"Now is the
judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this
world be cast out" (John 12:31).
"I will no
more speak much with you, for the prince of the world
cometh: and he hath nothing in me" (John 14:30).
"Finally, be
strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might...
For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but
against the principalities, against the powers, against
the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual
hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Eph.
6:10,12).
"And there was
war in heaven: Michael and his angels going forth to war
with the dragon; and the dragon warred and his angels;
and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any
more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast down, the
old serpent, he that is called the Devil, and Satan the
deceiver of the whole world; he was cast down to the
earth, and his angels were cast down with him. And I
heard a great voice in heaven, saying, Now is come the
salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God, and
the authority of his Christ: for the accuser of our
brethren is cast down, which accuseth them before our God
day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood
of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony;
and they loved not their life even unto death. Therefore
rejoice, O heavens, and ye that dwell in them" (Rev.
12:7-12).
Our occupation is with
the content and outworking of a little fragment from 1
Cor. 2 - "He that is spiritual." We were
occupied earlier with the centre of that so far as we
individually are concerned, that is, the reconstituting
of believers on a spiritual principle and basis. We were
really turned in on ourselves - always a difficult and
sometimes a dangerous thing. But we were seeing the
nature of the new creation in Christ as being solely
spiritual, and our great governing statement which covers
all that we have to say was, and is, that spirituality is
the key to everything that is of God; and that begins
with a spiritual state or a new spiritual being, brought
into life by new birth. We worked that out at
considerable length. What follows now is an outcome of
it. We are going to turn from the inward and individual,
right out to the circumference of it.
Two
Creations under Rival Authorities
The Scriptures we have
read touch the realm in which we are going to move. It is
the circumference of spirituality. The great
all-encompassing facts are these. Firstly, there are two
creations active, an old and a new, which represent two
kinds of man: what the New Testament calls the soul-man
and the spirit-(or spiritual) man. "Now the soul-man"
- that is the literal meaning of the phrase translated
"natural man" in 1 Cor. 2:14 - "Now the
soul-man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of
God." "The soul-man"; compare this with
"he that is spiritual" in verse 15. What is in
view is a likeness after which the being is constituted.
You know the meaning of "ikon" (Gr. eikon).
An ikon is an image, a likeness, a figure; and here in
the New Testament we have three Greek words derived from eikon.
The word is changed to ikos, which implies
"to take the likeness of." So you get this word
psukikos, which means soul-likeness, after the
likeness of the soul. That is what is referred to here in
1 Cor. 2. "Now the man of soul, the soulman,"
the man who is constituted soul-wise, "receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God." That is the man to
which 1 Cor. 15:45 refers. "The first man Adam was
made a living soul," the psukikos man. Then
there is another word - sarkikos (Sarx
means flesh). That is the man who is constituted wholly
on the principle of the flesh. But then there is this
other word so often used - pneumatikos; and he
is the man whose likeness is of the spirit, the spiritual
man. It is to him that such passages refer as "He
that is spiritual": "The last Adam a
life-giving spirit." just that by the way.
To get down to this
matter of two orders, the psukikos and the pneumatikos
orders, or the soul-order and the spirit-order. These are
the characteristics or natures of two creations, the old
creation, and the new creation in Christ Jesus. We are
saying, then, that there are two creations, representing
two orders of man, active, and very active. Of course,
you know that in yourself personally that is true. There
is an active old creation order or soul life. You know
also, that, if you are a born-again child of God, there
is another Man in you active, and these two do not get on
well together, and that is largely the root and cause of
all your trouble. But in the wider realm, this is true of
the whole two worlds.
The second thing is
that, over those two creations, there are two lords.
There is the one of whom we have read, the prince of this
world, the great ruler of this world, darkness with his
hosts, his hordes of evil spirits - Satan, the Dragon,
the Devil, and his angels. They are there over the old
creation and governing it. On the other side, there is
the Lord Jesus Who is Lord of the new creation.
