Once more, oh Lord, we ask
for the miracle of the opening of the ear, the inner ear; the
opening of the inner eye, that by the Spirit of the Living God we
may hear and see what is impossible for us to hear and see but
for Thy supernatural work. Lord, do that, we pray, for Thy glory,
in the name of the Lord Jesus, amen.
We are occupied with what the
apostle Paul in the end of his letter to the Galatians referred
to as “the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ”. In the
opening and introductory time we just mentioned that in every
book of the New Testament the Cross is to be found; in either a
definite and positive placement, or it is to be found by
implication in what is written. That is, everywhere in the New
Testament the Cross in some way is kept in view. And then we went
on to break that up and in the letter to the Romans last night we
were seeing the all-inclusiveness of the Cross; how in that
letter the Cross is seen as touching every dimension, every
realm, every sphere, every aspect of life. It’s all gathered
into that letter. The Cross is seen to be central to it all. Now,
after the all-inclusiveness, we begin to break that down by
looking at some of these letters as far as we are able to get
this week and that will not be very far. And this evening we come
to the first letter to the Corinthians.
The Cross in the first letter to
the Corinthians... and it is here in what I am going to call
“the Cross and the two humanities”. You need not be
worried for the moment about the title, you’ll understand
before we’re through, I think. But let us just be reminded
how definite the Cross is in this letter, right at its early part
in chapter 1 and verse 17 and verse 18.
“For Christ sent me not to
baptize, but to preach the gospel: not in wisdom of words, lest
the Cross of Christ should be made void. For the word of the
Cross is to them that are perishing foolishness; but unto us
which are being saved it is the power of God.”
Unto us who are being
saved the Cross is the power of God. In verse 23, “But we
preach Christ crucified.” Chapter two, verse two: “I
determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and
Him crucified.” See how soon the apostle is on the basic
matter of the whole letter!
I want, for a later purpose,
just to add to those passages the fragment known well to you,
from the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 4 verses 12 and 13,
beginning with a conjunction of very real significance, at which
we will look or to which we will refer later: “for”. It
is a continuation of something. “For the word of
God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword and
piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joint
and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the
heart. And there is no creature that is not manifest in His
sight.” For the moment just know it: the thought of the
heart. Have you ever thought with your heart? Not the common way
is it, in speaking about thinking? We’re supposed to think
with our heads, “the thoughts and intents of our
hearts...” I’ll just leave that for the time being.
Now to the message. And in
order to really understand and to appreciate the place of the
Cross in this first letter to the Corinthians it is important -
indeed it is essential - that we know the situation to
which the letter was addressed. So, with the briefest of
introductory words, let me remind you that the apostle Paul was
in Corinth for two whole years and what we know of him,
about his visits and his ministry, lead us to the very
certain conclusion that he wasted no time during those two years.
He did have a habit of preaching all night, and one young man at
any rate knew something about that!
For two whole years the apostle
was there in Corinth and we may conclude that for hours on hours,
every day, he was ministering. And then he went away and he was
away from Corinth for four or five years. During this time a very
terrible deterioration in the situation, the spiritual situation,
set in and rumors of it reached the ears of the apostle, brought
by the members of the household of Chloe; evidently, I think, the
servants in that household who visited the apostle and brought
the report of this sad and tragic spiritual deterioration.
Apollos was dispatched and he went to Corinth to investigate and
returned to the apostle with the news that it was all too true.
The situation was indeed very bad and the apostle sat down to
write letters. He probably wrote three letters, one possibly
lost. Two we have. And in the first letter, which we are now
considering, the situation is uncovered, the tragedy is exposed.
We have this that is perhaps the most terrible of all the New
Testament documents as to spiritual declension.
I pause there for the moment,
not rushing on, to once more indicate that it is not the amount
of teaching that you have that guarantees your spiritual growth.
You and I would agree that if the apostle Paul, and what we know
of him, were with us for two whole years every day pouring
himself out, as he said in other connections and other times,
making sure that they received the whole counsel of
God... If the apostle Paul had two years with us, well that would
settle the whole matter of our spiritual growth, and measure, our
going on. Not necessarily. We are very, very little things
compared with Paul and here we are having ministry day after day,
three times a day, and it is no guarantee of anything unless we
learn the lesson that the apostle tried to teach in this letter,
this first letter by which such a terrible, almost unthinkable
result would ensue from his ministry.
