What more can we
say and how better can we say than: more of Thyself. O
show me hour by hour more of Thy glory. O my God and
Lord, more of Thyself in all of Thy grace and power, more
of Thy love and truth. Incarnate Word, answer that prayer
in this hour. We ask in the Name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.
In our consideration of the great transition from one
humanity which has been exposed, discredited, judged, and
set aside to Another Humanity which has been tested,
perfected, and installed in glory in our Lord Jesus
Christ, we have come at length in the closing hours of
this time together to the all-governing vision in the
light of which this transition becomes both clear and
very practical. And we saw yesterday that with the
Apostle Paul to whom this vision, this “heavenly
vision” as he called it, was the secret and key to
his whole life ministry when he saw the Lord Jesus risen
and glorified, four things became clear to the Apostle
Paul in that vision. These four things we have mentioned:
Firstly, the place and destiny of man in the Divine
economy. Secondly, the nature and dynamic of ministry in
this dispensation. Thirdly, the nature and purpose of the
Church now and in the after-ages. And fourthly, the
immense significance of Jesus Christ crucified, risen,
and exalted, all this in these three things.Now yesterday we were occupied
with the first of these four things. This morning we
proceed to the second, the nature and dynamic of ministry
in this dispensation, and whether we shall get to the end
of the fourth is with the Lord.
The Apostle Paul said: “It pleased God, ...to
reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the
nations.” Now we must stay for a moment to ask
and answer one question: “What do we mean by
ministry?” Perhaps we need a revised version on this
matter of ministry, for, immediately, when the word
“ministry” is mentioned, people’s minds
automatically think of someone with a Bible in their hand
standing up and teaching out of the Bible or someone
preaching the Gospel to the unsaved or someone having
been shut up with their Bible, studying it and making
some notes and coming out into public and giving the
result of their Bible study. Something like that is
usually associated with the word “ministry.” As
I speak of ministry in this dispensation, some of your
minds at once may think of someone with Bible in hand
upon a platform or in a group, teaching and preaching. I
trust the Lord is going to revise that concept for you
entirely before we are through this morning.
The New Testament has
two things to say about this matter of ministry. It does
speak in Ephesians about special, personal gifts for
ministry in the Church. He gave, the ascended Lord “gave
some, apostles; some, prophets; and some, evangelists;
and some, pastors and teachers.” These are
specific personal ministry gifts in the Church, and
please put a circle around that word “in.”
There are these personal ministry gifts in the Church;
however, the New Testament has much more to say about the
ministry of the Church Itself, and the Word says that
these personal gifts in the Church are for the purpose of
enabling the Church to fulfill the ministry —to do
the ministry, to be the minister of Christ.
Now you remember the
passage: “and He gave some, apostles; and some,
prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and
teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work
of the ministry.” Do not put any break in your
sentence: “the perfecting (of the Church, the
‘making complete,’ of the Church) unto the work
of the ministry.” I heard Dr. Campbell Morgan once
say in this very connection in this passage: “and
God help the minister whose Church does not fulfill the
ministry....” And it is with this second thing, the
ministry of the Church Itself, that we will be occupied
this morning.
I am not going to talk about apostles, prophets,
evangelists, pastors, teachers, these specific ministers,
but about the ministry of the Church; and the two letters
with which we have been mainly occupied this week (the
two letters to the Corinthians) have in view, very
clearly and emphatically so, the ministry of the Church.
All that the apostle is saying is with this background of
the fulfillment of the Divine ministry in Corinth, and as
those letters are a vehicle down through the whole
dispensation to our own time, it is what the Holy Spirit
is saying to the Church about its ministry.
In the First Letter of
Corinthians, the apostle is dealing with all those things
which either frustrate or spoil the ministry of the
Church. In the Second Letter, he comes out very clearly
and emphatically on the matter of the ministry as he uses
these words: “seeing then that we have this
ministry”; and you must remember that the apostle is
writing to a church, a local church, he is not just
talking about his own ministry. Paul has much to say
about that, but here he is speaking of the Church’s
ministry and the “we” is the Church at
Corinth: “we have this ministry”; and the
associated phrase is: “we have this treasure in
vessels of fragile clay”—is that only
Apostles? No, the “we” is corporate;
it is all of us. We shall come to that again presently,
for what we are really concerned with this morning is the
ministry of all believers, or the ministry of the Church.
