J. N. Darby.
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246 1 Corinthians 10.
This chapter is a continuation of the same subject. All Israel were baptised unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all eat the same spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of the spiritual Rock that followed them; and that Rock was Christ. But with many of them God was not well pleased; for they were overthrown in the wilderness." They were, as we may say, in the Christian profession, standing in this world. Paul is proving that a person might persist in the outward observance of Christianity, and yet be lost. But there may be such a thing as having the shield of faith down as a chastisement perhaps, but that would be the only case I can recognise of loss of assurance where it has been really known; that is, I mean where a man is given up to it, and to the fiery darts as a kind of chastisement.
I remember a person who was away from fellowship for fourteen years, and a high Calvinist spoke to him as a child of God, which became the means of bringing him in again. He had got puffed up, was a kind of prophet, Irvingite, and so on, and the devil had blown him over. Very solemn indeed! But I do not want a soul to lose his assurance; it may be the power for bringing him back. I do not say of a child that is naughty, he is not a child, neither do I wish him to think he is not. If you find a person in despair, you may feel it is the divine nature there. God reconciles absolutely His holiness and His faithfulness, and all else. We may be taking them apart, but He never does.
We have in this chapter certain truths typically presented - the keeping of Israel as a whole, or to the end, as well as the fall of these individuals. In Numbers 15 we have the security of God's purpose most beautifully set out. In Numbers 14 He says their carcases shall fall in the wilderness. He pronounces judgment on the whole nation, save two persons. The entire people refuse to go up and take possession of the land, and the Lord says, "doubtless ye shall not come into the land," save Joshua and Caleb. Then in chapter 15, "The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land," etc., and goes on with His own intentions just as quietly as if nothing of chapter 14 had happened.
247 "Baptised unto Moses," is what we call being associated with him in these ordinances. "Baptised with the baptism of John," was objectively the thing to which they were brought: so it was baptised "unto" instead of "into." The Greek preposition eis refers to the point you are going to, unless hindered. I might say I am going to Rome, but robbers might come in and stop me, but eis has that force. Pros is "towards" with the accusative; with the dative it is rather "there," but with the accusative it is distinctly objective. The sickness is not unto (pros) death, but for the glory of God, that is, it was with that object in view. In Ephesians 4 ministers were given with a view to (eis) the work of the ministry, eis the edifying of the body, and pros the perfecting of the saints. The prominent thought is the perfecting of the saints, the more immediate point is eis: the former was, that is, an eternal thing, but the work of the ministry was a present thing, and what they were at then; the perfecting is a definite result in view.
In the middle of this chapter we go from the outward thing to the inward. We have had not merely those who call on the name of the Lord Jesus, but those who were baptised to Moses, and did eat the same spiritual meat, and so on. These really partook of the privileges and yet were lost. You may have really Christ, and yet God be not well pleased with you. A person who is living after the flesh shall die. He therefore cannot have the real thing. This passage is not a warning against having a thing and in any way perishing, but against having the signs of the thing and then perishing. It is addressed to saints "with all those who call on the name of the Lord Jesus," however bad they might be at Corinth. It would be a very dangerous thing to say that people were outside warnings and dangers because they themselves are so bad.
We have here a kind of Sardis, and a terrible thing it is to have a name to live, and yet be responsible. "I gave her space to repent, and she repented not." The whole professing church will be cut off; they wax worse and worse, but still the responsibility is there, though they have left their first love. To the Thessalonians Paul had written, "Ye are not of the night that that day should overtake you as a thief." It will overtake the world so, and the Lord writes to Sardis, "lest I come as a thief," that is, treat you as the world. There will be a testing-time, and then some will be cut off. In the beginning of all, the Lord added daily to the church such as should be saved; but when we come as far as Jude, we see apostasy coming in, evil men creeping in unawares. In verse 8 fornication refers to the particular danger they were in. All their relatives around them went on in that kind of thing, and they themselves were therefore in danger of slipping into it. Fornication was not a type. These were the things that happened then in Israel, not the figures of things for us, but the judgments that came from them are our warnings.
248 As to their idolatry, I doubt if a single sacrifice, unless an official one, was offered to God all through the wilderness. In Acts 7:42, Stephen says, "Have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them." The official ones probably were maintained, or might be; and at large what they did offer might be professedly to the Lord; for when they made the golden calf, Aaron made proclamation, "To-morrow is a feast to Jehovah." God had ordered them to bring the blood of every beast they slew to the tabernacle. or rather the beast itself.
In verse 11 the "ends of the world" is the completion of the ages. To me the world now is not under any dispensation, but the whole course of God's dealings with it are over until He comes to judgment. Man was under responsibility from Adam to Christ, and then our Lord says, "Now is the judgment of this world." Historically I see this: up to the flood no dealings of God, but a testimony in Enoch. We see a man turned out of paradise, and presently God comes in by a solemn act, and puts that world all aside. Then after the flood we see various ways of God with the world. He begins by putting it under Noah. He gave promises to Abraham, then law raising the question of righteousness, which promise did not. Law was brought in to test flesh, and see whether righteousness could be got from man for God. Then God sent prophets until there was no remedy, and then He says there is one thing yet I may still do: I will send My Son; and when they saw the Son, they said, "This is the heir, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours," and then, so far as responsibility went, God was turned out of the world. Then comes the cross, and atonement for sin, and a foundation for a new state of things altogether, and that was the completion of the ages. God is not now dealing with man to try if he is lost or not, and so in John's Gospel man is gone from chapter 1. The first three Gospels present Christ to man, and then He is rejected; but in John 1, "He came to his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." There we find God's power coming into the world, and the Jews all done with: only some receive Him who have been born of God, and so John's Gospel is thoroughly what men call Calvinistic.
249 As to invitations, it is not incorrect to say to an unconverted man, "Come to Jesus." We may go "as though God did beseech you by us … be reconciled to God." God is obliged to have ambassadors for Christ now that Christ is gone. Beseeching is, so to speak, more than saying, Come. Christ says, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden," in the chapter where H. had already said, "We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented," Matt. 11. Thereon He begins to upbraid the cities wherein most of His mighty works were done, declaring woe unto them; and then comes, "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight." And then He says, "Come unto me," etc. He speaks of the judgment as already come upon them; then there is nothing for it, for no man knows the Son but the Father, neither knows any man the Father save the Son. He bows to His Father completely in rejection, and it is consequent upon that rejection, that, like Noah's dove, He finds there is no single place for Him to put His foot upon; and so now He says, If you want to get to heaven, come to Me outside the world. The gospel tests, and people will not receive the gospel any more than they could keep the law.
In 1 John 2:13 we read, "I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning"; that is, they knew Christ had come into the world. They knew a great deal about Him, but no man can fathom the Son but the Father. "Son" is that being who was in the form of God, Christ, who "made himself of no reputation, and took upon himself the form of a servant" and so on; but if you ask how God can be a servant, you plunge into difficulty by getting into the reasonings of men.
250 Returning to our chapter, we have now identification with the table; the eaters are partakers of the altar. In eating of it, you identify yourself with the body of Christ, for "we are all partakers of that one bread." Someone once wrote to ask what was the proof that it was the body of Christ! And I found from another that it was understood only to speak of the unity of those who were actually partaking. But what the apostle is saying is, If you go and eat of these idolatrous altars, you identify yourself with them. As Israel after the flesh, if they ate of the altar, they identified themselves with it; so if you partake of the table of the Lord, you have a common part with others with it. It is not itself identity with the body, but that which is the sign of it. You cannot partake of Christ and of demons at the same time; this is, "cannot" morally. The peace-offering gives the understanding of it: some was burnt on the altar, but of the flesh the priest ate the part offered to God, and they themselves, the offerers, ate the rest.
The principle was that the eaters were identified with the altar. If it were a thanksgiving, it must be eaten on the same day, but two days were allowed in the case of a vow, because there was a stronger energy in it, and none might be eaten on the third day at all. And so, if they were at table at a feast, he says, Eat what is set before you, unless it is given you as having been offered at an idol's temple, and then eat not. Of course you could do the act of eating of idols' sacrifices, but you cannot eat to God and to the demon together. Then comes the question, whether it is only those who are eating who are identified; and the local church is spoken of as the body of Christ, but I must take in all Christians when I go out into the mystic body. The communion (koinonia) is merely the external act of partaking, but if it is of Christ, it is the whole body. I cannot call an assembly the body of Christ, except so far as it may represent the whole body. At the altar there is identification, I am in communion with it; you do not get communion with the Lord's table, but taking a part in it; 1 Cor. 10:21.
251 There is a distinction: the Lord is the One who is over me. I do not think Christ is ever called the Lord of the assembly. He is the Lord of the individual, but not of the assembly. Head of the church implies union. Head of the body is not the same thought as the head of every man; that includes wicked men as well as good. The head of my body is head, and therein is union; but when I speak of head of every man, it is lordship over man. In Ephesians 5:29, "Even as the Lord, the church," should be "Christ the church."
"He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit" is spoken of us, because He is a glorious person, and I by the Holy Ghost am one with Him who is such; but that is very different from the thought of Lord of the assembly as such. The thought destroyed the unity of the body, and this was the use that was made of it. He is Lord in the assembly. I suppose every Christian would own the title of authority in the Lord. Christ is generally the official name; it is not an absolute rule, but in most cases we have lost the the Christ in the English. There is a Greek rule, that if you have the article and the thing that governs the genitive, you have the article with the name, and there is a question then whether you say "the Christ," or "Christ." "The Christ" may contemplate the church too, as in "so also is the Christ." In "whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ," he takes the lowest character first, and says, "He that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God," that is, he that has faith in His person.
The thought that was put out as a difficulty is, that the unity is merely the unity of those who are actually partaking. The bearing of it all is to make independent churches, whereas the apostle is here looking at them in connection with the fact of their partaking at the table; but he adds it is the communion of the body of Christ; and then we have the whole body, while those who may be present stand as such for the time.
In chapter 12 you have two statements. Verse 12, "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all members of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ," literally the Christ. Then in verse 27, "Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular," takes in the whole thing, and the character that belongs to them. In our chapter we have two things; for if I speak of Christ's body, there is His literal body and His mystical body. His literal body is broken, and His mystical body is a united one.
252 The "one bread," in verse 17, represents Christ; it is the loaf on the table. We all partake of it, and are therefore one body; "for we are all partakers of that one bread." Before it is broken, in a certain sense, it represents the body of Christ before it was broken; but it does not form a sacrament in that state, because we have not the figure. It is true I eat Christ as the living bread that came down from heaven, but I go back to do that after I have eaten of Him as broken. I cannot think of the body of Christ without bringing in the mystic body, and verse 16 identifies me with the thought of the body it belongs to. The communion of the blood is always identification with the blood of Christ as shed for us. I do not know another word so good for it as that. Israel had their character from that with which they are connected; so with us, it is with Christ, with His body and His blood. It is not the spiritual feeding of my soul, but it is in the sense that my hand is partaker of the life of my body. "Joint participation" does not express it, because that is rather the act of partaking, or might only go so far. I may partake and not be in communion with; but it is in the latter way we are identified with Christ as His body.
"Demons" refers to idols' temples as such, because it was to demons they offered, and not to God. It is monstrous to apply it to any professing Christianity. In verse 20 we have distinctly what is the meaning of "the cup of demons." If any tried to eat of the Lord's table, and also of the table of demons, that would be saying, "I can eat with a demon, and I can eat with you." This would be provoking the Lord to jealousy, as in verse 22.
The difficulty we started with seems all cleared to my mind by chapter 12:27. The Corinthian church was not the body of Christ. It is a sheer attempt to make one meeting independent of another. That is not the apostle's mind through this chapter at all. But it is what was attempted by connecting the lordship of Christ with the assembly as such. Some said Christ was Lord, and they obeyed the Lord, and acted under obedience to the Lord in any one place, and nobody else had anything to say to them. At first I could not think what they were aiming at, insisting on His lordship in this way, though a man surely is not a Christian if he does not own the lordship of Christ. "Calling on the name of the Lord" is a sort of definition of a Christian. What we have been considering is ecclesiastically a less vigorous attempt at the same purpose. They asked what proof we had that the Lord's supper was an expression of the unity of the body. It was this that made the separation in - . Now what brought me out of the Establishment was the unity of the body: otherwise I could have gone into some independent church or set up one for myself, perhaps. I do not think many would deny that there is one body in words; but the practice denies it.