So he wrote the first letter...
and this letter does disclose a lot of terrible things. You know
what it contains about behaviour of these Christians at Corinth,
going to law before the world and the ungodly against one
another. I’m not going to stay with all the details but the
moral decline was such a low, low level, almost unthinkable like
the very lowest level of incest; a moral level. Divisions, there
are divisions among them, "there are divisions among
you".
Well, evidently some at Corinth
were exercised about the situation and they had sent to the
apostle eleven questions for him to answer. I’ll leave that
to you, they’re answered in this letter: eleven questions.
But the point, oh let it come home to us, it’s going to hurt
us, it really is going to hurt us. It’s going to pierce us
if we listen and take heed. The Spirit is going to be like the
two edged sword. Listen then: after all that ministering
of such a man pouring out his heart perhaps night and day with
tears, because the Lord had said to him when he arrived in
Corinth, “I have much people in this city” I have! Now
after all of that, out of the heart of this church, there comes
this questionnaire. Eleven questions on not very profound
matters, indeed, rather staple matters some of them. You would
think “Oh, surely they’ve got past that!” But the
point is: indications indicated an almost utter lack of inward
spiritual perception, judgment, understanding. A lot of
mental questions, perhaps on practical matters, but questions...
I dare not say what I’m
almost inclined to say, you know we can just be full of mental
questions indicating how little we have inwardly of divine
understanding. Well, by the way, that’s how it is here.
It’s a bad situation isn’t it? On almost every aspect
of life and you would hardly think of a Christian life, because
there was a time when first handling this letter I said
“Well, are these people born again people at all? Is it
possible that such people should be Christians?” That’s
it, that’s the position to which the apostle addressed
himself and note: right at the outset of his addressing himself
to the situation, he introduces in this three-fold way with such
precision: the Cross. “I determined, I made up my mind, I
resolved to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him
crucified.”
Now you’ve got onto the
line you see there. These people were not on the line of the
Cross apparently and that was the reason for this situation. That
explains everything. They were on another line. That is what
we’re going to come to presently. They were on another line
and it was the line of this world brought within the area here of
Christian things; always a most dangerous thing with
most terrible results. Of course you would think that to be
addressed like this would have no application, but wait a moment
please. I’m not saying that in this congregation or in this
company these things are being perpetrated: immorality of the
grossest type, and form, and other such things, of a moral kind.
I don’t know about divisions... Don’t know about
divisions, depends on what you mean. You see, after all, divisions
are in the spirit before they are on the outside. However, leave
it for the moment.
It may not be and it may yet be
that some of these things are true. Whether all or few, they
represent a position, a situation, which is a denial of the Cross
and which will explain Corinthian position which is, Paul calls
it, a position of carnality which means: “Why, you
haven’t grown at all! I could not speak to you as unto
spiritual but as unto carnal! Ye are yet babes!” Babes?
After two years of his ministry like that and being left for
another four or five years to work it out? Yes, all that... still
babes. Still babes! Fed you with milk, not with meat, you're not,
they’re not yet able. What a terrible position!
Now I say again, whether that be
wholly or only partly the situation with us, any of us,
we’re in the presence of something that is going to be our
deliverance from any such course or situation sooner or later.
That is why I stressed that little fragment, “we who are being
saved”. The Cross for those who are being saved;
got that? Well now, this whole letter just is built up upon two
words, two words which represent two different humanities, two
contrary kinds of people who can be in Christianity and who can
be Christians. I’m not talking now about saved and unsaved;
I'm talking about we who are in the course of being saved, we've
got inside, we’re on the road. And even so, if this letter
means anything, even so, after we have come in and are the
Lord’s on this mysterious ground... we make out by the
apostle’s beginning of the letter, so kind and generous he
is: unto the saints which are at Corinth.
