Lord, we have to
appeal to Thee again for Thy compassion. What a pathetic
thing it would be if we tried to do heavenly work with
earthly means; Divine work in our own human strength. And
that is just where we are now. We need Thy sympathy, Thy
compassion, for our speaking and our hearing will really
profit us nothing, will have no eternal value. O Lord,
help us with Thy Divine help at this time that we may
speak under the anointing and with the unction of the
Holy Spirit; and also in the same way hear. Anoint our
ears, anoint our ears, and give us a hearing that is not
just our natural hearing that we may this morning by the
power of the Holy Spirit hear the voice of the Son of God
and live. Grant us this mercy for Thine Own Name and
Glory’s sake, Amen.
We have been occupied in these morning hours with
the great transition from an old discredited humanity as
in Adam to a New accredited Humanity in Christ. Our first
attention was with the exposure and the devastation of
that discredited humanity as we saw it representatively
gathered around the Cross of the Lord Jesus in Caiaphas,
Pilate, Judas Iscariot, Peter, and the two on the Emmaus
Road. Then we saw what a devastation the Cross was or an
exposure of the old humanity at its highest, at its best;
and there could have been nothing worse when we were
finished. Then we went on to the battleground of the two
humanities as we have it in the two letters to the
Corinthians: on the one side, “the natural man”
which is the old humanity; on the other side, “the
spiritual man,” the New.
We stood and did little more than look into those letters
in a general way, pinpointing a few things in the letters
where the carry-over of the old to the New is shown, the
conflict being between the natural man and the spiritual
man or that which is natural and that which is spiritual,
the natural touching so many things, even the most sacred
things. The things of the Spirit touched by the hand of
the natural man and taken up and used for the natural
man’s gratification and glory. That is what is in
the First Letter to the Corinthians.There is much more detail, with
which we are not going to deal; we have only touched it
in order to indicate something. I trust that you have
seen the indication of how dangerous it is and with what
tragic consequences the touch of the natural man on
spiritual things can be. We brought out that most
terrible warning, the warning to Christians as in
Corinth: to “born again” people called
“saints,” separated unto God, came that
terrible warning where Israel’s tragedy in the
wilderness is taken as the ground of the warning. They
perished in the wilderness, and the apostle uses that to
warn the Corinthians that the battle can be lost in the
wilderness if there is any compromise between the natural
and the Spiritual. If you are still in Egypt, while being
geographically so to speak out of Egypt but Egypt not
being spiritually out of you, then you are positionally
where the Corinthians were.
Now that is all the
negative side, however we came yesterday morning to point
out that the answer the apostle gave concerning the whole
compass of things in the First Letter, the answer he gave
to the ten questions raised by the Corinthians in a
letter to him, was not in a code of rules and laws like
the Mosaic, but in principles. And all the principles
gathered into one principle which amounted to this: how
much of Christ is in this? How much of Christ is in your
divisions? “Is Christ divided?”
Paul, pinpointing the
whole question of division, said: “Is Christ
divided? Were you baptized into Paul?” Christ is the
principle of solving that problem of divisions and all
the other matters which I am not going to reiterate now.
The answer he gave to the solving of these difficulties
is focusing on Christ. The answer he gave them was how
much does this minister Christ? How much does this
represent of Christ? Everything is tested from that
standpoint, judged and settled. Paul said these things
are answered by principle and the principle is Christ.
“Have
I Not Seen Jesus Our Lord?”
Now having come past
that, with all there is left in the letters, we come onto
the positive side. I want you just to look at one or two
fragments from the First Letter to the Corinthians. It is
only a fragment found in chapter nine at verse one:
“Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen
Jesus our Lord?” It is that clause that I want you
to take hold of and hold for a moment—“Have I
not seen Jesus our Lord?”