253 I could not go to any loose table as the Lord's. People do and call it the Lord's, of course; but I do not call it so or I should be there. Many go with a good conscience, I doubt not; but they do not meet on the principle of the unity of the body. If all the Christians in any place come together, they would not be a church and members; there are no members of a church. The idea and the term are unknown to Scripture altogether. Members of Christ's body, and therefore members one of another, is right, and that only. There is not the most distant approach to the common idea.
"All things are lawful" (v. 23) is connected with what is sold in the shambles. The apostle alludes to the custom of selling carcases for food in the common way after the animal had been offered in an idol's temple. But suppose we were sitting at a table with a person just come out from idolatry, and he said, "That joint was offered to an idol." His conscience is not free, and for his sake I do not eat it. To me it is all common meat.
In Acts 15 the commands to abstain from blood, from things offered to idols, and from fornication, are obligatory on a Christian now. They are not from law, but from Noah. Not that I should think if I had eaten blood, that I was defiled by it, for it is not the things that go in that defile. The above three things are special: one is life, and belongs to God; then idols are the giving up of the true God altogether; and fornication is giving up the purity of man. They are the three things which form the standard elements of what I have to say to God in. The two are plain enough: the third may be less clear. If a man came to me and said, 'That rabbit was caught in a trap,' I could say, 'Well, I will not eat it, simply for his sake.' To me these three principles are the expression of man as belonging to God, and not to his own lusts. As to blood, it is the life, and clearly belongs to God, but I leave every man's conscience to himself.
254 1 Corinthians 11.
Here we have another instance of how the greatest truths are brought into connection with commonplace subjects. Here is a question, whether a woman is to have a covering on or not. The whole ordering of God is brought in to say whether a woman is to wear a cap on her head (v. 3-16). It was the custom there with women inspired by demons to have their hair flowing out wild, and this was not the order for a woman. They were to recognise the authority of man if they prayed or prophesied. Women did prophesy, for Philip had four daughters that did. The woman had her place for praying and prophesying, but not in the assembly. Men are to pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands. If a woman's husband were unconverted, it would not be right for her to pray with him if other men were there.
In nominal Christianity we have to take things as we find them. I have known a converted husband, when he went from home, tell his wife to pray with the household, including unconverted men; but I do not believe it was right. The woman's head was to be covered. The apostle shews by her hair that God had covered her, and her mind and will are put on the same ground. A woman ought to be covered at family prayers, or as one of Philip's daughters prophesying in her father's house. The principle applies to both praying and prophesying. The man is the head of the woman, and she puts a covering on her physical head to shew that there is authority over her. The apostle takes the state of the head of the body as a sign of the condition of the man or woman in respect of their moral head. The woman's head - the man - is her head really, and she must cover her own head in sign of her subjection; and so she says in effect, I have no head myself; the man is my head, and I am in subjection. The man could not do that, or there would be no visible head. A woman's gift ought to be confined to women, or to her own family.
As to the difference between preaching and teaching (v. 4), in point of fact, all preaching is teaching now. At first they went and announced the fact - " Jesus is risen from the dead." I have not to do that so much now; I have rather to describe the efficacy of the effect; though I believe the more these things are set out as facts the better, although they are now all admitted. The more we make our preaching the history of a fact, the more powerful it will be. You do bring facts before people if you say, This was God's Son, and so on; otherwise it is teaching, except so far as we press the facts.
255 I do not accept a woman's going out to evangelise. I never saw a woman meddle in teaching and church matters, but she brought mischief upon herself and everyone else. If she sits down with a company before her to teach them, she has got out of her place altogether. We read of Tryphena and Tryphosa, who laboured in the Lord, and the beloved Persis too - each in her own place of service. You find all honour done to women in the Gospels; but the Lord never sent out a woman to preach; neither did a man ever go and anoint Christ for His burial. The women's prophesying was not preaching. There came an inspired teaching, to which they gave utterance. I believe it was in an extraordinary way, as Philip's daughters. Women can be used, as Mary Magdalene was sent by Christ to His disciples. If Christ sent a woman to carry a message, the best she could do would be to go and carry it. It was a mere message; it is no place of teaching; no matter what the message is, it is but a message. Suppose it was written down and was special instruction, the teaching then was in the message, not in Mary Magdalene's place. Scripture says, "I suffer not a woman to teach." She was not to teach at all. She can lead on those who are converted without setting up to be a teacher. Teaching is expounding to people put under you to receive certain doctrines.
The apostle is not speaking of wearing the sign of subjection at all times, but I believe it would be very comely. "For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels," v. 10. She is therein a spectacle with all present to the angels, and angels ought not to see disorder among Christians. The whole subject is modesty, and order, and comeliness, and things in their right place. Therefore the woman ought to have power on her head on account of the angels, that is, the sign of subjection to her husband. Angels should learn something in the church.
As to the "image of God," in verse 7, "image" is something that represents another, and so a man represents God, though certainly he has failed to fill it up. The image of Jupiter was not necessarily like Jupiter, but it was made to represent him. So man keeps the place, though he has fallen in it - the same place in which God put him. He was made sinless, but beside that he stood as the centre of an immense system: no angel was that, no angel was the one single centre of a system all around him. Adam was. And indeed to be that is just what men are driving at in one form or other in the world, and in the church, and in Christendom. If Adam had remained, all his family would have been looking up to him. Here man is spoken of as "the image and glory of God" and in James "made after the similitude of God." But he is not in likeness now.
256 The first Adam was the image of him that was to come; the last Adam takes the place of the first: only the last Adam was in counsel before the first was in responsibility. The last Adam was first before God, and when the first has failed, the counsels are brought out in the last Adam. You get the first man put in responsibility after the counsel, and then the second Man was brought out in the accomplishment of counsel. That settles all Calvinism and Arminianism and such like systems. All the responsibility goes on until it has been thoroughly brought to an issue at the cross, and man will not have God at all: but in that cross God does a work that lays the foundation of everlasting glory; and then as soon as that is done, all these counsels are revealed, not accomplished yet, but revealed. Thus since the cross man's responsibility, as such, is over; it is not that he has not debts and sins, or that he was not responsible: all that is true, but God was rejected finally, and God comes and works His own work all alone by Himself. When that is done, He tells out His counsels and what He is going to do. At the beginning of Titus, we read "the acknowledging of the truth" - the gospel comes and man is responsible to own his ruin - "in hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie, promised before the world began, but hath in due time manifested His word through preaching which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Saviour."
First, He begins with Adam, and that is all ruin. 2 Timothy 1:9 gives us "who has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death and hath brought life and incorruptibility to light through the gospel; whereunto I am appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles." It was all in God's counsels settled in Christ, but when Christ came, it all came out to us. It is a mistake to think predestination in itself has anything to do with the counsels of God. If God came down now and chose fifteen of us who are here, it would be just the same as if He had done it before the world began. It would be just as arbitrary, as the world would call it, to take fifteen now, as to take fifteen before the world began. But He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.
257 "Incorruptibility" refers to the body. "Mortal" is never applied to anything but the body. The corruptible mortal is that which goes to dust; incorruptible and mortal alike have only to do with the body. So we see in 1 Corinthians 15. It is not necessary that the body should go to corruption: the incorruptibility of the body is brought to light by the gospel. We do not find it in the Old Testament, having little hints here and there and that is all; eternal life is mentioned twice in the Old Testament; "life for evermore" in Psalm 133, and "some to everlasting life" in Daniel 12:3. You may perhaps spell it out, and some of them did, the Pharisees for instance. Hezekiah says "the living shall praise thee" in contrast with the dead in Isaiah 38. When we are raised and changed, the "incorruptible" will be made apparent; when the dead are raised in incorruption, they will not corrupt any more. Immortality may refer to the soul; there is no difficulty about it.
At verse 17 we have the assembly, and in terrible disorder. "Heresies" and "sects" are the same. It is no use taking up words in an exclusive way; as, for instance, to distinguish worship and homage. We use "worship" now for worshipping God; but when our version was made, it was not at all so. It says "they worshipped God and the king" in the same sentence, and so in the church of England marriage service the man says, "with my body I thee worship." It did not mean worshipping God at all. Here we have three words, heresies, divisions, and sects. Schism is a positive division; heretic is merely a man being at the head of a school of doctrine, as that of the Epicureans. There were many schools of doctrines, or heresies. In modern language the word has come to mean false doctrine. If we were all breaking bread together, I might make a party and yet no schism, but it might go on to that. "Damnable heresies" means bad doctrine. We are to reject a party school in the church: "a man that is a heretic after the first and second admonition reject." Have no more to do with him.
258 In our chapter the apostle says, "First of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you." I do not suppose they had openly divided, but they were making parties; and he says there must be heresies among you, though no division yet, but that came from the setting up of these schools. Heresies and sects are not exactly the same. There are only two words in this text; "divisions" is the word schismata (v. 18), and the word heresies (hairesis) (v. 19), is often translated "sects."
In verse 18 "the" church would not do at all. It is not the church, but in that character of meeting, whenever the church met as such, not restricted to the breaking of bread on the Lord's day (for so the first day of the week was called): when the assembly met together the apostle taught the people. They might not have broken bread whenever they came together. If notice was given that the assembly would meet for a particular purpose, it would still be the assembly, though all did not come; it is the assembly when they come together as such. A reading meeting would not be such though all were there, because that is not the character of the meeting. A meeting for prayer is an assembly, but hardly the assembly of the place. Meetings are meetings of the assembly if it is understood that they meet as such, but the meeting must be accepted by the assembly. What I look for is the consciousness of meeting together in the Lord's name as one.
It will be observed that Paul received his instruction concerning the Lord's supper by revelation. The church and the unity of the body was the very thing entrusted to Paul. It is the local assembly here - the saints at Corinth, but what is wanted for action is that the whole assembly should come together for the purpose and with the intention of coming as such. Sometimes the Lord's supper is taken in a private house when a person is sick, and if it is done in unity, it is all well and very nice, but when a person is sick, I might not do it for other reasons. In the early church they used to send out a piece of bread dipped in the wine, to shew that they were one. If I were ill for two or three weeks, I should bow to the chastening. A few might go to an isolated one, and break bread with him, if it is done in the spirit of unity; but if done in a party feeling, it would be wrong. It need not be named first if there is confidence; but if there is distrust, it should be named. We have no rule as to breaking bread oftener than every Lord's day. But I took the Lord's supper with the young men who were reading with me, every day for a whole year. So the early church did.
259 The words "take, eat" (v. 24) should be omitted: I suppose he expresses what is weighing on his mind, and "take, eat" does not come into his mind. To "be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord" (v. 27) is disrespect to it. Suppose I spat upon my mother's picture, in spirit I should be spitting upon my mother; it would be doing scorn to my mother, and so it would be in this case; to be guilty of it means to be guilty in the way you are dealing with the body and blood of Christ. Some leave out the word "unworthily" in verse 29, but it has been used before, and the sense is all right: it is in verse 27, and therefore it means so eating and drinking, that is, unworthily. The eater and drinker in verse 29 is the same as in verse 27. "Not discerning the Lord's body" is that a person takes it as his own or common bread and wine, perhaps drinks and gets tipsy. Carousing would not be discerning the Lord's body. It has nothing to do with being unworthy to eat or drink, but is the manner of doing it: in Christ, he is worthy; out of Christ, he is unworthy, which is another thing.
There is another principle at the end of the chapter which is not without its importance, and that is the government of God over His saints. "For this cause many are weak and sickly among you and many sleep; for if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged; but when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world." It is nothing difficult, but very important. We are chastened that we should not be condemned. "Come not together unto condemnation" (v. 34), is to judgment, it is your own fault that you should have to be accused and judged. The word "condemned" (v. 32) is distinctly in contrast with "judged" as well as in contrast with "chastened." "Condemned" is right in verse 32; but he eats and drinks judgment, or fault, or crime; for it is the thing a man is accused of to himself. "Condemnation" is not right in verse 34; "If any man hunger, let him eat at home, that ye come not together unto condemnation," judgment or fault. Our word "crime" is from the Greek word: it is the judgment that is passed, but it comes to be used also for the fault itself.
