I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.
And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
For I say, through the grace that was given me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but so to think as to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith.
For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office:
So we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.
And having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of our faith;
Or ministry, let us give ourselves to our ministry; or he that teacheth, to his teaching;
Or he that exhorteth, to his exhorting: he that giveth, let him do it with liberality; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness.
Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.
In love of the brethren be tenderly affectioned one to another; in honor preferring one another;
In diligence not slothful; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord;
Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing stedfastly in prayer;
Communicating to the necessities of the saints; given to hospitality.
Bless them that persecute you; bless, and curse not.
Rejoice with them that rejoice; weep with them that weep.
Be of the same mind one toward another. Set not your mind on high things, but condescend to things that are lowly. Be not wise in your own conceits.
Should we just have a further word of prayer this evening?
Lord, we do just want to bow again in Thy presence and recognize, dear Lord, that speaker and hearer, we are bankrupt, Lord, to Thy grace. We are not going to get anything, Lord, out of this time unless, Lord, Thou dost come in by Thy Spirit.
We praise Thee, Lord, Thou hast made the provision for us in and through our Lord Jesus. And, oh, Father, we come on no other foundation, no other basis or ground, than that which Thou hast given us: our Lord Jesus Christ and His finished work.
And Father, we ask Thee now, wilt Thou flood this time, as we turn to Thy Word, with divine light? And, in divine light, wilt Thou, we pray, dear Lord, get this burden out of Thy heart and into our hearts?
Lord, Thou seest all the poorness of the vessel through which Thou must speak. But, Lord, overcome all that, we pray, as we turn to Thee, and let Thy strength and power be manifested in human weakness. And, Lord, Thou seest the weakness of our hearing. Let Thy power and strength be manifested there too, Lord.
And let this whole evening, Lord, redound to Thy glory and honor, because of Thy coming in through our Lord Jesus Christ. We ask it in His name. Amen.
As you all know, I have been dealing, as the Lord has enabled me, with different principles of fellowship. This evening, I want to take another principle. I consider it to be as vital and as strategic—an important principle—as any of the ones we have thus far dealt with.
It is the principle of the organic. The principle of the organic—a bit of a mouthful—the principle of the organic.
I think that this is another principle of fellowship that the enemy has used every device known to him, and every weapon in his armoury, to somehow or other induce the people of God to contradict. Because the enemy knows, far better unfortunately than most of us, that this principle is so vital to the building up of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ—so vital to real fellowship in practice—that he will do anything and everything to blind the people of God to this matter.
Ignorance of this principle in its practical outworking and meaning has led to many, many tragedies—not only in the history of the church, with which we could spend the whole evening dealing, but even in our contemporary situation.
We see all over the world things which really, I believe, began with the Spirit of God, contradicting this principle of the organic and producing a structure and a system which, at the beginning, seems to be very much of the Lord, but which proves later to be horror for the life of God.
It is an imposition upon the life of the people of God, upon the life of Christ in the people of God, and therefore, in the end, becomes the very undoing of the deepest desire of the people of God.
Some of these dear ones in these moves of the Spirit of God desire more than anything else to see the house of God built. They desire more than anything else to see the recovery of truth concerning the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. But they themselves, through contradicting or contravening this principle of the organic, undo the very thing they long to see fulfilled in our day and generation.
The Apostle Paul once said to the people of God, “We are not ignorant of Satan’s devices.” We must say sadly against ourselves that, for the most part, we are ignorant of Satan’s devices.
Oh, that the Holy Spirit this evening could paint something of this matter, could paint this principle of the organic and get it into our hearts. Oh, that somehow or other I might be enabled, at least by the Spirit of God, so to elucidate the principle, so to set it forth, that the youngest of us here may see it. Praise the Lord, help us.
True fellowship is organic in its nature. True fellowship is organic in its nature. You cannot structure it. You cannot systematize it. You cannot reduce it to a technique, to a matter of methods, a matter of regulations.
You all know those sticky times that we can have when we suddenly say that this is the technique for fellowship. We do not put it quite like that, but we say, “Now we are going to have a time of fellowship.”
We sit ourselves around in a circle, all looking at one another, and we say, “Now this is how you have fellowship: one, two, three, and four.” And the time becomes so sticky. We all look at each other, and then we look at the ground, and we look at the ceiling, and we look over there, and we look at each other, and we are so thankful whenever anyone even makes a peep.
“Here we are—oh, someone is saying something.” But even when they have said it, it is artificial. And then, as soon as it is all over, we go out and we have fellowship.
