Books by T. Austin-Sparks

[Shammu]

The Dividing:
“he that is spiritual” and “the natural man”

We are now coming to Corinth, and we have not moved far into the letter until we are shown what belongs to the one side and what belongs to the Other. Oh, that Christendom had really had its eyes opened to chapter two of the First Letter to the Corinthians. Here we have two designations; here are the two humanities. One is the natural man, and let me say again that is not necessarily the unborn again man. Corinth shows that and is used to show that. It stands through spiritual history to show the tragedy of a carry-over from one humanity to Another in not allowing the great transition to be clear cut. That is what is here, and so in Corinthians we have the dividing: we have “he that is spiritual” and “the natural man,” and then there opens up the characteristics of each.

When we launch out into the characteristics at Corinth, we come almost immediately on this: personality complexes— that is “the natural man.” “I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Peter, and I am of Christ.” You tell me that we are not capable of that—making even a servant of God, a greatly used servant of God and a servant of God who is a saintly man, making him the focal point, the pivot around whom we circle —his way of teaching that appeals to me, his interpretation, his personality. The apostle of the Holy Spirit puts that sort of thing in the category of the natural man because the effect of that is the divisiveness in the Body of Christ—that is what the letter opens up: divisiveness in the Body of Christ. Oh, do not talk about personalities; they may have been used to your help; you may owe a lot to the Lord because of them, but do not be constantly bringing them into view. Paul will argue back and say: “Who is Paul, who is Apollos, who is Peter?—Only servants of God through whom you believed!” Let the instrument recede into the background, and let Christ come to the fore; be occupied with Him, talk about the Lord Jesus.

Perhaps there is a lot of this in a conference like this— this man’s name and that man’s name and this teacher and that teacher. We have our preferences and attachments, but we must drop the whole thing. Paul is saying nothing but “Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” We must drop all that personality complex business which in the development only means division in the Body of Christ, and division is weakness and defeat. We must restrain from this sort of thing, for this is moving along the wrong line. This is moving from the outside—trying to gather around personalities and calling that “unity” instead of dealing with it from the inside; and after all, if only, if only we saw Jesus Christ, we would see what the Church is.

Dear friends, the Church of Jesus Christ is not an “it.” It is not a system of teaching. It is not something ecclesiastical. It is not an institution. (Oh, I thank God for the day when He showed me this.) The Church is a Person and That Person is Jesus Christ in corporate expression.

We must revise our mentality when we talk about the Church, the Body of Christ. What are you talking about?— not an it, a something, as though it were a something in itself, and a teaching in itself. No, it is this Man with a family, with children, brothers and sisters, begotten of God, that is the Church.

Oh, how much ecclesiasticism we can have without the family life, but the Church after all, when you come to the final Word, is just the measure of Christ that there is in those who make it up—“till we all attain unto... the measure... of Christ”—every one of us. That is the Body of Christ, that is the Church.

Now I am going to close this morning. We have seen the very first thing that you meet at Corinth is this carry-over of an old humanity in personality complexities, and the Lord says “No” and the apostle says: “No... only ‘Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.’ ” The Lord search our hearts concerning these two humanities. Let us pray...

Now, Lord, this can very quickly and very easily be all covered over in the next moments when we go away and have to think back as to what it was about in that hour. Spare that; save us from that. Lord, we are not wanting to impose upon Thy people any kind of suppression, but we do pray that the Holy Spirit will solemnize our hearts in the presence of such great issues in the greatest issue of all time and eternity. Give us quiet meditation, prayerful meditation in our hearts to see where we are, where we are in this whole Bible. So help us, God, for Thy Son’s sake, Amen.

[Shammu]

Chapter 3 - Battleground Of The Two Humanities

Lord, Thou knowest that this very act of prayer as we pause at this point is our acknowledgement and confession that we cannot go on without Thee, and we have no wish to do so. Lord, for the speaking of Thy truth, for the reception, understanding, and obedience, we need Thee; we cannot do without Thee. We rest back upon Thy faithfulness, Thy mercy, Thy grace, and we believe that trusting in Thee, Thou wilt not fail us; and we shall come through by the help of God, so be it. And seeing that it is so, the glory will be Thine alone through our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

We in these hours are being occupied with the climax of humanity as represented in the appearing in this world of God’s Son in human form, and we have reached the point in these meditations where we are at present occupied with the battleground of the two humanities, that battleground being particularly focused in the two letters to the Corinthians; that is their place in the sovereign ordering of God. Other letters have particular aspects, but here in Corinthians we find the focal point of the great controversy between the old and the New, the first Adam and the last Adam, the one humanity and the Other.

Let me say here before we proceed that our consideration may seem to be very much of a destructive character, hard, exacting, not pleasant at all to our old humanity. These letters are drastic; and as we have said, devastating to the old humanity; and the apostle is really hitting very hard, saying some very strong things—while in love, yet being very faithful. I do want to very definitely point this out that the apostle took that attitude and handled the situation as strongly, forcefully, radically as he did, not because he wanted to hurt anybody, not just because he did not agree with these people, but because he had seen—he had devastatingly seen the Lord Jesus in Glory. This man’s whole life and ministry were actuated by what he called “the heavenly vision,” and he had seen the greatness, the immensity of the significance of Jesus Christ in the whole economy of God in this universe.

Beyond Paul’s power to explain and express (for he exhausted all language in his attempt to do so), Jesus Christ for him had appeared and was continually in his heart being revealed in such magnitudes as to make him feel that anything that gets in the way of our attaining must be ruthlessly dealt with. He said: “Brethren, I have not attained, I am not already complete, I press toward the mark, the prize of the on-high calling.” What was it?—

Utter conformity to the image of God’s Son—

the real apprehension in his own experience of
the wonder and glory of Jesus Christ—

to attain unto that was the all-consuming object
and passion of his life because he had seen!

Now my point this morning is not intended to be destructive and negative and only against. If we are seemingly being very hard on this old man, it is with the positive always in view; it is unto something—unto the image of God’s Son. Now having said that, let us proceed with this battleground of the two humanities as gathered into these two letters to the Corinthians which we will only be able to touch so lightly and so imperfectly this week, but I think sufficiently to indicate a great deal more which you will grasp.

The Expression Of Jesus Christ

So here we are in the midst of the whole business of the New Testament, the transition from one humanity to Another and that where Christians are concerned. You must remember these letters were written to a local assembly, and while individuals in the assembly are picked out and pinpointed and spoken straightly to about their conduct, their behavior, their manner of life, it is the assembly that the apostle is concerned with and what a local assembly should be as an expression of Jesus Christ. That is the only object for the existence of any local assembly—the expression of Jesus Christ. The apostle was concerned with that nucleus in Corinth of the whole Body of Christ, and I think that it is very impressive that down through twenty centuries in ever widening circles from nation to nation, country to country, to the farthest bounds of this earth, the ministry to the Corinthians has expanded and today it is dealing with us. A local assembly ought to take on that character and not just be a localized thing. It ought to have a universal significance, to say something. Oh, that every local company of the Lord’s people said something for all time and for all eternity and to all the world as to the meaning of Jesus Christ!

A local church is intended to have the values of Jesus Christ, which are never capable of being just localized. They must—not by their effort, organization, machinery, or anything of that kind, but because they are that—they must have an expansive influence beyond themselves and beyond their own time: spiritual values. Now I want to get to this matter of how that is reached and what it is that makes the Lord’s people like that, both individually and collectively.

You see, the heart of this whole matter is not a system, either of teaching or of practice. It is not an ecclesiasticism: that is only another word for church order. It is not that or any of the things which Christianity has become, not all the accretions and the developments and the forms, but the heart of this whole thing is the Person—the Person of a Man with a capital M. Manhood is God’s great thought from creation. He has put His supreme value upon this form of creation —humanity—and bound up all His interest with a kind of humanity that He wants to possess to represent Him. “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” What is an image, what is a likeness? a representation. God said: “Our image, Our likeness, a representation of Us.” But I am afraid the representation is more or less very poor at Corinth. God expressing Himself in a species called humanity—to that He has committed Himself and all His interests; and if you want to know really what the Holy Spirit’s coming and operation is for, it is just that—To Get Hold Of A Mankind After This One Man.

So it is a Person; always focus your eyes on the Person, keep your eyes on the Person. The New Testament is all about that. It is always the Person, and this Person is repeatedly saying and affirming: “I Am.” Whatever the capacity, Shepherd or Door or Vine, these are only aspects of His Person, of what He is, “I Am.” He has stepped right into the arena of history and is the only One Who is allowed to do it, to say: “I Am.” Tremendous things are said concerning this, and God hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness not by, but in a Man of His Own choice. The judgment of this whole world is going to be on the ground of Christ. Not what sins you have committed, more or less what you might call small or big. No, that is not the ground of judgment. The ground of judgment is where do you stand in relation to Jesus Christ, and how much of Him is there. He will judge the world in the Man. Now think about that. It is the Person which we must keep all the time in view as we proceed!

[Shammu]

This Man is utterly and absolutely different from the whole race of humanity; hence, as we have seen, because of that immense difference, there has got to be the undoing of the one in order to make room for the Other. God’s full and utter beginning all over again is with this Man. You notice that this implies or indicates that at the time the Lord Jesus came into this world, God had considered and decided that the human race had become big enough and large enough to wind it all up. Here is this great multitude, Jews and Gentiles, filling the world that then was, and it was enough to represent the whole world, a race, a great race. Then the Lord God said: “Finish and We will start with One Man all over again, One Man, the last Adam, a New Race.” The whole humanity is set aside and a New Race brought in by its first Man, “the Firstborn among many brethren.”

Here in these letters to the Corinthians, as we have pointed out, we see the tragedy that can come about amongst Christians, Christians as individuals and Christians as a company. The tragedy is because of this one thing, because of a carry-over of that old rejected and discredited humanity into the realm of the New. This is a terrible tragedy. See, the Spirit of God has caused this to be written in Corinthians. It is unpleasant reading, and I do not like reading a lot of this letter. When I read what is here, when I read about what they are doing in this Christian assembly, that there is such a thing as incest in a Christian assembly (and all the other things, some of which we shall touch upon); when I read, I think—what an awful tragedy amongst Christians.