260 They were told to "tarry one for another," because each had been eating his own supper before his neighbour's came, making a pic-nic, as it were, as they pleased. I do not know that they became actually drunk, but some were what one calls carousing. It is all readily understood, if you remember that they were taking a meal before the Supper. It is "the table of the Lord" in chapter 10, and "the supper of the Lord" in our chapter. We must keep each in its own connection. In chapter 10 it is the table of the Lord in contrast with the table of demons. There is no thought of that here, but the apostle is on another point, and with those who had nothing to do with demons. There was that which represented the body of Christ, and they were carousing, and getting tipsy or very near it; it was now the abuse of what was on the table.
In general the weakness and sickness would fall upon those doing wrong, but God might take away one righteous man to chastise the assembly, though it was not the case here: this applies only to the persons, the individuals who were guilty of the disorder. I think that the assembly ought to have judged it, and restored order: there was guilt in the assembly too. If an assembly is in a bad state, the Lord can combine the two, and wake up the conscience of the assembly. If the Lord take anyone so, it may be to his glory: in such a case he would be a martyr. When God deals in this way with individuals, we are outside of all dispensations.
There are two principles in Job, chapters 33 and 36. In chapter 33 God deals with men "in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed, then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, that he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man." There God stops him. Then, in chapter 36, we have more; not that God only deals with man in His own sovereign way, but "He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous, but with kings are they on the throne, yea, he doth establish them for ever, and they are exalted." There we have the special fact, beyond the general care of God; just as in the case of Laban and Jacob, God is also always looking at the righteous, blessing them, as a rule. "As kings are they on a throne"; that is, figuratively. They are righteous people that God owns, and that God also chastens. We find it more distinctly when there is a particular government of God, as in Ezekiel 18; and sometimes the sins of the fathers were visited on the children. Then, in the church of God, we have it definitely and little known. The apostle can tell them why this chastening came, "and if he have committed sins, they shall pray for him, and they shall be forgiven him," that is, unless it is a "sin unto death." Only, observe, the assembly ought to know why they are in such and such a condition. I do not doubt there are now quantities of discipline and sorrows that come upon the saints as discipline; I do not say all: you may find a man born blind who neither sinned, nor his parents; or, again, "this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God"; or God may unite both. He might have chastened Lazarus, and yet used it for His own glory.
261 Discipline may be to check a tendency. Paul had a thorn in the flesh, that he might not be puffed up. The order is, we are chastened for a fault, but there may be much more. Paul meets with a messenger from Satan to buffet him. If a godly person were taken aside from an assembly, the assembly ought to inquire why it was so. It might be because they did not give heed to him; but that becomes a question of spiritual discernment. In Job the righteous are in contrast to believers. The value of the Book of Job is, that you get the great principles of God in connection with man. God was using everything for the purpose of helping the righteous man, and Satan was bringing in all that he could against him; and that before there was either law or gospel. As I observed just now, all sickness need not be discipline. Suppose God saw some evil among the saints: He will take means, in various ways, to arouse them to a sense of it. In nature you find a quantity of hidden caloric constantly, that comes out the moment there is something to call it out. It is a wonderful thing, when we think of God, that God not merely has saved us, but never withdraws His eyes from us. In a way it is as wonderful as is the salvation. Those who did not bow were cut off - "shall perish by the sword" - "Hypocrites in heart," "cry not when he bindeth them," goes further still. Notice, it was not the devil who began with Job, but God set Satan at work. The devil did not know what God was doing. "Hast thou considered my servant Job?" It was a great conflict between God and Satan, with a man between them. Satan's object, of course, is all mischief, but God allows him.
There is a difference between chastening and scourging. Chastening is a general word (as, for instance, the education of children) and the same word is used for "teaching," and a certain correction and discipline, and even punishing too; but when you come to scourging, it is the positive action and punishment. As a general rule, if we judge ourselves, we shall not be judged of the Lord. All will come out at the judgment-seat of Christ; it will make no difference, whether we have been chastened for it or not. It will all appear. I cannot know as I am known. I cannot give account of myself to God, if I do not give account of everything. And that, I believe, is a great blessing.
262 None of my sins will come up in that day as a question of judgment on myself. As to imputation, "He hath not seen iniquity in Jacob, nor perverseness in Israel," when they were iniquitous and perverse all the while. But at that day I shall see all God's ways to me, and His dealings with me all through. If I look back now, I can see faults before I was converted, and nothing else; and after that, faults that I have to be humbled for, and I say, How could I do so? Yet it does not rest on my conscience as though it was there. And then I shall see the goodness of God, with a blessed sense of how He has brought me through all, and what God has been to me in it all, with no question of judgment, or thought of it, for I have not then a nature that sins, even as to my body; I am a new creature.
There should be fear of one kind in connection with the government of the Father, but it is not servile dread; "Blessed is the man that feareth always." "Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear," 1 Peter 1:17. And that is connected with the Father, and he continues as to the cost of redemption for motive: you know what it cost to redeem you out of your sins, and now, upon that ground, you think of your Father upon whom you call. There is no fear of God when I am going to meet Him, but now is the time to walk in His fear. If a Christian sins, it brings down a dealing of God with him, unless he confess it at once, and then God has no pleasure in afflicting. We find plenty about it in James 5:14-16, and in 1 John 5:16: such as, "God shall give him life for them that sin not unto death," and so on. I remember once saying to a person, "If you do not bow and break off that particular thing, you will not get well of your affliction." And three days before he died, he said, "I would not bow to the will of God; now it is too late." I have no doubt he went to heaven.
263 I could not say that, according as we love Christ here, we shall enjoy Him hereafter. Reward is for our labour: as to our place, we all get the same glory as Christ, "when he shall appear, we" - that is, all Christians - "shall appear with him in glory." And Paul cannot have anything better than that; but when you come to labour, it is a very different thing, and reward is accordingly. The Thessalonians will be Paul's crown, but they will not be ours; that is clear. We know not how this will be accomplished, but in glory Paul will have them as his crown, yet he will not take away Christ's crown; for it was all grace that did it, though Christ is pleased to reward the labour when it is faithfully done, owning, not me, but the grace of God that is in me. The reward has nothing to do with motive, and never is the motive for action in scripture; it is the encouragement in the service, when the person gets into trial by the motive.
Well, it is a great thing to see that there is this present government of God. There are cases where evil is the fruit of sin, believing or not believing; evil is in the world, but much is positive discipline, where, if there were faith to deal with God about it, the discipline would be removed. James 5 can be acted upon where there is faith to do it. I have known it acted on, and the use of oil also, in two cases where they asked for it themselves. In one case the doctor had said nothing could be done for her, and she had better go home to die. She recovered, and was walking about that week, and taking care of the poor. She had three daughters after that. In the other case I remember, the one prayed for was out in the street, and at a place where there was a very broad crossing; but a boy had placed a barrow across the path, and she stumbled against it. Her own brother who was passing ran to help her, and found it was his own sister, whom he supposed to be dying at home. Another case was that of J - , who was ordered not to speak or stir by the doctor; but he rode over to a place some twenty-five miles. When the brethren went in, he was vomiting blood, but he rode back the twenty-five miles; afterwards he walked fifteen miles. It was a prayer-meeting in his case, but he was not anointed with oil. He was twice married afterwards. Other cases I have had myself, having laid my hands on a baby once. Such things have generally been at the beginning of an awakening: there is an energy of faith that brings in God more directly. It is a question of faith very much, but this necessarily in the sick person. Some have professed to have the faith constantly, but I do not put much confidence in that. I believe God would answer the prayer of anybody that cried to Him.
264 Discipline would not go on after the prayer of faith. James refers to a case of discipline distinctly. Paul was sick, and the Lord had mercy upon him, but we do not know that he was prayed for at that time. He could perhaps have raised himself, but the apostles never wrought a miracle for their own comfort. Paul left Trophimus at Miletum sick. The words, "And if he committed sins," shew that James refers to discipline. And the forgiveness is a question of present government, as the church can also forgive. I do not think we lay to heart enough the fact of government in that way. There is many a case, I am satisfied, which is real chastening, and all the doctors are of no use. It may sometimes be without any specific sin. I used, at one time, to be ill every year, and I laid it to this, that I did not keep close enough to the Lord in service. But you must take care that such a thought as that does not become legal. We read, "Every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit." This is not always for discipline; it may be for instruction. The Lord can combine the two. When Paul had a thorn in the flesh, whatever it was, it made him contemptible in his preaching, and was discipline, lest he should be puffed up; and so it was his glory and his discipline. The Lord can unite these things, but we cannot. Yet in His hands it may be our honour and our discipline at the same time.
Paul did not fail in asking the Lord to take away his thorn, though he may have failed in spiritual discernment: it is not the granting of a thing that proves whether it is right or wrong. Our Lord asked that the cup might pass away, and it did not, though the asking was in perfect submission, and He had His answer in resurrection. Yet "for this cause came I unto this hour." A person losing his mind may be in discipline; for "Affliction does not spring out of the dust" in any way. Take Job: he had elephantiasis, or whatever you call it; and when he had a house, there were plenty of winds to blow it down, and plenty of people to sweep away his cattle; but it was a particular use of these by Satan, and all within God's limits.
To return to our chapter: - we come now to spiritual manifestation. This is all the true order of the church. You do not get a hint that there were any elders, nor a suggestion to make them; either there were none or they disappear from view. And it was the Lord's goodness to give us here divine instruction how to go on, and give it in a way that suits us now. There may have been elders, but if so, seeing that they are not mentioned here, it is all the more strong for us now. In the action of the assembly the conscience of the assembly must be cleared: elders by authority could not do that. They could not put out. I remember a terrible hubbub in Geneva on this. I said only engineers can make a good road, but, when made, all the carters in the country can use it, and their elders - wise and godly brethren - were of immense value; but the action in actual discipline, publicly, must be made by the assembly; for the assembly has to clear itself, and no other way will do. As he says, "You have proved yourselves clear in this matter." Suppose the elders had put a person out rightly, this would not clear the conscience of the assembly. It would only lead ultimately to sorrow that they had to put him out. A brothers' meeting can only deliberate and take counsel, and perhaps the matter will be better weighed there than with a whole body of people.
265 The first thing here in chapter 12 is to distinguish the Holy Ghost from demons. The Corinthians were very fond of gifts, and so were liable perhaps to be ensnared by satanic manifestations; but no demon would say "Lord." If any spirit said "Lord," that was by the Holy Ghost. The point here was to distinguish between a good spirit and a bad one. It should be "no one can say." Sometimes the use of "man" is mischievous. It may be spirit, angel, devil, or anything else; it is merely a being, and "man" in English is wrong. Evil spirits are at work now, and in the same way exactly. When the apostle was preaching, there came one and said, These men shew us the way of salvation. Now, apart from experience, you would not expect a demon to say that. How were they to distinguish? Mormonites used to go and preach the Lord's coming and baptise, and then when they had so laid hold of people, they would preach other things altogether. False doctrine may not always be the direct action of an evil spirit, but often it is. There is more the action of Satan in certain cases than people suspect. I do not doubt that in Irvingism there was much of it. And then if they were treated as Satan they would have no power at all. I was told at - - they had a great deal more charity than I had; I really have no charity for the devil. When asked in Somersetshire to meet certain people, I would not go. Prince (of the Agapemone) stated publicly in the town of Bridgewater, that they could not preach or do anything because of the brethren who were there. And I believe he said the truth. So in W - 's case, I said that I would not go near, unless the Lord led me there, and then He would give me strength. S. wanted me to go, and I said no. H. came and I went with him, and the first night, I said, "I cannot say, but I think it is of the devil." W had stopped them from breaking bread; he said that "whenever there was any evil and nobody knew it, they were all contaminated, and they ought not to break bread, as they were all of one body," and so he stopped them. His wife could hardly contain herself against me. The next night I thought over it and cried over it before the Lord, and the following day I said it was the devil. The whole thing passed, and they have gone on happily there ever since. I believe he was puffed up, and that his wife was the real secret of it, and the devil was there. He had been much used, five hundred being converted in one year: it is said nine hundred, but an opponent said there were not more than five hundred. All are going on happily now, though they were very angry with me then. "Anathema Jesus" was the utterance of a man. The spirit said it, but by the man's mouth, of course. Anathema is a curse. It is never used in a good sense in the New Testament. The anathema among the heathen was a thing devoted to the gods and was killed. "Anathema maranatha" is a curse on him when the Lord comes.
