We now pass to the
letters to the Corinthians, and, again following our
method, we seek to find that which will sum up all that
these letters contain. After all the details, all that
goes to make up these letters - and it is quite a lot -
we ask: 'What does it amount to? What is the result with
which we are left?' And once more we shall find that it
is only the gospel again - forgive me putting it like
that - it is just a matter of the gospel again from
another angle, another standpoint.
We may be surprised to
learn that the word 'gospel', or, as it would be in the
original, the term 'good tidings', occurs in these two
letters no fewer than twenty-two times: so that we are
not just taking a little fragment and hanging an undue
weight upon it. We need some fairly solid foundation upon
which to base our conclusions, and I think that
twenty-two occurrences of one special word in such a
space forms a fairly sound basis. Whatever else these
letters are about, they must be about that. Much of what
you read in these letters might lead you to think it was
not like that at all - it looks very bad; but what we are
after is the resultant issue.
The
Summing Up of the Letters
There is one very
familiar sentence which sums up the whole of the two
letters. It occurs, naturally, at the end of the second
letter.
"The grace of
the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the
communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all" (2
Cor. 13:14).
This is sometimes
called 'the benediction' or 'the blessing'. That is, of
course, man's title for it. But it is not just an
appendix to a discourse - a conventional way of
terminating things, a nice thought. Nor was it used by
Paul as a kind of concluding good wish or commendation
with which to terminate a meeting, as it is commonly used
now. I suppose there is a blessing in it, but you have to
look much more deeply than just at these phrases. Really
it was a prayer, and a prayer in which was summed up the
whole of the two letters which the Apostle had written.
In Paul's wonderful way of comprehending much in few
words, everything that he had penned through these two
letters is in this way gathered up.
The
Order of the Summing Up
It is perhaps important
to note the order of these three clauses. The grace of
the Lord Jesus, the love of God, the communion or
fellowship of the Holy Spirit. That is not the order of
Divine Persons. If it were the order of Divine Persons,
it would have to be changed: 'The love of God, the grace
of the Lord Jesus, and the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit'. But we have no need to attempt to put God right
- to try to improve upon the Word of God and the Holy
Spirit's order. This is not the order of Divine Persons.
It is the order of the Divine process. This is the way
along which God moves to reach His end, and that is
exactly the summing up of these two letters. All the way
through God is moving to an end, and this prayer of
Paul's is according to the principle, the order, of
Divine movement.
Let us now come to the
words themselves, and see if we can find a little of the
gospel - the 'good tidings' of these two letters -
gathered into these three phrases.
The
Grace of the Lord Jesus
What was the grace of
the Lord Jesus? Well, if you look back in this second
letter, to chapter 8, verse 9, you have it.
"Ye know the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich,
yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his
poverty might become rich".
There are three quite
simple elements in that statement. The Lord Jesus did
something - He became poor; and what He did was voluntary
- for grace ever and always carries that feature at its
very beginning. It is that which is perfectly voluntary;
not compelled, not demanded, under no obligation, but
completely free. The grace of our Lord Jesus meant
firstly a voluntary act. That is grace very simply, but
it goes to the heart of things. So that is what He did -
He became poor. And then the motive, as to why He did it:
'that we, through His poverty, might be made rich'.
I think that is a
simple, and a very beautiful, analysis and synthesis of
grace. He became poor - He did it without compulsion -
and in so doing His motive was that we might become rich.
Now, you see, you have
here in the Lord Jesus a Person and a nature wholly and
utterly, fully and finally, different from any other
human being; a nature completely contrary to the nature
of man, as we know it. Human nature as we know it is
being rich, doing anything to become rich, and anybody
else can be robbed to make us rich. That does not
necessitate taking a pistol and putting it at people's
heads. There are other ways of getting advantages to
ourselves, at other people's expense or otherwise. There
is really no 'grace' about man, as we know him. But the
Lord Jesus is so different from this! Christ is
altogether different - an altogether other nature.
Now the whole of the
first letter to the Corinthians is crammed full of the
self-principle. I am assuming that you are more or less
familiar with these letters. I cannot take you through
page after page, verse after verse; but I am giving the
result of close reading, and you can verify it if you
care to. I repeat: the whole of the first letter to the
Corinthians is just full of the self-principle -
self-vindication, going to law to get their own rights,
self-seeking, self-importance, self-indulgence - even at
the Lord's Table - self-confidence, self-complacency,
self-glory, self-love, self-assertiveness, and everything
else. You find all these things in that first letter, and
more. 'I' - a great, an immense 'I' stands inscribed over
the first letter to the Corinthians. This is the nature,
the old nature, showing itself in Christians. Everything
that is contrary to "the grace of the Lord
Jesus" comes to light in that letter, and the Lord
Jesus stands in such strong, clear, terrible contrast to
what we find there.
