Reading: Matt. 3:16; Gal. 3:13-14.
In our previous meditation, we noted in the first place how the
Scriptures in every connection make it clear that whenever God has
moved to realize any phase of His comprehensive purpose, He has
done so by the agency of His Spirit. Then we went on to point out
that the pattern of this great divine purpose to which the Holy
Spirit is committed is God's own Son, our Lord Jesus. The Holy
Spirit comprehends Christ, and the purpose of His coming is to
reveal Christ and to constitute things according to Christ.
Now we go on a little further, for thus we are brought
immediately to the Holy Spirit's object in coming and then the
Holy Spirit's method of attaining His object. We see that He alone
knows Christ. "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the
spirit of the man, which is in him?" (1 Cor. 2:11). You can
only understand a man by having a man's nature. "Even so the
things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God." To know
the things of God you must have God's nature and that is a
spiritual nature. He alone knows, but He has come to make known
what He knows as the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full
knowledge of Him. But He is an inward revealing and teaching
Spirit; that is, His revealing of Christ has got to be of an
inward nature, it has got to be a heart thing. It is not just an
objective presentation of truth or truths. It is not just to see
in an objective way things as to Christ, but rather to constitute
the nature of the child of God according to Christ, that what is
true as to the Holy Spirit is made true as to the child of God.
I have just cited that passage - "What man knoweth the things of
a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the
things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God." Here, you
see, like is necessary and essential, to knowledge. That is the
law that governs here. Like is necessary. A dog can understand a
dog, a man can understand a man. A man does not understand a dog
and a dog does not understand a man. They require their own
constitution and their own nature. People can go a long way in
guessing and arriving at conclusions, but there is still a long
way to go to understand how the lower sentient creation
communicates its knowledge mutually, exactly how these creatures
make known to one another what they are thinking, feeling, wanting
and intending, but it happens, there is no doubt about it. They do
know from one another in their own way what is intended, what is
wanted and what is felt, because they have a nature which is
capable of intercommunication in its own realm.
You and I have our basis of relatedness, communication, knowledge
and understanding because we share human nature. But it is not so
in the higher realm. Naturally, we do not know the mind of God,
the thoughts of God, the intents of God, the desires of God.
Naturally the ways of God are far removed from our ways. "As
the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher
than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isa.
55:9). There is a difference, and the difference is the difference
of constitution. We are flesh and He is Spirit. We are soulical in
our nature and He is spiritual in His, and these are two orders.
They cannot commune in full, understanding fellowship. Only that
which is spiritual can apprehend the spiritual; the spiritual is
never apprehended by that which is not spiritual. "He that is
spiritual judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no man"
(1 Cor. 2:15); he is inscrutable. No one can understand the
spiritual man but a spiritual man. No one can understand the
Spirit of God save he in whom the Spirit of God is and who has
been constituted by the Spirit of God a spiritual man. It is a
different nature.
This is the way of divine knowledge, of knowing Christ. We may
have all the information that it is possible to accumulate
throughout the ages about Christ and not know Christ. We may be
very fully informed on all the truths as to Christ doctrinally -
His person, His work, and all that has to do with Him - and still
we may be in the dark as to Christ Himself. This is not a matter
of an informed mind. This is a matter of a constituted nature and
in the last analysis we only know Christ in the measure in which
we have been constituted according to Christ, made after Christ,
like Christ, partaking of His very nature. That is the only true
knowledge of Christ, and that is what the Holy Spirit has come to
do; not just to present truths, but to do some great thing which
makes over again according to Christ so that the knowledge and
understanding of Christ is in our very being. We feel it. It is a
power, a force, an energy. We know. You say, "How do you know?" We
may not be able to tell you how, may not be able to define it,
explain it, but we know. The thing is settled in our very being
and it is not a matter of being able to give up this, to give it
up as something we have taken on, teaching that we may abandon
which we once adopted and accepted. No, this knowledge of Christ
is something which has become our being and it lives with us and
dies with us in that sense that it is part of us. Oh, there are
far too many people who feel themselves to be in a position of
being able to take up this teaching and give up this teaching at
will. They can take it or refuse it. That is not the knowledge of
Christ. The knowledge of Christ is not something from which you
can resign, which you can give up, abandon. You may grow, you may
advance in many mental conceptions, but the true knowledge of
Christ is a part of your being.
