Reading: Romans 8:19,29; 1 Cor. 3:1-3; 2
Cor. 3:18; Gal. 3:26; 4:6,19.
We
have already pointed out how much there is of strength
and urgency in the New Testament concerning full
spiritual growth. Indeed, more than ninety percent of the
New Testament is addressed to believers for that very
purpose. Every letter of Paul’s is a strong urge in
that direction, and was written specifically for the
increase of Christ in the believers, that they might come
to full growth, to the stature of the fullness of Christ.
We
observed that this is not only true in a general way, but
that every letter of the apostle deals with the matter of
spiritual growth from a different standpoint, or has a
particular aspect of that matter to deal with, which, of
course, has its occasion in the situation existing in the
different places to which the letters were sent.
Then
we began to consider the letters of Paul in their bearing
upon this matter, and we got to the end of the second
letter to the Corinthians. If the Lord wills, we will
presently review that ground as we approach the letter to
the Galatians, but we want to say another word first
concerning the urgency of this matter.
Why Maturity is so Vital
It
does not require argument and evidence to be produced to
convince you that this is a matter of very great
importance from the Lord’s standpoint. It is quite
impossible to read the New Testament and fail to see that
it is to this end the Lord is by His Word and Spirit
urging believers all the time, making it perfectly
manifest that the Lord’s thought is not just the
salvation of men from sin and from judgment. The greater
emphasis with the Lord is what they are saved unto,
rather than what they are saved from. It is divine
purpose which is always governing, and the calling by His
grace is according to His purpose: “according to the
eternal purpose”. We must remember that salvation,
from start to finish, at every point, is related to
divine purpose, is toward an end, is with something in
view, and in order to reach that which is in view in
divine purpose a going on with God unto full spiritual
measure is necessary.
There
again it needs to be said, that to have full grown people
is not an end in itself. The end in view is that they may
be prepared and fitted for the purpose unto which He has
called. No mere spiritual infant, who is such beyond the
point of time where infancy ought to have ceased, can
come into the divine purpose, and that is the reason why
there is this tremendous emphasis placed upon the tragedy
of immaturity when it ought to be otherwise, and upon the
necessity for maturity. It is with something of a groan
that the apostle writes these words to the Corinthians:
“And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto
spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes”. Now
it is all right to speak to babes when they are rightly
such, but when it is time they were more than babes it is
a terrible thing to have to go on speaking to them thus.
So
that we must see what the purpose of God through maturity
is, before we can feel the real weight and recognise the
real importance of full spiritual growth. What is the
purpose of God? What is that eternal purpose to which we
are called by His grace in Christ Jesus? There are
several words in the New Testament which are very full
words, and very significant words. There is the word
“adoption”, a very misunderstood word by us,
because it means something entirely different in our
Western language from what it means in the New Testament.
There is another word “sons”; and, again,
another word “inheritance”. If you look at
those words you will find that they are always related to
a particular thing. They are related to a position in the
ages to come, and that position is definitely stated to
be dominion over the inhabited earth. That governs
everything in the thought of God. You will remember that
in the second chapter of the letter to the Hebrews that
is clearly and definitely stated: “…not unto
angels did he subject the inhabited earth to come,
whereof we speak. But one in a certain place hath
testified, saying, What is man that thou art mindful of
him — puttest him in charge?”.
The inhabited earth to come will be subjected to man, and
it is that particular man which is God’s object in
this specific dispensation. It is the corporate man in
Christ; the church which is His Body, conformed to the
image of God’s Son, of whom He is the firstborn, as
the firstborn among many brethren. Thus the letter to the
Hebrews goes on to say that in bringing many sons to
glory the Author of their salvation was made perfect
through sufferings.
Galatians and the Day of the
Adoption
That
brings us right to this letter to the Galatians. You will
notice in the course of this letter that the apostle Paul
lights upon Abraham, and takes up everything in relation
to Abraham, and in so doing he throws back our horizon
tremendously. To begin with, he gets rid of a whole
dispensation, the Jewish dispensation, which came between
Abraham and Christ. He leaps right over it, pushes it on
one side, and gets back into the universal. He says, in
effect, “That was a merely local thing, a merely
temporal thing. It came in, it served a purpose, and it
is now done with. Now let us go back to Abraham, and take
things up there. That is where things began, and we come
in with Abraham.” “Know therefore”, he
concludes, “that they which be of faith, the same
are sons of Abraham”.