You are not going to tell me that belongs to Corinth two thousand years ago alone. Are we not meeting this in Christian companies continually, adultery and what not? It is a terrible tragedy when you ignore that great gap that God has placed by the Cross between one humanity and Another, when you do not recognize how utter is that cleavage which the Cross has made. When you bypass the Cross in this matter of human life, you are in the way of tragedy, the tragedy of your whole spiritual life and testimony. This is very testing. The Cross is more than a teaching, a doctrine— it is a terrible setting forth of the great thing that God has done and is after; though, on the other hand, a very glorious setting forth, for here is the New Man introduced. And we must keep Him in view even while we speak about this tragedy, and the battleground of these two humanities.

The Battleground Is Between Two Men: “the natural man” and “he that is spiritual”

Now we must spend a little while getting our position, as is represented by this First Letter to the Corinthians in particular. Their position (and what might be our position) is undoubtedly the position of many Christians today. What is the position in which the apostle, or the Holy Spirit through the apostle, puts the Corinthians? I wonder if you have noticed that in this First Letter to the Corinthians, Israel’s history in the wilderness is mentioned fourteen times, as it is recorded in Exodus to Deuteronomy, and is pinpointed in a very particular way. Here the Corinthians are shown to be in that period between Egypt and the land. That is their position spiritually; that is, they are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb and have come out under its covering. The Corinthians are there, and the apostle takes note of that as he introduces the letter unto the “saints.” Now you revise, if necessary, your mentality about that word “saints”; it simply means the “separated ones,” those who have come out unto God. That is all! That is a saint, one who has come out to God, been separated, redeemed by precious blood, positionally separated and out. How? They are redeemed by precious blood.

In First Corinthians, chapter ten, Paul says: “I would have you know, brethren, that all our fathers were baptized into Moses in the cloud, and in the sea.” Baptized—the Corinthians have been baptized and had come under the regime of the Spirit, the Cloud, the regime of the Holy Spirit. These are Christians positionally, if not conditionally. Positionally they are separated; they are baptized, but they are in the wilderness as we find them here in Corinth. They are Christians positionally, they are under the regime of the Holy Spirit, the era of the Spirit; they are in the Kingdom of God, and if the Kingdom of God means the Sovereign rule of God, as it does!, they are under the Sovereign rule of God. They are positionally in the Kingdom of God—not in the general sense of Divine Sovereignty of the Universe, but in a more particular sense of Divine Sovereignty. Yes, they are all that, and they are experiencing supernatural activities of God; objectively supernatural things are happening to them.

Paul says: “Corinth, you come behind in no spiritual gift.” All the gifts are there—“supernaturals.” (Nestle's Greek Interlinear). Later, the apostle in answering one of the ten questions that they present to him says: “Now concerning the spirituals....” Now let us move slowly, carefully, for these are all truths that were Israel’s while they were in the wilderness between Egypt and the land. Yet, with all that was true of the Corinthians, the apostle had to gird himself up and gather himself together and make one positive resolution. To these people with all this, he said: “I determined, I have made up my mind, to know nothing amongst you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” To Christians with all this, redeemed by the precious blood, positionally separated unto God, within the Sovereign rule of His Kingship and His Kingdom, and objectively knowing much of His sovereign, supernatural activities in their history—to them the apostle has to say this categorical thing: “To you I have made up my mind, I resolved, I determined, that amongst you it shall be nothing but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” What is all this about? It is this cleavage in chapter two between what the apostle designates “the natural man” and “he that is spiritual”; and the battle is between the two. That is the battleground, between these two men.

I wonder if you people in this country ever have time to sit down and think. I know your tremendous activity, but I wonder if you ever have time to just sit down and think. Now I would recommend something to you, for your own need, for your own quiet time, not for public reading or anything like that, but I would recommend to you that translation of the New Testament in The Amplified Bible. If you remember, the translators of The Amplified Bible state in their introduction: “Our object is to get inside of the original language which is so much richer than the English and has so many shades of meaning that no English words can convey and give that amplification which is true to the sense and meaning of the original language. It takes a lot of words and a lot of shades to explain the Greek there, the original language, and so we have given the amplification which is true to the sense of the original language.” (A paraphrase of the Amplified statement). Now you will need a lot of patience to read that, but if you would sit down with that Bible, you would be searched and illuminated as you think your way through clause after clause of your New Testament.

[Shammu]

Now, why am I saying all this? Because I look at Christians today, and I think many have not read their New Testament. My word, look at Christendom! Here (as in the Corinthian letter) there is an utter contradiction; they are not seeing, yet they hold this New Testament as their charter.

Now, why is this? The answer is in a phrase. When Paul wrote this First Letter to the Corinthians speaking about the condition there, he pinpointed and said: “When you do so and so, are ye not ‘as men’? You say, ‘Must I not be as men?’” No, not after a certain humanity, that man is not allowed in here to be “a man.” The Cross has stripped him of that manhood, “...you have put off (and the Greek language again is) you have taken off the clothes; you have put off the old man and his doings and have put on the New Man,” and so there is a manhood that is not allowed in here at all.

“Are ye not as men?” Paul says: “You are talking like men, as men talk; behaving as men behave; and it is not allowed, that kind of humanity is not allowed.” That man is an intrusion, and he is under a Divinely imposed embargo; and this second chapter indicates the embargo. “The natural man”—that is the man, and “he cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them.” Would to God that Christendom would imbibe that. This natural man is an intrusion into the place where he has no standing with God; it is an assumption which has led to a presumption. It is presumption for us to come into this realm of the New Humanity with ourselves, to bring ourselves in in any way. You see the strength of this natural man is shown here in this chapter two, and I am keeping close to the text although I do not quote the actual wording. It is the truth that is here: the strength of the natural man in his proceeding is of himself. The apostle is talking about power, and these Corinthians had a great idea of power-politics. Power! Yes, power is all right if it is the power of God; but their idea of power was the world’s idea of power, and their power was of themselves which meant that it was of the world.

Now we bring in the Other Man, and what is the Other Man saying about this? Go back to John 5 where He says: “The Son can do nothing out from Himself”—the Son of God can do nothing out from Himself. And this great servant Paul, who wrote the Corinthian letter, said: “Of mine own self, I can do nothing; when I am weak, then I am strong; I glory in my weakness that the power of God, Christ, may encamp upon me.”

The strength of the power of this old creation, this old humanity, is utterly undercut in the New Humanity. And, whether you have reached it yet or not, if the Spirit of God gets hold of you—and you want Him to, perhaps you pray that He will—but let me tell you, you are in for something; if He really gets hold of you, the day is coming when you will feel utterly helpless in yourself. You are at the end of all your ability for anything in yourself, and you will come to the place where you will say: “Lord, if you don’t..., this is the end.” All this power idea for which the first Adam made his bid—to be as God, powerful in himself—all that has been undercut in the New Man, “Christ crucified.”

Power? dear friends, keep the positive in view that the power be of God. Unto these Corinthians, the apostle states: “I was amongst you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.” Why? He answers the why—“that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”

The Way The Old Humanity Does It: A Realm That Is Not Allowed

Wisdom is another great word in this second chapter; it speaks of the wisdom of this world, the wisdom of men, (and that quest for wisdom, wisdom and their philosophers, that was almost lust with the Greeks and with the Corinthians). “Wisdom” is “the power to judge, to discriminate, to determine, and to decide”; but the wisdom in their procedure was of themselves in Corinth. Their wisdom was their own and the wisdom of this world.

There is something here that I confess I do not understand, something beyond me. To this Corinthian assembly, the apostle comes down on one of the other points of this carry-over. If any of you have a matter, do not ask a worldly man with worldly wisdom to decide your affair; that is the way the old humanity does it. Now you in Corinth ought as an assembly in the New Humanity in Christ to have an ability that this world has not got in the matter of wisdom and judgment. And here is the thing that I do not understand; it is this phrase: “Do you not know that we shall judge angels?” Have you thought about that? Oh, I thought they were superior beings to ourselves; obeying God in everything, but the time is coming, the apostle says, “when we shall sit in judgment upon angels.” We shall judge angels, and he uses that here to show that there is Another Kind of Wisdom altogether from the wisdom of the best in the old humanity —Wisdom he says which is not “of this world,” for in Christ He “is made unto us” the Wisdom of God.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, and, therefore, the spiritual man ought to have the power of judgment, discrimination, discernment, and understanding that even a magistrate in this world has not got. Yes, this humanity in the New Man is very different! However, the Corinthians brought in this old humanity, their worldly wisdom, for their driving force was of their own souls in Corinth. It was soul force, and that is the principle of this world. Soul force—that is something to dwell upon. Soul force—have we not in this last part of the age seen what that can do?! Yes, we have seen it extended to literally terrible, frightening proportions, soul force in the nations. That soul force is with us all, but I am not going to start on soul and spirit. I am beginning to feel that there is a little too much being said about that. There was a time when it had a real point, it has that today; but it has become a subject, a fascinating subject, and we want to be very careful not to be taken up with subjects. But here is the fact that at Corinth, the driving force was soul force; it was not the force of the Spirit. These people were clever people, they were intellectual people, they were efficient people; but it was in a realm that is not allowed.

Do not make too much of human intellectualism. I think one of the most deadening things today is theology as such; I think that is where Christendom has gone astray, intellectualism in the realm of Divine things. The power of the brain has made an awful mess in Christendom. Yes, they were intellectual with the philosophy of the Greeks. They were clever, they were efficient; but this letter is saying, that is out—that kind of wisdom is not allowed in here. There is Another Kind of Knowledge here, and how utter the apostle is in this matter when he says: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, they are spiritually discerned” by the spiritual; that is the spiritual man—the man of the Spirit. And he says: “As it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.”