Well I won’t stop with
that, we’ve got a wrong idea of what a saint is. Two or
three weeks ago I came across something which I thought was very
good on this matter of sainthood. A mother took her little girl
to a church building with stained glass windows and there were
figures in the windows, the stained glass windows. The little
girl looked at these and said to her mother, “Mother, who
are those people?” The mother said, “Oh, they are the
saints.” The little girl put that in her mind and went
away. Thereto afterwards the mother took the little girl to the
home of a dear old child of God and had a wonderful time with
this old believer. And when they came away the mother said to the
girl: “She’s a real saint”. Stained glass
windows... and saints... how can these both be saints? She
thought and thought and she said “Oh, I know! I know now
what a saint is! A saint is one who lets the light through!”
A saint is one who lets the light through.
Well I don’t know how much
these Corinthians were letting the light through but Paul said
they were saints, and the point is they were on the inside
of the Christian community. And on the inside you can have these
two humanities represented by these two words which I’m
going to give you (keep you in suspense for a minute or two) but
I’m wanting to lay a very sure foundation for what I’m
saying. I’m not just giving you doctrine and truth and
theory. I’m here to get right down to the roots of the
Christian life. That is what we all want isn’t it? We want reality.
All right.
These two words then that
constitute this whole letter are the basis upon which everything
that follows in the New Testament rests. Until that is settled
which is represented by these two words, you can’t go into
second Corinthians for that is a big advance upon the first. You
cannot proceed to Galatians, we’re still moving on. You
cannot go into Ephesians or Philippians and Colossians with all
that they represent of the mind, the thought of God for us. We
cannot go on to any of them until this is settled.
And herein I see the sovereign
providence of God by the Holy Spirit putting this as the first practical
application of the Cross in the Christian life. For I say upon
this, this, rests everything that follows, right to the end. And
this is distinction represented by the two words;
it explains the very incarnation itself. It explains the baptism of
the Lord Jesus. It explains the anointing of the Lord Jesus with
the Holy Spirit. It explains the battle into which the Lord Jesus
was precipitated with satan and his kingdom. It explains the very
Cross itself, including the resurrection. It explains the advent
of the Holy Spirit, the very coming of the Holy Spirit and it
explains the training under the Holy Spirit’s government of
the life of the Christian. That’s a few things isn’t
it, fundamental to the Christian life, you got them all? All
those things are explained by the two words that I am going to
remind you of and if I added one other thing to all those that I
have mentioned, I would add the building of the church because
that comes here doesn’t it, in chapter three, “other
foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, let every man
take heed how he build thereon”. It's the building of the
church (and it’s the building of the Christian life) and
there are two possible issues, two possible issues connected with
that building. It depends on what you put on it; on the
foundations... Wood, hay, stubble, going up in flames and smoke
and you being saved yet as by fire and all your life’s work
gone up in smoke. That’s a terrible prospect and the
apostle’s saying that’s possible for you Corinthians.
Or on the other side, gold, silver, precious stones which
I’m not going to explain, as symbols, but these which will
abide, and secure not just being saved and creeping into heaven (we
have a way of saying in England I don’t know whether you say
it, by the very skin of your teeth, just getting in) or
having an abundant entrance into the everlasting
kingdom. These are the issues with this basic distinction
represented by these two words. Are you ready now for them?
They’re here, of course if
you were reading your Greek New Testament you would be more
impressed than with the English translations. The Greek words are
simply “psuche” or “psuchikos” - soul or
soulish. The other word: “pneuma” or
“pnuematikos” - spirit or spiritual.
Soul or Spirit
Now, in our translation that
Greek word “psuche” or “psuchikos” is
translated “natural”. But what we’ve lost in that
translation! Natural... the natural man... that’s poor
isn’t it? The natural man. Ah no, this is a species of
humanity, this is a kind of person, or race; a soulical
humanity. This isn’t a very far cry, it’s only the cry
of a change of a letter from "psuche" to
"psychic". Getting clearer now? A phsychical, soulical
humanity - or in contrast, the contrast of a different species of
being, of spirit. A people of spirit, not just and only
of soul. I say the whole letter is built upon that contrast, that
distinction and that helps us right into this letter doesn’t
it?
Why all this situation
in Corinth? Why this declension, this spiritual decline, why?
This state of things... why these quarrels and contentions and
schisms and divisions and this constant expression of the ego?