You
will know that there is a great similarity between this
letter and the letter to the Romans. The subject is
almost identical, the object the same. The letter to the
Romans is a more thorough-going treatise (if we may call
it that) on the subject of law and grace. The letter to
the Galatians is an impassioned outburst of righteous
indignation. The spirit of the apostle is aflame at the
outrages against the work of God which were being
perpetrated, to which we will refer later. The object is
the same, and if you go back to the fourth chapter of the
Romans you have this remarkable word: “Now the
promise to Abraham that he should be heir of the
world…” You have no such thing recorded in the
Old Testament. Nothing in the Old Testament says that God
made promise to Abraham that he should be heir of the
world in this sense. It is there that the apostle takes
things up with Abraham. In his letter to the Galatians,
he deals with everything along the line of sonship,
adoption, heirs of the promise made to Abraham. That is
inheritance. When you have grasped that, and recognised
what that means, you are getting into the flaming heart
of the apostle. We cannot get into this letter unless we
understand and recognise the tremendous background of it.
In a word, what we are presented with is this: God made a
promise to Abraham that he should be heir of the world.
Upon that we are told that Abraham looked for a city
whose builder and maker was God, and we find Abraham
refusing all the cities of this world, choosing to dwell
in tents with Isaac and Jacob who were also the heirs of
the promise; repudiating this world and its cities,
because he looked for a city whose builder and maker was
God, with the promise that he should be heir of the
world.
Now we
look at the apostle’s argument in this letter to the
Galatians. Who is a Jew? Not he who is one naturally. He
is a Jew who is linked with Abraham’s seed by faith.
“Not unto seeds”, says the apostle,
“but… to thy seed, which is Christ.”
Abraham’s seed is Christ. Faith in Jesus Christ
constitutes us the seed of Abraham. One of the last
clauses of this letter to the Galatians refers to the
Israel of God, and leading up to that is all this about
the “Jerusalem that is beneath, that is in bondage
with her children, and the Jerusalem which is above and
is free, which is the mother of us all”. He looked
for a city. We are Abraham’s seed by faith in Jesus
Christ, related to a city, and that city is to govern the
world. The end of the Word of God makes it perfectly
clear that the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, is the
church, and in this whole dispensation the church is the
object upon which God’s heart is set, in order that
she may govern the inhabited earth in the ages to come.
That is the purpose. That government demands full
spiritual growth, and because of the greatness, the
seriousness, and the importance of God’s eternal
purpose as to the government of this world, if in heart
you enter into that with God, you also will become aflame
as did the apostle, when you discover there are things
which are working insidiously against God’s purpose
in the saints, to frustrate spiritual full growth. Get
the range of the thing, and then it goes to your heart.
Everything that stands athwart God’s purpose is to
be met with indignation, with uncompromising zeal, for
this matter is so important. It is our loyalty to God. It
is our oneness of heart with God’s purpose.
God
has a cherished purpose concerning His Son. In His
infinite grace He has called us according to that
purpose. The fact of what we are, as it breaks upon us so
continually, is perhaps the thing which discourages us
most of all from believing in a thing like this, and yet
it is true that you and I, despite what we are, our utter
worthlessness — ah, more than that, despite all the
enmity that is in us against God by nature, all that is
there that is so utterly contrary to God’s nature,
all the rebellion against God by nature, of which we are
so capable under provocation — we are, by God’s
infinite grace, which comes down to us in Jesus Christ,
called to govern the inhabited earth in the ages to come,
for God, with God, in His Son. That is the purpose. That
is what God is seeking in this dispensation, that
instrument, that vessel for coming world-government.