[Shammu]

I suppose you at once would think that that must be after this life—what He has prepared for us afterwards. Oh, I do not believe that; I believe that begins now. It is for us now. The things that the eye, the natural eye, the old human eye, have never seen and never can see, the things of the Spirit that have never entered into the natural heart, the old humanity heart, “God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit”: “hath revealed”—“hath.” That is not hereafter: “hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” You are standing in the good of that—the open heaven, the Anointing Spirit, and God revealing His Son in us; and in so doing He is devastating us, but He is also opening a new vista entirely of possibilities, of wonder. It is like that all the time in our going on. Can you say that is going on in you? Yes, I am seeing in my heart more and more of His Son, not the truth as a theory but His Son; and seeing His Son is undoing a lot of my own conceptions and my ideas and my valuations. It is just making them shrivel up; I see Him to be an entirely New Conception, and in Him I have a new conception of the Church.—

The Church Is A Person Expressed In Mankind

I must reiterate that the Church is not a thing; it is not an institution; it is not a denomination, nor is it all denominations put together. It is not anything like that. The Church is a Person expressed in mankind, expressed in human life. The apostles never went anywhere with the preconceived idea: “We will have a church here; we will set up a church here; we will form a church here.” No, they went and preached Jesus Christ; and when people saw God they began to see Jesus Christ, He became the Cohesive Power drawing together, and if they were really on that ground, what did they meet? They met Jesus Christ. They met Jesus Christ—that is the Church, and there is no other Church in the New Testament.

Well, it comes back to this—the natural man cannot see and is debarred from the things of the Spirit, “but he that is spiritual judgeth all things.” He that is spiritual has this New spiritual capacity; and it is, as this letter teaches, the increase of that spiritual capacity, of spiritual measure, which is the thing that is the ground of appeal to these people in Corinth. Paul says: “While you talk ‘as men,’ while you behave ‘as men,’ are you not babes?” And as in Corinth, so today, we are to recognize that though that natural man should be the greatest brain that has ever been produced—compassing all the bodies celestial and terrestrial, this “nuclear-age” man developed to the dimensions of humanity today—though he be a man like that, he cannot know, he cannot see, the things of the Spirit of God. There is a limit on the natural man. That is how it is, but there is a world, a realm, open to the spiritual man of the New Humanity which is beyond anything else of which the old humanity is capable.

Corinthian Questions: The Enunciation Of A Principle

Now from that point, we begin on these things about which the Corinthians wrote to Paul. At sometime they sent a letter to him with a whole list of questions, and I am not going to try to answer them all; but I want you to note one thing—how did Paul really answer all of those questions? He did answer them, and while he said some things about some of these matters, giving advice and discussing the thing with them, he did not answer them in the form of something that you could put into a book as a book of regulations, as a book of laws. He did not just write a blue print to answer, for example: “Should a woman who has become a Christian and has a non-Christian husband, leave him?” Or the other way: “Should a man who has become a Christian and his wife has not accepted the Lord, should he leave her?” “Should a slave who has become a Christian, give up his position as a slave and try to be free?” “Should we refuse to eat meat that has been sold in a market, but previously offered to an idol?”

There are a lot of questions like that in the letter, and evidently there had been one question about what is today called charismatic, “spiritual gifts.” Paul has some things to say about this, but do you feel that he is conclusive in the things that he says? I do not think so. Paul never intended that here, and he never intended to be another Moses writing ten commandments over against ten questions. He had a far better way of answering them than that, if only they would recognize it. In all these things, what was his real way of approach and answer?—the enunciation of a principle. If only you can get hold of the principle, you have got the answers. Please get this, whatever you forget, please get a hold of this: the answer to it all is a principle.

Now I am coming down to that question of gifts, tongues, and so on. It was a problem, a question, at Corinth. Paul had been asked something about it, and so he uses a part of his letter and says: “Now concerning the spirituals....” He says some things about tongues, apparently quite a bit about tongues; but as far as I can see he does not finally answer the question on tongues. However, he does enunciate a principle about it and all the gifts, and he answers it in this way, this is the effect of it, this is really the answer: on the one hand, none of these things—none of the gifts of God, are ends in themselves. If you draw a circle around either one or all of them and say—this is the “know-all and the end-all,” you are going to come to an impasse, sooner or later. You are going to find that you are held up, and your spiritual maturity is arrested.

Brethren, however supernatural and precious it might be, beware of an experience becoming the beginning and the end. None of these things are ends in themselves, and the apostle says about this particular thing, and about gifts as a whole as he deals with them, that this is the principle concerning them:—Are They Leading To A Greater Measure Of Christ?

In this letter, the apostle uses a word which I am sorry that the translators have left out and put another one in its place. The word they have used is “edification,” and, of course, if you give a very strict explanation or definition of the Greek word for “edification,” you will get the true meaning of the apostle’s thought. What Paul did say and mean was “for building up.” For building up what?—the increase of Jesus Christ. Are these things ends in themselves, wonderful as they may be? Are they leading on to a greater measure of Jesus Christ? Are they building up the Body of Christ? That is the challenge of every gift: How does it minister and effect an increase of Jesus Christ?!

Now they had every one of these things at Corinth and over against them was this low moral level: this poor spiritual standard. Here at Corinth they had the gifts and came behind in no spiritual gift, but where is Christ, where is the increase of Christ? Paul had to say: “I have to speak to you as babes.” What the Lord looks for, what must be, is the increase of the measure of the fulness of Jesus Christ. The question is, after all, how much of Christ is in the individual, in the assembly? How much of Christ, and not the obsession with things even though they be the supernaturals, but the captivation of Jesus Christ—because He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man Whom He hath ordained;... It must be just the Lord, the kind of Man that He is, the kind of Humanity that He is.

Conformative To His Son

Some of you, and some of us, have gone through deep deep waters, dark waters under the Hand of God. We have cried out and asked, “Why should this come to me, Lord? Does this come to other Christians? Why?”—Well, I have only one answer: “He is working all things out to the counsel of His own will”—conformative to His Son. And on the one side, the side of the Cross, this is getting rid of something, breaking down something, emptying you of something; you were too full, you had to be emptied on the other side. You may not see it, but Heaven knows a bit more of the Lord Jesus in your softness, in your patience, in your sympathy, in your understanding, in your heart going out for others and for the Lord. And I suppose I ought to say that the most perilous thing that the Lord could allow for us is for us to know how good we are getting. Is that not true? I will have something more to say about that later on. Shall we close...

Our Lord, there is so much here; it does need Thy covering, and Thy handling, Thy protection. It will need grace in Thy dear people, much grace. Give them that grace to receive, to understand. Protect us all as to just how much it is Christ, not even, not even Christian things. He is our Object and Goal. Be it so for Thy Name’s sake, Amen.

[Shammu]

Chapter 4 - The All-Governing And Dominating Vision: The Seeing Of Jesus Our Lord

Lord, we have to appeal to Thee again for Thy compassion. What a pathetic thing it would be if we tried to do heavenly work with earthly means; Divine work in our own human strength. And that is just where we are now. We need Thy sympathy, Thy compassion, for our speaking and our hearing will really profit us nothing, will have no eternal value. O Lord, help us with Thy Divine help at this time that we may speak under the anointing and with the unction of the Holy Spirit; and also in the same way hear. Anoint our ears, anoint our ears, and give us a hearing that is not just our natural hearing that we may this morning by the power of the Holy Spirit hear the voice of the Son of God and live. Grant us this mercy for Thine Own Name and Glory’s sake, Amen.

We have been occupied in these morning hours with the great transition from an old discredited humanity as in Adam to a New accredited Humanity in Christ. Our first attention was with the exposure and the devastation of that discredited humanity as we saw it representatively gathered around the Cross of the Lord Jesus in Caiaphas, Pilate, Judas Iscariot, Peter, and the two on the Emmaus Road. Then we saw what a devastation the Cross was or an exposure of the old humanity at its highest, at its best; and there could have been nothing worse when we were finished. Then we went on to the battleground of the two humanities as we have it in the two letters to the Corinthians: on the one side, “the natural man” which is the old humanity; on the other side, “the spiritual man,” the New.

We stood and did little more than look into those letters in a general way, pinpointing a few things in the letters where the carry-over of the old to the New is shown, the conflict being between the natural man and the spiritual man or that which is natural and that which is spiritual, the natural touching so many things, even the most sacred things. The things of the Spirit touched by the hand of the natural man and taken up and used for the natural man’s gratification and glory. That is what is in the First Letter to the Corinthians.

There is much more detail, with which we are not going to deal; we have only touched it in order to indicate something. I trust that you have seen the indication of how dangerous it is and with what tragic consequences the touch of the natural man on spiritual things can be. We brought out that most terrible warning, the warning to Christians as in Corinth: to “born again” people called “saints,” separated unto God, came that terrible warning where Israel’s tragedy in the wilderness is taken as the ground of the warning. They perished in the wilderness, and the apostle uses that to warn the Corinthians that the battle can be lost in the wilderness if there is any compromise between the natural and the Spiritual. If you are still in Egypt, while being geographically so to speak out of Egypt but Egypt not being spiritually out of you, then you are positionally where the Corinthians were.

Now that is all the negative side, however we came yesterday morning to point out that the answer the apostle gave concerning the whole compass of things in the First Letter, the answer he gave to the ten questions raised by the Corinthians in a letter to him, was not in a code of rules and laws like the Mosaic, but in principles. And all the principles gathered into one principle which amounted to this: how much of Christ is in this? How much of Christ is in your divisions? “Is Christ divided?”

Paul, pinpointing the whole question of division, said: “Is Christ divided? Were you baptized into Paul?” Christ is the principle of solving that problem of divisions and all the other matters which I am not going to reiterate now. The answer he gave to the solving of these difficulties is focusing on Christ. The answer he gave them was how much does this minister Christ? How much does this represent of Christ? Everything is tested from that standpoint, judged and settled. Paul said these things are answered by principle and the principle is Christ.

“Have I Not Seen Jesus Our Lord?”

