That which is before us can be put in several ways,
and we shall seek to outline at least the introductory part
of our meditation.
God's Present Purpose
1. The Gathering Out of a People from the World
In the first place it would be helpful for us to be
reminded of the special nature of this dispensation,
which embraces the period from the ascension of the
Lord Jesus to His coming again;
and it is well for us to be reminded (since it is a tragedy
that the Lord's people have not been continually
reminded through the dispensation) that in this age, in
this dispensation, God's main concern with this world is
to take something out of it, and not to do anything with
it, nor to have anything in it as of it. Until we have
become clear on that matter we shall be confused on all
other matters in relation to the Lord, as to His work, His
purpose, and our life in fellowship with Him.
The Lord is pre-eminently occupied with the taking of
something out of this world. All the rest is but a
preparation of this world for judgment. When that
activity of God is finished in the taking out of the earth,
then the judgment of this world will take place. So that
all ideas about improving this world, and setting up
something of God in it as of it, establishing something
here for God, are false ideas, and will lead into a great
deal of error, and, in the long run, to disappointment.
2. The Gathering Out is Mainly Spiritual
In connection with that primary activity of God in the
dispensation, the next thing to remember is that this
extraction from the earth is mainly spiritual. Of course,
the Lord is taking His people literally out of the world
from generation to generation, and there will be, at the
end, a mighty literal taking out of the residue of
those who look for His appearing; but mainly the taking
out through the dispensation is a spiritual thing, the literal
or physical is but the end of a phase.
That taking out spiritually is, firstly, by a crisis, the
crisis of new birth, in which we become aware that we
have been born out from another realm and that we are
no longer belonging to this one; that in the deepest
reality of our beings through new birth we are not of this
earth, but are from above. That is the crisis of our
extraction from the world.
Then, secondly, the crisis once passed, the extraction,
the redemption, or the emancipation (whichever word
you prefer) is a progressive thing. It is, in a sense, a
pilgrimage, a moving away, and as we walk with the
Lord in a true way we are getting further and further
away from this world in a spiritual sense.
These are simple and elementary truths, new to no
one, but necessary of emphasis by way of laying the
foundation.
3.
God's Purpose in Leaving His People in the World
That which remains of God in this world is here for
three purposes. We are now referring to that which has
come through the crisis and is in the process, but is still
here; here, and yet not of this earth. While it remains, it
remains for three purposes, which are in three different
directions, firstly toward God, secondly toward itself,
thirdly toward the world.
The Godward purpose of being here is the
representing of God's rights in the earth. Just as David,
when driven out of his kingdom away from Jerusalem
sent back Zadok the priest with the ark into Jerusalem as
a testimony to the fact that that was his place and he
would come back into it one day, so the Lord, who has
been driven out of this world, strategically puts His
people here as in relation to Himself, representing His
rights here. Thus we are called upon deliberately to
stand here on this earth against the claims of this usurper,
as a challenge to the Devil's claim to be prince of this
world, for the rights of Him whose right it is to reign. We
simply stand here toward Him for that purpose.
As to the aspect of this purpose which is toward the
thing of God itself which is here, that is for the purpose of
learning the true nature of what is of God. We are left on
this earth for the time of our sojourn amongst these other
things for the purpose of education, and our education is
in the direction of learning what the nature of a thing of
God is. We have many lessons to learn, many things to
know as to the difference between what is of man and
what is of God, what is of Adam and what is of Christ,
what is of earth and what is of heaven, what is of the
flesh and what is of the Spirit, and our education lies in
that direction.
It is a very experimental and practical thing. If you and
I were suddenly taken to heaven; that is, if immediately
we were saved we were transplanted to heaven, we
should know the nature of all that is of God fully,
immediately, but we should know it in a way in which we
do not know it now. To put that the other way, we are
knowing it now in a way which we should not know it if
that were the case. We should then know it as objective,
as something which obtained all around us, and into
which we came in that way; but being left here in the
conflicting elements we are learning it in an experimental
way, it is being wrought into us through sufferings,
through contradictions, through discipline, through a great
deal of inner history. It is being wrought
into
our very
being, and that is God's way of teaching His people. It is
the most profitable way; otherwise He would have
adopted another method.