Two
Realms in Conflict
Thirdly, although we do
not always feel it to be so inside of ourselves, there is
nevertheless from God's standpoint and in God's mind an
absolute divide between these two. They are split apart
by nothing less than the Cross of Christ, and that Cross
is immense. It puts things in two entirely separate
realms. Later we shall come to see the working of that,
but just for the moment I anticipate by reminding you of
the object that the Apostle Paul had in view when writing
to the Corinthians. At the beginning of his first letter
he said "And I, brethren, when I came unto you, came
not with excellency of speech or of wisdom... for I
determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus
Christ, and him crucified" (2:1-2). The object which
he had in view in that deliberate determination was to
put two worlds asunder in Corinth. They had come too near
and were interfering with each other, and everything was
upset because of the overlapping of those two worlds -
the realm of the natural (you see how much Paul says
about it) and the realm of the spiritual. We never get
anywhere until this mix-up has been put right. So he said
in effect, I determined to put the Cross right in there
between these two things and split them asunder, put them
apart. The Cross makes the great divide between these two
creations, these two natures, soul and spirit.
Now another thing - and
this is where we get very near to the point of our
present meditation - the medium used by the prince of
this world in the old creation is the soul of man; that
is his line of action, his basis of operation. On the
other hand, the means, the basis, the instrument of the
Lord Jesus in the new creation is the spirit of man - of
course, renewed in new birth, quickened and raised and
joined with the Lord one spirit, and indwelt by the Holy
Spirit. Man's spirit is the vessel of His activities. So
you find that there is a continual conflict between soul
and spirit in the individual; but also in the larger
world, the whole world, it is like that.
Satan
Always Works Through the Soul
All Satanic activities
are soul-wise. That is a key which will unlock a vast
realm of things, if only you get it into your hands
spiritually. Satan's activities are all soul-wise. He
assailed the soul of man in the beginning. You know what
the soul is - mind, heart, will: reason, emotion and
volition. Satan came arguing and reached man's mind; he
came appealing and seduced his heart; he came driving and
forced his will. So he got that creation soul-wise into
his hands, and ever since then all his activities have
been soul-wise. He is a spirit, an evil spirit, but he
works soul-wise. This whole world is run by Satan on the
psychological basis; it is all psychology. We have had
perhaps the greatest exhibition ever given to this world
of that fact during the recent years. More than anything
else, it has been a psychological warfare. But we have
seen through the psychology so much that is absolutely
Satanic. You may call it a "war of nerves."
What is that but a psychological war? But so it is apart
from wars; this world is run on the psychological basis.
Everything commercial is psychological; so are all the
secrets of good business. You will never have any success
in business if you do not know the psychological moment
and the psychological method, and all that. All the
secrets of good teaching lie there - in your
psychological acumen to know the psychology of the child.
This world is all on that level.
But let us come to
this. Have you not recognised that the activities of the
Devil are always like this - in some way to stir up the
soul? When there is some interest of the Lord in view - a
conference is coming, or something which has spiritual
values wrapped up in it - have you not found again and
again that, in advance of it, there is a drive made on
your soul to provoke you, to get you bad-tempered, to do
anything to get your soul stirred up? You know when that
has happened you are out of position, you have to get
quiet with the Lord and get the seething inside calmed
down. It is extraordinary how it happens; it comes from
nowhere; very often there is no explanation. You take on
provocations that do not exist, interpret looks and words
in a manner never intended; there are phantoms about all
the time stirring up your soul. So often it is not coming
from anything at all that you can trace - it is not
anybody, it is nothing said - but somehow your soul is
getting worked up and you are being put out of spiritual
position; the seething of your soul like a ferment
overflows your spirit and destroys its poise and strength
and grip. Sometimes the method used is to depress. You
feel terribly depressed. You cannot explain it, but
something has happened in the atmosphere and registered
upon you, depressing your spirit. Yes, all the Lord's
people have known that. David knew a lot about it.
"Why, art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art
thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God for I shall
yet praise him" (Psa. 42:5). Sometimes you have to
talk to your soul like that. You know the depression of
the soul to take your strength away, to sap and drain
your spiritual vitality. Sometimes the method is to bring
the soul into darkness. What onslaughts the Devil made on
Martin Luther along that line, to bring into the darkness
of accusation and condemnation, where his assurance of
justification and salvation was undermined and weakened!
Many of the Lord's people know a lot about that, the
darkness, the overclouding, when it seems that the soul
is in a dark dungeon.
Sometimes the means is
to inflate the soul, and, oh, what a lot of success the
Devil has gained along that line. Nebuchadnezzar was the
very embodiment of this whole principle of soul life.
