1880 58 The latter part connects itself with the former, with this difference: the one is His presence in the church; the other in individuals. We must bear it in mind, to understand the doctrine of the Holy Ghost; we must not confound the working of the Holy Ghost in the church with the general working of God. It was not a question of dwelling in creation. By the Spirit God garnished the heavens. In scripture, whenever there is any act of God upon creation, it is the Holy Spirit that does it, not shutting out, of course, the agency of Father and Son. By the Spirit Jesus cast out demons. We must bear this in mind to understand what was said "The Holy Ghost was not yet," and may cease to be in one sense, as Jehovah created the heavens and the earth long before He dwelt in Jerusalem. Jehovah was acting in the same power long before He dwelt in Jerusalem, and He is working in the same scene since He left it. Therefore no extent of the Holy Ghost's operation in individuals is necessarily connected with its being the "habitation of God through the Spirit." Now the church is the habitation of God. The Trinity having been manifested, we in a special manner come to be God's dwelling-place in the church. There is the operation of the Spirit, for which man is responsible as a natural being, and also the record of this which increases man's responsibility.* In the same way the law was given to Israel; and they were responsible for this and the testimony. So now there is the whole Bible, for which we are responsible, even where there is not life.
[* Not only creation, but in a double way. First, that which man is responsible for — a testimony for God and then using it — without the communication of life,]
It is not merely the existence of creation as a natural thing, but that there is in it a testimony for God. For though man's will is opposed to God, yet all His ways and doings are absolutely and excellently adapted to man, as there are natural feelings which show out God's relation as a Father. Thus the existence of certain things is not only a testimony, but the Spirit of God intends them to teach certain truth. So with the Jews — "Hear ye my voice;" and Stephen said, "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost" — not a question of giving life, but of responsibility. We must remember that the effect of the fall facilitates all this. Two things came in by the fall — the knowledge of good and evil. In the very act of guilt man got this. Secondly, in the fall man got into a state of certain wretchedness and ruin for the life of God; we see there was wretchedness, which gave him the opportunity to make known the knowledge of His kindness. As Jesus, perfect in grace, could reach man in his sorrow, in times of death and hunger — raising the widow's son, feeding the multitude, etc. The miseries of human life came as an available opportunity for love to minister to.
We must distinguish between responsibility, will, and power. "Ye will not come unto me that ye may have life." They are not necessarily connected. If I told my child to come, and he would not, and it was afterwards proved that the door was shut, this would make no difference. If he showed the will to come, perhaps I might have opened the door. God never supposes there is life in conscience. There is a knowledge of good and evil, but Satan can act altogether on the conscience of a Hindu widow, or of a Paul conscientiously opposing Christ; but still there is such a thing as conscience on which the Spirit of God acts. There was a sense of responsibility before the fall, but conscience, as discerning between good and evil, came in with the fall. The communication of life is a distinct living thing. Even in paradise there was the tree of good and evil, and the tree of life. The knowledge is one thing, and another is the sustaining power of Christ.
There is such a thing as conscience on which the Spirit of God acts, and presents the claims of God — even on fallen man. The law took up man in this state — that side of responsibility without life at all. Christ comes in the scene of life, add instead of putting man into the responsibility, takes it Himself, and charges Himself with it. There was the grand final question answered of the knowledge of good and evil. Christ thus gives man the responsibility of love, not of judgment. Any light previously given increases condemnation, as now when Christ is rejected. Christ not only becomes a testimony to the Jews, but that which applies to man in every possible condition of the human heart. The perfect Light in Himself, besides the perfect universality of it. I take Simeon, Anna, the thief on the cross, a godly Jew, the most wretched sinner called a dog: to the wisest man He was made wisdom — Christ to all comes in as light, to those in every position. So man is left without excuse; so we have done with the knowledge of good and evil. The law presents what we ought to do, but cannot produce the power — cannot touch the springs of men's hearts. We cannot love because we are commanded. Take a man in every condition: Christ must touch the spring, though he may resist it, and this demonstrates the perfect ruin. But still Christ is adapted to meet the affections — everything is in Him to touch the heart.
The tree of life could not heal man — if he had been allowed to touch it, he would have perpetuated his misery. Christ is another Man. The Lord from heaven, He became the source of a new life, communicating life on the ground of forgiveness. Not that we have always the consciousness of it when we first have life, though it is said, "Having forgiven you all trespasses." That is the principle. Everything that the old man produced is looked on as dead in the grave of Jesus. Christ, having risen from the dead, has atoned for all the sin for which man is responsible. The conflict coming brings in the exercise of Mediatorship, teaching us to know God by wants. It is of great importance to know God by wants.
