The assembly is spiritual, in
that it is entirely outside of this world realm and order. In John 14 the Lord
definitely says that He would reveal Himself to His own, and not unto the world.
Judas took up that statement and said, "What has happened that You are going
to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world?" (John 14:22). Then again
He said, "After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will
see Me..." (John 14:19).
I think that one of the
meanings of His forbidding of Mary to take hold of Him when He said, "Stop
clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father" is this, that the
order is entirely changed, entirely different. What could be in the days of His
flesh of a physical apprehension and association, a natural contact, that which
is in the realm of human senses, no longer obtains. Everything now is outside of
that realm, and outside of that order. So it was that to His own alone He
appeared for the space of forty days, with them alone He assembled, in the midst
of them alone He was received up. He was moving entirely outside of this world's
scene of things.
It is a strong, definite mark
of the true church and of the true assembly that it is with its Lord, quite
outside of this world. This world and this order must not on any account be
brought into the church or made a part of it, neither must the church move into
this world order and become a part of it. Immediately and inasmuch as that clear
distinction and division is overridden, the value and the meaning of Christ
risen is lost. All that is bound up for His people with His risen life is
arrested by those very communications. He has put these asunder, and at the
peril of the church they are brought together.
That, of course, works out in
many ways. Nothing more fatal to spirituality could ever have happened than that
the church should have become a world institution. That is what is the matter,
considered at an extreme point. There are a great many who will not have that
because they see the error of it, and they will call themselves by names which
imply that they repudiate the temporal status and position and office of the
church and its world connection, but who at the same time are just as worldly
and perhaps more so in other respects than that particular body. The thing works
down to very fine points. We are not going to try and analyse it, but simply
make the definite statement, because even in a spiritual assembly, where these
things are recognised, the peril is never far away of something like this.
What it amounts to is that
there must be, on no account whatever, consideration given to this world order
for spiritual advantage. No considerations at all must be entertained for the
danger of the things of God, so far as this realm of things and this order is
concerned. It will rule out a great deal. It will challenge our decisions and
our contemplations, and our considerations. What is the motive in adopting any
given course, making certain appointments, choosing certain people? Is it
because they have something of this realm of things, and of this order which
will be an advantage to the things of the Lord? Any such consideration may be a
snare, and may be found to violate a basic principle of the very assembly, the
very House of God itself.
Resurrection is something
altogether apart from this realm and this order. It is something outside, and
all that is bound up with resurrection is, therefore, outside, and must come
into the church from an entirely different quarter than that of this world and
this order of things. In this way the House of God is a spiritual thing, as
something apart, and the hand of man as man, the touch of the world, may not
rest upon it, may have no place in it. To all such, from centre to
circumference, the Lord's attitude is, "You have no part or portion in this
matter" (Acts 8:21).
Having noted that as something
which is very distinct in relation to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus,
forming His church, and which cannot be overlooked, we can pass on.
The assembly as expressing the
House of God is spiritual in three other connections. This has to do very
largely with its order.
1. In its Membership
On what ground does the
membership of the assembly subsist or consist? Spirituality is the governing
factor, and it determines relationship from start to finish. There is no other
ground recognised by the Holy Spirit and by the Word of God, for membership of
the church, the House of God, of the assembly. A roll of membership may be a
very great snare. It has no place in the New Testament. How strange it is that
words from the New Testament have been taken up and used in connection with
things with which they had no connection in the beginning. Take such a phrase
as: "the right hand of fellowship". It is a word used by Paul, "They
gave to me the right hand of fellowship" (Gal. 2:9). Now did he mean that
they received him into membership of the church? That is unthinkable. No one
ever was received into the church or into an assembly by the right hand of
fellowship. No right hand of fellowship can ever make a person a member of a
spiritual assembly. All that that phrase meant as Paul used it, is that there
was a recognition given to the fact that the people concerned were the Lord's
people. "They gave to me the right hand of fellowship" simply means that
they recognised me as the Lord's, and as the Lord's messenger. You can go no
further than that with any right hand of fellowship.
If you have the right
foundation in spirituality, even though it be in its earliest and most immature
degree and form, nevertheless the right foundation, you have no need of any
membership. But if you get to work on things to keep your people together on
some other ground, and to get them to take responsibility because of this
official recognition, then you had better have a roll. It will become necessary.