In our last chapter we
sought to show that, in order to reveal the glory of the
good tidings as the good tidings of the God of hope, the
Divine method was to paint the hopelessness of the
picture as it really was and is for human nature. Now, in
order to reach the Divine end, the Holy Spirit does not
cover up the faults, the weaknesses - even the sins, the
awful sins - of Christians. The grace of God is enhanced
by the background against which it stands. And so, while
we might feel, 'Oh, what a pity that this letter was ever
written! What an exposure, what an uncovering, of
Christians! What a pity ever to speak about it - why not
hide it?' - ah, that is just where the good tidings find
their real occasion and value.
You see, they are the
good tidings of the benediction. The good tidings here
are found right at the very beginning of the letter. God
knows all about these folk. He is not just finding out -
He knows the worst. Dear friend, the Lord knows the worst
about you and about me, and He knows it all; and it is a
poor kind of all! Now, He knew all about these
Corinthians, and yet, under His hand, this Apostle took
pen and began his letter with - what? 'To the church in
Corinth', and then: "sanctified in Christ Jesus,
called saints". Now, is that pretending? Is that
make-believe? Is that putting on blinkers and saying nice
things about people? Not a bit! I repeat: God knew it
all, and yet said, "sanctified in Christ Jesus...
saints".
Do you say, 'Oh, I
cannot understand that at all!'? Ah, but that is just the
glory of His grace, because the grace of the Lord Jesus
comes out here in calling such people saints. Now, you do
not call such people saints; you reserve that word for
people of a very different kind. We say, 'Oh, he is a
saint' - distinguishing him, not from people who are
unsaved, but amongst good people. Now, God came right to
these people, knowing this whole black, dark story, and
said: "saints"; and that other word,
"sanctified in Christ Jesus" is only another
form of the same word 'saints'. It means 'separated' -
separated in Christ Jesus. You see, the very first thing
is the position into which the grace of the Lord Jesus
puts us. It is positional grace. If we are in Christ
Jesus, all these lamentable things may be true about us,
but God sees us in Christ Jesus and not in ourselves.
That is the good tidings, that is the gospel. The wonder
of the grace of the Lord Jesus! We are looked at by God
as separated, sanctified in Christ Jesus. That is where
God begins His work with us, putting us in a position in
His Son where He attributes to us all that the Lord Jesus
is.
Now, you can break that
up in this letter. "Christ Jesus, who was made unto
us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification,
and redemption" (1 Cor. 1:30). He is made
unto us righteousness, sanctification, redemption. I am
afraid that some Christians are afraid to make too much
of their positional grace. They think that it will take
something away from their Christian life if they make too
much of that, because they put such a tremendous amount
of emphasis upon the need for their sanctification,
actually, as to condition; and they are so occupied
introspectively with this matter of what they are in
themselves and trying to deal with that, that they lose
all the joy of their position in Christ through grace.
We need to keep the
balance in this matter. The beginning of everything is
that the grace of the Lord Jesus comes to us - even
though we may be like the Corinthians - and sets us and
looks upon us as in a place of sainthood,
"sanctified in Christ Jesus". You cannot
describe it. Grace goes beyond all our powers of
describing, but there is the wonder of the grace of the
Lord Jesus. The fact of the matter is that we really only
discover what awful creatures we are after we are in
Christ Jesus, and after we have been in Him a long time.
I think the longer we are in Christ, the more awful we
become in our own eyes. Therefore, if we are in Christ
Jesus, what we are in ourselves does not signify. Our
position does not rest upon whether we are actually,
literally, truly perfect. The good tidings first of all
has to do with our position in Christ.
Ah, but it does not
stop there. This does not introduce any kind of shadow,
or it should not. Thank God, it is good tidings beyond
even that. The grace of our Lord Jesus can make the state
different - can make our standing lead to a new state.
That is the grace of the Lord Jesus. It can make our own
actual state now correspond to our standing. Grace not
only receives into the position of acceptance without
merit: grace is a working power to make us correspond to
the position into which we have been brought. Grace has
many aspects. Grace is acceptance, but grace is power to
operate. "My grace is sufficient for thee" (2
Cor. 12:9). That is the mighty word of power in need. The
grace of our Lord Jesus is indeed good news - good news
for all Christians.
The
Love of God
After "the grace
of the Lord Jesus" "the love of God". See
how God is moving to His end. Now the second letter to
the Corinthians is as full of the love of God as the
first is full of the grace of the Lord Jesus. It is a
wonderful letter of the love of God, and of its mighty
triumph, its mighty power. The love of God is God's
present-day method of showing His power. If that will not
do it, nothing will. What God is doing in this
dispensation, He is doing by love. Let that be settled.