The moment that man separates from God, he is ruined. In this sense we are above angels. Angels were never made the centre of a system as man was, and man therefore is always aiming to be a centre, and Christ, the new Adam, is truly the centre of a system, and it becomes horrible sin for man to be the centre. The sinner is not only one who has fallen away from God, but when fallen, and everything is presented to call him back, he will not come. Here is the condition of man. Christ came into the world; man hated Him, and turned Him out of it — the extent of sin. Everything that God could present to man, He has, and man has failed when put into responsibility. This is the demonstration of the Son of man, not being merely turned out of paradise.
When Judas went out, Christ said, "Now is the prince of this world," etc. "The judgment of this world." Jesus died to be the source of a new life, has risen from the dead as Master over the consequences of sin, and put hereby a new ground of responsibility to man. Christ is the centre of a new world and system. Now I go to a sinner, not to reclaim him, but to show him there is pardon obtained by the blood of Christ, the new ground of responsibility, as having rejected Christ. Still, there is grace in the gift offered. There is the accessibility of the place, and capability of man to enter. All may come to a room, but some may be lame, and cannot. I distinguish between responsibility and the giving of life. God comes in as a Giver, and there is no responsibility in this, only as based on what is given. God was in forbearance till Christ came, because the atonement was before His mind; but the whole measure of man's responsibility was filled up before He declared His righteousness. Romans fully opens this. The life never could have been declared till the work of Christ was wrought. The consummation of man's sin being seen in the death of Christ, God brings in His own righteousness, and faith owns it in producing all manner of fruits, but only recognising that Another had done everything. Hezekiah could only speak of the darkness of death. There was no declaration of life, any more than of righteousness. Hezekiah said, "There is no remembrance of thee." The prophetic notices are no declaration of life.
It was only consequent on the death of Christ that God manifested life. Christ brought life and immortality (that is, incorruption) to light by the gospel, as in 2 Timothy. "Except a corn of wheat die," etc. The Son of God becomes the life-giving power by which God acts, and the word. We get a new thing — the fact of life. The second Adam becomes a living Spirit, quickening by resurrection," having forgiven you all trespasses."
When God's righteousness is declared, the whole course of the saints is based on the knowledge of it. In the first sermon of Peter, in Acts, there is the full conviction of sin, and immediate joy, and now we look for fruit to the glory and praise of God. "Therefore he ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." Christ having the double character of taking up the law, and taking up the righteousness of God, He becomes light. The latter is our responsibility. Another thing: Christ being set up as the Head of all things, we come to the counsels and purposes of God, even that the church is to be the bride of His Son as the glorified Man. Not only Jesus glorified God, by perfect obedience, but God was glorified in Him, and we are associated with Him in His fulness. God communicates this life to the church through Christ, and the Holy Ghost thus associates with Him on the basis of the glory. In our bodies all this is to be displayed; God has been pleased in the meanwhile to display all this on the defiled earth. The church has righteousness and life, and in the world it is associated with the power of God's life, and having all the sympathies. The Holy Ghost comes into the church to dwell in it, in the energy of Christ at the right hand of God; not merely as gifts — that is not the highest — but God was there. The Holy Ghost being there, the effect is seen in the judgment of Ananias and Sapphira. They thought to have the credit of grace, when they had not grace in their hearts. The sin was the same, whether there was gift to adjudge the punishment or not. The same as Dagon falling down — God there acting for Himself. Also the power over creation, seen when the cows went straight up with the ark. Nature was not changed, but God turned it. The ark was there, whether they lowed or not. The indwelling of God in the church was not made known before the coming of Christ.
David said, "I will build God a habitation." Now when this was said, it was a mistake, but it sprang from love, and the Spirit always notices the affections. (Ps. 132) The heart's desire was to be near His habitation — to make Him one; but the truth is, that His own hands will make Himself a habitation. I was a defective thought, though not a wrong one. The Holy Spirit leads to holy desires. Read the song of Moses for this. "Thou hast guided them in thy strength to thy holy habitation." There is a created scene into which God will bring His people, as in Exodus 29: "I will sanctify and dwell among," etc. Redemption and deliverance make the way for God to dwell amongst them. God dwelt with them in a certain sense then, and so He does in the church now. In 2 Samuel 7 you will see the same thought brought out. Until the true Solomon builds, God is going from tent to tent, till He builds a house. "Unless the Lord build the house," etc. The church is not in a place of its own, for God has set it in heaven. In the meanwhile we are "builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit."
