"For
we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning our
affliction which befell us in Asia, that we were weighed
down exceedingly, beyond our power, insomuch that we
despaired even of life: yea, we ourselves have had the
sentence of death within ourselves, that we should not
trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead: who
delivered us out of so great a death, and will deliver:
on whom we have set our hope that he will also still
deliver us" (2 Cor. 1:8-10).
The Fact of the Experience of Suffering
The first thing that comes to us from this
little bit of Paul's autobiography is the fact of this
experience. He does not seem to regard it as some
extraordinary thing. He takes it, it would seem, almost
as the normal course of the life of a servant of God. He
simply speaks of it as something which befell him in Asia
- almost like a normal happening. Great and evidently
terrible as it was, it is taken as something which just
befell, happened, occurred; and this would say to us that
the tremendous experiences of adversity and suffering and
trial through which the Lord's people go must not be
regarded as spiritual catastrophes, as if everything has
gone wrong, our universe is going to pieces, Satan is
simply carrying everything away and the Lord is left
stranded and defeated. That is a strong way of putting
it, but it is said merely to draw attention to this fact,
that in the course of the life of a very true and
faithful and devoted servant who stands for the Lord's
highest and fullest interests, things like this do befall
him. The word here is better expressed by our word
"converge upon." You and I, in the time of
difficulty and adversity, deep suffering and trial, are
so often tempted to think that something very wrong has
taken place, and there is a big question as to whether it
ought to be, seeing we belong to the Lord. We are really
in heart devoted to the Lord, we mean business with Him -
and now look at this! Well, it befell and it befalls. We
must get to the point of a conclusion about this, that
there is no charm resting upon the life of the most
devoted child of God, there is no special providence to
say that no adversity shall overtake, shall befall. It
just does happen, it is a fact, and that is where we
begin.
It happened to Paul, it befell him, it
"converged upon" him, but he does not raise any
questions at all about God or about spiritual issues in
such a way as to lead him into difficulties with the
Lord. Are you one whose way has been, and perhaps still
is, one of great adversity, trial, suffering, perplexity?
It has happened to you, it has overtaken, it has befallen
you. Well, Paul is not alone in this, that it is a part
of the course of things. It has a meaning; but my point
at the moment is that these things are facts. You cannot
get away from them. You must settle down to it that they
are facts to be recognised and accepted as making up the
lot of a true servant and child of God. That is where we
begin.
Exercise in Regard to the Experience
But then there is another thing here. Of
course, we do not know what was the exact nature of this
particular trial. Some think it refers to Paul's time in
Ephesus and that he was nigh unto being flung to wild
beasts in the arena. He did say on another occasion that
he fought with beasts at Ephesus, speaking metaphorically
(1 Cor. 15:32). It may have been that, but it is more
probable that it was some terrible illness which overtook
him, some sickness which brought him to an end of all
hope. Whatever it was, he says: "We despaired even
of life; yea, we ourselves have had the sentence of death
within ourselves." You wonder why he repeats that
word "ourselves." That is the difficulty of
translation. If it were put into literal English, it
would be something like this. "We doomed
ourselves"; that is, We came to a verdict ourselves
about the situation. As to ourselves, our verdict was -
This is the end, death! But what we want particularly to
note is the exercise that the affliction produced in
Paul. Evidently he had been looking into this thing,
scrutinising it and saying, What is the Divine meaning in
my situation? What does the Lord mean by this? Although
it looks like a hap, it has befallen me, yet the Lord has
something bound up with it. There was enquiry and
exercise about the situation, and in his prayerful
investigation, he comes to realise what the Lord's mind
is, and he sums it all up in the little word - THAT.
"We have had the sentence of death within ourselves,
THAT we should not trust in ourselves, but in
God..." All this happened in order that... There was
a Divine object, a Divine meaning, something quite
precise. In order that...
Well then, the second step is that we must
have inward exercise in order to find out what the Lord
means by the things which befall us, because nothing
happens to a true child of God without the Lord having a
meaning in it. There must be exercise until we come to
the point where we are able to say, Oh, I see - that is
the Lord's object and aim and purpose. It is in order
that... What a mighty "that"! It is the issue
of a prayerful enquiry as to why we are permitted to go
through some of the dark ways of trial and suffering in
which we despair. We come to an end, and we pass sentence
upon ourselves. We say, "Well, I am finished, I am
at an end: so far as I am concerned, it is death, there
is no hope." We pass the sentence. But we believe
that God has something in it and we have got to get that
out of it; the result must be a concrete
"that..."
