Reading: 2 Cor. 3; Rom. 8:19,29; 5:17-19; 3:12; 4:6; Gen. 2:17; 3:4-7.
In
those passages you have the parts of a wonderful
revelation. First of all, there is God’s thought and
intention: His Son, His image, His fullness; the
standard, the model, the completeness. Then you have
believers conformed to the image of His Son, and the
whole creation brought into being in relation to that
purpose, its very meaning and object found in the
intention of God as to His Son, and man’s conformity
to His image. So that the whole creation is, as it were,
made to hang upon one central purpose, man in the image
of God’s Son.
Life and Light
Two
things become the great governing factors and principles
by which the purpose was to be realised; the one life,
the other light. “God who commanded the light to
shine out of darkness,” planted a tree of life, open
to man, and a tree of light (the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil) which, while man was under probation, was
kept from him, under a prohibition. It is well to
remember that true light only comes along the line of the
obedience of faith. It was not that God was withholding
essential knowledge from man, but was testing him as to
his faith in Himself, and as to his obedience of faith.
We
have seen how things proceeded. Man ceased at a certain
point to believe and obey God, and believed and obeyed
God’s adversary instead, and man’s disbelief
and the disobedience were in the direction of having
knowledge and light for his own ends and glory, that he
should have the seat of glory and power and wisdom in
himself, and become something. When you have recognised
that you have got to the heart of everything, for God
never intended man to have that in himself, but only in
His Son. The glory and the wisdom, the knowledge and the
power are all bound up with His Son, Jesus Christ, and
never to be had apart. Man essayed to possess it all
himself, to have it in himself, so that he would become
independent in God’s universe. So he struck for
light and knowledge, for self-glory and empowerment, and
exaltation. The result was immediate death. “In the
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”.
There was no postponing of things. Death took place that
day, and the evidence of the death from that day onward
is blinding, darkness or ignorance; just the opposite of
what they aimed at, and struck for. Even when we come to
Israel in the wilderness in the presence of a great
revelation of God’s glory, we read that their minds
were hardened, and a veil was upon their hearts; and that
veil remains.
All
that, of course, is the working out of a deeply laid
plot, a plot to defeat God in His purpose, to cheat Him
of His end, to frustrate the realisation of His intention
concerning His Son. The history of this world is the
history of a rivalry between the Son of God and Satan;
divine purpose fixed in Christ, divine purpose assailed
by Satan, and the assault always directed against the Son
of God, revealing that Satan’s great object is to
have the place which God has given to the Son. So that
this is just the outworking of that plot, that evil
device.
Now we
come to this second letter to the Corinthians. It has a
tremendous background and you will see how very great is
its significance and its value. Oh, how much there is
behind this letter. Here is a man sitting down to his
spiritual correspondence, writing to believers a personal
letter, and as he writes the Spirit of God takes him back
into the past eternity and into the counsels of God,
touching all the deep, mighty elements of the drama of
the ages. When you read the letter for the first time, it
looks like so many personal things said by one man to a
few friends, but if you dwell upon it, meditate upon it,
it expands, and expands, and you find yourself taken
right back into the heart of God before times eternal,
and on through the past ages and up to the cross of the
Lord Jesus, and out from the cross on through this
dispensation, and still on to the consummation of all
things. It is all in one simple letter.
We
come, then, to this letter, and with but a few touches
there flash out these great thoughts of God. We commenced
with the verse so well-known in chapter 5:
“Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a new
creation: the old things are passed away; behold, they
are become new” (verse 17, R.V. margin). God is here
seen beginning all over again. The creation missed its
way. Its course was foiled, the purpose of God in it was
interrupted, it went astray. Creation is bound to a
divine purpose, but even if in the straight way of that
divine purpose it has not the urge of that purpose unto
consummation, while if it has gone out of the way it is
like a person within whom is a groaning to get back.
“The whole creation groaneth and
travaileth…” What for? “…waiting for
the manifestation of the sons of God.” “The
earnest expectation of the creation” is still bound
up with God’s purpose. That creation has gone
astray. The purpose of God cannot be set aside, and
therefore there must, if needs be, be a new creation, and
that in Christ Jesus.