We make this mistake again and again. Do not get me wrong. I am not saying that a time like the one we had the other morning, when we had a time of fellowship, cannot be the most blessed time.
But when you try to structure this kind of fellowship, when you try to define, as it were, methods of fellowship, techniques in fellowship—when you try to systematize it—you have somehow or other missed the whole point of real fellowship. Real fellowship is organic.
Fellowship is something within the very life of God. Fellowship is inherent within the life of God.
You know, when real spiritual life comes into a human being, they suddenly desire fellowship. There is the natural desire to find someone else who has got the same life, someone else who knows the same Lord, someone else who has been saved by the same Saviour.
We long for fellowship, and the more life we have in us, the more we feel our need of each other. The strange thing about the life of God is that it never makes us self-sufficient.
Self-knowledge always makes us self-sufficient. We feel the more we know in the head, the more we can do without other people, the more self-contained and self-sufficient we can become. But the life of God somehow creates within us a hunger for the rest of the people of God. It creates within us a hunger for one another. It creates within us a sense of the need to share with others.
Our Lord Jesus explained it in such simple ways. In one way, He did not explain it: it was in prayer, and He was speaking to His Father in John 17. But it is explained in those wonderful words of His in John 17:21:
That they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us.
That is organic. That is organic fellowship. You cannot structure that. You cannot systematize it. You cannot reduce it to methods or technique. That is a matter of life.
You get the same thing again in Romans 12, in the passage that we have read together, where the apostle says in verses 4 and 5:
For even as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office:
So we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.
And here is the point:
Having gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of our faith;
Or ministry, let us give ourselves to our ministry; or he that teacheth, to his teaching.
Suddenly we discover that this whole matter of being in Christ, of being one body in Christ, of being members of Christ and members one of another, is a matter of fellowship. We do not all have the same thing. We have gifts differing according to the grace that was given to us. One has something; one has another; and fellowship flows out of that. It is something organic.
Now let us look a little more closely at this principle. What I want to say is this: the church, the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, is an organism—or, to put it another way, it is organic in nature.
Most evangelicals give lip service to this. Most theological seminaries and Bible colleges will teach that the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is a living organism. Then they teach everybody how to organize the organism.
You will go through many, many believing, fundamental Bible colleges and seminaries, and you will discover that they teach that the church is a living organism—a living organism.
Some, it is true, make a distinction between what they call the mystical body of Christ and the church on earth. That is, a difference between something which is all up there in the air, in the heavenlies—invisible, universal, spiritual—and what is down here on earth, which is organized, institutional, earthly, and has every kind of contradiction within it.
Now, there is a kind of teaching, which I must say I cannot find in the New Testament, that somehow or other up there we have the mystical body of Christ, and down here we have an institutional, organized thing.
The fact of the matter is this: if you take your New Testament and shut out all the ideas you have ever had about church and formal churches, you must come to the conclusion that the Word of God teaches us that the church on earth is the expression of the church. Really, all it is is that somewhere on earth is found a fellowship produced from heaven, governed by heaven, developed from heaven, which one day will be caught up to heaven and will return to the earth from heaven.
You come to that conclusion.
In these days in which we are living, thank God, more and more true believers are beginning to see the evil of denominationalism. Twenty years ago, it was still very respectable to be denominational. Now, even if you are in a denomination, it is not so respectable to be denominational.
We have to thank the World Council of Churches for that, and also the Second Vatican Council, as well as the fact that evangelicals are being pressurized into a corner where they are having to rethink the whole term church.
We find all over the place that suddenly it is respectable to be non-denominational. Even if you go to a Baptist church, it is acceptable to be non-denominational—even if you have got a letterhead that says “Baptist,” it is acceptable to be non-denominational. Respectable, man.
We even have groups who seem to feel that the main thing is to be non-denominational.
I have got my teeth back into place. We can continue.
Denominationalism is not the disease. Listen carefully to me: denominationalism is the symptom. You can get rid of every case of denominationalism, and you have got rid of the symptoms, but the disease is still there.
You know, sometimes you can go to the doctor—this is not devaluing the doctor—but you can go to the doctor and you have some pimples or a rash. He says, “Oh yes, yes, yes”—a very busy man, especially on our side of the Atlantic—and he says, “Yes, yes, here you are. Take the prescription and go.”
Off you go to the chemist, and now, on the welfare state, we get something for it. We slap it on the rash and it is gone. Then it comes up here. So we put it there, and it comes up here. Then we put it there, and it comes up here.
