Reading: 1 Corinthians 2.
"We... are transformed into the same image" (that is: 'We
pass from one form to another') 2 Corinthians 3:18.
As I have moved about amongst Christians in many parts of this
world, and in many situations, one thing has been growing upon
me more and more strongly. In the presence of a great deal of
confusion amongst Christians and many complications in
Christianity, the feeling has become stronger and stronger that
the need is for Christians really to know what Christianity is,
and to know what it is that they are in as Christians. That
sounds, perhaps, rather drastic, but I am quite sure that a very
great deal of the trouble - and I think all agree that there is
a good deal of trouble in Christianity generally - is due to a
failure really to understand what Christianity is. It may seem
strange that I should speak to you, mostly experienced and
mature Christians, about the true nature of Christianity. Well,
if you feel that it is presumptuous and hardly called for, be
patient, and I think that before we get very far you will feel
as I do: that although we know a good deal about Christianity as
it is taught in the New Testament, we are very often in
difficulty ourselves for the very simple (or profound) reason
that we have not really grasped the meaning of what we are in.
So often, when distressed as to some situation, and perplexed
that it should have come about, I have found that that is just
what the Word has said would happen.
May I say to you (and I am sure you will agree after a moment's
thought) that the major part of the New Testament, by which I
mean all these Letters which make up the larger section of the
New Testament, is all bearing upon this one thing: to make
Christians understand what Christianity is. If that is true, and
all these Letters were to Christians, surely
we have to conclude that even New Testament Christians needed
Christianity explained to them, and even then there was this
necessity of just defining the real nature of that into which
they had come.
Begin with the Letter to the Romans. Was that necessary for
Christians? It was written to Christians, but what was it
written for? To put them right in the matter of Christianity!
Apparently those people were not quite clear in their position,
in their lives and in their hearts as to the implications of
that into which they had come by faith in Jesus Christ.
Proceed, as we are going to do, into the Letters to the
Corinthians, and what are they? Set over against a background of
real confusion and contradiction in Corinth, those Letters were
written really to try to make the Christians understand what
Christianity really is. And so on and on through the New
Testament that is the object; that we and all who believe in the
Lord Jesus should really have a clear understanding of what this
is, of the meaning of the name we bear, and the meaning of that
which we believe and into which we have come by the grace of
God. We can gather it all up in this simple statement: that the
whole Christian life is an education as to what Christianity is.
Is that true? Do you not sometimes stand in the presence of some
situation, some difficulty, some trial, some complication, some
perplexity, some experience, and say: 'What does it all mean? I
am a Christian. I have put my faith and trust in the Lord Jesus.
I am His, but I don't understand what it all means. Why this
experience? Why am I going this way? Why has this come my way?
Why is my life such as it is? These many things are so full of
mystery and perplexity. What is it that I have got into? Is this
Christianity? Is this really what I have to expect and accept?
If so, I need understanding, and enlightenment, and I need help
as a Christian, for this thing is often beyond me altogether.'
Well, that is the setting - but is that true? If there is anyone
who has never been that way, who has never had a moment like
that, and whose path has been so nice and smooth, with
everything so right and well adjusted and without any kind of
trouble, I will excuse you if you like to read no further, for I
have nothing to say to you.
Well now, what is the point on which these words in 2
Corinthians 3:18 are focused? "We are transformed...", and it is
the present active tense: 'We are being transformed'; 'We are in
a process of transformation, passing from one form to another.'
There is a sense in which that fragment, that condensed verse
put into those few words, touches the heart of the whole New
Testament and explains everything.
Having said that, we come back to this second chapter of the
first Letter to the Corinthians. This Letter (as indeed are all
the Letters, but this is a very good example) is built around
two contrasted words, and they are in this second chapter. Those
two contrasted words describe two different types of humanity,
two different manhoods, and between the two, firmly and squarely
the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ is planted. Look at the
chapter again in the light of that last statement! "When I came
unto you... determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ, and
Him crucified", and everything after that rests upon that
distinction between these two types which the Cross divides and
says: 'That belongs to one category of human beings and this
belongs to another category of human beings.' There is a
cleavage cut by the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ between those
two which separates them and makes them two different species of
mankind. That truth follows right through this Letter. Read it
through with this in your mind. The Apostle here speaks about a
foundation and a building. He says: "Let each man take heed how
he buildeth thereon. For other foundation can no man lay than
that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ", and then he drives
the wedge of the Cross right into the superstructure and speaks
of one kind of work or works, which are the product of one type
of man, or Christian, and another kind of work, or works, which
are the product of another kind. The first will go up in flames
and will never be found in eternity. It has gone for ever. The
second will abide. It will abide the fire of judgment and the
test of time, and be found in the ultimate structure, or
building of God.