And now over to Second
Corinthians, chapter four, verse four: “In whom the
god of this age hath blinded the minds of the
unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of
Christ, Who is the image of God, should not dawn upon
them.” And in verse six: “Seeing it is God,
that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, Who shined
in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
“Have
I Not Seen Jesus Our Lord?”
“God has shined
into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Again I would like to
add another fragment; this time from the Letter to the
Galatians, chapter one, verse fifteen. It is in a rather
large section, but I would like to lift out just a
fragment, “But when it was the good pleasure of God
to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among
the nations”:—It was the good pleasure of God
to reveal His Son in me.
“Have
I Not Seen Jesus Our Lord?”
Of course, the
immediate context of those words is the apostle
authenticating his apostleship and answering those who
said that he was not an authentic apostle because he was
not one of the twelve. That is connected with that
charge, but it has a very much larger and more
comprehensive context than that, as you see from these
other verses and many more like them. His answer to them:
“Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” “It
pleased God to reveal His Son in me.” God, the same
God Who said in the beginning, “Let light be, has
shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”;
which means, in the Person of Jesus Christ.
The
Seeing Of Jesus Our Lord
What we are going to be
occupied with this morning is this all-governing,
all-dominating vision of Jesus Christ. This brings in
four of the greatest matters with which we can have to
do. The seeing of Jesus—how comprehensive and
revolutionary it is! These four things are major things.
Firstly: The place and destiny of man in the economy of
God. That comes in with a seeing of Jesus our Lord.
I am glad the apostle
added that last clause, “our Lord,” and I would
like to point out that in the New Testament, the name
“Jesus” by itself is only used when it relates
to His pre-resurrection life. If the name
“Jesus” is used alone, you will find that the
context is of His pre-resurrection life. However, after
the resurrection, the apostles never called Him
“Jesus” alone; they always linked on our Lord,
our Lord Jesus, the Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ our
Lord. Let us note “Jesus,” yes; but “our
Lord” and His Lordship came into view after His
resurrection and ascension. Right there on the Damascus
Road, “and he said, ‘Who art Thou, Lord?’
”—“I Am Jesus.” He knew it was Jesus.
“Lord, (not, ‘Jesus, what will You have me to
do?’ but) Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?”
The very beginning of a revolution of a transition from
knowing after the flesh to knowing after the Spirit. All
that is parenthetical. Let us go on.
The four magnitudes
which come in with a true Spiritual seeing of Jesus are:
The Place And Destiny Of Man In The Economy Of God
The Nature And Dynamic Of Ministry In This Dispensation
The Nature And Purpose Of The Church Now And In
After-Ages
The Immense Significance In That Three-fold Context Of
Jesus Christ Crucified, Risen, and Exalted
These are four very big things, and they are all
comprehended by “Have I not seen Jesus our
Lord?”—“It pleased God to reveal His Son
in me”; and when He revealed His Son in me, this is
what I began to see. That is what the apostle is saying:
“This is what I began to see.” He does not
tabulate these things like that, but I have just taken
these four magnitudes as the content and substance of the
New Testament.
This is where we begin;
firstly the seeing of Jesus our Lord or God revealing His
Son in us, illuminating, unveiling, the place
and destiny of man in the Divine Economy. I must say here
(though it might get me onto controversial ground) I am a
firm believer that the Apostle Paul had a very real hand
in the writing of the Letter to the Hebrews. Whether he
actually wrote it or dictated it, I am certain that Paul
had a very definite and direct influence, to say the
least, upon the writing of the Letter to the Hebrews; and
you will recognize it in what I am going to say. It is
there; it comes out of that.
Paul, from the
beginning in his First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter
fifteen, takes up man from his inception. He says,
“The first man, Adam.” It starts with man; it
goes right back to the beginning of humanity, mankind,
and he follows right through mankind on the battleground
of the two humanities until he reaches the point of man
glorified. How marvelous that chapter is. I have stood
back from that chapter many times, and said, “How
did any mortal man know that?” It could only be
because he had seen Jesus Christ. That is the only
answer:—
A
New Man In Christ
“There are bodies
terrestrial, and there are bodies celestial. There are
bodies earthy and there are bodies heavenly; and as we
have borne the image of the earthy, so we shall bear the
image of the heavenly.” Here Paul describes
something of the nature of this Heavenly Body, this
Heavenly physical Body, this glorified Manhood. This is
an amazing unveiling of the destiny of man in the economy
of God.
