Reading:
"The spirit himself beareth witness with our
spirit, that we are children of God: and if children,
then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if
so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also
glorified with him. For I reckon that the sufferings of
this present time are not worthy to be compared with the
glory which shall be revealed to us-ward."
(Rom. 8:16-18).
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; ye also
helping together by your supplication." (2 Cor.
1:8-11).
"For our light
affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more
and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; while we
look not at the things which are seen, but at the things
which are not seen: for the things which are seen are
temporal; but the things which are not seen are
eternal." (2 Cor. 4:17-18).
Just leave those words in the
background, while we come to stand before the general
prospect or presentation.
First of all, it surely is of
very great importance that we, the Lord's children,
should be able to recognise those governing features of
the dispensation in which we live, that which gives to
this dispensation its character, its nature. The
importance of recognising that is, that unless we do, we
shall be out of joint all the time, we shall be found in
a state of inward conflict, we shall have a battle
continually going on inside us which completely unfits us
for the battle outside; and I am sure that you will agree
that it is no use trying to fight a situation
outside, an enemy outside, while you are all the time
occupied with one inside. Until we have got something
settled, we are weakened, if not altogether paralysed, in
the real work and warfare to which we are called, and the
thing that has got to be settled is this matter of what
is the nature of the dispensation in which we live. If we
have got some wrong ideas about that, then we are
constantly turning in and back upon ourselves, not making
very much progress, a state of strife and strain and
uncertainty and questions all the time.
Well then, I suggest to
you that that which gives to this dispensation its
particular character, that from which this dispensation
derives its real nature, that is, as to God's mind, is in
the fact that the Lord Jesus is in heaven and that He is
known, only known, but known and ministered by the Holy
Spirit. If you and I really could grasp what that means
we are going to be taken a long way. The first half
is that the Lord Jesus is in heaven, that is, He is not
on the earth. If He were on the earth, an entirely
different system of things would obtain. You think about
that. If He were on the earth, the same things
would be happening as did happen when He was on the
earth. Everybody who had aches and pains would be going
after Him wherever He might be, if He were in Palestine
or in any other part of the world, they would be going
after Him with aches and pains to get these cleared up.
There would be people
who would take all their temporal difficulties and
troubles and situations to Him and all the
problems of this life as here on the earth. And
then the whole world situation, political and so on, to
have this whole temporal realm of things dealt with, and
it would resolve itself into a matter of Jesus
constituting a temporal order. As they did then, so they
would now, want Him to be the leader of a new political
or social movement, to deal with the political situations
and the social difficulties, and so on.
Supposing you heard
that the Lord Jesus was just round the corner. You would
be after Him like a shot with some of your troubles,
perhaps your physical troubles, or domestic quarrels, to
get them put right. What shall I do with my
brother? How am I to deal with my wife, my
husband? All that would be going on, and when He
was here on the earth, they were all the time seeking to
get Him to deal with a whole temporal state of things on
this earth. We do not find very many coming to Him
really with spiritual troubles when He was here, not
directly and deliberately with spiritual troubles.
Not many raised the question of sin and how they were to
be forgiven and have it dealt with. He had to go
behind to deal with that, refer to that; they did not.
Well, you see, Jesus is
in heaven. He is not on earth, and that means that
everything in this dispensation from the Divine
standpoint is heavenly in its essence and nature.
It is not firstly, primarily, but quite subserviently, of
secondary account, that He touches the temporal
situation. Until you and I have got this adjusted,
we are going to be in trouble all the time.
Why does not the Lord do this and that and the other
thing, a thousand and one temporal things? Why does
the Lord allow this and that and the other? "Our
light affliction..." (2 Cor. 4:17). "If
we suffer with Him..." (Rom. 8:17). Look
at all the suffering that there is in the New Testament
when you get past the Lord's days on the earth - the
suffering amongst the Lord's people. Why, why does
not the Lord come in? Yes, we would bring Him down
to earth again, into that realm, but He is not coming
down. He is in heaven, and that is a governing thing for
this dispensation. He is in heaven, and everything
primarily with Him is heavenly.
He is to be known and
ministered by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. He is
not known as He was known in the days of His flesh. He is
not known after the flesh. "Though we have known
Christ after the flesh," said Paul, "yet now we
know him so no more" (2 Cor. 5:16). He is
not known temporally in the first instance. He is
known and only known by the Holy Spirit and ministered to
us, given to us, imparted to us, by the Holy Spirit
alone, which means that this dispensation is
pre-eminently spiritual in the mind of the Lord; heavenly
and spiritual.