“I am of Paul! I am of Apollos! I am
of Israel...” I! For every one of you professes
“I”, every one of you says “I”! That’s a
type of humanity. It's the humanity of Selfness, of the ego, of
the assertion of man’s soul, and you know what the assertion
of the soul is or what the soul is, look again. In this letter
you’ve got it so clearly defined. They’re
craving for worldly wisdom. We know all that the apostle has to
say right at the beginning of the letter about the wisdom of this
world.
The wisdom of this world... why
talk to these people so much about the wisdom of this world? Oh,
because they’re very interested in the wisdom of this world.
The wisdom of this world (philosophy if you like but that’s
too technical a term) natural, soulical wisdom... the wisdom of
the soul which is just the intellectual realm to begin with,
intellectual Christianity. It covers a lot of ground, a lot of
things. But just this, this projecting of the mind into
things with its thousand and one, more than eleven questions;
curiosity and interest you know, and playing with Scripture in a
mental way... going out in the natural mind into the realm of the
things of God. And the apostles had something to say about that.
The intellectual side of the soul, an intellectual Christianity,
a mental thing after all. After all, interest in Christian
things, in Christian truth, in the Bible; all has to do with
Christianity, an interest that is merely mental interest. Not
only that, but you go from the intellectual and you find yourself
immediately in the next sentence in another aspect of the soul,
that is: the desire for power.
The
Desire for Power
Ah, look at the
world today and you’ll see what that means. The desire,
it’s a lust for power, power politics, and power this, and
power that... to have power in your hands, to wield power in this
world and over lives, coming from yourself. The assertion of
yourself to get it, and don’t tell me that any one of us
here, any one of us, is not infected by that naturally. You will
come to me, someone will come to me and in a very humble and
lowly voice tell me what a poor creature he is or she is and all
along that line and that tone and I am listening more inwardly
and what am I really hearing? I’m hearing the
murmuring of an inferiority complex and an inferiority complex is
one of the most evident signs of the desire for power.
It is indeed an advanced
Christian who is saved from this desire of being somebody and
something, or let me put it the other way: of not being ignored.
Not being ignored... Oh, it's a testing thing isn’t it? This
being ignored, taken no notice of, walked over, walked past...
"He didn’t even look at me!" Ah, here’s your
desire for power, as subtle and deep as the devil himself.
There’s a false humility
you know, which is the essence of pride. “I thank thee
Lord that I am not as other men...” that’s the voice of
the hypocrite, of the Pharisee. This desire for power... and the
apostle puts his finger upon this in this letter: power, the
power of God and the power of men are in two different realms
altogether and the power of God is seen mainly in the weakness of
the Cross. The Cross, because it is the symbol of human weakness,
is the symbol of heaven’s mightiest power. But how can men
look at it like that?
But leave that a minute, coming
back, and another aspect of the soul, the soulish humanity in
the emotions. Now, you’ve got to be very patient with me...
you really have, I’m going to get it! In the emotion,
and that can be so much of the soul in the physical realm, for it
says these people more than any others were blessed with
spiritual gifts, tongues, what-not - charismata, the gifts. Oh,
what is this? What is this? A people like this, a people like
this? Boasting of their gifts, glorying in their spiritual gifts,
in these powers? No doubt so much in that realm that often they
would obsess you with it and challenge you with it and put you
really on the spot over it; that if you haven’t got these
gifts, well, you’re written off as a Christian! The
emotional aspects of this, and let me say it, and this is where
I’ll get myself into trouble, but I’ve got to face it,
to say it. Spiritual gifts of this type are no necessary
proof of spiritual character and spiritual paradigm. You may
have them all and be an immature child if this letter means
anything. They are not proof of spiritual maturity at all
because the apostles had them before Calvary! They healed the
sick, cast out devils and the rest of it with divine powers
before ever the tragedy of their break down, the crucifixion, and
their being scattered all abroad and forsaking Him and leaving
Him, every one. They had had the gifts. No guarantee of places. You understand? It can be just so much soulical emotion and
interest and fascination.
I’m not saying that there
are no true spiritual gifts, but you see where we are, this is
all on a natural basis after all, in the Christian world, the
Christian life. It can all be, all be, intellectual, volitional,
emotional. All this and yet such a poor spiritual
condition. And I get it out of the Word of God, I wouldn’t
dare to say these things like that, but here it is.