The giving of gifts, and all other privileges, flow from this — God the Holy Ghost dwelling in the church. Timothy was to stir up his special gift, because God had given him the Spirit of power, love, and a "sound mind." The Spirit of power, love, and a sound mind was to control the gift. Particular gifts were thus used by the intelligence of the saints as superior to the gift in the man, God acting for the saints; and we ought to have a spiritual intelligence. Better have five words in the Spirit than the finest discourse without; and you ought to have a spiritual judgment to see the purpose to be edification. The Holy Ghost, the demonstration of God's power and goodness in the midst of the evil, is not gone away. The Holy Ghost displays God in the midst of all the wickedness of Jew and Gentile, giving us our place around Christ, the heavenly centre, and surmounts the miseries that sin had brought in, in the confusion of tongues, and uses them as a proof of the wonderful works of God, proving that He was the God of Jew and Gentile. God has taken His dwelling-place here because righteousness is established in heaven. Weakness may flow if they do not walk according to His presence, and God will say, as He did to Joshua, "Ye cannot stand before your enemies." Thus thirty men fell before Ai; and so should we in fact see manifest evil, if saints own the presence of the Holy Ghost, and do not walk consistently, more than where e is not owned.
Difference there is in gifts: those personal, such as ministry; and those He has put into the church as signs of His presence — the church set in unity with Christ. He gave persons, such as apostles, prophets, not for the display of the Holy Ghost in creation, but for the edifying the church in love (charisma is used in various senses); Christ has given one to be an apostle, another to be an evangelist, etc. The ministry to the church is not displayed to the world. The Holy Ghost may make a man speak with tongues, or lead to the most common act of kindness. (See Rom. 12) Do not think you are here told to cultivate gifts, but that every act should be the working of the Holy Ghost, according to the measure of individual faith. Do not go out of your gift — ministry; wait on ministry, etc. Do not go out of your sphere — be sober. The working of the Holy Ghost is in all the various developments of the church of God. How far the sin of the church has hindered the display, or edification may be a question; but whilst the church is here, the Holy Ghost is here.
Restoring grace is not bringing back to the same place, but bestowing that which is suited for the present remedy — the deeper sense of God's grace. It is not needful to pass through sin to know this; God always prepares the vessels.
Barnabas was full of the Holy Ghost. He took up all his faculties, and, instead of thinking or acting as a man, the Holy Spirit took him up and used him for Christ.
"The truth as it is in Jesus." This applied to doctrine. It is the new man, instead of having corrupt lusts; it is walking according to Christ. The Holy Ghost maintains His own nature, and reveals, being given us as a seal. The new nature cannot reveal. It is dependent on Christ, is athirst for God and to it the Spirit reveals the glory of the new world. Having this new life in Christ, the Holy Ghost comes and connects our desires with Christ.
In Romans 8, suitably to the epistle, the Holy Ghost takes another character — He takes a place in the midst of evil, and helps us in the midst of infirmities. The grieving produced by the evil around us is by Him, connected with the love of God, and thus the Holy Ghost uses all to bring the soul of the saints into sympathy with God, according to the evil around. The Holy Ghost takes notice of all in creation, natural sympathies, etc., because the judgment of the Holy Ghost enters perfectly into all that produces sorrow. He takes His place amongst the sorrows of man, and makes the hearts of the saints the place of expression, according to the will of God. The Holy Ghost, in a certain sense, just as the Son was looked on when in our tabernacle, as down here, has that particular character, and thus speaks what He hears. He reveals and gives us power to feed on what He reveals. The heart was won to the sustaining at once. There is more difficulty in guiding, as it becomes acting in responsibility, and this leads to anxiety — and except in the Christ of God, I see this anxiety. There is a guidance by knowledge, and also a guidance without knowledge.