The Lord Jesus has been
perfected, that is brought to completion, fullness,
finality, and has been filled by God, filled unto all
fullness, and has therefore become the pattern and the
standard for believers. He is in heaven and in
heavenly fullness as a Man, and has been set forth as
God's heavenly pattern for the people of God. So that
this dispensation is above all things, from God's
standpoint, governed by this - our being brought to that
which Christ is, to heavenly completeness and spiritual
fullness. It is heavenly and it is spiritual,
heavenly completeness, spiritual fullness, and the Lord
is devoted to that object in this dispensation, and looks
at and deals with everything in the light of that.
A
LIVING WAY
The next thing, in line
with that, is that everything unto that end is a matter
of moving in Divine, heavenly, spiritual life. It
is the living way, the living way, of reaching God's
end. That is, it has got to be, it can only be, by
the Holy Spirit getting us there. We can never
reach that goal, that object of God, Christ in heaven and
in Divine fullness, we can never reach that goal of God
along any lines, by any means, save by a definite work of
the Holy Spirit, that is, by a living way. Man
cannot do this; no means of man can accomplish it. You
see, you may, for instance, attend meetings. You
can attend them three times a day or more every day of
your life as long as your life can possibly be and not be
one iota spiritually advanced. It is not the number
of meetings or the nature of the meetings that we attend,
it is not the addresses to which we listen. It is
not anything of that kind at all that gets us to God's
end. It is the Holy Spirit doing something in a
living way, our coming by the way of Divine life to
Divine fullness.
If one thing is true
among others, it is this, that you and I are utterly
hopeless in the matter of making people spiritual.
You may put them into institutions and colleges, and make
them preachers, and make them organizers, and make them
workers, and make them a hundred and one things, but you
can never make them spiritual. It is no use having
homes and places for gathering together the Lord's people
with a view to making them spiritual. If ever you
think that that is what you are going to do with them,
let me tell you, you cannot do it. You can give them a
lot of knowledge, teach them what is in the Bible, can
turn them out very different from what they were when
they came in in many respects, but you cannot make them
spiritual. I cannot make myself spiritual, you
cannot make yourself spiritual. You are helpless in
that matter. Unless the Spirit of God comes and
does something, we are helpless, and that is the great
mistake many have made, that they have thought by
imparting Biblical knowledge and knowledge of spiritual
things and how to work for the Lord, they are qualifying
people for the Lord's use. Does it work out like
that? Not necessarily; unless there is something
extra to all that which is God's own work, then that does
not count with God, it does not get anywhere with God,
and really it only provides the background of fresh
tragedies. It is true of many. I am not
saying that those things are wrong and useless. I
am speaking of one thing. We cannot make people
spiritual, in that matter we are helpless. Only the
Holy Spirit can do it, and that is done only on the basis
of life or in a living way. It can only be
accomplished by real, inward, spiritual history under the
hand of the Holy Ghost.
THE
PURPOSE OF SUFFERING
Now, it is just there
that suffering, affliction, adversity, frustration and
all those things have their place. Why adversity in
the Lord's work and in relation to the Lord? Why
frustration, why suffering, why affliction? When
the story is told at last, when it is fully told at last
- and what an immense story it will be what we
shall discover is that it was the frustration, it was the
suffering, the affliction, the adversity, the sorrow, the
trial, that was the means of making us spiritual, nothing
else it was that that did it. We have to
say, by the grace of God, that we owe our spiritual
measure of increase to the suffering through which the
Lord allowed us to go.
"Our light
affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more
and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; while we
look not at the things which are seen, but at the things
which are not seen: for the things which are seen are
temporal; but the things which are not seen are
eternal" (2 Cor. 4:17-18).
God is working eternal
values which are not seen, but only to be grasped by the
eye of faith. We have got to settle this, or else we are
beaten before we start. Are we not all the time
really fighting strongly to get the Lord on to a temporal
basis with us? Why have any adversity, why have any
suffering? Indeed, why have an enemy at all, why
have a devil, why have afflictions and
persecutions? Why should we have this if the Lord
is Lord almighty, all-powerful, all-gracious, and really
is concerned for His interests and for the progress of
His work? If the Lord really is with us and on our
side as the Mighty One, then the devil ought to be swept
out of the way, and all hindrances and frustration ought
to go to the wind, and all sufferings at once ought to be
subjugated, and we ought to know nothing of this, we
ought to ride triumphantly on without any of this sort of
thing which is a weight upon us, and is only interrupting
and frustrating growth and progress. The devil all
the time is hindering and the Lord is not getting.
Is He not? That is a matter you and I have got to
settle.