266 We have then "gifts," "administrations," and "operations"; the Spirit, the Lord, and God. There are diversities of gifts, but one Spirit. If they were demons, they were diversities of spirits; you might have a legion of spirits in a person, or "seven demons." But here it is one Spirit. "Administrations" were by one Lord, so that anyone in any service is the Lord's servant. We have the unity of the Spirit in contrast with these demons; next various administrations, but one Lord; and then these operations, which were a secondary and narrower thing, but one God. One God worketh everything; it was divine, one Spirit giving gifts; one Lord with administrations under Him: and then it is God that is working everything. "The administrations" may be wider than "the gifts," if we take in elders; but in Romans 12 they all run together.
267 The manifestation of the Spirit was not given to every man. If I work a miracle, or speak with a tongue, that is a manifestation of the Spirit, but it does not say that a manifestation was given to every man. The point was, that these Corinthians who were fond of gifts were using them wrongly, speaking with tongues that were of no use to anybody; but the apostle says the tongues were given you to profit with. If it is not to profit, you are not to use it, whether the Holy Ghost is there or not, that is, in the gift. The order and moral rule of the Spirit is paramount to mere power by Him. There may be power, but a person is not to use it else; "the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets." I may have a real moving of the Spirit, and am yet to hold my tongue for all that. If three have spoken, and I have five prophecies to tell, I must hold my tongue. The church suffers both from presumption and unused gifts - it varies in places. I believe there are many gifts repressed. The principle here is distinctly stated, that power is not to guide us. The rule for my using it is that it profits those to whom I speak. If one spoke not to profit, the others are to judge; and if they tell him of it, to do it as gently as they can. It is not the prophets only who are to judge. It leaves it open to those who had the capacity to do it.
In the Old Testament prophets, the relation between power and exercise of gift may have been different, though there is something like it in "while I was musing the fire burned; then spake I with my tongue." We now have the Holy Ghost, but then a man was like a tube or a pipe to carry a thing, and they began to search "what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow; unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven." But now all that the Holy Ghost gives He gives to the person who receives it, and that makes a difference in the nature of the thing. As to ourselves, whatever the Holy Ghost reveals to any of us, of course we have it in the word, but the Corinthians received it for themselves When God shone into Paul's heart to make him an apostle, He shone into his heart the things he was to be an apostle about, and we have them in the written word - words, as we were seeing, given by the Spirit for the purpose. So I now drink for myself, and then communicate it; rivers of living water flow from me. So God shined into Paul's heart for him to give out. He had it to use in the consciousness of the possession of the thing itself for himself.
268 In John 3 we read, "We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen"; but it is Christ who is speaking there who says, "No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." It was Christ telling them heavenly things, and that a man must be born again, or else he could not have them. The point was that man, as a man, was gone and done with, and Christ had brought in what was heavenly. The "lifting up" was the cross, not the ascension. "We have heard out of the law," they said, "that Christ abideth for ever, and how sayest thou, the Son of man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of man?" John 12:34. And in John 8:28, "When ye have lifted up the Son of man." Clearly it is Christ rejected from the earth, and not yet in heaven. But a Christ rejected from the earth is a total breach between God and this world. It was alone between God and Christ. The whole question of sin was settled when Christ was lifted up from the earth before He went to heaven. Everything in this world was shut out; even the disciples were shut out. He said to them "ye cannot follow me" now; and then God is glorified as the consequence of the cross. We have it in the tabernacle; when a man went into the court, he met the altar first. The first thing we meet is the cross. Christ was lifted up in view of the world; but He is neither on earth nor in heaven, and the grand question is, when man turns Christ out of the world, can He do such a work that God can take Him to heaven? "I will draw all men unto me" is in contrast with the Jews who rejected Christ. He will draw all men unto Himself. In John 3 it is not merely that man is a sinner, but "we speak that we do know and testify that we have seen, and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" He brings down heavenly things which no one receives at all; and so in the next chapter He goes to Samaria, and grace comes out in God giving from Himself without expecting anything of man. "God giveth not the Spirit by measure" is there spoken of the Lord. I believe it is an abstract principle that the Holy Ghost comes, and is not a mere influence of which you may have more or less.
269 Remark in our chapter that we have an intimation of the deity of the Holy Ghost as well as of His personality. "It is the same God which worketh all in all," and then "all these worketh that one and self-same Spirit." And then you have what is more often practically lost sight of, the personality of the Holy Ghost. "He divideth to every man severally as He will." You cannot say this of an influence, for it is He worketh and He wills; which is the most distinct expression of the action of a person. I think the place in which we find the Holy Ghost in scripture is striking, I mean as acting in us. In the order of God's dealings - He is not the object, but as a divine power, He is the agent. The Father and Son are objects, but the Holy Ghost is the agent, and so is more mixed up with things in us, because acting in us; so that there is a natural liability to lose sight of His personality. The Father and Son are objects of faith. "We have fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ"; through Christ "we have access by one Spirit unto the Father"; so that the Spirit is working in us. The Father sent the Son, and He went back to God; but the Holy Ghost's being in us is mixed up with the workings of our minds.
We have three things in Romans 8:27, He that searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit; then the Holy Ghost Himself also; and that in us, for our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost. This is not a mere influence, which is a very common idea. You find persons when you speak of "the Spirit of Christ" take it as a term of Christ's character. It may include that, but also very much more. Scripture is plain enough: only we are apt to get confounded in our minds. The Spirit is life, and He is the spring and power, and power of life in us. It is from Him the life comes; "the body is dead … but the Spirit is life"; it is the Holy Ghost in us. He is the power of the life, and characterises it, and righteousness is the effect.
In chapter 8 of Romans we read of Him both as working in life in us, and also a distinct Person. First as a nature and character; and then (for we cannot separate a spring from its stream) after verse 14, we have Him as a Person in us and with us: "the Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit," and there He is distinct. The Spirit is life, and then He bears witness, which separates the two. "If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his" is the indwelling of the Spirit, but it is characteristic there. An unsealed soul is not Christ's in the sense of being a Christian, as God owns a Christian to be. It is not that he does not belong to Him, for He belonged to Him before, but I cannot call a person a Christian who is not sealed. He may really be Christ's in the sense that God is bringing him into it all; but he has not got into Christian place and standing. "We have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but we have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba Father." And "if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his," refers to that. It is a person who is not an unbeliever. There was no verse in Scripture so difficult as that to me for years, until I saw that the whole chapter refers to the Christian position as such. It is not merely life: we receive the Spirit as life, and as a Person. The two are true.
270 In Romans 8:14 He is a distinct person from us; in verses 12, 13, it is transitional. Chapter 7 closes with "Who shall deliver me?" and we get the deliverance up to the resurrection of the body in chapter 8:1-11. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" comes first, then the body is dead; as I said it is spring and stream; neither one is the other; the spring is not the stream, nor the stream the spring: yet if you stop the spring, there is no stream at all; but beside that, there is a divine Person who makes my body a temple; the same Holy Ghost, but in a distinct character. In "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit," it is the flesh contrasted with the Spirit, as you have in Galatians. He is the Spirit of life; we are in the Spirit; the Spirit of God dwells in us; and then we have the same Spirit in His formative character; then, "if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin"; and then, "the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead." The Spirit is first, the opposite of the flesh; next, He is formative of the new man; and then I find Him raising up the body into glory.
The Spirit dwells in me. He is called the Spirit of Christ, because He expresses Christ in me. The opening of Romans 8 is closely connected with chapter 7: "The law of the Spirit of life," etc., sums up chapter 7 with the character of the deliverance. By the body being dead is meant that there is no life, it has no life, but is a corpse, and the Spirit is life. As to the words - " is none of his," though I may be sure that God is working, yet I cannot say such an one is His until he is sealed. I cannot say till then, as an absolute fact, that he belongs to Christ. Then he would know it himself, for God has given to us the earnest of the Spirit. The man is wrought by God for it, but that is not the same thing as his being in the place.
271 "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" means that where the Spirit is, the man is free. Redemption sets a man at liberty, and then, when he has the Holy Ghost, he knows the liberty and enjoys it. A person is sealed when he can say, Abba Father: only there are some who say, "Father" in prayer, and yet have unbelieving thoughts about themselves. It may be such an one from bad teaching is afraid of acknowledging what he is, but he has the Spirit of adoption. He has liberty too with God, and there is the important place to have it. He has a consciousness that God is his Father; it would be much better to be able to tell other people so. A man in Romans 7 has not that liberty, which in type comes in with Israel, before they had crossed the Red Sea. It precedes sometimes the first part of Romans 5, though not always, but it is modified if it come after. It is connected with our dying with Christ, not with Christ's dying for our sins. The fact in Romans 5 that I am forgiven, when I know that, modifies it. Forgiveness is not death with Christ, but the knowledge of forgiveness brings in a character of love and mercy and non-imputation; which greatly modifies the remainder. The deliverance by the doctrine of the death is in chapter 5, whilst chapter 7 comes in to shew the bearing of the doctrine of death on law; but the knowledge of forgiveness modifies the power of the law. Chapter 7 might be a person who has the Holy Ghost, but only in a certain sense. In that chapter he takes the thing in itself completely, in its full actual character, and this does not touch the question of forgiveness at all. The sealing comes upon the knowledge of the work by which we are forgiven, not upon the knowledge that we are dead. But one may be in a legal state though knowing forgiveness. The full character of Romans 6 is Jordan, not the Red Sea. The Red Sea is that Christ died and rose, Jordan is my dying and being risen with Christ; but when I look back with clearness, I see that I died and rose with Christ, and then I get Jordan. We get the consciousness consequent upon Jordan.
272 Marah throws in the bitters of the way. Circumcision is not in the wilderness, which so far complicates it; they have to drink death in the wilderness - the bitter water - for they have been saved through it; and they have to get it applied; but when I have the full consciousness of liberty, I must go through Jordan, and then circumcision comes; the reproach of Egypt was never rolled away until then. It was not, of course, that they were not out of Egypt, for they were, and in the wilderness; and there we have the two parts of the Christian life: the going through the world as a wilderness, and that distinguished from sitting in heavenly places, or the land. We must have death and resurrection for both; but if it is in Christ only, I am but in the wilderness; but if I get Jordan, then I have the realisation of my having myself died and risen. Then I get circumcision, and never till then. Those who had only a place in the wilderness, and its character, were not circumcised, and therefore they had nothing heavenly, unless it is said that any one tasted of it from Eshcol. I think we have something of this in John 3.
We must have Christ's resurrection even to get the earthly blessings of Israel, and therefore, in Acts 13 Paul says, God raised Christ "up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption"; and "I will give unto you the sure mercies of David," Isa. 55. Israel could not have them without death and resurrection, and therefore the sure mercies of David are proof of resurrection; there was nothing sure till that. If they trusted to a living man, all failed. Then only I have them so, and a master of Israel ought to have known that. Therefore when I have heavenly things brought in, I have the cross to bring them in. I do not merely have the death and resurrection of Christ as that which delivers me from Egypt - " by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit," which is true - but I have also all things brought to me, as risen with Christ, through the Jordan.
Circumcision, in the end of Romans 2, is looked at as a real thing, and all is the work of the Spirit, when you come to the actual application of it. I have forgiveness of sins, and deliverance from flesh; and not only practically mortify my members, but I say, I am dead; for I have died with Christ, and that is Jordan; then we have liberty, and what is heavenly. Romans 3 to 5 I link with the Red Sea, and chapter 6 with Jordan. I am dead, only I am looking back: first, I must have Christ entirely alone - lifted up; then I must, so to say, put myself in Christ by faith. I died then, and then I myself am actually dead also, across the Jordan; and then I get into this heavenly standing: not merely am brought into a wilderness, for there it is that flesh is tested, but into the land where I am fighting, so the Lord's host in Canaan, and have nothing to do with flesh, but am risen, and only that, and therefore I am simply the vessel of God's power against God's enemies. Notice, that the beginning of the wilderness is a little picture of grace, which stands by itself entirely: for the things Israel were chastened for afterwards, they then had blessing about If they wanted flesh, quails were sent at even; but afterwards; in Numbers 11, the Lord smote them with a very great plague for the same murmuring for flesh.
