READINGS: Isaiah 48:6-7; 2
Corinthians 5:17; Matthew 9:16-17.
Familiarity with words and
ideas very often takes something from their value. Few passages
in the New Testament are more familiar to us than 2 Corinthians
5:17: "Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a new
creation..." (R.V.M.), but the full force of the one
governing word there has, I am quite sure, not fallen upon our
hearts, and we have still very much to learn as to that essential
newness of the new creation in Christ. Indeed, we may say that
many of our troubles, our difficulties, our weaknesses, our
failures, our problems, our perplexities are the result of our
having failed to sufficiently grasp the import of that one word
"new." We have, very largely, proceeded with a good
deal that is old into the new creation, or we have tried to do
so, and we have discovered sooner or later that that cannot be
done, that we are attempting an impossibility. So that it may be
quite profitable for us to dwell for a little while upon this
essential newness.
We begin by reminding
ourselves, or acquainting ourselves with the fact that there are
two sides to the new creation. There is the vessel, and there is
that which is put into the vessel. It takes both of these to
constitute what is called the "new creation," the human
side, and the Divine side: but while newness applies to both
sides, the newness is not the same newness. There are two main
words which are translated into our English word "new."
We are perhaps familiar with the difference. One implies
something which is fresh, not necessarily just originated, but
bearing the mark of freshness. The other word implies more
strictly something which is quite recent, which was not
necessarily there before; it is new in the sense that it has just
come in, not something revived but something new. It is
interesting to notice that the Holy Spirit uses the two words in
connection with the two sides of the new creation.
In this vessel in Matthew 9 you
have both words used. As to the wine-skins (translated in the
Authorised Version, "bottles") the word used is that
which implies freshness. When the Lord Jesus speaks of new wine
He uses the other word, that is, something which is quite new,
quite recent. When you pass to the passage in 2 Corinthians 5 and
it is stated that: "...if any man is in Christ there is a
new creation; the old things are passed away; behold, they are
become new," there twice the word is used which means
freshness. That is strictly consistent with the truth as to the
real nature of the new creation.
You are dealing, first of all,
with the vessel. Now as vessels in the new creation we are not
something which never was before, something quite recent. The
vessel of the new creation is our old spirit brought back into
life. Our human spirit fell out of fellowship with God, and that
meant spiritual death. The new creation activity is to bring back
the human spirit from spiritual death into life, and it is the
same spirit, raised in union with Christ, becoming the vessel of
the new creation.
That is, however, only half of
the process. Something which was never in that spirit before is
deposited in it, a life which is not fresh but new, recent,
absolutely new, which was never in the human spirit before is now
put into that vessel, and that which is so completely new, says
the Word, is never put into an old wineskin. That vessel has to
be made fresh, brought into a state of life, in order to be the
receptacle of this utterly new life of the Spirit of God.
These are the two sides of the
new creation. The point is that, first of all, something has to
be done in the vessel, as well as something having to be put into
the vessel.
That is a principle, to which
God has bound Himself, and which governs Him in all His
activities. It applies in every direction where Divine work is in
view. God never builds His new thing upon an old foundation. God
never uses the old thing as the material for His new work. That
has to be completely renewed. That He does not put His
life, His new wine, into old skins is a truth which relates not
only to regeneration, to our salvation, to the new creation man,
but it also applies to every work of God. Whenever God does a
thing the characteristic is newness. Although there may be an old
vessel, that vessel has got to be made fresh in order to effect
God's end.
That applies to truth as much
as to anything else. It may be Divine Doctrine, God given
revelation, that which at one time by the Holy Spirit was living
truth; but that can never be taken up at any subsequent date or
period of time and used again without it becoming fresh in the
experience and life of those who come into it. It is just there
that a very great many of the mistakes have been made; that what
in the way of revelation was a living revelation so long ago has
been adopted by subsequent generations as truth, without that
subsequent generation, or those subsequent generations, coming
into the living reality thereof. That is vital.
It applies to the new creation
man. You cannot bring the old creation man over into the new
creation without his becoming fresh in a living way. That applies
to truth, revelation, doctrine. You cannot carry it on only as it
is perennially fresh. Ezekiel's vision of the river, and the
trees on either side, very many trees whose leaves never fade and
whose fruit is continuous, is simply a revelation or a vision of
the Testimony being maintained by the principle of life in
freshness right down the whole course of the ages. Truth has to
be like those leaves, which never fade. Truth has to be like that
fruit, which is always there, luscious fruit. All doctrine is not
like that. Unless it is like that its essential element has gone.
It is the essential newness of what is of God.
Every fresh step of God is
marked by this freshness, this newness. God may have done that
same thing again and again, in the course of history, but the
next time He does it it is as though it had never been done
before in the case of the people in whom He does it. That is the
glory of things.
We have seen this work in
simple ways. Some of us have been so familiar with certain
things, and we have said those things again and again. To us they
were living realities, and we have known of certain people who
have heard them, who have listened to them, who have been under
the ministry by which those things have been declared again and
again, over a course of, perhaps, years, and then suddenly, as by
a touch of the Spirit, they have seen it, they have caught the
inner sound, it has broken upon them, and has become living to
them. The result was that they commenced to talk about those
things as though no one in all the world had ever heard them
before, and as though the very person who had been talking about
them for years did not know anything about it! It is just like
that. That is the living Testimony. It is the freshness of
things. Things must be like that to be of God, for what is really
of God is like that. It is not that we hold the truth. It is that
we have the life of the truth.
