Reading: Eph. 4:24,25; Col. 3:10; Rom. 6:4-6, 7:6, 12:2,4-6; 1
Cor. 12:12-14,20,27.
What I feel the Lord wants added to our series of messages is a
word on the essential corporate nature of that which is born of
the Spirit, of the new creation in Christ. It is into this that
there are gathered in the fullest meaning of those things of which
we have been speaking.
1. The Heavenliness of the New Creation
We commenced with the heavenliness in nature, life, resources and
vocation of that which is born of the Spirit, the new creation in
Christ Jesus. And that, while applying to the individual and being
true of the individual, is pre-eminently true of the church which
is the Body of Christ. That fact, of course, must come by
revelation of the Holy Spirit before it can be apprehended and
appreciated, but as a fact it has to be stated and we have to take
facts to the Lord and ask Him to make them living realities.
So we must recognise the fact that the church, according to the
Word of God, is essentially a heavenly thing in its nature,
resources, life and vocation. Putting that round the other way, it
is not an earthly thing; its life is not of the earth, its
resources are not of the earth. Let that fall on you very heavily.
The resources of the church, according to God, are not of the
earth.
Its vocation is a heavenly vocation. We must always remember that
while there is an aspect of the vocation of the people of God
which is manward, the pre-eminent aspect is Godward. You find that
borne out very clearly in the Old Testament in the worship of the
Tabernacle and the Temple, for when you begin to deal with the
Tabernacle, where you see God's mind, you always begin at the
inside. God begins on the inside. He commenced with the most holy
place and what was therein, and coming from God beginning there,
indicates the true and highest nature of the vocation of that
which represents the dwelling place of God; that is, its vocation
is Godward before it is manward and we are called to fulfil a
ministry which is more in relation to heavenly things than it is
to earthly things. One would like to stay with that for a time
because it is very important that we should recognise that we are
such earthbound, earth limited creatures, that for us the span of
our years here, and sphere of our activities here has counted more
than anything else and if there has been limitation in earthly
life and service, we have felt that was the governing feature, and
that represented failure. Not necessarily so. The Lord is
fulfilling through the church a heavenly ministry and vocation
which far transcends time, and space, and this earth, and that
explains a good deal - something of which we may mention in a few
moments.
"That now unto the principalities and powers, by the church, the
manifested wisdom of God is being made known". There is the
heavenly vocation; and at most, the church in this age will have
touched, so far as this earth is concerned, a very small portion.
It will be composed of a very small percentage of the inhabitants
of this earth. Not because God has doomed the rest, but He is
taking out from the nations a people for His Name, and we know
that the church is relatively a small thing in comparison with the
vast multitudes of those who are on the earth, and always will be.
And when the church is withdrawn and you see all that great margin
of those not in and of the church, you say "Well, is this all? Is
this all that the church was for?" and you begin to judge by
measurements of that kind and you feel that it is a failure. But
you have got to take eternity into account. This has to come into
account, and something beyond that which is seen in the vocation
of the church. There is something being done through the church by
God in His wisdom, which goes beyond the bounds of humanity and
beyond the limits of this earth. It is a heavenly vocation and it
is unto God. The church is called to minister in a heavenly way.
2. Universality
Universality was the second meditation. The universality of that
which is born of the Spirit and the church as the New Man. Note
that is what it said in the passages we read. The church is the
new man - one new man - it is universal in its range, in
its influence, in its ministry. It is universal; it is not local,
though it may have a local expression among local companies. It is
not national; it is not international. I am afraid a good many
minds have slipped up there and thought the church is
international, that it is comprised of all nations. No! It is not
comprised of all nations. It is not comprised of nations at all.
The Word says, "where there cannot be Jew and Gentile" not
"where Jew and Gentile combine", but "where there cannot be Jew
and Gentile, bondmen, freemen". These things do not come in at
all. It is not an international church. It is a super-national
church, a new creation, a new man where all earthly distinctions
are entirely lost.
And Paul, to come there, was given the supreme revelation of the
church, the body of Christ, and is himself a personal
representation of the teaching and ministry that was committed to
him. God has wrought it into the very life of this man. And to me,
one of the most striking things is how Paul, of all the apostles,
the authorised Jew, is introduced with his threatening and
slaughters, making havoc of the church, casting men and women into
prison because this thing was a threat to Judaism. That man is
here dealt with by the Spirit of God, so that the Gentile is
eventually just as much as the Jew to him. The marvellous emerging
of this thing was that he withstood even Peter to the face on this
very question. Remember how the Galatian letter opens. With Peter
and certain others "...I withstood him to the face because,
before they were come down he went in and ate with the Gentiles,
but when they were come he withdrew - I withstood him for his
dissimulation". There is some hypocrisy that Paul could not
tolerate now - this man who once had persecuted the Gentiles and
would not have them, is now withstanding Peter to the face that he
is withdrawing from the Gentiles because of the brethren and
because of what they would say if they saw him going in to eat
with the Gentiles. I feel that one of the miracles of New
Testament history is that change in Paul so that he becomes the
embodiment of the truth of the new man where there is neither Jew
nor Gentile, where that distinction has been lost sight of
entirely and it is not a matter of international movement, but One
New Man and if there was ever one new man typically, that was Paul
himself, on this very thing. That is the church, the Body of
Christ, universal in its nature.
