"And as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the
Son of man be lifted up" (John 3:14).
"Jesus therefore
said, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall
ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself,
but as the Father taught me, I speak these things"
(John 8:28).
"And I, if I be
lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto
myself" (John 12:32).
In the Scriptures cited
above we have the Lord Jesus three times speaking of
being "lifted up". Of course, it means on the
Cross. In connection with that ‘lifting up’ He
uses two phrases: "Whosoever" and "All
men". The issue of the Cross, then, is said to be a
unifying of humanity. When we think of the Cross, we
usually, and almost entirely, think of sin. This is
right, if we understand what is meant by sin. There are
sins, and there is sin. The Cross is His ‘bearing of
our sins in His body on the tree’. The Cross is also
the judgment upon, and destruction of, the effect of sin.
In the Bible sin is
regarded as spiritual disease. There the greatest
illustration of spiritual disease is leprosy, and the
effect of leprosy is to disintegrate the body, to break
down its unity. It does that first in the individual, and
then in the society; for the leper must go outside of his
family and away from other people. This breaking up
principle and power of sin is also represented in another
type, which has an embargo upon it when the Cross (in
figure) is present, and that is leaven. The effect of
leaven is to break up, disintegrate, and inflate.
Jesus says that the
Cross, and the ‘lifting up’ will be against
that effect of sin. Sin separates between man and God;
between man and a heavenly society; between the
"natural man" and the spiritual man in the
Church. (See 1 Corinthians.) It was because of that
divisive effect of sin that the Apostle said that he
would know nothing among them but "Jesus Christ, and
him crucified".
The only cure for
divisions in any realm is the power of the Cross. We have
— in these messages — been seeing the course of
disruption, from Satan’s jealousy of God’s Son
in the "before the world was" (John 17:5), and
the resultant schism there, to the earth in its chaos as
possibly Satan’s earlier "princedom"
("the prince of this world"), then to —
and in the Garden — man and wife; then to the
family, the tribe, and the whole race.
That long and terrible
history was destined by Divine Counsels to be met and
destroyed, and "reconciliation", reunification,
reintegration, to be accomplished in the same dimensions
as the evil. The instigator and his work were to be
destroyed and cast out of God’s domain of light,
life, and love, forever. The Person to do it, and
rightly constituted for it, was God’s Son, and the
instrument for its accomplishment was His Cross. Every
aspect of the cosmic universe was focused in that Cross.
The Cross is a factual position, basic, fundamental,
final as to this schismatic power of sin. Then it is a
progressive principle to be applied and made effective in
the Church. The final and consummate vision of the Cross
is a great multitude out of every tribe and nation
singing in unison or harmony the Song of the Lamb.
This is all a very great
test and challenge as to the place and work of the Cross
in ourselves personally; in our relationships; in the
local assemblies, and in the Church universally. The
heart of the disrupted universe, and the heart of all
disrupted situations contains an ‘I’. It
commenced there when "Lucifer" said in his
heart, "I will be equal with the Most High".
The principle of self-hood, in some form of
‘grasping’ and not letting go to God, is
accountable for all schisms which affect Divine interests
and glory. (See Philippians 2:9 onwards.)
So, coming back to our
main subject, the Divine order is in the Person of
God’s Son. It is secured by His Cross. It is
increased by the principle of the Cross at work in
believers. It is the real meaning of ‘knowing
Christ’, and it is consummated when the Lamb in the
throne is the adored Centre of a new Creation.
Let us not just view all
this objectively, but continually challenge all motives
and situations by it.
The Application of the the Message to Local Assemblies
While the disruptive
work of the enemy of Christ is extended to the whole
Church — the true Church — to effect its
disunity by every possible means because the true Church
— the Elect of God — is destined in the eternal
counsels to occupy the position of administration of the
‘new heaven and new earth’, it is of particular
interest and concern to the enemy to disrupt and
discredit all local representations of Christ and His
Body. This he will do — and does — by bringing
about wrong order. Order — Divine order — is
absolutely indispensable to growth, strength, and
effectiveness. This fact is greatly overlooked and
therefore much advantage is given to the disruptive
forces. Because the Divine order is heavenly and
spiritual, only the Holy Spirit, sent down from heaven,
knows what it is and can administer and constitute it.
Immediately man puts his hand upon the Church local to
organize, form, arrange, and control it, disorder —
or un-order — will set in, with the results of
confusion, limitation, artificiality, make-believe, and
— in time — an end in itself. It can be worse
— even shame and disgrace.
Therefore, to have the
Divine order it is basically essential — as in the
beginning — that the Holy Spirit shall be in
complete control in terms of the absolute headship and
lordship of Christ. This means that everything shall be
meticulously referred and deferred to the Holy Spirit.
This is the principle embodied in fasting with prayer. We
say the principle, because there is no virtue in fasting
without its meaning. To some men it might be costly to go
without a meal or two; to others meals are not of such
account, indeed, they feel better without a few. The
principle of fasting (not only or merely in going without
food for a day) is the refraining from what is of man in
any way to give the Lord a full way through occupation
with Him, which is the function of prayer. The Lord does
not want us to go on ‘hunger strike’ to get
what we want, but to go on self-strength strike to let
Him have what He wants. It was out of this ‘prayer
with fasting’ that the Holy Spirit instigated the
Divine order at the beginning. (Acts 13, etc.) Note: the
appointments were made firstly through abandoned prayer,
then by Holy Spirit direction, then in the midst of the
(local) Church, and evidently by the Church’s unity.
Who will ever estimate the values which issued from that
microcosm of the heavenly order? The most impressive
thing, and the most significant, is that the local
emerged into the universal. Souls saved, companies born,
and saints fed in far-reaching ministry, and all-time
values. Man’s arrangements and appointments do not
work out in that way!
Every assembly ought to
be a vessel of light and food for all the Lord’s
people, as well as of evangelism to the unsaved.
The law of order as
governing development, growth, strength, effectiveness,
and reproduction is written large by God in all organic
nature, and not least in the human body.
Order is the spontaneous
outworking of life. It proves that life is unimpeded,
unobstructed, and working normally. What is true in
nature is equally true in the spiritual organism —
the Church. It is when there is an invasion of something
contrary to "the law of the Spirit of life",
from selfhood or the world, that the life is obstructed
and there is a loss of power, effectiveness, and
productiveness. The Bible calls this "the
Anointing". Every vessel, every ministry, every
"office", every position, every function in the
local Church should manifestly be under the anointing. It
should be evident to all that that man in that position,
doing what he is doing, is unmistakably there and
functioning under the anointing; that God put him in that
position, and therefore life flows through him and his
function.
When we have said this
(and we could add very much more concerning Divine order
in the local assembly), we are brought back to an
all-inclusive and comprehensive work and meaning of the
sovereignty of the Holy Spirit: it is to reveal Christ.
We have said that Christ — the Son of God — is
the full embodiment of the heavenly order. By the
Anointing He expressed that order. We need to get right
away from our man-crystallized systems of Christianity to
a new Holy Spirit revealed apprehension of Christ. If the
Holy Spirit is really governing He will organically
constitute all things according to Christ, and the Church
and churches will not be institutions, organizations, or
even ‘churches’, but representations and
expressions of Christ.