When will the Lord's
people, who have the Scriptures and who know the
Scriptures so well in the letter, when will they come to
realize and to recognize that if truly they have been
crucified with Christ, if they have died in His death and
have been raised together with Him and have received the
Spirit, they have light in their dwelling? ''The
anointing which ye received of Him abideth in you, and ye
need not that any one teach you, but... His anointing
teacheth you concerning all things'' (I John 2:27). When
will believers, when will Christians, come to realize
that? Why must Christians who have the knowledge of the
Scriptures in the letter run about here and there to seek
advice from others on matters which vitally affect their
own spiritual knowledge? I do not mean that it is wrong
to get counsel, wrong to know what other children of God
of experience think or feel about matters. But if we are
going to build our position upon their conclusions, we
are in great danger. The final authority and arbiter in
all matters is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the
anointing.
We may get help from one
another, but I do hope that you are not going to build
your position upon what I say now because I say it. Do
not do that. I do not want you to do it. I do not ask you
to do it. What I say is, listen, take note; and then go
to your final authority Who is in you if you are a child
of God, and ask Him to corroborate the truth or to show
otherwise. That is your right, your birthright, the
birthright of every child of God: to be in the light of
the indwelling Spirit of light, the Spirit of God.
I wonder where Paul
would have been had he taken the opposite course to that
which he did take? ''When it pleased God, Who separated
me from my birth...to reveal His Son in me...straightway
I conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went I up
to Jerusalem to them that were apostles before me, but I
went away into Arabia'' (Gal. 1:15-17). I wonder what
would have happened had he gone up to Jerusalem and laid
every matter before those who were apostles before him?
We know from subsequent events that one thing they would
have said to him would have been, Look here, be careful,
Paul! You tell us that on the Damascus road Jesus is
supposed to have said something to you about going to the
Gentiles; be careful! They would have put him back about
this Gentile business. You know what happened afterward.
You know how on that point even Peter was caught in
dissimulation years after. You know how those apostles
which were before him at Jerusalem were all the time very
chary about this matter of the Gentiles, and had Paul
capitulated to them, we should never have had the great
apostle to the Gentiles, the great apostle of the Body of
Christ, with his revelation of the mystery, of the
oneness of all in Christ, Jew and Greek. He did not
submit that thing even to those who were apostles before
him, to ask them whether he was right or not, whether
this was sound or not. Oh no! He had the anointing in
Damascus; Ananias laid his hands upon him and he received
the Spirit, and from that day, although Paul was quite
ready and happy to have fellowship with his brethren,
though he never took a superior or independent position,
though he was always open to conference, nevertheless he
was a man governed by the Spirit.
I know you have to be
careful how you take what I am saying. It will only be
safe for you as you are one who does not set yourself up
as some independent party with the Holy Spirit, but who
keeps perfect fellowship, humility, submissiveness,
openness of heart, with readiness to listen to and obey
what may come through others, as the Spirit bears witness
to the truth. But all that depends upon your inward
condition, whether you are on natural ground or on
spiritual ground, on old creation ground or on
resurrection ground. But being on resurrection ground,
where it is not the life of nature but the Spirit that
governs, beloved, you have the right and the privilege
and the blessing of knowing the Spirit bearing witness in
your heart, and the anointing teaching you all things
with regard to whether any given matter is right or
wrong. When will the Lord's people know that, recognize
that?
You see, it is this
other thing all the time that is robbing so many of the
light that the Lord would give them. The Lord would lead
them into the greater fullness of the knowledge of His
Son, of the enlargement of their spiritual understanding,
but they are neglecting the gift that is in them. They
are neglecting the Holy Spirit as their illuminator and
teacher and instructor and guide and arbiter, and they
are going to this one and that one, to this authority and
that, and saying, What do you think about it? If you
think it is wrong, then I will not touch it! It is fatal
to spiritual knowledge to do that. That is going on to
natural ground.
Now the Lord wants us
off that ground. This matter of occupying resurrection
ground, of living a life in the Spirit, is all-important
in coming to the full knowledge of God's Son. How much
more we could say about that! Let us be careful as to who
our authorities are. So many dear children of God,
individually and collectively, have come into dire and
grievous bondage, limitation, and confusion by all the
time going back to human authorities, to this great
leader and that, to this man who was greatly used of God,
this man who had a great deal of spiritual light.
''The Lord has yet more
light and truth to break forth from His Word'' than even
this or that servant of His possessed. Do you see what I
mean? We get all the benefit of the light given to godly
people and seek to profit by true light, but we will
never come into bondage and say, That is the end of that
matter! That must never be. We must maintain our
resurrection ground. And who can exhaust that? In other
words, who can exhaust the meaning of Christ risen? He is
a boundless store, the land of far distances. No man yet
has ever done more than begun to know the meaning of
Christ risen. If there has been one man who has that
meaning more than another, I suppose it was Paul. But to
the last from his prison he still cries, ''That I may
know Him!'' "I count all things to be loss for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for
whom I suffered the loss of all things and do count them
but refuse" (Phil. 3:8). Right at the end of a life
like his, he is still saying, That I may know Him!
This article is an extract from the book "Spiritual Sight - Chapter 5 - The Cause and Ground of Blindness". It was first published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, May-June 1943, Vol 21-3