You see, Paul is applying this principle of the divide between
two kinds of Christian people, and to the two kinds of work, or
fruits, from each respectively, and the building, he says, as to
its eternal value, will be determined by who is producing it, by
what kind of man, or manhood, is producing it. Which of the two
is producing this building? Think about this! These are not
non-Christians. What an immense amount is being built upon
Christ that is going up in smoke! Every man's work will be tried
by fire, and its real value and its endurance will be determined
by and will depend upon where it comes from, that is, from which
of these two types of manhood.
Now you are wondering what the two words are which define the
two types of manhood. Read the chapter: "the natural man... he
that is spiritual." There are the two words: the natural and the
spiritual Christians.
They are not unconverted people, not non-Christians. Is it
necessary for me to put in all the detail to confirm and ratify
what I am saying? May I remind you that the Apostle Paul had
been in Corinth for two whole years with these people! I do not
know what you think, but if you had the Apostle Paul going in
and out for two whole years, you would have plenty of ground for
consideration! He was there amongst them for
two whole years, going in and out, teaching them probably every
day, and then he went away for five years. Then he heard things
which were reported to him by the household of Chloe. I wish
everyone would do what the Apostle did! He did not take the
report without investigating it. He got the report and then
immediately despatched a reliable messenger to investigate,
either to find that the thing was not true or to find that it
was so. The messenger sent and came back, saying: 'It is all
true, and worse than the report.' The deterioration in five
years!
You are perhaps startled and shocked by that, and will say: 'Can
it be?' Well, remember the messages to the seven churches in
Asia in the Revelation, and how all those churches began. There
were wonderful things in those churches at the beginning. Read
the story of the beginning of the church in Ephesus, and what a
story it is! Against such tremendous antagonism and hostility
those people came out clearly, and they brought all their magic
books, of which the price is given (and that represented a
tremendous amount in human values!), and piled them up in the
open street, or it may have been the market square, or some open
place, and set them all aflame. That is a thoroughgoing
division! But where is that church in the Revelation? "Thou
didst leave thy First love. Remember therefore from whence thou
art fallen, and repent" (Revelation 2:4-5). What can have
happened? Well, I put that in by way of emphasising this
possibility, at least, of declension. Why in Corinth, why in
Ephesus, and why in the others that decline? Come back to the
two men, the two men instead of one man, the two men instead of
each individual. It is not a dividing of a company into this
category and that category, but the two things in a person. You
know, we are all, if we are the Lord's, in some measure natural
and spiritual. Do you agree with that? The question is not
whether we are altogether perfect and there is no more of the
natural in us. That is not the point. The point is: Who is
dominating and governing? Which of the two, the natural or the
spiritual? Here in Corinth, as we see by the Letter, the natural
man was in control in the men and in the women and had taken
ascendancy over the spiritual man.
The two words, then, are 'natural' - and you do not need that I
should tell you that the Greek word is 'soulical' - and
'spiritual'; the man of soul and the man of spirit always in
conflict. Who is going to have the upper hand, the mastery, in
every one of us? The two are in each person.
Intellectualism
Now what is this natural
category, this natural species? Look at the Letter again. First
of all, the dominance, ascendancy, control of intellectualism,
the wisdom of this world. That is the thing that is being marked
and underscored as a part of the trouble in Corinth; the control
of intellectualism, the natural reason, the natural mind, the
idea that you are going to solve the problems of life along
intellectual lines. Will you tell me that that is not a peril of
Christianity today? Why, it is everywhere! It shouts at you from
the religious press. You may not read so much of it, but it is
my business to be familiar with what is happening in the
Christian theological world, and I tell you, friends, that as I
read certain theological magazines I find death. They are
wearisome to the spirit. All this terrific effort to solve the
problems of Christianity by the human intellect; the research,
argument, discussion and debate, theses, etc.; philosophical
Christianity trying to solve spiritual problems; what a
weariness it is! I have to put these papers down sometimes! I
cannot finish them, for they are so dead, so utterly lifeless.