273 Strictly speaking, Jordan is connected with Ephesians only. Colossians may be in advance of Romans, introducing resurrection; but it is only partial in Colossians. You are there risen with Christ, but not sitting in the heavenly places; you are risen, but still on earth, and that is more like the Red Sea than Jordan. If ye be risen, seek the things above. It does not say you are sitting in the midst of them. In Romans you are not risen; in Ephesians, both risen and seated; in Colossians it is rather between the two. You do not get the Holy Ghost in Colossians at all, save once the "love of the Spirit." We have death with Christ in Romans, resurrection with Christ in Colossians, and sitting in heavenly places added in Ephesians. Not that it is all the apostle is teaching; he takes much for granted also, as "in Christ," for instance: such an one had title to everything, and he speaks so in Romans. You are alive in Christ, but he does not there speak of with Christ. With Christ I have come out of death, which is different from receiving life. If I have come out of death, and am risen with Christ, that is very different from simply receiving life. If I look at Christ as having given life, it is a divine person quickening me; but if, as risen with Him, I look at Him as the one who has gone into death, and with whom I have risen, then I have gone through death; and so it is that risen with Christ is so much more than life through Him simply.
In Romans 7 the experience is that of a man quickened but not dead. In the early part of the chapter we have the doctrine that we have died, and so we cannot have the two husbands; and the law cannot have power over us, because we have died. It will be seen therefore that chapter 7 is the application of the doctrine of chapter 6 to the question of law, and there the experience is given of a man that is under law who cannot say he is dead. There it is not "risen with Christ," but married to another who has risen. You cannot have law and Christ together. Then the figure is changed; for it is we that have died, though it is the same in principle. And in the end of the chapter we have the experience of a man that is under law, and not delivered; he has the life given, but he is not dead and risen. It is the fullest expression of a man under law, and having life. And as such we are delivered by finding out, not merely that Christ died for our sins, but also that we have died with Christ. And this is the doctrine of chapter 6.
274 In Ephesians the principle of the body is brought in. We are in sins, and Christ dies, and in the coming down to that, He put away all our sins, and then God comes and raises us all up together, and this involves union in one body. In Colossians it is only just brought to the edge of what is called "one body" (Col. 3:15), but in Ephesians the body is the great subject - Jews and Gentiles all one body - and then "quickened together with Christ," and "raised up together" (that second "together" is Jew and Gentile), sitting in Christ, but not with Him.
1 Corinthians 12.
Turning to 1 Corinthians 12 we have both the manifestation of the Spirit and miraculous gifts. The apostle was speaking in contrast with demons, etc., but it is a manifestation of the Spirit in power: so in chapter 14, if all prophesied, they were convinced of all, and judged of all, and thus the secrets of his heart were made manifest, and so, falling down on his face, he worshipped God, and reported that God was in them of a truth. It is more the outward manifestation that is in his mind here. It applies in principle to what remains now. There is the word of wisdom, etc. Speaking by "two or three, and that by course," applies now. I never did speak, if three had spoken. Simply reading a chapter is not speaking. Ordinarily we call prophecy the foretelling future events, but this is not the meaning of the word. It is "forth-telling," not "foretelling." We have this prophecy spoken of in verse 10, for edification, exhortation, and comfort, but not as inspiration of some new revelation. The word is used both in a general way, and as a direct gift. We have not it in the special way.
275 The baptism of the Spirit (v. 13) was on the day of Pentecost, and when an individual believes, he is sealed and anointed. "In [or by] one Spirit" is "in the power of." A person says by one Spirit he was baptised, instead of saying in the power of one Spirit: it may become equivocal. You have been baptised by the Holy Ghost coming. By the coming and power of the Holy Ghost we have all been made one body, and if I have the Holy Ghost, I am brought in, and am united by it. By being sealed, I am joined to the Lord. God puts a testimony of salvation on a man, and we cannot really say what he is until then, even though I may feel sure he is being wrought in by God. Yet he has not his place along with Christ in this world until then. We cannot say a person is saved until God has put His seal upon him. It is baptism into one body, and drinking of one Spirit. They are shades of thought. It reads, "For by one Spirit," and "for as the body" (v. 12, 13); but the word "for," in more than half the cases, is not a connection with what has gone immediately before, but rather a reference back to some great principle.
The body (v. 12) is for eternity, though a person when he dies passes out of the body, as manifested in time; he ceases to be part of that which was formed of God, by the Holy Ghost down here, but in result the whole will be Christ's body. If a person dies, he is like any one on furlough, and forms no actual part of the regiment in active service. We must recollect that the Holy Ghost has come down to earth. Christ, as God, created everything, but that was not His actual existence as when He came, but still He had been working, and had created everything. And so as to the Holy Ghost Christ said, "If I go not away, the Comforter will not come." Now, every direct action of God on the creature is by the Spirit: yet He came on the day of Pentecost. Our Lord says, "When he is come," and so on. Of course, when He forms the body, He forms it where He is; but as God He does not give up the person that dies, neither his body, for He has got it all in His hands, and under His eye, to be raised. Even the body is not given up, but it ceases to be in that corporation which the Holy Ghost has formed on earth. If one die, he belongs to the body, and is held to belong to Christ. His body is in the dust, and his spirit is with Christ.
276 When you get to the "nots" and the "onlys," it is a dangerous thing. If you say, "He is not of the body," naturally you conclude that he did not belong to it at all. If you say, "belongs only down here," you exclude the body for Christ in eternity. If I say, That is in Scripture, I bring my text, and there it is: if I say, "not," then I must know the whole of the scripture to say so. In our knowledge, negatives are universals, and affirmatives only are particular.
In Ephesians 1, we may notice, Christ is head in title, and not yet: in God's counsels the church is Christ's body, neither present, future, nor past, for it is all in counsel; but here, in Corinthians, it is the actual thing in accomplishment, distinct quite from Ephesians, which is purpose and counsel. And here, too, it is the nature of the thing. Then we have the dependence of the members down here; and it is important to see that all this is down here, because when I read, "He set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets," and so on (v. 28-30), then all this is not in heaven. The apostle says, "in the assembly" (v. 28), so not "in the body," because it is a matter of historical fact. The body is a figure; and he is stating the fact of the realisation of this in the assembly; so that it would not suit so well to say, "He set some in the body."
Verse 25 - "The members should have the same care" - proves that all the saints ought to have a care one for another; and that would include every member of the body on earth. "The same care," he says: it is not simply his taking a care for them, but I ought to care for you in the sense of love, and interest and heart being there; it is not "taking care of," but a different idea. We are all one body: my hand is interested in my eye, and my eye in my hand. All are dependent one on another, in spite of themselves, though it ought to be in love.
"Now ye are the body of Christ," v. 27. The local assembly stands as a whole body. You cannot say that the assembly in Corinth was the whole body of Christ, but it was its local expression. You could say the same of any place. It is all that expresses the truth of the assembly there. A wise masterbuilder would not know what to do with a ruined house. So, if Paul came down, I do not know to whom he would write now. There is a danger of losing, in a local assembly, the truth of the whole body, and so of having only the representation instead of the reality. I fully recognise that in the principle of meeting this is the only thing that God owns; but in our owning the local thing, I dread losing the whole thing. At Corinth the one answers to the other.
277 We get an exact list of gifts. The apostle's object was to give the manifestations in the church. Barnabas was an apostle too beside Paul and the twelve. There are different words rendered "gift," and they have shades of meaning. "Gifts" (charisma) (v. 4) is the giving when there is need strictly, and "gift" (dorea) (Eph. 4:7) is the freedom of the gift, and so on. We should look for such gifts as will edify, and desire them. Here they were vain of their tongues; but if you were to talk Chinese, nobody would understand you. You had better seek what will edify; if you prophesy, you will help others. So, if a man desire the office of a bishop, it is a good work.
In our chapter it is power by the Holy Ghost come down; in Ephesians 4 we have Christ as the Head coming for His body. There Christ gives from on high. Here the Holy Ghost comes down, and is distributing. There is capacity as well as gift. In the parable in Matthew 25 our Lord gives to every man according to his several ability. God had formed the vessel for the purpose. In Luke a great deal more is thrown on man's responsibility; in the talents it is more God's grace. In Luke, therefore, you find ten cities and five cities in reward; while in Matthew both are alike, and here "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." It is responsibility, and reward according to labour, in Luke.
Some of these gifts have been called sign-gifts, because it is said they were a sign to unbelievers. They were for the inauguration of Christianity, but there is no intimation of their continuance. The church continues, if you take the secret wisdom of God; if you take the revealed statement of God, there is no intimation of remaining here. You will never find the church contemplated as remaining, so as to put off the coming of the Lord. In the parables with reference to it, though we have "After a long time," yet the servants to whom the talents were entrusted are the same as those who are judged; the virgins who slept are they who are roused and so on. So with the seven churches, all was existing then, and yet it has been all going on.
278 As to the signs, we read, "confirming the word with signs following," as a promise. Moses wrought miracles, and Elijah too, in the midst of apostate Israel. But not so the other prophets. Isaiah and Jeremiah worked no miracles, nor John Baptist. When God is introducing something new, you have them - wherever the thing was to be made good in testimony for our poor hearts to sanction the truth. I see no restoration of miracles, or of anything indeed. There will be miracles at the end on the devil's part: power, and signs, and lying wonders. There was no statement to the church that it must lose them at a certain time, nor that they must go on for a certain time. Some ask as to the continuance of apostles and elders. This was what they said to me in Switzerland: "How can you think of God setting up a church with elders and apostles, and yet making no provision for their continuance?" I said, It is so, because God did not mean the church to continue. We see this to be the way God used miracles. Of course, He could work a miracle at any time.
It is to be noticed, that, in verse 26, the apostle does not say (though it would be right to say it) that if one member suffer, all the members do suffer with it. God has tempered the body, that it should be so; and I trust it is in measure the case. The realisation of it is diminished by divisions and distances, and all that kind of thing; but do you suppose that, if there is a great work of blessing going on in India or Canada, there is not a blessing, too, in Ireland? Of course there is, as far as living energy goes. The thing is true, though spoiled in a measure. In an assembly where a brother is not walking in the Lord, if the gathering is spiritual, they will feel it, and there will be an immediate consciousness that something is grieving the Spirit. But if my soul is deadened, as you may sometimes see, of course it is not felt so distinctly. If a person cuts my hand, I do not merely say, "Why did you cut my hand?" but my whole body feels it. If an individual were chastened, the assembly feels it in a measure; if they were insensible to it, they would be all the more hardened. The suffering here is any kind of trial, but it applies to chastisement, because we have all one life. It is, by there being one Spirit in it all, that it is so, and it always has a certain effect, though the body may be so divided as to feel it but little. We can be awakened by the work of the Spirit and the word of prayer. If any can apply the word, let them apply it. When there is sin in an assembly, if they judge it, they prove themselves clear; but if they do not, things will get worse, or the Lord deal with them. "Leaven" would apply to both the sin and their refusing to judge it. The thing the apostle wants in 2 Corinthians is to bring them all into obedience: he says, "When your obedience is fulfilled." Our own condition is of first importance. We are never independent of the state we are in, or of the Lord's judgment of it.
279 "Now ye are body of Christ" (v. 27) is an important principle. The local assembly stands as the body of Christ, for it acts for the whole body, and is recognised as the whole body in a certain sense in its acting. If a person is put out at Belfast, he is put out from the whole body. Suffering affects the whole, though it takes place locally, and action is of the same character in that sense; and then, in verse 24, God hath done "this," that there should not be a schism in the body; that is, given such provision, though it is seen in individuals in various places. Verse 24 includes all persons who may be exceedingly valuable and yet not appear at all. It does not bring in a question of a schism. There could be no schism in the body itself; but, taking the whole thing, he says God may put honour on one person, and there may be another very quiet with a little gracious word of counsel to the rest, without outward honour put upon him.