This is a humanity on the other
side over against that, with such emphasis, such emphasis the
apostle places, “he that is spiritual”. The Corinthians
would have so much speaking, so much given to them of divine
truth. To them he said “He that is spiritual
discerneth all things. He is able to weigh things up and come to
right heavenly conclusions about things. He has spiritual
judgment, spiritual perception. But this soulical man,
(the natural man is our translation) cannot! Cannot
receive the things of the Spirit of God. He cannot know
them. It’s only the spiritual man who knows, who sees, who
understands.”
Two Humanities
Is it hard to receive dear
friends? I don’t think I’d be altogether wrong in
saying there’s a great deal of this kind of thing amongst
Christians. Christians in the world today, if not here, like
this: the inconsistencies, the contradictions, the limitation of
spiritual life and understanding. You can be evangelical, in
America you call it "fundamentalist", you can be that
and not be a spiritual person. I have met many who would lay down their lives for the fundamentals of the faith, the
deity of Christ, the inspiration of the Scriptures and what-not
and I can’t have any fellowship with them on the things of
the Lord. There’s a bigger gap, it seems to me, between an
evangelical Christian and a spiritual person as there is between
an unsaved and a saved one. You know what I mean. A really
spiritual person... well! Things flow and you can talk and get on
with the things of the Lord in the most blessed, living
fellowship... it just comes out; a spiritual person! And with an
evangelical Christian so often if you begin to talk about the
Lord they raise their eyebrows and open their mouths as though
you’re talking in another language. That is not untruth,
that is truth, that is truth. There are many, even in
what is called "the ministry", leaders of God’s
people, with whom you cannot have real spiritual fellowship on
the things of God. You can only just go so far. They’re
interested in Christianity, they’re interested in foreign
missions, they’re interested in things, but when you
want to get down and really have spiritual food to your
heart’s gratification, you cannot get it. They’re
evangelical right enough, but they’re not spiritual.
It’s so difficult to get
this over. I think that you have enough understanding to
appreciate what I’m saying. And this is the thing. I put all
those things, you see, on this: that the explanation of the
incarnation is that God brought into this world a different
humanity from ours, another humanity of heaven and not of earth,
of God and not of man. Another humanity which this world could
not understand or follow or appreciate. The words “...it
knew Him not” - it knew Him not! The incarnation was the
introduction of a different humanity. A matter to dwell
upon for many hours. Yes, the incarnation. The baptism. The
baptism is the setting aside in its entirety of one kind of
humanity and the bringing in of another. Paul explains it, the
later New Testament explains everything. Why, why bury something
that’s good? Don’t do that! No, it’s rejected.
It’s a humanity that is discarded, rejected by God.
Unacceptable. Its only place is burial and the bringing in of
another humanity, that’s a baptism.
The anointing... there’s all
the difference of two races between an anointed and an unanointed
person; wants a lot of dwelling upon doesn’t it? What is the
anointing? Well in a word, it is God committing Himself.
Committing Himself. And to what does God commit Himself? The
Anointed. Ah, the battle, you see immediately the battle set in
after the baptism and the Anointed and it was on one issue: to
try to get this Man who had taken heavenly ground through death,
burial and resurrection under the government of the Holy Spirit,
to get this Man to go back onto natural ground. You read of it,
study it again; get Him off His heavenly ground. What a battle
all through life that is with us! “Come down” is ever
the word of the tempter, “Come down from the Cross, we will
believe! Come down from that position you have taken. Come down,
it’s to your advantage to come down; you’ll gain
everything if only you’ll come down...” And how intense
is that battle sometimes isn’t it? When you’re up
against it, when you’re on the Cross in weakness, in
suffering, in agony... and although the Cross is meaning that to
you, the battle does rage to take easier ground, to sacrifice
something, to compromise somewhere, to get out of the
“offense of the Cross” as Paul calls it.
The
Battle
The battle of two humanities.
What kind of person are you going to be? Of heaven or of earth?