But a true spiritual background will bear its own fruit, it will secure the
strongest fellowship; it will result in the taking of responsibility, it will
mean mutual care of one another. There need be no mechanical contrivance
whatever in the place of the true fellowship.
Now that is said more by way of
illustration than by seeking to criticise. The point is that the membership of
an assembly is spiritual in its foundation, in its nature, and if you have not
got spiritual people in the assembly you are better without them, and certainly
you must safeguard the Lord's interests from their interference and from their
having any place whatever in the ordering or the influencing of the things of
God's House.
This is a law which may be
simple, in some senses weak at its beginnings; that is, you may have a babe in
Christ, but there is spirituality at its beginning, and a true babe in Christ is
one ready to be taught and recognises the need of being taught, and needs to
know everything as to walk, and knowledge, and everything else. But this matter
of spirituality is the law by which the church grows, and, as we shall see in a
moment, everything springs out of it and must do, and if it does not, you have a
false formation. We must be very careful as to the ground upon which we come
together, and as to that which holds us together.
Just as a roll may be a snare,
so may be a confession of faith. You get many people to subscribe to a
confession of faith who have no spiritual understanding of what it contains. To
them it is a creed. That has obtained right through the dispensation, with very
baneful and disastrous consequences in many directions. You can subscribe to the
most utter declarations concerning the things of the Lord, and yet remain very
unspiritual.
These may be but things
presented and emphasised and imposed to constitute something; but the way of the
Lord is that people should grow from a beginning into everything that is of
Himself. It is no use, even though you might get many people to accept and bow
to your presentation of truth, to guarantee that they are spiritually in what
you present, you have not secured your end by getting that assent. But even if
they cannot, that is no ground for excluding them. It is no ground of excluding
people because they cannot at present understand all that you say. Given an
acceptance of the Person of the Lord Jesus in all that that Person is, God in
Christ, Christ in God, and that on the basis of a spiritual, living, though
elementary knowledge of Him, fellowship with Him, union with Him, that is the
true beginning of the assembly, and all that is essential. All the rest has to
be grown into. Do you accept, do you understand, do you know this truth, or that
truth? The answer may be: "No, I do not understand that, I have not yet seen
that." Then we have no right to exclude anybody on that ground, and we have no
right to try and cajole them into it, to force them into it by any means. The
way into all the truth is to be led in, and that by the Spirit; or to grow into
the truth. All that is required by the Lord is an openness of heart, and a
responsiveness of spirit, a readiness that, should it be of the Lord, although
it may not be at the moment seen to be, it will be accepted willingly. Once
there is any movement of the Spirit of the Lord in the heart in that direction
there will be no holding back from it; that is, the refusal of truth is not
wilful, it is not by prejudice, it is not by the leadership of human judgement,
but rather the heart is open for all that is of the Lord, whatever it may cost.
Given that there should be the ground of fellowship.
Let us be careful that we do
not allow artificial false barriers to come up between us and other children of
the Lord because they do not see all that we think we see, and are not just
going all the way that we think we are going, have not just reached the point
that we think we have reached. It is so easy to say they have not come into the
truth yet, and when you have done that you have put a hedge around them and put
a label on them and put them on the shelf. That is not the assembly. Membership
is governed entirely by spirituality, not by any imposed or artificial
instrument.
2. In its Ministry
The ministry of the assembly is
also spiritual. Here, of course, Christendom is far from the mark. Those who
have influence, whose influence has to be with others in the direction of the
thought of the Lord for His people, in our desire that everything should be
living in His House, know that this law governs life, that only as things are in
accordance with the Lord's thought can there be life. That is, life is measured
by proximity to the Lord's thought. The Lord's life may be found in realms where
His full thought is not apprehended, only in a limited way. And who shall ever
say that anyone has yet known the full thought of the Lord? We are speaking in a
comparative way now. We may find life at a point somewhat remote from the full
thought of the Lord, but that does not alter the fact and rule out the law that
there should be more life, and will be more life as the Lord's thought is
approached more closely. It is not a matter of whether we know blessing in this
thing. The question is, How much more blessing could we get if we were more in
line with the Lord's things? People take this attitude that says, Well we get
blessing where we are. Yes, that is all right, but could you not have a great
deal more blessing? If it is not only a matter of blessing, could not the Lord
have a great deal more. So we must never think that because there is a measure
of life in anything we have reached the end. The Lord would lead into the
greater measure, and as we have said, this is the governing law, that life is in
proportion to the measure of the mind of the Lord as expressed anywhere.