The
Nature And Dynamic Of Ministry
Part One
Now having said that,
we can proceed to a consideration of the nature and
dynamic of ministry; and once more referring to the
apostle, a particular apostle who is writing these
letters, let us remember that Paul is a representative or
example ministry. That is how he speaks of himself
throughout these letters, and what was true of him as to
ministry, he was saying, has got to be true of the
Church. He did not put it in just this way, but this is
very clearly what he is saying: “What is true in my
ministry, as to its Source and its Nature and its Power,
has to be true of all believers, and of the Church.”
He is a representative minister, not an exclusive one; he
may have dimensions beyond anyone else’s, but that
is just his representative character. The Lord is saying
by this man Paul that here you have an example of what
ministry is and how ministry is produced and what the
principles and laws of ministry are, and, inclusively,
what the background of ministry is. That is how you must
look at the apostle (as a great minister quite true) but
as in principles, a representative minister.
As Paul begins, he goes
right back to the Damascus Road, to the beginning of his
Christian life and ministry, for you will remember that
it was there, right at the commencement, when the Lord
met him on his way to Damascus that the Lord gave him his
commission: “to whom I send thee” (Acts 26:17).
Paul goes right back to his conversion, to the beginning
of his life in union with Christ, and he says this:
“as to life, as to vocation, as to ministry, that I
might proclaim Him among the nations, God revealed His
Son in me.” Here you have the Source of everything!
It is this vision of the Lord Jesus that is the Nature of
the ministry, that is the Source of the ministry, that is
the dynamic of all true ministry, for all true ministry
in this dispensation issues and proceeds from an
inshining of Divine Light revealing Jesus Christ. “It
pleased God to reveal His Son in me.” That
gives us a secret.
Saul of Tarsus is on
the way to Damascus, and on the way he saw a Light from
heaven. That is objective, something that blinded him
from without. That Light turned out to be the Glorified
Lord Jesus, and Paul is saying here in this fragment to
the Galatians that he not only objectively saw that Light
and that Glorified Man, but also something happened
inside of him. Inside of him, he said: “Jesus of
Nazareth Whom I am on the way to persecute and Whose
persecution has become the one passion of my
life—Jesus of Nazareth, that impostor (as I believe)
that evil man, that deceiver—this is He?! He has
been here amongst us walking the streets of Jerusalem, of
Galilee, up and down the country, that same One
has now appeared to me, that same One, not a
different One—only in appearance and in
knowledge, but the same One. What does this
mean?!”
That inshining carried with it an overwhelming
significance in the life of Paul, and so away to the
desert he went to live and to dwell upon this; and that
Light which has shone on him was shining in him, and he
was seeing the significance of Who?—God’s Son!
True, but he was seeing Jesus of Nazareth, the Man
Glorified—the Man having reached the ultimate of
God’s intention for man. Paul thought within:
“Because I knew Him as a man, whether I saw Him in
the flesh or not, I knew Him—all about Him as a man
amongst men; and human eyes could not discriminate
between Him and other men, only there was something about
Him that was different, but He is a Man amongst
men, and this is that same Man—transfigured”:
this he had to think in the light of that inward
revelation.
People who know the
Greek here know that this Word: “It pleased God
to reveal His Son in me,” is a
subjective-objective. Paul could say: “I saw
objectively, but I also saw subjectively,” and until
that happens, dear friends, we are not in the way of
effectual ministry. You may be seeing by what is said to
you throughout this week, you may be seeing in a sort of
objective way, everything objectively, and that is very
wonderful; but has it broken through from the objective
to the subjective where you can say: “My word, I
have never seen it like that, I have never seen Him in
that way.” This “objective-subjective”
seeing is what happened to the apostle, and it was the
beginning both of his Christian life and of his ministry;
and they both went together.