3. The Sovereign Headship of the Lord Jesus
Then we went on to the sovereignty, the sovereign headship of the
Lord Jesus, the sovereignty of the new creation. It is very
striking to note that the New Testament begins with the gospel
concerning sovereignty. Matthew introduces the gospel along the
line of sovereignty. It is the King. Matthew - sovereignty. The
striking thing is this, that having introduced the gospel along
the line of sovereignty, before he gets to the end of his gospel,
he has introduced the church as the instrument of that
sovereignty. Matthew 16: sovereignty vested in the church so that
the gates of Hades are unable to prevail against it. That is just
it; the church which is His Body is the instrument of the
administration of the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus as sovereign
Head over all things to the church which is His Body. That is the
nature of the church's power: authority and influence according to
the mind of God. And there is a great quest to recover the
church's prestige today, to recover its influence in the world, to
reinstate it in the world as something to be taken account of and
to be reckoned with. And there has been a great deal of deploring
of the fact that in great international crises the church is not a
factor, whatever men may mean by that. They are thinking of it as
a force on earth with political, moral and social position,
influence, and power, raising its voice of authority in the matter
of ethics and public morals and so on. They do not mean this: the
spiritual sovereignty of Jesus Christ through and by the church
meeting forces of evil behind the world situation; that is another
thing altogether.
It is one thing to raise a public voice to try and stem the tide
of worldly forces, and world counsels, it is quite another thing
to meet the principalities and powers and world rulers of this
darkness, the spiritual hosts of wickedness lying behind the
spiritual bondage of men whose minds are darkened, and who are
governed by the prince of the power of the air. In that realm the
sovereignty of the Lord Jesus counts, and it is in that realm that
the church is paralysed. Earthly position and power is not the
thing that the Lord Jesus desires for His church. The New Man
stands in the sovereignty of his Head, the Lord Jesus Christ.
4. The Perfecting Through Suffering, Chastening
and Discipline
We went on to speak about the perfecting through suffering,
chastening, and discipline, and we want now to recognise that this
relates not only to the individual, but that it is a corporate
thing. It is the church's perfecting.
5. The Corporate Nature of the New Creation
We have all recognised that everything now in the believer's life
is not only personal or individual; it is relative to all other
believers, it is corporate, it is a part of a whole, and we should
rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. And
you will notice that when reading that passage I called attention
to what followed, "speak everyone truth with his neighbour seeing
ye have put on the new man" - the new man, a corporate new man -
and it is a matter of relationships now with all other believers.
Suffering is one suffering; suffering is not isolated suffering, it is suffering in the behalf of the church which is His Body.
Paul saw that principle, "to fill up that which is lacking".
Paul's sufferings were corporate sufferings and we have to
recognise that others are to come into
the benefit of our sufferings. It is for the Body's sake. The
blessing is the same. The ministry is the same. Here you have come
to this then, that everything, while it has a personal application
(seeing that we are severally members of Christ) has supremely a
corporate meaning. It is relative, and all these things are
gathered up in their various expression in the Body, the church.
Now, why this word? For this purpose: that the very term 'the
Body', the very designation 'the Body' (which is the highest
designation given to us for the church) that is the highest in the
realm of what is corporate. When you are thinking in the realm of
relationship, of oneness, then the thing which gets nearest, and
which I think it is impossible to get nearer the principle of
oneness, is the body. If you take the thought of a temple ("ye are
stones built into a temple") it may be brought into very near
proximity, you cannot get the above point; you still remain
individual stones capable of being parted, separated, and the
absence of one stone or more will not destroy the unity of the
whole. You take the other designations of the church and you find
they are intended to represent some particular aspect of the
church like the wife or bride, and there you have the emphasis
upon affectional relationship.
When you come to the body, that designation is intended to bring
you to the final point of what is one; the body is one. Take the
physical body as an illustration, because it is so mutually
intertwined with itself that you cannot touch one point of this
body without touching the whole. You tread on a tack; it only
touches the tip of your toe but your whole body has got it! You
have a bad tooth and you know quite well it involves your whole
body. The oneness is so complete, and you cannot touch a point
without involving the whole, and if you destroy one little part
you have destroyed something which is vital, living; it is not a
dead thing. We have nothing dead in this body, unless we are
suffering paralysis. There is life to the tip and you can take
hold of one hair of the thousands and your whole body has got it.