Ministry is very much involved
in this. Ministry is a matter of spirituality, and ministers are constituted
only by spirituality. The great illustration of this is the book of Numbers. The
book of Numbers seems to correspond very closely to what came in in the book of
the Acts, and especially through the ministry and labours of the apostle Paul.
What you have is the whole company of the Lord's people being ordered as an
assembly, and if you notice, the ordering begins with God speaking out of the
tabernacle. You look into that closely, and you find that what it really means
is God speaking out of Christ. "God... in these last days has spoken to us in
his Son...". God's speech in Christ, through Christ, is the commencement of
the church's order. He speaks out of the tabernacle; not out of heaven now in
the direct sense. God spoke directly out of heaven, directly to Israel in the
Mount. What was that for? That was the giving of the revelation of Himself. The
result of that was the bringing into being of the tabernacle. In a word, that is
the incarnation. When God acts directly from heaven by producing His Son, Christ
becomes the heavenly expression of God amongst men. That is the Mount. But then
Christ is here, the incarnation has taken place, God has spoken. Now He has to
conform a people according to that speech, and it is Christ in the tabernacle,
in the assembly, in the House, in the church, and God speaking out of the
tabernacle by and through His Son. To have the order of the House of God you
have got to have Christ as a Son over God's House present in it. Christ's
presence is the commencement of the divine order amongst us. He is governing, He
is Head, everything is in His hands.
This is not merely technique,
it is a living reality. We know in our own personal experience that if the Lord
is in us truly, and we know the Lord is in us, and we have a touch with the
Lord, that our way, our walk, our conduct is checked up, comes under His hand.
The ordering of our life is taken up by Him, and we know it. How is it that we
cease to do certain things? How is it that we begin to do certain other things?
How is it that there is this changing of conduct by us without anybody saying
anything to us? It is because the Lord the Spirit is ordering the House. In
exactly the same way the presence of the Lord in the midst of any assembly, any
company, is bound spontaneously to reach the heavenly order, if the Lord is
having His way. Man does not have to come and impose something. It grows into
that order. God speaks out of the tabernacle, out of Christ, and the result is
the ordering of the House of God. So, of course, it becomes necessary for us to
listen to the Lord's voice within His church, within the tabernacle, for the
putting out of anything superfluous, the putting right of anything that is
wrong, for the bringing in of anything lacking.
We have already said that the
House of God is a heavenly, spiritual system, and it is this system that is put
into operation when the Lord speaks. The sons of Aaron blew the trumpets, and a
certain way of blowing the trumpets indicated a certain thing, and there were
various ways of blowing those trumpets, and every different way implied a
different thing. A loud blast meant one thing, a soft blowing meant another, a
repeated blowing meant something else, and so on. Now that is all very well from
the Lord's side, but from the side of the people it was necessary to have
spiritual intelligence, otherwise what would happen? Either they would do
nothing, take no notice, the trumpets would not mean anything to them, or they
would do the wrong thing because they had misunderstood the trumpet; or they
would be so divided up in the apprehension of the thing that they would all be
doing different things. It was necessary for them all to be governed by one
spirit of intelligence.
That is Pentecost. That is the
New Testament church: having the same mind, all speaking the same thing. How? By
being governed by the one Spirit. The result of that is in living fruitfulness,
not by arranging a programme that you agree all to speak on the same subject,
that you just impose things on people. You may all, of course, say the same
thing, all be dwelling upon the same theme, but there may not be that livingness
of the Spirit, that fruitfulness, without any arrangement, and without any
conference. The one Spirit speaks through one and another, giving the same
emphasis. It leads things away from man to the Lord. It leads to worship. That
is the governing law of the Spirit, to bring everything to the Lord. Trumpets
were governing factors as to the mind of the Lord.
That is how the Lord would have
it amongst His people, and, blessed be God, this is not an ideal impossible of
realisation, this can be known and is known in measure amongst some of the
Lord's people today; and if only in a measure it is actual today, surely it can
be anywhere where the Lord has spiritual people.