See the battle? The Cross gathers all this together. And again
the Holy Spirit... why the Holy Spirit? Why the Holy
Spirit? What’s your answer to that? It’s all been put
into little categories, the Holy Spirit this and that; if you
don’t do this you haven’t got the Holy Spirit, you
don’t know anything about the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Well why the Holy Spirit? To make a different humanity of
you; a spiritual person! A spiritual person by the
Spirit of God. It may include many things but it’s just
that: the difference in what we are by the Holy Spirit.
And then I spoke about the
training... what is the meaning of our training because as soon
as we really get into the hands of the Spirit (don’t be
discouraged in what I am going to say, young Christians who are
here) you’re in for it. You’re in for it! You’re
in for real difficulty, real training.
You’re going to get into a hard school for your natural
life, for your soul life. Ah yes, it’s going to be real
training... what the writer calls "chastening", child
training, discipline. Oh, what a hard school this is for the
natural man when our soul life is being starved. The mental side:
"I cannot understand, I cannot see why, I cannot
explain the dealings of God. My whole mental ability is thwarted
and frustrated and I just don’t know what to think or to
make of it." Yes, the soul is being starved. It’s going
to come through only, only on the ground of your spiritual
life. That is what the Lord is after, to get us away from living
on things to living on Himself alone.
The starvation of our
emotions... my word, how we go into the deep freeze sometimes
spiritually. You know? Am I saying wrong? I don’t want to
cause anyone to stumble, but there can be times, there can be
times in the life of a child of God when it seems the Lord has
departed from him; when you cry like Job, “Oh, that I might
know where to find Him... I go on the right hand and He is not
there and on the left and He is not there!” Where is the
Lord? Today? Here? True... why? Well this is a part of the
training of the new man, the different kind of man. The emotions
are sometimes frozen. All your lovely feelings have gone and you
agree with the man who wrote, God forbid that we should invite
it, but he did write: “Where is, where is the preciousness I
knew when first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul-refreshing dew
of Jesus and His Word? Return O Holy God, return...” Have
you felt like saying that sometimes? Oh, it’s the normal
spiritual life!
There’s nothing abnormal
about that, nothing really in the design of things strange about
that. This is normal for anybody who is going right on
with the Lord, you will have these times when the whole of you is
in great distress and the only way out and through will be what
you know of the Lord in your spirit; how much spiritual Life you
have, how much spiritual measure you have, that He is working in
us, training by setting aside this natural, soulical, psychical
life and building up the spiritual man. Those are the two words
representing two humanities and now you see the Cross is
introduced.
This is not my philosophy, my
construction; this is just what is here in this letter. I beg to
repeat: the letter is built and constructed upon these two words,
two different humanities - the soul humanity and the spiritual
man.
The
Natural-man Humanity and the Christ-man Humanity
The apostle begins with a
distinction, presses it home all the way through as the ground of
challenge, instruction, and counsel and advice and warning and
concludes it, the whole thing, in the most glorious way! In
effect he says by this letter: you have to begin by becoming a
spiritual person, your spirit born anew from above, the whole
spirit in charge of you making you at the beginning a spiritual
person and right through growingly a spiritual person, and then
what? Chapter fifteen, “First that which is natural...”
oh, here we are there again, that which is soulical.
“Afterward that which is spiritual...” and where does
that land us? The spiritual body. The spirit is sown, that living
spirit is sown, that which has been the work of the Holy Spirit
in us, which we are really and truly in the innermost part of our
being, what is called “the inner man”.
The inner man, that all
developed as a seed and given a spiritual body, a spiritual
body. Ah, that raises questions, don’t worry. I’m so
often asked: do you think people will know each other in the life
afterwards? Yes and no. If you think that you’re going to
know me by seeing these features, no, no not this body, not this
body but a body given of a different order: a spiritual body. I
can’t define the spiritual body, I’ve no time for it
for one thing, if I were able. Flesh and blood cannot, says the
apostle, inherit the kingdom. No, but He gives to each seed a
body as it pleases Him, oh thank God! It’s going to be in a
body that after all pleases the Lord! Oh, what troubles in this
body!