In "covet earnestly the best gifts," the emphasis is on "best," gifts that edify. The desire should be in the individual and in the assembly. Suppose I felt the assembly wanted teaching, I might earnestly desire to be able to unfold Scripture to them. Gifts belong to the whole body of course, though they may be used locally. Take the highest gift, and apostle, he was not an apostle merely in a particular place. An evangelist is the servant of Christ, not of the assembly; but wherever he may be, he is of the church himself. If there is no assembly gathered where he is, then he is alone; but if there is an assembly, he is of it. And the first thing in him is to gather to Christ. Say that I go to Galatia, and the Lord converts fifty, they are gathered to Christ, not to the assembly I had come from. An evangelist would be for the edifying of the body of Christ, inasmuch as he brings the souls in and 'adds them. How could you build up a church without people, without bricks (or scripturally I should say, "stones")? I should in this connection be jealous of two things exceedingly: of a person separating himself in spirit from the saints; or of the assembly thinking his work was their affair. I think it is of great importance that the workman should be clearly Christ's servant; but if he works in any spirit of separation from the saints, I could not go with it. An evangelist may not necessarily gather to anything that was there but to Christ, with a full knowledge of redemption; and having Christ and a full knowledge of redemption, they could not go on with anything else.
280 Now-a-days the great thought commonly even among Christians is the conversion of souls to go to heaven; then (in Paul's time) there was no thought of anything but the church, and converts went in as a matter of course. One is thankful where there is now any better sense; one hears of souls converted all over England and small gatherings springing up. Bringing converts to a full knowledge of redemption does not always bring them unto the ground of Christ: anybody that has a pastor's heart and power should look after such. Paul himself was more than an evangelist merely, but he gets Timotheus, Silas, etc., to go and visit these places where he had laboured, and see how they were going on. Paul wanted Apollos to go to Corinth (1 Cor. 16:12); but from a beautiful feeling Apollos would not go, for they were saying, "I of Paul, and I of Apollos." Paul had no jealousy, and wished him to go; but Apollos feared the effect of it, and would not. In the time of a revival I said to S. in Kingstown, What are you going to do with all these converts? He said, The Lord will take care of them. The result was that it all died out. I do not think this was the case with our brethren in France; when they were blessed, they stayed and gathered the converts to the table. The nearest local assembly may be a long way off. I think there is responsibility on all the church of God.
This does not really confound gifts with assemblies. The assembly would not act collectively merely, though it would have fellowship with labourers. When Paul laid hands on any to give him a gift, he was glad to have the testimony of the elders with his own. As to elders themselves, the apostles chose elders, but it is not said that hands were laid on them, yet I believe it was so. He says, "Lay hands suddenly on no man," but does not state that it refers to elders. Remember all this is very different from "gift."
281 I do not want to leave the thought as to the care of souls that are converted. If you look at a pastor, you see in his very expression a difference from an evangelist. An evangelist will say, "O Lord, look at these poor sinners"; and a true pastor will say, "O Lord, look at these poor sheep." There is this point too: the character of revival preaching does not tend so much to gather together perhaps, though having a measure of excitement in it; and souls so converted have no thought of being gathered, and it is very difficult in a revival work to bring souls into a condition to receive further teaching. I remember an expression of one who "wanted a sermon to pull him up." There is dear - whose preaching is exciting, but finds the converts who get a taste for worship go elsewhere, and those remain who want the exciting preaching. But there is a kind of looking after people that I should not give in to. You cannot follow into ways which cultivate a thing that is not according to God. It is an anxious thing when souls are brought in; an evangelist will not be careless about his converts, but then his special work occupies him. I believe there is many a gift that is not developed from want of devotedness.
1 Corinthians 13.
In the beginning of chapter 12 the apostle supposes all manner of gifts, but no grace. (This is of moment, too, in the opening of Hebrews 6.) A person may have the faith here spoken of without reality. He is talking of faith to remove mountains, not of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ's person. We find power and grace constantly distinguished. We find the power and not the grace in the Old Testament, in such an one as Balaam for instance, but not exactly such instances in the New Testament: there we find Judas rather.
We have a blessed description of love in this chapter. "God is love." It is sovereign goodness, coming out of itself. It goes beyond "The love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost." It is the same love, but here it is in its different characters. "Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity (love), it profiteth me nothing." It is not a definition, but the way love works. But what we find here is divine love in the world; which is such a different thing from law. It is what is above all the evil that is round it, and therefore can feel for all the evil; love is affected, but never touched in itself by it. That is what I see in its working. So we see Christ going through this world. Love is a sovereign thing. There are two kinds of love, both divine: a downward love which is sovereign in its nature - God really - which is in our hearts in a certain sense through the Holy Ghost; and then I find another which goes upward, and there is a holy affection to which I am subject. We find an analogy to it in husband and wife. Thus, where divine love is working in my heart towards others, it goes downwards; but when I get the state of my soul, I must look up and I am subject. In "walk in love as Christ also hath loved us, and given Himself for us," we have divine love. This is the giving up of myself altogether; and then I get to God, who is the object. And therefore it is said that we are light, but it is never said that we are love, because love is sovereign, and we cannot say we are that.
282 In our chapter we have love in the character of the Spirit of Christ working us. I must have a power that is above all the evil that is around me, and yet walk in graciousness through it all; and this is the reason the love of the law would not do for this world. If I love my neighbour as myself, it is not enough for a world of evil; there I must have a love that can go on, and be superior to all the evil, and this is what Christ was. It can feel all the evil too. Having no self in it, it has no self roused by all the evil that is around, and therefore it can feel for the people that are there. It "suffereth long," that is downward; it "seeketh not her own" - downward too. It is not merely that it delights in God, and in what is blessed here, but it is looking around in the midst of evil and selfishness .
"Rejoicing with the truth" (as it reads in the margin). It is in the truth, no doubt. The truth is there, and I rejoice with it, and take delight in it. Suppose the truth is being preached; my heart goes with it, and is delighted.
"Believeth all things" is not being suspicious: one believes readily. It "hopeth all things"; it does not mean ill, it does not think of evil. Evil tends to depress the soul, but God is above all that. I find constantly the danger of thinking the evil is greater than the good; but if I bring in God, He is greater than all opposed. Christ was here in the world with no thought of suspicion, and that is the spirit in which we are to walk through the world. If you are always suspecting people, who will trust you? I feel the great difficulty in seeing the evil, which is apt to get the upper hand of your mind; though it is no good deluding oneself that it is not there, because it is there. But love will go on in heaven when there is no evil to think about; prophecies will fail, tongues cease, and knowledge vanish away. "When that which is perfect is come" (v. 10) means the time of glory, when everything is perfect, and these partial things will have ceased. Knowledge now is in degree, "we know in part"; all that kind of learning will pass away. Learning is a proof of ignorance, and this will not be then. Even in divine things we learn, and all that is testimony to ignorance. It gives a great idea of the littleness of man in that way. All these partial instruments of communicating will be done with when I know as I am known: which is, I believe, God's way of knowing; it is not knowing in part; it is not so much the measure as the manner of God's knowing. God can create ideas. I know so far as things are knowable to be known. Now we see "darkly" what we do not see clearly. It is just as I see through a window, instead of seeing the object at once. It is an extraordinary expression; we do not see clearly, but in a mystery, not like plain open things. It is an enigma, though I do not like that word, because it does not suit divine things.
283 "Faith, hope, and charity," or love, are not put accidentally here. They are the three things that are characteristic of the Christian state now, "putting on the breastplate of faith and charity [the same word], and for a helmet the hope of salvation," 1 Thess. 5:8. Some ten times in the New Testament faith, hope, and love are put together. They are positive elements, faith and hope referring to the present state I am in, and charity to the present and eternal state. Faith lays hold of an object, and hope desires it. The word "charity" is an ecclesiastical word. Love is really what God is. He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and this never fails. When we possess a thing, we have done with faith and hope as to it: they have passed into positive fruition, as we say. There will be love in heaven, but we shall not have faith there, because there will be sight; and we shall not have hope there, because we have got possession. "Now abideth" shews the three as present things, but charity never fails.
284 1 Corinthians 14.
In this chapter the apostle is referring to these tongues which shall cease; the Corinthians were vain of them; and he says they are not to use them save conditionally.
Verse 3 is the way in which prophecy works, rather than a definition of prophecy. It is speaking unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort. It can be now, of course, in that way; knowledge and doctrine abide, though the giving forth of revelation does not, because all is revealed (that is, in the word). We speak of revelation in a lower sense, when anyone gets something he had not before; but then that is only what is already in the word. It is not so much here a question as to the character of the prophecy, but he contrasts the prophesying with tongues, when no one understood them; and it is as regards those who are within, not those who are without.
In "I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also" (v. 15), suppose I was praying, and did not understand what I was saying, what good would there be in that? In "my spirit prayeth," it is just as it might be in a groan that could not be uttered. The tongues, in a sense, superseded the confusion of tongues. Instead of grace confining itself to Israel, the gift of tongues opened it up to all nations. We see a specimen of it in Acts 2; it reversed Babel, as it were. Only on the day of Pentecost it was all plain and simple; but now the Corinthians were abusing it. The moment it was given, it was for all the nations in carrying the gospel to them.
The saying Amen, in verse 16, is general, I think; it would include the Lord's supper too. But if some prayed in Dutch or Persian, nobody here, at least, could say, Amen. A very wonderful thing were the tongues. There is little difference between "when ye come together in the church," in chapter 11:18, and "the whole church be come together into some place," in chapter 14:23. It may be more emphatic in chapter 14, that is all. The way the difference at all comes about is in chapter 11; it is the character of their coming together, in assembly; here is the whole assembly come together. The one is a character; the other is a thing. The "unlearned" persons (v. 23) are those not taught in the word. This is true of an unbeliever, but we have the unbelievers named also. The word is "idiotes," and a person not instructed in an art was called such; a private person. It makes two classes, the untaught in the things of God, and the actual unbeliever. There were no catechumens at that time. When the catechumen was first invented, they were allowed to hear the first exhortations; and when the church part came on, they were all sent out. That is the origin of the word mass, from 'Ite: missa est.'*
{*The formula of dismissal by the officiating minister.}
285 In thinking of the one who was "convinced of all, and judged of all" (v. 24), we must remember how instruction was obtained; Peter and John were not taught as Rabbis were. They had not rabbinical instruction, though this was much esteemed of course. How many poor people now will say, If a man is not a clergyman, how can he know anything about it? That would be the feeling. Such a one, convinced and judged, will "worship." Because he finds God working thus, and falls down and owns Him. The presence of God acts upon his spirit, and bows it; and his conscience is reached. The secrets of his heart are told out to himself. God's presence finds it all out to himself, without his speaking to others. It is the power of the Spirit of God on a man's conscience.
In verse 25 "God is in you" is collective. Ev is used for "among" and "in," when the noun is collective. "In you" is perhaps better, because it looks at the assembly as a whole. Verse 26 does not imply a censure, nor that the things were all looked out ready. He speaks of a revelation, and this could not be a cut and dried thing. But they were abusing the power of the Holy Ghost: there was no order. Verse 30 is merely the general spirit of subjection. But now there is no revelation. I do not think one was to wait* till another had done; order is before power. God is never the author of confusion. Verse 32 teaches that the moral power is superior to mere power. The "tongue" is subject to me, as we said before. Whatever I might have in power, if it were spiritual wisdom not to speak, I should not speak. The moral judgment of the prophet is superior to mere power, however real and mighty. Verse 34 is the tenor of the law, if not a particular law. The apostle is peremptory about it in Timothy. "I suffer not a woman to teach," he says. I think it is a little out of place for a woman even to raise a hymn; but I do not object, if she do it modestly. If three women were on a desert island, I do not see why they should not break bread together, if they did it privately. A man and his wife being alone, I see no objection to their breaking bread, if they themselves feel free and are disposed.
{*? 'speak.'}
286 Chapters 12 and 14 are separated by a chapter on love. Charity comes in, by the bye, in the middle, to teach them how to use their gifts. He brings in love too, as the root of all right action, as of everything else; and then he goes on to the order and exercise of gift. We have the doctrine in chapter 12, and the exercise of gifts in chapter 14. There is no law as to the order of the morning meeting. If a person had a word to say before the breaking of bread, I should not object; but I enjoy prominence given to the breaking of bread on the Lord's day morning.