Then we were saying this system
came into operation. He speaks first out of the tabernacle by His Spirit from
His Son. But then He speaks to the tribes by representative members. These
representative members are gathered into the closest touch with Him. What they
are we will mention in a moment, but here is the way. To the tribes the Lord
speaks by means of representative members; that is, to use the term in Numbers,
"heads of fathers' houses". There are responsible ones to the Lord for His
people, who have to have that intelligence which the babes may not have, that
they may bring the spiritually apprehended mind of the Lord to His people for
the ordering of the House. That is what we have in the book of Numbers.
What are these heads? Headship
in the mind of God is always spiritual. The head is generated, not manufactured.
The head is a living, born one, who has grown up; not an officer appointed. That
is a very big difference. Headship is spiritual. He is the head, He is not made
head. No one is made head in the House of God. You cannot vote for a head in the
House of God, you cannot appoint a head by ballot. These who occupy any such
position are that by the act of God, by the walk with God, by the knowledge of
God, by the operation of the Spirit of God in them to produce headship, or they
are in a false position. The Lord will call right back from anything else if He
has His way, if we have become officers in any other way, and when the Lord has
His way with us He will work so that He undermines all that we know and bring us
down to the place where we cannot be in that place of responsibility only as we
have a knowledge of the Lord commensurate with that responsibility.
Therefore ministry is
spiritual, not official. You cannot make a minister by any outward activity or
appointment. The minister must grow up, must be the product of a walk with God,
so that he and his ministry are spiritual. In the New Testament elders were not
made: they were recognised. When it says that they ordained elders, it does not
mean that they appointed officers as such. They recognised where there was
spiritual value, where there already obtained those features of spiritual
trustworthiness, spiritual measure, spiritual values, and took account of that,
recognised in the midst of the assembly such as having by the Holy Spirit been
provided for that assembly as its ministers. That is how we come into any place.
As it works one way, so it works the other. If the Lord gets hold of us in the
fullest position, He works to bring us into the truth by destroying the merely
official, destroying it in such a way as to make us know that we cannot go on
because we have not got the resources to go on; He brings an end to that. But it
works the other way, that the Lord Himself maintains that ministry; He is the
fountain of oil for His own ministry. If at any point you and I cease to draw
upon the Lord, and go on with our official position, we create disaster, and we
very soon begin to realise that something very serious has happened, and there
will be a breakdown. The Lord is the fountain of ministry, and we need the olive
tree in order to go on.
The case of Barnabas and Saul
is a striking example of this, being what they were, Paul having had such a
revelation as he had, and having received such a commission as he received at
the commencement, even at his conversion. Paul was such a chosen vessel, and he
with Barnabas became just a part of the assembly in Antioch, and stayed there
amongst the others as members of an assembly during long months. The Lord the
Spirit did not come to them directly and say, "Now, look here, you know what I
commissioned you for thirteen months ago; now go out and do it, the time has
come for you to take up your office." He did not leave them with the necessity
of announcing to the oversight of the assembly that they were servants of the
Lord, and the Lord had told them that they must recognise them as servants now,
and they must go out to their life work. It came through the assembly and its
spiritual headship: "Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which
I have called them." Probably the oversight knew who the men were, and what
their experience was, but there is the case that it was nothing official,
nothing that they could enter upon as an official thing. It had become spiritual
in every sense, and the spontaneous result of the Holy Spirit's sovereignty in
the assembly.
These heads of fathers' houses,
and these princes in Israel - now speaking of the type, speaking of what they
were literally - were men of dignity, and men of substance, men of wealth, and,
while we may not trace those things in the New Testament order, that those who
were given ministry and oversight and responsibility were, so far as this world
is concerned, men of position, and honour, and substance, and wealth, there is
no doubt about it that those were the things in the spiritual direction which
marked the servants of the Lord then, and always are the marks of true ministry.
There is spiritual dignity, there is spiritual substance, spiritual wealth, so
that as the princes in Israel were marked out by the people, were conspicuous
amongst them, so amongst the Lord's people there is no mistaking those who are
to take responsibility. They strike upon the consciousness of others, as those
who have something of the Lord. So the Lord would have it, and govern everything
in this way by spirituality.