The Explanation - "God Who Raiseth
the Dead"
That leads right up to the final thing,
"...that we should not trust in ourselves, but in
God who raiseth the dead." It is a passing right
over from one ground to another, from the ground of
ourselves to the ground of God. In ourselves there is
death, an end; but with God there is a beginning -
"who raiseth the dead." It is the whole history
of the Church gathered up into a little clause of four
words. It is the whole object of the Church in this
dispensation, wrung out of the soul exercise of this man
Paul. What is the history of the Church? What is the
Divine object in the Church in this dispensation? It is
that in every part God shall have opportunity of showing
that by Jesus Christ He has conquered death and triumphed
over all the limitations and all the finalities of what
is natural, and has made possible the limitless fullness
of resurrection life. Dear friends, it is true that at
the last the Church will be seen to have been God's
instrument in establishing in this universe the fact that
through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ,
death, that age-long enemy of God and man, has been
absolutely destroyed. That truth is going to be worked
out through the Church. "Now unto principalities and
the powers in the heavenlies might be made known through
the church the manifold wisdom of God" (Eph. 3:10).
In all that is this central thing - death. What do we
mean by death? We are not talking simply of physical
death, but of a great spiritual thing. Death is the thing
which pronounces an end. Whenever you and I say, This is
the end, we are finished! - we have succumbed to death.
That is the verdict of death, for death always says that.
The Church should never believe in ends - that is to
capitulate to death. Although a thousand times in
ourselves we might feel the end has come, in the very
experience which brings us to that place God has invested
a new realisation that in Him that finality is cancelled
out. We should never expect an end until God says, That
is the end! He is the God of hope, "who... begat us
again unto a living hope, by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible,
and undefiled, and that fadeth not away" (1 Pet.
1:3-4). If we leave out the negative and read only the
positive statement in the passage which we are
considering we read: "That we should... trust in God
who raiseth the dead."
Are you expecting ends, limitation,
feeling that for you there is no hope, no future? Do not
believe it! Get down to this and see it as the great
eternal fact - God is trying to bring us to the place
where we stop expecting what the Devil is constantly
offering through circumstances - death, an end,
limitation. God is all the time thinking of increase,
enlargement. That is the history of the Church. Again and
again, generally and in individual cases, it has been
said, This is the end: it is all over: the Lord has done
with us; and yet - oh, how slow we are to learn it, to
get it fixed, established! - it does not prove to be the
end, does it? We find that there is still a lease of
life, still something more in the Lord's intention; and
even when the point is really reached of an end here on
earth, we do not believe that is the end of life and work
- it is emancipation unto fullness.
These are very simple things, but all hang
upon this little word "that." God allows very
deep and hard and painful things - things which bring us
in ourselves really to the point of giving up, where we
pass the verdict of death upon ourselves. He allows them
with this object, that - however much we may have known
and proved the truth in our earlier experience - He may
bring us yet a stage further into the power and good of
it, that God raiseth the dead. If He does that, then
there is hope for anybody and for anything. The Lord give
us more of this disciplined, instructed, enlightened
faith. We cannot come to it by being told it, by hearing
it a thousand times, but only by experience. Some of you
know what we are talking about. You know despair, you
know hopeless situations, you know what it is to come to
the place where you are finished and throw up your hands.
If you do not, you may know it yet. The Lord is after
getting us, as many as He can, through to that place
where, in and through His Church, death is swallowed up
in victory, death is no more. That is practically the
last word of the Bible. Nearly the first words of the
Bible are about the entrance of death; the tree of life
was cut off. At the end of the Bible we read "Death
shall be no more" (Rev. 21:4). That has got to be
wrought out in an instrument, and we know that that
process is very practical. The Lord enable us to
learn that lesson and gain the vantage ground of the
triumph of Christ's resurrection.
From "This
Ministry" Messages given at Honor Oak - Volume 3. Originally published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Nov-Dec 1947, Vol. 25-6.