2 Cor. 4:1-7.
More than once we have heard it
said that what the world needs today is another Paul. But
two things have to be said in answer to that statement.
One is that another Paul, or even Paul himself, would
hardly get a hearing in the Christian world of today. He
would be found to be running too severely counter to the
Christianity of our time that it would do with him what
Judaism did with the Lord Jesus, and with Paul, at the
beginning. The other thing, which seems somewhat to
contradict that is this, that it is very necessary and
important to remember that Paul was a representative of
the Church, or corporate vessel of the Lord's Testimony
for the dispensation, and that the Lord never intended to
repeat Paul personally, and to have an individual or
personal Paul in every generation of this dispensation.
But what the Lord did intend was that the whole of the
Church should be in this dispensation what Paul was. Paul
was brought in as a type, a representative, an embodiment
of the whole Church for the dispensation, and that which
was embodied by His servant Paul was to be the very
constitution of the Church. Those features of Paul's
spiritual life were to be the constituents of the Church
throughout the dispensation so that we should be nearer
the mark if we said that what is needed today is not
another Paul but THE CHURCH ACCORDING TO PAUL, as
spiritually constituted. It is not the individual or the
personal Paul, but it is what came in through and with
Paul spiritually, as constituting the Church, the whole
Body.
A
Chosen Vessel
That is the foundation
of our present consideration. We are dealing with the
vessel of the Testimony, and we know that right at the
outset of Paul's spiritual life that very word is
attached to him. In the very first hours of his
relationship to Christ in a saving way the words
concerning him were: "A chosen vessel unto me."
We find that in the full unfolding of his spiritual life
he does become a representative vessel, that is, a vessel
to which the Church is to be conformed so far as the
spiritual elements are concerned.
We are not forgetting
that the Church is to take its pattern from Christ; that
Christ is the Pattern of the Church, and that the Church
takes its character from Christ and is to be conformed to
Christ. But Christ has become in a peculiar way revealed
to and in and through His servant Paul for practical
purposes here in relation to the Church. It only needs to
be said that not in a definite and systematic way was the
Church revealed through Christ, but Christ revealed in
that definite and systematic way the truth of the Church
to and through His servant Paul. It is not the Church of
Paul, but the Church of Christ; but the revelation of
Christ has come through Paul. We must remember that no
revelation is of value only in so far as it is wrought
into the very experience of the person to whom it is
given; so that it is Paul's spiritual history and
experience which gives value to the revelation, and in
that sense the truth has become of practical value
because wrought in a man.
When we consider this
chosen vessel, this representative vessel, there are
quite a few things which are related.
The
Previous Vessel Supplanted
We begin by saying that
he, representatively, was the vessel which supplanted the
other vessel. Perhaps the best way of explaining that is
to turn to the Scripture itself, and compare two
passages.
We look at a familiar
passage in Jeremiah 18, where we are shown the potter's
house, the potter's wheel, and the potter's vessel.
Verses 3-4, 6:
"Then I went down to the potter's house, and,
behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. And the vessel
that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the
potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed
good to the potter to make it.... O house of Israel,
cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord.
Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in
mine hand, O house of Israel."
Now note, verses 7-10:
"At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation,
and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down,
and to destroy it; If that nation, against whom I have
pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the
evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant
I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a
kingdom, to build and to plant it; If it do evil in my
sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of
the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them."
Now turn to the letter
to the Romans, chapter 9 and verses 21-25:
"Hath not the potter power over the clay, to make
out of the same lump one vessel for honour, and one for
dishonour? But what if God (though willing to show forth
His wrath, and to make known His power) endured with much
long-suffering vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction
(and cast them not at once away)? And what if thus He
purposed to make known the riches of His glory bestowed
upon vessels of mercy, which He had before prepared for
glory? And such are we, whom He has called not only from
among the Jews, but from among the Gentiles, as He saith
also in Hosea, 'I will call them my people which were not
my people, and her beloved which was not beloved'"
(Conybeare).
The implications are
perfectly clear from the context. Israel was a nation
concerning whom God purposed good. That nation did evil,
and the Lord repented Him of the good, and He plucked up
that nation. When did He pluck up that nation? Changing
the metaphor, it was the day when He cursed the fig tree,
and the Jewish nation, which did evil in His sight
although He had purposed good for it, was set aside.
That was the first
vessel, and it was marred in the hand of the Potter. The
Potter proceeds to make another vessel as is good to Him,
to take its place, which supplants it, and which will
fulfil the purpose which He had in His heart which the
other vessel has failed to fulfil. The vessel which
supplants the vessel that was is the Church, and Paul is
a type of that as the chosen vessel. The whole history of
Paul is a clear unveiling of the fact that God has
brought in another vessel, which puts Judaism out of the
way.
