Reading: John 1:14; 14:10; Col.
3:16-17; Rev. 19:13.
In the course of our previous
meditation we noted the relationship of the Holy Spirit to the
Word of God and the Heavenly Man, and before we pass on to
further considerations it may be well to sum up that relationship
under three or four specific heads.
The Holy
Spirit Related to the Word of God and the Heavenly Man
(a) In
Birth
We observe, then, that the Holy
Spirit is related to the Word of God in the birth of the Heavenly
Man. The Word was presented to Mary, and it created for her a
problem. In the human realm there was perplexity as to how the
realisation of this thing could be; how she should attain unto
that; how this wonderful presentation and unveiling of
possibility and meaning, purpose and intent, and Divine thought
could ever become a realised thing. That was her problem. The
angel answered her inquiry and cleared her perplexity with one
statement: "...the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee..."
(Luke 1:35). So we see that, related to the Word of God, there
was the Spirit, in this birth.
The Holy Ghost did not take up
the Word to make it a realised thing in Mary until she had
committed herself to the Word. That is always a law. But when she
committed herself deliberately to the Word, then the Holy Ghost
took up the realisation of the meaning, the implication, the
content, the purpose of that Word.
(b) In
Conflict
In the same way the Holy Spirit
was associated with the Word of God in the conflict. When the
Spirit had come upon the Lord Jesus, as the Heavenly Man, at
Jordan, He was led of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be
tempted of the Devil. Being led of the Spirit, governed by the
Spirit, actuated by, and moving in, the Spirit, the Word of God
was, by the Spirit, the instrument for the overthrow of the
enemy, and for the ultimate advance rather than the arrest of the
Heavenly Man. You notice that there is the mark of enlargement,
because when the Devil left Him, it says, "...Jesus returned
in the power of the Spirit..." (Luke 4:14). There is the
mark of enlargement, the sign of increase through this that has
happened. The Spirit was associated with the Word in the
conflict, unto victory, and unto enlargement.
(c) In
Ministry
The same was true in the
ministry of the Lord Jesus: "...the words that I speak unto
you I speak not from myself; but the Father abiding in me doeth
his works" (John 14:10). The words are the issue of an
indwelling activity of the Father, by the Spirit.
We are speaking solely of
Christ as the Heavenly Man now, not of Christ in His Deity and
Godhead, as the Son of God in the highest sense. In His ministry,
by the anointing, by the indwelling Spirit of the Father, there
are activities going on in Him which result in words coming from
Him. But they are not from Him apart from the Father, they are
not from Him out of relationship with the Spirit, they are coming
from the inward activities and energies of the Spirit of the
Father. The Spirit is producing the words by His operations in
the life. That is why they are always practical words, that is,
words of practical effect. We will come back to that presently.
(d) In the
Life
What was true in His spoken
ministry, and in these other ways, was also true in His life. His
life was a continuous and spontaneous fulfilling of the
Scriptures, not by continuous reference to them, but through the
indwelling of the Spirit, who had the Scriptures in possession,
having Himself given them, and inspired them. They are eternal,
and the Spirit in Him was moving in such a way that the
Scriptures were being fulfilled all the time. On many occasions
the statement is made to indicate that fact: "...that the
scriptures might be fulfilled..." So He was energised and
actuated in His life, and in all its incidents, by the Spirit in
relation to the Word. The Heavenly Man is governed by the Word of
God through the Eternal Spirit. That is true of Him personally.
Now that is true also of Him
corporately. The corporate Heavenly Man is the result of the same
process. The Church, His Body, in its every part, is brought into
being by the Word, firstly presented, and then contemplated,
considered, responded to, and the Holy Ghost taking it up and
making it a living thing. The result is the Church, the Body of
Christ, the corporate Heavenly Man.
That is how the Church comes
into being, and to contemplate any kind of thing called the
Church, which does not come in by the operation of the Holy
Spirit through the Word of God, is to contemplate something that
does not exist in the thought of God. Set the Word of God aside
and you will have no Church. What you will have is something that
is utterly false. Set the Holy Ghost, in relation to the Word of
God, aside, and you destroy what you are trying to build up.
That is viewing it in a very
general way, but for us it becomes an immediate matter that our
very being, as a part of Christ, issues from exactly the same
principle as operated in His incarnation, the Word and the Spirit
co-operating.