The fact of the matter is, you can get rid of a symptom, but the disease may stay inside you. To get rid of denominationalism is, thank God, a major step forward. But it is still only getting rid of the symptoms.
What is the disease? The disease is organizationalism. That is the disease.
You will discover that every single major denomination began as something organic, became organized and structured outside of the life of Christ, and finally crystallized into a denomination. The disease is organizationalism. Denominationalism—our labelling of ourselves by all the various names we have—is only a symptom.
Now, what is the difference between an organism and an organization?
An organism has got a very complex—often a very complex and intricate—organization. Do not make any mistake about this: an organism is thoroughly organized.
But the difference between an organization and an organism is that an organization is static and man-made. It is put together from without. Whereas an organism has to be born, and its organization is within the life.
Now do you begin to get it? For instance, my body is an organism. Every one of you here this evening has a body. This is a remarkable fact, but every one of you in this place has brought your body along with you. I am thankful for that.
You have the illustration of this whole matter sitting with you. You are sitting in an organism, and the organism is sitting in a chair.
This organism, this body, is an incredible thing, is it not? Quite a few years ago, I was born, and I was no more than that size. Everything I have got—except these clothes—has come out of that. How did I get like this? Did my parents stretch me? What did they do? How did it happen? No, I grew. I grew.
Do you know that this body of mine has got the most incredible organization? I have got a central intelligence system—believe it or not. So have you. That intelligence system in you is more intricate than anything in the Pentagon, and far more accurate.
You have a telephone exchange. You have got all kinds of things in your body. Do you know you have got a built-in thermostatic control? When it gets too cold, you shiver, and that is your thermostat at work. It says, “Now generate a bit of heat,” and you start to shake.
When you get too hot, you perspire—not sweat, you perspire. That is the way that somehow or other your body is trying to cool you down.
Where did it all come from? Where did this intelligence system in your body, which is so remarkable and so accurate, come from? Did it come from reading books? No. Did your parents endlessly play a kind of tape to you that told you how you should react and the way you should grow? No.
You have got the whole thing in your life. The whole thing is in your life, and it was all there when you were born. Parts of it were there but not developed because you did not need them. But as you grew, the whole organization that you needed to be a contemporary human being developed.
You understand what I mean? The whole organization is within you, so that an organism is always contemporary. It never falls behind; it is always contemporary.
Here I am, quite a few years after I was born, but I am contemporary. You may not feel it, but I am. I am contemporary. Do you understand the word contemporary? You use it over here, I hope.
In other words, my body is absolutely contemporary. I am not living back in 1935. I am living here in 1975. I have got a body that is absolutely renewed. All the cells of my body are being renewed all the time. I am living a contemporary life. I have got a contemporary body. I have got a contemporary organization.
Some things have had to be cut back because I have grown older, and other things have had to be developed in order to keep it contemporary.
Now, that is the difference between an organization and an organism. An organization is something which is put together. It never grows unless men change it from without. The only way you can bring an organization, say from 1935, up to date is to try and change it from without. It does not grow from within.
If you had a 1935 car—an automobile, as you say—it would still be a 1935 car in 1975. It is an organization, but it is a static organization.
But my body is contemporary in 1975. How come? Because my body has an organization that is developed from its life.
Now the whole key to this matter of organization is where it finds its origin. We cannot do without organization. It is stupid to think that the people of God can do without all organization. Things have to be done decently and in order. There has to be a certain amount of organization. That is obvious.
But where does it come from? Where does it come from? Does it find its origin in the life of God, or is it something that we are thinking up and conceiving from the Bible and imposing upon the life of God?
Sometimes, you see, we think we see a weakness. Oh, I could speak for an hour on this, just from observations and experiences that I have had in all kinds of things, all over the place.
People see a weakness among the people of God, and it is a real weakness. Then they begin to talk and discuss and think, and think, and think, and discuss more. Then they look at the Bible, and then they think again, and then they discuss more. Perhaps, at the end, they have a little bit of prayer.
Then they produce something to answer the weakness. Of course, when it first comes in, it seems to be marvellous. Absolutely marvellous. It seems to be an answer to the weakness.
What we have done unwittingly is that we have brought a structure in that has not come out of the life. It has come out of our head. And in the end, that structure will kill the life of God inside. It will suffocate it. It will strangle it. It will bleed it to death.
Like a parasite living on something else, it will drain everything out of it until it is killed.
Now that leads me to say that everything is within the life of Christ. Everything is within the life of Christ. The church is within the life of God. You cannot put the church together.
