You may not see it now, you will later; God knows. He works
upon a known accomplishment. He says to an apostle, leading him into a heathen city
of wickedness and pollution: “...be not afraid... for I have much people in
this city.” Not, “I am going to get much people”, but “I have much people in
this city.” “Lord, when did You get them?” “Before
ever you came into being, before this world was!” That is the principle of God.
The necessity for doing the works of the Lord and for a Spirit-governed and
directed life. That is to get right on to the foundation concerning which there
need be no argument of despair and abandonment; it is standing upon something
solid which cannot be destroyed.
Oh,
to have our life founded upon that; our faith for salvation, to have all our
service, our ministry founded upon that. Oh, to be delivered from things which
being of man, even religiously, will not stand the test; and to be brought into
the things which are of God and which will go through all the testing. “...the
firm foundation of God standeth.” It cannot be
destroyed. To be on that there is no need to give up. There will be times of
sore trial and testing when the counselling of our
own hearts will suggest a fleeing, abandoning, giving up, but that is the
counsel of fear. There is one thing about the counsel of fear you may always
bear in mind. Fear never sees everything.
Fear only sees one thing. Fear only sees the present thing and is blind to all
the other factors. Fear, on the part of the spies who first
went out into the land, made them see just one thing, the difficulties, and
blinded them to the asset, God. Faith sees all the difficulties and,
while faith does not see God perhaps as imminent, it always sees Him as
transcendent. Fear is short-sighted. Fear is very limited in its apprehension;
and this was a counsel of fear: “Flee... to your mountain.” Why? “Well, look at
things, look how they are. Isn’t it obvious that you are on a wrong course and
the enemy is just doing as he likes?” Fear could say that well enough, but
David had another side. It was the side of faith, and he said: “In Jehovah do I
take refuge. How say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to
your mountain.” Faith sees that God’s foundation cannot be moved, cannot be
destroyed, and whatever the appearances may be, faith looks beyond the
appearances, beyond the circumstances, cleaves to the Lord and makes Him the
refuge, and comes through.
Some
people have suggested that the 11th Psalm was written by David in the day when
Saul was pursuing him. I cannot see how that can be because when Saul
persecuted David he fled, and here he is saying he will not flee. Others say it
was in the day of Absalom’s treachery and the advice given to David was to
flee. Well, he did flee then, but here he is saying that he will not flee. You
have to find some other historic setting for it. He did not flee, that is the
point. Why didn’t he flee and abandon that situation, and say: “Yes, you are
right, he is making a mess, he has struck a blow at the very foundation of
things; I had better find some line of less resistance.” Why did he not take
that attitude? Simply because the eyes of his heart were fixed upon the Lord and
he had no personal interests to serve; no organisation,
no society, no movement to which he was so attached that if it were blown to
pieces his whole life would go with it. No, it was the Lord. It is a great
thing to be with the Lord and to be delivered from lesser things, to be one
with the Lord in His purpose. What if all the other goes up in smoke? You were
not in that at all, that is not the thing upon which your heart was set. What
you were after was not a temporary thing, something on the earth; it was a
spiritual and eternal thing and nothing can destroy that.
Now,
beloved, you see the issue of this. You and I have got to be founded upon God’s
objective. The thing which has got to be the thing which determines all our
life, all our activity has to be God’s end. And what is God’s end? Let it be
settled once and for all that God’s end is not to have something anchored to
this earth, even with His Name upon it. Everything anchored to this earth will
go with the earth. God’s object is to have a spiritual thing in the life of His
people; something which relates them to His Son in a growing and increasing
way—the increase of Christ. It matters nothing about all the rest. All the
merely temporary aspects of the work are of very little importance at all. The
thing that matters is that men and women are being perfected in Christ. We are
not here to put something down and then try and get men and women to join that,
attach themselves to that—not even a “testimony”, as we might call it. Let us
be careful that we start at the right end. We are not here on this earth to set
up a teaching, and then try to get people to come into that teaching. If you go
to your New Testament you will find people came together because they were in
it already. They did not come to join it. The testimony is not something that
you join. You are joined by being in the testimony. Do you get that? That is a
tremendously important thing in connection with this whole matter which we are
now considering. We shall be disappointed, and will have a hard time if we try
to get people to adopt something, take it on, accept
it. Let us, in the power of the Holy Spirit, give our witness,
let the Lord do the work in our hearts, and when He does His work in our hearts
we will cleave to one another. You will have the expression of the Church here
on the earth as a result of the work done inside and not in something you have
brought together, even in a teaching, a testimony, or a system even called a
“fellowship”. Let us be careful in thinking we can join a fellowship.
Fellowship is a thing that is;
it is the result of something inward.
Now
I gather up all I have said into this law. The objective is to have an inward
life in God, and if we are on that line we are on something that can never be
destroyed. If your objective is anything else, to have some outward form or
order, you are on a line that will be destroyed, it will suffer, it will be broken up. That is why we find so many splittings up in things. Here is a pure thing which has
been wrought into a few lives, and because the same thing has been done in that
little company they are together in a beautiful oneness, and there they do
represent something very much of God; but then others begin to join it, to
attach themselves to it, or to accept the teaching. Then another generation
comes along and takes up the teaching of that generation, and the thing has not
been done in those who adhere or succeed,
and so you get the carrying on of a teaching, or a tradition, without the
inward thing. What happens? Before long the thing is divided, and the divisions
are endless. You cannot divide a thing which is the one thing of Christ in each heart;
that makes for fellowship, that is indestructible. But
if it is anything external merely, historical, traditional, doctrinal, it can
be split into as many fragments as there are people in it. The foundation is
Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ in the heart, growing, developing, being fully
formed in the saints. That is an indestructible line—Christ as the foundation
within us.
I
think that we want to be far more concerned with the spiritual growth of one
another. Everything must come within that object: the spiritual growth of one
another. Everything else will come that is good and right; any kind of outward
expression will be a result of it, but this is the basic thing, our mutual
spiritual development, the increase of Christ, and that all hell’s activities
and treacheries can never destroy. It is God’s foundation in us which stands.
Reading: Psalm 11:1-4; 1 Cor. 3:9-17.
