"Now I Paul myself beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, who in presence am base among you, but being absent am bold toward you" 2 Cor. 10:1.
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." Gal. 5:22-23.
"With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love" Eph. 4:2.
"Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls ... Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth ... Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass." Matt. 11:29, 5:5,
21:5.
That which we have been considering,
and with which we are to be occupied for a little while
longer is this House of God, which is perfectly
represented by the Lord Jesus while here on the earth.
The house of God is governed by certain laws, and if we
are coming into that relationship with Christ which the
Word speaks of, resulting in our being builded together
for a habitation of God through the Spirit, and being a
temple of God, living stones built up a spiritual house,
then we also have got to be governed by the same laws as
governed the life of the Lord Jesus, the same principles
have got to hold good in our case if God is going to find
in us His dwelling place. These laws are the opposite of
those features of ruin, of which we have already spoken.
If pride was the root of the ruin, then humility will be
basic to recovery and to the house of God, and if pride
is seen in independence, then humility will be seen in
dependence.
Let us stay with that for a moment.
We have seen that in the case of the Lord Jesus He chose
of His own free will to live here on this earth a life of
dependence upon the Father, making it perfectly clear
that the Son can do nothing out from Himself, but He does
whatsoever He sees the Father doing. He does not speak or
work out from Himself, but His life is a life of
voluntary dependence upon the Father all the way through.
That was a mark of His true humility, and that made it
possible for the Father to dwell in Him in this
particular sense, that He was setting forth for man what
a dwelling place of God really is. It is that in which
there is no pride expressing itself in independence, but
perfect humility on the basis of dependence.
It seems to be clear enough in the
case of the Lord Jesus to make it unnecessary for us to
dwell upon Him in that connection, but if we advance to
see the truth, the revelation of the House of God, the
church, brought in especially through the apostle Paul,
we are able to see how closely and strictly God kept to
this principle. I wonder if it has ever struck you what a
difference there was between the apostle Paul and the
apostle John in relation to their particular and peculiar
ministries. Paul as a man is very much in view. Of
course, there is a sense in which it is quite wrong for a
man to be in view, for the man to be obtruding himself
upon the consciousness of others, but in the case of Paul
the wrong element is strangely absent. The man is kept
very much in view, and yet you never feel anything in the
nature of assertiveness, the bringing of himself as
himself to bear upon you; you never feel irritated by his
presence, and yet he is very much in view. He speaks
about himself. No apostle uses the personal pronoun more
than Paul, or as much, and he seems to keep himself in
view. Go through his life and see how much autobiography
there is. Not only so, but the Holy Spirit seems to keep
Paul in view.
That is because of two things, as I
understand it. One is the church, as God’s object,
is brought into view particularly through Paul, and the
other is the need of the cross to be seen working, over
against the man, to show the nature and elements of the
church. The church as God’s object is brought into
view particularly through Paul. Now it is necessary for
the Lord to get an object lesson of what the church is to
really administer in a life where the elements and the
nature of the church are. It is not enough for a man to
develop a teaching about something; it is not enough for
Paul to be given a revelation of the church and then to
talk about his revelation. Paul must be taken hold of in
relation to his revelation, and made an object lesson of
that revelation and he must, therefore, be made an object
lesson concerning the church. The Holy Spirit brings the
man, who is the message, right up in front of you and
keeps him there, and then begins to deal with that man to
show you what the church is and what the church is in
that man. So that what you find in Paul is the outworking
of the principles of the church.
Take the point of humility. Look at
Paul according to nature, look at Saul of Tarsus. You
have anything but a man marked by humility, you have a
man vindicating himself, assertive, aggressive,
domineering, forceful, coming out into the light,
displaying himself before the world. All that is in Paul
by nature, and the Holy Spirit keeps him in view and
allows him, perhaps causes him, to keep himself in a
certain sense in view. Then what do you see? It is as
though the Lord were taking up the cross and hammering
Paul, hammering at all that pride, breaking it and
bringing out in this man’s life a beautiful
humility. Saul of Tarsus is not dependent, he is not
suppliant. He is a man of independence, very great
independence of judgement, of purpose, of manner, of
spirit, of mind, of will, of way. All that is in Paul by
nature. From time to time you get a little touch of it
even when he is Paul the apostle, but you notice one
thing. Here is a man who naturally is so independent, so
proudly independent, who has been smitten, and smitten,
and smitten by the Lord, and he is steadily moving to a
place of utter dependence, until you meet Paul in the
place where he confesses his utter dependence upon the
Lord for his own physical life, for all that he knows.