Now having come past that, with all there is left in the letters, we come onto the positive side. I want you just to look at one or two fragments from the First Letter to the Corinthians. It is only a fragment found in chapter nine at verse one: “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” It is that clause that I want you to take hold of and hold for a moment—“Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”

And now over to Second Corinthians, chapter four, verse four: “In whom the god of this age hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, Who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them.” And in verse six: “Seeing it is God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, Who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

“Have I Not Seen Jesus Our Lord?”

“God has shined into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Again I would like to add another fragment; this time from the Letter to the Galatians, chapter one, verse fifteen. It is in a rather large section, but I would like to lift out just a fragment, “But when it was the good pleasure of God to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the nations”:—It was the good pleasure of God to reveal His Son in me.

“Have I Not Seen Jesus Our Lord?”

Of course, the immediate context of those words is the apostle authenticating his apostleship and answering those who said that he was not an authentic apostle because he was not one of the twelve. That is connected with that charge, but it has a very much larger and more comprehensive context than that, as you see from these other verses and many more like them. His answer to them: “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” “It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.” God, the same God Who said in the beginning, “Let light be, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”; which means, in the Person of Jesus Christ.

[Shammu]

The Seeing Of Jesus Our Lord

What we are going to be occupied with this morning is this all-governing, all-dominating vision of Jesus Christ. This brings in four of the greatest matters with which we can have to do. The seeing of Jesus—how comprehensive and revolutionary it is! These four things are major things. Firstly: The place and destiny of man in the economy of God. That comes in with a seeing of Jesus our Lord.

I am glad the apostle added that last clause, “our Lord,” and I would like to point out that in the New Testament, the name “Jesus” by itself is only used when it relates to His pre-resurrection life. If the name “Jesus” is used alone, you will find that the context is of His pre-resurrection life. However, after the resurrection, the apostles never called Him “Jesus” alone; they always linked on our Lord, our Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us note “Jesus,” yes; but “our Lord” and His Lordship came into view after His resurrection and ascension. Right there on the Damascus Road, “and he said, ‘Who art Thou, Lord?’ ”—“I Am Jesus.” He knew it was Jesus. “Lord, (not, ‘Jesus, what will You have me to do?’ but) Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” The very beginning of a revolution of a transition from knowing after the flesh to knowing after the Spirit. All that is parenthetical. Let us go on.

The four magnitudes which come in with a true Spiritual seeing of Jesus are:

The Place And Destiny Of Man In The Economy Of God

The Nature And Dynamic Of Ministry In This Dispensation

The Nature And Purpose Of The Church Now And In After-Ages

The Immense Significance In That Three-fold Context Of Jesus Christ Crucified, Risen, and Exalted

These are four very big things, and they are all comprehended by “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”—“It pleased God to reveal His Son in me”; and when He revealed His Son in me, this is what I began to see. That is what the apostle is saying: “This is what I began to see.” He does not tabulate these things like that, but I have just taken these four magnitudes as the content and substance of the New Testament.

This is where we begin; firstly the seeing of Jesus our Lord or God revealing His Son in us, illuminating, unveiling, the place and destiny of man in the Divine Economy. I must say here (though it might get me onto controversial ground) I am a firm believer that the Apostle Paul had a very real hand in the writing of the Letter to the Hebrews. Whether he actually wrote it or dictated it, I am certain that Paul had a very definite and direct influence, to say the least, upon the writing of the Letter to the Hebrews; and you will recognize it in what I am going to say. It is there; it comes out of that.

Paul, from the beginning in his First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter fifteen, takes up man from his inception. He says, “The first man, Adam.” It starts with man; it goes right back to the beginning of humanity, mankind, and he follows right through mankind on the battleground of the two humanities until he reaches the point of man glorified. How marvelous that chapter is. I have stood back from that chapter many times, and said, “How did any mortal man know that?” It could only be because he had seen Jesus Christ. That is the only answer:—

A New Man In Christ

“There are bodies terrestrial, and there are bodies celestial. There are bodies earthy and there are bodies heavenly; and as we have borne the image of the earthy, so we shall bear the image of the heavenly.” Here Paul describes something of the nature of this Heavenly Body, this Heavenly physical Body, this glorified Manhood. This is an amazing unveiling of the destiny of man in the economy of God.

So Paul takes up manhood first in Adam, and then by the Cross he smites that race in Adam, discredits it, rejects it, and puts it aside, and starts with the New Man, “The last Adam”: “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation,”—the old humanity past, all is New. We have the whole history of man in this letter, right from his inception in the heart of God, his inception in the creation of the first Adam and his rejection in this letter; and then we have man created in the New Man, Christ.

Oh, what a Man this is in glory. In this we groan! But what is the groaning about? Oh, for that for which I was created; which God meant for me. In this we groan waiting, “waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body,” the putting on of our New Man. “When this corruptible will have put on incorruption.” My, do you not groan for that? Incorruption, this mortal dying “will have put on immortality,” eternally living. Now how did Paul get all that? “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” “It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.”

Paul said: “God has repeated His Divine fiat in me. Over all the world in chaos and darkness God said, ‘Let light be—and there was light,’ a fiat of God, and He has done that in me. God has repeated and said, In this darkened humanity, ‘Let light be’; and when He said that, I—in that Light—saw His Son and in His Son I saw all that God intended and intends for mankind”—man’s destiny in the economy of God.

All that is in chapter fifteen, and Paul tells us out of this seeing that the world to come is going to be entirely subjected to this Man and this Humanity. As I was saying, this is Hebrews two: “For Thou madest Him in order to have dominion over the works of Thy hand. Thou has put all things in Thine economy and intention under His feet,” but we do not see that true of the old humanity. It is discredited, it is lost, it has lost that kingdom.

But we see Jesus, we see Jesus the Representative Man of this New Humanity, the Inclusive Man, the Last Adam of this Humanity, we see Him crowned with glory and honor. That is the destiny of man in the intention of God. That is what Paul is saying here by the Spirit.

[Shammu]

He Must: He Must Have: He Will Have!

Paul shows us in these letters to the Corinthians and by his influence, at least, in the Letter to the Hebrews, he shows us God’s intense interest in man and God’s infinite patience and perseverance and pains with man through history. God never, never wiped out any mankind until it had finally gone beyond the point of no return where mankind said, “We will not, we will not,” finally “We will not”—that was Noah’s day. Noah—a preacher of righteousness, and the effect in them was: “We will not.” So God said, “The end of all flesh is come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” God never did anything like that until the cup of iniquity was full to overflowing, and there was no hope because of man’s settled determination not to have the revealed will of God.

Apart from that, look at the infinite pains and patience and perseverance of God. Oh, how marvelous is God in His Sovereignty. I think God chose the Jewish race because it was going to extend Him to the fulness of His patience; and it did. God is marvelous in His Sovereignty, sometimes I think that He chose it for no other purpose than just to show what mercy He has. Well, that would take us into another part of First Corinthians: “God hath chosen the foolish things... the weak things... the ignoble things... that are not.” We see what patience, what long-suffering, what pains, what perseverance is shown by the apostle on the part of God with mankind because God has set such store by this kind of creation; and if God should never have a humanity like that at the end, then God is defeated utterly and He is not God, the God of the Bible. He must—He must, and He will have a humanity that His heart is set upon.

Moreover, the apostle shows here by the Spirit, that all God’s dealings with His Own children (and the terms are family terms: His Own children, His Own family) he shows that all God’s dealings with His Own children and family had this end in view—the transition unto the glory, bringing many sons to glory, getting many sons to glory. But we must link with that: “My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked or reproved of Him. Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth. He scourgeth every son that He places by Him.” That wonderful chapter in Hebrews 12 about God’s dealings with His children, His family, showing that “no chastening (child-training) for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous”—for the present, grievous.

You and I know something about that. But “afterward,” there is an “afterward”; and it is that “afterward” that God is working toward in His dealings with us, difficult as they may be. We will come to that again, and I do not know whether we will get to it this morning, but here is the principle. Oh!! God is not against us when we are having a hard time. The devil says He is. Have a bad time, and there is at once a little demon at your ear accusing God, maligning God, trying to get a twist in your mind that questions God, trying to get you right back into the garden again, “Hath God said?” trying to get you onto the old Adam ground again. Oh, brethren, I can say this more easily than I can go through it, and so can you hear it more easily than you can go through it, but there is that “afterward.” What afterward? The end of One Corinthians, chapter fifteen. Oh, yes, all this, “But thanks be to God, Who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” All His dealings with us are governed by this great destiny for which He has made us and called us.

Destined For Sonship

Now all this the apostle shows, all this is represented by the perfected Man in glory, and all this is not only represented by Him there as the ultimate of God for mankind, but it is secured in that Man in the glory. It is security for us, and in this connection the apostle uses a figure from the Greek about the Holy Spirit having been given to us as an “earnest” of our final redemption. You know what the figure is? What is it? You see some goods, some produce at a depot on a railroad station. It is destined for something or somewhere, and there is stamped on it “sample,” “sample,” destined for sonship. It is an earnest, it is a firstfruits, it is a prophecy, but there is more to follow; and a great deal more to follow. This is only the beginning, this is only a piece of what is coming; and the apostle uses that figure of speech. The Greeks understood quite well what he was talking about. Paul says: “He has given us the Spirit as the ‘sample,’ the earnest, the prophecy, of what is to be.” It is secured, it is all there secured in Him to come to us; and He has sent Him (is it irreverent to speak of the Holy Spirit like this?)—He sent the Sample. If you and I really have the Spirit, what have we got?—The earnest of our inheritance, and what is it?—We have this witness, this assurance, and the working of this Power holding us unto something, unto a destiny. Thank God for that holding. To quote the Apostle Peter: “Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto a salvation to be revealed in the last time.”

We Are Kept By The Power.

Now where would any of us be today if there had not been that holding of us? When we really did let go, when we really did say: “We can go no further, this is the end.” And we would have gone if it had been left to us. Well, the miracle is we are here kept by the earnest of the Spirit unto that because it is secured unto us in Christ. So the apostle says: “Cast not away, cast not away your confidence which hath great recompense of reward. You have need of patience that after you have done the will of God....” Brethren, there is so much in all this. He shows that it is all represented in the Man perfected in heaven; even more, it is secured in Him up there. I am glad it is up there and out of this world beyond any power to undo the security.