The Holy Spirit is constituting on the basis of what Christ is
and when at last that corporate Body of Christ, the Church which
is His Body, is perfected, it will be a perfect universal
expression of what Christ Himself is. And that is its calling and
its function, and that is the object of its eternal election - to
be in this universe that comprehensive expression in nature,
not in words, ideas or teaching, but in nature, in ways, what
Christ is. That is the only satisfactory and adequate meaning of
the very term - His Body.
And what is going to be true of the whole of that Body is to be
true now progressively of every part. Thus the work of the Holy
Spirit in each part of the Body, in you and in me, is to conform
us to the image of God's Son, to constitute us after Christ. How
different is this organic process, this spiritually biological
basis, from a system of doctrine, a system of truth, a system of
teaching, and all that outward form which has now come to mean
Christianity! You can have it all and yet not meet the tremendous
spiritual impact of Christ; all the orthodoxy that it is possible
to have, all the right form and order, perfect in its outward
shape, method and observance, devout, and yet with no registration
of the spiritual power of Christ. That is the terrible tragedy.
The Holy Spirit has not come just to make models. He is not here
just to set up churches, to have a perfect replica of something.
He is here to bring Christ in living, mighty, spiritual reality as
a force at the centre of this universe; to register. We can have
the doctrine in perfection and the church order and polity
complete, absolute. We may have the New Testament model of a
church with all the right forms and orders, and I am not saying
that these are not necessary, but we can have them all and yet
there be lacking this tremendous influence and power as of a
living dynamic Person. While the order may be necessary to the
Holy Spirit, the order can be there without the Holy Spirit. Well,
this is the Spirit's vocation in this dispensation, to bring
Christ in all that He is according to divine constitution, and
thought; to bring Christ, as it were, into increasing presence in
God's universe. I know that in Himself He is full and complete, in
Himself He is present in God's universe in a finality to which
nothing can be added, but what He is in Himself is the Spirit's
ground of operation to expand, to extend, to impart into a Body in
the first place, the Church which is His Body.
So that the first thing that the Holy Spirit is here to do in
this dispensation in relation to the comprehensiveness of Christ,
is to make inward the outward work of Christ and what Christ did
for us on our behalf, all that He accomplished in His
incarnation, by life, by death, by resurrection, ascension and
exaltation. All that is the ground of the Spirit's operation to
make it inward in believers and in the Body, to put Christ in the
sum of His work at the centre of things, and then work to make
that centre the nature of the circumference. The objective is to
be made subjective by the Holy Spirit. He has been manifested. He
was manifested to "destroy the works of the devil" (1 John
3:8). The Son of God was manifested; He has been brought into this
world literally, objectively, and has accomplished a perfect work.
But now an apostle will speak about "it pleased God... to
reveal His Son in me" (Gal. 1:16). He has been revealed
objectively, but this has got to be made subjective in me. The
historic Christ will not do to accomplish the end of God. If God
were only working sovereignly and mechanically, it would be
enough, but seeing God is working constitutionally, it is not
enough. The thing has got to be put into the very nature of
things, and the revealed Son of God has got to be revealed in us.
The new creation has got to follow in principle the law of the old
creation. "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"
(2 Cor. 4:6). It is inward revelation of the knowledge of the
glory of God, inward revelation in our hearts. The new creation is
constituted by an inward revelation of the light of God in the
heart. When the light of God has shined into the heart, what a new
world, a new order, at once springs into being; what a change!