One wants to press this. It is the nature of oneness and
everything is life in it. It is oneness of life, the oneness of an
intricate system of energy all brought together and registered and
passed into the head. That is the designation of the church in its
highest expression of oneness. Is this what we have today in that which
is called the church? That is not the governing principle of what
is called the church today. There is this extra thing to take into
account. We have not traced it, but it is implied, it is
intelligent oneness. When you touch one of those points, you know
it. It is not the fact of a mechanical oneness, it is conscious
oneness, it is intelligence, and of course, the intelligence of
this spiritual Body is the Holy Spirit - we are all baptised into
one Spirit - and He is the intelligence of the whole from the
Head, from Christ, in whom all the members are gathered up, as the
Head. The Holy Spirit moves through the whole as its intelligent
life, its conscious life. And beloved, it is that that the Lord
wants to have recognised and understood and it is unto that that
the apostle found it necessary to pray for believers that the eyes
of our hearts might be enlightened - not the eyes of our reason -
the sensitive affection organ being made alive to this great
truth; you come into a sympathetic intelligence, knowledge,
understanding of the oneness of all the members. So the very term
"Body" is given to indicate the nature of the oneness of Christ
and His members and all of the members together in Christ.
It is a matter of interdependence. What have we today taking the
place of the body of Christ in this essential? I do not think l
have exaggerated the truth; I have only sought to bring out what
is true: we have committees, councils, companies of men coming
together and organising, and arranging, manipulating and directing
the things of the church along the lines of this world's business
for the most part, and seeking by all kinds of means to draw upon
this world's resources to keep God's work going. You know the
whole system of things. Men running it as they run a business on
this earth, and men have taken charge of the Lord's property. Men
have taken charge of the church of God, but the church does not
belong to men, it belongs to the Lord. The Body is for the Lord,
it is the Lord's, and the Holy Spirit has come here to do the
Lord's work and to carry out the Lord's purpose concerning His
Body. If only we could get back to this, it is going to change
things for us.
Building the Body, perfecting the Body is not our business - to
see to the progress and expression of the church - that is not our
business at all. That is the Holy Spirit's business; it is ours to
be servants of the Holy Spirit, to do as He tells us: to give the
word that He gives to us, to take whatever steps He dictates we
should take, not to sit down and plan and scheme, order, and
govern the thing and bring our judgment to bear upon it. What does
the Lord say about it? And we are finding today the confounding of
the counsels of men as they are trying to run the church of God,
and at best it is not adequate, and the spiritual results are not
ever where you have the most perfectly ordered and running
machinery. The spiritual results are not those you have in the New
Testament because man has taken the place of the Holy Spirit, and
there has been a conforming to this age instead of a transforming
by the renewing of the mind. The new man is a different thing
altogether.
It is the interdependence of all the members that we want to
emphasise; it represents the necessity for a tremendous
emancipation. We have come into an awful inheritance of a
long-standing system. The day was almost before the apostles had
gone, when man pulled the church down out of the heavenlies and
planted it on the earth and made it an earth thing and introduced
man as architect and sought to make it a popular world movement
with something to impress men, and draw men to it instead of
leaving it to the Holy Spirit to draw men to it. That thing has
been developed through all these hundreds of years and we have
entered into that inheritance, and the Lord has got to deliver as
much from a Christian system as from an anti-Christian system. It
is just as big a thing as to deliver out of the power of darkness.
Forgive the stress of this, but it is important that if the Lord
is going to have what His heart is set upon, things like this must
be said. The new man is of heaven, not of earth. His life is from
above, his resources are from heaven; though he might be in a
wilderness, God can prepare a table in the wilderness and He has
proved it again and again. Spiritually and humanly the resources
are heavenly. It does not mean God will not use resources down
here and give it into the hearts of His saints to bring their
wherewithal to His aid, but it is how it comes. It is the
Holy Spirit doing it, not our appeal, our going to people and
saying that the work of God cannot go on unless you give big
collections. It can go on. God can look after His work when men
close their pockets. It is the direction of things; that the
resources are heavenly, not earthly, and when one stream dries up
the Lord has another one. With Elijah, when the brook dries up the
Lord tells him to go to Zarephath, "I have commanded a widow woman
to sustain thee". The Lord has a wonderful way of doing
things. He can do it. It is the heavenly resource of the church,
the heavenly life, heavenly nature.