(1) The Summation Of All—His Son

Now the apostle shows then that the advent of Jesus Christ into this world was this: first of all, it was the summation of all God’s former forms and ways of His Self-revelation. “God Who at sundry times and in divers places spake unto the prophets,” spake by the prophets in many-sided fragmentary bits. Here a line and there a line; a bit through this one and a bit through that one, all speaking bits and pieces and fragments. He has summed them all up now, gathered them all together, made One Sum of them; and it is the summation of all when His Son comes into this world Incarnate. That is what is here! See Jesus and you see the summation of all God’s previous methods and ways and times of Self-revelation. It is the full and the final revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

That is what this young man Saul of Tarsus, with his background of the Old Testament in his mind (so that he could quote the whole thing without the Book) with that he saw Jesus Christ, the Risen Glorified Lord; and his Bible became a new book. Paul saw that in the One everything was gathered up, everything was summed up. “Have not I seen Jesus our Lord; and when I saw Him, I saw.” There are no more fragments, the thing is complete now; no more bits and pieces, it is just One Great Glorious Whole. No more “then” and “now” and “afterward,” it is all eternally present in Him now: the summation of all God’s previous ways of Self-revelation.

[Shammu]

(2) His Son—The End Of The Old Economy And The Introduction Of An Entirely New Economy

Then Paul saw, and this meant so much to a Jew and an educated Jew, so thoroughly educated as was Saul of Tarsus, he saw that Jesus our Lord was not only the summation of all God’s previous ways of revealing Himself, but He was the consummation of a whole economy, the whole of the Mosaic economy. That is why I say I am sure that Paul had a hand in this Hebrew Letter, because the whole of the Mosaic economy is gone over in that letter. And what is the purpose of that letter? the transition from that Mosaic economy to Christ. He is the High Priest. He is the Sacrifice. He is the Altar. He is the Temple. He is everything that that economy represented in type and figure, but He is the consummation of that. He is the end of that and the introduction of an entirely New economy. It is a Heavenly One in the heavens, “not made with hands.” Oh, the terms are so definite. “Not of this creation.”—The consummation of a whole economy. Brethren, has Christendom seen what Paul saw? Has Christendom grasped this yet? Is it still clinging onto the old economy in its vestments, its robings, its ritual, its external things? Has it failed to see that this is all finished with, and now our robing is the robing of His Righteousness, and no other can appear before God. All our adornments are spiritual.

Peter has seen this, for in 1 Peter 3:3-4 he speaks to the dear sisters “whose adorning is not the plaiting of the hair and the wearing of the jewelry.” What is the word “adorning”? “Adorning” in the original is “Whose world (cosmos)”—“whose cosmos” is the word “adorning.” “Whose cosmos, whose world,” whose realm and system of things is not this getting yourself up in making an impression. Oh, I am not holding any agreement with carelessness and slovenliness and that sort of thing, but the question is what “world” do you live in?—how do you appear to others, what impression do you make by these outward things? “No,” says Peter, of the saintly women whose world is not that. That is not their world, that is not their cosmos, their system, but their “adorning” is “the ornament of a meek and a quiet spirit.” So we see one system of externals is gone, and it is all now a system of the Spirit in the heart, a Heavenly thing for a Heavenly people.

Now some people have seen the principle, and they have tried to put it into effect by putting on a certain kind of raiment and becoming a sect who wear that kind of raiment. They have seen the principle all right, but you cannot fulfill a principle in that way. It is the Spirit that comes out and expresses itself. The end of an economy, its consummation and then the transition to an entirely new regime, the regime of the Man perfected and installed in glory as God’s Model for this New Humanity. “According to Christ” is the phrase so often used. It is “according to Christ” or “not according to Christ.” That is the test, the challenge, according to the perfected Man and Humanity installed in Heaven, God’s Pattern, to which He is working.

He is working, and here we come back again to the place of the Holy Spirit in the Letters to the Corinthians, especially the First Letter. As we look through the letter, what is the full, ultimate, supreme function of the Holy Spirit?—“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, ...though I give all my goods to the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, I have nothing.” The supreme work of the Holy Spirit is the Character of Jesus Christ, not love as a thing. You can put on love as a thing. You can put that on, and it can be a pretension, a way of behaving and speaking. Beloved, people can come and put their hand on your shoulder and be treacherous behind your back by pointing out your faults to someone else. It must be “unfeigned love” the apostle says. “Unfeigned, unhypocritical, love of the brethren”: it is the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

Are you not surprised when Paul has finished his letters, and he says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ...” (this benediction has become so commonplace and lost so much of its contextual significance as applying and relating to the whole Corinthian situation). What is the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? “...though He were rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might become rich.” That is the grace of the Lord Jesus, self-emptying; Paul will later say that to the Philippians.

The benediction, what is it? “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.” It is Jesus Christ all the time. “The love of God.” How do you know it? in Jesus Christ only, never in any other way can we know the Love of God. “The fellowship of the Holy Spirit”: the communion, the unity,—the removal of those divisions and that divisive spirit, (“I am of Paul, Apollos, Peter, and so on—”).

“Have I Not Seen Jesus Our Lord?”
“He Was Pleased To Reveal His Son In Me”

Now time does not permit me to start this morning on that next great thing: how seeing Jesus is the Source, the Character, of all ministry in this dispensation. But let us hold what we have heard this morning quietly before the Lord because it challenges us. How far are we here able to say with the effect of it, the revolution, the transformation, the transition:—“Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”—“He was pleased to reveal His Son in me.” And when that happened, my word, what a lot went. It just went and what a lot came. How different! I have called this section:

The All-governing And Dominating Vision,—The Seeing Of Jesus Our Lord.

Go and ask Him to do that with you, and let me just say this, it is not something that is going to be all done at once. Oh, no, some of us after many years are seeing more today of the significance and meaning of Jesus our Lord than we have ever seen all through our lives. It has got to be like that, thank God, it has got to be like that. We always have a margin, a plus, an extra right to the end. As one brother has said, “All ministry should have such an overflow that no man ever finishes his sermon,” and you know what he meant. When you have come to the end of your time, you have got far more than your time will allow you to go on with. And it ought to be like that over the Lord Jesus. Oh, how much more I see than I have ever been able to say or could say today. I see He is so vast, so full, so immense. We are here, dear friends, not to talk about the greatness of Christ as a subject, but to be the expression of it!—It may defeat us. We may go to the grave (if He does not come) feeling, “Oh, we haven’t begun yet,” but it should be like that. He is so great, so Wonderful. And may the fiat take place, if it has not. But if it has, and our eyes, the eyes of our hearts, have been enlightened, we have begun to see something of Him. Remember, there should be no stalemate over this, no arrested progress as at Corinth, no undue babyhood. Yes, it is all right to be a baby when you are a baby; but it is a horrible thing to be a baby when you have the years of maturity.

That is how it was at Corinth. Growth was stunted, it was arrested, because of what? They had really failed to see the Lord Jesus. They had heard the teaching; they knew what the apostle was talking about, but he has to come back with this: “The eyes of our heart be enlightened.” He has to come back with this Second Letter to them:—“The veil taken away,” and we all with unveiled face see Another Face, “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,” and “are changed into the same image from glory to glory.” Shall we pray...

So, Lord, we can only say that with the presentation of the truth Thou would go beyond, take us beyond; and grant that every life here may stand in the good of the unveiled face of Jesus Christ—the glory therein... may stand in the good of having seen Jesus our Lord. O make that true of every one of us, very true, wonderfully true, and growingly true, until we finally see His face. We ask it in His Name, Amen.

[Shammu]

Chapter 5 - The Nature And Dynamic Of Ministry And The Nature And Purpose Of The Church

What more can we say and how better can we say than: more of Thyself. O show me hour by hour more of Thy glory. O my God and Lord, more of Thyself in all of Thy grace and power, more of Thy love and truth. Incarnate Word, answer that prayer in this hour. We ask in the Name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.

In our consideration of the great transition from one humanity which has been exposed, discredited, judged, and set aside to Another Humanity which has been tested, perfected, and installed in glory in our Lord Jesus Christ, we have come at length in the closing hours of this time together to the all-governing vision in the light of which this transition becomes both clear and very practical. And we saw yesterday that with the Apostle Paul to whom this vision, this “heavenly vision” as he called it, was the secret and key to his whole life ministry when he saw the Lord Jesus risen and glorified, four things became clear to the Apostle Paul in that vision. These four things we have mentioned: Firstly, the place and destiny of man in the Divine economy. Secondly, the nature and dynamic of ministry in this dispensation. Thirdly, the nature and purpose of the Church now and in the after-ages. And fourthly, the immense significance of Jesus Christ crucified, risen, and exalted, all this in these three things.

Now yesterday we were occupied with the first of these four things. This morning we proceed to the second, the nature and dynamic of ministry in this dispensation, and whether we shall get to the end of the fourth is with the Lord.

The Apostle Paul said: “It pleased God, ...to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the nations.” Now we must stay for a moment to ask and answer one question: “What do we mean by ministry?” Perhaps we need a revised version on this matter of ministry, for, immediately, when the word “ministry” is mentioned, people’s minds automatically think of someone with a Bible in their hand standing up and teaching out of the Bible or someone preaching the Gospel to the unsaved or someone having been shut up with their Bible, studying it and making some notes and coming out into public and giving the result of their Bible study. Something like that is usually associated with the word “ministry.” As I speak of ministry in this dispensation, some of your minds at once may think of someone with Bible in hand upon a platform or in a group, teaching and preaching. I trust the Lord is going to revise that concept for you entirely before we are through this morning.