As
we proceed with our consideration of foundations there is a third thing. In the
first letter to the Corinthians we have another way in which foundations are
virtually destroyed, at least in a very real measure. It is by what is put on
them; the building that is placed upon them. Not utterly and altogether and
finally are they destroyed by this means, but they are robbed of their supreme
value, and thus they are in their main virtue destroyed. You will see what I
mean by the apostle’s words: “I laid a foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let each man take heed how he buildeth thereon.” And then Paul proposes that some build
with certain materials and others build with other materials. Then a testing
fire from God comes to try out that superstructure; and the wood, hay and
stubble material goes up in smoke, and when it has all gone the question is:
Well, what was the value of that foundation if when all is said and done
nothing is on it? In that way the foundation is in its supreme significance and
value destroyed. The apostle tells us that those who do that sort of thing may
be saved people, and, because they have Christ the foundation is there; they
themselves may not lose their salvation, but then they were not saved just to
be saved. Christ did not come into them just to be there. He was not the
foundation just to remain the foundation. A foundation presupposes a
superstructure, it points to it, implies it, necessitates it. There is no
justification in having a foundation if you have no superstructure. The
superstructure is the justification of the foundation. What would you think of
a builder who went round everywhere putting down foundations, and then you went
round the earth seeing a lot of foundations and that is all you saw;
foundations put in year after year and as you passed on, you saw nothing but
foundations. You would say: Well, that fellow did not justify his existence, he did not justify his labour.
The only justification for putting those foundations in is that he put
something on them.
The
justification of our salvation is that there is a superstructure; for our
salvation involves that, and we are not justified as saved ones until God’s
building is up. God is justified in saving us when He has His building. That is
the justification of the grace of God. So the apostle goes on with the language
about God’s temple: “Ye are God’s building.” God’s building. Now what we are putting
upon our salvation, what we are building is either going to justify the
foundation, or to, virtually, for all divine intents and purposes, destroy the
foundation; that is, render it vain in the full purpose of God. That is plain.
Do you see what I mean? There is a way of rendering even the divine foundation well nigh valueless, and robbing it of its real virtue by
putting up something not according to Christ. Now that is very simple and very
elementary, but it will help us on a little.
The
superstructure has to be in keeping with the foundation. It has to be
spiritually and morally of a piece, it has to be alike. What the foundation is,
the superstructure has to be. The building has to take character from the
foundation. The foundation is said to be Jesus Christ and the whole building
has to take its character and nature from its foundation. Think of de-rooted
foundations after an excavation down to the bottommost depths of hell; for that
is where Christ laid the foundation. He excavated down to the very bottommost
depths of sin; He touched rock-bottom to lay the foundation of our salvation.
Deeper He could not go. He ploughed through hell to lay the foundations of our
eternal redemption. Now think of putting up a flimsy wood, hay, stubble
building upon that. Does that justify those foundations? Something worthy of
Christ is required, something worthy of the work that He has accomplished,
something which will speak of the greatness of His grace and His glory. That is
God’s building.
When
we have said that, and seen that, we can come to this letter to the Corinthians
and let the letter itself explain that to us. You remember that we are thinking
of destroying the foundations in this sense, that something not worthy of
Christ is put upon them.
Now
take up your letter to the Corinthians and we will cover some familiar ground.
Remember this whole letter represents the problem which confronted the apostle
as he contemplated visiting Corinth. There was a situation there with many
sides which represented for him a problem calculated to break the heart and
destroy the faith of anyone whose foundations were not well laid in themselves. I am quite sure before we are through you will
see that to face a situation like that, you will need to have foundations well
laid in yourselves.
The
first chapter introduces you to the first phase of his problem. Before you are
through that chapter you discover that in that assembly of believers at Corinth
the spirit of the world outside, the Corinthian spirit, had gained access and
taken hold. The spirit of the world at Corinth was the spirit of worldly
wisdom; it was a centre and citadel of philosophy.
They had no better entertainment than to discuss the latest phase of
philosophy, the new thing in thought. And Corinth was a place where human
reason had full play and everything was determined in its value by the
reasoning powers of the mind; argument, debate, discussion. It was a world-centre of rationalism, and that had crept into the assembly
of the Lord’s people. And what we find is that the Lord’s people in that spirit,
in that mind, had taken hold of spiritual things, heavenly things, things of
God, and brought them down to the level of mere human argument, debate,
discussion, and reason; applying all the time the test of human reason to them
and seeking so to handle them by the intellectual faculty as to bring them
within the limited compass of man’s own power of mind. Thus they were
discussing what the apostle calls the things of the Spirit of God, and bringing
heavenly, eternal, spiritual things down there; dragging the things of eternity
into the school of worldly rationalistic discussion, debate, argument. Of
course, that was not exclusively the way of the Corinthians of Paul’s day.
There is plenty of that today. Again and again we have come up against people whose
one great obstacle to the things of the Spirit of God is their own head. They
will get their head in the way; and what they cannot reduce to their own
intellectual comprehension, they reject. And when you say: Look here, you will
have to stop arguing, discussing, give God a chance along the line of faith,
they will answer: Why have we got brains? That means our brains are the
capacity of eternal things. If that is so, God help the eternal things! Well,
that was the first phase of Paul’s problem, no little one. Those of us who have
met it even in a little way know what a big difficulty it is.
Pass
into chapter two and we find the same thing carried on for a bit, and then as
we move on and begin the next chapter we find we come into the realm of human
preferences, human likes and dislikes in the direction of teaching and
teachers, preaching and preachers, the messengers of God and their messages.
One school says: Now Paul is the man we like, and Paul’s line of things is the
line we like. You may like Apollos or Peter, but as
for us, well, Paul is our man. Within the same assembly another company are saying: We prefer Apollos and
his line of things. You may have Paul, and you have Peter, but we like Apollos. The third company were
saying: All right, if you like Paul and if you like Apollos
you may have them, we will stick to Peter. There was a fourth class who said in
a superior way: Well, if you like to have Paul, you Apollos,
and you Peter, you may, but we belong to Christ (something quite different from
the other, of course). That is the implication, you see, making Christ a party.
You know when human preferences run riot they are awfully difficult things to
handle. That was there; their sympathies and antipathies; and these are deeply
rooted things in human nature. It takes a lot of grace to get over them. Of
course, that was their condemnation. If it does take a lot of grace to get over
these things, and you have not got over them, you have not got a lot of grace.
That was Paul’s problem, the thing which Paul had to face and deal with and for
which he had a responsibility before God.
In
chapter three again you find a state which is perhaps more difficult, that of
unduly delayed maturity. After some considerable time of being God’s people and
having the things of God in their midst, Paul says that he could not speak to
them as unto spiritual but as unto carnal, as unto babes. That is a tragedy.
