That which we feel the Lord is saying to us at
this time, is that that which was at the beginning, should also be at the end.
It would seem that, apart from a tremendous thing going right through the whole
company of the saved, it would be too much to expect that He would have His full
thought represented in all. And the Word does not seem to warrant such an
expectation, for wherever we look in the Word at what is an end time, it is
always comparatively few who answer to God's thought. So it was in the old
dispensation, and so we have it in the Book of the Revelation.
In the beginning there are those larger
companies, but in the midst of them there are those who have the ear to hear
what the Spirit is saying, and who are represented as overcomers even in the
midst of the Lord's own people. But whether it be few or many, it does seem
perfectly clear that the Lord's desire and the Lord's intention is to have at
the end that which does answer to His original fulness of design and the
dispensation shall not close with God being cheated of that and defeated in His
intention. There shall be those in the earth who come to a fulness which means
the reaching of the throne: "He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit
down with Me on my throne...".
That is really what the Lord is seeking to say
to us, that we in turn may be ministers in a spiritual way concerning the
fulness of the Lord's desire and purpose and thought in His people.
I have been impressed in reading the second
letter of John with the similarity of spirit, and to some extent phraseology,
between John and Paul. I notice that in the introduction to the second letter
John uses identical words with most of Paul's introductions to his letters: "Grace,
mercy, peace". It may be that John had read Paul's letters, and had somehow
or other been affected by them in this way while retaining his own personal
line, but the Holy Spirit is one, and this is the thing that I have in mind in
saying this: that there is a secret or a hidden oneness between John and Paul
lying beneath the surface, which represents the fulness of that which came in
from the beginning. Now John says, of course, nothing about the church. He says
nothing about the Body. That is referred to by Paul. But John does give us the
spiritual laws and principles and elements of the Body, the church, those things
which lie back of the church, the Body, as basic principles and spiritual laws
are John's matter, and the two form one complete ministry.
So we are not wrong when we take up these
spiritual truths or principles as in John and bring them up in the light of
Paul's revelation of the church, the Body of Christ. We can hardly help doing
that, because in the knowledge of the Holy Spirit, who inspired both men, the
thing is one. The Holy Spirit did not inspire John to one revelation and Paul to
another as differing and contrasted. The Holy Spirit had the same object of the
dispensation in view, and He inspired one man to present one particular aspect
of that thing, and another man to bring out another aspect, but it is the same
thing as a whole. Now Paul brings into view what we may call the entity, the
Body of Christ. John brings before us those things which constitute that Body as
spiritual things and that we shall see as we go on and consider a little more
the values and functions of the life, the anointing and the blood.
The Life
The life to which John refers so much, both in
his Gospel and in his letters, constitutes an organism. That is the basic
reality and meaning and function and value of the life. It constitutes an
organism as different from an organisation. At an end time, after all this
history and all this development, and shall we say, after all this digression,
it is most important that we should come back to the recognition of the fact
that the Lord determined to reach His end and fulfil His purpose by an organism
and not by an organisation. He could have set up an organisation. That was a
popular idea as to what He was going to do. That is what men both expected and
wanted Him to do, to put Himself at the head of a world movement, an organised
movement, with His circle of disciples as His officers. But the Lord made it
perfectly clear that that was not His thought, and not His intention. While that
was in their minds, and while they were looking for that and waiting for that,
waiting for the hour to strike when that course would be adopted, and thinking
from time to time that that hour had struck, He was steadily, quietly but
strongly seeking to get into them another conception and the things which He
said are all along the lines of the organic rather than the organised. He timed
some of those utterances to synchronise with the coming disillusionment. As the
disillusionment of their minds drew near and shadows began to gather over their
expectations, He was putting His finger upon another line of things: "I am
the Vine, and my Father is the vinedresser... I am the Vine, you are the
branches". That is not an organisation; that is an organism.
The central law is life: "As the branch
cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine..." it depends
entirely upon the life flow, and that life flow is quite impossible if there is
detachment, separation and apartness.