The New Testament has two things to say about this matter of ministry. It does speak in Ephesians about special, personal gifts for ministry in the Church. He gave, the ascended Lord “gave some, apostles; some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.” These are specific personal ministry gifts in the Church, and please put a circle around that word “in.” There are these personal ministry gifts in the Church; however, the New Testament has much more to say about the ministry of the Church Itself, and the Word says that these personal gifts in the Church are for the purpose of enabling the Church to fulfill the ministry —to do the ministry, to be the minister of Christ.

Now you remember the passage: “and He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of the ministry.” Do not put any break in your sentence: “the perfecting (of the Church, the ‘making complete,’ of the Church) unto the work of the ministry.” I heard Dr. Campbell Morgan once say in this very connection in this passage: “and God help the minister whose Church does not fulfill the ministry....” And it is with this second thing, the ministry of the Church Itself, that we will be occupied this morning.

I am not going to talk about apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, these specific ministers, but about the ministry of the Church; and the two letters with which we have been mainly occupied this week (the two letters to the Corinthians) have in view, very clearly and emphatically so, the ministry of the Church. All that the apostle is saying is with this background of the fulfillment of the Divine ministry in Corinth, and as those letters are a vehicle down through the whole dispensation to our own time, it is what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Church about its ministry.

In the First Letter of Corinthians, the apostle is dealing with all those things which either frustrate or spoil the ministry of the Church. In the Second Letter, he comes out very clearly and emphatically on the matter of the ministry as he uses these words: “seeing then that we have this ministry”; and you must remember that the apostle is writing to a church, a local church, he is not just talking about his own ministry. Paul has much to say about that, but here he is speaking of the Church’s ministry and the “we” is the Church at Corinth: “we have this ministry”; and the associated phrase is: “we have this treasure in vessels of fragile clay”—is that only Apostles? No, the “we” is corporate; it is all of us. We shall come to that again presently, for what we are really concerned with this morning is the ministry of all believers, or the ministry of the Church.

[Shammu]

The Nature And Dynamic Of Ministry
Part One

Now having said that, we can proceed to a consideration of the nature and dynamic of ministry; and once more referring to the apostle, a particular apostle who is writing these letters, let us remember that Paul is a representative or example ministry. That is how he speaks of himself throughout these letters, and what was true of him as to ministry, he was saying, has got to be true of the Church. He did not put it in just this way, but this is very clearly what he is saying: “What is true in my ministry, as to its Source and its Nature and its Power, has to be true of all believers, and of the Church.” He is a representative minister, not an exclusive one; he may have dimensions beyond anyone else’s, but that is just his representative character. The Lord is saying by this man Paul that here you have an example of what ministry is and how ministry is produced and what the principles and laws of ministry are, and, inclusively, what the background of ministry is. That is how you must look at the apostle (as a great minister quite true) but as in principles, a representative minister.

As Paul begins, he goes right back to the Damascus Road, to the beginning of his Christian life and ministry, for you will remember that it was there, right at the commencement, when the Lord met him on his way to Damascus that the Lord gave him his commission: “to whom I send thee” (Acts 26:17). Paul goes right back to his conversion, to the beginning of his life in union with Christ, and he says this: “as to life, as to vocation, as to ministry, that I might proclaim Him among the nations, God revealed His Son in me.” Here you have the Source of everything! It is this vision of the Lord Jesus that is the Nature of the ministry, that is the Source of the ministry, that is the dynamic of all true ministry, for all true ministry in this dispensation issues and proceeds from an inshining of Divine Light revealing Jesus Christ. “It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.” That gives us a secret.

Saul of Tarsus is on the way to Damascus, and on the way he saw a Light from heaven. That is objective, something that blinded him from without. That Light turned out to be the Glorified Lord Jesus, and Paul is saying here in this fragment to the Galatians that he not only objectively saw that Light and that Glorified Man, but also something happened inside of him. Inside of him, he said: “Jesus of Nazareth Whom I am on the way to persecute and Whose persecution has become the one passion of my life—Jesus of Nazareth, that impostor (as I believe) that evil man, that deceiver—this is He?! He has been here amongst us walking the streets of Jerusalem, of Galilee, up and down the country, that same One has now appeared to me, that same One, not a different One—only in appearance and in knowledge, but the same One. What does this mean?!”

That inshining carried with it an overwhelming significance in the life of Paul, and so away to the desert he went to live and to dwell upon this; and that Light which has shone on him was shining in him, and he was seeing the significance of Who?—God’s Son! True, but he was seeing Jesus of Nazareth, the Man Glorified—the Man having reached the ultimate of God’s intention for man. Paul thought within: “Because I knew Him as a man, whether I saw Him in the flesh or not, I knew Him—all about Him as a man amongst men; and human eyes could not discriminate between Him and other men, only there was something about Him that was different, but He is a Man amongst men, and this is that same Man—transfigured”: this he had to think in the light of that inward revelation.

People who know the Greek here know that this Word: “It pleased God to reveal His Son in me,” is a subjective-objective. Paul could say: “I saw objectively, but I also saw subjectively,” and until that happens, dear friends, we are not in the way of effectual ministry. You may be seeing by what is said to you throughout this week, you may be seeing in a sort of objective way, everything objectively, and that is very wonderful; but has it broken through from the objective to the subjective where you can say: “My word, I have never seen it like that, I have never seen Him in that way.” This “objective-subjective” seeing is what happened to the apostle, and it was the beginning both of his Christian life and of his ministry; and they both went together.

Brethren, do you know that you as a believer, as a Christian, are constituted for ministry from the day of your new birth? Do you know that you are ordained a minister the moment you are regenerated into this New Humanity? Do not wait for the day when someone will ordain you to the ministry. Oh, no, your calling of God is from the beginning unto ministry. About this, Paul said that it was, it corresponded to, what happened at the creation. Paul said in Second Corinthians, that great letter of the ministry: God Who said, “Let there be light, let light be,” has repeated that Divine fiat in a spiritual way in our hearts, “has shined into our hearts”;—God has said in these darkened human hearts, “let light be” ...shined into our hearts with what object?—“to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” For those of you who have heard this before and have heard me say it before, bear with me if I may just stay for a moment with that word “glory.” Yes, it was objective glory with Saul of Tarsus which he saw, but what is that glory? What is the glory of God?

We have been hearing in the second session about the God of glory appearing to Abraham. What is the glory of God? The glory of God is His absolute satisfaction with anyone or any situation. When God is satisfied, something emanates from Him. We know that in simple ways in Christian experience. If there is something over which you may have had a battle, a real battle, and you have got through to what the Lord has been trying to get you to and the battle is over and you are responsive wholly to the will of God, what happens? There is such a sense of blessedness inside. The fight is finished, the battle is over, there is rest and peace and joy within. Now that is glory because it is on the way to that ultimate accomplishment of the whole will of God in a Humanity when the glory will be universal. Yes, the “glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” just means this: because the Lord Jesus was so satisfying to the very nature of God that there was about Him something of peace and rest and joy. He carried with Him the satisfaction of God. “I always do the things that are pleasing to Him”: that is the glory.

Do not think of glory just as this objective, shining, blazing something, but think of it as shining into your hearts. Oh, how can I explain it?! It is just this—that inside we have come to the place where we are satisfied with the Lord Jesus and meet the satisfaction of God. “Not what I am, O Lord, but what Thou art—that, that alone, can be my soul’s true rest. Thy Love, not mine, is glory.” Paul said: “God carried out this New fiat in my heart, and in your heart, Corinthians. He shone in. He said, ‘Let light be, and there was light.’ ” It was a Light that was never on land or sea, “the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Now that is the spring of ministry, and what is the ministry? What do we mean by ministry? Well, ministry is the outshining of Jesus Christ from our lives, and you do not need to have gone to convocations; you do not need to have any artificial or mechanical means. You may study your Bible, and you may give the most wonderfully organized and arranged Bible readings; but the question is, is that ministry?

Are you emanating Christ?
Are you transmitting Christ?
Is Christ coming through your teaching?

Are people sensing Christ and not your study, not your library, not your commentaries, not your versions, not your translations. But the point is, where does this come from, where did we get it, how did we get it???

Brethren, I am not saying that Bible study is wrong, but I am saying that through it all, has Christ appeared?! and is He appearing?! You may be a minister, a preacher, a Bible teacher of renown, and it may stop there; but the whole question is whether I am officially that or just a humble member of Christ, without any public gift at all, without any human ordination, I can be ministering Christ, in some way ministering Christ, and that is the ministry. That is the source of all true ministry from beginning to end. Here the apostle is making it that. Paul is saying: “It began in me and is going on in me, and all that I have to say to you believers is what I am seeing of the Lord Jesus, a growing, inward unveiling of God’s Son."

[Shammu]

The Growth Of Ministry Is Through “Afflictions”—“Consolations”

Now the question arises, how does the ministry grow, proceed? In these letters, and especially in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, we have the answer; and it is going to touch us quite deeply, acutely I think, on this matter of the procedure of ministry, of the growth of ministry. How will this be? Will it be by more study, more books? Oh, no, dear friends, that is not the way of a growing, continuing ministry; and the ministry has got to grow all the time, deepen and enlarge all the time, but how? Please read again your Second Letter to the Corinthians, and before you have gotten very far, indeed almost immediately in that letter, you come on some words which are repeated again and again. What are they? “afflictions”; “consolations.”

Underline those words right at the beginning of the Second Letter. And in that connection the apostle brings forth his own great experience: “I would have you know what befell me—so great a death. (He had the sentence that it was death.) But we had the sentence of death. We despaired of life. We were pressed out of our measure.” Then, and right through that letter, the apostle is constantly striking that note of sufferings, sufferings, sufferings.

“We Have This Treasure”
which is this ministry,
the revelation of Jesus Christ
in our hearts.

“We have it in vessels,” and I like the literal translation of “fragile clay,” capable of being broken and smashed. “Beyond our measure of endurance, even unto despair, we despaired of life,” and then he will give us a couple of catalogues of his afflictions.