A
Reiteration of the Divine Purpose
The Principle of Incarnation
Let us break this up, going
back a little in thought. God requires a Man for the expression
of His thoughts. To put that in another way, God has never meant just to
utter words, statements; to make Himself known and give
expression to Himself by verbal utterances. There is a great deal
more hanging upon that than appears for the moment, but that is
the simple fact, that God has never intended to make Himself
known by statements, by words, by verbal utterances. That is why
it is infinitely perilous to be occupied with teaching as
teaching, and to take up teaching as teaching, to take up things
said, and think that because we have the thing said to us we have
the thing itself. We never have! Many people have all the things
that have been said, but they have not the thing itself. There is
such a position to come to as that of learning, and never coming
to a knowledge of the truth. That is a position of great peril.
Yes, for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years we may have heard all
that there is, and know it all, and yet never have come to a
knowledge of the truth. It sounds like a contradiction, but it is
possible, or the Word of God would not say so. What is the
trouble? Where is the flaw? That is what we are trying to see
now.
Now, as we have said, God never
intended to try to make Himself known, to give expression to
Himself, by words, by statements, by mere utterances, that is, by
things said. For the expression of His thoughts God requires a
man. The Word, therefore, becomes flesh; for the man God desires
must be the product of His Word in an inward way; that is, life
must be related to truth, and truth must be related to life.
Again, there is the terrible
danger of speaking apart from the Word of God having been
inwrought. There is a fascination about the great truths, and
connected with this there is a danger, especially if you happen
to be in what is called "ministry". The danger is that
of getting hold of truths, of doctrines, of themes, of subjects,
of things in the Word of God, and all the time talking about
them. You go and hear something fresh, and it is a new idea, and
so off you go to give it out. In reality you are collecting
material for your ministry in that way, and there is a terrible
danger in so doing. It is going to put you and your hearers into
a false position. As we have already said, it will make things
top-heavy. You are building teaching upon something that is not
life, that is not growth. It is simply a case of putting teaching
on to people, and presently the whole thing will topple over,
down will come your edifice, and you will wonder what is the
matter. It is only life that counts. You have to lay a
foundation, but there must be an excavating, an upheaving, a
breaking up, an inworking, before you can add teaching. That is
why doctrine followed the working of grace in the heart, in the
New Testament. The work of grace was begun, and then the Lord
explained by the doctrine what He had been doing. It is often
thus with ourselves. The Lord takes us through something which we
cannot understand, and which to us, while we are passing through
it, is a deep, dark, terrible experience, but afterward He
explains it to us in His Word, and we are brought into a full
interpretation of what we have gone through. It is far better to
have it so.
The receiving of the Word of
God by the Old Testament prophets is described by the Hebrew verb
"hayah" which means "happened". Thus the
literal rendering of the Hebrew is, The word of the Lord happened
unto so and so. In our translation this is expressed by the
word "came": The word of the Lord came to so
and so. It is an event, not just a verbal utterance. That is how
it has to be through us to others. That is why the Lord said,
"...the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and
are life..." (John 6:63). There is an event with His words,
not always in the immediate consciousness of those spoken to,
but, as we have already pointed out, something is done, and it
will come to light one day. Upon that everything in destiny
hangs. God speaks, and something is effected one way or the
other. Thus the Word of God is not merely a saying, a speech, it
is an event. The full value is given to the Word of God when it
is incorporated in a body. That is, of course, patent in the case
of the Lord Jesus Himself. The full value of the Scriptures was
reached when they were incorporated in Him personally, when it
could be said, "And the Word became flesh, and tabernacled
among us... full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).
The Word of
God and a Living Assembly
On the corporate side there is
something to be recognised which perhaps may occasion difficulty
for the moment, but which is nevertheless true, and something
that must be taken into account, and be remembered, that the Word
of the Lord in a living assembly has special value and power. If
you have not seen that mentally, and recognised that as a truth,
possibly you have known it as an experience, as a fact. In a
living assembly of the Lord's people, with the Word of the Lord
in the midst, what power that Word has, and what value. But how
unprofitable it is to try to preach the Word in the midst of an
assembly that is not living, but dead and dry. It may be the Word
of the Lord, and, so far as the preacher is concerned, it may be
in the power of the Holy Ghost, but of how little profit it is.