Then as to the manward aspect of that which is here of
God, that is a matter of testimony and witness. Those
two words do not mean the same thing. The witness is
the instrument itself, the testimony is that which is given
by the witness. The Lord must have something here
which is the embodiment of the truth, and, being the
embodiment, it gives forth the truth. That is the difference
between witness and testimony, and we are here on the
earth manward, world-ward, for that purpose, to be the
embodiment and the expression of the truth.
So you see that, while the Lord leaves that which is
essential and strictly of Himself here for a time, He does
not mean that it is to settle in; to consolidate itself here;
to become a part of things here, but it is only here for
Divine purposes, and when those purposes have reached
that point where the Lord sees in His own wisdom and
sovereignty that it would be better that the vessel should
be transplanted to heaven, then He takes action
accordingly.
The Son of Man the Divine Exemplar
All this is gathered up in two features of Christ's life.
(a) As in the world, yet not of it. Into that short
sojourn there were packed all the laws of a life which is
lived as in relation to heaven, and not in relation to this
earth. His position was, while here, in the bosom of the
Father; with God, not of this world. He lived by the
laws of such a relationship, and He lived thus in order to
show forth the fact that man is called to live by God. It is
true that He was God. That is not the question for the
moment, but we emphasise the other side in order to see
why it was necessary for Him to live here, and that is
to set forth the fact that man can live on the earth, and
yet be governed by laws which, if obeyed, make him
something other than a man of this world.
That may sound complicated, but it can be resolved
into one simple fact. He lived, a Man in this world, yet
not of it; and in order to do so He had to move as
governed by laws which were not the laws of this world,
but the laws of heaven. That is one phase of His life in
which that which we have been saying is gathered up.
(b) As in heaven, yet expressing His heavenly life
in the Church by the Holy Spirit. All is gathered into
that. The Holy Spirit is sent for the main object of "re-living" Christ in the Church, and thus constituting the
Church one Heavenly Man according to Christ. Thus it
becomes necessary for us to know what the life in the
Spirit is, what the life governed by the Spirit is.
Spirituality the Great Governing Law
There is a parenthetical period in which these two
phases of His life are joined and yet divided, where they
meet and where they part. That parenthetical period is
the great forty days after His resurrection. The first
phase of His life on earth reaches unto that, and His new
life in heaven also reached unto that. The two meet.
He is still Jesus of Nazareth, but there is a difference.
While they meet in that period, they are not one; they
are different, they are separate. Mary would fain have
proceeded according to the old regime when she met
Him on the morning of the resurrection. She would have
embraced Him, but He said, "Touch me not". There is a
difference, there is a change. In a word, that old kind of
relationship is at an end, the relationship is going to be
different; and yet the deepest realities are going to
abide. The two phases, the earthly and the heavenly,
meet in the forty days, and yet they are different, and
they are separate. The one great inclusive law governing
both of those phases, and that is so clearly set forth in
the parenthetical period, is spirituality.
Spirituality is the great determining truth. It determines
the truth of everything, determines the value of
everything, governs everything. Mary, with the others,
thought and believed that to possess Christ they must
see Him, and handle Him, and hold Him. He was
teaching them two things. One is, that is not really to
possess Christ. In the deepest reality, the deepest truth,
in the greatest value of Christ, that is not possessing
Christ. On the other hand, it is possible to possess
Christ as truly as though you saw Him, and handled
Him, and to possess Him even more really than if He
were here in physical presence. The governing law of
that greatest of all realities is spirituality.
What is spirituality? We shall see as we consider the
forty days that spirituality resolves itself into this fact of
knowing Christ, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit;
not according to the standards of man in the flesh, the
soulish standards of the changeable, the seen, but
knowing Christ in an inward, spiritual way according to
the power of a Divine life. That is spirituality in a word.
Much more has to be said about it.
You can see where the two phases were meeting, overlapping, and yet were
divided. The Lord, while He brought them together, showed perfectly clearly that these are not the same, and that
they are not one; there is this mighty difference. As I understand it, that was the object of the
forty days. It was to set before them and establish in
them the fact that spirituality is the great governing law
of our relationship with Christ, and of everything that has
to do with that relationship.