There are perhaps few more pathetic tragedies in human life than to see
arrested growth in infancy while years go on. That is how things were at
Corinth. Paul says it was carnality which had caused the arrest, and carnality
always does cause arrest, and when they ought to have been mature they were
still helpless, dependent, spiritual infants, without understanding,
perception, capacity to take spiritual responsibility.
A very difficult thing to deal with that. Beloved,
that was not peculiar to Corinth or Paul’s day. Multitudes of the Lord’s people
are like that today. Oh, yes, it is a pathetic situation to find people who
have known the Lord for years, decades, who are still without their spiritual
faculties developed to a state where they can take spiritual responsibility,
where they know and have not to be told! There are multitudes like that. The
reasons are not always the same. It is true that carnality is the cause of that
very often, but I am afraid poor teaching is also responsible for that in many
cases. They have not been fed and nourished. It is a tragic situation with
which we are met today; but there it is, whatever the cause. In this case it
was their own responsibility, their own fault, their carnality.
You
pass to chapter four and find the apostle speaking with language which
indicates spiritual pride. It takes this form. The Lord had blessed them with
spiritual gifts and done very gracious things for them, put them in possession
of His spiritual riches, and they were boasting of those possessions, boasting
of these things as though they had acquired them by their own ability, had
achieved them by their own efforts; and the apostle says: “...if thou didst
receive it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not
received it?” In other words: Why are you trying to make people think that your
possessions spiritually are the result of your own spiritual ability,
that you have by your own effort attained unto this? Why don’t you recognise that it is all the grace of God, and that you are
the humble dependants upon the Lord? They were
boasting of their spiritual gifts as though they were their spiritual
attainments and not gifts.
Spiritual pride is a terrible thing. Ordinary pride is bad enough,
always the hallmark of ignorance, but spiritual pride is a far worse thing.
Then
there is the next phase of the problem confronting Paul. That alone would
dishearten a good many, but put them all together! Chapter
five. Here we dare not tarry. “It is actually reported that there is
fornication among you...” Amongst believers? In an assembly of the Lord’s people? Yes, a tragic story
which has been repeated again and again through the ages. But
oh, the heartbreak to any man who had any real sense of spiritual
responsibility for souls, to come up against that.
Chapter six. Believers, members of the Body of Christ
dragging one another into the courts of earthly judgment, having writs issued
against one another, summoning one another before the magistrate, charging one
another, lawsuits before the ungodly. Fellow members of the Body of
Christ! Oh, what a misapprehension of the Body of Christ. That is, they were
standing up and fighting for their own rights.
He
goes on. You come soon upon some terrible disorders at the Lord’s Table. One
was that they were turning the Lord’s Table into a revelry,
a feast. People better off in this world’s goods were bringing to the feast
luxuries, and people who were poorly off could only just bring their little,
and there was the class distinction, and all that sort of thing. The apostle
says: Have you not homes? If you want to glut yourselves at least have the
decency to do it in your own home in private, do not do it as an assembly of
the Lord’s people. You see they often turned their common meal into a
sacrament. They met together, ate and drank together and then as spontaneously
as if it were the natural thing they made of their meal a testimony, but this
thing had so degenerated as to make it a commonplace, as we have mentioned, and
all the glory, beauty, sacredness of the Body of Christ and Blood of Christ had
been dragged down to this. No small problem that in itself to have to deal
with. There were other aspects of this matter which we will not deal with.
You
pass on still further and you come to disorders in the assembly in general.
People usurping authority, and you know what the
apostle has to say about disorder in the House of God. The place of men is
under the sovereign headship of Christ in a spirit of subjection, fulfilling
their ministry in the House of God. But here men were taking authority
themselves and not having their authority in subjection to Christ. And then
women, out of their divinely appointed place, upsetting the whole order of the
assembly. The apostle tells them what this means: “You get out of your divine
covering and get into touch with the evil spirits who deceived Eve. The Devil
is out to disintegrate this assembly along the same line, and you are giving
him the chance he wants by this disorder.” The whole matter was one of order.
The Lord has an order for His House, and all may fulfil
their ministry—women and men—if they keep to His order.
I
think any one who had not the foundations in himself
well established would give up this situation, abandon it, run away, do what
the counsellors advised David to do, flee to the
mountain. “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Surely
with a situation like that the foundations are destroyed? Not a bit of it! I
come back and see that after all Paul does not run away, he does not accept
that the foundations are destroyed, but he does see that those foundations are
being robbed of their value by all this. This is the thing which destroys the
foundations in their real virtue.
Now
do you want an exposition of what Paul means by wood, hay, stubble? That is it!
The Word interprets itself. What did he mean by putting upon the foundation a
superstructure of wood, hay, stubble? He meant all that. Divisions,
schisms, worldly wisdom, intellectual glorying, and all the rest. This
is something which will be destroyed by the fire. What will you have left? When
you are building with that material you cannot be building with the other at
the same time, therefore you will have nothing left. Do you want an exposition
of what Paul means in the second chapter by the spiritual and the natural? “Now
the natural man receiveth not the things of the
Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them,
because they are spiritually judged (discerned).” Natural and
spiritual. We know that word natural, in the Greek, is the word soulical, or soulish man, and he is set over against the
spiritual man. What is the soulish man? One Corinthians tells you all that. The
man who is handling spiritual things with natural wisdom, he is the soulish
man. The man who is influenced and actuated by his own
natural likes and dislikes, preferences, sympathies and antipathies—Paul, Apollos, Peter—that is the soulish man. But over
against him is set the spiritual man. The man who is not
actuated primarily by his own worldly reason, but looks to the Lord the Spirit
for his understanding in the things of the Lord. The spiritual man is
never influenced or governed by his own likes or dislikes for people or
teaching or anything else. He is actuated by what the Lord likes. He does not
say: I prefer this man to that, this line of teaching to that. He says: Has
Paul got something of Christ? Well, I will have all,
it is Christ I am after. Never mind what kind of a vessel,
it is Christ I am after. There are no divisions in the spiritual man, no
preferences in the spiritual man. He may know secretly what naturally he would
like, but he does not allow those things to come to prejudice his mind or in
any way affect his relationship. The spiritual man does not go to law with a
believer to fight for his own rights. The spiritual man is not guilty of
fornication. The spiritual man does not bring disorder into the House of God;
it is the man of soul who does that. You see you have got a clear exposition
with the whole letter of the meaning of the natural or psychical and spiritual.