So Paul takes up manhood first in Adam, and then by the
Cross he smites that race in Adam, discredits it, rejects
it, and puts it aside, and starts with the New Man,
“The last Adam”: “If any man is in Christ,
he is a new creation,”—the old humanity past,
all is New. We have the whole history of man in this
letter, right from his inception in the heart of God, his
inception in the creation of the first Adam and his
rejection in this letter; and then we have man created in
the New Man, Christ.
Oh, what a Man this is
in glory. In this we groan! But what is the groaning
about? Oh, for that for which I was created; which God
meant for me. In this we groan waiting, “waiting
eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our
body,” the putting on of our New Man. “When
this corruptible will have put on incorruption.” My,
do you not groan for that? Incorruption, this mortal
dying “will have put on immortality,” eternally
living. Now how did Paul get all that? “Have I not
seen Jesus our Lord?” “It pleased God to reveal
His Son in me.”
Paul said: “God
has repeated His Divine fiat in me. Over all the world in
chaos and darkness God said, ‘Let light be—and
there was light,’ a fiat of God, and He has done
that in me. God has repeated and said, In this darkened
humanity, ‘Let light be’; and when He said
that, I—in that Light—saw His Son and in His
Son I saw all that God intended and intends for
mankind”—man’s destiny in the economy of
God.
All that is in chapter
fifteen, and Paul tells us out of this seeing that the
world to come is going to be entirely subjected to this
Man and this Humanity. As I was saying, this is Hebrews
two: “For Thou madest Him in order to have dominion
over the works of Thy hand. Thou has put all things in
Thine economy and intention under His feet,” but we
do not see that true of the old humanity. It is
discredited, it is lost, it has lost that kingdom.
But we see Jesus, we
see Jesus the Representative Man of this New Humanity,
the Inclusive Man, the Last Adam of this Humanity, we see
Him crowned with glory and honor. That is the destiny of
man in the intention of God. That is what Paul is saying
here by the Spirit.
He
Must: He Must Have: He Will Have!
Paul shows us in these
letters to the Corinthians and by his influence, at
least, in the Letter to the Hebrews, he shows us
God’s intense interest in man and God’s
infinite patience and perseverance and pains with man
through history. God never, never wiped out any mankind
until it had finally gone beyond the point of no return
where mankind said, “We will not, we will not,”
finally “We will not”—that was Noah’s
day. Noah—a preacher of righteousness, and the
effect in them was: “We will not.” So God said,
“The end of all flesh is come before Me; for the
earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold,
I will destroy them with the earth.” God never did
anything like that until the cup of iniquity was
full to overflowing, and there was no hope because of
man’s settled determination not to have the revealed
will of God.
Apart from that, look
at the infinite pains and patience and perseverance of
God. Oh, how marvelous is God in His Sovereignty. I think
God chose the Jewish race because it was going to extend
Him to the fulness of His patience; and it did. God is
marvelous in His Sovereignty, sometimes I think that He
chose it for no other purpose than just to show what
mercy He has. Well, that would take us into another part
of First Corinthians: “God hath chosen the foolish
things... the weak things... the ignoble things... that
are not.” We see what patience, what long-suffering,
what pains, what perseverance is shown by the apostle on
the part of God with mankind because God has set such
store by this kind of creation; and if God should never
have a humanity like that at the end, then God is
defeated utterly and He is not God, the God of the Bible.
He must—He must, and He will have a humanity that
His heart is set upon.