The fact is that the New
Testament is full of that sort of thing. The one
man who has more of the heavenly vision, the knowledge of
things spiritual, than any other man in the New Testament
is the man who knows more of this other side than any
other man. He tells us more about what he had to go
through. Thrice I was shipwrecked (2
Cor. 11:25). There is something wrong about that
the Lord letting one of His great apostles be shipwrecked
again and again, just escaping with his life on a
spar! Imprisoned again and again, thrashed with
rods, suffering hunger, cold, nakedness. Oh, the
list! We do not know when these things
happened. He simply tells us that they did
happen. Most of them have never been recorded by
Luke. Why? Because he was not writing the
life of Paul, he was writing the life of the Lord Jesus,
but Paul mentions them. Paul says, I once and
again would have come to you, but Satan hindered "
(1 Thess. 2:18). Oh, there is something wrong about
that! Paul does not explain it, he does not say
that it is wrong, he takes it in his stride. You
see what I mean.
We are so wanting to
bring the Lord again on to the temporal basis, to clear
up all these difficulties, to get hindrances out of the
way, to have a clear course, to lift us right out of
adversity, suffering, affliction, weakness, and very
often we are tempted to make that the criterion as to
whether the Lord is with us and for us. You know
quite well there are plenty of Jobs friends about,
Christian ones too, always ready to say, 'Yes, it is
because you are wrong, you are in error, that is why you
have so much of it!' That is a matter that has got
to be settled. Here it is. Are we going to
expect anything different from what the Lord had Himself,
the heavenly Lord? Are we going to expect anything
different from what Paul and the believers of his day
had? These letters are so full of references to these
afflictions and sufferings of the saints. Do they
mean that Satan is triumphant and the Lord is defeated,
or that the Lord is not with His own? Let us get
that settled.
What, then, is the
meaning of all this? Oh, let us look again.
Is it not by these means that we are being made
conformable to the heavenly Christ? You know the
fact remains that the people who live in that infant
stage of temporal things and who will not walk with the
Lord unless He gives them proof positive in temporal
realms of His being with them are not spiritually helpful
people, that is, they are not the people to whom you can
go in the deepest hours of your life. There is an
inward place. People who can help those who really
do know the deepest tests of faith, are those who have
gone through and been sustained even when the Lord has
not shown His hand for their deliverance. Is that
not true? It is a level of life. Conformity
to the heavenly Lord is by everything being heavenly and
the Lord not letting us off in this matter of
heavenliness. You want it down here, you want it in
the temporal realm, things seen, things that you can
bring up as proof positive, all the evidences. You
want it like that, but the way of conformity to the
heavenly Christ is not along that line. Things will be
heavenly, and oh, my word, they are! We have not
got much here, the Lord does not give you much here. It
is all heavenly, it is HIMSELF. As soon as
you and I begin to make a great deal of the THINGS,
the Lord may step in and smite the things in order that
He might be the object and not the things, the heavenly
Lord known and ministered by the Spirit in a living way
on the line of life.
CONCEPTION,
NOT IMITATION
I do wish that we could
see and really grasp inwardly this, that our New
Testament is not something to be imitated in any
matter. Our New Testament is something in the hands
of the Holy Spirit to be wrought in us. You see, the New
Testament did not come out of a study at all. Paul
did not go and shut himself up in his study and think out
the doctrines of Christianity as a theologian, look up
his commentaries and authorities and so on, giving you
the manual of New Testament doctrine. Paul was
every day of his life right up against terrible
tragedies, actual situations, and the New Testament was
written right in the midst of the fight on the
battlefield, grappling with problems, grappling with
living problems, and when those letters were written they
never thought that they were writing Holy Scripture, they
never thought that in time to come people would sit down
and study every word and resolve it into a doctrine, and
crystallize it into "New Testament teaching."
They never thought like that. What they were doing
was that they were trying to meet a practical situation
right on the spot, and it was wrung out of them.
Yes, the Holy Spirit came through in that way and
revealed the meaning of Christ in a living situation; and
unless you and I are right in a living situation, faced
with a terrible problem in our own case or someone
else's, we will never be conformed to the heavenly
Christ. We will never come to that by sitting down
and studying New Testament doctrine. It has got to
be wrought on the anvil of experience, and that
experience is going to be, in a certain sense, tragic
experience. It is going to be something of a real
question of life and death. Anyone who has really
walked with God knows that I am telling the truth, that
what they have come really to know of God, what they have
come to possess of real spiritual value and strength, has
come out of some dark and terribly grim and awful
experience in their own life. They were taken into
the depths where faith rocked. They did not know
but what this was the end of everything. That is how they
have grown and become spiritual and heavenly. They
have not come there because the Lord has pandered to
every childish demand for satisfaction and gratification
and answered prayer in everything temporal. They
have been tested, and if the Lord has subsequently come
in to do things to answer prayer, He has only come in
when He has done the spiritual thing inside and prepared
and made it safe to do that. He has done it after
travail. THIS IS THE NATURE OF THIS
DISPENSATION. It is heavenly, it is spiritual and
God is governing the life of His true children with this
fact.