“God,
that said, Light shall shine out of darkness…”
(We are back at the creation.) For what purpose was this?
That His Son, the fullness and the express image of His
thought and intention for man, should give character to
the race, and that we should be conformed to that image.
God said light should shine out of darkness, and that was
His first act in the direction of that purpose. Now you
leap right into it here, without ages between:
“…hath shined into our hearts, to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ”. You have all the divine thought and
intent, and the divine end, reached in Jesus Christ.
There is a new creation, a creation with a purpose, which
is conformity to the image of God’s Son. How is it
to be reached? By life. Put your pencil line underneath
each occurrence of the word “life” in this
second letter to the Corinthians. You will be surprised
how many times that word occurs, and you will notice that
it is always life out of death. The apostle is speaking
much of his own experience. “We despaired even of
life.” Ah yes, but there was an object in God’s
bringing him there. What was the object? “…that
we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which
raiseth the dead.” “Always bearing about in the
body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may
be manifested in our mortal flesh.” Life works in
you as the result of our dying! There is much more about
life coming out of death with which we will not stay at
this time. Then there is light out of darkness: life and
light in relation to the new creation, with this end in
view, conformity to the image of God’s Son.
All
those elements are quite clear, and you can piece them
together. Our purpose is to bring it down to quite a
precise application.
God’s Purpose and its
Realisation
Firstly,
God’s intention. An attaining unto the full measure
of Christ as God’s standard is His intention. We are
told definitely that “whom he foreknew, he also
foreordained” to that end, “to be conformed to
the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn
among many brethren”.
Secondly,
the way to its realisation. The apostle sums all up in
one central thing in the creation, giving the creation
its meaning and its value, namely, the revelation of
Jesus Christ in us.
Now
you see the movement. In Romans relatedness to God is
secured anew through the work of Christ in His cross;
righteousness, which is by faith. Those who were
separated, afar off, alienated through sin and wicked
works, are made nigh by His blood, and union with God in
Christ is established; deliverance from all that which
had come in to frustrate the divine purpose, deliverance
from the dead man: “O wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God
through Jesus Christ our Lord.” So the relationship
is renewed and established through faith on the ground of
righteousness.
In the
first letter to the Corinthians a man indwelt by the Holy
Spirit, and endowed with spiritual capacities for knowing
the things of God, is seen. As the apostle says, “We
have not received the spirit of the world, but the spirit
which is of God, that we might know the things which
are… given us by God.” That is enablement,
empowerment, that is faculty for spiritual knowledge, for
spiritual things; the man is there. Now that is what is
to go on in that man. What is the central thing that is
to be the object of those faculties? For what are those
faculties given? They are given for an apprehension of
Jesus Christ. In a word it all amounts to this, that to
reach God’s end, to come to that fullness of our
foreordination according to His foreknowledge, there must
be that inward revelation of Jesus Christ which is
constantly expanding. All growth is bound up with that,
and so the apostle bases the whole of this argument upon
the one point, namely, that “God… hath shined
in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”. I take
that phrase “the face of Jesus Christ” to mean
that Jesus Christ is an image or portrait of God’s
glorious thought. It is only a figurative word, which
does not mean actually his countenance. The face is the
representation: it is the man. The knowledge of the glory
of God is in the face of Jesus Christ, and that has to
come into us by revelation. Every inch of ground in
spiritual progress that you and I will cover, every bit
of advance in spiritual increase will be upon the basis
of some fresh revelation of Jesus Christ in our hearts
— not truth to our minds but the revelation of the
person in our hearts. God has bound up everything with
His Son in person, and there can be no light, no
knowledge and no life leading to God’s end apart
from the revelation of Jesus Christ. Thus spiritual
progress, spiritual increase just resolves itself into a
question of the unveiling of Jesus Christ in our hearts
by the Holy Spirit, so that as we go on we are able to
say: “I am seeing more and more of what the Lord
Jesus is, and who He is in the divine thought, and that
seeing for me is enlargement, is increase, is strength,
is life, is power.” It is all such a thing as that.