1 Corinthians 15.
The apostle now speaks of resurrection. His keeping it till the last, in this way, is remarkable. We have a great truth brought out in the chapter, in the total identification of Christ with men - saints, but man as man, because he says, if men do not rise, Christ is not risen. I have not the least objection to verse 22 as it stands in the English Version, for all the wicked will be raised, as well as the righteous. As in Adam everybody in Adam dies, so in Christ all in Christ will be made alive. Verse 21 is more general; it is merely the fact that resurrection comes by man. You could only say "in Christ" of the wicked, if you take it in the power of Christ. The whole account is the resurrection of the saints. When you take in resurrection of the dead, it is abstract, and it is resurrection that is insisted on.
The destruction of death, if you take it for the wicked, will be the second death. The wages of sin is death in general, but strictly the first death; though wrath of God from heaven is revealed along with the gospel. I know of no scripture that speaks of Christ bearing the second death. He bore what brings us into it. It is a great thing to keep to Scripture. "The lake of fire," "the second death," is not annihilation.
You must recollect that all that is behind death is fully brought out on either side by the gospel. The Pharisees spelled out something of resurrection, but life and incorruptibility are brought to light by the gospel. In the Old Testament eternal life is mentioned but twice, and both times in connection with the millennium; and in the judgment on Adam there is no judgment beyond death - "dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return" - that is all. Of course, when God was driving out the man, the woman was to have sorrow in her conception, and so on; and plenty more comes out in the other scriptures; but as for the present state, death of the body was what was imposed on him as the consequence. There were other intimations in the Old Testament, whence the Pharisees had gathered the truth, but it was a matter of spiritual apprehension. All the Old Testament saints will be in the resurrection, though I do not know that they are included in this scripture. "They without us shall not be made perfect."
287 The resurrection of Christ from among the dead is the testimony to God's acceptance of those that are raised. It is merely a question of time. If the dead are raised altogether, then they are all to come together into judgment. But God takes Christ out - the seal of His perfect acceptance - from the rest of the dead; and when the time comes, we shall be taken out from the dead in just the same manner. God does raise the wicked, and Christ will judge the wicked, and then He will give all up to God.
There is a passage in Philippians 3 as to the resurrection, which makes it simple about the body: "Our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." It is wonderful what revelations we have of the plans of God, compared with the darkness of man! Romans 8:11 also refers to resurrection - "shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you."
In our chapter two things are evident: one that is always our portion in spirit, that is, the time when the dispensation and ordering of things will cease; and the other, the actual having to say to God, "He must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet." There is the whole system of dispensed power which comes in by-and-by; and then you get God all in all, when all mediatorial provision to bring it about is complete, and He will render up the kingdom to God. In one sense we reign for ever and ever, but all the governmental system that brings the thing about will be closed.
288 The apostle John does not give dispensations, but deals more immediately with natures; what he does is evidently the bringing out the manifestation of God. "No man hath seen God at any time: the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." "If we walk in the light, as God is in the light," and so on; it is the revelation of God's nature.
But here it is all a system of counsels and power, which is, in a certain sense, provisional, and so only for a time. The object is, that God - not the Father - may be all in all. And there comes a blessed fact with it, that the Lord Jesus never gives up His manhood; "then shall the Son also himself be subject." You have the sonship in John most fully. Christ was God, and came to be a servant, presently to take the government, and all authority and power is put down, and then He takes the place of subjection, and all as man. It is not that He is not God, for He is God all the time. His divinity comes out in John at every step. He is never as a mere man in John's Gospel; yet He never goes out of the place of a person that receives everything. He has taken the form of a servant, and says, "I have glorified thee on earth," and now "glorify thou me." He does not say, I glorify Myself. And again, "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him; if God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him." In John 17 He speaks as Son of God; "Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee. As thou hast given him power over ail flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent."
It is beautiful to see Him God, but man, all through that Gospel! That is just what Satan tried to get Him out of down here; but no, if Satan says "Give up your place as a servant," He says, "That is where I am now come." Nor does He ever cease to be the firstborn among many brethren, and that is a wonderful thing to us. But you never find the glory of His person touched, however much He comes amongst us, and at His baptism by John, He quite takes His place as a man. Of course, there was no need for Himself to be baptised with the baptism of repentance; but in grace He takes the place with those who did need it; whereon immediately heaven is opened to Him, and the Holy Ghost comes down, and He is sealed and anointed by the Holy Ghost. If the Father owns Him as His Son, there also He takes His place with us.
289 When heaven is opened to Stephen, at once we see the difference. Stephen has an object in heaven which he is looking at, and which forms him into the same image. But when heaven is opened to Christ, heaven is looking down at Him, not He at an object there. And so the glory of His Person is always secured. In the transfiguration He was in exactly the same glory as Moses and Elias, and they were as He; but, the moment the glory comes out and the Father's voice is heard, Moses and Elias are gone. Even where His saints are in the same place with Him, the glory of His Person is completely secured. It was so at the transfiguration, as well as at His baptism. And the nearer we are to Christ, the more we shall see the glory of His Person. It is blessed to see this. He still remains the firstborn among many brethren. If it were only an angel, there would not be much in it.
Psalm 8 will be made good at the beginning of the millennium. His enemies will be made His footstool according to Psalm 110, but the same general sense. He is sitting at His Father's right hand now, but when His Father makes His enemies His footstool, then He begins to trample them down. In Psalm 8 He gets this power, and is set over the works of His hand. He has three distinct titles to this place over all things: He created them in Colossians, and therefore is Head over all things; then, in Colossians and Hebrews, He takes it as Son, because, if He is Son, He is heir; and then there is a third title, as Son of man He takes it to Himself, but in the way of doing it, He takes it in redemption: God reconciles everything by Him. The full result of Psalm 8 Will not be reached until death is destroyed. God puts all things under His feet as Son of man at the beginning of the millennium, and then He begins to put them down, and, when all is done, He gives the kingdom up. The kingdom of heaven is going on now; not the kingdom of the Son of man, though He is King, and entitled to take the kingdom at any time. He is ready to judge both quick and dead; only He is sitting there till the moment, known to God, when He is to take the kingdom manifestly, and in actual execution. Now it is all a provisional state. He is sitting on the Father's throne, and has not taken His own at all; still the kingdom belongs to Him; only it is going on as in the parables of Matthew 13, a kingdom without a king, in patience, not power. This is not a kingdom in the literal sense, but the shape the kingdom takes before the King takes His power, though He is King.
290 The destruction of death will not be until the great white throne. The taking of the kingdom will be a total change in the order of things; but the great difference will be, that (instead of a rejected Christ, and the Holy Ghost giving power to go against the stream) when the Lord comes, the stream is in the way of righteousness: power and glory, and everything, are in the way of righteousness. Now people have to make sacrifices; if they follow Christ, they have their cross. Only He is excepted who did put all things under Him: otherwise it is all without exception. We have it in Psalm 8, and quoted in three places - Ephesians 1:22, Hebrews 2, and this chapter. It is more developed in Hebrews 2; it says, we see not yet all things put under Him. Half the psalm is fulfilled, but not yet the other half. He is crowned with glory and honour, but we do not see everything put under His feet, and there He sits on the Father's throne. In Ephesians He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be Head over all things to the church, which is His body. In Psalm 2 we have Him as Son of God and King of Israel down in the earth: only He is rejected, and then we have the state His rejection leaves the Jews in, until Psalm 8, when we have everything put under Him. We find the Messiah's glory and title set aside for a time, when those who followed with Him are in trial and difficulty; and then Jehovah's name is excellent in all the earth, when the Son of man is set over everything, and this is seen in Psalm 8.
That gives the whole scheme of God's ways in Christ, not the church, but as to the earth. In the end of John 1 Christ is owned according to Psalm 2, "the Son of God and King of Israel." And Christ says, You shall see greater things than these - the Son of man on the throne. And then, in John 2, we have the millennium settled among the Jews on earth, the water of purifying turned into the joy of earth at the marriage, and with a scourge of small cords He purges the temple. Those are the two sides of the millennial character, and that is why it is called the third day. You cannot make anything of those days in John, if you do not see it is the remnant up to Nathaniel. The history, in fact, has many days; but the days taken notice of are John Baptist's ministry, Christ's, and then the third day. It is just the same at the end of John: this is the third time that Jesus shewed Himself, and that third time is the millennium. It is meant to be mysterious, and it is so. The first time He sent His disciples for a haul (Luke 5:6), the net brake; but now, when the Lord comes back again, the net did not break, although there were so many fishes (153). It is purposely mysterious, I do not doubt. There had been the revelation to Thomas before; and He had shewn Himself eight days before that. This was the third time, when He gathers them at the end. Paul's ministry is entirely left out here, but we have Peter and John's ministries: - Peter's, to feed the sheep; and, as for John, the Lord says, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me"; and this is what John did; he goes watching over the church until Christ come.
291 In our Lord's speaking with Peter (John 21), two words are used: phileo (I am attached) is more intimate, agapao (I love) is more general. Peter says, I love you with the intimacy of a friend. It is curious, that, though the verb phileo is used, the noun from it is never used in the Greek. The Lord uses the general word first, and probes his heart; and then again, "Lovest thou me?" and the third time He says, "Affectionest thou me?" "I not only love you," says Peter, "but have affection for you." I think there is great instruction there. The Lord never reproaches Peter, but goes to detect the root that had produced the fault: and Peter is not really restored until he had judged the root. I do not mean that he may not have confessed it honestly, but he is in danger of the same again. The moment he had been put to the test, he did not know the Lord at all, and nothing but divine knowledge could have said that he loved Him. Divine knowledge could say all things; and then, when the Lord has completely humbled him, He puts entire confidence in him: "Feed my sheep." The very thing Christ loves most on this earth He trusts to this man. It was a complete destruction of Peter's self-confidence, and then he knew what the resource for a poor sheep was: since he had judged himself thoroughly, he knew where to take the sheep. The Lord never can trust anybody that trusts himself. It is not that a person is not sincere. Peter was perfectly sincere, but he did not know himself.
Then the Lord, we may say, leaps over to His coming. Then there was another thing as to Peter I may mention - He puts an end to his will. Peter had declared he would follow Him to prison and to death - the thing he could not do. If only a servant girl asks him, "Are you one of them?" he is afraid, and begins to curse and swear. The Lord now says, "When thou wast young, thou girdest thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake he signifying by what death he should glorify God." 'When your will is gone, you will follow Me.' The very thing he said he would do, and could not, because he trusted the flesh, that thing, when he had no confidence of his own, was what he would do, and really did so. It was a thorough breaking down of the flesh, and then Christ trusts all to him, both His sheep and His lambs. There is a difference there: first, "Feed my lambs"; then, "Shepherd my sheep"; and then, "Feed my sheep." "Shepherd," in that way, is sometimes important; the elders are called on to shepherd the flock; the Greek word means not to feed merely, but to care for and watch over them. We have no ascension here; all passes over to Christ's coming: we have nothing of Paul, but only Peter and John; Peter, the apostle of the circumcision, and John's ministry going on till the Lord came.
292 To return to our chapter. It may be remarked that the baptism for the dead, in verse 29, means, that you take your part with the dead, and for the dead, whether it be Christ, or anybody else. It is a very old thought. Doddridge had it two hundred years ago; he says, Here's a man who has fallen in the ranks, and another steps forward in his stead; what is the good of that, if nobody rises?
"I die daily" (v. 31) is an outward thing. The difference of the glories is, I believe, between the heavenly and the earthly. "So also is the resurrection of the dead" - the state of the resurrection is more glorious than the state down here.
All that is told of the first resurrection is testimony against the entire idea of taking people to judgment in the way the evangelical system does. "We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ" - be manifested there - that must be, but the saints are in glory before they arrive there: therefore the idea of a judgment, whether they are to have the place or not, is altogether too low. The real power of redemption has been lost sight of, and the resurrection itself is the fruit of that redemption. Just as Christ Himself was taken from among the dead (besides, He "could not be holden of it") by the glory of the Father owning Him in righteousness as Son, so the saints will be taken out too. But there the resurrection was putting the seal of acceptance publicly upon Christ's whole work; and everything is settled. Whereas, also, if the saints alone are raised, and taken out from among the wicked dead presently, it too is a positive testimony to their acceptance.