Brethren, do you know
that you as a believer, as a Christian, are constituted
for ministry from the day of your new birth? Do you know
that you are ordained a minister the moment you are
regenerated into this New Humanity? Do not wait for the
day when someone will ordain you to the ministry. Oh, no,
your calling of God is from the beginning unto ministry.
About this, Paul said that it was, it corresponded to,
what happened at the creation. Paul said in Second
Corinthians, that great letter of the ministry: God Who
said, “Let there be light, let light be,”
has repeated that Divine fiat in a spiritual way in our
hearts, “has shined into our hearts”;—God
has said in these darkened human hearts, “let
light be” ...shined into our hearts with what
object?—“to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
For those of you who have heard this before and have
heard me say it before, bear with me if I may just stay
for a moment with that word “glory.” Yes, it
was objective glory with Saul of Tarsus which he saw, but
what is that glory? What is the glory of God?
We have been hearing in the second session about the God
of glory appearing to Abraham. What is the glory of God?
The glory of God is His absolute satisfaction with anyone
or any situation. When God is satisfied, something
emanates from Him. We know that in simple ways in
Christian experience. If there is something over which
you may have had a battle, a real battle, and you have
got through to what the Lord has been trying to get you
to and the battle is over and you are responsive wholly
to the will of God, what happens? There is such a sense
of blessedness inside. The fight is finished, the battle
is over, there is rest and peace and joy within. Now that
is glory because it is on the way to that ultimate
accomplishment of the whole will of God in a Humanity
when the glory will be universal. Yes, the “glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ” just means
this: because the Lord Jesus was so satisfying to the
very nature of God that there was about Him something of
peace and rest and joy. He carried with Him the
satisfaction of God. “I always do the things
that are pleasing to Him”: that is the glory.
Do not think of glory
just as this objective, shining, blazing something, but
think of it as shining into your hearts. Oh, how can I
explain it?! It is just this—that inside we have
come to the place where we are satisfied with the Lord
Jesus and meet the satisfaction of God. “Not what I
am, O Lord, but what Thou art—that, that alone, can
be my soul’s true rest. Thy Love, not mine, is
glory.” Paul said: “God carried out this New
fiat in my heart, and in your heart, Corinthians. He
shone in. He said, ‘Let light be, and there was
light.’ ” It was a Light that was never on
land or sea, “the Light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Now that is the spring
of ministry, and what is the ministry? What do we mean by
ministry? Well, ministry is the outshining of Jesus
Christ from our lives, and you do not need to have gone
to convocations; you do not need to have any artificial
or mechanical means. You may study your Bible, and you
may give the most wonderfully organized and arranged
Bible readings; but the question is, is that ministry?
Are you
emanating Christ?
Are you transmitting Christ?
Is Christ coming through your teaching?
Are people sensing
Christ and not your study, not your library, not your
commentaries, not your versions, not your translations.
But the point is, where does this come from, where did we
get it, how did we get it???
Brethren, I am not
saying that Bible study is wrong, but I am saying that
through it all, has Christ appeared?! and is He
appearing?! You may be a minister, a preacher, a Bible
teacher of renown, and it may stop there; but the whole
question is whether I am officially that or just a humble
member of Christ, without any public gift at all, without
any human ordination, I can be ministering Christ, in
some way ministering Christ, and that is the ministry.
That is the source of all true ministry from beginning to
end. Here the apostle is making it that. Paul is saying:
“It began in me and is going on in me, and all that
I have to say to you believers is what I am seeing of the
Lord Jesus, a growing, inward unveiling of God’s
Son."
The
Growth Of Ministry Is Through
“Afflictions”—“Consolations”
Now the question
arises, how does the ministry grow, proceed? In these
letters, and especially in the Second Letter to the
Corinthians, we have the answer; and it is going to touch
us quite deeply, acutely I think, on this matter of the
procedure of ministry, of the growth of ministry. How
will this be? Will it be by more study, more books? Oh,
no, dear friends, that is not the way of a growing,
continuing ministry; and the ministry has got to grow all
the time, deepen and enlarge all the time, but how?