The Proof of Experience
You
see the apostle takes an illustration. He takes us back
to Israel at Horeb, and tells us of Moses going into the
Mount, of his receiving the law and coming down with some
of the light on his face, and standing before the
congregation and reading the law, and of the glory being
too much for them to look upon, so that he had to put a
veil over his face. He read a law which itself was in
glory, given in glory and accompanied by glory, albeit a
glory that was departing. What was the effect? It was, as
we have said, written by the finger of God, it was
accompanied by glory, it was an unveiling of the divine
mind for His people. Everything was very wonderful; it
spoke of God, had all the accompaniments of heaven with
it: but what was the effect? Death! Condemnation! That
very generation perished in the wilderness, and never
came to the end which God had fixed for it. God had
referred to the land flowing with milk and honey, with
fullness. That was His thought, His intention, His
purpose. He covenanted to give them the land. Then came
the revelation of His mind as to the way in which they
could come into His thought and intention for them, and
they perished in the wilderness and never reached the
land. Why? Because there was not only a veil over the
face of Moses, but there was a veil over their hearts.
They had not had the eyes of their hearts enlightened.
They had not received a spirit of wisdom and revelation
in the knowledge of Him.
The
apostle takes that right up and comes immediately to the
question of the new creation, and says: “Things are
different now; there is no need that anyone should perish
in the wilderness today. Here is the so much greater
advantage which secures God’s end.” What is it?
It is not something presented to you in your impotence
and helplessness, but a revelation given within you,
Christ who is God’s full intention revealed within
you. It is not something objective to which we are
journeying; it is Christ within, the hope of glory. It is
not something into which we have to strive day by day,
but an inward reality. Christ is revealed within, and
when you see Him, you are in the land. You have come
right into living touch with God’s end. What
remains? Only that what is within you should be expanding
from day to day, growing, increasing, until Christ (as
the apostle puts it) is fully formed in you, and you, not
now beholding Him in some objective way, but by the Holy
Spirit in your own hearts seeing the Lord Jesus in a
growing way, are changed into the same image from one
degree of glory to another, conformed to the image of
God’s Son. It all hangs upon this: “God…
hath shined into our hearts…” God has made this
whole thing in His purpose now an inward thing by the
Holy Spirit. How near we are to it. How marvellous is the
possibility of reaching God’s end. The apostle here
says, in effect: “That is the basis of all our
ministry. We are not talking from a book; we are not,
like Moses reading from tables of stone; we are not just
reciting something which God has written; we are now
living out something that God has done within”. That
is ministry. “We have this ministry.” That is
something that is coming from the inside.
Now
let us see how far we have, for real practical ends,
grasped the significance of this. Let us start at the
beginning. Can you really associate yourself with these
words: “God… hath shined into our hearts to
give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in
the face of Jesus Christ”? You can put it in other
words if you like, if that seems too wonderful. Can you
really say, I know the Lord Jesus in a living way within
my own heart? Then you have all the fullness summed up in
that, and all that you need to reach God’s end is
that you should discover what you have; not seek that God
will give you more, but that God will show you what you
have in Christ, what Christ is. There is such a fullness
in Christ that it will take so much longer than the
longest life that we could live here on this earth to
discover anything worth while comparatively of what
Christ is. I am quite certain that the one effect left
upon us of a growing knowledge of the Lord Jesus will be
that we feel we are only on the edge of things all the
time. However long we live, and however long that goes
on, we are only on the edge of things. I am sure that is
true in the case of those who are discovering something
more of the Lord Jesus. I can say that my most recent
discovery of the Lord brought me to the place where I
wondered if I had ever known Him before. It almost makes
you feel that you have been wasting your time when you
get a new revelation of the Lord Jesus. That is how it
will always be. It is a wonderful thing to have a
revelation of God in Christ in your own heart, and it is
a wonderful thing if that revelation is opening out,
growing from day to day as you go on. Do believe that,
while it may sound to you a thing altogether too high for
you, it is meant to be of the greatest and simplest help
to you.