This is important, because it
requires the upsetting of another system, and it explains how the Lord does
things. We have so often found ourselves in the difficult position of being
asked why we do not give work, responsibility, ministry, and so on. But that is
the old way of doing things, it is not the living way; because anyone has a
scope and an opportunity for ministry who has substance. If you have something
of the Lord, you have substance, and yours is a life of dignity in accordance
with the holy things of the Lord, and there is room and opportunity for that. We
put it that way simply to make the point practical. This is the way of ministry.
This is according to spiritual value and never by arrangement or organisation.
It must be spontaneous, and it must come out and be revealed by the Lord
Himself.
We should perhaps be missing
something if we did not point out that in the book of Numbers, which is
illustrated for us in the New Testament order of the House of God, in the
assembly, the ordering of the House came along two lines. Those two lines are
represented by Moses and Aaron. Moses and Aaron are only two sides of one
person. They are brethren, and they represent the two sides of the Lord Jesus
Himself: Moses the administrative side, and Aaron the priestly side. You have
them wonderfully combined in the case of the apostle Paul, and you have them
wonderfully manifested in the ordering of the New Testament assemblies. I have
been reading again Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, and have been greatly
impressed again with this very thing, how that for a time he could speak so
strongly, so firmly, could be very downright and very straight. He will speak of
his coming, and if he comes there will be no weak handling of the situation. But
before he has got much further he is saying that he entreats them as a father.
He tells them they have many instructors but not many fathers. The two things
come in one chapter, and you find Moses and Aaron operating together, the
administration and the love.
That has to be in a true
assembly. The Lord has to express Himself in that way. The two sides mean this:
Moses is really God dealing with man, Aaron is really man coming to God. It is
from God to man, and from man to God, and it is very blessed to note that, while
God must have things right if He is going to deal with man, He cannot overlook
anything that is wrong. He must and He does jealously watch and deal with all
sin and all wrong, and so you get administration of the Holy Ghost, the judicial
administration of the Holy Ghost, governing a true assembly, and letting nothing
go that is evil and wrong. Sooner or later it is brought to book. Yet when that
is yielded to, submitted to, when the evil is put away, then you have the other
side: there is a clear way to the Lord.
It was in a marvellous way that
Paul dealt with that man at Corinth. Who he was I am not sure. Some people think
he was the fornicator of whom Paul wrote. What is clear is that he was a violent
opponent of the apostle himself, he was one that had opposed in such a way as to
make things very difficult indeed for the apostle Paul, probably to turn the
assembly aside from Paul, to do much mischief. There were evidently evil things
in the man's life, and so the apostle was dealing with that in writing to the
assembly about it, and did not just take up the cudgels for himself, and try to
reinstate himself, but he pointed out the evil, and that if there was evil in
this man's life they were altogether wrong in being influenced by him. That
influence was against the apostle. How could they accept an influence which was
arising from a life that was evil? Paul's personal acceptance was a secondary
thing. They were exhorted to put the evil thing right, and to judge that, to
deal with this man, and then Paul was quite sure that they would be all right
with him. That is what it amounted to.
Then they judged the man, probably put him out
of the assembly, and the Holy Ghost seems to have judged the man, and he seems
to have had a very bad time. Then the apostle heard what they had done, and what
the man had said, and then he wrote and asked them to forgive him if he were
penitent.
Here you see judgement and mercy, here is Moses
and Aaron working marvellously in the assembly, wrong being dealt with severely
in the assembly by the assembly, and by the Holy Ghost, and it seems that it was
an extreme case of evil in the assembly, a very bad case. It does not matter how
bad the case was, there is restoration, there is the priestly place to bring
back the wrongdoer. Thank God there is always the priest alongside of the
administrator.
God always comes to us in the dual capacity. If
He must deal with sin in judgement in the assembly, judgement beginning at the
House of God, He never ceases to be the priest, keeping the way open for the one
to return, to come into full fellowship with Himself and with His own. Let us
see that we never finally close the door to anyone. If we do we abandon the
ground of the priest. At the same time let us see to it that we do not try to
keep on the ground of the priest, to close our eyes to the need of holiness, and
righteousness before God, and to forsake our responsibility in the Lord to judge
wrong, and to administer.
We can see through all this a little of what a
spiritual house, a spiritual state is, and how necessary it is to be spiritual
for all this and not official.