Please read again your Second Letter to the Corinthians,
and before you have gotten very far, indeed almost
immediately in that letter, you come on some words which
are repeated again and again. What are they? “afflictions”;
“consolations.”
Underline those words right at the beginning of the
Second Letter. And in that connection the apostle brings
forth his own great experience: “I would have you
know what befell me—so great a death. (He had the
sentence that it was death.) But we had the
sentence of death. We despaired of life. We
were pressed out of our measure.” Then, and right
through that letter, the apostle is constantly striking
that note of sufferings, sufferings, sufferings.
“We
Have This Treasure”
which is this ministry,
the revelation of Jesus Christ
in our hearts.
“We have it in
vessels,” and I like the literal translation of
“fragile clay,” capable of being broken and
smashed. “Beyond our measure of endurance, even unto
despair, we despaired of life,” and then he will
give us a couple of catalogues of his afflictions.
Now you ought to sit
down brethren, and think about that if you are thinking
about ministry. My, you ought to think about all that
Paul himself met, encountered, and went through from
center to circumference. At the center what do you
find?—unfaithful, disloyal, and treacherous
brethren; and moving out from that center in ever
enlarging circles, there are many implications in this
letter, as well as statements, of what people were saying
about him: “He was not a true apostle. He is not one
of the twelve. He never saw Jesus after the resurrection.
He is not a true apostle; he is an imposter. He is a
deceiver. He is just going around cadging, getting money
from Christians.” These are all implications; a
whole list of them. This is implied. It is there.
Paul goes on to say: If any man has suffered, “I
more than them all.” And then he speaks of the many
times he was in prison, of how many times he received the
stripes, and how many times he was in the deep and
shipwrecked, a night and a day in the deep, of how many
times he was in hunger and in nakedness and in
peril—in sea, on land, from robbers and
fellow-Christians. It is a terrible double list that he
gives in these chapters of Second Corinthians. Read them
again, and no wonder that word has such a large place at
the beginning of the letter—“the afflictions of
Christ which abound unto us, that the consolations also
may abound.” That is the ministry, those periods
when even men like this man Paul, perhaps the greatest
minister that Christ ever had, will say: “I
despaired. I despaired of life, I was pressed beyond my
measure of endurance.” That is how the ministry
grows.
If we really say to the
Lord, “Lord, make my life a ministry of
Christ,” this is how the ministry grows, this is how
it goes on. This is how to be an effectual minister. This
is how the ministry proceeds, deepens, and becomes more
fruitful. Believe me, dear friends, if the apostle is
representative of ministry and if we as servants of God
are to be spiritually fruitful—if really true
ministers of Jesus Christ, there will be in the
background of our lives the secret sufferings, a hidden
history with God under His hand.
If you are going to be
a true minister of Christ, ministering Christ,
He is going to take you into some deep experiences with
Him, very deep experiences, where you will discover
something that is going to be of great value to others;
for it is the crucified and suffering servant of God who
is really the fruitful one, the one of whom you can say:
“That man is not talking out of his library, from
his books, that man knows what he is talking
about—he has been there. He has been in it. This has
come out of the travail of his soul.” Read 2
Corinthians again in the light of how the ministry grows.
Oh, I speak and say these things to you, but God only
knows how I hold my breath, for we do know that if the
Lord has done anything at all, it has been by a hard way.
It has been by the “afflictions” of
Christ that we might know the “consolations”
of Christ; and, as the people of God, what do we want?
information or consolations?
I know what your answer is over that, but I want you to
notice that this is something terrific in the whole
cosmic realm, for ministry is not just limited to the
people amongst whom we move. This kind of ministry is
“cosmic ministry.” What do I mean? I mean this:
the god of this age had blinded the minds of the
unbelieving, lest as a precaution, as a move, a strategic
move, lest the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God
should shine upon them. If our gospel is hid, it is hid
in them that are perishing in whom the god of this age
had blinded.—What is such a ministry? It Is The
Undoing Of That Devilish Work Of Spiritual Blindness.
