Reading: Hebrews 12:9; 2:6,10; 3:1; 4:12; 5:8,12-14.
There are some words in these passages which we must note
— teachers, senses, experience, full growth, learn. All
those words relate to relationship in the sense of sonship, and
training in sonship. The government of the inhabited earth to
come is to be with the sons in the Son, so that spiritual sonship
is essential to God’s purpose in coming ages, which is not
just relatedness to the Lord but with all that sonship means as
so much more than childhood.
1) Israel in the Wilderness — A
Warning
Having got our setting we note, in the first place, that this
going on of which the apostle speaks, and to which he urges, is
linked in the letter to the Hebrews with Israel in the
wilderness. They are taken as the tragic example of people who
did not go on. Seeing that the apostle links this particular
verse concerning full growth as the end of going on, full growth
evidently corresponds with the land which they missed, unto which
they did not go on. The wilderness, therefore, corresponds to
immaturity, babes; the wilderness is therefore the place of the
training of children in the matter of sonship.
I am impressed with the fact that it is in connection with
Israel in the wilderness that that remarkable word in verse 12 of
chapter 4 occurs: “The word of God is quick and powerful...
piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.”
You notice the context. Israel in the wilderness and what leads
up to it: “...they shall not enter into my rest”;
“Today if ye will hear My voice...”; “If Joshua
had given them rest...”; and so on. All that follows that
word in verse 12. In the wilderness God was dealing with the
inner man in type; “the Father of our spirits”, not of
our souls — of our souls in a secondary sense, but primarily
of our spirits; and it is in our spirits that the Spirit of
God’s Son resides. God is not soul, and therefore
relationship cannot be with our souls in the first instance.
Relationship is spirit with spirit: “...that which is born
of the spirit is spirit”.
God seeks such to worship Him, such as worship Him in spirit
because He is a Spirit. God is Spirit; therefore we must worship
in spirit, not in the soul first of all. Here training is related
to the spirit, and if you ask for the spiritual interpretation
and explanation of Israel’s failure to go into the land, on
to full growth, and perishing in the wilderness, it is because
they lived in their souls and not in their spirits: that is, they
lived on their feelings, they lived according to their outward
reasoning, they lived on the basis of what they wanted. The inner
life was not linked with God in oneness, therefore living in
their souls they did not come to God’s appointed end, the
Kingdom, the fulness of Christ, the land, which is the type of
God’s eternal purpose, the covenant with His people.
If we live on the level and basis of mere soul-life instead of
living in the spirit joined with God, the Holy Spirit, we shall
not make spiritual progress, we shall simply go round and round
in the wilderness, we shall never get through to God’s end,
we shall never attain unto sonship, and therefore we never shall
have dominion over the inhabited earth to come whereof we are
speaking.
I think that is a very true summary of the situation, so that
what God is after is not just to have a people out of Egypt or
out from the world, called His people; not just on the basis of
atoning blood, related to Himself as His children, not delivered,
even, from the kingdom of darkness. That is not enough for God,
for Israel came out on that basis, and in that relationship, and
much more, representing all that salvation in its initial stages
means, but yet they missed the object. God is not satisfied just
to have a people saved from the world and from sin, called His
people. He is the Father of their spirits to train them in
sonship for a Kingdom, a dominion which is the realisation of His
full thought from eternity.
2) The Need that the Foundation be Laid
The second thing, the thing which follows, is that full growth
or sonship requires that the foundation shall be fully and
finally laid. That is the word in the section from what is
chapter 5 verse 11 through into chapter 6. You can never get
through to sonship unless your foundation is established. All
that is being said here about needing to be taught when the time
was more than past for their being teachers relates to this
matter of foundations. The foundations had been presented; they
had been taught the foundations, but they were still occupied
with foundations in the sense that it was not an accomplished
fact; they were not settled, and therefore they could not go on.
So the urge comes: “Let us cease to speak of first
principles of Christ, and press on to full growth.” For full
growth, or for sonship, the foundation has to be finally laid.
Then the apostle presents the foundations and calls them first
principles of Christ.