In Christ we have everything exactly according to God. Christ, in a certain sense, had no character. He had never-failing obedience, because He was the thing to be testified about. A difference is in man's character, but not so in Christ: all was in Him that demonstrated God — tender when He should be tender, gracious when He should be gracious, faithful when He should be faithful. The apostles, who were only vessels, were not the thing itself, but only the witnesses of the thing, and had their own individual character. St. Paul said, "I do not repent, though I did repent." "My flesh had no rest," etc. "In weakness and fear." See the feelings of a man in its workings there — obliged to have the thorn in the flesh, an antagonistic power against the power in him, to keep him humble. God inspired him, and made Paul's own feelings to be guided by the divine life, and for our instruction in all this. I do not think the command, "Go not into Bithynia," etc., the most blessed operation of the Spirit. This was like the government of "prohibition," not in the intelligence of God met in communion, such as in Philippians, "Filled with the knowledge of his will with all wisdom," etc. The divine will is as evident as possible to the spiritual mind. A vast quantity of the character of the Spirit is according to that in communion, the result of much prayer, though not necessarily resulting from prayer at the time.
Now I may be rightfully exercised about that in which five years since I was quite at rest. If we have lost ourselves, He may put it in our mind to go here or there, and it assumes a person walking with God. Assuredly we find, if we are walking humbly, God will guide us. "I will guide thee with mine eye." If I exalt myself, God will deny me. If I have not the wind of God, and am asked, "Will you go to Hereford, or elsewhere?" if I have not the mind of God, I must pray, and this assumes I am not walking in the knowledge of God's mind. I believe Providence never guides us, it guides things. I may be going to preach in a place, and find the train gone. God has ordered things about, and I may be thankful for that; but it is not God guiding me, for I should really have gone.
Evidence of divine life and guidance of service are closely connected, but distinct. There may be a special guidance which may riot be exactly taking Christ as a direct model, as when Paul was not suffered to go into Bithynia. The Holy Ghost acts for the church and in the church, and never severs from responsibility to the Head. We have seen the divine life flowing through all. Individual devotedness and brotherly love would be the same, if we were guided by the same Spirit of God, but life being an individual thing which continues in glory, as the white stone (no man knows the name, it might be insignificant to another, but it is a secret between the saint and Christ which none other knows), and He never gives up His title of knowing His sheep by name. There is a vast principle that is hung on it. The Holy Ghost is seen forming and caring for the church, ministering for the church and in it. "The same Lord" to make him a servant of Christ, and the effect of the working of the Holy Ghost. Most important it is to remember I am a servant of the Lord. The apostle states the servant to be free from all men, but his bondman.
Another point is: if cooperation weakens individual responsibility, it will weaken the whole church. I get the whole body in the church. There is the eye, and car, etc., each in its own place. Love unites in love and intelligence. The moment God puts Paul in subjection, then it was seen Paul was mighty, and the intelligence of the mind of God as to individual action. If that is not the case, there is no love in service. I see the Holy Ghost going before the church. Paul, in evangelizing, was the servant of Christ, and of nobody else. We are servants of the Lord, if walking in the same spirit; we have a common joy, and altogether free from all men as servants of Christ. Important to see individual responsibility — then I afterwards see the body, which necessarily involves cooperation. See Paul acting with the most perfect independence, and in the same epistle he speaks of going up to Jerusalem for counsel of the apostles about his ministry, In another place we have cooperation in regard to individual service. The apostate mind may like to be a centre; but a man conscious of weakness, depending on God, delights in cooperation and fellowship in service. Even an apostle found it sad to have no man like-minded.
I see a great politician, and he brings the most diverse means possible to promote the same end, to hear on his own point. Satan also combines the most gracious forms of human nature as well as firm independency, etc., all to bear against God, and promote the same apostasy. The Holy Ghost's power shown in the same thing. He obliterates the differences of character, and brings them to cooperate to one purpose. See a man of firm nature and a man of yielding nature: Christ has both righteousness and grace, and the measure of Christ in each is brought into subjection, keeping that which is merely individual in subjection. if there had been two Pauls, there never would have been Paul and his son Timothy in the faith. The individualisation of service shows weakness.
The danger with us may be on the side of individual responsibility, or acting apart from those whose graces are necessary to the order of the church. In order to this, it is necessary that Christ should be the common object of all; and, after all, to so trust Christ, that He will care for us individually. A person like Paul I could see unconsciously had Timothy under his eye. Christ could direct all alike as one subjected to Paul, others perhaps alone. The Holy Ghost acts and works in subordination to Christ. One truth pushed alone will lead to absolute heresy. The Spirit divides to everyone severally as He will, acting in His divinity, yet always as taking the things of Christ — taking His place of glorifying Christ.