Now, all practical
points, all practical matters, have got to arise out of a
spiritual quest. They have got to come up by reason
of our seeking to know the Lord, to go on with the Lord,
to reach the Lord's end, not the other way round.
Quite a lot of people think if they do this and that and
the other thing, that the Lord will lead them to
spiritual things. Oh no, we cannot duplicate, we
cannot reproduce, anything that is spiritual. You cannot
duplicate a spiritual assembly. You cannot
duplicate a spiritual company of the Lord's people. You
cannot duplicate a real spiritual order. Now listen
to me, brethren. It is no use going about the
country saying, 'We are going to set up New Testament
companies, order of assemblies!' You cannot do
it. You cannot duplicate anything spiritual.
You get people together and say, 'We will have a New
Testament order and this is it' and then have your
order written down - 'this is the order of a New
Testament church!' The thing may be absolutely
dead. You cannot reach spiritual things by coming
out of this and that and coming to some thing else.
Oh no, let it be said very, very strongly, you can never
guarantee that you are going to reach any fuller
spiritual measure by coming out of something. I
would never for a moment suggest to you that if you came
out of a certain connection, a certain denomination, a
certain church, a certain association, it would be to
your spiritual gain, unless that thing, of course, were
wrong in some quite positive sense. If you are in
some personal relationship which is evil, of course you
will not move spiritually until you break that; but I am
not talking about that. You can never assure people
that they will make spiritual progress if only they will
come out of this connection and that, and become
connected with something else. Never do it, never
hint at it, you may put them into an entirely false
position. If ever such questions - I have only
mentioned that out of a large number that I might mention
- if such questions are ever to arise at all, if you have
to leave something, withdraw, associate somewhere else,
if ever such questions are to arise at all, they have got
to come up as you are seeking the Lord and His fullness,
to go on with Him. The Lord will make it perfectly
clear to you that that is a hindrance, a spiritual
hindrance, that is definitely athwart the path of
spiritual progress. It has got to be an issue like
that. Do not do anything because somebody else
tells you you have got to do it. It has got to
arise as a practical issue as you have a quest for God's
fullness. It has got to be in the living way, not
the legal way, not the technical way.
Let me repeat. It
is impossible to duplicate spiritual things. It cannot be
done; it is a work of the Spirit of God.
I am speaking of a
principle which is so perfectly clear in the New
Testament if you look at it. You see, Paul and the
other Apostles did not leave the Temple and did not leave
Jewry in order to join the Christian Church, in order
even to go on with the Lord. No, no, they did
not. They went to the Temple, they continued going
to the Temple, they continued going to the synagogue,
they continued association with the Jews, in fellowship,
if you like, with them, until the matter became an
inward, spiritual issue, a thing from heaven, a thing by
the Holy Ghost, and then you find gravitation according
to life, conformity to heavenly type; and when they came
to see that the Temple is not that thing at Jerusalem, it
is something in heaven, THAT came by
revelation of the Holy Ghost, not because someone told
them that was so. If ever they came to withdraw
from the Temple and the synagogue because they had seen
the heavenly, it was a crisis in their spiritual life, a
mark of their spiritual progress. It was not
because it was said to them, 'You have got to leave this,
come out of that, association with that is all
wrong!' No, it was a spiritual matter with a living
issue, and you cannot find the point at which it happened
with them. There is no secession recorded in the
New Testament, no split as a part of the history of
Christianity. It happened, and it did not happen
with all the Christians at once, just this one and that
one. It happened, that is all. In the end, they saw
there was a difference. It was a spiritual
matter. That is my point.
And so that is the
nature of things now. It has got to be like
that. If you are in something not on that basis, I
ask you to go back and reconsider your whole
position. Are you where you are because it has
become in you at some time a spiritual issue, a matter in
which your spiritual life was involved, something between
you and the Lord? Is that the basis on which you
are where you are? If not, let me urge you, go
back, do not be afraid, don't you think the Lord will be
grieved with you. He will not be grieved with you
putting things on a right basis. We must be on the
basis of what is living, of the Spirit, in a heavenly
way, that is, on the basis of Christ in heaven known and
ministered by the Holy Spirit.