When
you and I recognise what the grace of God is, grace which
finds a way for our forgiveness, and our deliverance from
judgment, grace upon grace, ever mounting up until it
sets us on the throne with Himself, in accordance with
the word which He has spoken, “…shall sit with
me in my throne, as I also overcame and am set down with
my Father in his throne”; such grace coming home to
our hearts surely would make us intensely jealous for God
and deeply loyal to God. Surely if we felt that grace our
attitude would be: “Oh, if anything dares to touch
God’s purpose, God’s interest, that which is
dearest of all to God’s heart, I for one will have
no compromise with that, I for one will show that I am
utterly with God.” That surely ought to be our
reaction to the grace of God. It was because the apostle
Paul had such a deep, deep sense of the grace of God in
eternal purpose calling him that you find him so burning
with zeal, so mightily stirred to white heat when there
rose up something to interfere with God’s purpose.
That
explains the letter to the Galatians. Listen to his words
in the first chapter. There is no compromise about this:
“But though we, or an angel from heaven, should
preach unto you any gospel other than that which we
preached unto you, let him be anathema.” That is
very straight language. Let him be accursed. Why? Because
he is interfering with God’s purpose when he seeks
to subvert the saints, when he interferes with their
going on to full growth.
Sonship,
adoption, is something which lies ahead. The adoption has
not yet taken place. We are children of God, we have the
Spirit of sonship, but the adoption is not yet; that is
coming. The word “adoption” would help us more
if it were translated literally; for it bears a different
meaning in the New Testament from that which obtains
among us today. The word simply means placing as sons,
the installation as sons. It is rather the official
element than the element of relationship. It occurs only
five times in the New Testament, and these are all in
Paul’s letters, and every occurrence is very
interesting and helpful.
So
that is ahead, and it is that to which the apostle refers
in his letter to the Romans: “The earnest
expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of
the sons of God.” That lies in the future, and that
is the day when the government of the inhabited earth to
come will be taken up in the saints conformed to the
image of His Son, in the church as mature.
Now
you see, I am sure a little more of the importance, and
why there is given such a place of importance to this
matter of full growth. It is in maturity that the
inheritance is to be possessed, that the placing of sons
is to take place, that the subjecting of the inhabited
earth to come is to transpire. Hence the need for going
on to full growth. Government is important to God, and it
is the full meaning of grace in the saints. So much,
then, for our further emphasis upon the importance.
A Retrospect of the Letters to the
Romans and Corinthians
We
have said that these letters of the apostle Paul are each
dealing with some aspect of spiritual maturity, or
dealing with the matter from respective points of view.
The letter to the Romans, as we have already pointed out,
represents the work by which relatedness to the Lord is
brought about unto His full purpose. The purpose is
brought into view right at the outset, the manifestation
of the sons of God conformed to the image of His Son.
That is the purpose. Then everything is dealt with in
order that a relationship shall be brought about, so that
God can begin His purpose and proceed to its realisation.
Thus, in the letter to the Romans you have a revelation
of God’s attitude toward men by nature. The whole
race is taken into view, and the verdict is, “All
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”, and
therefore lie under judgment and death. “There is
none righteous, no, not one.” Gentile and Jew are
all in the same position before God. It is a startling
fact, nevertheless clearly and positively stated;
irreligious and religious; those who were without and
those who were with the oracles of God. The natural
difference that the oracles of God are seen to have made
is that they have proved how helpless man is, and how
deeply sinful he is by nature. The law came in, and, far
from saving man, it only accentuated the natural
condition of human weakness and sinfulness, and made
manifest how impossible it is for man to stand up to
God’s requirement. So that universally man by nature
is proved to be hopeless and helpless, under sin,
condemnation, judgment and death.
Then
the cross of the Lord Jesus is brought into view as the
place where God’s verdict concerning man universally
was put into effect in the representative person of the
Lord Jesus, who was made sin in our stead. The whole race
passed under the actual judgment of God in the cross, and
when Christ died, from God’s standpoint, the race
died under judgment.
Then
the resurrection of the Lord Jesus comes in, as marking
God’s new beginning, a new relationship, where sin
has been destroyed in judgment, and now, on the ground of
sin having been destroyed and removed, there is a new
relationship with God in Christ risen, in which
relationship the Holy Spirit is given, the Spirit of the
new creation. A new life is given — “…the
law of the Spirit of life in Christ…” —
and then in that new relationship, the purpose is
embarked upon by the indwelling Spirit. Conformity to the
image of His Son is the end. The call is that believers
should apprehend that position of union with Christ in
death, in burial, and resurrection, and by faith take
their place therein. That becomes the foundation of
God’s purpose. Without that God cannot even make a
beginning.