First Principles of Christ
Let that govern. A lot of commentators have said that these
six things following are Jewish ordinances, but this says
“first principles of Christ”, and they are:
a) Repentance from dead works
In the case of these Hebrew believers it was repentance from
Judaism as a dead system, dead works. As we have already said,
the very significance of the divine preservation of this letter
after it had fulfilled its immediate purpose to Israel means that
it is a message for the church, for if the dates fixed for its
writing are correct then it was only two years after the writing
of this letter that its purpose was fulfilled. It was written in
view of the imminent destruction of Jerusalem and the passing of
the temple and the Jewish system, in order to get Jewish
believers attached to heavenly things and detached from earthly
things. That shaking came about very shortly after the letter was
written. But it has persisted for all these centuries and
generations, and is full of life now, which means that the Lord
intends this letter to apply to the church as well as to Judaism,
and to say that Christendom can become a dead system, that
Christianity can decline into spiritual death, and that there is
a call, therefore, to believers to repent from dead works; that
is, not just repent of their sins as unbelievers but change their
attitude, repudiate dead religion.
Of course, it embraces everything else that you can call by
that name. There are the dead works of the sinner who labours for
the bread that perishes, labouring for this world’s good,
and glory, and pleasure: dead works. But it reaches right on to
the Christian, who is simply labouring in dead traditional
Christianity, and the call is to repent.
b) Faith towards God
I think we need not stay with each of these clauses. One or
two may call for a little further comment.
c) The teaching of baptisms
You notice it is in the plural, and the word to be stressed is
the word “teaching”. What the apostle is saying here,
as I understand it, is this, that you have got to understand the
meaning of the different baptisms: that is, the baptism of John,
and the baptism of Christ. And if you want that explained just
insert at that point the paragraph in Acts 19:1-7. These people
were baptised twice, and on the basis of having the two baptisms
explained to them. They were taught the difference. Now I am not
saying that you have to be baptised twice, but I am just saying
that this is what this passage means as I understand it.
Perhaps some of these people were saying, Oh, we were baptised
with John’s baptism; that is quite good enough! And then
they had been told that it is not good enough; that that is one
thing, but baptism into Christ is baptism into His death, into
His burial, into His resurrection. It is identification with
Christ, not John. There are the two different baptisms. They were
still evidently going round this question, circling round in this
wilderness, and getting nowhere. Now, says the apostle, you have
got to get that first principle of Christ established and settled
once and for all.
I do not suppose the difference between John’s baptism
and Christ’s troubles you very much, but you may be held up
on the baptism question all the same, and the Lord would say you
have got to get that settled before you can know freedom. You may
think you are going on but you are not; you may go on for fifty
years and at the end of that time have to come back and settle
that question. The Lord has never given up. The Lord has never
left that point, and, sometimes with humiliation, there has to be
an acknowledgment on the part of those who have gone on many
years, that they left undone the first things, and from the
Lord’s standpoint sonship does not come in. The result is
that we have many people like these Hebrews who after years and
years have been called by the Lord’s Name, and ought to be
teachers, are still babes to be fed, still unable to take
spiritual responsibility, still getting everything from the
outside instead of from the inside. Why is it? The foundations
were never settled; they have never really gone on. Sonship
demands that each first principle of Christ should be a settled
matter in the life.
d) Laying on of hands
One word in this connection I think is necessary. If you look
at this matter in the New Testament you have, I think, got to
come to one of two conclusions. Either something was delegated by
the Lord to certain men at a certain time, that by the laying on
of their hands something was imparted and something happened, but
it remained with them and belongs to the first times, it has
nothing to do with now; you have got to take that view, and your
difficulty will arise when you discover that it was not always
apostles that did it; sometimes it was someone such as Ananias
who laid his hands on Paul so that he received his sight and was
filled with the Spirit, so that you cannot say it was apostolic.
Or you have to take another view, that this was a representative
thing which embodied a principle, the principle being that of the
oneness of the Lord’s people in and under one anointing of
the Holy Spirit. And that, therefore, the act of laying on of
hands was not an official thing but it was simply a
representative act, setting forth a principle that these who have
received the Lord and have been baptised into Christ are members
of one Body, and that it is the Holy Spirit who forms that Body
and who constitutes its oneness, and therefore when the principle
is set forth in a merely representative act the Holy Spirit bore
witness to the truth that Christ is one with and in all His
members: the Body is one.