Moreover, the apostle shows here by the Spirit, that all
God’s dealings with His Own children (and the terms
are family terms: His Own children, His Own family) he
shows that all God’s dealings with His Own children
and family had this end in view—the transition unto
the glory, bringing many sons to glory, getting many sons
to glory. But we must link with that: “My son,
despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint
when thou art rebuked or reproved of Him. Whom the Lord
loveth, He chasteneth. He scourgeth every son that He
places by Him.” That wonderful chapter in Hebrews 12
about God’s dealings with His children, His family,
showing that “no chastening (child-training) for the
present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous”—for
the present, grievous.
You and I know
something about that. But “afterward,” there is
an “afterward”; and it is that
“afterward” that God is working toward in His
dealings with us, difficult as they may be. We will come
to that again, and I do not know whether we will get to
it this morning, but here is the principle. Oh!! God is
not against us when we are having a hard time. The devil
says He is. Have a bad time, and there is at once a
little demon at your ear accusing God, maligning God,
trying to get a twist in your mind that questions God,
trying to get you right back into the garden again,
“Hath God said?” trying to get you onto the old
Adam ground again. Oh, brethren, I can say this more
easily than I can go through it, and so can you hear it
more easily than you can go through it, but there is that
“afterward.” What afterward? The end of One
Corinthians, chapter fifteen. Oh, yes, all this,
“But thanks be to God, Who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ.” All His dealings
with us are governed by this great destiny for which He
has made us and called us.
Destined
For Sonship
Now all this the
apostle shows, all this is represented by the perfected
Man in glory, and all this is not only represented by Him
there as the ultimate of God for mankind, but it is
secured in that Man in the glory. It is security for us,
and in this connection the apostle uses a figure from the
Greek about the Holy Spirit having been given to us as an
“earnest” of our final redemption. You know
what the figure is? What is it? You see some goods, some
produce at a depot on a railroad station. It is destined
for something or somewhere, and there is stamped on it
“sample,” “sample,” destined for
sonship. It is an earnest, it is a firstfruits, it is a
prophecy, but there is more to follow; and a great deal
more to follow. This is only the beginning, this is only
a piece of what is coming; and the apostle uses that
figure of speech. The Greeks understood quite well what
he was talking about. Paul says: “He has given us
the Spirit as the ‘sample,’ the earnest, the
prophecy, of what is to be.” It is secured, it is
all there secured in Him to come to us; and He has sent
Him (is it irreverent to speak of the Holy Spirit like
this?)—He sent the Sample. If you and I
really have the Spirit, what have we got?—The
earnest of our inheritance, and what is it?—We have
this witness, this assurance, and the working of this
Power holding us unto something, unto a destiny. Thank
God for that holding. To quote the Apostle Peter:
“Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto
a salvation to be revealed in the last time.”
We
Are Kept By The Power.
Now where would any of
us be today if there had not been that holding of us?
When we really did let go, when we really did say:
“We can go no further, this is the end.” And we
would have gone if it had been left to us. Well, the
miracle is we are here kept by the earnest of the Spirit
unto that because it is secured unto us in Christ. So the
apostle says: “Cast not away, cast not away your
confidence which hath great recompense of reward. You
have need of patience that after you have done the will
of God....” Brethren, there is so much in all this.
He shows that it is all represented in the Man perfected
in heaven; even more, it is secured in Him up there. I am
glad it is up there and out of this world beyond any
power to undo the security.
(1)
The Summation Of All—His Son
Now the apostle shows
then that the advent of Jesus Christ into this world was
this: first of all, it was the summation of all
God’s former forms and ways of His Self-revelation.
“God Who at sundry times and in divers places spake
unto the prophets,” spake by the prophets in
many-sided fragmentary bits. Here a line and there a
line; a bit through this one and a bit through that one,
all speaking bits and pieces and fragments. He has summed
them all up now, gathered them all together, made One Sum
of them; and it is the summation of all when His Son
comes into this world Incarnate. That is what is here!