And that sort of thing is everywhere. It is thought that if you
go to our seats and seminaries of learning with a clever brain,
able to put out a convincing argument, you are going to save
souls. There never was a greater fallacy!
This Letter to the Corinthians says that. Read this second
chapter again and you will find that Paul is saying that. Paul
was an educated man, so much so that for two thousand years the
best scholars have found him defeating them, and they have not
mastered him yet! Come to the religious bookshops and look at
the shelves on the exposition of the New Testament, and you will
find that Paul predominates. I got a book by one of our leading
professors of theology in the universities and it was called A Portrait of
Peter. This man, with all his learning, set out to give us
a portrait of Peter. I opened the book and found that the first
few pages were wholly occupied with Paul! He could not get to
Peter because Paul was in the way, and the issue of his attempt
was: 'Well, Peter was a great man, but Paul was very much
greater!' Yes, this man Paul was an educated man, an
intellectual man, a learned man. You cannot discredit Paul along
that line at all, for he will beat you every time in that realm
- but listen! 'You Corinthians, when I came to you I came not
with excellency of speech or of wisdom, but in fear and in much
trembling. I had determined that I would know nothing amongst
you intellectual Corinthians save Jesus Christ, and Him
crucified.' What was Paul's conclusion? 'It is no use, however
much I may have of the schools, whatever I may know, however I
might be able to argue with the Corinthians or the Athenians on
Mars Hill, I will get nowhere along that line with a spiritual
situation like this. I have made up my mind about that.' It is
part of the natural man to think that you are going to be able
to build up something by intellectual, scholastic, academic
acumen. The fact is that what intellect can build up, intellect
can pull down!
Powerism
Then look at this
prominent word: power. It is there in the chapter: wisdom...
power; and at Corinth there was a worshipping of natural power,
ability to conquer by natural strength. You can call it
'powerism', for it was an 'ism' there. Crush by your superior
strength, impose something forceful, mighty, upon people, and
you will win. Only be strong enough and you can solve all the
problems and change all the situations. 'Powerism' is the
natural man's idea of how it is going to be done.
Emotionalism
Then emotionalism has a
large place with these Corinthians. Going to capture, captivate
and master, and gain your end by force of emotion stirring up
people's feelings, playing upon them, working upon them until
they make an almost hysterical response. If you do that well and
thoroughly you will get some Christians! The Apostle says: 'Not
at all!' It is evident that these Corinthians were very
emotional people.
Foolishness
What does the Apostle put
over against these three aspects of the natural man? Over
against wisdom he puts 'foolishness'. In the first chapter he
speaks of "the foolishness of the preaching". You find that
'foolishness' was a great thing with the Apostle Paul! "We are
fools for Christ's sake" (1 Corinthians 4:10). What did he mean?
Well, he did not mean: 'Be simpletons!', which is what we
immediately take to be the meaning of being foolish. What Paul
meant by foolishness was the denial that intellectualism could
find out God. 'The princes of this world, and the wisdom of this
world did not find out God', said Paul, 'and they could not find
Him out. They could not find out anything to do with God.' "The
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for
they are foolishness unto him: and he cannot know them."
Foolishness is the denial that all the wisdom and all the
philosophy of the Greeks there in Corinth, where they boasted of
this thing so much, could get through the barrier to find God;
and that all this power of mind and will projected and asserted
in any way whatever will come up against the barrier and not get
through, will not find God, nor the things of God. It is all
written off as foolishness when the quest for God is pursued
along that line. How foolish it is! And Paul gives a wonderful,
almost startling, example of this: "God's wisdom... which none
of the rulers of this world knoweth: for had they known it, they
would not have crucified the Lord of glory." There is not much
sense in that wisdom, is there? Not much logic or philosophy in
that!
So Paul puts what he calls 'foolishness' over against their
wisdom, meaning a positive denial registered by the Cross of the
Lord Jesus that mere intellectualism can find God and the things
of God. It cannot, for the natural man cannot!
Weakness
Over against the powerism
of this mentality of the natural man, the Apostle almost glories
in using the word 'weakness'. He says even that Christ was
crucified through weakness, and he is always speaking about, and
glorying in, his own weakness. What does he mean? The denial
that this kind of human force, assertiveness, can achieve
anything in the spiritual world. What a building we are tearing
down!