You see what the apostle was
saying in the course of this letter and more in the next letter:
Our outward man perisheth but our inward man is renewed day by
day, our inward man. And as we groan waiting to be clothed upon
with our body which is from above, every seed a body given, and
then in that spiritual body (which, I suppose, is like the body
of the Lord Jesus after His resurrection, that’s all I can
say, or the body of the Lord Jesus on the mount of
transfiguration is that it?) a different type, a different
humanity - it will be a humanity! You’ll know one another as
human beings not as angels. Don’t sing again “Oh to be
an angel,” oh that’s an inferior thing to what you're
called to! Oh no, we are not going to sprout wings, this is
something far, far higher; a spiritual man with a spiritual body.
I think we may be the only lot, I don’t know. In our time
we’ve lived now to see men going into space, getting out of
their spacecraft and floating in air, with the law of gravity
absolutely nullified. But for them there has to be a special
equipment, artificial equipment to live in that realm. Well, we
will need no artificial equipment when we are caught up to meet
Him in the air and to live in that rarified atmosphere of heaven.
It will be quite natural, you see what I mean?
Well, this is the difference in
the humanity, it requires a different type of person to do that
doesn’t it? A different species. And to finish... yet again
it’s the Cross that effects this. Right at the heart of the
two humanities, to bring one progressively down, less and less.
That’s what’s happening. How far we’ve got in
this, how you say, “Oh, I’m beginning to feel myself
less than nothing, the poorest, most inferior kind of
being.” Have you, and this is not exaggerating, have you
groveled in the dust of the consciousness of your own
worthlessness? That’s alright, that's quite alright,
provided, mind, that there’s a corresponding spiritual
growth of another species, another order, another kind. The Cross
is working on the one side, as ever it was meant to do, to bring
one kind of man to an end and on the other side to bring in a new
kind of man. The Cross does it.
Now, I must safeguard all that
I’ve been saying by this: don’t anyone go away
saying it is wrong to have a soul, wrong to have a mind,
wrong to have feelings, wrong to have a will; if that’s all
the soul then I must kill my soul. That difficult
principle... the governing principle, as you know, of Buddhism is
the final annihilation of desire. Oh God save us! No, I’m
not saying it’s wrong to have a soul. What I’m
saying is: the soul is not to be the governmental thing; the
spiritual is to be the governmental thing, to control even our
soul, to say to our reasoning to say “Now look here, you may
be thinking altogether differently from the way in which the Lord
thinks, let’s take this to the Lord and get His mind about
it.” Our mind, our reasoning will say: yes, this is right,
this is good, this is it. But wait a minute. Let us subject this
to the Holy Spirit and we may discover that our thinking was all
out of line with the Lord. Oh, we may have strong feelings and
emotions... now let’s get hold of this, they’re not
going to run away with us, control us; let’s bring this to
the Lord. Is this right? All this, this emotional soul has got to
be controlled by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit in our spirit. No,
it’s right to have a soul, there is such a thing in the Word
of God as the salvation of the soul, receiving the end of your
faith, even the salvation of your soul. My word don’t they
need saving? They do. How then? The work of the Cross, building
up the spiritual man, the spiritual life.
I think that’s good enough
for tonight, enough for us to get on with isn’t it? But you
see the Cross in this first letter to the Corinthians had a very,
very pertinent word to say; a very far reaching issue to secure.
If you’ve not been able to understand, grasp, follow
anything or everything, don’t turn it aside: “Well I
can’t understand all that...” No, if you are a true
child of God you’re going to learn this because it’s
true. It will be set right over your life and it will be the very
best thing that can happen. The greatest thing is the
consummation, the consummation of it all, the manifestation of
the sons of God. We collect that from Romans don’t we? And bring it into Philippians, the new species, the new humanity; sons of God. I
don’t know whether we’ll get to Galatians this week but
that’s the issue there. So we leave it for the time being.
Shall we pray?
Lord we do turn from all the
words and the ideas and the thoughts, even the truths as such in
themselves, and pray Lord, from our hearts: give us spiritual
understanding. Oh, may we be amongst the spiritual men who
discern all things and have a capacity that no natural man at his
best could get it... the deep things of God revealed by the
Spirit to spiritual men. Lord, teach us what’s of You and
help us in this way, that we may become a different order of
being from that which is of Adam. We ask in the name of the Lord
Jesus, amen.