Now you ought to sit down brethren, and think about that if you are thinking about ministry. My, you ought to think about all that Paul himself met, encountered, and went through from center to circumference. At the center what do you find?—unfaithful, disloyal, and treacherous brethren; and moving out from that center in ever enlarging circles, there are many implications in this letter, as well as statements, of what people were saying about him: “He was not a true apostle. He is not one of the twelve. He never saw Jesus after the resurrection. He is not a true apostle; he is an imposter. He is a deceiver. He is just going around cadging, getting money from Christians.” These are all implications; a whole list of them. This is implied. It is there.

Paul goes on to say: If any man has suffered, “I more than them all.” And then he speaks of the many times he was in prison, of how many times he received the stripes, and how many times he was in the deep and shipwrecked, a night and a day in the deep, of how many times he was in hunger and in nakedness and in peril—in sea, on land, from robbers and fellow-Christians. It is a terrible double list that he gives in these chapters of Second Corinthians. Read them again, and no wonder that word has such a large place at the beginning of the letter—“the afflictions of Christ which abound unto us, that the consolations also may abound.” That is the ministry, those periods when even men like this man Paul, perhaps the greatest minister that Christ ever had, will say: “I despaired. I despaired of life, I was pressed beyond my measure of endurance.” That is how the ministry grows.

If we really say to the Lord, “Lord, make my life a ministry of Christ,” this is how the ministry grows, this is how it goes on. This is how to be an effectual minister. This is how the ministry proceeds, deepens, and becomes more fruitful. Believe me, dear friends, if the apostle is representative of ministry and if we as servants of God are to be spiritually fruitful—if really true ministers of Jesus Christ, there will be in the background of our lives the secret sufferings, a hidden history with God under His hand.

If you are going to be a true minister of Christ, ministering Christ, He is going to take you into some deep experiences with Him, very deep experiences, where you will discover something that is going to be of great value to others; for it is the crucified and suffering servant of God who is really the fruitful one, the one of whom you can say: “That man is not talking out of his library, from his books, that man knows what he is talking about—he has been there. He has been in it. This has come out of the travail of his soul.” Read 2 Corinthians again in the light of how the ministry grows. Oh, I speak and say these things to you, but God only knows how I hold my breath, for we do know that if the Lord has done anything at all, it has been by a hard way. It has been by the “afflictions” of Christ that we might know the “consolations” of Christ; and, as the people of God, what do we want? information or consolations?

I know what your answer is over that, but I want you to notice that this is something terrific in the whole cosmic realm, for ministry is not just limited to the people amongst whom we move. This kind of ministry is “cosmic ministry.” What do I mean? I mean this: the god of this age had blinded the minds of the unbelieving, lest as a precaution, as a move, a strategic move, lest the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God should shine upon them. If our gospel is hid, it is hid in them that are perishing in whom the god of this age had blinded.—What is such a ministry? It Is The Undoing Of That Devilish Work Of Spiritual Blindness. All spiritual blindness is not just natural, it is satanic, and you have got to have something that strikes there beyond the merely natural condition, that strikes right home to the source of that condition, “he hath blinded.”

Satan is “the god of this world,” and the trouble at Corinth, as the whole of the First Letter shows, is that the world has laid its deadly, paralyzing hand upon those people. The world and the old humanity lie under a curse. Does that sound strong, brethren? But have you never said, “this accursed self.” It is this accursed self that is in the way all the time. Yes, that humanity lies under a curse from the beginning, and this world lies under a curse which means that that humanity and this world can never go through to God’s end as it is. The end of that humanity and of this world is what? destruction, removal right from the Face of God. Paul saw this as to the Corinthians, the natural man intruding, and this world—its judgments, its standards, its conceptions, its values, its ideas—amongst these people in the church; controlling, influencing—the world of Corinth had come into the church at Corinth—in its mentality, in its manner, and in its procedure: how the world does it... that was at Corinth.

Yes, our natural man lies under a curse, our old humanity lies under a curse. It cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God because God has put His veto on it. It is vetoed, and this world is vetoed as to God’s things. And who has done it? The god of this age, the prince of this world; and when God breaks in, He said: “Let there be light,” because darkness is not of God; it is of the devil. And here we have it in the spiritual part: “he hath blinded”—the god of this age, blinded and brought into darkness this old humanity; and when God says, “Let there be light,” the work of the devil is undone and the judgment is removed and that should be the effect of ministry.

The ministry of Christ should be out of darkness into Light; and you remember the commission to the Apostle Paul at the beginning, “To whom I send thee, to turn them from darkness to light.”—The right translation in the Greek language is: “That they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive an inheritance.” This is ministry, the turning from darkness to Light, from the power of Satan unto God, to have an inheritance which they lost in Adam. It is very full. That should be the impact and influence out of our presence as ministers of Christ.

When Christ was present, He did say a lot of things; He did preach, mostly to His disciples, preparing them for their work ahead; but it was not only what He said, it was as much His personal presence. He would come somewhere and He had not said anything, and demons would cry out: “I know Thee Whom Thou art; the Holy One of God.” They could not hold their peace. His Presence dragged them out. His very Presence was an exposure of man, an exposure of Satan: His Presence, and that is the ministration of Christ.—

O Lord, make us ministers, make me a minister, as far as I can bear it, that the impact, the registration, the influence may be people moving into the Light, really seeing the Light in an inward way. The Light—not of truth, or even of Scripture to begin with, but through Scripture—the Light of Jesus Christ.

[Shammu]

The Test Of Ministry Is In Its Eternal Value

That is all I have time to say this morning about ministry—unless I add this word, again from Corinthians:—the test of ministry is in its eternal value. Now the Apostle Paul associates the two things: Affliction and Eternal Value. He says, “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while...” (now do not stop there, get your conjunction) “...while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; (passing, transient) but the things which are not seen are eternal.” The test of our ministry is perhaps not going to be what we see in our own lifetime, but what is afterward, going on to eternity.

When you get to glory, do you not want to discover that you meant far more than you knew you did? That there was a great deal more value in your being here than ever you saw. Oh, this soul life of the old humanity does want to see, it is always doing things to see, to see the result, to see the value. “While we look not at the things which are seen.” I think perhaps this is one of the most testing words in the Bible to the old man. How can we live on what is not seen and what is in the eternal future and be satisfied? Oh, that is not the old humanity, but it is the New—the eternal value of ministry.

The Nature And Purpose Of The Church
Part Two

Now for a little while I will go on to the next thing: the nature and purpose of the Church, now and in the ages afterward; and here again, we need a revised version of what we mean when we speak of the Church. Through the years I have talked and written much about the Church, but on this very matter of the Church I find that I am being forced to a revision, not to abandon what has been said, taught, and believed, and acted upon, but as we go on, a great deal of what we did at the beginning, of what we called our Church teaching, a great deal has, shall I say, broken down?!

Now, brethren, what are you finding about the Church today? To begin with, you may be looking around everywhere and saying: “Where is it? Is this the Church? Well, this does not come up to Ephesians; far from it, it is very much like Corinthians.” So, what is the Church? What is its function now and in the ages to come? The Apostle Paul always linked these two things together: “Unto Him be the glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus through all ages, forever and ever”—the function of the Church afterward, as well as now.

What is the Church? Of course, there are various symbols of the Church. The Church is called “the House of God,” it is called a “Temple,” it is called “the Body of Christ,” it is called “the Bride,” and so on. You may ask, “Are these different things?” No, they are only aspects of one thing. Each of those definitions or designations or titles is only a functionary aspect of the Church. The House of God—the place where God lives. The Temple of God—where He is worshipped. The Body of Christ—the vessel of a Personality. The Body of Christ is a function, a many-sided function of the expression of the Personality. The Bride—is the expression of the affectional relationship between Christ and the Church: “Christ loved the Church, gave Himself for it... so ought husbands to love their wives....” The Bride is the affectional relationship between Christ and His Church. These are all symbols of the one thing, but what is the one thing of which these are but aspects? And that is what we have got to come to, that is where our revision of mentality has to take place.

So, what is the inclusive designation of the Church? “One Man”—You have it in that great Church letter of Ephesians where “He has broken down the middle wall of partition” between Jew and Gentile (racially the old human divisions, compartments) He has removed the division and has made “of the twain one new man.” The inclusive designation is a Man, “One new man,”—a New Humanity. It is the aggregate of the New Creation people, men and women, Jews and Gentiles (not remaining as they are naturally, Jews and Gentiles) but just one New Man, one New Humanity: that is the Church! And which Humanity is it? That touches on the function: there is the nature.

Oh, do take this to heart, dear friends, for I do not intend to offend anyone, but what is God doing? What is He after? Is He after making a new institution called the Church, a new ecclesiasticism, something that has a denominator amongst men like the individual denominations or the non-denominations? Is God doing that? Is that what God is doing? (This is where we need a mental revision, a heart revision.) No! He is not in it. No, He is not doing that, He is only with the people, not with the thing. But God is doing in the spiritual way what He did at the beginning. He is saying and proceeding, proceeding with His concept: “Let Us make man, let Us make Man.” The Church is the One New Man:—Let Us make a Man, not an institution, or any of these things that the Church is called. God said: “Let Us make a Man,” and that is what he is doing with you and with me. God is not trying to make of us any of these many things that Christians are called and the names by which they go. He is just getting to work on us to constitute us “the Man.”

You remember what we said in the beginning: “He called them (man and woman)—He called them man.” Here in this (and, sisters, be careful how you take what I am now going to say, for “there is neither male nor female”) it is a Man, that is, it is a Humanity. I cannot explain to you, because I do not know, what that Humanity is going to be afterward in glory, but Jesus answering a certain man’s question about marriage and repeated marriages, (whose wife a certain woman would be afterward out of all she had married) said, “Ye do err... in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels.” It is a kind of Humanity that is different. Oh, the questions will arise, “Shall I know my husband in heaven, shall I know my wife in heaven?” Yes! But we shall know in a way in which it is far better to know, however precious may have been the human relationships, husband and wife, wife and husbands here—yes, precious, very precious; but is it not better when a husband and wife know each other in the Spirit than in the flesh? Is it not lovely when they flow together from one Spirit, one vision, one objective that their united lives manifest Jesus Christ in the home and in the neighborhood?! There is something very precious about that.