Do
you see what I am getting at? It brings me right back to my beginning. What
kind of a building is to be suitable to the divine foundation? Well, we have
seen how Paul faced his problem. Oh, magnificent example of how to face a
spiritual problem! I am not coveting to face a problem like that in one
assembly. God forbid that it ever should be, but I do see here the most
magnificent example of how a humanly impossible situation is faced, met, dealt
with, and triumphed over. I am so glad Paul won through. Read the second letter
and you see he has won, he is on top, and they are out with him. Everything was
in a state of suspense so far as ministry was concerned in his first letter.
The second letter is the letter of ministry. “Therefore seeing we have received
this ministry, even as we obtained mercy, we faint not; but we have renounced
the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of
God deceitfully; but by the manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to
every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” Then a wonderful chapter on godly
sorrow leading to repentance, and what the fruit of that repentance is. But he
has won, that is the point; solved the problem from every standpoint. How did
he do it? Open at chapter one again. I see Paul away there with this whole
problem spread out before him. Yes, bowed, concerned, praying, saying: Lord, this is a terrible thing, only You can meet
it, but something must be done, this does not glorify You. Give me the key to
the situation, put into my hand the key to the whole thing. And as he sought
the Lord, it flashed into him, and perhaps he shouted: I have found it, and sat
down to write. Chapter one, put your pencil under every reference to the Lord
Jesus and you will have seventeen blue pencil marks in thirty-one verses, an
average of more than one to every two verses. Gather that all up into the grand
statement: “For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ,
and him crucified.” “For other foundation can no man
lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” What is the solution?
Giving the Lord Jesus His full and right place! Put the Lord Jesus into His
place as absolute Lord in the heart, in the life, in the assembly, and all
these foul birds will go out before the light. If the Lord Jesus is dominant in
our hearts, divisions will go. You will not have to clear them up, they will
go. What we need for all our divisions, our lack of love, our schisms, our
likes and dislikes, is a fulness of Christ. Christ as
Lord, Christ as Master, Christ reigning. And like evil creatures in a dark
cellar scuttle away when the light comes on, so will divisions and schisms, and
all that makes for them, go, when Christ comes into His place. It is the cure
for everything.
If
the foundation is to be justified it must be justified in a superstructure
after its own kind. Christ at the root, and Christ the stem, branches, and
fruit. It is all Christ. We have something to think about. “If the foundations
be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Destroyed in this sense, that they
are made void by what is being put on them. What can the righteous do? Well,
there is nothing to be done but one thing, but that one thing will do all the
rest: that is, bring the Lord into His place. Oh, Paul must have had a
wonderful faith in Christ; facing a situation like that, beloved. Sit down with
any one phase of it and see how you would like to tackle it; and then taking
the whole thing—more than I have given you—and realising
you have a spiritual responsibility for that situation, you want a mighty faith
to believe that whole situation will yield if only the Lord Jesus can be
brought into His place. It will do it, and it will again. There is no problem,
no difficulty which cannot be solved by the enthroning of Christ. All the
problems in this world, and of all the nations, are going to be solved by the
enthronement of Christ. There is no other solution, but this is the sure
solution. God has bound up everything to that, that
all things are going to be settled when His Son has His place. But judgment
must begin at the House of God; it must start with us.
I
have used all this by way of illustration. It may have an application to us in
some way or other. Whether that be so or not is for us
to determine before the Lord. Whether we are guilty of any of
these things in spirit, in principle, if not in act. If it does not come
home to us in any specific application, surely the grand truth should help our
hearts. How are we going to face our problem, either within ourselves, or
without, in others? Only in one way. Seek to have the
Lord Jesus exalted in your own heart, and in the hearts of others. Bring Him
first into view and then with Him in view all the other things can be dealt
with.
I
have only touched one aspect of this chapter. I will not go further with it.
Paul said: “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” You will see what the foundation
is composed of. Jesus Christ as the foundation in this letter includes Christ crucified, the meaning of His death for us: Christ Risen,
Christ exalted in the place of sovereign head. Those three things comprise the
foundation. When we know what the death of Christ means so far as we are
concerned, Christ crucified; we died when Christ died, how can we have the
natural man then, the carnal man then? He has gone. When we know what it is to
be risen with Christ, that is, alive unto God, only unto God; unto no other
being or interest, and certainly not unto ourselves, only unto God; when we
know what the absolute lordship of the Lord Jesus means to bring us into His
government, how can it ever be: I am of Paul, I of Apollos,
I of Peter? They cannot come in there if Christ is all. You find these threads
running right through this letter. The Spirit tells you of the Christ
crucified, risen, exalted. That is the foundation and
the superstructure must be according to that.
Let
the word lead us to glory in Christ, for that is where chapter one ends: “He
that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.”
Reading: Psalm 11:3; Ephesians 4:7, 8, 11-16
We
shall now proceed with a further aspect of the important matter of foundations.
In that eleventh Psalm from which we started our meditation there is one
feature which is common to the whole subject of foundations and building in the
Word of God. When we considered that Psalm more fully you will remember that
David was, at the time of writing the psalm, in the midst of great active treachery,
opposition and antagonism. The wicked were drawing their bow in the dark to
shoot under cover at the righteous, and in the midst of that hostility the
Psalmist refers to the foundations, and then he also says: “Jehovah is in his
holy temple”; so that you get two things which comprise one whole, that is,
building and battle. The temple, the foundations, the
Adversary and the atmosphere of conflict. You will find that throughout
the Word of God these two things are always found together.
If
it is Nehemiah building the wall of Jerusalem, the sword and the trowel are
found accompanying one another; the building and the battle are together. If it
is the building of the temple of Solomon, David has reduced all the surrounding
enemies to subjection to make that building possible. The building was not
possible until the battle had accomplished its work. When you come into the
spiritual interpretation of the Old Testament illustrations in the New
Testament, you find those things always together. Wherever you have to do with
the building you will always have to do with the battle.
When
we look into the first letter to the Corinthians there surely is there a very
conspicuous example of this truth. The building in that letter is alongside of
tremendous battling. The battling is associated with the building. Now, when
you come to the letter to the Ephesians you see the same thing again. Here is
the House, the “habitation of God through the Spirit”, here is the church which
is Christ’s body, and here you have much said about the building up of the
body; but you will find in this letter that all that is in the presence of the
enemy, principalities and powers, the world rulers of this darkness. The
building goes on in battle, in conflict, and this fourth chapter contains in
itself those elements. If you were reading those verses just now thoughtfully,
you were discerning that the apostle in what he was saying about the building
up of the body and all connected therewith was in the presence of antagonisms,
perils, dangers, spiritual opposition. What is this about sleight and cunning
craftiness, the wiles of error, the winds of doctrine, the
waves of falsehood? These are the elements of the battle, the conflict, these are the opposing forces to the church, the
body of Christ. These are the things with which the development, perfecting,
consummating of God’s purpose in the church are associated, and with which that
progress has to contend. And the apostle is saying in more words that the
important thing here is that the saints should be well grounded; that the
saints should come to a place of being established,
and established in fulness where every one of them is
a responsible, trustworthy member of the body of Christ. That is the force of
this whole paragraph.