See Jesus and you see the summation of all God’s
previous methods and ways and times of Self-revelation.
It is the full and the final revelation of God in Jesus
Christ.
That is what this young
man Saul of Tarsus, with his background of the Old
Testament in his mind (so that he could quote the whole
thing without the Book) with that he saw Jesus Christ,
the Risen Glorified Lord; and his Bible became a new
book. Paul saw that in the One everything was gathered
up, everything was summed up. “Have not I seen Jesus
our Lord; and when I saw Him, I saw.” There are no
more fragments, the thing is complete now; no more bits
and pieces, it is just One Great Glorious Whole. No more
“then” and “now” and
“afterward,” it is all eternally present in Him
now: the summation of all God’s previous ways of
Self-revelation.
(2)
His Son—The End Of The Old Economy And The
Introduction Of An Entirely New Economy
Then Paul saw, and this
meant so much to a Jew and an educated Jew, so thoroughly
educated as was Saul of Tarsus, he saw that Jesus our
Lord was not only the summation of all God’s
previous ways of revealing Himself, but He was the
consummation of a whole economy, the whole of the Mosaic
economy. That is why I say I am sure that Paul had a hand
in this Hebrew Letter, because the whole of the Mosaic
economy is gone over in that letter. And what is the
purpose of that letter? the transition from that
Mosaic economy to Christ. He is the High
Priest. He is the Sacrifice. He is the
Altar. He is the Temple. He is
everything that that economy represented in type and
figure, but He is the consummation of that. He
is the end of that and the introduction of an entirely
New economy. It is a Heavenly One in the heavens,
“not made with hands.” Oh, the terms are so
definite. “Not of this creation.”—The
consummation of a whole economy. Brethren, has
Christendom seen what Paul saw? Has Christendom grasped
this yet? Is it still clinging onto the old economy in
its vestments, its robings, its ritual, its external
things? Has it failed to see that this is all finished
with, and now our robing is the robing of His
Righteousness, and no other can appear before God. All
our adornments are spiritual.
Peter has seen this,
for in 1 Peter 3:3-4 he speaks to the dear sisters
“whose adorning is not the plaiting of the hair and
the wearing of the jewelry.” What is the word
“adorning”? “Adorning” in the
original is “Whose world
(cosmos)”—“whose cosmos” is the word
“adorning.” “Whose cosmos, whose
world,” whose realm and system of things is not this
getting yourself up in making an impression. Oh, I am not
holding any agreement with carelessness and slovenliness
and that sort of thing, but the question is what
“world” do you live in?—how do you appear
to others, what impression do you make by these outward
things? “No,” says Peter, of the saintly women
whose world is not that. That is not their world, that is
not their cosmos, their system, but their
“adorning” is “the ornament of a meek and
a quiet spirit.” So we see one system of externals
is gone, and it is all now a system of the Spirit in the
heart, a Heavenly thing for a Heavenly people.
Now some people have
seen the principle, and they have tried to put it into
effect by putting on a certain kind of raiment and
becoming a sect who wear that kind of raiment. They have
seen the principle all right, but you cannot fulfill a
principle in that way. It is the Spirit that comes out
and expresses itself. The end of an economy, its
consummation and then the transition to an entirely new
regime, the regime of the Man perfected and installed in
glory as God’s Model for this New Humanity.
“According to Christ” is the phrase so often
used. It is “according to Christ” or “not
according to Christ.” That is the test, the
challenge, according to the perfected Man and Humanity
installed in Heaven, God’s Pattern, to which He is
working.
He is working, and here we come back again to the place
of the Holy Spirit in the Letters to the Corinthians,
especially the First Letter. As we look through the
letter, what is the full, ultimate, supreme function of
the Holy Spirit?—“Though I speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, ...though I give all my
goods to the poor, and though I give my body to be
burned, and have not love, I have nothing.” The
supreme work of the Holy Spirit is the Character of Jesus
Christ, not love as a thing. You can put on love as a
thing. You can put that on, and it can be a pretension, a
way of behaving and speaking. Beloved, people can come
and put their hand on your shoulder and be treacherous
behind your back by pointing out your faults to someone
else. It must be “unfeigned love” the apostle
says. “Unfeigned, unhypocritical, love of the
brethren”: it is the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
Are you not surprised
when Paul has finished his letters, and he says, “The
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ...” (this
benediction has become so commonplace and lost so much of
its contextual significance as applying and relating to
the whole Corinthian situation). What is the grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ? “...though He were rich, yet
for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty
might become rich.” That is the grace of the
Lord Jesus, self-emptying; Paul will later say that to
the Philippians.
The benediction, what
is it? “The grace of the Lord Jesus
Christ.” It is Jesus Christ all the time. “The
love of God.” How do you know it? in Jesus
Christ only, never in any other way can we know the Love
of God. “The fellowship of the Holy Spirit”:
the communion, the unity,—the removal of those
divisions and that divisive spirit, (“I am of Paul,
Apollos, Peter, and so on—”).
“Have
I Not Seen Jesus Our Lord?”
“He Was Pleased To Reveal His Son In Me”
Now time does not
permit me to start this morning on that next great thing:
how seeing Jesus is the Source, the Character, of all
ministry in this dispensation. But let us hold what
we have heard this morning quietly before the Lord
because it challenges us. How far are we here able to say
with the effect of it, the revolution, the
transformation, the transition:—“Have I not
seen Jesus our Lord?”—“He was pleased to
reveal His Son in me.” And when that happened, my
word, what a lot went. It just went and what a lot came.
How different! I have called this section:
The
All-governing And Dominating Vision,—The Seeing Of
Jesus Our Lord.
Go and ask Him to do
that with you, and let me just say this, it is not
something that is going to be all done at once. Oh, no,
some of us after many years are seeing more today of the
significance and meaning of Jesus our Lord than we have
ever seen all through our lives. It has got to be like
that, thank God, it has got to be like that. We always
have a margin, a plus, an extra right to the end. As one
brother has said, “All ministry should have such an
overflow that no man ever finishes his sermon,” and
you know what he meant. When you have come to the end of
your time, you have got far more than your time will
allow you to go on with. And it ought to be like that
over the Lord Jesus. Oh, how much more I see than I have
ever been able to say or could say today. I see He is
so vast, so full, so immense. We are here, dear
friends, not to talk about the greatness of Christ as a
subject, but to be the expression of it!—It may
defeat us. We may go to the grave (if He does not come)
feeling, “Oh, we haven’t begun yet,” but
it should be like that. He is so great, so
Wonderful. And may the fiat take place, if it has not.
But if it has, and our eyes, the eyes of our hearts,
have been enlightened, we have begun to see
something of Him. Remember, there should be no stalemate
over this, no arrested progress as at Corinth, no undue
babyhood. Yes, it is all right to be a baby when you are
a baby; but it is a horrible thing to be a baby when you
have the years of maturity.
That is how it was at
Corinth. Growth was stunted, it was arrested, because of
what? They had really failed to see the Lord Jesus. They
had heard the teaching; they knew what the apostle was
talking about, but he has to come back with this:
“The eyes of our heart be enlightened.” He has
to come back with this Second Letter to
them:—“The veil taken away,” and we all
with unveiled face see Another Face, “the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ,” and “are
changed into the same image from glory to glory.”
Shall we pray...
So, Lord, we can only say that with the presentation of
the truth Thou would go beyond, take us beyond; and grant
that every life here may stand in the good of the
unveiled face of Jesus Christ—the glory therein...
may stand in the good of having seen Jesus our Lord. O
make that true of every one of us, very true, wonderfully
true, and growingly true, until we finally see His face.
We ask it in His Name, Amen.