We need not enlarge upon that. To mention it is
enough, but we must stress the fact that the Lord determined to reach His end
and fulfil His purpose through the dispensation by an organism, and not by an
organisation. The very existence of Christ through the dispensation in this
world is based upon the law of life. Christ and His members are represented as
one entity now for this dispensation, so far as this world is concerned, and
that existence, that collective, corporate existence of Christ is upon the basis
of life: that is, we cannot "join" Christ, we cannot adhere to Christ; and if
Christ and His members are the church, then we cannot "join" the church, we
cannot adhere to the church. That is an organisation. We cannot, from the
outside, come and affix ourselves to what is Christ personally or collectively.
The only kind of union that can be, the only kind of connection, is that which
grows out of Christ by His life passing into members, which grow out of Christ.
So that the very beginning is by life, and is the expression of life.
(1) Growth is by Life
Then growth is by life. The growth, both of the
individual member and of the church, is by life. Keeping to the corporate
expression of Christ, the church, the Body itself, growth is by the energy of
divine life. All expansion and all increase is the result of the functioning of
divine life. There is no other kind of development or expansion in the New
Testament according to God's mind. It is simply that this life goes out and
becomes the basic constituent of man, and by that life which is imparted, which
is put into them, they are joined to the Lord, they are one with the Lord. Then
they are not so many individuals as such, but they are parts of one great
corporate Person.
A medical student may be given a box of bones
and told to articulate those bones into the human frame. He gets to work, and he
quietly and steadily, perhaps laboriously, builds up a skeleton and when he has
articulated this whole framework and got his skeleton, are you going to say he
has got a man? Surely not! He has got so many bones put together, a framework.
It may be perfect, but that is not how men are made. Men grow, and what is the
law of the production of a man? It is the operation of a vital energy, and man
is the product of that.
You cannot build the church or the Body of
Christ by bringing so many members and articulating. You will get something, but
you will get an organisation without life. You cannot put life into the
skeleton. You may have the most perfect framework, nothing out of place, but
you cannot put life into it. The Lord never intended that to be the
method of the fulfilment of His purpose in this dispensation. He never intended
to be represented in this universe by any such means as bringing people together
on a common basis and trying to organise them into a unity. The Lord's way is
from the inside by the expression, impartation and functioning of life.
Any other kind of building up is false. It will be proved to be not of God but
of man.
(2) Order is by Life
There is a divine order. That order is referred
to in many places in the Word, and Paul especially brings out the divine order.
Sometimes he makes it perfectly clear what that order is in certain connections.
Sometimes he strongly emphasises the fact that there is a divine order and
sometimes he hints at or intimates an order in a mysterious way, but he does it
so that you have to take note of it. What is the meaning of all this about:
"...because of the angels"? What is the meaning of the covering of the head,
the place of the sisters in the assembly, and ministry? Things are being said in
connection with some mysterious realm, the angels, and heavenly factors. What is
he hinting at? Undoubtedly he is hinting at the fact that in God's mind there is
an order, and it is exceedingly dangerous to violate that order. A great deal
may be lost if God's order is not recognised. So he brings all that home to the
Corinthian church, which was a most disorderly church, and puts his finger very
strongly upon the whole question of order.
I am not one who believes that sisters have no
ministry in the assembly, and I do not believe that Paul believed that, but what
Paul was pointing out was that it is a question of order, that any ministry out
of order means disaster, whether it is man's or woman's, and he is just as
straight with the men as with the women in this matter. Let us read Paul in the
light of this. God has an order, and if you want to look into that more closely,
read what Paul has to say about the Body and the members, and all the members
not having the same office, but all being related to one another and
indispensable to one another. By reason of every member being in its right place
and functioning according to its own purpose, and not someone else's, means the
building up of Christ and the increase of the Body. This is the way in which the
Lord comes to His end in fulness.
These are not extra things for the people of
God to consider, they are basic things, and I am not taking up some line of
truth, but coming to the thing which has come in by divine revelation at the
beginning and saying that if the Lord is going to have a full expression of His
mind at any time, these are things that have got to be taken notice of and are a
tremendous thing unto spiritual fulness and growth and increase in divine order
amongst His people.
How is the order brought about? Again, not
by organisation, not by our placing or displacing, arranging and appointing.