Now
then, let us immediately bring before our view the end, the object, and then we
shall see what goes toward the realisation of that
object. What is the object in view here? It is that every one member of
Christ’s body shall be a functioning, responsible, effective member, in a
position where they are able, with the ability of Christ to stand against the
wiles, the craftiness and falsehood of the Evil One, the winds and the waves of
error. But, beloved, surely you and I are alive in these days to the necessity
for every member of Christ to be in that position. The conditions with which
the apostle Paul was contending at that time are conditions which abound today
just as much as then. Of course, it came in his day through those who were
Gnostics, people who claimed to have wisdom, to be in possession of knowledge.
Of the Gnostics, who claimed to have religious knowledge and wisdom, Paul said
their gnosticism operated in
these ways: craftiness, wiles, winds and waves of error, false doctrine, false
teaching. Whoever may be the counterpart of the Gnostics today, gnosticism is widespread. That is,
there are waves and winds of error sweeping over the earth, and so subtle that
no natural mind can see through, no ordinary judgment
or discernment can detect the flaw, the error. It is so wrapped up in biblical
forms and scriptural phraseology that the infants, the children to whom Paul
speaks, will be easily carried away, those who are spiritually children in a
wrong sense. It is not wrong to be a child of God, to be a new-born babe, but
it is wrong to be a child when you ought to be a man, and that is what the
apostle is speaking about. In the presence of these things, and in the
expectation warranted by the Word of God that these things will increase,
develop and become more and more subtle, with the very miracles which will
accompany them, the necessity the apostle saw then, and which is made clear to
us through the Word of the Spirit by him is that every member of Christ should
be in the position to stand against those wiles, should have their foundations
so soundly laid, and should themselves be so rooted and grounded that they will
not be carried away. The ministry that is needed today is ministry in that
direction. Give heed to this word, you will need it. If you have not already
done so, it will not be long before all of you are confronted with some of
these wiles of error, this craftiness of false teaching, these waves and these
winds of doctrine, and unless you are grounded and established and know, you
will be carried away, you will lose your footing and will be swept off.
Now
with the consciousness of so solemn and serious a situation and need, this word
is, I believe, given to us by the Lord, and we must lay it to heart. Every
member of Christ, without an exception, must be a responsible, intelligent,
functioning member, and inasmuch as that is not true of any one member, that
member is in a perilous position. But you are not surprised that the coming
along of these winds and these waves carry away multitudes of Christians.
Sooner or later they are landed high and dry and do not know where they are
because, in spite of having the New Testament, and in spite of having the
letter to the Ephesians, which itself is enough for this purpose, so many of
the Lord’s children are not taught, instructed, and established in Christ, to
be able to discern, to understand, judge, and to remain firm in a perilous day.
Now
then, let us look at this passage of the Word a little more closely. “He...
gave gifts unto men”, that is, “He gave some apostles.” He gave apostles unto
men. “...some prophets.” He gave prophets unto men. “...some
evangelists, and some pastors and teachers.” These are the gifts which
He gave to men. “Men” here, of course, represents the whole company of the
elect. The evangelists to bring in the elect, the others
mainly to do with those who have been brought in. So that the church
which is the body of Christ is in view, and it is in relation to the church as
the body of Christ that these gifts were given by the Lord in His ascension.
These are the gifts—but note, they were given for an express purpose and with
an express object. They were given for “the perfecting of the saints unto the
work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ, till we all
attain unto the unity of the faith...” Do not break in with punctuation there.
There ought not to be a break. “For the perfecting of the
saints, unto the work of ministering”, as though the work of the ministry there
related to the apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists. It
does not relate to that. The work of the ministry there relates to the saints
as they are perfected through the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers. The work of these gifts is to result in the saints
being in a position to minister, and it is only as the saints are in a position
to minister (that is what I mean by functioning) that the saints are safe. It
is not alone the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers who are
in the ministry, it is all the saints who are called
to be in the ministry. All the saints, every member of
Christ’s body is a minister according to the divine intention. And only
as they are in that position to minister, in a state which qualifies them to
minister, is the church safe. The ministries may be as varied, as numerous as
there are members of the body of Christ. “For the perfecting
of the saints unto the work of ministering.”
Let
us be quite clear in our terms. That word “perfecting”. You may say: Well, of
course, if we were perfect we could minister. Surely that is a long way ahead, that is something toward which we have got to move,
to which we have to come. But that word perfecting there does not mean that. It
is used as a medical term very often, and a more literal translation would be
“mending”, for the mending of the saints. If you have an accident and get
broken and are taken to a hospital you get mended, and that is exactly what
this word means. The mending of the saints, making them
whole. Sometimes the word is used for the furnishing of a house. You
would not like to live in an unfurnished house. We must furnish it before we
can live in it. The word is used in Matthew concerning the nets, when the Lord
saw certain men mending their nets. This is the same word. There were holes in
their nets, and those nets had to be made good so that they were complete,
suitable for their work. They might not have been in that higher sense the most
perfect nets you could find, but they were whole nets, complete nets. And what
the apostle is pointing out here is just that. Not a state of divine perfection
in us but a state of completeness in Christ. “For the mending
of the saints unto the work of the ministry.” The mending of the nets
was unto some hope of catching fish. The trouble with so many, and the reason
why so many are carried away with these winds and waves of doctrine, is that
there are gaps, gaping gaps in their apprehension of Christ, in their knowledge
of Christ, in their understanding of the truth; gaps, breaks, openings through
which the error comes, and they want mending. And these gifts are given just to
mend the saints that the saints may fulfil the
ministry. It is so different from the traditional order to which we are accustomed,
that the ministry is something we sit under so many times a week, from a pulpit
or platform. And having sat under it, and either
enjoyed it or endured it, that is the end so far as we are concerned; we have
done what is incumbent upon us, we have done our duty, we have “sat under the
ministry”. That is not the ministry here at all. The ministry is the result in
your practical functioning of what the pastor, the teacher, or the evangelist
does, what you do as the outcome. That is the ministry: the resultant exercise
in the heart of every member of Christ. If we really did get that we should be
a long way on, we would be much further on than we are. Just
think where we would be if that had always been the case. The
evangelists, prophets, pastors, teachers, would have fulfilled their function
in our midst and we would have gone away and got before the Lord on that and
said: Now Lord, that has to be wrought in me, I am going to make that mine, and
work in the strength of it.