Not by judgment, not by condemnation. The Lord Jesus said
He did not come to condemn, He had come to save (John
12:47; cf. 3:17). Yes, it is the love of God which is the
method of His power in this dispensation. The method will
change, but this is the day of the love of God.
Now, Paul has already,
toward the end of the first letter, given that classic
definition and analysis of the love of God - 1
Corinthians 13. There is nothing to compare with it in
all the Bible as an analysis of - not your love, not my
love; we are not interested in that - but the love of God. "Love suffereth long and is kind, love envieth
not, love seeketh not its own, is not puffed up, doth not
behave itself unseemly", and so on. There is the
love of God set forth. We shall find that we cannot stand
up to it. No man can stand up to that fully. "Love never
faileth" - never gives up, that is. Here is the
quality of Divine love.
Now bring it into the
second letter to the Corinthians, and see the mighty
triumph, the power, of the love of God. First of all, see
it as working triumphantly in the servant of the Lord.
Look again at the letter. Paul has in different places in
his writings given very wonderful, very beautiful, very
glorious revelations of the grace of God in his own life;
but, considering the setting, I do not think there is
anything anywhere in the New Testament that so
wonderfully sets forth the triumph of the love of God in
a servant of God, as does this second letter to the
Corinthians. If ever a man had reason to give up, to wash
his hands, to despair, to be fiercely angry, to be
everything but loving, Paul had reason for such a
reaction in regard to the Corinthians. He might have been
well justified in closing the situation at Corinth, and
saying: 'I am done with you, I wash my hands of you, you
are incurable. The more I love you, the more you hate me.
All right, get on with it; I leave you.' Look at this
second letter: the outgoing, the overflowing, of love to
these people - to these people - over that
situation. What a triumph of love, the love of God, in a
servant of God! That is how God reaches His end. Oh, God
give us more love, as His servants, to bear and forbear,
to suffer long, and never to despair.
Yes, but it was not
left there. You can see it, even if it is only beginning
- and I think it is more than that - in the Corinthians
themselves, as he speaks to them about the result of his
strong speaking, his pleading, his rebuking, his
admonishing, his correcting. The terms that he uses about
them are their sorrow, their godly repentance, and so on.
It was worth it, the love of God triumphing in a people
like that; and you know that that is what made possible
the wonderful, beautiful things that Paul was able to
write to them in the second letter. Paul could never have
committed himself to write some of the things that are in
this second letter, but for some change in those people,
in their attitude, in their disposition, in their spirit;
but for the fact that he had got this basis of triumphant
love.
For this second letter
has to do with ministry, with testimony, and Paul would
be the last man in the world ever to suggest that anybody
could have a ministry and a testimony who knew nothing
about the conquering love of God in their own nature.
Paul was not that kind of man. It is, alas, possible to
preach and be a Christian worker, and know nothing of the
grace of the Lord Jesus in your own life - to be just a
contradiction. There is far too much of that. Paul would
never countenance anything like that. If he is going to
speak about ministry and about testimony in the world, he
will demand a basis, that grace shall have done its work
at least in measure, so that in this way the love of God
is now manifested. There is now humility: 'Oh, what godly
sorrow', he says, 'what godly repentance!' Where is the
'I'? Where is the self-hood? Something has broken,
something has given way; there is something now of the
grace of the Lord Jesus, in self-emptying, in the
negation of the self-life. Yes, they are down now,
broken. This is the triumph of Divine love in such a
people.
That is the gospel, the
good tidings! It is good tidings, is it not? The gospel
is not just something to bring the sinner to the Saviour.
It is that - but the gospel, the good tidings, is also
this, that people, Christians like Corinthians, can be
transformed like this through the love of God. Good
tidings! The glory of the triumph comes following on
here, in words that we love so much: "Thanks be unto
God, who always leadeth us in triumph in Christ" (2
Cor. 2:14), to celebrate His victory over Christ's
enemies. This is the triumphal procession of grace and
love. It is a different Paul, is it not? - a Paul
different from the first letter. He has got the wind in
his sails now, he is running before the wind, he is in
triumph. He is talking about everything being a triumphal
procession in Christ, a constant celebration of victory.
What has made Paul change? Why, the change in them!
Yes, it was always like that with Paul; his life was
bound up with the state of the Christians. 'Now I live if
you stand fast' (1 Thess. 3:8). 'This is life to me.'