You know, that has been the test of man right from the
beginning. Was it not the test of Abraham to let go even of what
God had given him in Isaac? The test of this man's real
spirituality was the ability to let go. Was it true of Jacob?
Was he not a man of tenacity, of determination, a man who would
get what he wanted at any price, at the cost of anyone else's
convenience and wellbeing? Was that not the issue of Peniel, or
Jabbok? "I will not let thee go!" That is Jacob! He had been
like that all his life, holding on tenaciously to what he
wanted, what he had or what he wanted to have. But the finger of
God touched the hollow of his thigh, and after that you can see
that he is a cringing man! See how he meets his brother Esau!
You are not, whether you are Abraham or Jacob or any of the
others whom we might mention, going to get through with God
fully and finally by your own natural determination and
tenacity. One of the great lessons of the Christian life is to
learn how to let go to God. Oh, all the exhortation to be strong
in the Lord, to endure, to acquit you like men and be strong,
does not mean with this natural strength. It is another kind of
strength, and a very different kind, a strength which is only
seen by our ability to let other people sometimes have their
way, to get what they are after and set us at nought. They hold,
grip, maintain things in their hands to our disadvantage, and
our real strength is in our weakness. The Apostle Paul put this
into words. Read the second chapter of the Letter to the
Philippians: "Christ Jesus, who, being in the form or God,
counted it not a prize to be on equality with God, but emptied
himself, taking the form of a bondservant... becoming obedient,
even unto death, yea, the death of the cross." Well, has it
proved to be the right thing? 'We are being changed...' Do you
see the point now?
Balance
So, over against
intellectualism - foolishness; over against powerism - weakness;
over against emotionalism - what? The denial that the quest, the
craving, the pursuit of sensationalism will get you there. For I
believe that was the heart of these Corinthians' lust, their
excessive desire, their outreach of soul for spiritual gifts. It
is impressive that it is to the Corinthians, far more than to
any other church in the New Testament, that so much is said
about spiritual gifts. These demonstrations, this display, these
things that you can see and glory in because you can see them,
are all out of sensationalism. I am quite sure, from what we
read, that if you had gone into those gatherings in Corinth you
would have seen some hysterical behaviour as they made these
spiritual gifts, as they thought, the ground and
nature of their spirituality - and they are the most unspiritual
church of all. So over against unbalance, lopsidedness in the
Christian Church, there is need of balance.
Do you notice one characteristic of these Christians, one defect
which is written so clearly and so largely here in the Letter?
There is a lack of the power of spiritual discernment, the
spiritual perception, the spiritual intuition which warns us:
'Go steady! Don't be carried away! Don't be thrown off your
balance! This thing may be all right in its right place and
under proper control, but be careful! There is a snare in every
spiritual gift, and if you make the gift the main thing and not
the spiritual meaning of the gift, that thing, which in itself
may be quite right, will lead you into trouble.' I am covering a
lot of history when I say that. Perhaps some of the biggest
problems with which some of us have had to deal in people have
been the result of this unbalanced quest for the manifestation
of the sensational aspects of Christianity.
Well, perhaps some of you are not able to understand all this,
but this is the situation here in Corinth, and I am only saying
this to show that there are these two orders, these two
categories of what I have called species of humanity which have
their residence within one shell of the human body: soul and
spirit. They are there, and the Apostle writes to these same
people - for the second Letter is only a continuation of the
first - 'We are being changed from one form to another.' What is
going on? What is the process of the Spirit of God in the
believer? What is the meaning of all this that the Lord allows
to come our way, this discipline, these adversities, these
trials, these sufferings, these difficulties, these 'strange
things' (to use Peter's words, for they are strange to us as
coming from God, or being allowed by God)? What is the meaning
of it all? To bring about the change, the transformation from
one species to another, from one kind of humanity to another.
There is something in each trial, in each adversity in the
suffering, which, under the sovereignty of God, is intended by
Him to make a difference in us. 'We are being transformed.'
It is certainly not wrong to have a soul! It is that which has to be saved.
In the course of that salvation, the great lesson is how to keep
the soul under the control of the spirit. This is what is meant
by being 'spiritual'. This is truly "He that is spiritual".