Is not that the import
of the life of Paul, that Judaism is put away? And was
not his supreme conflict with Judaism, the vessel that
was still seeking to push itself into the place of God's
purpose, but which God had repudiated? The Lord made
another vessel, the Church, to be brought into its place.
Paul was the very type and spiritually the embodiment of
that, so that Paul becomes, as the representative, the
vessel which supplants the other vessel.
That carries with it a
very definite and wide significance for the Church. It
means that in God's thought the Church is a vessel which
spiritually fulfils all that purpose which was
represented by Israel, but which Israel failed to fulfil.
That is a very wide sphere of meditation, as to why
Israel was constituted, the purposes of Israel. Those
purposes are many and varied, and very wonderful; but
Israel failed. God brings in a new vessel to fulfil those
purposes spiritually, to take up all the spiritual things
which lay behind what was typical in Israel. We only have
to read the letter to the Hebrews (in the writing of
which we verily believe Paul had some influence, and a
very definite influence) to see that fact established,
that in the Church there are spiritually all those things
which lay behind the religious life of Israel.
We leave that for the
moment with this closing remark, that the Church comes in
and is represented by Paul as something which is in the
place of a merely external religious system, even though
that system may have been in vital relationship with God,
even although that may have been brought about by God.
Immediately that thing fails to be a spiritual force in
the world it ceases to be God's instrument, God's vessel.
And the same will have to be said of Christianity, any
part of Christianity which goes the same way. Immediately
it ceases to be a spiritual force in the world it ceases
to be God's instrument.
So we draw our first
conclusion from this, namely, that the Church is called
in to be a spiritual force, and not merely an organised
religious system. That is the vessel which comes in with
Paul, and is bound up in his person.
A New
Cruse
The second thing, which
is closely akin to it, is that Paul very clearly
represents the new cruse, a newness of the vessel. We are
now thinking of the clean and clear cut which is seen in
the life of the Apostle between what had been as his life
religiously, and that which came in by his new
relationship to the Lord Jesus. Things were undoubtedly
absolutely new. We do not mean by that that they were
just fresh. There is all the difference between freshness
and newness. You can make an old thing look fresh, but
that is not the sense in which we are thinking of this
new vessel. It is not fresh, it is new. It is something
which never had been before. It means that there was an
entire and final end to one history. That history of the
Apostle Paul before the Damascus Road experience was
closed fully and finally. The end came to that history,
and an entirely new history began there. The two are
divided by three years of solitude in Arabia, and then
the beginning of something which was so utterly different
from all that had been. There was no carrying over from
the past. It would be well for you to read again
thoughtfully these letters of Paul, in order to be
confirmed in that one thing, of how completely the past
history was closed for him, and how utterly different and
new all was from the time when he came to see who Jesus
of Nazareth was, and all that was bound up with Him.
Now come back to our
point, which is Paul as representative of the vessel of
the testimony, the embodiment of all the spiritual
features and principles of the Church according to the
mind of the heavenly Lord, and in this second thing we
find the Church defined as something which is utterly
new, carrying over nothing from the old life. It is, in
its constitution, in all its members, in all its methods,
in all its means, in all that it is and all that it has,
something absolutely new. It brings nothing over from the
old creation, from the old life; that is, there has been
a history brought finally to an end where the Church is
concerned. To put that more simply it means this, that
the Body of Christ, the Church which is His Body, is
composed of a company of people who have a clean cut
between an old history and a new, and who do not bring
over into their new realm, their new life, their new
service, anything of the old creation, not even
religiously.
That has been the snare
of the enemy with so many, that while it is admitted that
you do not bring over your old sinful ways or old sinful
life, you do bring over something religiously. Now Paul
is an outstanding example of the fact that that is not
so. He will tell us that, so far as his religious life
was concerned, it was of the white-heat kind, passionate,
intense; "more exceeding zealous," he said. He
came to see that it was all wrong, and it was all
governed by other forces than the Holy Ghost. You may
take it that any life governed by any other force than
the Holy Ghost is a deceived life. It does not matter,
though we may be intensely, and passionately, and utterly
devoted to the Lord's interests, if we are putting the
strength of our own natural life behind that passion we
may be the most deceived of all people. I never had any
doubt, but I am more convinced today than ever I was,
that the ground of deception is a strong natural will
projected into religious things, and the stronger the
natural will projected into spiritual things the deeper
the deception. In the case of Saul of Tarsus you have a
terrific will projected into the realm of religion, and
he has to confess in the end: "I verily thought that
I ought to do many things contrary to the name of
Jesus." He did what he thought he ought, and found
that he was under deception, it was working in exactly
the opposite way to which he thought it was working.