I had a son, and the Lord took him about three or four years ago; and as my son, we had a good relationship, there was not strife between us as father and son, no difficulty at all; and he and I had such spiritual fellowship that I could open my heart to him as fully as I could to anybody, and more than to most people—for he was not only my son, but he was my spiritual friend. Brethren, you know what I am talking about. That is how we are going to know, and it will be a better kind of knowing. Do not worry, then, whether you know your husband or your wife. Oh, you will: “Then shall I know, even as I have been known by the Lord.”

[Shammu]

The Vocation: The Emanation Of Christ

Now we must move on. The vocation of the Church now and in eternity is going to be just the emanation of Christ. It is now intended to be that, and God help us to be that. It is not this and that and one or more of a hundred things that are the idea about the Church today, but it is just this one thing, the presence of a different kind of Man, in the individual and collectively. Let us take it universally.

Are you not impressed with how Peter, having passed through the great transition from the old Jewish humanity, got right through:—after his battles with the Gentiles at Cæsarea, and Cornelius’ house, after his battle down at Antioch when James and the elders came down from Jerusalem, when Peter withdrew himself from eating with the Gentiles (“dissimulation” Paul called it). When he got through it all, and thank God Peter got through it all, what did he say in the opening of his letter?—“To the saints, scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.” Peter says: “Ye, Galatians, Cappadocians, Asians, Bithynians, you are all scattered. The dispersion has taken place, and you are all scattered, you saints, and yet you are a spiritual house, One House. Not so many houses, but One House. Everywhere.” What is this? It is where the Lord is dwelling, in men and women.

The Church universal according to the Divine concept is just One Man in the earth. How we discover that when we meet somebody we have never met before and they are the Lord’s. It is wonderful!—until you begin to ask or they begin to ask what you belong to. If you just talk about things of the Lord, One Man, One Blessed Man, it is like that. Well, that is very elementary; it is very simple, but that is what the Church is universally: that is what the Church is locally.

When people come into the local company, they do not come in and say, “Well, this is how they behave, this is what they do; they have baptisms, they have the Lord’s table, and they have this form of worship.” No, these things may be all right, they may have their place, they may be a part of a Divine order, but what is it they are to meet?—not our baptism, not our Lord’s table, not our method of procedure, not our technique, but “God is in this place!”—they meet the Lord. They may not be able to put it like that, they may not be able to define it or explain it, but the impress is: “There is something there, these people have got life, these people are in the good of something that you will not find anywhere else. It is the Lord.” Oh, that all our local companies were just like that, in whatever way we go on, the thing that impresses is: “The Lord is here, the Lord is here.”

I have moved out from the universal to the local company, and now I am going to move down to the individual. To the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul said: “Do you not know that your body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit? He dwells in you.” I am a microcosm of the Church (or intended to be), and each one of you is intended to be a microcosm of the Church. Now what is it? What is true of the universal Church collectively is to be true in our case, it is to be Christ that people meet when they meet us individually. What broke upon this man Paul’s heart was not something that he studied up, read up, or worked out in his mind, but he saw Jesus as Lord (and He is a lifetime of seeing). Paul began to see, and to go on to see, what the Church really is. And I will say this, brethren, you do not know anything about the Church if you have not seen Jesus Christ—however much you have read and talked about it, if you have not seen Him, you do not know what the Church is. It is not a thing, an it. But if you have seen Him, it is a Him, it is a Person Who is dwelling in persons—that is the Church! I think that is enough this morning. Very much more could be said, but time has gone. Let us pray...

Make the truth live in us, O Lord. May that Divine fiat take place, light shine into our hearts, and the eyes of our understanding be enlightened that we may see light in Thy Light. For Thy Name and Glory and Satisfaction’s sake, Amen.

[Shammu]

Chapter 6 - The Immense Significance Of Jesus Christ: Crucified, Risen, And Exalted

Lord, when we say to Thee, “Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law,” Thou knowest that the most “wonderful” Thou canst show to us is Thy Son; and so, not things, but Him. Open our eyes that we may see Him this morning. It is to Thee, and not to men, but to Thee that we say, “We would see Jesus”; and O Lord, grant it in Thy mercy that when we leave this place we are able truly to say: “We have seen the Lord.” Be it so, for Thy Name’s sake, Amen.

Now we come to the last of these hours in which we have been occupied with the “Great Transition,” having said at the beginning that the whole Bible is occupied with God and humanity. The Old Testament, with an old humanity throughout, showed how utterly unreliable that humanity is, and how it eventually proved a failure as the Old Testament closes. I expect you have noticed that not in the chronological order, but in the spiritual order the Old Testament closes with Malachi, and what a sorry picture in Malachi it is, the closing of the book in failure. The New Testament is occupied wholly with the introduction and development of a New Humanity, brought in with the Lord Jesus Christ; and from that point the whole of the New Testament is occupied with this New Humanity, of which Christ is the Representative of its birth, its growth, and its eventual and ultimate glorification.

That is the general background of these morning hours this week. And we came two days ago to the all-inclusive vision of the Lord Jesus and began (as we shall never finish though we stayed here all our life) began to see what there is in Jesus Christ, what He has brought in, and what the Apostle Paul saw in the Lord Jesus when, as he put it, “It pleased God to reveal His Son in me.” What an immense revealing that was, which grew and grew all through the life of the apostle. And we said that four things came to the apostle in that vision, that “Heavenly Vision,” that inward seeing of the Lord Jesus.

Firstly, in Jesus glorified, Paul saw, according to the eternal thoughts of God, the place and the nature and the destiny of humanity, the Humanity after Christ. Then Paul saw the nature and dynamic of a life ministry, of a ministry through this long dispensation between the ascension of the Lord Jesus and His coming again, he saw what the ministry is, the vocation. He saw that when he saw the Lord Jesus. We spent a lot of time on it: not enough. Then Paul saw the nature and the purpose of the Church now, and as he put it, “unto the Age of the ages.” These three great things he saw, and then Paul saw a fourth. With this, we are going to be occupied this morning.

Paul Saw Jesus Christ Crucified, Risen, Exalted

Saul of Tarsus saw Jesus of Nazareth glorified—“The Man in The Glory.” And as he gazed and gazed inwardly upon that Man, seeing that vision, that revelation, he saw these three things that we have mentioned, and then Paul saw the immense significance of Jesus Christ Crucified, Risen, and Exalted; and, of course, these are the things which fill all his writings. You will have to approach them with these four things before you. Let me repeat, the immense significance of Jesus Christ: Crucified, Risen, and Exalted.

We are totally incapable of sensing, recognizing, conceiving what happened to this man, Saul of Tarsus, when he saw the Lord Jesus, for he had thought of Jesus the Nazarene as an imposter, a false teacher, a false leader, as One Who was leading people astray; and all the feelings of animosity and hatred and bitterness, of which that great soul was capable, overflowed against this Man—Jesus of Nazareth. He made it his life business, with his tremendous abilities, his natural abilities, and his training, and all his knowledge; he made it his life business to blot out any remnant related to that Man, Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. Saul viewed the Cross of Jesus Christ as His deserved crucifixion. He viewed the death of Jesus of Nazareth as death, death as we know it—the end. And that in shame—deserved shame, deserved ignominy, deserved disgrace. And more than that, from his Jewish standpoint, he viewed that Man on that Cross as cursed of God, as cursed of Almighty God! This was his mind about Jesus of Nazareth.

When Paul saw Jesus on the way to Damascus and he was smitten with the Light, not knowing at that moment Who and what it meant, he said, because of the overpoweringness of it, “Who art Thou, Lord?”—I say we can never enter into the tremendous convulsion that must have taken place in this man Saul when there came back in answer: “ ‘I am Jesus, I am Jesus,’ that One of Whom you have had that mentality; that One, about Whom you have had all those thoughts and feelings. I am He, I am Jesus.” I say, we cannot enter into what that man must have felt at that moment, but it was then, and from then on, that he began to see This Man Jesus, Glorified, in the Seat of Power, capable of smiting even such a man as Saul of Tarsus to the ground with one stroke, and prostrating him, leaving him one who has got to be lifted up by men, and by the arm led blind to the place where he was going. In the overwhelmingness of it, he began to see in that One that it was not just a crucifixion, and it was not a death such as he had thought of death; but that Jesus Christ, Crucified, was all that his life after (that which he learned by revelation and experience throughout his life) and teaching showed him to have seen.

He Died In My Place: He Died For All

And what an “all” Paul saw; it comes out in considerable fulness in his ministry. What Paul saw first of all was that death, that ignominious death, that shameful death, that awful death, was his own death. Paul saw what God thought of him; it was God’s attitude toward him. He could say: “That Man on that Cross like that, in all that state of degradation and shame and helpless weakness, despised and rejected, all that—that was me, that was me, that was what God thinks of my humanity. He died for me (but you know that the meaning is ‘in my place’). When He died, I died, that was my death, and that was God’s conception of me, Saul of Tarsus!!” Oh, what a revolution! He had a great idea of himself and his own abilities; but, look, this is God unveiling Saul of Tarsus, but more than that: “He died in my place.” And that was a death, a new idea about death.

Moreover Paul saw, and I am keeping, of course, firstly to his teaching; I am not reading in anything, making up something. You can sit down with it yourself and prove everything that I am saying from the New Testament. He saw not only that that death, that awful death, as a judgment upon a kind of man was his death, but he saw that it was the death of the whole human race in Adam. What does Paul say? “Because we thus judge that One died in the place of all, therefore all died.” Coneybeare says, “It was the death of the whole race... ‘As in Adam all die.’” This is the new conception to the Cross of the Lord Jesus. Our death, the death of the whole race, the humanity to which we belong by nature, the whole—all died. But then Paul came to see this also, that in the death of Jesus it was not death as an end; it was a death that destroyed Death. In a sense, it was a death which was the end of Death. “He tasted death for all men,” it is true; but then, “He destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”