"Is not this great Babylon, which I have
built?" (Daniel 4:30). That is the spirit of
Antichrist inflating the soul. The word of the Lord is,
"If a man thinketh himself to be something when he
is nothing" (he really is, from God's standpoint,
nothing) "he deceiveth himself" (Gal. 6:3). How
many people there are deceived along that line of
self-importance! You know what this world is like in this
matter. But the tragedy is that the very realm of the
things of God, the work of God, has become the playground
for that sort of thing, people exhibiting their own
self-importance, and bringing themselves into prominence
- all the expression of an inflated soul life. You find
absolutely nothing of that in the Lord Jesus when He was
here, but the exact opposite. "I am meek and lowly
in heart" (Matt. 11:29). "He poured out his
soul unto death" (Isa. 53:12).
Well, there are many
other ways in which the enemy works soul-wise. Sometimes
he seeks to affright. How often he has tried to get us
frightened, as he did in the days of Nehemiah - and in
the days of Hezekiah, when Sennacherib came and started
his demonstration around Jerusalem.
The
Answer to Satan Through the Spirit
On the other hand, all
Christ's activities are spirit-wise, and there you open
up another whole realm of Scriptures; e.g., "born of
the Spirit" (John 3:8) "renewed in the
spirit..." (Eph. 5:23); "strengthened with
power through his Spirit in the inward man" (Eph.
3:16); and - touching spiritual understanding - "the
eyes of your heart enlightened" (Eph. 1:18). So you
bring in the Scriptures, all bearing upon this
spirit-wise activity of Christ. And this quickened,
renewed, energised, indwelt spirit, is up against this
soul of ours, and this soul world.
When we speak of
spiritual warfare, let us not think in terms of the
abstract. "They overcame him because of the blood of
the Lamb." What do you take that to mean? - that
they were a people of a phraseology about the blood and
they started hurling their phraseology at the Devil?
Well, phraseology, even about the Blood, has no effect on
him. "They overcame him because of the blood of the
Lamb." Whom did they overcome? - the Accuser of the
brethren, who accused them day and night. How do you
overcome an accuser? Only by having a better case than he
has. You have to have a good case, and the Blood of the
Lamb represents that in a mighty way. Our legal standing
because of the Blood of the Lamb puts the enemy out of
court if only faith will hold to it. And we must not
think in geographical terms of Satan being cast down from
somewhere high up and coming crashing to the earth. This
is spiritual warfare. We have to get this
spiritual sense and idea of things. Our soulical
mentality is always drawing pictures of places,
positions, spaces, but we have to understand that this is
a spiritual matter - that Satan can, in effect, be cast
from the highest heights to the lowest depths without any
geographical factor coming in at all. You may have a
person against you who lays a charge at your door, and
thinks he has a very strong case. But you happen to have
a case which undercuts that and tears it to pieces, and
he goes down before you in utter collapse; he comes from
a tremendous soul height to a very great depth. That is
not a geographical thing but a spiritual. This is
spiritual warfare, not geographical. "Our wrestling
is not against flesh and blood" (Eph. 6:12), it is
not in the realm of the physical and geographical at all.
It is spiritual - you can call it moral if you like - and
the Blood represents a legal case, and Satan can be cast
down from heaven countless times in one day. You cannot
do that literally: it can only be understood spiritually.
A million people all over this earth may cast him down in
one day at different moments of the day. As they stand by
faith on the case that the Blood provides, they have a
mighty and triumphant answer. That is how spirituality
works out in warfare. Christ works spirit-wise. Soul
cannot cast out soul, and the soul cannot cast out the
Devil because the Devil has already got it in his hand.
Satan has obtained ground in our souls, but in our
renewed, born-again spirits he has no place. The evil
spirit behind everything can only be overcome by a spirit
strengthened with might by the Spirit of God, and that
means by a subduing of the soul to the spirit.
The
Subjecting of the Soul to the Spirit
Now we
have touched a new aspect. The Lord spoke figuratively
when He said that we should take up our cross and deny
ourselves; and later He went further with that in a
little fuller explanation when He said "Whosoever
would save his soul" - that is the word there -
"shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his soul
for my sake, the same shall save it" (Luke 9:24).