That is the whole danger of books which define for us church principles. We need to see clearly what these things are, but the danger has always been the same: as soon as some people get hold of it, they say, “Now we have got it. Now we can put it together.”
“Just get a few people to drop together, and we will have this, and we will have that, and we will have the other.” You on this side are terrific at this. You are away in a moment. We are much slower and more stupid on our side of the Atlantic.
But over here, you have got a business instinct. As soon as you see the technique, or the way, or the idea—whoosh!—you are in.
That is the whole danger of this matter. We tend to think that anyone who is saved can put the church together; that somehow or other, all you have got to do is know certain teaching, certain principles, and then you can start.
Principles are living things. They are within life. What we have to do is recognize a principle and then see that we obey it. That is a different thing from trying to structure it.
I wonder whether you understand what I am trying to say this evening.
What is the meaning of Pentecost? Did not those dear ones, the one hundred and twenty in the upper room, have what seemed to be a perfect church? One hundred and twenty saved believers in an upper room, gathered around a risen Christ, with an open Bible and pure doctrine. I said this before, I believe, when we began this time.
We could not have asked for more.
But something happened on the day of Pentecost which was altogether in a different realm. When the Holy Spirit came, what was the meaning of His coming? That we might speak in tongues? That we might have gifts? That we might have manifestations?
My dear friend, all these things may be true, but that is not the meaning of the coming of the Holy Spirit. Those are the evidences, or the equipment. What is the end? The end was this: that within the life of our risen Lord, transmitted to us through the Holy Spirit, we suddenly find the church has come.
In other words, it was the risen life of our glorified Lord that came by the Holy Spirit into one hundred and twenty members of the party and turned them into one hundred and twenty members of the body. From then on, they were an integral part of one another. They belonged to Christ and to one another. They shared in a way they never shared before.
Now they were in living touch with the Head. Now they could get direction from the Head. Slowly but surely, an organization began to develop. But it is interesting, when you see the kind of organization, how it developed: it all came from the life of God.
In other words, it was fellowship that came with the Holy Spirit.
God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
The pattern of the church, the gifts necessary for the building up of the church, the functions of the body—they are all within this life of Christ.
Once we can see the life of Christ flowing through members of the body, we begin to see the development of a pattern. People get so caught up on this thing about elders and deacons. Oh dear, all over the place there is this focus on shepherdhood and everything else: “We must have elders. We must have shepherds. We must have this. We must have that.”
Oh, my dear, dear friend, the first thing we need to bother about is loving one another, caring for one another. And as we share that life, and really submit, as it were, one to another, God by His Spirit raises up those who must take responsibility among us, and we shall all know who they are. There will be no question about it.
The tragedy is this: you can start making people elders who are not elders. You can start making people deacons who are not deacons. You can start making people apostles who are not apostles.
I have people coming to us saying, “I am an apostle.” God help us.
“Oh, I am an apostle.”
“Really?”
“Yes, yes. So-and-so laid his hands on me and set me aside. I am an apostle.”
I have no doubt that there are times when hands should be laid on people and people should be recognized. No wonder the Apostle Paul says, “Lay hands hastily on no man.”
Give time for the organic, so that we can see in them something happening. Oh, there is a pattern. Make no mistake about it: there is a church pattern.
People always say that the Methodist pattern is found in the Bible, and the Baptist pattern is found in the Bible, and the Presbyterian pattern is found in the Bible. They say the Episcopalian pattern is found in the Bible, and the Brethren pattern is found in the Bible, and the Pentecostal pattern is found in the Bible. All these patterns are found in the Bible. Incredible, is it not?
I am quite sure that our Lord, who was not limited in knowledge in any way, could have cleared this whole matter up by giving us one simple chapter in the New Testament which exclusively dealt with the pattern of the church once and for all. And He never did.
That is why you get one pattern built on one thing, and another pattern built on another, and another pattern built on another—and it is all fragments of the pattern. Why? Do you not think our Lord, if He was so interested in the building of the church, could have driven this whole thing clearly to us? Of course He could have done.
But what our Lord was trying to tell us was this: the whole thing is a spiritual matter. It is within life, and the thing to bother about is life—the resurrection life of at least two or more members of Christ. When we start to bother about that, then in the end the pattern will develop.
I said this to you some years ago—perhaps I said it last year. I will say it again, because it has to be said again and again.
If I were to take some things and put them before you—a daffodil bulb and an onion bulb—they look so alike. How come that when I plant an onion bulb and a daffodil bulb, the daffodil comes up a daffodil and the onion an onion? Would you not think that sometimes they might make a mistake?