Supposing
we had done that with every message we had received, don’t you think the church
would have been in a solid place of establishment? A very different history
would have been written in the presence of the wiles of the devil and the
cunning craftiness, if that had been the case. We will not look abroad too
much, we will look within our own hearts, and say, Now
this is for me. We have to look into our hearts and say: Now what is the
practical result and abiding value in my life as a functioning member of Christ
of that ministry to which I have listened, of that work of the gifts of the
Lord, the apostle, prophet, pastor, teacher, evangelist.
Where am I as the result? Have I heard it, regarded it as the ministry, left it
there and let them get on with their ministry? Or am I as a result, a minister
of Christ? That is a distinct question is it not? Oh, for the strength in the
people of God, in the church His body, which would be the sure result of our so
apprehending the Word of the Lord. We are badly in need of that strength today,
that assurance, that establishment.
Now
notice: “For the perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministering, unto
the building up of the body of Christ.” Then the work of ministering, which is
the work of each member of Christ is to result in the building up of the body
of Christ. Now let us test it again backwards. How much are you and I
contributing toward the building up of the body of Christ? How much are we
functioning with that result, the building up of the body? That is our
business, every one of us. That is our ministry. Are you prepared to accept
that responsibility, to take, by the grace of God, that work on your heart, not
to be an adherent, a follower, a passenger, an attendant, but a live,
functioning member whose very presence in the body of Christ means its building
up?
Later
you notice the apostle puts his finger upon this very matter in a specific way.
He says: “...through that which every joint supplieth,
according to the working in due measure of each several part,
maketh the increase of the body unto the building up
of itself in love.” Each several part working in measure,
resulting in the building up of the body in love. He has the physical
body at the back of his mind. How much Paul knew about the physical body as we
understand it today I do not know, but the Holy Spirit knew all about it, and
when you remember those minute organisms of the human body, the cells of the
human body, and how the entire growth of the physical body hangs upon the functioning
of each minute cell, and the body is only built up, increased as each minute
cell functions and does its work, you have a wonderful illustration and
perfectly true one of how the spiritual body of Christ is built up and
increased. You say: “I am only a minute part, I do not count.” Well, try and
count the cells in your body, how many cells can you pack into a square inch of
your physical body?—almost countless. You may be in your own mind like one of
those, lost in the crowd, but there is a mighty responsibility for the whole
body resting upon you. The point is not how big you are but whether you are
contributing your measure. Each several part working in
measure. The sense is that every part must do its measure, come up to
its measure, toward the building of the body of Christ. That is our function
and our ministry.
Oh,
beloved, we shall have to regard this as an ordination service, and go out
regarding ourselves as in the ministry and responsible for the whole body of
Christ in our measure. We cannot understand that; we never shall understand it;
we are in the presence of a mystery. Who can understand the physical body to
the full? There are mysteries about it which have never yet been fathomed, and
I doubt whether they ever will be fathomed. We have often illustrated that
mystery of the human body in this way, that the oration of a Demosthenes should
be the result of a Demosthenes having had his breakfast. You have read some of
those orations which swayed crowds and made men do what they had no intention
of doing, the power of reasoning and of human language. If the orator had
stopped eating he would have stopped giving orations and therefore his orations
were in some way the outcome of his having his food, but how you translate
bacon and eggs into orations I don’t know. But it is true! You see what I mean.
And how you and I, being the atoms that we are, the cells which may be so small
as humanly to be beyond recognition, can affect the whole body of Christ for
good or ill I do not know, but there it is. It is a truth definitely and
positively in the Word of God: “And whether one member suffereth,
all the members suffer with it; or one member is honoured,
all the members rejoice with it.” And if you and I are not contributing in our
measure then the whole body is suffering, is weak.
Here,
then, is the call, the challenge, that every member of Christ should be a
responsible functioning and intelligent member, fulfilling the ministry. Yes,
but there is something more, “...till we all attain unto the unity of the
faith...” Well, now we have got our finger upon something which is very vital.
We are very much concerned about unity, oneness. We pray for it, we agonise for the lack of it in manifestation, we long for
it. How will it come about? What is the principle of coming to the unity of the
faith? Every member fulfilling his ministry, a functioning
member. What is the cause of discord, division, schism? Well, look again
at our first Corinthian letter: “And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as
unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ... for ye are yet
carnal; for whereas there is among you jealousy and strife, are ye not carnal,
and do ye not walk after the manner of men? For when
one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not men?” There are divisions among you
resultant from your being carnal, your carnality means spiritual immaturity, no
unity of the faith. When everyone comes into full functioning that is a mighty
factor in bringing about the unity of the faith. The enemy is out to split the
body of Christ on earth into as many fragments as he can. How does he do it? Very largely by the ignorance of the Lord’s people. Very largely by their delay in spiritual development, very largely
because they are in a passive state instead of an active state spiritually.
You will find these things lie behind most of the activities of the enemy along
the line of schism. The unity of the faith, says the
Word quite clearly, is through every member functioning, and making their
contribution, livingly, to the whole. There was a day when certain men went to
Moses and complained that there were certain people in the camp who were
prophesying, and they thought it was a movement toward sectarianism or division
or something like that, they thought this was a break in fellowship, but Moses
said: “Would to God all the Lord’s people were prophets.” The positive line is
the better one. When some are fulfilling the ministry and some are not it is
quite impossible to come to the unity of the faith. We have all to be in it.
Then
again: “...and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” The Greek there is
literally: to the full knowledge of the Son of God: “...unto a full grown man,
unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of
Christ.” All that is bound up with his active life of all the
members of Christ. We will not stay with it in its fragments but read it
again more carefully.
The
apostle has in view these things which are circling round: “...that we be no
longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of
doctrine, by the sleight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error.” If
only we could stop with the apostle’s language it would throw so much light on
this matter. “...by the sleight of men.” Literally, in the deceit, but the
Greek words refer to the throw of the dice and the element of cheating, it is
something like the loaded dice by which there is a fraud, a cheating, and that
is what is here in the language. The wiles of error. The throw of the dice which is always so arranged that it comes out
to the good of the one who is using it. This error that is going round
is to cheat the saints of their advantage in Christ, to cheat them of their
place. Is not that the effect of error in the long run?