The whole soul life, the whole natural life of ours, has
got to be brought into subjection to our renewed spirit
before the enemy can be cast out. If we are actuated by
natural, soulical interests, we have no power over the
Devil; he has ground. It is only when our reasoning and
desiring and feeling and willing have been brought into
subjection to the Spirit of Christ in our spirit as
something inside of us, by our own determined and
deliberate choice, that the enemy can be defeated. The
enemy can make havoc in a life that is lived on the soul
level, as he did at Corinth - even though it be the life
of a believer. The degree in which our natural life
influences us is the degree in which we are powerless
over the enemy, and, let me repeat, it is in that realm
that things matter. The real issue of life is in the
spiritual realm. Our accountability, our worth, our
value, is measured by the degree in which we count there.
It matters not what we are here in this natural world. We
may be important people here naturally but we do not
count for anything really beyond a few passing years, and
then it is Sic transit gloria mundi - so passes
the glory of the world. It is how much we count in things
spiritual that is our real value.
Spiritual
Ascendancy Demands Faith
Now, let
me say further and again, things that are seen, things
that happen, are not alone, they have spiritual factors
behind them. Oh, young people, try to get hold of this.
Ask the Lord to help you to get this really registered in
your hearts, not as a part of your religious education or
information, but really as a working principle in your
lives. Your difficult situations, hold-ups, frustrations
- they are not just alone by themselves. If you are a
child of God, there is a spiritual factor and a spiritual
intelligence behind, and you will never get through until
you can get behind the thing and deal with that spiritual
factor; until you know how to deal with the enemy, the
things will not be loosened. The Lord's answer to these
challenges may not always be in the same way, but always
on one certain principle. Paul said, "I would have
you know that the things which happened unto me have
fallen out rather unto the progress of the gospel"
(Phil. 1:12). That is one way in which the Lord answers
the enemy - He sovereignly turns the work of the Devil to
His own glory and to the fulfilment of the very thing
which the Devil intended to prevent. The Lord's answer is
not always in the direct way of casting out the Devil,
nor a direct rebuke that brings the enemy's work to
nought or stops him from working. The Lord very often
allows him to work but answers him in many ways, and the
ultimate issue is with the Lord, not the Devil. But
always the Lord works to one principle, and that is the
principle of our faith. Paul met the situation; he saw
and felt the things that were happening. Do you think
that in his heart he capitulated to Satan and said, The
Devil has things in his own hand, it is of no use our
trying to do anything? Not a bit! Paul's attitude was -
the Devil sees we are having some success and he is
working; he is apparently doing a lot of harm, but the
issue of this thing will be with the Lord and not with
the Devil. So, because of an attitude taken like that on
the part of His servant, the Lord was constantly, in
different ways, answering the Devil and getting the issue
into His own hands. But the instrument of the Lord in
defeating and casting down the Devil was the spirit of
the servant of God standing strongly - and you do marvel
how strongly Paul's spirit stood. Though Satan often
seemed to have things his way, in the end the Lord
triumphed every time.
Spiritual
Ascendancy Through Discipline
We have
spoken of our feeling of grief over the lost impact of
the Gospel, and of the Church, and of Christian life
generally; but where does impact begin? It does not
really begin upon men, nor upon things, nor upon the
world. Impact really begins upon the spiritual forces
behind, and if you have not the spiritual strength, all
your assaults and all your endeavours will be in vain.
Are you in the Lord's work? Unless you can get behind
people and things to the spiritual factors and forces,
you may as well close down. You are not, in the long run,
going to have much to show for all your labours. You are
dealing ultimately with spiritual things. If you are
going into the work of the Lord, remember you cannot get
this equipment by mere Bible study or by any kind of
soul-training. You can only get this along the line of
the discipline of the soul and the strengthening of
spirit, and that is why there should be a predominant
element of practical life in all training for the Lord's
work. For instance, to know how to live triumphantly in
spirit with difficult people. You will never go out to
meet the power of the enemy behind this world unless you
have learned how to meet him in your own spirit and under
discipline. So the Lord puts us through a severe
gruelling before He really commits to our hands spiritual
responsibility.
Let me say
at once that the soul is not to be annihilated. We are
not wrong in having souls; our souls have to be won, to
be mastered and brought into charge of the spirit so that
the self-element is eliminated and the soul serves the
spirit and serves the Lord, and not ourselves.
You see
the nature of spiritual warfare; you see the realm in
which things matter most. Well, this takes us back to our
earlier message - the reconstituting of us and the
building of us up in an inward way, the increase of
spiritual measure. May the Lord use this meditation to
secure for Himself the instrument that He needs for
casting out the prince of this world, for establishing
and extending His true spiritual kingdom and reign.