You
young people have a high standard put before you, the
whole thing seems so immense, and so difficult, that you
wonder if ever you will reach it, and sometimes you
perhaps feel the burden of it all, and do not feel you
will ever attain. Now let us get rid of all that burden,
and all that worry, and come right back to the secret of
everything that God ever intended for you. It is this:
“Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Have you
despaired of reaching that glory? Well, the hope of glory
is Christ in you. There is hope. If you look upon the old
creation, that old creation of which you are a part, and
which is in you, you despair. Christ in you is the hope
of glory. There is a new creation in Christ Jesus. If you
have the basic thing you have the root of the matter. We
do not mean that thing of which a great many people are
talking in their modernism, about the Christ in every
man. We mean that definite act of faith in Christ Jesus,
and His work on the cross, by which you receive Him into
your life and are thereby born again and made a new
creation. If that has taken place, and you know that
Christ is in you, you have the root of the matter.
Everything in the outworking of divine purpose related to
that is simply a matter of your seeking to know the Lord
Jesus Christ in all that He is as your fullness for every
day.
The Path of Discovery
As you
look at this second letter to the Corinthians, you see
that it begins another chapter in this very thing, and
you look at the apostle Paul himself there, because he is
brought into view as a practical example of this truth.
You will see what is implied when we speak of learning to
know what it means that Christ has been revealed within.
See this apostle, in whom Christ is, in whom Christ has
been revealed, taken into definite situations, trying
circumstances, deep waters, through much suffering, and
as he passes that way I see that all that upon which he
might count and reckon in himself and in this world to
get him through is breaking down. He comes to a place
where he himself cannot go on any further, and he knows
it; he cannot take another step, he cannot put forth
another effort. If this man had ever acted upon the
strength of his own will — and, you know, some
people can do an immense amount by their will power, and
I think Paul did something in that way sometimes —
if ever he had been so actuated by his own will as a
strong-willed man, making up his mind that he would do it
if he died in the attempt, he got to the end, where he
could not make another effort, he despaired of life. Then
it was that he made a discovery, that that was not the
end but the beginning. When he got to the end himself
there was “God who raiseth the dead”.
He
discovered Christ in him as the risen One in the power of
resurrection, and to have made that discovery had a
wonderful result. In what way? “We have this
ministry.” The whole of this second letter to the
Corinthians is on the ministry. What is this ministry? It
is the ministry of life being ministered, the life of the
risen Lord who has been discovered as life, discovered in
the hour of death. The energy of His risen life was
discovered in the hour when all his own energy had come
to an end. Yes, the light of that risen life breaking
upon him when he was in a corner and did not know which
way to turn, and felt that he was shut in and there was
no way out. He discovered that the Lord had a way out,
the Lord had ways of which he was entirely ignorant, the
Lord knew more than he did.
To
make that discovery sometimes is good. Somehow or other
we are always coming up against the fact that the Lord
knows more than we do, and knows better than we do. That
is discovering what Christ in you is. It is very
practical. It is something for every day. Believe me, the
Lord is taking you and me along such a path with the one
object (Oh, let this be written in our hearts!) of making
us discover what a Christ we have; and as we discover
Him, what He is to us in every circumstance, in every
need, in every hour of despair and weakness, and
helplessness, that is the increase of Christ. That means
that something more of the Lord has become our life, and
that kind of thing goes on. That is why the Lord presses
us so much, deals with us as He does. The greatest
discoveries have been made in the greatest trial, and the
deepest distress of heart. We have come out with a fuller
measure of the Lord. That is what constitutes ministry,
Paul says here. “We have this ministry”, and
“We have this treasure in vessels of fragile
clay…” and that is necessary in order that
“the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God
and not of ourselves”. It is all of God. It is
revealed in Christ.
We
have touched upon the mere fringe of this whole glorious
matter. We see that “the earnest expectation of the
creation waiteth for the revealing” of this that God
is today doing in secret, under cover. The world is not
seeing, and we ourselves do not always see what God is
doing in us, but there is going to be a day of
manifestation. It is the day when sonship is manifested,
and sonship is not just some kind of formal relationship
to God. Sonship is a nature developed, a likeness
produced. The day of the manifestation of that likeness
to His Son is coming, and the whole creation will heave a
great sigh of relief and say, We have arrived at last!
That
is God’s end, the revelation of His Son in us, our
conformity to His image, the hope, the assurance.
“God… hath shined into our hearts, to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ.”