What a loss there has been because of that manipulating of the Lord's people and
because the Lord's people have not recognised that this is the way of vital
function! Unless we are going to function by the very life of the Lord in us, it
will be a poor lookout for us if we get into responsibility in the things of
God. We shall find that we cannot function, and sooner or later we shall want to
resign, it will be too much for us, or else we shall simply go on by our own
resources and the ends of the Lord will not be reached.
For those who have any place of responsibility
in the things of God, it is a most important thing to recognise that God has a
heavenly order for His church; that every member of Christ has a particular
function and a specific place in the Body of Christ relative to other members
and that we have to come into that by life. We can, and shall, come into it by
life; that is, if the life of the Lord is working in us unhindered, we shall
find ourselves spontaneously functioning in a certain direction and we shall say
in the long run: "Well, I never sat down to think out what my work would be, I
never chose that, but I found myself being energised in that direction and urged
in that way and that became my work, that became my function, and then I saw
that it was related to other things." How important such a principle, such a law
is in the relationship of fellow-members, fellow-workers. The Lord knows whom He
will put together, and when He does it, it is on a basis of life, and there is
value. One of the great difficulties in organised Christian work has been the
absolute inability of certain people ever to work together, because God never
put them together. Now Paul says: "God has appointed in the church..." (1
Cor. 12:28). That is the point. "The whole body, being framed and fitted and
held together by that what every joint supplies..." (Eph. 4:16). We
cannot do that. If that does not work out by the energy of something that is
more than our wit and wisdom and ability, then it is impossible. Only God can do
that.
You see it in the growth of the human frame. We
never need to sit down for five minutes and worry as to whether our right arm
should grow out of our right shoulder, as to whether it might somehow or other
go down out of our hip. You say that is absurd. That is just it. The whole thing
is in its place and works properly because life is uninjured, life has not been
damaged, and while the life is free and undamaged, you get proper order. It just
works from the inside. That is an organism. It takes the Lord to produce an
organism. Man can produce other things, but the Lord alone can produce
organisms. Where the life is injured or where the life is insufficient, you will
get disorder.
It is no use our going to a disordered or
disrupted company of the Lord's people and trying to set them right from the
outside, we have got to get down to the root and say, "Look here, the life of
the Lord is arrested, the life of the Lord is hindered. You, by this or by that,
are injuring that which would result in a better state of things." It is no use
trying to put things right by dealing with them on the outside, you must get
down to the root of this matter, where the Lord has a free way, a clear way, and
absolute sovereignty in the heart. All that is personal and all that is fleshly
has got to go, and the Lord has to have a clear way for His life. When the life
of the Lord has its chance, you will find the order will spontaneously come
about. There will be a sensing of things being wrong, and there will be a
sensing of what is wrong. Order is tremendously important unto fulness, unto
effectiveness, unto the reaching of God's end.
(3) Function is by Life
How shall we fulfil our ministry? How shall we
function according to God's will? If we are full of life we shall just function,
that is all. Go back to the beginning, that which was from the beginning. We do
not read of any of those things which are common amongst us today as to
functioning. They were filled with the Spirit, there was an abundance of life,
and they functioned. They did not ask anybody for a job in the church, and
nobody gave them a job; they did it. It was done under that divine government,
so that there was no discord, there was no jealousy, no one's personal interests
were injured. They did it in a wonderful harmony, and they continued in
fellowship, in prayer and in the breaking of bread. It was spontaneous.
Oh, for more of that which is spontaneous! What
a lot we should be delivered from of anxiety and trouble, because of this
accepted state of things which leaves so much with man, and which is so little
the outworking of the life within. I believe that really if we are governed by
the Lord as our life, we shall not get far into disorder. Somehow or other there
is a tendency to think that unless you govern things in the church, you are
bound to have disorder. That means that you do not trust the Lord. You do not
get disorder by keeping your hands off and trusting the Lord. You cannot always
get order when you try to arrange it; it does not work.
It is true that the Spirit of life works and
constitutes order, and causes relative functioning. You fulfil your ministry in
that way, but it is a walk of faith and sometimes it is a test of faith to
fulfil your ministry on that line. The Lord holds you to Himself, and then it
proves all right.