There is a terrific danger of projecting any part of our
natural life into the things of God.
The
Church, in the mind of the Lord, is a thing which is new,
out from heaven, all its energies and spiritual resource
are of the Holy Ghost. You cannot have that until you
have definitely closed the old creation history.
This is
something for us to lay hold of, if we cannot understand
it completely. If it seems somewhat beyond us,
nevertheless to lay hold of, as simply as we can. The
necessity that the Lord has a vessel which is new, that
is, which has its old history of the natural life closed,
and is now something altogether under the control, and
government, and direction of the Holy Spirit, is
something for which to pray, that the Lord shall get a
people like that. That is what we mean when we say that
Paul was brought in by the Lord to be a representative of
the Church, and the embodiment of the principles of the
true Body of Christ. What is needed through this
dispensation is that what is revealed through the Apostle
Paul should be the nature of the Church: no carrying
forward of old creation elements.
Divinely
Apprehended
The third
thing in this vessel of the testimony was a definite,
Divine act of apprehending. Paul spoke of himself as
having been apprehended of Christ Jesus. That is how he
explained his experience on that road, that he was
suddenly, out from heaven, apprehended. He was laid under
arrest. It was as though, to speak in our more up-to-date
language, the Lord said suddenly: I have got you! I have
been on your track for a long time, but now I have got
you! And Paul knew that he was apprehended. But it was a
sovereign act, an act from heaven.
Our
present thought in connection with this apprehending is
that he represents the Church in that. The Church is not
something which man can make. It is not something
constituted by man. It is not something that we can set
up, that we can bring about. It is not something which we
can organise, and get people to join. We cannot make
adherents to the Church. The Church which is called
"the Church" today is very largely made up of
those who have come under some sort of human influence,
yielding to which they have "joined the
Church"; and the trouble after that is to get rid of
them, you wish most of them had never joined. When you
get on to that level that is bound to be the trouble. The
point is this, that the Church is a Divinely constituted
thing, a thing which is the expression of the Divine
Sovereignty. All that we can do is preach Christ. The
Holy Ghost has to do the rest, and any member not added
by the Holy Ghost to Christ will be a weakness to His
Body. Apprehended of Christ Jesus! You are very safe when
you are on that ground.
The
Vessel Liberated
Once more,
in this representation of the vessel we see the vessel
liberated. Of course, our special means of seeing how
completely this was so is Paul's own letter to the
Galatians, the key word of which is "liberty,"
"our liberty in Christ." We know by now what
the difficulty was. Those Judaisers still regarded
Judaism as the Church, with its ritual, its form, its
system, its order which they desired to impose upon every
convert, and cause every believer to observe in the rigid
letter of the law. Paul, in his own experience, by his
own Divine revelation, stood utterly and absolutely
against that whole thing, having seen that Christ is no
longer a set of laws and regulations, external rites and
forms; but Christ has fulfilled all that in His own
Person, and now makes good spiritually to His own the
value of that. He is the Altar; God and man meet in Him.
He is the Sacrifice; sin is dealt with in Him. He is the
Priest; the one Mediator between God and man. He is the
very Tabernacle itself, and all gathering together in
worship is not now to some temple, to some specific
building, of necessity, but anywhere so long as He is the
Centre; He constitutes the Church. The Church does not
constitute itself by a membership roll and a special
building, a place of assembly; it is being together with
Christ in the midst which is an expression of the Church.
He is the Church by His presence in and with His own. And
so you go over the whole system and you find that it has
ceased to be some external thing, and it has become
purely a spiritual relationship to Christ in a living
way. But the Judaisers said, No! except ye be circumcised
you cannot be saved! This and that must be observed as
the law! And so the battle raged, and Paul fought through
to victory for the liberty of believers from all the law.
We have
not to fight today that battle with Judaism, but a
similar situation has arisen as Christianity has become
very largely a system of external forms, rites, orders,
largely man-governed, regulated and controlled; and the
life has very largely gone out of the whole thing, it is
a matter of bondage and spiritual death. Paul stands as a
vessel absolutely liberated from all that sort of thing,
and so he is a representation of the Church, whose
liberty is of that character that Christ is Everything,
and knowing Christ in a living way you have everything.
You are not under any kind of external law, and you never
need fear that you will break moral laws if you are in a
living relationship with the Lord Jesus. The vessel is
liberated. "Our liberty in Christ," Paul calls
it.
The
Vocation of the Vessel
This can
be summed up in one word from 2 Cor. 4:6.
Paul said:
"We have this treasure in earthen vessels...."