That
is the letter to the Romans in brief. Our position by
faith has to correspond to Jesus Christ crucified, dead,
buried, risen and receiving the Holy Spirit, the Spirit
of sonship, to be led into God’s purpose.
The
first letter to the Corinthians takes us one step past
that, and shows us the kind of person who will move on to
God’s end, to God’s purpose, and what is
necessary in believers in order that there may come about
full spiritual growth. The key word in Romans is “in
Christ”: “There is therefore now no
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus…”
That is relationship. The key word to the first letter to
the Corinthians is: “He that is
spiritual…” The whole of that first letter has
to do with spirituals in men and in things. The first
letter to the Corinthians, then, has to do entirely with
what a spiritual person is, how a spiritual person will
act and speak; or, by contrast, how a spiritual person
will not act and will not speak. The whole letter,
chapter after chapter, sets carnality over against
spirituality, and says, “Now this is carnality, and
it blocks the way to God’s end, and is the cause of
spiritual arrest.” It is necessary that a man shall
be spiritual in the innermost reality of his being, that
he shall be spiritually minded, and that this spiritual
mind, the mind of Christ, shall govern him in every
consideration.
One
mark of the carnality of the Corinthians was their
divisions, their natural preferences, likes and dislikes
amongst people. Paul says, in effect, “If you were
spiritual there would be none of that. If you are going
on to full growth then you have to get clear of all
that.” So you go through the whole letter, and find
that the finger of the Spirit lights through the apostle
upon point after point, revealing carnality, and how it
works out to spiritual arrest. They are seen to be full
of contradictions, and full of denials, and full of
limitation. He that is spiritual is not like that.
Spirituality is essential to full growth.
In the
second letter to the Corinthians the key word is
“the face of Jesus Christ”. By inference we are
taken right back to the first creation. “God, who
commanded the light to shine out of darkness…”
(the first act in the creation), “…hath shined
into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”. What is
the object of the creation? Jesus Christ is the object of
the creation. Through Him, and unto Him, and by Him all
things were created. But that object was not realised in
the first creation, and whereas light came first,
darkness soon followed on the disobedience of man, and so
God’s purpose in the face of Jesus Christ was not
recognised; it was shut out. Now God begins His new
creation: “If any man is in Christ, there is a new
creation.” What is the first thing that governs the
new creation? “God… hath shined in our hearts,
to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in
the face of Jesus Christ.” That is the key to
everything.
How
shall we reach God’s purpose, God’s end? How
shall we grow in grace? By the continuous unveiling of
God in Christ in our hearts. It has to go on, and so the
word there heads up into this: “We… beholding
(the word indicates continuous activity, maintaining our
gaze, fixing our eyes) …are changed into the same
image…” We are coming to God’s end, the
image of His Son, by the Holy Spirit keeping in our
hearts a growing unveiling of the Lord Jesus.
We have the purpose of
God set before us, we know what the calling is, we
understand why we are urged to give diligence to make our
calling and our election sure. We know that, while we may
not fall from salvation, we may fall from the
inheritance. We know that we may lose God’s full
purpose by not going on. Otherwise why this urge? We
receive our salvation through grace, and I am quite sure
that it will be the grace of God that carries us through
unto the purpose; for who of us would get through, but by
the grace of God? Nevertheless, for the inheritance unto
the adoption as sons, coming to the government of the
inhabited earth to come, there has to be an attitude of
pressing on to full growth, lest we fail of the calling.
It is the failure to recognise that which has led so many
people into a fog, and into perplexity, and I think, into
false teaching concerning certain things in the New
Testament. It is the inheritance which governs. Until we
are really governed by God’s full purpose we do not
understand a great deal of the New Testament. In the
purpose of God we are “foreordained unto the
adoption of sons by Jesus Christ”, the placing as
sons for governmental purposes in the ages to come.