Until that light has shined into the heart, it is no use arguing,
reasoning, discussing, trying to thrash things out. It is no use
sitting down even with a well-instructed ruler of Israel -
Nicodemus - to go into the matters of the Kingdom of God. The
light has got to shine in inside and then all the argument becomes
unnecessary. At once the subject says, "I see! I have struggled,
strained, groaned, longed, agonized, for years and years, but I
have not been seeing, I have been in the dark, but now I see!" God
has shined; God Who brought the old creation into being by shining
in the dark has shined into the darkness of this heart and I see
the light of God, the light of the glory of God, and the light of
the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ!
For the new creation is in Christ Jesus. Thus the apostle will say
- "This mystery, this secret, this hidden secret of God which is
now out, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27).
That is the Spirit's work, to make inward all that Christ is and
Christ has done.
That is very simple and elementary, but it is the basis of
everything. There is no hope until that is done, and that is not
only the initial breaking in. It is the basis of all spiritual
progress, growth and increase, that the Spirit is continually
increasing in the believer this illumined knowledge of Christ in
this inward way.
Here you have the apostle Paul, a man of a vast spiritual
apprehension, a great spiritual knowledge, gigantic in comparison
with the rest of men is his apprehension of Christ. What he has
been shown! He has seen all that tremendous significance of the
glorified Christ revealed to him on the Damascus road. He has, at
a later date, been caught up into heaven and shown unspeakable
things which it is not lawful for a man to utter (2 Cor. 12:4). He
has got all that teaching of the Holy Spirit apart from these
specific advents of God in his life, these particular, peculiar
epochs. He has all that and yet well on towards the end of such a
life, so rich, so full, this man is stretched out, he is found to
be reaching forward. He is like a runner in the race, he is
bounding forward to grasp, to apprehend. He is, in a sense, a long
way ahead of himself in his attitude. He is going because he is
drawn on by something. And what is it that makes that man go on,
what is it that is drawing him on, what is it that is making his
life to be characterised by this one thing - "I press... I am a
man who is on full stretch!" It is just that the Holy Spirit has
shown him that Christ is far greater than ever yet he has seen or
imagined, that he has this living sense of a knowledge of Christ
which is after this mark - not just information - this order of
knowledge which is transforming knowledge, constituting knowledge,
which is going to result in his attainment unto the very glory of
Christ itself. It is the intimation, the revelation, of the Spirit
within him of the greatness of Christ; what there is to be known.
"That I may know Him" (Phil. 3:10), "...the excellency
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord" (Phil. 3:8).
My point is that the very power of spiritual progress, advance,
growth, development, is this work of the Spirit making us realize
that we do not know anything yet in comparison with what God wants
us to know and to know in this transforming, this transfiguring,
way. I ask you, have you any sense of that? Do you feel that you
are just paddling in the very shallows of a vast ocean, which
ocean is Christ, and you know out there, there are depths and
fulnesses which are going to mean everything to you if only you
can get there. How different from a satisfied Christian life,
satisfied in any measure. I do not mean that we should be
restless, discontented people. Let us be careful how we interpret
this. There is a wonderful satisfaction about every little bit of
fresh knowledge of Christ. Satisfaction deepens and there is no
realm in which satisfaction is deeper than in the knowledge of the
Lord Jesus. How wonderful it is, when we have been in the dark,
perplexed, distressed, rowing hard against contrary currents and
winds, and He appears in the darkness and we see Him in some new
way that just answers to that particular need. What rest of heart
there is. You are not surprised that it says in that story in the
Gospel that then they were at the land. They had been rowing out
in the deep all night and land seemed far away. As soon as he
appeared, they were at the land (John 6:21). You feel you have
arrived immediately you see Christ, as He answers to that
particular need, how He applies there. It is heart rest and
satisfaction.
But at the same time we know that there is very much land to be
possessed and we can never be content in a wrong way with less
than all that God wants, for after all, is it not a feature of the
Holy Spirit's presence and activity in us that we are those who
are stretched out, reaching forward and pressing on, going on, to
full growth? That is a fruit of the Spirit in us. Anybody who
settles down with their measure of spiritual life and knowledge of
Christ has left the place of the energies of the Holy Spirit. Thus
the Holy Spirit has come to make inward in our very hearts, in our
very beings, all that Christ is and has done. That is the first
thing in this particular dispensation.