You can take one daffodil bulb and plant it in a field of a million onions. The million onions will come up onions, and that one single little daffodil bulb, all on its lonesome in the centre of the field, will come up a daffodil.
Would you not think that one bulb, which looks so much like those million onions, would think, “Well, I am so much like them; I will be an onion”?
What is the key to the whole thing? The key is this: the daffodil has a pattern within its life. It has daffodil life. The onion has onion life. The pattern is in the life. Do you understand? It is all in the life.
Once the life starts to develop and grow, you have the pattern.
We learned this lesson at home so deeply and so bitterly. When we first began years ago, we were as green as green could be. The one thing we did was to seek the Lord about everything. But on this matter, we naturally were very taken by the fact of Scripture.
We began to ask the Lord about elders and deacons because we saw in the Bible that there were such things as elders and deacons. As we sought the Lord, we saw, “Well, they prayed and fasted.” So we had two weeks of prayer and fasting.
At the end of those two weeks of prayer and fasting, three men were made elders and four men were made deacons. We could not have had a more perfect church pattern, nor could we have produced this pattern in a more spiritual way. After all, not that many people would fast and pray for two weeks.
We prayed and fasted for two weeks, and we ended up with three elders and four deacons. Everything went on for a year or two blissfully. People were saying everything seemed to be right and good.
But after a year or two, I became aware—and I think one of the others did—of a kind of tremor, a kind of spiritual shaking deep down within the very life of the company of God’s people.
It ended one autumn with thirteen of us brethren spending a day of fasting and prayer together to seek the Lord. In the study at Halford House, there happened to be on the table an acorn jar. It was one of those little jars in which you put an acorn from an oak tree and can watch it grow. You see its roots come, and then you see the thing grow up.
Halfway through the day, I had my eyes open in prayer. I looked at the glass, and I saw the acorn jar on the table. As I was looking at it, the Lord said to me, “That is the answer to your prayer.”
I looked very carefully at this acorn jar. I thought, “Now I am crazy.” But then again the voice said to me, “That is the answer to your prayer.” So I looked again at the acorn jar.
Then the Lord said, “You see the acorn? The pattern you have got is like that outward shell—perfect—but it is static. Inside that acorn is life, and that life has got the pattern of an oak tree in it.”
“That life inside, if you will let it, will break the outward shell, will grow up into an oak tree capable of reproducing other oak trees.”
Then I saw it in an instant. We had produced, by the most spiritual means possible—fasting and prayer—we had produced a pattern.
We did not know what to do. I shared it with the brothers. We all prayed about it. We became of one mind, and we sought the Lord: “What will we do about this pattern that we have produced?”
We felt the right thing to do was to hand the whole thing over to God, which we did.
There came this wonderful Sunday when, one after another, all those with responsibility sort of faded out. A girl playing the piano was an elder. She also played—it sounded like a cross between a cat fight and out-of-tune music. She tried again, and it was worse. Then she finished altogether, weeping, and said she could not play any more. That was her out.
One of the brothers who had quite a gift of tongues stood up, and what came out of him was neither a tongue nor English. It was certainly not dramatic. He stopped and started again, then covered in confusion, he sat down. That was him out.
We ended that Sunday with one elder and one deacon. Then we said, “Well, that is no longer a New Testament pattern,” and so the whole thing went overboard and we all became brothers.
Then the most amazing thing happened. When we all became brothers again and just committed ourselves to one another in the Lord, the Lord started to do some quite remarkable things. People whom we least expected began to emerge in the next year, head and shoulders above the rest.
The point was that the pattern we had was stopping the organic development. That thing was doing something. You see, we are not dealing with something that is just a fairy tale. We are dealing with realities.
This thing was going on deep in the company. It was the organic life that had come up against the outward shell and could not get through it because we had imposed the structure. The only way it could come through was by breaking the whole thing open.
Now, I have seen more works that I believe were, in their beginnings, of God, wrecked by this elder-deacon complex, this shepherdhood complex, than by any other thing. You can make people elders; it is very hard to de-elderize them.
These things ought to get right into our lifeblood. Oh, I wish I could go on about this matter, but if we are going to cover what I want to cover this evening, we really cannot.
My point is simply this: within the life of Christ you have got all the pattern of the church. Once we bother ourselves about seeing that the life of the Lord Jesus is flowing through us, the pattern will come. So will the gifts.
As we hold fast the Head by the Holy Spirit, we shall find the body, and the body will increase with the increase of God. The body will build itself up in love. All these functions and gifts that are necessary will come.