All spiritual blindness is not just natural, it is
satanic, and you have got to have something that strikes
there beyond the merely natural condition, that strikes
right home to the source of that condition, “he hath
blinded.”
Satan is “the god
of this world,” and the trouble at Corinth, as the
whole of the First Letter shows, is that the world has
laid its deadly, paralyzing hand upon those people. The
world and the old humanity lie under a curse. Does that
sound strong, brethren? But have you never said,
“this accursed self.” It is this accursed self
that is in the way all the time. Yes, that humanity lies
under a curse from the beginning, and this world lies
under a curse which means that that humanity and this
world can never go through to God’s end as it is.
The end of that humanity and of this world is what?
destruction, removal right from the Face of God. Paul saw
this as to the Corinthians, the natural man intruding,
and this world—its judgments, its standards, its
conceptions, its values, its ideas—amongst these
people in the church; controlling, influencing—the
world of Corinth had come into the church at
Corinth—in its mentality, in its
manner, and in its procedure: how the world does
it... that was at Corinth.
Yes, our natural man
lies under a curse, our old humanity lies under a curse.
It cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God because
God has put His veto on it. It is vetoed, and this world
is vetoed as to God’s things. And who has done it?
The god of this age, the prince of this world; and when
God breaks in, He said: “Let there be light,”
because darkness is not of God; it is of the devil. And
here we have it in the spiritual part: “he hath
blinded”—the god of this age, blinded and
brought into darkness this old humanity; and when God
says, “Let there be light,” the work
of the devil is undone and the judgment is removed and
that should be the effect of ministry.
The ministry of Christ should be out of darkness into
Light; and you remember the commission to the Apostle
Paul at the beginning, “To whom I send thee, to turn
them from darkness to light.”—The right
translation in the Greek language is: “That they may
turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan
unto God, that they may receive an inheritance.”
This is ministry, the turning from darkness to Light,
from the power of Satan unto God, to have an inheritance
which they lost in Adam. It is very full. That should be
the impact and influence out of our presence as ministers
of Christ.
When Christ was
present, He did say a lot of things; He did preach,
mostly to His disciples, preparing them for their work
ahead; but it was not only what He said, it was as much
His personal presence. He would come somewhere and He had
not said anything, and demons would cry out: “I know
Thee Whom Thou art; the Holy One of God.” They could
not hold their peace. His Presence dragged them out. His
very Presence was an exposure of man, an exposure of
Satan: His Presence, and that is the ministration of
Christ.—
O Lord, make us ministers, make me a minister, as far
as I can bear it, that the impact, the registration, the
influence may be people moving into the Light, really
seeing the Light in an inward way. The Light—not of
truth, or even of Scripture to begin with, but through
Scripture—the Light of Jesus Christ.
The
Test Of Ministry Is In Its Eternal Value
That is all I have time
to say this morning about ministry—unless I add this
word, again from Corinthians:—the test of
ministry is in its eternal value. Now the Apostle
Paul associates the two things: Affliction and Eternal
Value. He says, “Our light affliction, which is but
for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and
eternal weight of glory; while...” (now do not stop
there, get your conjunction) “...while we look not
at the things which are seen, but at the things which are
not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal;
(passing, transient) but the things which are not seen
are eternal.” The test of our ministry is perhaps
not going to be what we see in our own lifetime, but what
is afterward, going on to eternity.
When you get to glory, do you not want to discover that
you meant far more than you knew you did? That there was
a great deal more value in your being here than ever you
saw. Oh, this soul life of the old humanity does want to
see, it is always doing things to see, to see the result,
to see the value. “While we look not at the things
which are seen.” I think perhaps this is one of the
most testing words in the Bible to the old man. How can
we live on what is not seen and what is in the eternal
future and be satisfied? Oh, that is not the old
humanity, but it is the New—the eternal value of
ministry.