A Vital Discrimination
As to spirituality it is, of course, necessary to say
something more. We must not confuse spirituality with an
abstract, ethereal, atmospheric, mystical element which
is unrelated to all that is positive and practical. There are
strange ideas in men's minds as to the meaning of
spirituality. If you pass through an Art Gallery with an art
critic, you will hear that word often upon his lips. He will
refer to the work of art as "spiritual" or otherwise, and
he will tell you of a certain work that it has a spirituality
about it. Or if you go to a great musical production you
hear the same thing. It is the "spirituality" of the thing
that is either there or absent which determines the real
artistic value. If you go into the realm of architecture you
will have the word used. It is not only the actual structure
and adornment, but there is some intangible thing said to
be about that edifice, it is the "spiritual" element.
We must get that idea entirely out of our conception
of spirituality. That is not the Scriptural meaning of
spirituality. That is the mystical, the ethereal, the abstract,
the atmospheric, but that is not what the Word of God
means by the word spiritual. Perhaps it is unnecessary to
say that, and yet when we talk about spirituality some
people drift mentally into the realm of the unreal. Upon
true spirituality according to the Word of God the
greatest issues hang, the most tremendous consequences
depend.
We take a familiar illustration of this. There was a
revelation given by God through His Word as to the
means and method for the transportation of the ark. The
day came when that ark was to be transported from a
certain place to Jerusalem, and David assayed to do it.
On the one side with David there was the Word of God
that the ark should be in a certain place, a deep devotion
to the Lord on the part of His servant, a whole-hearted
zeal for the Lord's interests; and then out of his
devotion, and in his zeal, in accordance with what he
perceived to be the Lord's purpose (and his perception
of the Lord's purpose was perfectly right) he acted, and
tragedy overtook the execution of the purpose, the
carrying out of the design. The Lord made a breach that
day and Uzzah died before the Lord. What was wrong?
The Divine purpose was not wrong, God's thought was
that the ark should be in a certain place; the devotion
was all right, the zeal for the Lord was all right.
Where was the breakdown, the flaw? It was in failure to
perceive at that time the Lord's way of realising His own
purpose, how the Lord would do the thing that He
wanted to do, or how the Lord would have it done.
Everything hung upon how the thing was done. It was not
the object, not the motive, not the devotion, not the zeal
that was wrong, but perception broke down in the realm
of how it was to be done. It meant that David acted
upon a lower level than was revealed within the Word of
God, or was embodied within the Word of God. It was
a failure in spirituality, because spirituality has as its hallmark spiritual intelligence, intelligence as to, not only the
intention of God, but the methods of God; not only the
purpose of God, but how the purpose was to be fulfilled.
We can have general conceptions of what God wants
done, and not be sure as to exactly how, but it does not
end there. There can be tragedy in that realm. So that
you will see that, in this instance, spirituality was a matter
of perception as to the Lord's thoughts for the carrying
out of His purpose.
Is that practical? Ask Uzzah whether it is practical.
Ask David on that day when the Lord made a breach
whether it is practical. It is a practical matter whether we
get through with a thing or not. It is so practical that it
becomes a matter of life and death. It is practical as to
whether the Lord's blessing is upon it or withheld from it.
The greatest consequences are bound up with spirituality,
for spirituality means a knowing of the Lord in an inward
way. So that spirituality is very practical, very real; it
comes right down to the most tremendous consequences
in our lives.
We have taken that familiar illustration, as touching
upon one phase of things, and indicating what spirituality
means. David came eventually to the perception of God's
meaning, and came to see that it does matter very much
whether you have apprehended the whole thought of
God or whether you have only apprehended a part. The
part that he grasped was that the Lord wanted the ark in
a certain position, in a certain place. That was enough for him. It did
not matter very much in his zeal for the end how it was
done, so long as it was done; but that is of very great
significance to the Lord, as we see in this case. There is a wrong way of doing a right thing, which may bring the
whole thing to disaster. The result here undoubtedly
was a tragedy in the realm of a rightly conceived
purpose of God wrongly carried out. It was a failure in
spirituality, because spirituality means perception as to
the Lord's ways, in the Lord's interests.