Yes,
believers who are carried away like this wake up to the fact that they have
been cheated of the reality by a fraud, they have lost the food by something
that pretended to be to their advantage. “...in craftiness”, that is literally,
in their clever trickiness. The words are very rich. He uses the word here
which is “in every deed, or every work, in craftiness”. Every deed of theirs
has some subtle craftiness in it, some trickiness in it. And
oh, the trickiness of the devil in his false doctrine. The thing seems
so right, so thoroughly good, according to the Word, but there is something
hidden in it, a trick, a snare. The Lord’s people need to be alive to that and
it is only as we are out on full stretch, active, positive in our spiritual
life that we come to the place where our senses are so exercised that we can
discern the good from the evil, and discern the trick. What a great thing it
would be if every real child of God who ought, by reason of time to be in such
a position, was really able to see in these wiles, these waves and these winds
of falsehood, an error, just where the flaw is, just where the trick is, and be
in a position to warn those who are children in a right sense, who have not yet
come to the time when they ought to be mature; to be a safeguard to them. These
foundations are very important. This is all foundation work, and we must,
without exhausting all that is in these verses, just leave the main emphasis
and indication of the apostle to take hold of us, grip us. When everything is
said that could be said, however much we might add to it, it is just this, that
you and I, every one of us without an exception should be so reaching out and
moving on with the Lord in an active and positive way, as over against a
passive way, so that our spiritual life and our spiritual senses are being
developed, brought to maturity, that no matter what the wiles are, what the
winds are, what the waves are which sweep like a hurricane or tornado, or even
like gentle summer breezes over the earth, we are never moved, never carried away,
we are alive to the subtle secret snare, and we stand. We are in the battle.
The building is in the battle. There is no realm in which the battle is more
real, more furious, more relentless than in the realm
of the perfecting of the saints, the building of the body of Christ. That is
why this one letter outstandingly brings those two things together. On the one
hand there is the church, His body, to be built and perfected, on the other
hand the raging and the subtle working of the enemy. The enemy is out to
deceive the saints, to destroy the church, and the only way in which he can be
defeated is by you and I being stretched out for the fulness
of Christ, to go on in an active way, not being satisfied that we are saved,
but wholly given to all that fulness which is
possible in Christ. With all the saints in fellowship till we come to the
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
The
Lord impress His Word upon our hearts.
Reading: Hebrews 5:11-14; 6:1-3.
That
portion which could be accompanied by a very great deal more from the letters
to the Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, and from Peter’s letters,
brings one very foundational thing into view. Foundational because it is
addressed in this case to very religious people, and
to those who inherited the whole of that system which God Himself produced. It
brings into view the fact that with Christ, and a true relationship to Christ,
everything begins over anew. Everything else, it does not matter what it is,
comes to an end. It makes clear what Paul was so fond of saying, that with the
death of Christ everything finished, everything! The
central thing religiously, so far as the old order was concerned, in type, was
the veil of the temple; everything met in that veil. With the death of Christ,
from heaven that thing was ripped and split in twain by the hand of God. The
old order was struck right at its centre. The death
of the Lord Jesus did bring an end to everything—religiously and otherwise—of
the old order and system and creation. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus was
God’s starting all over again right from zero. And not one fragment or fraction
of the old creation was carried over into the new.
I
think that a good many people have the idea, even if they have not thought it
out and put it into positive shape, they have a mentality that to become a
believer, a child of God, a Christian, is to come to a certain point in one’s
history where you, metaphorically speaking, go up in an escalator on to a
higher platform and proceed. It is in the nature of continuing life on a higher
storey. That is, that now you have interests,
religious interests, Christian interests, which you did not have before, your
activities and your energies are directed along lines in relation to Christ,
which did not obtain before. You are simply going on now on a different level
of life, and thus they confuse resurrection with elevation, and elevation with
resurrection. Now it is tremendously important (and I am not careful about
being too elementary) that we should recognise that
when we become children of God we have come to the place where we have not gone
up on to a higher storey as in an elevator, but where
we have tumbled into a grave and been buried, and so far as God is concerned,
never again to be seen as we were before. You say: Here we are, it is the same
old I, the same old ego, the same old personality.
That may be from your standpoint, but from God’s standpoint, No! What you and I
have to do is to accept God’s standpoint. That is what Paul means by:
“...reckon ye also yourselves to be dead...” That is,
accept God’s standpoint. Once you have accepted that intelligently and
deliberately you are destined to come continually, progressively, increasingly
to know that God’s standpoint is a real one. That is, that God had reckoned you
dead, and does reckon you dead, and He does not want to have anything to do
with you on that old level; and inasmuch as you bring anything in from the
natural, you have a bad time, and find God is up against you. You come to these
crises, and you say: What is the matter, Lord? And the Lord says: That was
ruled out in the beginning! You see it is an accepting of God’s standpoint once
and for all, and discovering it is not a theory, not a doctrine, but a reality.
I
picked up a little book this week. The title on the cover rather struck me.
Probably many of you know it. “When did you die?” I have only seen the first
few words of it, and the writer says: “A strange question to ask any one”, and
then a little while and he says: “You died as long ago
as the Lord Jesus died on the Cross.” I know, of course, what he will have to
say about that, I know what will follow, but that is the truth which the Lord
requires that we shall accept. The Lord’s standpoint is that you and I died
before we were born, before we came literally into this world. So far as the
old creation is concerned, we died, we died with Christ, and the Lord has
nothing whatever to say to us or do with us until we have accepted that
position. The first word to any man from the Lord is “repentance from dead
works.” Everything is dead until you know resurrection union with Christ, no
matter what it is, religion or anything else. Everything is dead until you know
union with Christ in resurrection life.
That
is God’s position, and the Cross of the Lord Jesus presented to any man or
woman represents so far as that man or woman is concerned an absolute end, and
on the other side a beginning of an entirely new order. Paul calls the
different order: “… the newness of spirit.” That is not the newness of the Holy
Spirit, that is the newness of our spirit, that our
spirit has become a new thing and out from that everything else works. You can
see it in his own case. If ever there was an
illustration of what newness of the spirit means, Paul was such. Why, it came
about swiftly with him. One day he is breathing out threatenings
and slaughters against members of Christ, and on his way with a passionate
burning determination to destroy these Christians, and in a few hours he is
humbled, before a little assembly in Damascus, which he was going to destroy,
taking his instructions for the rest of his life.