293 In Mark Christ told them, after the transfiguration, to tell no man until after He should be risen "from among the dead." The disciples were wondering what this rising from the dead should mean; that was what astonished them. Every Pharisee in the country believed there would be a resurrection; but a rising out from among the dead they could not make anything of. The whole idea of a judgment to come to settle a person's case seems to me to upset all Christianity. Paul has been eighteen hundred years in heaven, and you are going to take him out to judge whether he is to be there or not! It is absurd upon the face of it. People fancy that the testimony to the fulness of redemption weakens morality: nay, but the fulness is in Christ, and being in Christ I also see that Christ is in me. Then if Christ is in you, let us never see anything but Christ in your ways every day. All duties flow from the place we are in already. You could not have the duties of children to me if you are not my children, nor could you, if you slaved yourselves to death, become my children. But if you were my children, you would have the duty of living as such. A woman cannot act as the wife of a man, if she is not his wife, and so on. But then the duty is there if the relation is. Are you sure of being saved for ever? asks one. Well, is that my child? Yes; then he is my child for ever. God gives a ground for all action, but it is not duties and conditional promises: you cannot have a duty without first putting a person in the place it belongs to. And then God gives a new nature that delights in the duty, whereon He sets you to do it.
But I was alluding to the fact that we are raised in glory, and surely, if we are there, the question of judging whether we are to be there is all nonsense. And so the first resurrection is not merely a notion about some high-flown thing. "Some have not the knowledge of God"; for this denying the resurrection was connected really with a moral state; there was no real knowledge of God. A Christian might have fallen into such a state, but the knowledge of God is that revelation of God to the soul which is estimated by the new nature, and is the spring of all acquaintance with truth. A saint may fall into such a state, for the flesh in the saint is as bad as in the sinner, or worse. Paul here states the fact, "some have not the knowledge of God," just as we were saying, the other day, a man asleep is, as regards others, just the same as a dead man. Some needed the exhortation, "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead." Such are thinking after the flesh, instead of thinking after Christ, though before God not really in the flesh.
294 The knowledge of God is immensely important; if I have not light, I do not know what light is; the knowledge of a being flows from partaking of the nature of that being. An animal does not know what a man is, though there may be greater men, and stronger men, and wiser, than myself. Hence "he that loveth not, knoweth not God." If God is love, and I have got His nature, then I know He is, and what He is. But there are some people who have not the knowledge of God. As I said, you must have the nature of a being to know that being; and now I know what God is, because I have been made partaker of the divine nature, or else I had not the knowledge of God. "We" walk in the light, as God is in the light, and that was the difference between Israel and Christians. God was behind a veil to them, but now He has come out in Christ, and that veil is rent, and we come in. And so now the wrath of God is revealed from heaven; that is not the government of God sending the people to Babylon, or elsewhere, but wrath in full, or else there must be no "ungodliness." And the death that rent the veil, and let God out, put away the evil that kept us outside. Of old they might have learned at least some of God's ways: for "He shewed his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel"; that is, if they were spiritual. Moses says, "Shew me thy way, that I may know thee." That was something of it, but the Christian, properly speaking, knows God. Galatians 4:8 gives you, "When ye knew not God," and then, "After that ye have known God." There is a moral estimate of what God is. If I find a ritualist, I say, You do not know God, you could not, as long as you bow down your head like a bulrush, as Isaiah says (chap. 58:5), and think God can be worshipped by all these mummeries; you do not know God really.
295 Those in 2 Peter 3, who were "entangled" and "overcome," had known Christ in a superficial way; there was no real change of life, no vital change, only an outward change through the knowledge brought to them, but, as the old saying is, "A washed sow is no sheep." It takes a new nature really to know God. Knowing Christ may be a little different from knowing God; knowing God is knowing His nature, whereas Christ has come, and there might, in another way, be such and such a knowledge of Him. Without knowledge of God, you may get your feelings moved about the truth. Look at Balaam. He can say, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his"; but there was no change as to his life, or anything. There may be such now, with no real knowledge of Christ. The outward manifestation of Christ may have come to a person, without any knowledge of what was inside. "When they knew God," in Romans 1, was the knowledge of God as in Noah, the preacher of righteousness; but they turned that into idolatry. They knew there was only one God in Noah's time, and they gave that up for idols. In one sense you may know everything, if you merely take the acquaintance with it. In Romans Paul is convicting the Gentiles on two grounds - their knowledge of God as in Noah, and on the ground of the creation-glory of God. The starting-point of the Gentiles was the knowledge of God, and they did not like to retain Him in their knowledge; that is the way they lost it, because the human mind, in a moral sense, cannot hold it. It is ginosko in Greek, in "After that ye have known God." It is the word constantly used in such a connection. The word epiginosko is more, it is consciously to know. He says of the Corinthians, they were ignorant of God; I think the knowing of God, in Romans, is a little more, because they had knowledge, for they started from a point, and it was abandoned.
Now we have another very important thing, "The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening Spirit," etc. (v. 45-48). As we were like Adam, we shall be like Christ. There are many important things here. "The second Man" is the first truth; that is, we have no acceptance of the first man at all; we have acceptance of people, of course, but that is in the second Man, not in the first. God's thought is to bring in a second Adam, and the first is set aside; and as the first Adam was a head and centre, the second Adam is looked at as a head Man, and in a far higher way. In many places people think there is a great deal going on towards perfecting man, but, instead of that, Christ sets him on one side. Christ was "the last Adam" before He rose as to His Person, but not as to His state. Adam was so in the garden, in his person, in paradise, but was not exactly head of a race until he was outside; and this has its importance. So Christ was not Head of a race really until He had died and risen, because He died. Christ comes among men down here, and men will not have Him, but in His death their system is totally closed. Another man is set up: "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Man rejected Christ, and that finished man's history. When Christ has risen, He begins a new state altogether, but it is in the last Adam. He is the last Adam; there could be no other after Him. "Adam," in contrast with "man," is looked at more as the head of a race.
296 Then notice the enormous difference between the two Adams. The first was a living soul, the second a life-giving Spirit. This is the very thing those who deny the immortality of the soul insist on, for they say animals were living souls, and so they were. But we know that after death comes judgment (Heb. 9:8), and that single text shews that after death the whole question comes in of judgment for what a man did when he was alive. These people talk of Hebrew and Greek about it (that is, one of their chief people, and one may say several), but he only proved that he knew nothing about the language, and could not even look out words in his dictionary; and yet it raises a cloud of dust. God had quickened Christ, but Christ is a quickener both of soul and body, and that is the way there is a spiritual body. Christ was born of a woman, "made of a woman," it says, "made under the law." "Made" is not the thing, but it is a word that signifies, "to begin to be," and that was not before; because "under the law" would not do. I could say, He became a man, but I could not say, became of a woman. "Became," in English, supposes a person to exist already, and then to become something, which is not the case here. And "was made" does not do, because it looks as if He was made what He was not before. Christ was always a quickening Spirit - He quickened from Adam. It is the contrast between the first Adam and last; the one received life, the other gives life; and then we shall be like Him who is from heaven.
297 As to soul and spirit, spirit is the upper part, and life was communicated to the body through it. Soul, when you make the difference, is that which you have in common with the beasts. The word is used in the Hebrew for everything; conscience, soul, spirit, and heart. Heart thus is really a figure, for else it is a piece of my flesh connected with the circulation of the blood. Take "if our heart condemn us not," there it is in the sense of conscience: "Love God with all thy heart," there it is the affections.
The "earth," in verse 47, is the ground the man is made of. I think we have to recollect that, in divine things, the force of words is known by the meaning of the thing. It is not so in human science, but the opposite. Our Lord asks, "Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my words." Nicodemus shews what this is when he asks, "How can a man be born again?" It is of the first importance to lay hold of what the Lord is speaking, though we might learn Greek too; it is all well in its place. "We have borne the image of the earthy, and shall also bear the image of the heavenly."
When we learn that "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump," we shall be changed. The last trump, among the Romans, was the signal for all to start from the camp. They sounded one trumpet, and pulled down their tents; then a second, and put themselves in order; and when the last was sounded, they all started. It is the same idea in 1 Thessalonians 4; it is there the military technical shout when they were all called into the rank again from standing at ease (originally it was the sound given to the rowers to pull together). We have three there: the Lord first; then the archangel carrying it on; and then the trump of God that completes all. "Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory; O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law; but thanks be to God which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ."
Yes, "the strength of sin is the law." It is astonishing the way people cling to the law for morality. I know nothing that shews more the perversity of man's mind than this. It is clear enough. "Sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under law, but under grace." To put under law is to bring in sin, for you cannot keep it, and so it is "the strength of sin." The motions of sin were by the law. Law addresses itself to a nature, and forbids the sin, without changing the nature, or anything else; and it enfeebles the whole spirit of a man, by bringing his conscience into bondage. Indeed sin takes occasion by the commandment. If in this table, now, I had a drawer, and something in it, and I said, "Nobody is to know what is there," why, there are lots of heads in this room would be curious to know what it was directly. And the law is "the strength of sin," by binding the soul down to guilt: not that this is a fault in the law, but because of what my nature is, law does provoke. And then, besides, it ties the guilt down on the conscience. Law gives no life, no power, no object, but it provokes the lust, is the occasion of sin, and fixes my guilt upon me. Christ gives me an object, and life, and power, and delivers me from all that was against me. The law tells me to love God, and I ask, Why so? I have no nature that does. It states the duty, without acting on the person's heart one atom, but the sin that is committed it ties down upon the conscience. And it is very useful to tie sins down upon the conscience, but that is all it is useful for. Where Paul says, "Touching the righteousness which is in the law blameless," in Philippians 3, it was outwardly true: but he says in Romans 7, "We know that the law is spiritual," which is another thing. In Philippians he alludes to sins; so with the ruler, who says, "All these things have I kept from my youth up." But the Lord tests him with, "Go and sell all that thou hast," and that will not do for man.
298 The moment of the rapture (v. 54) is not in the scope of the prophets, and Paul merely states the fact without time. In Isaiah 25 we have the Gentiles brought in, and the Jews restored, and he puts the fact of the resurrection in without the precise order of events. The testimony of the Lord's coming is striking, for it is when He comes the first resurrection takes place. I say this, because it is considered to be a kind of bit of superior knowledge. 1 Thessalonians 4 gives it. There are two classes taken up, and they will be setting on the thrones of judgment, but it does not say exactly when.
299 1 Corinthians 16.
We have in verse 8 an important principle as to work. There are many adversaries, but a great and effectual door is opened to me, and so I will stay. It is a very different thing to have the door closed, and to have many adversaries. We shall soon find out when the door is closed. I think it requires patience; and you may find amazing opposition. I remember only two people coming, for eight weeks at one place where everything was against me, but at the end of that time forty or fifty came in, and several were converted. At another place, where all was for me, even the clergyman, it all came to nothing. The highest leading is direct leading by the Spirit of God. I do not say we have that now as Paul had it; but there is being guided by His eye, while, too, it is a great mercy to be held in by bit and bridle. Take the fact that Paul and Silas were going to Bithynia (Acts 16), "but the Spirit suffered them not." Then they were called over to Macedonia; and this was positive direct guidance as to where they were to work: and Paul went afterwards to Ephesus, and stayed there a couple of years, and all Asia heard the word of God. I believe the Lord might now put it upon a person's heart to go to a particular place. I remember once going to Cork, and could not tell why I went, and there was great blessing. It is better for evangelists to go two and two, but it is difficult to get enough for it. We lean but little on the power of the Spirit of God. We have a network of railways, and use them, but Paul did his work on foot, and did a great deal more work too than we do. I use a railroad, of course, but if one can go on foot, it would be a deal better.
In verse 15 I see the Lord providing spiritual authority: "they addicted themselves"; it is the word for appointing officers to a regiment. It is not an official authority, but an action on the conscience of the person - it is a moral authority, and not official. They were not teaching, but they were serving the saints, and acquired a just and happy influence over them: and wherever an assembly is going on well, and there is a number there, there will be something of this kind. In Switzerland we were very much opposed about ministry, but they failed in their scheme. To get something we had not, they chose elders, saying Luther sanctioned them. One of them came to me, and said, "I am an elder."
300 I said, "Suppose I am unruly; what will you do?"
"Why, I will come and visit you."
"Well, you are here now: what have you to say to me?"
"Why, I am an elder."
"Who made you an elder?"
"I was chosen an elder."
"But I did not choose you."
And, quite confused, he had to own, "I cannot be an elder to one who did not choose me."
"And do you think unruly people will own you, even if they did choose you? Not they."