There have been times when we have become deeply bothered in the work at home about certain weaknesses. By the grace of God, He has stopped us every time from structuring something, systematizing something, or somehow countering that weakness. What we have done instead is have a week of prayer.
We have been very honest with the whole company. We have said, “We will have a whole day of prayer and fasting. We will have a week of prayer. We will get on it. We will tell the Lord that there is a weakness.”
When we feel there is a lack in our company of discipline or relatedness at some particular point, then we say it as brethren. Then we say to the company, “We feel the need now is that we should get before the Lord and ask Him: ‘Lord, do something about this weakness amongst us.’”
God has preserved us from somehow or other trying to answer those weaknesses with our own spiritual, biblical solutions. Instead, we have seen the Spirit of God come in and relate people to one another.
You see, dear child of God, it all goes back to this whole thing of Christ as Head. It all comes from this principle of authority. Once we really see that He has been made Head over all things to the church, when we see weaknesses, we shall get through to the Head.
We will say to the Head, “Now, Lord, we believe this and this and this needs to be done. Release something from heaven. Do something about this matter.”
Do you begin to understand what I mean? Would we not have been spared some innovations, some things that have destroyed real works of God, if instead of just trying to answer some dullness in our meetings, some dirt in our meetings, some lack of ministry in our meetings, we had instead got on our knees and asked the Lord to do something?
If we had caught what the Lord said: “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth laborers into his harvest.”
Please turn the cassette over at this point.
That is the principle. Then He sends labourers into His harvest. If we see there is a need of ministry amongst us, why do we not get around and say, “Lord, Lord, do tackle whatever it is that is stopping Thee from raising ministry amongst us”?
Get through to it. By our very act of being together in the Lord and praying together, we find each other in the Lord. This is real fellowship. It is real fellowship.
The Head has transmitted by the Spirit a sense of weakness to us. We begin to see an area of weakness, and instead of trying to answer it just like that, we go back to the Head and say, “What wilt Thou have us do? There is a pain here. There is an area of paralysis here in the body. What wouldst Thou have us do?”
And the Head has always an answer. Sometimes it is simply, “Wait,” and He will work. Sometimes it is to take some kind of action which He will show us. But do you begin to understand my point?
People often come to me and ask me if I am a charismatic. I say dogmatically, “I am certainly a charismatic.” I want to know what they mean by charismatic. They normally mean, “Do you speak in tongues?”
Then I say that the Scripture says quite clearly in Romans 6:23:
For the wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The word translated “free gift” is charisma. All the gifts are in the life of our Lord.
Everyone who is born of God is a charismatic. So forget this business about the charismatic. You are all charismatic, good. What some of us may need is for the Holy Spirit to come upon us and be the dynamic for the gift, so that what is inside the life will come out.
The word for spiritual gift, of course, is pneumatika. In 1 Corinthians 14:12, that is the word. I have often wondered what would happen if we were all called pneumatics instead of charismatics.
Someone says, “Are you a pneumatic?”
“I am. I am a charismatic and a pneumatic. I am a Calvinist. I am a Pentecostal Plymouth Brother. I am a Baptist with Lutheran convictions, and a Calvinist who sometimes sees the need of human responsibility.”
Well, forget that. I am a believer, are you not? If we are in the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, then we shall find all these barriers and emphases are too much for us. I cannot contain them within myself, really.
All I can do is be what God has made me in Christ. All you can do is be what God has made you in Christ. But when we come together, we have got a fullness.
Oh, may God help us in this matter of gifts. We need them. We need them. We need the gift of faith. We need words of wisdom and knowledge. We need the discerning of spirits. We need prophecy. We need these things.
We desperately need the manifestation of the Spirit, especially as we go further and further into this last phase of world history.
Without the life of Christ, we cannot have the organic. You can have organization, but without the life of Christ, it is impossible to have the organic.
Now that leads me just to say this: there can be no resurrection life without the cross.
My dear friend, why is it that we are all so capable of producing a structure which is non-organic, and thus defeating our own deepest desires to see the house of God built? How come that we are so capable of this?
The capacity to produce systems, to reduce things to techniques or methods or regulations, is something that we do naturally. It belongs to our natural life. It is us naturally.
To see something organic means that we must know the life of Christ flowing through us. We cannot know the life of Christ flowing through us unless we know the death of Christ in our experience. Here is our dilemma, dear child of God. This is our dilemma.
The problem is not how to live, but how to die.
That is the problem that faces us all, and all the companies that are represented in this room. Continually people come and say, “Oh, if we could only know life, if we could only know life.” But that is not the problem. The problem is how we can die.
I will tell you this, as sure as I stand here tonight—more truly than my standing here tonight—that if a person dies, God will take care of the resurrection. Where two or more members of Christ deliberately commit themselves to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, God will take care of the resurrection.
Now you understand why people say we are all mystics. It is so much easier, is it not, to produce a structure? So much easier to produce a system.
Simply, we have only got to search a few Scriptures and put our heads together and have a bit of fellowship, so-called, and we can produce some kind of structure, some kind of regulation, some kind of technique. We can study it everywhere. We can write books on it, do all kinds of things.
But, my dear friend, if what I say is true—that the pattern is in the life of Christ, that the gifts are in the life of Christ, that the functions are in the life of Christ, that the church itself is within the life of Christ, and that fellowship is in the life of Christ in more than one believer—then the great need is to know resurrection life.
You cannot know resurrection life without death. You cannot die but by the Spirit.
If you think you can die, try. People are always coming to me and saying, “Oh, I must die. I need to die.” Oh, you die. Try.
People say, “Could you tell me a book on how to die?” It will only make you heavier than ever. I can give you any number of books that will tell you about the need of dying. But how to die?
Our Lord said:
Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.
The wind is the only thing that makes the grain fall into the ground. The Spirit of God is the only One, once you have seen the need to die, who can bring you to the place where you fall into the ground and die.
Maybe He will use your brothers and sisters. Maybe He will use your circumstances. Maybe He will use your job. Maybe He will use some unpleasant relatives. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But He will take something like the wind of God. The wind will come and shake you. If you are ready because you have seen the need, you will fall into the ground and die.
How did the Lord Jesus die? By the eternal Spirit, He offered Himself up to God without spot or blemish. If our Lord Jesus could not die on the cross apart from the ministry of the Holy Spirit, how much more you? How can you know the death of Christ except by the Holy Spirit?
Otherwise, it all becomes a miserable heaviness. People go around looking dark. As they say in Norway, “It is easier to wear black stockings and have a pure heart.”
The fact of the matter is this: you can preach the cross and preach the cross and preach the cross and preach the cross until, in the end, it becomes a thing. Everyone is heavy, everyone is trying to die, and no one can die.
In the end, it is the Spirit of God alone who can enable people to die. No one can die of themselves. You must will to do the will of God, but you cannot die.
How many times I got stuck on that wonderful hymn we sang this morning:
O God, I lift to Thee my head;
I dare not ask supply for me.
I lay in dust Thy glory dead,
That from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.
That is where I can get stuck. Do you not?
There are times when you know you should die. There are times when you know you should lay down your life. There are times when you know you should lose your life. There are times when you know you should deny yourself. But you cannot. Your very knowledge that you should do it only makes you the more miserable.
Oh, we poor Christians.
But when the Spirit of God comes blowing, and we are ready, then we do what we cannot naturally do.
Oh, dear child of God, what does it mean:
That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death?
What does it mean, being made conformable to His death—conformed to His death?
No wonder we see so little of church life. No wonder we see so little of the body of Christ in expression. No wonder we experience so little of real fellowship.
The problem is that the whole thing is not flowing from the life of Christ. To get the life of Christ really flowing means the death of the cross.
Now get me clear on this matter. We receive life through the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. But to experience life flowing through us, we must know what it is to be crucified with Christ.
It is by the Spirit that we put to death the deeds of the body. Oh dear, when the problem is not how to live, it is how to die.
There are a thousand situations, I have no doubt, represented in this place tonight, and every one of them would be solved by dying—some measure of dying.
Now may I say something here, since I am talking about fellowship and not merely personal life, personal growth, or character?
The fact of the matter is, if you and I are going to know church life, if we are going to know fellowship, then two or more brethren or sisters must die by the Spirit.
Now I want to say something which I hope will lift everything out of the realm of a problem for some of you: God does not even require all to die, but a nucleus must die for the rest.
Now do you get me? We get into this trap and say, “You mean everyone has got to die? Everyone come down? They will never do.” No, they never will.
Anyone who is looking for the perfect church will never find it. It was Moody who said, “When you join it, it will be imperfect.”
We have all got this thing: we are all looking for the perfect church. My dear friend, God never meant the church to be perfect down here. The very evidence that it is the church is that it is imperfect, but it is being perfected.
How can you have a perfect church down here? If all the believers were to gather together in any given locality, why, we would have all kinds of problems. We would have the ones that are lame, the ones that are paralyzed, the ones who are rebellious, and the awkward squad, of whom God has saved many. We would have all kinds of shapes and conditions. We would have young ones and old ones.