That
is a change of spirit, is it not? That is newness of spirit. And you find that
tremendous change manifested in all kinds of directions. Think of this Pharisee
of the Pharisees and his attitude toward gentile “dogs”, as he would call them
(anybody that was not a Jew was a “dog” in the eyes of a Jew). See this man in
whose very blood that was, now putting gentiles at least upon an equal footing
with Jews, and giving his life in continuous suffering that those gentiles
might come into the enjoyment of Christ. Something has happened inside, a new
spirit! That only comes through the crises of a death in one realm and a
resurrection into another realm; something that only God can do. And all that
is not of that newness of spirit is of the old creation and it means the
impassable barrier of the Cross of the Lord Jesus whenever it arises. Let any
of our old man, whether of our old temper, our old way of judging, our old
disposition, any of it come up at all, if we are children of God, we know quite
well that at that point a barrier is set up and we cannot get past, we are held
up in our spiritual life and we have to go back and have that thing cleared up.
It is as real as any other thing in the universe to us. At that moment we stand
still spiritually, and the flaming sword is across our path. There is no way
for that here. Bring that here and you will be judged. You will meet the
judgment of God. You will be broken. It is coming up against the fact that God
finished with all that long ago and we have to accept God’s standpoint. When we
have accepted it then the thing works out, it continually works out. We take
that position, we accept the truth. We cannot bring an actual end to the old
creation ourselves, but we say in a positive way: I reckon as God reckons. Well
then we shall find as we go on that God having put all that under death, death
rests upon it, and if ever it shows its head again the sentence of death is
met. If we begin to work for the Lord with our own natural strength we meet
death and before long our natural strength will come under death. If we begin
to use our natural judgment in the things of God we shall meet an arrest and
before long we shall come to a deadlock, unable to get through. Anything which
we bring of nature into the things of God will bring us up against—not some new
issue but—the old issue, death which was made to rest upon the old creation. In
so far as we move in the newness of life, work by the Spirit of God, walk after
the Spirit, death is done away and we are in life and we can go on and can get
through, no matter how much there may be of handicap and weakness in nature, we
can get through as we go on in the Spirit. “The law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death”. We are free!
Now
that is all old familiar ground to many, and yet something which we have
continually to remember. It is the foundation. Unless we have the foundation
thoroughly well laid, we shall come to a hitch. We know of many children of God
who have been the Lord’s children for years and they
have been working for the Lord many of them, and yet they have come to a
standstill, they have come under an arrest. Why? Well in some way, at some
point, somehow, something of themselves, their old self has come up, has come
into evidence, has come into the way. It may be some
of their old mind, some of their old will, some of their old affections,
desires and feelings. They are in their own way somehow. They are in the Lord’s
way. What is needed is not that they should die again, but that they should
come to accept their once-for-all death in Christ in relation to whatever that
may be that has come up, and let it go and be set free from that law of sin and
death. “Repentance from dead works.” That is exactly
what the apostle is saying to these Hebrews: You have come to a standstill. You
simply ceased to go on. You went so far, now you have got to a certain point
and for years you have not budged a bit from that position. You have never got
past foundations, you are not going on to full growth.
You have not settled it once and for all that you died when Christ died. You
ended the whole system and order of the old creation religiously and otherwise
when you came to Christ. Christ is the end of the law and Christ is the end of
the old creation, and He is the beginning of everything new. Do not be wearied
at repetition of old truths, they are very important as foundations, and this
is foundational.
We
are destined, whether we now accept it or not, whether we like it or not, we
are destined to discover that God’s foundation stands. This is true, and no one
will ever get through in relation to God and His things while still bound by
the old creation, on the old creation level. This new way of life is so narrow
that we cannot take ourselves into it, we have to
leave ourselves behind.
Well,
now, that is a position taken up, and what those who are being baptised are doing is to declare in the practical way that
that is the position they have taken. What they are going to discover is that
they have not just obeyed a form of doctrine, but that they have entered into a
very live situation and from henceforth the Lord is going to make good the
implications of this. He is going to say: That died, you cannot bring that
along, don’t bring that out of the grave, put it back.
And they will find all the way along that the Lord just puts His finger upon
things which He reckons as ended in the death of His Son. But, of course,
whenever there is acceptance of the Lord’s attitude and position to those
things on the death side, we get more of Christ as we get rid of ourselves.
I
do want you to recognise that every one of us from
the wisest to the most foolish, as we judge, every one of us when we really
come into Christ, has got to learn everything all over again. It is true that
we may have a tremendous amount of knowledge and information as this world can
give it, and yet the wisest, the wealthiest in knowledge or in any other way,
coming into Christ has got to learn the ABC in spiritual things. They will
discover that. Everything has got to be learned from the infant class, from the
cradle roll of the spiritual life. It is no use our coming unto the Lord and
thinking we know something. It will not be long before we are made to know that
we do not know anything. The Lord said: “How hardly shall they that have riches
enter into the kingdom of God!” I think if He had been in another world from
the one in which He was at the time, if He had been in the Western world He
would probably have said: How hardly shall they that have knowledge enter the
Kingdom. The boasted knowledge, wisdom, intellect of the Western world is the
great obstruction to the Kingdom. It is not prepared to know anything. When
Paul got outside of the Jewish world that was the kind of thing he was saying
all the time, that the wisdom of this world was the great hindrance. With the
Jews, gain along the line of wealth; to the gentiles, gain along the line of
knowledge was the hindrance, and anything that appertains to nature has to be
set aside. It is a hindrance to our coming into the Kingdom. The longer we live
in relationship to the Lord the more we know that we know nothing. One piece of
knowledge we have is that we do not know anything at all, and we are just
longing all the time to get some knowledge. There is no royal road to spiritual
knowledge, we have to start right at the beginning and learn the things of the
Lord as we go along. When we start as young Christians we do think that we know
something. But, of course, that is the folly of youth. We are learning
everything all over anew. With all the knowledge that we might have naturally,
if it should be anything, it does not count here. Spiritual knowledge is a
different thing. We have started all over again, but when we accept that place:
Now I have everything to learn, I am open and eager to learn, I know nothing,
then the Lord can teach. It is the proud one that never learns anything. The
Lord show us what it means to begin, what the meaning
of the Cross is in our end to the old and beginning to the new.
From "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, 1933-34
This
selection re-published by: