READING:
Rom. 12:3-8; 1 Cor. 12:4-7;
Eph. 1:22-23, 4:15-16; Col. 1:18, 2:19;
1 Tim. 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6.
Following on our last meditation, something remains to
be said on the other side, the corporate side, the
relationship of the life in the Spirit to the ultimate purpose
of God as it concerns the Church, recognising what is set
forth in the Word, that the representation of God of
which we spoke is not merely individual but corporate.
There are two titles or designations of the Church,
which are, to my mind, supreme amongst the
designations. The first is that which we have in 1 Cor.
12:12, "the Christ". The definite article should be
preserved in the reading here: "As the body is one... so
also is the Christ". That seems to be the very highest
designation of the Church. The other is that which is in
Ephesians 2:15, the "new man". Both of these are
represented by the other designation, "the Church,
which is his body".
In the sense in which Paul meant it, the Body is the
Christ corporately presented. Again, it is the "one new
man".
In those two designations - "the Christ and the "one
new man" - we have the whole idea of representation,
and that is now here set forth as supremely a corporate
thing. We have
said much about the Spirit of sonship in the individual
believer, but in a very much fuller sense than that the
Spirit of sonship is in the Church. It is in one Spirit (not
by one Spirit) that we are baptized into one Body, and it
is in the Spirit of sonship.
That means that importance of the individual is
subjected in the Body to the Body. It is what the
Apostle is leading to when he says that, by the grace of
God given to him, he exhorts every man not to think more
highly of himself than he ought to think, because we are
members one of another. There is one Body, and we are
members one of another, and the importance of the
individual has to be subjected to the importance of the
whole Body. The individual importance must not stand
out from, or in, the Body as something over the Body,
something in itself. There is an importance of the
individual member, as the Apostle makes perfectly clear,
and a great importance, but that importance of the
individual is not to protrude.
That brings us to another very vital aspect of the great
truth of the Body of Christ, as presented in the Word of
God, and that is,
The Holy Spirit and the Order in the Body
You cannot read these writings of Paul by the Holy
Spirit in the light of facts as you see them, or of
conditions as you meet them, without being rendered
well-nigh breathless. It is an astonishing vision that Paul
has concerning the Body. You have only to stand back
from these things as you read them, and you feel this is
either something amazing, or else it is impossible. Many
have surrendered to the latter conclusion.
Paul here presents the Church, the Body of Christ,
with these two features, namely, as already complete,
and as already functioning. He speaks in the present
tense: "All the body, fitly framed and knit together...
maketh increase..." The Body is one. Paul never speaks
of the Church as if it would one day be all fitly framed
together. He speaks of it as being complete already, and
then, more remarkable still, he speaks of it as even now
functioning: "The head... from whom all the body, fitly framed and knit
together... maketh increase..." It takes your breath
away and you are compelled to ask some questions,
come to some conclusions about it. The fact is, as we
see it, the Body is not fitly framed. It is in a tangle, and in
disorder. It is only rarely that you come upon anything
that you can call an adequate expression of this
adjustment, this relatedness, this perfect fitting together.
You meet far, far more of what is contrary to that. It is
almost difficult to find two people of God who are
perfectly fitted together, and yet Paul talks about the
whole Body as being like that. We say of that, "Ideal, but
impossible"! It is certainly not what we see. Paul wrote
those words hundreds of years ago, as though the
Church were then
in
that state, and we have only to look
at the conditions in Paul's own time and read the letters
to the Corinthians and Galatians, to see that his
conception was one thing and the actual situation a
contradiction.
It is not an impossible situation. If we saw it as Paul
saw it we should say the same thing. What Paul saw
about the Church as the Body of Christ was quite
evidently a spiritual, and not a temporal thing. He saw the
Church from above, not from beneath. He was not
looking at the human side of believers and that about
believers which produces the conflict and the strain, the
break and the lack of adjustment and fellowship and
oneness, he was seeing the inner relatedness.
This is one of the most difficult things to explain. We
can see it, and see what Paul meant, and there is a key to
it. The key is this, that Christ is a unity. There is no
conflict in Christ, no strain, no dividedness, no schism,
but a perfect harmonious, ordered life. The Holy Spirit,
who is the Spirit of Christ - therefore utterly one with what
He is - distributes Christ to all His members. What they
are in themselves is one thing, but what Christ is in them is
another. Christ, by coming into all this conflict of our
humanity, does not take of its nature, does not lose His
perfect harmony and oneness. That which is of Christ in
us is working one thing, in one way, with one purpose,
working to a clearly defined plan. It is perfectly one and
perfectly related. That which is given to you is one
aspect, one feature of Christ, while to me is given
another, to a third another, and yet all these features
make up the one perfect Man, and are necessary to that
end. If we live in the Spirit, if our life is in the Spirit, in spite of what we
are in ourselves, there is through us all that perfect unity of Christ; that is,
there is something of Christ at work in each which, related to what is of Him in
all the others, makes the whole expression of Christ.
That is what Paul saw, and that is what we have to
see. That is how the Apostle checked the situation at
Corinth. One said, I am of Paul! and another, I am of
Apollos! and another, I am of Peter! Paul said, Is
Christ divided? He meant, That is you, not Christ. You
are violating the truth, you are destroying a reality. The
reality is that Christ remains one. Because you live in
yourself you are a contradiction, but the fact remains that
Christ is one. If you forsake that line of things, and come
on to Christ's ground, you will come into the great fact.
So Paul saw through, as from above, everything that we see and that presents itself to us as what we
think to be the Church, the Body of Christ, the people of
the Lord. He saw right through as from above, and
taught the fact, the reality. What is it? It is that Christ is
one, and although He can be giving Himself by His Spirit
in various features and aspects of His person, He does
not divide Himself up. He remains one, and that oneness
is something deeper than what we know ourselves. Even
when we, as children of God, are divided one against
another, that oneness of Christ remains.
Paul saw more than that. He saw the functioning of
that. Recognising the fact, seeing it, he said things which
have to be regarded by us, in order that the fact may
have as full an expression as is possible in the Body. The
fact is one thing, the expression of it is another. We are
not responsible for the fact; we can neither make it nor
alter it. Nothing in this universe can alter the fact that
Christ is one. There is nothing capable of disintegrating
Christ, dividing Christ, breaking Christ up into conflicting
fragments. Nothing can do that. The Head is in heaven, in
the power of a universal victory over every divisive force
in this universe, and nothing can touch the absolute
oneness of Christ. You and I as members of Christ may
have the most violent conflict, but we do not alter the fact
of the oneness. The manifestation, the expression is
another thing, and that is where our responsibility begins.
Seeing as he saw, the background reality and fact of that
oneness, Paul had to say things concerning our
responsibility, and that of which we have to take
account in order to make the fact as far as possible a
manifest fact amongst us, or in order to bring the fact
into operation in us.
We will touch upon some of those things. You are
sufficiently aware of, and alive to, the importance of this
matter. This is not just a presentation of teaching about
great themes, great ideas; this has to do with God's
ultimate purpose represented in this universe, an
expression of God in Man-form. That is our destiny, that
is what we have our being for, and we miss our destiny
unless we recognise this. We have no adequate
knowledge and understanding of what God is doing, and
why He is dealing with us as He is, until we see this
purpose of God in our being conformed to the image of
His Son, the producing in this universe of a corporate
Man which is Christ in full expression.
Order Essential to Increase
Firstly, the Body (you can use the term "the new man" in this corporate sense, if you like) grows and makes
increase through order.
The Apostle makes that perfectly clear. It is as the
Body is fitly framed that it grows. It makes increase with
the increase of God. That is on the basis of being fitly
framed, and every joint working in its due measure.
Order and growth and increase is, therefore, by means
of this order. We hardly need turn again to the analogy
of the physical body, which is presented to the mind of
the Apostle as he writes about the Body of Christ. It is
quite true that there is no growth in the body, no
development, unless there is an ordered state in the
body, what he calls a fitly framing.
It is wonderful how the Lord has created things in the
physical world so that their position is best suited to their
purpose. Conceive of any other order in the arrangement
of our members, and see how we should be
handicapped. We do not want to be humorous, but
rather to simplify this matter and get the principle home.
But supposing your thumbs were on the other side of
your hands, and you had to work in that way and get
hold of everything on the outside. Get anything that is
freakish, and see at once how limitation arises. Now the
Lord has an order, which, if recognised, and if
functioning, leads to the greatest measure of increase, is
itself determined to realise the end of God; and we can
no more realise God's End without God's
order than we can realise the physical possibilities of our
bodies with a body disordered.
The inclusive factor in this order is the headship of
Christ, and, of course, our holding it: "Holding fast the
head, from whom all the body, being supplied..." The
headship of Christ, and our holding that, is the inclusive
factor. Every faculty is centred in Him as Head; and no
part of a body can function if the head is severed from
the body or in any way separated in the sense of
function. Get in between the head and the body in any
way by a nervous disorder, or a fracture, and the whole
body is out of order and incapable of functioning.
Everything is gathered up into the head. Thus the
headship of Christ becomes essential to the order of His
Body, the Church. In speaking of the headship of Christ
we are only speaking, in other words, of the government
of the Holy Spirit, who comes as from Christ the Head.
To refer to the symbolism, unless you have the oil
poured upon the head, and then as from the head
coming down to the body (the oil on the head of Aaron
flowed down to the skirts of his garment), there can be
no functioning. So here the Holy Spirit is represented as
being upon the Head for all the members, and bringing
all the members under the Head and the one anointing.
In one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body, under
one Head, because the oil is given to the Head. You see
that this is the government of the Holy Spirit.
Now we must take up the whole matter of the
individual function of the members. We have not to take
up the matter of our own function in the first place, as to
what it is. That is not the first consideration. Our
relatedness to others is likewise not a thing of which we
are to make a mental problem. The first thing that we
have to do is to come right under the government of the
Holy Spirit, under the anointing. The result of that
government will be the order. The individual will have to
be subject to Christ, and when the individual is subject to
Christ, that individual is by the Holy Spirit brought into a
proper function and relationship with every other
expression of Christ. Harmony comes in that way. It is
spontaneous.
The Nature of Spiritual Relationship and Function
Secondly, the members of Christ as set forth in the
Word are functioning parts of Christ.
The members of Christ's Body are functioning
parts of Christ. That follows from our being one spirit, as
joined to the Lord. Let us get rid of the physical idea
altogether, and recognise how that the Body of Christ is
the uniting of renewed spirits indwelt by the Holy Spirit. It
is not the uniting of so many physical bodies and calling
them the Church. That is merely a congregation. It is
what we are together in spirit that makes us the Church.
Believers do not make a Church, and congregations do
not make a Church. The Church is spiritual, because it is
the union of spirits. Is not this exactly what the Master
was pointing to in His dealings with the woman of
Samaria? To her words, "Our fathers worshipped in this
mountain; and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where
men ought to worship", His reply was, "the true
worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth". It was not a case of the Samaritan temple, nor the
Jewish temple at Jerusalem; the true worshippers worship
the Father in spirit, and the Father seeks such to worship
Him. "God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth". In effect the Lord
said, 'I am come to take the place of the temple, and all
that outward system; and the Church now, by My
coming, is not a place, not a congregation, but a union of
spirits'. Wheresoever two or three are gathered in My
name - there I come and join them? Nothing of the kind.
Somehow people have the idea that if two or three come
together and say, 'Lord, we have come together in Thy
name, come and make one in our midst' that is the
meaning of it. It does not say so. It is in no way a
question of providing a ground upon which to claim the
Lord's presence at all. He says, "Where two or three are
gathered together in my name there am I". "Two or
three have Me already dwelling in them." That is the
Church. It is a union of spirits. We are not talking about
something physical, but about the spiritual Body, the
Church. "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit".
That is the nature of union, and that is the nature of
membership of the Body.
Membership of Christ is something other than our
physical relatedness. What a lot of notions we have to
get rid of. If we have our names put down on a certain
church roll we say we have joined the Church.
Membership of the Church is membership of Christ by
union with Him in our spirits, and that union is brought
about by Christ indwelling our spirits. The spirit is a
vessel.
Now we come back to what we were saying. The
Holy Spirit gives to the obedient believer some faculty of
Christ, that is, a spiritual faculty. Think about that for a
moment. The Holy Spirit gives to obedient believers
some faculty of Christ. This is what is meant by gifts of
the Spirit. We referred to some of them in our previous
meditation in 1 Cor. 12 and in Ephesians 4. That does
not exhaust all, for the spiritual faculties of Christ cannot
be fully tabulated, but there you have examples.
The Laying on of Hands
(a) Its Appointment of God
(b) Its Signification
We have referred to two passages in the letters to
Timothy about the laying on of hands. Paul speaks of the
gift that was in him by prophecy with the laying on of the
hands of the presbytery. There was a gift given by the
Spirit to Timothy. That was bestowed at the time of the
laying on of hands. That shows it to be a necessary thing,
for this is in the Word of God. We must be perfectly
honest with the Word of God, and with ourselves, and
with the Lord, and not hedge any of these matters. It
makes it necessary for us to look at this matter of the
laying on of hands.
The first thing that it signifies is the fact of the one
Body. If you take the instances in the New Testament of
the laying on of hands you will see that it was a
recognition and acknowledgment that converts were now
members of the one Body. The first instance is at
Samaria. The Samaritans turned to the Lord, and there
went down from Jerusalem some of the elders and saw
this true work of Christ, and it says, with reference to
those that had believed "They laid their hands upon them". It is a wonderful triumph of the Spirit, to begin with,
between Jews and Samaritans, in the light of all that we
know about those relationships, and it is a wonderful
fulfilment of what Christ had said to a Samaritan woman
about the true worshippers worshipping neither in their
mountain nor yet at Jerusalem. It is the spiritual testimony
that matters. The testimony borne in the laying on of
hands was to the fact that they were one. They were one
Body and one spirit. That was the true adjustment to the
fact, of the one Body. Then, inasmuch as the hands were
laid upon the head of the believers (we have skipped a
lot in that connection; this is all in Acts 8) a proclamation
was made of the sovereignty of Christ as Head,
or, in other words, the subjection of the member to the
Head.
It would be necessary to enlarge upon the matter of
headship right through the Bible to make that clear.
When the Lord speaks about headship, He makes it
perfectly clear that headship on the one hand signifies
that there is subjection on the other hand. He uses a
human illustration. The man is the head of the woman,
even as Christ is the head of the Church. That means
that the Church has to be subject to Christ. The greatest
profit is obtained that way. The Lord intended to reach
His highest ends by this order, and if the order is upset
there will be some kind of limitation. This all represents
the heavenly fact of Christ and the Church. When it
comes to subjection to Christ, the man has to be as
much subject to Christ as the woman. You will see that
Paul has something to say to the man, as well as to the
woman, in the assembly, about how he is to behave in
the assembly. If a woman is not to go uncovered, then a
man must not go covered. It is a matter of order before
heaven, and we have all to be subject to Christ.
Subjection means our place under Christ's headship,
whatever that place may be.
Now we have been speaking of the laying on of
hands, the fact of the one Body and subjection to Christ
as Head. When representative members of the Body
(mark you, "the presbytery" is not an official body as
such, not necessarily a body of apostles. Ananias laid his
hands on Paul, and he was not an apostle. He
represented the assembly in Damascus; that is the most
you can say. If you go to Antioch, you find five men
there who were not apostles, but were simply men
taking spiritual responsibility under God in the assembly.
As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Lord
said, "Separate me Barnabas and Saul..."), when
representative members prayed in the case of Timothy
and laid their hands upon him, recognising the fact of the
one Body and his subjection to Christ, they were led to
pray by the Spirit in a certain way. They asked that this
young man should be marked and characterised by
certain things, and that the Lord would qualify him in a
certain way. It was inspired prayer and proved to be
prophetic. Afterwards it became quite clear to
everybody that Timothy was marked by certain things. "Do the work of an evangelist; make full proof of thy
ministry". Timothy was marked by the gift of an
evangelist. How had that come about?
Is not that the thing they prayed for when they laid their
hands upon him? It was prophetic, in that the Holy
Spirit indicated what his ministry was, what his vocation
was, and qualified him, equipped him with gift for that.
So that the functioning relationship of all members is by
gift.
I do not believe that was intended to cease in the
Body of Christ, neither the method, the testimony, nor
the outcome. The Body of Christ must cease as a
functioning thing if that ceases. So the testimony should
go on, and for believers there should be a continuation in
this testimony; the oneness of the Body, the headship of
Christ, and gift of the Holy Spirit whereby the priests
shall be enabled to function in the Body of Christ.
Let us not narrow down the word "gift", it has been
narrowed down to three or four things, to the detriment
of the whole truth. A few people think that one certain
gift is the sure sign of the Holy Spirit, and that if you have
not got that you have not received the Holy Spirit. The
Lord deliver us from that sort of thing. Paul shows very
clearly that what some people make so important is one
of the least of the gifts (we refer to tongues). There are
others more important than that. There is a gift of
wisdom, of knowledge, of understanding, of revelation.
These are very, very important gifts, and yet you cannot
do much with them in public. They are not things you can
demonstrate before men. They work in a quiet but very
valuable way. And there are others, which work in the
secret altogether, and yet they are gifts of the Holy Spirit.
The point is that the Holy Spirit gives some faculty of
Christ to His members. Every member is to be a
functioning member, with some faculty of Christ. There
may be a correspondence between spiritual faculties and
the physical faculties. There is the faculty of sight, and the
Lord by the Spirit constitutes some members those who
see for Him. Is that not perhaps discernment, perception? All have not that discernment. Oh, that those who have
not got it knew they had not, instead of thinking they
have, and getting other people into all sorts of trouble
because they act without discernment. There are some
who have that gift, and it would be well for such as are
without discernment to work in fellowship with those
who see more clearly than they see. Moses said to his
father-in-law, Come with us, and be unto us as eyes. I think, in that instance, he made a mistake, but at the
same time the Lord does need eyes for His people.
You can take every part of the body and find the
corresponding spiritual faculty. There are some who hear
far more clearly and quickly than others what the Lord is
saying for others, and so on. The inclusive point is this,
that Christ by the Spirit is distributed through His
members in spiritual faculties, and the members are to
function accordingly. Then it is that the Body grows, is
built up.
The Apostle says it is not only necessary for us to
recognise these facts, and to come by the way through
which we are constituted functioning members of Christ in
spirit, but it is necessary for us to guard the gift. Bear in
mind that the Lord has definitely constituted you spiritually
for some thing. Be careful that you do not fall short of
that. Be careful that you do not allow that to fall into
abeyance. Stir up the gift of God which is in you.
The Recognition of the Body
The next thing that the Apostle will teach us is that
there must be a mutual recognition of the Body of Christ.
We have just said as much; here we make a definite
point of it. Again, the words with which we commenced
are so apt at this point: "...to every man that is among you,
not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think". If he does that, he will be setting other members at
naught, or in a place less than should be occupied by
them. It does a great deal of harm to the Body of Christ
when one member dominates the situation. Mutual
subjection to, and recognition of, one another represents
what the Lord would have. So Peter would say, "Subject yourselves one to another in the fear of the Lord".
The Ministering of Christ
Further, there must be a ministering of Christ to one
another. We have something of Christ, a faculty of Christ
for ministering Christ; that
is,
a measure of Christ to be
ministered by us, and our business is to minister Christ
one to another. In that way the Body grows.
I shall not forget first hearing a phrase which many of
you have often heard. It was in America in 1925. I was
talking about a certain servant of the Lord who had been
greatly used to build up a work of God in America. I
was interested in this
servant of the Lord, and wanted to know all I could
know of her. I met a man who had been in very close
association with her in her life, and I was trying to get
from him all that he knew. He was telling me about her
closing days, and in a very natural way, quite in the
course of things, he used this phrase: "I used to go in to
her, and minister life to her in the name of the Lord". He
said it as though it were the most natural thing in the
world to say. Life to her in the name of the Lord? That
was a new idea to me at that time. Then my mind at once
reverted to the Word of God. Is there anything to
support that? I found there was quite a lot to support it.
You hear the Apostle John speaking thus: "If any man
see his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask,
and God will give him life for them that sin not unto
death." (1 John 5:16). It is a part of our ministry. Is not
Christ our life, and can we not, as functioning in Christ,
minister life to one another? Surely we can. That is what
we are called to. Thus the Body grows. Oh, that the
Lord will enable us to be greater ministers of life to one
another, and not of death.
In the light of the Scriptures throughout, it seems that
spiritual order is very largely a military idea. That is
because so much in the matter of victory is bound up
with order. Take the book of Numbers, for instance, and
you find there the ordering of the host in relation to the
conquest. They were to move by the sound of the
trumpet as an ordered whole. Come to the New
Testament, and you find we are in a conflict. Take the
Ephesian letter. Through identification with Christ you
move into the ordered Body, the right relationships; an
ordered whole, filled with the Spirit, and then comes
our wrestling with principalities and powers. Why does
it come at the end? Obviously because if there is
disorder in the Body there is going to be no triumphant
walk, nor any victory over the forces of evil. The Lord
must have His Body in order, His people functioning in a
right relationship.
We have said that it is not for us to take up this whole
matter of the detail and technique of the order, but if we
have our life in the Spirit it will come about, and we must
recognise what the laws of order are. Those have been
set forth, and we must be obedient thereto. Here is a
great reality, and Paul says that this reality is a fact; but
he says also that, in order that there may be increase,
building up, growth, victory, you must not have your life
on a natural basis, where division will come about.
Forsake that ground, and come on to the ground of
Christ, and then you come on to the ground of oneness.
That means growth, increase. You will be no longer
carnal, babes, you will come to full growth. Recognise
that order is a very important thing. If any given local
assembly is governed by the Holy Spirit you will have an
expression of this in that assembly. We ought not to give
up hope of having something like that. But apart from the
imperfect and immature state of the Lord's people here
as seen, looked at from above the Lord sees all that is
going on. He sees the spiritual value of each one of His
members. He would seek to get each member into such
a relationship with Himself that He can bring them into
touch with situations and people who need what they
have of Him.
We shall need to ask the Lord to give us much understanding and light on this
matter.