What is true in the case of the
new creation man, and in connection with truth or doctrine,
revelation or light, is also true in the direction of the work of
God, what we call Christian work. For every one who enters into
the Divine vocation, the calling to service, it ought to be, for
that one, as though there had never been any Christian work
before. It ought to be as though they were the first ever
commissioned. In their spirit, in their outlook, in their
passion, it should be as though they were right at the beginning
of things, as though the Christian activity, the Christian
Gospel, was only just starting on its way. That should be the
consciousness which they should have. It is just the opposite of
entering into a longstanding, accepted, crystallised system of
Christian work, becoming a part of a great existing machine. The
freshness about things should be of this character, that in our
service we are conscious that the hand of God has come upon us as
though it had never come upon any other person, as though no one
else had been called but ourselves. I do not mean that to be
taken in a wrong way, that we are the only ones, but that here
this thing is such a living, tremendous reality to us that we
feel as though nothing had ever been done for the Lord before.
Do you understand what we mean
by that? Christian work has become an order, as we have called
it, a crystallised system of Christian enterprise, activity,
organised work, and people are called upon today to enter into
it, to take it up, and they do so and become a part of a great
Christian machine for accomplishing a certain purpose, and they
go into some kind of a factory to be turned out a Christian
worker. You are not surprised that these factory-turned-out
workers have not got that thing by which men and women today are
fed and brought into the full glory, beauty, grandeur,
magnificence of Christ. No! The work of the Lord is something
which, to the one who is apprehended of Christ Jesus, is as
though there had never been any Christian work before. There is
the freshness of life about it.
This applies to the thing which
God does, not only to those who are used to do it. When God does
a thing there is that about that thing which is fresh. There is
the sense that here is something which, as an element, makes this
work of God a new work.
God must have newness in His
vessels of every kind. If the vessel, or the vehicle, is a man;
if the vessel or the vehicle is a revelation; if it is a
collective instrumentality, or some piece of work which God is
doing in the world, when it is of Him it bears that hallmark of
freshness. There is no staleness about it. There is no death
about it. It throbs with vitality.
I believe the Lord has a very
definite object in our being led to this thought at this time.
Undoubtedly, the need today everywhere is just this sense of God
in a new way. There is plenty of work, plenty of doctrine, and
there are many Christians; but, oh, for this sense of God, this
sense of keenness, freshness, vitality, and knowledge of God in
all! That is the need. Without that things will go on as
they are, and they are very dead, and tragically weak and
ineffective.
The measure, then, of the
newness of the vessel will be the measure of the newness of what
God puts into it. God demands the newness of the vessel in order
to commit Himself to it.
Look at that passage from
Isaiah 48: "I have shewed thee new things from this time,
even hidden things, which thou hast not known. Thou art created
now, and not from of old; and before this day thou heardest them
not lest thou shouldest say, Behold, I knew them." Is not
that the attitude today toward a great deal? "Oh, yes, I
know it all! I know, there is nothing new about that! The
doctrine and everything else, I know it! We have heard that
before! We know it! There is nothing new about that!"
Beloved, if you have caught the inner significance of this you
are not mentally talking like that, you are seeing, and as you
see you are feeling intensely that there is this need today
everywhere. You have the intelligence of a living insight, and
you know quite well that there is no hope whatever in simply
propagating doctrine and truth, and trying to do the old work in
the old way. The need is not more work, more doctrine, truth and
light, so much as more of this living element in all.
There are two sides. There is
the vessel, and there is that which is in the vessel. The vessel
may be quite a good vessel doctrinally, and in other ways, but
there needs to be also the deposit in the vessel, the new wine.
So the Word says here quite clearly that there is a hopelessness
about the old, and all the hope lies in the direction of renewal
and freshness on the one hand, and God's living, new deposit on
the other hand.
What is the ultimate conclusion
about this? It is the conclusion to which 2 Corinthians 5:18
comes: "But all things are of God..." That follows the
statement: "...we thus judge, that one died for all,
therefore all died; and he died for all, that they which live
should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him..." That
is the one side; everything having died as to its own
self-productiveness. It cannot produce this Divine end, this
Divine result. It has died to its own productiveness, and now it
is unto Him, and when it is all unto Him then all things are out
from God. When all things are of God, all things carry this vital
element, this essential freshness of a new creation.
You and I should have heart
exercise about everything that the Lord has brought to us. Do we
really do that? Do we go back over what has been said and say,
Now the Lord said such, and such, and this and that comes out of
it. What are we going to do about it? Do we know that in a living
way? Does that really represent the Lord's mind for me, and His
People? Is that something that the Lord desires for all His own?
If so, on any one of these matters I must get before the Lord and
definitely be exercised in heart about it. There piled up,
mountains high, words, language, teaching, truth, light, and the
percentage of living, effective value in it all is all too small.
If there is one thing about which we should lay hold of the Lord
it is this, Lord keep this Testimony a living thing! Do not let
it become mere doctrine, mere truth, something to be passed on,
which shall be taken up by others and talked about, and the
phrases and terminology used! God forbid that that should be.
The essential newness of all
that is out from God is the point. The essential newness of that
which proceeds from the Lord, which is really related to the
Lord. Freshness on the part of those who are concerned, and
newness on the part of that which is coming out from God Himself.
Let us pray very much about that, because that is the very
essence of our ministry, not only of our life and what we call
our Testimony. Bread must have vitamins in it; and in the
spiritual food it is the same thing, there must be a living
attribute. The essential newness, not old things dead, but (it
may be old things) living. "Therefore every scribe who hath
been made a disciple to the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man
that is a householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure
things new and old" (Matthew 13:52). But if he brings old
things out there is a newness about them that conveys the
impression that they never were before, something at any rate
which is altogether fresh. The Lord maintain us, and all with
which we have to do, in that essential freshness and newness
which is the hallmark of Himself.