The book of the Acts is a book of foundation principles. It is
not necessary that throughout the whole dispensation there should
be the same divine, heavenly manifestation or attestation. Even
in the book of the Acts it was not always so. Not on every
occasion do we read that, being filled with the Spirit, they
spoke with tongues, but here the Holy Spirit in laying the
foundation of the dispensation gives clear evidence that this is
the truth, and we are called upon to accept the truth in faith,
not merely to demand the evidence. So that laying on of hands, on
the one side, represents simply an act by which a testimony is
borne to the fact that the Body of Christ is one, all in Christ
are members of Christ and of one another, and that under one
anointing which is upon the Head for all members, and the Holy
Spirit confirms that. So that everything becomes related to Him,
and related in His Body. Life is a related thing; service is a
related thing: for they laid hands on in connection with service,
ministry. No one has a detached ministry, but it is the ministry
of the whole Body, and there may be a value in taking account of
that, that this is not my ministry, this is the ministry
of the whole Body of Christ; that is, the Body is expressing
itself and its purpose through the ministry that I am fulfilling.
It is a related thing, and there are spiritual values in that for
the Holy Spirit encamps upon that ground.
We are not going fully into the meaning of the one Body,
neither are we going into the full range of the meaning of the
laying on of hands, but here are the alternatives. I do not see
another course in this matter. I only see the apostolic one, that
this was a matter which apostles were delegated to carry out and
they had special powers from the Lord and the thing was bound up
with them and ended with them. But there were difficulties, one
that it was not always apostles who were delegated, and many
others. I do not believe the Lord was ever official in any of His
appointments but always spiritual, and what is spiritual is
timeless. We must get behind this system of officialdom in
Christian organisation to the realm where things are spiritual.
If you can find me a third alternative I shall be very glad to
have the opportunity of at least looking at it, opening my heart
to the possibility of it being true, but I have not found it, and
so I have come to rest on the second of these two, and I find
that it works. This laying on of hands is a testimony to oneness,
identification, not only with Christ but also in Christ. The
meaning of the act is that we are one in Christ, under one
Spirit, one anointing which embraces the Head and all the
members.
This is something to be settled, and, like all the other
things, is related to sonship. And is it not borne out by the
whole truth of sonship, that sonship is a Body matter? It is sons
in the Son on the representative side of the Lord’s person,
not as Godhead, as God’s Son in that initial deity sense,
but on the side of His representative person, the Firstborn among
many brethren. Sonship is an inclusive and embracing term,
bringing in sons, so that ultimately what will obtain is a great
corporate son under the sovereign headship of the Lord Jesus to
govern in the ages to come. “Wherefore, holy brethren,
partners in a heavenly calling...”. This oneness in the
Body, this oneness of the Spirit, is vitally linked with the
whole question of sonship and the purpose of it.
e) The resurrection from the dead
We will not stay with that.
f) Eternal judgement
You have no need that I comment upon this. The two we have
stayed to deal with more fully are the least generally understood
and accepted.
The point is this, that these things, being foundations, are
in the direct line of God’s end, and they are foundational
to training in sonship, and until we have got clear here and got
settled here we cannot go on, and so the urge is, “Let us
cease to speak of first principles of Christ...”; we ought
to have settled this thing.
We shall go on talking about these matters to those who need
that, but for us at this stage we cease to speak about these
things, and press on unto full growth, for these matters are
related to a living spiritual state, and until they are settled
the apostle here says that a state of infancy and lack of
capacity remains.
Now, following on from that into sonship, “Solid food is
for full grown men, those who by reason of use have their senses
exercised to discern good and evil.”
I am very strongly tempted to put in here something which I am
afraid quite a lot might not understand, and I do not want to
confuse any, but it might be helpful to some, and if you cannot
grasp it do not worry about it. That phrase, “good and
evil”, takes us a long way back to Genesis 2:17 and 3:5 and
7.
Firstly let us note that these are not two categories, things
which are good and things which are evil. That is not what is
meant here. If we come back to this passage in Genesis, “the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, in its outcome it
came to mean the evil of a right thing. What was right became
evil because of the governing motive. It was good, but it became
evil because of the way in which it was taken hold of. In the
first place it was the soul taking ascendency over the spirit,
the soul listening to the reasoning of Satan, the soul yielding
to the persuasion of the enemy and the soul acting upon the basis
of the reason and the emotion. That is the soul. So that they
went out in their soul. If they had remained in the spirit and
acted according to the spirit they would never have done what
they did, and yet the very thing would have taken place in
perfect purity: there would have been no evil in it. It was the
reversing of God’s order. It was soul, and body, and spirit,
instead of spirit, soul and body. The nature of man was upset; he
disturbed the balance of his constitution, so that good and evil
was not that there was a set of evil things and a set of good
things; it was the evil of a good thing, a good thing made evil
because of the motive. “The word of God...
piercing...”. And what does it do? Well, look again at
exactly what it does, “...quick to discern the thoughts and
intents of the heart...” (Hebrews 4:12). It was just those
intents of the heart that brought Israel to death in the
wilderness, the soul. It was not wrong to be in the wilderness,
it was not wrong to be babes, it was not wrong just at that time
not to be in the land, but it was wrong so to live in the
soul-life and not in the spirit as to be kept where they should
not have remained.