How the wisest men have erred in putting it down to the
marvellous intellect of Paul! Paul would say, “I
received it not of men.” This did not come through
the flesh. This is not the result of learning, but
received by revelation of Jesus Christ. “...It
pleased God... to reveal his Son in me...” Paul will
attribute everything to the Lord, and will say that he is
utterly dependent upon the Lord for all strength, and all
energy, and all life, and all knowledge, all wisdom, all
understanding, everything. That keeps a man very humble.
The Lord keeps that man at short accounts with Himself.
The man does not know what he is going to do, he does not
know in himself, he has to get direction from the Lord
for each step. He keeps himself so free unto the Lord,
that the Lord is able to change the course of things at a
moment. He is dependent upon the Lord for his guidance
every day. If you met him any day and asked him where he
is going he would say, I do not know, I am waiting for
the Lord. The Lord can indwell and can establish a man
like that.
In the man through whom the first
full revelation of the church came there had to be
wrought the principle of the church. The church is a
thing for the dispensation, and the Lord must point to
that man and say, This is the church, this is what God’s
dwelling place is, something without any pride in it, and
the absence of pride is marked by an utter dependence
upon the Lord. What is one of the great features of
dependence upon the Lord? It is prayerfulness. A
prayerless life is a life which has not recognised its
dependence upon the Lord. A life of prayer is a life
which has come to see that it cannot go on far without
the Lord. That is why I believe the Lord has ordained
prayer as His way of working and meeting the need. He has
said, in effect, You have to live by Me. If you can go on
without Me all right, go on; but for My purpose you have
to live by Me. Prayer is our way of showing that we are
dependent upon the Lord, and it is the way by which,
therefore, the Lord comes in and manifests Himself.
If you look again at Paul’s
revelation of the church, the Body of Christ, you will
see how he lays down the principle of dependence,
interdependence, mutual dependence, and how he strikes
strong blows against anything in the nature of
independence, separateness. The Body is one, and no
member in the Body can say to another, I have no need of
you. Every member must say, I am dependent upon you. The
hand cannot take the place of the foot. The whole body is
constituted to demonstrate the law of dependence. That is
humility. The opposite of that is striking out on your
own, being a freelance and snapping your fingers at
anybody and everybody else, and doing without them. That
is pride, and it is deception.
Pride is shown in possession or
possessiveness; that is, taking hold of things to govern
them ourselves, to be in possession of them. It is the
work in Adam, and it is in all of us. It is shown in the
desire to have in our own possession, to have in our own
power, to have under our own hand, under our own
influence, and it is a terrible thing. It is in us all by
nature more or less, and the ruin of the church has come
along this line of men wanting to take charge, men
wanting to possess, men wanting to bring their influence
to bear upon things, so that the thing comes into their
hold. It is the ruin of the church. It was the ruin of
the race. It was the ruin of Satan.
There is nothing like that about the
Lord Jesus. His was a letting go to the Lord, a letting
go to the Father all the time. Listen to some of the
sublime things that He said: “All that the Father
giveth me shall come to me...”. There is no fret
about that, no strain, no hurried, feverish, excitable
rushing about to get people, to get members, to build up
something, to get people to join, to make a success of
things: “All that the Father giveth me shall come...”.
It was a letting go to the Father. It is faith. That is
not mere passivity, but faith in the Father. It is our
inborn desire to have a sphere of power, of influence, of
domination, of government, that causes us to try to get
something, to get hold of something, to possess
something, to see something, to have something, to see
the work grow, to see a success. We are really out all
the time in some way or other to bring people to our end,
under our influence, to dominate them. There was nothing
of that about the Lord Jesus.
It is a mark of the house of God
that there is no strain to possess for the sake of
possession, to have power, to have mastery, to hold
something. That is mine! Do not touch this—it is
mine! The Lord Jesus had nothing in Himself, and wanted
nothing for Himself, but He had everything in the Father.