WHY
WE ARE WHERE WE ARE
Now, there are many more
things I would like to suggest to you. May I just
add this little word for each life? You see, the Lord
disposes of us entirely on spiritual considerations, that
is, our spiritual growth, and through that, the spiritual
growth of others. That is the thing that is
governing the Lord in His disposing of us all the
time. If only I were in such and such a place, in
such and such a situation, had such and such a job; if
only I were there or here, how much more I could be doing
for the Lord, how much more I could be counting for the
Lord! But where I am, I am bottled up, I am shut
up, I am pressed down, and there seems so little for the
Lord, so little, practically nothing, if anything at all,
for the Lord. It all seems so inadequate, so
insignificant, so unworthwhile, and life is passing,
nothing very much to show! Are you up against a
situation like that? Things seen; what you want to
see, you cannot see. That is the trouble, this
matter of the things seen, even spiritual values.
Let me say this, and I
understand the position, I know. It is a thing we
have got to settle. What is the Lord doing?
Have I deliberately taken myself out of the Lord's hands,
taken my own way, acted without prayer, without
committing my way to the Lord, chosen my own
course? Oh well then, if that is true, there may be
an explanation of the situation, but if I am where I am
without any self-will, where the Lord has been given
first place, where I have sought to honour Him, trust
Him, put my faith in Him and subject everything to Him,
and yet this situation obtains, what is the
explanation? The Lord is more concerned with my,
and with your, spiritual and heavenly measure than He is
with the number of things we are doing. We would
call spiritual success the number of converts, the number
of churches, the number of workers. The Lord does
not. It is the spiritual measure of ourselves that
matters. That is what it is with the Lord.
The heavenly measure, the spiritual measure, what there
is of the Holy Ghost, that is the thing that matters. "Let
him that glorieth, glory in this, that he hath
understanding, and knoweth me"
(Jeremiah 9:24). This is a hard school,
knowing the Lord, a bitter school, nevertheless, that is
what the Lord is after, a spiritual, heavenly measure of
Christ. He is more concerned about that than He is
about anything else, and remember that you and I can NEVER
HELP ANYONE BEYOND OUR OWN SPIRITUAL MEASURE.
The Lord is preparing us in this hard school to do
something more than the average, to be something more
than the average, of spiritual value. Whether it is
here or hereafter, that is not the question, but that is
the end that He has in view. Let me repeat.
The Lord disposes of us on entirely spiritual
principles. He puts us into the place, the
situation, the circumstances, where our spiritual life is
the thing in question, our spiritual life is the matter
in hand, and we shall usually find that the Lord puts us
where everything is contrary to our natural disposition,
because that is the difference between Christ and Adam,
between the spirit and the flesh, between the new
creation and the old. Am I naturally one who
shrinks and would not take responsibility, would never do
by initiative myself? Well the school for me is, in
the Lord's choosing, going to be one where I will have to
take the initiative for my spiritual life, I have to do
that from which my whole nature shrinks. I would
like to be in a corner where no demands were made on me,
where I could be left alone; but the Lord is not going to
leave me there. Or the other way. Am I one
who naturally would lead, would dominate, would govern,
would master, would lord it? Mine is going to be
the bitter school of self-emptying where I shall
eventually come to a place where I am not doing anything
of myself. It is a bitter school because it lets
men ride over your head, it brings you into the net, and
all that about you that wants to be vindicated,
justified, is simply being ground to powder, being
humbled in the dust. That is the school which is
going to make way for the Lord Jesus.
I wonder if you have
contemplated the Lord Jesus. He was all this, you
see, born to be Lord of the universe, and yet knowing how
to be a servant. Again, He, the meekest of men, at
times had to rise up and take a course, as in the
cleansing of the Temple. Do you think it was
easy? No, not easy. He did it on principle,
on grounds of righteousness, but I believe that the Lord
Jesus would rather not have done that. I believe
the Spirit of Christ was, If I must come to you with a
rod, it hurts Me more than it hurts you; it is not
because I love to wield the rod, that is not My nature,
nor the nature of the Spirit! - and yet it works both
ways.
Now you think of it, and
that is what it means. The Spirit is making us, through
our afflictions, which afflictions are things which work
contrary to our natural constitution, making us to be
conformed to Jesus in heaven and that by the Spirit, a
spiritual life. Now I have suggested. Do you
agree? Is it right? I hope the Lord will make
it clear to us all and give us grace.
First published in 2011 on this website, from a previously unpublished and undated manuscript.