The
Nature And Purpose Of The Church
Part Two
Now for a little while
I will go on to the next thing: the nature and purpose of
the Church, now and in the ages afterward; and here
again, we need a revised version of what we mean when we
speak of the Church. Through the years I have talked and
written much about the Church, but on this very matter of
the Church I find that I am being forced to a revision,
not to abandon what has been said, taught, and believed,
and acted upon, but as we go on, a great deal of what we
did at the beginning, of what we called our Church
teaching, a great deal has, shall I say, broken down?!
Now, brethren, what are
you finding about the Church today? To begin with, you
may be looking around everywhere and saying: “Where
is it? Is this the Church? Well, this does not come up to
Ephesians; far from it, it is very much like
Corinthians.” So, what is the Church? What is its
function now and in the ages to come? The Apostle Paul
always linked these two things together: “Unto Him
be the glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus through
all ages, forever and ever”—the function of the
Church afterward, as well as now.
What is the Church? Of course, there are various symbols
of the Church. The Church is called “the House of
God,” it is called a “Temple,” it is
called “the Body of Christ,” it is called
“the Bride,” and so on. You may ask, “Are
these different things?” No, they are only aspects
of one thing. Each of those definitions or designations
or titles is only a functionary aspect of the Church. The
House of God—the place where God lives. The Temple
of God—where He is worshipped. The Body of
Christ—the vessel of a Personality. The Body of
Christ is a function, a many-sided function of the
expression of the Personality. The Bride—is the
expression of the affectional relationship between Christ
and the Church: “Christ loved the Church, gave
Himself for it... so ought husbands to love their
wives....” The Bride is the affectional relationship
between Christ and His Church. These are all symbols of
the one thing, but what is the one thing of which these
are but aspects? And that is what we have got to come to,
that is where our revision of mentality has to take
place.
So, what is the
inclusive designation of the Church? “One
Man”—You have it in that great Church letter of
Ephesians where “He has broken down the middle wall
of partition” between Jew and Gentile (racially the
old human divisions, compartments) He has removed the
division and has made “of the twain one new
man.” The inclusive designation is a Man, “One
new man,”—a New Humanity. It is the aggregate
of the New Creation people, men and women, Jews and
Gentiles (not remaining as they are naturally, Jews and
Gentiles) but just one New Man, one New Humanity: that is
the Church! And which Humanity is it? That touches on the
function: there is the nature.
Oh, do take this to
heart, dear friends, for I do not intend to offend
anyone, but what is God doing? What is He after? Is He
after making a new institution called the Church, a new
ecclesiasticism, something that has a denominator amongst
men like the individual denominations or the
non-denominations? Is God doing that? Is that what God is
doing? (This is where we need a mental revision, a heart
revision.) No! He is not in it. No, He is not doing that,
He is only with the people, not with the thing. But God
is doing in the spiritual way what He did at the
beginning. He is saying and proceeding, proceeding with
His concept: “Let Us make man, let Us make
Man.” The Church is the One New Man:—Let Us
make a Man, not an institution, or any of these things
that the Church is called. God said: “Let Us make a
Man,” and that is what he is doing with you and with
me. God is not trying to make of us any of these many
things that Christians are called and the names by which
they go. He is just getting to work on us to constitute
us “the Man.”
You remember what we said in the beginning: “He
called them (man and woman)—He called them
man.” Here in this (and, sisters, be careful how you
take what I am now going to say, for “there is
neither male nor female”) it is a Man, that
is, it is a Humanity. I cannot explain to you,
because I do not know, what that Humanity is going to be
afterward in glory, but Jesus answering a certain
man’s question about marriage and repeated
marriages, (whose wife a certain woman would be afterward
out of all she had married) said, “Ye do err... in
the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in
marriage, but are as the angels.” It is a kind of
Humanity that is different. Oh, the questions will arise,
“Shall I know my husband in heaven, shall I know my
wife in heaven?” Yes! But we shall know in a way in
which it is far better to know, however precious may have
been the human relationships, husband and wife, wife and
husbands here—yes, precious, very precious; but is
it not better when a husband and wife know each other in
the Spirit than in the flesh? Is it not lovely when they
flow together from one Spirit, one vision, one objective
that their united lives manifest Jesus Christ in the home
and in the neighborhood?! There is something very
precious about that.