Now the soul triumphed over the spirit, and there came about
the knowledge of good and evil. With what result? Death! The
knowledge of good and evil led to death. God never meant that. Do
you think that God planted that tree (taking the figure, the
type, the symbol) of good and evil in order to work death? Did He
plant it in order to hold death over man’s head? Death is
not an institution of God. Now if we may speak in spiritual terms
more directly than in symbol, if man had been obedient to the
Lord in spirit, man would have become possessed of a living
knowledge, a knowledge of God which would have led to life, for
it is in the spirit that we come to spiritual knowledge. That is
the point we are coming to here.
Spiritual knowledge in the spirit by obedience through faith
is sonship, but moving in the realm of our soul we come back into
1 Corinthians 2: “Now the soulical man receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him;
and he cannot know them, because they are discerned by the
spiritual.” This knowledge of good and evil was death; death
coming by good things becoming evil, because of the intent of the
heart, the motive, the soul element taking pre-eminence,
governing the life. And so as the soul triumphed over the spirit,
death came. It was a kind of knowledge, but a knowledge that men
would fain be without today, a knowledge that is a curse, a
knowledge that is death. The Lord would have us be people of
knowledge, and He would have us know good and evil in another
sense, but He would have us know good and evil in the spirit and
discern, discriminate between and keep clear of that which we in
spirit discern to be the evil of the good thing.
Now that phrase, “the evil of a good thing” can
embrace such a lot. It is not just the one thing in Genesis: it
can embrace a lot. We believers are up against this very question
all the time. Yes, it is a God-appointed thing, it is instituted
by God, it is a good thing. Yes, that is all right if you keep it
in its right realm. If you in your soul begin to take hold of it
then it will become evil. Man in his own soul-life has taken hold
of God’s things, God’s truth, God’s work. Man
comes along and takes hold of all sorts of things that God has
appointed and instituted, and the thing which is of God becomes
evil.
See the work of God. See man sporting himself in the work of
God, man getting into view, getting a name for himself in the
work of God, man managing, governing, lording it over God’s
heritage. That is a good thing made evil, and as you expand that
principle it covers such a lot of ground. Now the apostle is
saying that sonship means discriminating between good and evil in
that sense. Yes, that is of God, let it remain of God, and do not
put your hand on it, do not begin to take hold of it. God has
begun something; do not bring it down to earth and begin to
manage it and advertise it. Let it remain God’s pure, Holy
Ghost work. Keep out of it in so far as your soul is concerned.
That is sonship; that is maturity; that is spiritual growth. When
this reaches its consummation in glory it will be all the glory
of God, and the only place we shall have in it is that His glory
rests upon us, and we have no glory of our own. That is sonship
consummated, perfected. Man’s soul-life is directing him all
the time, and making all things bad; he brings his name, and his
title, and his degree into the work of God, thinking that is
going to secure success for the work of God, and it is the whole
realm of soul brought in; and with it comes spiritual death.
If you cannot follow all that we have said do not worry, but I
think it is of value to recognise exactly how the Holy Spirit
gets down to the root of things. The Holy Spirit inspired this
letter, and He gets down to the root of things, and it is there
that we find the abiding value of anything written by God, that
it is not for any one time. It has a principle in it which ranges
all the ages; it is eternal. Here in a little fragment in Hebrews
you are taken back to Genesis, and you are touching a primary
principle that a good thing can be made bad by man’s soul
taking hold of it instead of it being held in the spirit. Sonship
is the holding of everything in the spirit, and not taking hold
of things in the soul.
3) The Exercise of Spiritual Faculties
and Senses
You will recall that phrase, “have their senses
exercised”. Senses! Do you see the force of senses now?