As we have said before, the constant effort of the enemy, through
man, has been to bring the church down on the earth and make it a
popular movement, and he has damned the church by doing it every
time. That is the way to do it - this is the doctrine of Balaam
who taught Israel to commit fornication; that is, links with the
earth; that which is outside of the covenant, and so they became
cursed of God, and a curse always carries in its train failure to
produce fruit. The thing has to come out of that connection, that
relationship, that system. Now, if it is true, we have got to
recognise the implication of it.
We have used the word 'interdependence'. "The foot cannot say to
the hand, nor the eye to the foot, I have no need of you". There
is interdependence. It means the Lord has brought into this
wonderful life, that every member might get the benefit of the
other members' strength and life, and be sustained and upheld by
them, and that everyone has to live for the whole and the whole to
live for everyone. And if you get that in representation, in part,
wonderful things for God are going to be seen. When one or two
according to God's order go out into some place where God has not
got a representation and there are none there on that spot to
sustain, support, succour, strengthen, it does not matter. There
may be saints from the other end of the earth, but proximity does
not count, it is no factor in the Body of Christ.
Let me prick your foot and then your hand and tell me which you
felt first, which reached your brain first, and you will not be
able for one moment to discern that, because your hand was nearer
your head you felt it in quicker time than your foot. Proximity
does not matter here. It is instantaneous; you can touch the
farthest extremity of your body and it will register just as
quickly as that part which is nearer your brain. You are just as
near to the Lord Jesus in a company here as in the two or three
who are three or four thousand miles away. There can be in that
marvellous unity of the Spirit with the discriminating of all
geographical situations, a mighty speedy co-operation with the
saints thousands of miles away - without the necessity of even
sending a cablegram! The Holy Spirit registers in you, So-and-so
needs prayer; you pray, that synchronises in the moment of their
need, and the thing is done. It is a working thing. Universal,
timeless, sovereign. Even now. That is the order. Paul enjoyed
that, he knew that. He said, "through your prayers". He was
referring constantly to the prayers of the saints for him.
It is relativity in the spiritual realm, the relationship that is
according to God, the new Testament conception of things, and
although you may think it is a hopeless, despairing thing to
expect to have anything like that universally today in this age,
well, you do not abandon the whole thing because you feel it is
hopeless to get all believers into that. Remember that end times
have always seen God recovering His original idea by a remnant, by
a nucleus. Back there in the captivity... who came back from
captivity and reconstituted things according to God? Two tribes
out of 12. What have you at the end of the Old Testament? The
whole people lying under a curse except: "Then they that feared
the Lord spoke often one to another"; you have a remnant according
to the mind of God. That, today, is His way.
While, for the most part, the saints have lost the New Testament
revelation of the church, and they are in something less, the Lord
would have in the earth that which perhaps by comparison is very
small, yet very precious because wholly according to His mind and
it is having that revelation by the Holy Spirit. The Lord would
have us to recognise this principle and co-operate with Him in it
and, so far as we are concerned, stand in that: ruling out the
earthly, the departmental, the divisional, and consequently
getting into the universal thing in its spiritual vocation.
Everything according to God's mind.
So when we have dealt with the individual application of all
these things, we see that the supreme expression is collective,
corporate, for this reason: that there is no one individual who is
capable of entering! In this it is going to take all the members
to enter into the fulness of Christ, the sovereignty of Christ; it
cannot be bestowed in one member in its fulness. The glory ought
never be given to a member in fulness. We must get the ultimate
vision. What is the object of the Body ultimately? Why have we got
bodies? Simply to express ourselves. To give expression to
ourselves; that is all. It is the medium of making known
ourselves, our mind, our thought, our desires. The Body of Christ
is just for that. It is to be for the display of Himself, the
manifestation of Himself, and ultimately the whole universe is
going to see the fulness of Christ through the Body, the church;
it is going to take the whole Body to do it. Christ is so great,
His glory is so marvellous, that it will take a great multitude
which no man can number, out of every nation etc.. That is the way
He is going to do it: bringing many sons unto glory for the
display of His glory that the nations may walk in the light
thereof. We are interdependent for this one reason.
We need Christ in every member and every member needs Christ in
us. That is an awkward way of putting it. The Lord strengthens our
hands by giving to us through others, and He is against everything
that is independent and freelance, that is contrary altogether to
the truth of God; and therein you have the emphasis laid upon the
necessity for subjection. "Subject yourselves one to another".
Subjection in the house of God... though there is no independence.
The opposite is independence, pride, personal action; subjection
is coming into line with all the rest, working in co-operation and
fellowship, order. This interdependence, this relativity, this
corporateness is the principle of God's operation in this age and
for the ages to come, and we must recognise it. It is spiritual,
not mechanical, but spiritual, living, vital - by the Holy Spirit.
The Lord open our eyes to understand it. It is necessary to
believe what He has been saying in these messages.
We shall finish where we began in recognising the Lord Jesus in
His place and we would not put the Body in the place of the Head
for one moment.