Then, to constitute us as believers spiritually according to
Christ; initially by new birth, for that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit (John 3:6); that is a new constitution. Then
progressively to conform us to the image of His Son; and then
consummately, the body of this humiliation shall be made like unto
the body of His glory (Phil. 3:21) which is the consummation of
the Spirit's work in us.
With one further word, I close this meditation. This, as we have
said, begins with the individuals. It is a personal and individual
matter. The very meaning of our having received the Spirit as an
earnest of our inheritance, the very reason why the Holy Spirit
enters into believers, is to make this all true in them
personally. Are you grasping this - all that this means that the
Holy Spirit is in us? What a vast world you have right at the
centre of your being if you have the Holy Spirit! What
possibilities and potentialities there are if we have the Holy
Spirit, Who knows everything about this matter, resident within.
Oh, for our lives to be really more under the sovereignty of the
Holy Spirit. We shall know what we ought to do and ought not to do
without being belaboured, without it being laid down for us as a
rule. We will know. Brother Nee's word always comes back - the
'Resident Boss' will make us know. The 'Resident Boss', said a
newly-converted China-man, "would not let me." That is how he put
it. It is like that; we know. It is so gloriously possible to
trust people when the Holy Spirit really has His place inside. You
go back after years and find they have gone on. Oh, for more of
those men who are so truly born of the Spirit, so truly
constituted by this birth of the Spirit, that they can go out into
the world, go out into our Forces abroad, and not meet another
Christian, not have any Christian fellowship, any meetings to
attend, but have to encounter all the opposite, and yet be found
to be going on with the Lord, growing. There are those like that.
But why, how, when so many who have been brought up and nurtured
in our meetings, in our churches, and have all the evangelical
doctrine, when they get out they lose it? Why these others?
Because they have been inwardly reconstituted; the Spirit is
there, they know the Lord in an inward way. This is reality. Oh,
have we grasped this? It is the basis of our growing knowledge,
intelligence, understanding.
We are supposed to have the Holy Spirit resident within us and
that is no small thing. That is God, infinite God, infinite in
knowledge. "He that is perfect in knowledge is with thee"
(Job 36:4). That can be said now in a New Testament sense in which
it could not be said when it was said in the Old Testament. With
thee - yes; but now, in thee. Perfect in knowledge,
perfect in power. That is an inward reality for the born-again
child of God. Lay hold of it, believe it, trust the Holy Spirit,
have real living dealings with the Holy Spirit to bring you into
all the will of God.
I have said this begins with us individually. It is a truth, a
fact, concerning us individually as members of Christ. But the
Holy Spirit is here also to reproduce Christ in this other, this
greater organism, the Church which is His Body, to reproduce
Christ in this corporate wide way of a whole collective Body who
are sharing His one life.
How will Christ be reproduced? Not by the acceptance of creeds
and doctrines and teachings and orders, but by the receiving of
His organic life, His divine life, His life from above, His life
of the ages. And that life is not an abstract thing. It is the
Holy Spirit Who is the Spirit of life, and the value of that is
that we are not just under the urge of an abstract force called
'life', 'spiritual life', 'divine life', or 'eternal life'. We are
under the instruction of an intelligent Holy Spirit Whose means of
making us know both right and wrong and all the things of God is
life. You can come into a meeting and if you are spiritually
alive, how do you know that the thing is true? Not because it
answers to the set standard of your orthodox truth or tradition.
You have a witness in the thing, the thing is alive in a sense
that means quickening to you. It answers to you in an inward way,
and very often you have to go away and say, 'The way in which it
was put was beyond me, but that was not the end of it; it was
something that met me inwardly. I realised that there was life and
power. There was meaning beyond my apprehension, but it was
meaning and value, and it has meant something to me although I
could never write it down.' It is like that, the Spirit of life
teaching us in that way.
May the Lord make good in the case of every one of us and in all
of us as a part of that great Body, the wonderful work of His
Spirit.