There are faculties for discriminating. These senses are those
which are given to us with our new birth; for with new birth we
have a new set of senses. As in the physical our five senses are
seeing, hearing, tasting, touching and smelling — every
normal babe has those — so in the new birth, that which is
born of the Spirit, there is a new set of spiritual faculties or
spiritual senses; that is, faculties for seeing spiritual things
which the natural man cannot see; hearing, “He that hath an
ear...”; tasting, touching, scenting. These are very real
things in the spiritual life, but every newborn babe truly born
of the Holy Spirit has these faculties, though they are not yet
properly functioning. And when you put all the senses together
you can sum them up in two words, spiritual perception or
intelligence; that is, that by which we know, as differing from
study, making ourselves aware of things simply by studying their
existence, and as differing from information, being informed,
receiving it as in someone else and not in ourselves. The
difference lies there. There is a word used very much in the New
Testament instead of perception. It is discernment. “He that
is spiritual discerneth...”.
It would be impossible to place too much emphasis upon the
value of spiritual discernment, spiritual perception. It is an
inclusive faculty of fundamental importance, the faculty of
spiritual intelligence, perception, discernment. For want of this
the Lord’s people are kept in infancy, and the church is
kept in infancy, and the church and the Lord’s people are
therefore a prey to all sorts of things. They are a prey to
anything that is presented to them in a persuasive way. They are
open to anything that has a real, sound argument based upon
Scripture. They are a prey to anything that comes along in any
guise using the language of Scripture. Oh yes, the range of
perils for the undiscerning is almost limitless, and how
necessary for all the Lord’s people to have in the midst of
them those who have discernment, spiritual intelligence. So a
vessel, an instrument related to God’s full purpose, to His
fullest thoughts, is one characterized by this factor in sonship,
spiritual intelligence, senses exercised to discern. Oh, that
amongst the Lord’s people there were more of those who saw
through, “quick to discern”, quick of scent. This is a
need. It is a matter of absolute importance, and it is an
indispensable thing to real service, that there shall be
spiritual discernment, spiritual perception, the power of
discriminating, senses exercised.
This is just the opposite of impulsive or mechanical action.
So many receive a kind of impulse, a presentation, a soul-impact,
an appeal, a vivid picture, a thrilling story, a romance,
something pathetic or tragic; and that is made the instrument of
appeal to go out to serve the Lord: it is pure soul, and a lot go
out under the impact of such an appeal. I have known of young
people going to a series of missionary meetings extending over a
week, and one night it was China, and the next night it was
India, and the next night it was somewhere else. The first night
they were sure they were called to China, and they were going to
offer themselves to China; and the second night they were sure
they were called to India, and were going to offer to India, and
the third night they thought they were called somewhere else; and
if they had done what they decided to do, they would have offered
themselves to every country during the week. It is the difference
between impulsive mechanical action and senses exercised to
discern. It is the difference between external instruction and
the Spirit of the Lord inwardly making known. It is the
birthright of every child of God to know the voice of the Lord in
his or her own spirit. It is maturity when we come to that and
all the other is commanded to stand back while we listen to the
Lord, while we detach ourselves and let all the emotion and heat
of the hour fall away, and our heart hears the voice of the Lord.
That is maturity, that is sonship, that is spirituality, and that
means God entrusting with responsibility. He needs such a
personal walk with Himself in which all things are tested in His
presence.
4) The Organ and Faculties Not the
Final Issue
We do not listen to our spirit; the Holy Spirit in our spirit
is the intelligence of God, and the intelligence of the inner
man. Let us beware of that danger, that peril into which many
have fallen. We hear strange language: “I listened to my
spirit”; “My spirit said so-and-so.” Do not let us
make the organ the end; it is only the means. We can get a kind
of false spirituality that way, and we have found very often that
people who have listened to their own spirits have gone and done
things which violate the Word of God in its most obvious meaning.
That is false leading. Let us remember that the Holy Spirit
indwelling governs us through our spirit, and becomes our
intelligence, and it is a matter of absolute dependence upon the
Lord. We must not become lords ourselves. Some of these very
wonderful people who are always listening to their spirit think
they can never make a mistake, they always know at once what the
Lord’s will is. They are the people whose language is always
so pat, that the Lord told them to do this, and the Lord told
them to do that. I confess to you that I do not always know right
at once what the Lord wants.
Note: This is where the message ends and was probably the
end of the tape rather than the end of the message.