Spirituality the Outcome of a Divine Nature
When we speak of spiritual people or of the Church
being a spiritual thing in this age, we do not mean that
they are just mystical. We hear that word very much in
connection with the Church as the Body of Christ, the
mystical Body of Christ. We have to be very careful
what we mean by that. The Holy Spirit through the
Apostle Paul brings that down on to very practical
matters. For example, this word is addressed to the
members of Christ: "The eye cannot say to the hand, I
have no need of you". There is nothing mystical about
that. That is very practical indeed. Let your own eye say
to your hand, I have no need of you, and work
accordingly, and see how far you get on! You find it is a
very practical matter. The Body of Christ is not mystical
in that sense of being something out of the realm of
practical, positive interests.
When we speak of spiritual
people, spiritual men, or of the Church in this
dispensation being spiritual, we are not meaning that it is
mystical, that it is a hidden, remote thing. The true nature
of a child of God and of the Church is something hidden
from the world and is a mystery to the world.
Concerning it the man of nature will always be saying, "How can a man be born again?"
"How can this man give
us his flesh to eat?" "How are the dead raised?" To the
unenlightened it is a mystery and is hidden. Nevertheless,
spiritual people, and the spiritual nature of the Church,
are something very definite, very positive, because, in the
first place, it represents the possession of a nature which
is altogether different from that possessed by man
naturally, altogether different in its qualities and in its
capacities and capabilities. The natural man cannot
receive the things of the Spirit, he cannot know them;
the spiritual man can. "As it is written, Things which eye
saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not into
the heart of man, whatsoever things God prepared for
them that love him. But unto us God revealed them
through the Spirit..." (1 Cor. 2:9).
Spirituality, therefore, represents the possession of a
nature which is superior altogether to the ordinary human
nature, and has capacities
and capabilities which are higher altogether than those
belonging to man ordinarily. That is the nature of
spirituality. It is a Divine capability, a Divine capacity,
brought within by reason of the operation and presence
of the Holy Spirit.
That is a fact, something which you and I know to be
a fact, but it constitutes the greatest practical difficulty
between us and those who do not possess it. Try to
resolve that. Begin to talk to the unregenerate man about
the things of the Lord, and you know that you come up
against a blank. You can talk about religion, about
Christianity, theology, and perhaps go a long way, but
when you come to the realities of knowing the Lord,
even beginning with new birth (the greatest reality with
us), those who have not gone through, who have not
been born from above, do not understand. They will say:
I do not know what you mean by being born again.
Advance beyond that to the things of the Lord which
have come to us in the course of our walk with Him, and
you find it is a realm which we move in alone, and all
who are not spiritual are excluded, and it is no use trying
to put a bridge over the two realms. It is the greatest
practical problem of our lives. We know quite well that
we are wrecked wholly upon the sufficiency of the Holy
Spirit in this matter where other people are concerned.
We can preach to the end of our lives, with every
ounce of strength we have, and unless the Spirit of God
gives quickening, illumination, and a capacity to those
who hear, the preaching is in vain, and we are as fools,
we have spent our strength for naught. We can never get
spiritual things across to natural minds, and yet we
cannot say that these spiritual things are mystical,
vapoury, abstractions, unreal, merely a matter of
atmosphere. They are the greatest realities in the
universe. We would not admit for an instant that it is a
matter of imagination. Neither is that true of any other
thing that has come to us in our union with Christ. They
are so real that they are our very being. If any man can
give up his faith, change his mind about his beliefs, you
may take it that that is something he has put on like a
coat; it is not the true.
The Inner Knowledge of God
Now all this that we have already said is ploughing
the way to the explanation of what true spirituality is,
and its true value. One thing
that surely concerns all the people of God very strongly,
very definitely, very mightily, is the question of that which
is invulnerable, indestructible; that which will stand when
everything else in the universe crashes, when all else is
consumed, destroyed: when in the shaking of the
heavens and the earth that which can be shaken is
shaken, then there shall be that which abides the shaking,
abides the fire, and goes through indestructible for
eternity. That concerns us in a practical way as to the
result of our being here on this earth.