"And the love of
God". "God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness...
shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we
have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding
greatness of the power may be of God, and not from
ourselves" (2 Cor. 4:6,7). 'We are poor creatures,
Corinthians: I am, you are; but God has shined into our
hearts. Something has been done in our hearts. The love
of God has come in. Fragile vessels as we are in
ourselves, that love shines forth - the glory of the love
of God.'
The
Communion of the Holy Spirit
"The communion (or
fellowship) of the Holy Spirit". Did ever a people
need to know the meaning of fellowship more than the
Corinthians? Is Paul touching upon some spot that was a
very, very sensitive spot? Fellowship? He wrote:
"Each one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of
Apollos and I of Cephas; and I of Christ" (1 Cor.
1:12). Is there any fellowship in that, any communion in
that? No. When you stay in the flesh, there is no
fellowship, there is no communion; you are all in bits
and pieces, all flying at one another. So it was. What is
God after? Fellowship, communion, amongst believers; and
it must be the communion, the fellowship, of the Holy
Spirit, that is, fellowship constituted and established
and enriched by the Holy Spirit. This is the result of
"the grace of the Lord Jesus and the love of
God" - oneness.
Let us clearly
recognise that this is the deepest work of the Holy
Spirit. Much has been said earlier, in Paul's first
letter, about the Holy Spirit. They had made much of
spiritual gifts; spiritual gifts attracted them. They
were enamoured of power to do things, of signs, wonders,
and so on. That was very much after their heart; these
gifts of the Spirit, and much more that was just outward,
brought a great deal of gratification to their souls.
But when you come to
the supreme end and deepest work of the Holy Spirit, you
find it in the oneness of believers. It takes the deepest
work of the Holy Spirit to bring that about, seeing that
we still have a nature that is an old nature. We still
can be Christians, and yet Corinthian Christians. There
is still lurking - and not always in hidden corners - the
'I', the self-life in some form or other. Seeing it is
there, it takes a mighty work of the Holy Spirit to unite
indissolubly even two believers; but to unite a whole
church like that is something stupendous.
Nothing less or other
than that is the communion, the fellowship, of the Holy
Spirit. Something of that seems to have come about at
Corinth. Oh, wonder of wonders, the difference between
these two letters! Yes, it has happened. It is an inward
triumph over nature, and it shows real progress. That is
the communion of the Holy Spirit. When Paul started his
first letter, he said: 'When every one of you says, I, I,
I, are you not babes? Do you not have to be fed with
milk?' (1 Cor. 3:1-4). Babies are always scrapping and
fighting. That was the Corinthians. But they had got past
the babyhood stage, through "the grace of the Lord
Jesus and the love of God". Things changed; they
have grown up.
It takes the Holy
Spirit to make us grow up spiritually in this way. The
measure of our spirituality can be indicated very quickly
and clearly by the measure of our mutual love, our
fellowship. We are, after all, little people spiritually
if we are always at variance. It takes big people to live
with certain other big people without quarrelling. It
takes "the grace of the Lord Jesus, and the love of
God", to lead to "the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit".
This fellowship of the
Holy Spirit, then, is essentially corporate. Perhaps you
have thought that this last clause, "the communion
of the Holy Spirit", meant your communion with the
Holy Spirit and that of the Holy Spirit with you. It does
not mean that at all. Paul is perhaps just gently hitting
back at the old state, touching on that old condition.
'What you Corinthians lacked more than you lacked
anything else was fellowship; there was no fellowship.
Now you have come along the way of the grace of the Lord
Jesus and the love of God "and the communion of the
Holy Spirit" is found amongst you'. That is what it
means. It is corporate, and it is a mighty work of the
Holy Spirit. It has to be in more than one of us. Now
you, of course, think it has to be in the other person!
No, it has to be in more than one of us, not just the
other person. It must be in you and me - it must
be in everyone concerned. Well, that is the gospel: good
tidings to a people in a pretty bad state! What good
tidings!
Let me close with this.
We never get anywhere by recognising the deplorable state
and just going for it - beginning to knock people about,
wielding the sword or the sledge-hammer and smashing
things, bringing people down under condemnation. We never
get anywhere that way. If Paul had gone to work that way
with Corinth, he would have smashed it all right, but
that would have been the end of it. But love found a way,
and, although there was brokenness, it was not the end.
Something, "beauty for ashes", came out of it -
because "the grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of
God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit", was the
principle upon which Paul himself lived and by which he
worked.
You and I must be
people of good news. We have got good news for any
situation, though it be as bad as that in Corinth.
Believe this! Good news! Good news! That must be
our attitude to everything, by the grace of God; not
despairing, not giving up. No, good news! The Lord make
us people of the gospel, the good tidings.