(4) Fellowship is by Life
That works both ways. If the life is injured or
arrested in any member, fellowship becomes difficult and strain in fellowship
increases. Fellowship is arrested as the life is arrested. You can see that
between two who are together. One is open and going on with the Lord, the other
is not so open, a little more closed, not so living, so responsive, holding back
a bit... What happens? Fellowship comes under arrest. You have seen that in
families, in human relationships, and so it is between the Lord's people.
While we stand for fellowship, and stand
against breaches of fellowship, we must remember that life governs fellowship,
and that if we are going to have fellowship maintained and deepened and
strengthened, it can only be by increase of life and as we go on growing
according to the laws of that life. We shall be fighting a very hard battle in
the matter of fellowship unless there is life, and that in increasing measure.
All this that we have said, then, has to do
with the Lord's means; that He has determined to reach His end by an organism.
The Lord's method is to have that organism represented in different localities.
The organism is one. There are not churches from heaven's point of view, there
are local assemblies which are, in those localities, the church. There is no
such thing from the divine standpoint as the Chinese church, or the ֻEnglish
church, or the Indian church. There is nothing of that in the Word of God, but
the church in China and the church in England, is another thing altogether. From
the divine standpoint the church is one, but represented in localities, and this
is the divine method. The local organism is the fulcrum of divine activities in
that area: that is, it is the basis, the footing, the leverage of God in that
area, and it requires an organism of this kind in that locality for the purpose
of God.
Again, you see the reason. The Lord does not
send so many people into an area to arrange and organise His work, and in any
way like that carry on His interests. What the Lord's object is, is to plant in
different places a living organism, and then out from that organism express
Himself in terms of life, His own mighty risen life. It may be necessary for
that organism, as in two or three or a little company, simply to live there;
unable to do anything for a long time, but to live Christ's risen life there.
They may not be able to do anything but live, and live mightily. You will find
it needs the life of the Lord to do it. The enemy will try to make it impossible
for you not only to be there, but to live there. It is a question of living
in a place, not of working in a place. God works through life, God's work
is life, and this life is terrific when it really is free. That is the Lord's
method, not to organise schemes, campaigns and so on, but to live, to testify in
life. We never know what the effect of that is. We have it hinted in the Word
that that reaches beyond the range of this earth, that even unto principalities
and powers in the heavenlies now by the church, the manifold wisdom of God is
being shown. It is not always what we can see, but life is effective.
The fact is that Satan makes this organism in
any location, when it is a true organism, the target of all his malice and all
his attention, as we have said, either to clear it out or to destroy its
testimony of life there. And sometimes it calls for all the grace and all the
strength that can be got from God simply to stay, simply to keep your footing.
Every force is at work to try to drive you out, or to drive you under and to
destroy the life in some way. That is Satan's testimony to the value of an
organism.
While life produces the organism, the
organism must care for the life, above all else. We have a responsibility in
relation to the life, and whatever we care for or whatever we do not care for,
it must be our business to see that the one thing which is maintained unhindered
and uninjured is this life of the Lord. We must constantly be testing things by
life; not by orthodoxy, not doctrine, not truth, but life - of course, life
related to the truth, but life as the impact of truth, the life which
determines the value of our truth so far as the practical side of it is
concerned. We can settle in on our doctrine, we can get a circle of truth and
simply move within that circle and become locked up and very dead within the
limits of truth. The value of truth is its registration of life. As in
everything else, the test is the life of the risen Lord amongst us and with us,
and to that we must give the main attention. And if we have any reason whatever
to suspect that while we are going on in our wonderful ideas and conceptions of
truth there is not a commensurate impact of life, then we ought to stop and go
back to the Lord and have real dealings with Him. If our many activities are
feverish activities and our programmes of work fall short of the mighty impact
of divine life, then it is time we stopped. The enemy is only too fond of
dragging the Lord's servants out into endless activity and work, so that they
have no time to get back to see to the quality of things and the real vitality
of things. So the work runs out in a wide area, but is very superficial and
becomes largely ineffective, and we become worn out and our labour is in vain...
carried on by the numerous demands, the endless requirements, and the real life
may really be passing underground.
We must watch that whatever else there is, that the
life is looked after and that life is always regnant, strong, and clear.