I had a son, and the
Lord took him about three or four years ago; and as my
son, we had a good relationship, there was not strife
between us as father and son, no difficulty at all; and
he and I had such spiritual fellowship that I could open
my heart to him as fully as I could to anybody, and more
than to most people—for he was not only my son, but
he was my spiritual friend. Brethren, you know what I am
talking about. That is how we are going to know, and it
will be a better kind of knowing. Do not worry, then,
whether you know your husband or your wife. Oh, you will:
“Then shall I know, even as I have been known by the
Lord.”
The
Vocation: The Emanation Of Christ
Now we must move on.
The vocation of the Church now and in eternity is going
to be just the emanation of Christ. It is now intended to
be that, and God help us to be that. It is not this and
that and one or more of a hundred things that are the
idea about the Church today, but it is just this one
thing, the presence of a different kind of Man, in the
individual and collectively. Let us take it universally.
Are you not impressed
with how Peter, having passed through the great
transition from the old Jewish humanity, got right
through:—after his battles with the Gentiles at
Cęsarea, and Cornelius’ house, after his battle
down at Antioch when James and the elders came down from
Jerusalem, when Peter withdrew himself from eating with
the Gentiles (“dissimulation” Paul called it).
When he got through it all, and thank God Peter got
through it all, what did he say in the opening of his
letter?—“To the saints, scattered throughout
Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.”
Peter says: “Ye, Galatians, Cappadocians, Asians,
Bithynians, you are all scattered. The dispersion has
taken place, and you are all scattered, you saints, and
yet you are a spiritual house, One House. Not so many
houses, but One House. Everywhere.” What is this? It
is where the Lord is dwelling, in men and women.
The Church universal
according to the Divine concept is just One Man in the
earth. How we discover that when we meet somebody we have
never met before and they are the Lord’s. It is
wonderful!—until you begin to ask or they begin to
ask what you belong to. If you just talk about things of
the Lord, One Man, One Blessed Man, it is like that.
Well, that is very elementary; it is very simple, but
that is what the Church is universally: that is what the
Church is locally.
When people come into the local company, they do not come
in and say, “Well, this is how they behave, this is
what they do; they have baptisms, they have the
Lord’s table, and they have this form of
worship.” No, these things may be all right, they
may have their place, they may be a part of a Divine
order, but what is it they are to meet?—not our
baptism, not our Lord’s table, not our method of
procedure, not our technique, but “God is in this
place!”—they meet the Lord. They may
not be able to put it like that, they may not be able to
define it or explain it, but the impress is: “There
is something there, these people have got life, these
people are in the good of something that you will not
find anywhere else. It is the Lord.” Oh, that all
our local companies were just like that, in whatever way
we go on, the thing that impresses is: “The Lord is
here, the Lord is here.”
I have moved out from
the universal to the local company, and now I am going to
move down to the individual. To the Corinthians, the
Apostle Paul said: “Do you not know that your body
is a Temple of the Holy Spirit? He dwells in you.” I
am a microcosm of the Church (or intended to be), and
each one of you is intended to be a microcosm of the
Church. Now what is it? What is true of the universal
Church collectively is to be true in our case, it is to
be Christ that people meet when they meet us
individually. What broke upon this man Paul’s heart
was not something that he studied up, read up, or worked
out in his mind, but he saw Jesus as Lord (and He is
a lifetime of seeing). Paul began to see, and to go
on to see, what the Church really is. And I will say
this, brethren, you do not know anything about the Church
if you have not seen Jesus Christ—however much you
have read and talked about it, if you have not seen Him,
you do not know what the Church is. It is not a thing, an
it. But if you have seen Him, it is a Him, it is a Person
Who is dwelling in persons—that is the
Church! I think that is enough this morning. Very much
more could be said, but time has gone. Let us pray...
Make the truth live in us, O Lord. May that Divine fiat
take place, light shine into our hearts, and the eyes of
our understanding be enlightened that we may see light in
Thy Light. For Thy Name and Glory and Satisfaction’s
sake, Amen.