When you get an assembly really alive unto the Lord, a body
throbbing with life, what value, what power, what fruit there is
in the Word. It was true in the case of the Lord Jesus. There you
have a living One, with the Word of God in Him, and you see how,
so far as He was concerned, the Word was spirit and life. The
Word had special value in Him, because in Him was life.
That is a true principle in
relation to the Heavenly Man, as corporately set forth. You have
there a living body, with the Lord's life and the Lord's Word in
the midst, running, having free course, and being glorified. On
the outer fringe of that company there may be the unsaved, and
others who are not alive to the Spirit, but the fact that the
Lord has a nucleus of living ones in the midst gives to the Word
something of value, which makes it far more powerful, far more
effective, than where this is not the case. This is a thing that
those who minister in the Spirit know all about in experience. If
the Word is ministered in a fairly large company, not very far
advanced, and not having learned the language of the Spirit, and
anything is said very much beyond early simplicities, they look
at you almost open-mouthed, and think you are talking a strange
language. But when the Word has been released and there have been
two or three who are alive to the Word, it has taken on power,
and these people, although not perhaps understanding the
terminology, have become alive to something. Some of you when
preaching may have looked round the congregation to find one
co-operating spirit, and the Word has found release. If there is
a nucleus in the midst of a realm of death, or comparative death,
the Word of God has a special value by reason of a
Holy-Spirit-actuated unit. It is there that we have to see the
importance of being alive unto the Lord for the ministry.
We have been dealing with the
fourth chapter of Ephesians, where we read of the Heavenly Man
giving gifts; apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and
teachers, for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of the
ministry. The saints are to minister. Now here is a way in which
the saints minister. All the saints do not come up on to the
platform and give the message, but they marvellously minister
when they co-operate with the ministry, and really the ministry
of the apostle or prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher, is
fulfilled by the living company. It is a poor look-out for the
one who is ministering, if there is not a company to fulfil the
ministry like that, by spiritual co-operation. In that way the
Lord gets through with a revelation of Himself. How much more can
the Lord reveal Himself when He has a living company.
The Lord seemed severely
limited when He was here, so that He could never say all He
wanted to say: "I have yet many things to say unto you, but
ye cannot bear them now" (John 16:12). Nor, again, could He
do what He wanted to do: "And he did not many mighty works
there because of their unbelief" (Matt. 13:58). But, given
a living company, there is no end to the possibilities. The Lord
can reveal and express Himself there. The Lord needs a Man, a
heavenly Man for His self-revelation, the expression of His
thoughts, and the full value is only given to the Word when it is
incorporated in a body.
Christ and
the Word of God are One
Now we come much closer. The
thing that must be said at once is, that by the Holy Spirit the
Word is Christ. It is not a statement of things, it is the
expression of a Person. What we mean to say is, that we have to
take the same attitude toward the Word, that we take toward
Christ. We have to face the Word of the Lord in the same way that
we face the Lord Himself. It is not something of the Lord
presented to us in words, but it is the Lord Himself coming to
us. We cannot reject any part of His Word and keep Him. We cannot
divide between the Lord and His Word. People seem to think that
they can take some of the things the Lord has said and leave
others. The Word is one. The Word is the Lord. To refuse the Word
in any part, is to refuse the Lord, is to limit the Lord, is to
say, in effect: Lord, I do not want You! Lord, I will not have
You! It is not that we will not have the Word, but that we will
not have the Lord Himself, for the two are one: "His name is
called The Word of God". "The Word became
flesh..." You cannot get in between, the two are one. He is
the Word of God. God does not come to us in statements, He comes
to us in Person, and the challenge is to take an attitude, not
towards the things said, but towards the Lord Himself.
The Necessity
for Heart Exercise
The question that arises in
most of our hearts when we have been hearing a great deal is, How
is that to become our life? How is that to become a part of us?