His attitude was, Father, if You want Me to have that You
will give it to me. I am not going to strive, and worry,
and manipulate, and work, and plan, and scheme, and be
all the time anxious to have it. If You want Me to have
that I trust You to give it to Me, and what You do not
want Me to have I do not want! That is the attitude of
Christ, and that is how the church was built, how the
Lord builds His church. We must be very careful that this
natural possessiveness does not come up in the things of
the Lord. It works up unconsciously, even in our desire
for spiritual blessing. It is to possess something in
order that, having it, we may have greater influence, we
may be something more, that we may become a dominating
factor, that we may be recognised. Even a desire for
holiness may have a subtle snare in it, that if we are
holy it will be noted that we are holy, said that we are
holy.
We cannot track this thing down, and
we do not always want to be tracking this thing down and
being introspective in this way, but we can take it that
a hallmark of humility is self-emptying.
Take Paul. He was dependent, and
self-emptied. There is a wonderful glory about emptiness
when the Lord does it. It is not always a glorious
feeling to feel empty, but it is marvellous how the Lord
gets glory through emptying us, and keeping us emptied,
until He wants us full. One of the things that the
apostle said to the Corinthians in a kind of irony was:
“Ye are full... ye have reigned as kings without us.”
That was no compliment. They are not to be admired for
that. It was pride. “We are accounted as the
offscouring of all things.” “Ye are full... ye
have reigned as kings without us.” Yes, but after
all what was it the Lord said to the church at Laodicea?
“Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with
goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that
thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind,
and naked.”
There is an emptiness which brings
much glory to God, and humility is being poor in spirit.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven.” God dwells with such as are of a
broken and contrite spirit. God-centredness is the
opposite of self-centredness, that all our wellsprings,
all our resources, our everything is in the Lord, and all
our interests are in the Lord. As for self-exaltation,
the Lord made Himself of no reputation, He humbled
Himself.
To return to the apostle Paul again.
How he abased himself, got right down even before those
who owed everything to him and yet were treating him so
scurrilously. He had gone right down before them, humbled
himself, abased himself, and went through, and won them
by that means.
You see what the House of God is,
this temple of God. If Paul brings in the great
revelation of the temple, the church, the House of God,
then he must be made an object lesson of its principles,
and the first great principle of Christ wrought in Paul,
and therefore to be reproduced in the House of God, is
humility in all its aspects, dependence, emptiness,
God-centredness.
What are the results? If pride, with
these various aspects, led to death, then humility after
this kind, that which Paul calls “the meekness of
Christ”, leads to life. Life by humility, life by
meekness, death by pride. “God beholdeth the proud
afar off”, “Pride is an abomination unto the
Lord”. If pride puts us away back there, there is
not much hope of life. When pride is out of the way God
draws near, and there is life. We have more to say about
life later.
If, again, the result of pride in
ruin was darkness, then humility, meekness, is the way of
light. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for
I am meek and lowly in heart.” You will learn by
that spirit. It is enlightening. We said that the great
law which governed everything was that of heart
fellowship with the Lord, and we saw that that heart
fellowship was broken by pride in the heart, the heart
lifted up in pride. Now, says the apostle, “the eyes
of your heart being enlightened”. This is heart
fellowship with the Lord, bringing about enlightenment,
leading to enlightenment, or making possible
enlightenment.
Now a closing word of special
emphasis upon the greater significance of pride and
humility. It might be thought that we were just talking
about the common virtues of the Christian life, and the
common evils of human nature, but they are far bigger
than that. We must remember that we are dealing here with
Christ and Antichrist. We are getting back before man was
created and seeing in the eternal counsels of God Christ
as God’s chosen, God elect, Who was to bring God
into dwelling in man. God was coming to dwell in man
through His Son as in His Son. The whole thought and
intention of the incarnation is: “God with us”,
“God manifest in the flesh”, and dwelling in
man. That is bound up with Christ, and that was in the
eternal counsels of God. If God were going to dwell in
man, and at some dateless point pride was found in the
heart of Lucifer, and he reached out to occupy the place
which God had appointed for Christ, that he should dwell
in man as God, you have two lines at once starting off:
the line of God indwelling man; and the whole course of
demon possession, Satan seeking to gain entrance into
human life and make it his tabernacle, his dwelling.
Those are two courses of history. We are familiar with
them. We know they are true. If you do not believe in
demon possession, there are some places we could send you
to where you would have your unbelief very quickly
dispensed, but there is the history. We are not going to
dwell upon it, but it is a fact. It is Christ and
Antichrist.