What treasure? The shining forth of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ! What is the
vocation of the vessel? What is the work, the ministry,
of the Church? Unto what are we called as parts of that?
For the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ.
That is a
great calling, but it is a great searching. We can test
Churchmanship by that statement (if we may use that
word). We say that we belong to the Church, and we are
members of the Church. Well, what about the shining forth
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ? That is the purpose of the Church. That is the
object of the vessel. Nothing can substitute that, but a
very great deal can veil it.
We would
like to add one word more to this, that in the case of
Paul, not only was that true, but there is a marvellous
manifestation of God in that vessel, especially in the
direction of resurrection life. It seems that this is one
of the primary aspects of the revelation of God in
Christ. If you look for the traces of the knowledge of
the glory of God in the New Testament you will find that the
outstanding trace of that glory of God is the power
of His resurrection.
Take Paul
as an illustration again, and read the whole catalogue of
his sufferings, of what he went through, and see him in
his brokenness, weakness, feebleness; "in deaths
oft," he says, despairing of life, with the sentence
of death in him; and yet, what achievement! What
ministry! What a tremendous accomplishment! What a range!
What a depth! What a fulness! What an endurance! for he
is more mighty today than he has ever been. How do you
explain it? You do not explain it by Paul's physical
strength. No! you do not explain it on any human ground.
Though much has been said about his intellect, about his
persistence, his wonderful will, and all these things;
Paul would repudiate the whole thing, and he does. Here
he says: "We have this treasure in vessels of
fragile clay, that the exceeding greatness of the power
might be of God, and not of ourselves." That is
quite definitely saying: I am but a vessel of fragile
clay, and if there is any accomplishment, if there is any
endurance, if there is any effectiveness, it is to be set
down to the power - the exceeding greatness of the power
- of God and not of myself! It is God in this vessel, in
the power of resurrection life.
Returning
to our original thought, we see that Paul is a type of
the Church as God means it to be in all its members, that
there shall be that there which can never be accounted
for on human grounds, the power of God in resurrection.
Do you feel like a vessel of fragile clay? What do you
follow that up with? Do you say, Well then, I am no good,
I can serve no purpose, it is no use expecting anything
from me, I have not got what is necessary to be of any
use to the Lord! Is that what you are saying, because you
feel a vessel of fragile clay? Paul was that, but
(a mighty "but") you see what is possible
through vessels of fragile clay: The exceeding greatness
of His power!
The Church
as we know it today is all the time trying to be
something other than a vessel of fragile clay; it does
not want the world to look upon it as such. It wants to
be something very imposing, which can stand up to the
world on its own ground, meet it in its own terms. Yes,
it has taken on the very habit, or it has developed the
very habit, of trying to impress the world with its own
resources. But in the New Testament it was a vessel of
fragile clay. The comparison between the effectiveness
today and the effectiveness then is a very sad
comparison.
Now we
have to sum up all this in a word of application. We have
seen what the vessel of the testimony is, and we must set
ourselves more than ever earnestly to pray that the Lord
will have a vessel after this kind; that we individually
may be such vessels; that companies of the Lord's people
here and there may be constituted such vessels; that the
Lord may have a vessel, represented by individuals and
groups in this earth according to this pattern of His
servant Paul, in whom He has given the revelation of His
own mind in a living, experimental way as to what the
Church, the vessel of the Testimony, should be. It is
that which comes in in a spiritual way, as over against a
merely historical and traditional way; that which marks
the end of the history of nature, and the beginning of
the history of the Holy Spirit in man; that which is
sovereignly raised up by the Lord Himself, and not
brought about by any activities of man by way of
constituting it; that which is absolutely free in Christ,
and to whom Christ is Everything, He fulfilling all the
need of man as typically represented in the Old Testament
- ritual, prophet, priest and king, altar and mercy seat,
sacrifice and temple. He being all that, and in Him the
knowledge of the glory of God going forth through vessels
of fragile clay in the power of His resurrection.
Now you
see that is a high thing. Can it be? Is it possible? Is
it any use praying the Lord to have something like that?
If it is true that that is the Lord's will, if that is
the Lord's revelation, we shall be wrong in abandoning
anything that the Lord has revealed as His will, though
it seem impossible, though its recovery be exceedingly
hard, nevertheless it is possible. It is possible in the
individual. It is possible in you; it is possible in me,
that in some real measure these things shall be true. And
if it is possible in individuals, then what is the
company but the aggregate of the individuals? Therefore
the Lord can do this work. We must pray the Lord to bring
about something like this in the earth; not a new sect, a
new denomination, a new organisation, but His own
children living in fellowship with Him on this ground.
Let us pray for that very definitely.