How are we to become the living expression of that? That is the
question which should arise, at any rate. Let us remind
ourselves, and those for whom we have responsibility in ministry,
that it is possible to be ever learning, and never coming to a
knowledge of the truth. We can attend conferences, go right
through every meeting, and mentally take in all that is said, and
go away with it in our minds, or have it in our note-books, and
then have to come back to another conference to get more, and
then to another, and still another. We look back over the years
of conferences and begin to take stock, and we ask ourselves the
question: What is the result of all this? I remember that on such
and such an occasion, such and such a thing was spoken about, and
on another occasion something else; these have been the things
which have been the subjects of the various conferences; and now,
what does it represent? That is a very solemn question. Is it
that we know these things; that is, if they were repeated, should
we take the attitude: Well, we have heard that before; we know
that! That is what we mean by ever learning, ever learning,
without maybe ever coming to the knowledge of the truth, in the
sense in which that word "knowledge" is used. What are
we going to do? How is all this to be translated into something
more than words, more than thoughts, more than ideas, more than
truths as truths, more than teaching, so that it really does
become incorporated, expressed in a Man? It can be, and it must
be. Exactly the same principle must operate as when Christ was
born of Mary. It means that the Word presented has to lead us to
exercise of heart. That is what happened with Mary. She
immediately entered into an exercise of heart about it. You know
what measure of exercise has resulted from your hearing of the
Word. Consider it thus: What does that mean? What does that
involve? What cost will that entail? What is that going to lead
to? Is that the will of God for me? The need is of a present,
direct, and deliberate taking up of the Word, and facing it,
contemplating it, entering into exercise of heart about it. That
is the first step towards incarnation of the Word.
Having looked at it, having
been exercised by it, we must take a deliberate step in relation
to it in faith. That is necessary. You will never get anywhere
unless you do. When, having faced that word, weighed it, looked
at it in the light of God's will for you, and having come to a
position you take a deliberate attitude, if it is to be towards
the Lord, the attitude must be: "Behold, the handmaid of the
Lord (behold, the servant of the Lord); be it unto me according
to thy word". 'I do not know how it can be; it seems an
impossible thing, too high for me, but be it unto me'. That is
faith. Mary did not stand back and say: Well, it is a wonderful
revelation, far too great for me; I do not believe it can ever
be, I cannot really accept it! Wonderful as it was, and
impossible as it was on any other ground but God, with the sheer
impossibility of its ever being on any natural ground, she said:
Nevertheless, be it! That is faith. It is not according to what I
think is possible, what I feel to be possible, what seems to me
to be possible, but "according to thy word". It is
according to the Word, and that Word is not an impossible thing!
If You have spoken, You do not speak impossibilities, You do not
challenge me with impossibilities! "...be it unto me
according to thy word." It is a committal of faith, a
deliberate act of faith in relation to the Word, that is
required.
How many of us have so acted
over things which we have heard? How many of us have got away
and, in exercise of heart, said: 'Lord, that is a tremendous
thing, and for me in a natural way it is quite impossible; but it
is Your Word, therefore, be it unto me. I stand on it, and I
stand for it, You make it good. I can do no more than say, Yes,
and I believe God'. There is a great deal in a transaction like
that. Without that we do not grow. Without that we are ever
learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth. Without
that so much of truth becomes merely mental in its apprehension,
and is not living, is not effective.
However much we have failed in
the past, there is something to be done in this matter. When the
Lord has been speaking to us, we should make it our first
business to get apart with Him. You would not believe the
heartbreak it is, to one who has been pouring out that Word, to
find that almost before he has finished his message, and the
gathering is closed, people are talking on all the trivialities
of their domestic and business affairs, on things that can quite
well wait. It is not as though there were any serious or critical
situation to be inquired into, but mere talk ensues along the
lines of ordinary, everyday things. Our point is that there has
to be a deliberate transaction with the Lord, if that Word is to
become an expression of God in a life; and God can never be
satisfied with anything else. God can never be satisfied with
mere statements, but only with the man as a living expression of
His words.
The Relation
of the Word to the Cross
That is why the Word is always
related to the Cross. The Apostle Paul uses this phrase:
"For the word of the cross is... the power of God" (1
Cor. 1:18). It is the power of God. It is the wisdom of God. We
know that the word used is the "Logos" of the Cross.
The Logos is the combination of a thought and expression in a
personal way. It is the Word in a Person, related to the Cross.