What is Antichrist? In the full
development of Antichrist it is Satan incarnate as God
dwelling in man, being worshipped (mark you) as God in
man. What is it that moves toward that? It is this evil
thing of which we have been speaking: pride. What is
pride? Pride is the elevation of man. So that Antichrist
is the elevation of man to the place of God. All these
things that we have said about pride, independence,
relate to that. Independence is man assuming personal
rights, prerogatives, acknowledging no greater authority
than himself, bowing to no one, a law unto himself,
drawing things to himself in possessiveness, having them
under his control, in his own hand, all things centred in
himself and working toward self-exaltation. Pride in its
simplest forms has all those elements, and it has only to
grow. That is the soul of man by nature. That soul has
only to exert itself or assert itself and you get a
development of Antichrist, or the spirit of Antichrist.
I wonder if you know of any
outstanding example, (though it is true in a smaller
measure of all of us), where a man asserts his soul force
tremendously to possess, to influence, to dominate, to
have his way, to get his thoughts realised and accepted,
his ideas adopted. It is not long before you find extra
elements associating themselves with that man, something
that is more than the man himself, egging him on, getting
behind him and energising him until, while that man in
himself to begin with was really not much, amongst men he
would not have been regarded as a great man in himself,
he has become a world figure and mysterious forces are at
work, so that his words become slogans; people take them
up and utter them. What are those forces? They are the
satanic forces of Antichrist, and in measure there is a
worshipping of him. The world will divide itself over
several such men, and then the lesser will fall away
until in all probability there will only be two; then
there will come a clash, and the domination of one,
Antichrist.
Where does it originate? In the soul
force of man projecting itself, which gives Satan just
what he wants to ally psychic forces, to bring him up to
Antichrist. Antichrist is the full development, with
Satan indwelling, the devil incarnate, apparently in
dominion. Then Christ comes, and the clash between the
two. What is it that marks the Christ? Is it this
assertiveness, this personal drive? No. Christ is the
Lamb, as it had been newly slain, and it is the Lamb Who
shall overcome. What is a lamb? A lamb is dependent, in
itself nothing.
The Lord will deal with us in this
way. If the Lord is going to constitute us His temple, if
we are really going to be a dwelling place of God; that
is, not to be brought to ruin, but to be established, to
become a part of that tabernacle of God coming down from
God out of heaven, God dwelling with man, what will the
Lord do with us? He will destroy our independence, empty
us of our self-sufficiency, bring us to the place where
we have nothing in ourselves and our all in Himself. That
is where His Son was and that is why Christ triumphed.
God allied Himself with that One, and whereas man thought
that they were dealing with a poor, weak human, they came
up against Almighty God. That was the issue.
That is what the enemy has to reckon
with. It may look like a poor fragment, a poor remnant of
humanity, weak, persecuted, helpless, but he will find
God there. That is why we said there is something mighty
about humility, dependence, emptiness, when its
everything is in the Lord. It is then that the forces of
evil have God to reckon with, not with us. How shall we
overcome? By standing by and fighting? We said just now
that what is true of these outstanding examples is true
in a smaller measure of us all. I wonder how many of you
have fought to have your own way, believing that it was
the Lord’s way. You may have thought that a certain
course would be the Lord’s way, and you fought with
all the heat of your being, with all the tenacity of your
strength of will, and some heat of flesh. I ask you, do
you wish you had never fought? Do you today wish that you
had never entered into that fight like that? You can
answer your own heart. I know that to this day I have
regretted that ever I asserted my will, to have things as
I thought they ought to be. What happened? I did not win.
I may have got what I was after, but I lost; and it may
be that I got something that I would rather be without
today. It may be place, or some particular position, and
we thought it would be all good, all to the glory of God,
and so we set ourselves to have it. It would have been
better to let go everything to the Lord, and have taken
this position, Now Lord, if You want me to have that, or
be in that, I stand in absolute faith in You that You are
able to do it, and I need not worry or fear. The Lord is
quite capable of seeing to it.
You see what the tabernacle of God
is. It is God’s dwelling place. It is where the Lord
is everything, and in order for the Lord to be everything
we must be nothing. Humility, meekness must be a big mark
of such a House of God.
There are other things, but that is
where we begin. May the Lord teach us His own lesson of
humility.