If the great feature of spirituality is spiritual intelligence,
which is knowing the Lord in the inner way of His
thought, of His purpose, that is what God is after,
because it is that which is going to outlast everything
else. That is what is meant by being in the pre-eminent,
the supreme activity of God in this dispensation. This
world and everything related to it is not going to last,
therefore we will not get our roots into it; we will not lay
deep foundations in it; we will not build in union with it,
with the Name of God on it, not even in a religious way.
You and I must come into God's supreme activity in this
dispensation, which is to get out from this world, in
association with Himself, that which will abide eternally
when all else has gone. This may be in a people, but the
thing itself is the inner knowledge of God. That is
spirituality.
Speaking of spiritual people, of the Church being
spiritual, we are speaking of that which, having the higher
(may we use that word) intelligence, the knowledge that
is superior to human knowledge and intelligence, works
accordingly. That is the practical side. Any kind of
mental apprehension of God's thoughts which does not
lead to a corresponding activity, is either a wrong
apprehension or has fallen short of its purpose. There are
a great many people who dwell much upon spiritual
thoughts, ideas, always probing beneath the surface to
get something that is not apparent and they are most
unpractical; there is no working out of things in life. It is
not enough to have thoughts that seem to be Divine,
there must be an expression of those thoughts in practical
ways.
The work of God has to be done according to the
principles of God, and those principles are to be
revealed by the Holy Spirit. That is spirituality in life and
in work. The difference is so manifest in this
dispensation. You can see that right through men have
got hold of ideas
which are in the Word of God, and then they have made
that which corresponds to the Philistine cart, which
David constructed; that is, they have put those ideas
into a form which is something quite tangible, and of this
earth, established here in the world, and they will point to
their order of things, what they sometimes call the
Church, and say: This is according to the Word, and this
is the Scripture by which we have acted in doing this. So
you find that you get a dozen different things set up, all of
which are in disagreement amongst themselves, yet all of
them claiming to be constituted by the Word of God. Is
that right? So many of them are mutually exclusive, and
yet they support themselves by the Word of God. Is that
right? Now in so far as any of them are something on
this earth, established on this earth, there is a failure to
perceive the mind of God in His Word. That is where
everything has gone astray. That is where the whole thing
is at fault. That is why you get the confusion and the
contradiction, why you get a state of things like that,
which cannot possibly be accepted as an expression of
God's mind. It is saying, in effect, that God has a dozen
different minds and no two of them are agreed. God is of
one mind. In order to have God's mind you must be
essentially spiritual, and being spiritually minded you will
get oneness in expression. The Apostles are a great
example of this.
We shall come later to this first chapter of the book of
the Acts, and probably go on further than that, but the
emphasis for us just now is this. You see here men who
manifestly were not in agreement in the former years of
their connection with Christ, all standing up together and
speaking, and you have an exhibition of a oneness of
mind, of word, of thought, so that they
are as one man. The immediate expression of the Holy
Spirit's advent was oneness in a most remarkable way
between those who were anything but one before. Oh,
the divergencies, oh, the differences which separate men! Oneness is a mighty, wonderful mark of the advent of
the Holy Spirit. That is the one mind of God operating in
all who are under the complete domination of the Spirit
of God. That is spirituality. It is intelligence as to God's
thought. So that we have in the spiritual man, and in the
Church, as a spiritual thing, that working according to a
higher intelligence than that possessed by the natural
man. It is so high that he cannot attain unto it.
Now we cannot go further in this present meditation.
This is preparing the way, and is intended to indicate at
least that what the Lord is seeking pre-eminently in this
age is a spiritual people possessed of a knowledge, an
understanding, a perception of Himself which is
something altogether different from that possessed by
the natural man, and which is, therefore, the thing which
is going to abide when all else goes, to endure
throughout all testings, all trials. It is the inward
knowledge of God in an ever-growing way.
The Lord's concern for us at this time is that we
should know what God's mind is as to a spiritual mind
(and that refers to the individual, and to the Church as
the collective man, the one new man), as constituted
according to Christ in heaven by the Holy Spirit; the
Holy Spirit reproducing in us the life, the mind, the
intelligence of the Lord Jesus as God's heavenly Man.
May our eyes be opened to that, and the Lord give
us increasing liberty as we go on in that consideration.