That is why it is put in this way by the same Holy Spirit of
knowledge and understanding, in the book of the Revelation:
"And he is arrayed in a garment dipped in blood: and his
name is called The Word of God" (Rev. 19:13). You see the
two things, the garment sprinkled with blood, and His name
"The Word of God". Then you look into the letter to the
Hebrews, and you will remember that in chapter 9:19, you have
these words: "...he took the blood of the calves and the
goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both
the book itself, and all the people..." There is the Word
and the Blood. It is the Cross that gives the working power to
the Word.
The Cross of the Lord Jesus is
a tremendously effective thing. The Cross of the Lord Jesus, in
its spiritual value, will break down everything that stands in
God's way. It will clear the ground of the old creation. It will
destroy the power of the enemy and his works. The Cross is a
tremendous thing for breaking down, destroying, overthrowing. The
Cross, on its resurrection side, knows no bounds to power:
"...the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who
believe, according to that working of the strength of his might
which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the
dead..." (Ephes. 1:19-20). The Cross has these two sides,
the breaking down side and the raising up side, and it is in the
power of the Cross of the Lord Jesus that the Word of God finds
its effectiveness. He becomes the Word of the Cross, and the
garment sprinkled with blood is the garment of Him who is
"The Word of God", and as "The Word of God"
He gets His power by way of the Cross. Christ crucified is the
power of God. When the Cross has its place in our lives, the Word
of God is tremendously potent. An uncrucified preacher is an
ineffective and unfruitful preacher. Ministry in the Word of God
from any but a crucified minister or vessel is impotent,
fruitless, barren. Find the crucified man giving the Word of God,
and you know it will be effective, fruitful, powerful.
Take Jeremiah as a great Old
Testament illustration. If ever there was a crucified man in
spirit, it was Jeremiah. He bears the marks of a crucified man
right from the beginning. If you want to know what a crucified
man is, read the first chapter of Jeremiah's prophecy, and you
will see him indicated at once. Read right through Jeremiah, and
you will see a life-size portrait of a crucified man. Turn to
chapter 1:4-6:
"Now the word of the
Lord came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly
I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I
sanctified thee; I have appointed thee a prophet unto the
nations."
Any natural, uncrucified man
would leap at that, and say: My! I am somebody! What power is
entrusted to me! What a life-work I have!
"Then said I, Ah, Lord
God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child."
Such is the reaction of a
crucified man to a great prospect set before him by the Lord. See
what a crucified man can be when the Lord has him in His hands:
verses 9-10:
"...I have put my
words in thy mouth: see, I have this day set thee over the
nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down,
and to destroy and to overthrow; to build, and to
plant."
There is the Cross in the word
of the crucified man: "...my words in thy mouth...",
destroying, overthrowing, plucking up, casting down. That is the
power of the Cross. The Lord does that with regard to ourselves.
The Cross works havoc in our flesh. It brings us to an end. But
there is another side of the Cross, and that is to build, and to
plant. That is the working of the Cross in resurrection. Thus we
have the Word in the mouth of a crucified man. It is the Word of
the Cross in effect. It is Christ crucified, the power of His
Cross bringing into view a heavenly Man, through the embodiment
of the Word of God. The Cross gets rid of that other man who
looms so large, and who is to be summed up in Antichrist, the
super-man, who will sit in the very temple of God giving out that
he is God; some great one of this old and cursed creation, so
lifted up in pride that he assumes the very Place of God. The
Cross casts him out, and brings God's Man into view, greater than
he. Over against Antichrist is Christ, and there is no
comparison. The Cross brings in that Man by putting out the
other. All that is in us of that other man the Cross brings to
nought, and thus makes room for the revelation of the Heavenly
Man, both personally and corporately, and gives to us a ministry
which is the result of the work of His Word within. It is a
ministry which is a work, not a ministry of statements. That is
why we have stressed the words in John 14 - "...the words
that I say unto you I speak not from myself: but the Father
abiding in me doeth his works." The Father dwelling in Him
was doing His works. The words that He speaks, He is not speaking
out from Himself, they are coming out of the Father's works.
Thus, it is not a case of truth, teaching, words, ideas; it is a
ministry (evidenced, maybe, by words, but by "words, which
the Holy Ghost teacheth") resultant from inward works, the
works of the Spirit within. The Lord lead us more into that.