What is needed? What is needed is this: not that everyone should die—although God knows it would be wonderful if it could be so.
What God desires—listen to this, my dear responsible brethren—if you want to see real fellowship in the area in which you live, if you want to see the house of God built up, if you want to see the body of the Lord Jesus Christ expressed, if you want to see something which has got balance within it, my dear friend, you responsible ones have got to die.
You may have the most difficult people in the world in your company. It makes no difference. After all, every company has the devil.
You may have the most difficult person in the whole world in your company, but if you will only learn how to die, God will use the difficult people to do something in your company.
Our time is nearly gone. I wish I could say something about travail now.
Having said something about this other matter, the fact is that if you and I want to see the organic really come, it has to be born. If it is to be born, there must be those who travail.
Now we come to God’s dilemma, if we can so speak of God having a dilemma. It is this: babes cannot travail, nor can children. There must be a certain maturity, a certain capacity.
The Apostle Paul says in Galatians 4:19:
My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.
Again in travail. So he travailed over them first when they came to Christ, when they were born of God. This was no cheap evangelism. Here was someone who travailed over these people so that into that place there might come the testimony of Jesus.
Here was evangelism with a marvellous panoramic view of the purpose of God. But, “My little children, of whom I am again in travail.”
You know what is the problem? We are all babies. Where can God find those who will travail? The whole company cannot travail.
God has to find those who are old enough, with enough spiritual capacity, who will have not only laid down their lives—because this is something further than laying down your life. To lay down your life is one thing; a step farther is to be ready for travail.
Would it not be an easy thing if those responsible brothers among us only had to lay down their lives once, when the church was produced? Oh, how wonderful it would be if we could get it all over with in a few months.
I want to tell you something, you dear responsible ones: you are going to have to lay down your lives once and for all, and you will have to lay them down not one time, but again, and again, and again, and again, and again.
So that the church of God may be built up, so that the church of God may increase with the increase of God, so that the life of God may flow through, so that the organic may really be known in your midst.
Then, dear, dear people of God, there are some of you who are a little older in the Lord, and God is preparing you for a ministry of travail. May God help us in these days that lie ahead. We have not so much time.
This is the dilemma of God: to find enough spiritual capacity and vision in which the Holy Spirit can conceive something.
Then I think I should finish. I want to finish on a rather negative note. I want to speak of the terrible danger of contravening this principle.
It is much easier to produce a system or a structure, or regulations or a technique, than to walk by the Spirit and to be led by the Spirit. What a judgment this is.
It is so much easier, dear child of God, to just produce something that is biblical, scriptural, but not out of the life of God, than to really walk by the Spirit.
I know people—now, let me tell you this, I believe in healing—but I know people who have got some regulation on healing. Oh, it is much easier to have a regulation on healing. The regulation is that everyone is to be healed. Hold up.
It is much easier to have a regulation because you have no problems—well, you have no problems for a while. Then you do get your problems, very real problems. Then you have to explain them away and say, “Well, of course, the person was in sin,” or, “The person had no faith.”
Or you have other extraordinary doctrines, like delayed healing, which means that when the person dies, they are healed.
Now, I find that the most incredible thing I have ever heard. I had a Harley Street doctor tell me about delayed healing. I said, “What do you mean? When they die, they are healed?”
Then I said, “Do you mean that some people go into heaven with sickness, then, and others get healed?” All of us are healed when we die, thank God.
It is much easier to go by the regulation on healing than to go by the Spirit.
What does it mean, “The prayer of faith shall save the sick”? It means that the prayer of faith has been given, that when the prayer of faith is given, God always acts—when it really is the prayer of faith. God always acts. But it has come out of heaven by the Spirit into us.
The history of the church is full of tragedies: things that apparently began in life and ended in death; structures and systems and techniques and methods, all brought in seemingly biblically to try and meet some weakness, some death, or some spiritual impoverishment.
At the time, as things were growing in number and everything seemed to be going ahead, it all seemed wonderful. But it was the undoing of that movement of the Spirit of God. The structure took over and killed it.
When this principle is contravened, there is weakness, there is paralysis, there is deception, and there is death.
What do I mean by deception? I mean this: when we contravene this principle, when we start to make elders or apostles, or whatever we do, we are calling people names that God knows nothing about. It is a deception.
A man has been called an apostle, and God has never made him an apostle. A man has been called an elder, and heaven has never made him an elder. A man has been set aside as a deacon, and he is not a deacon. Something is called something else, and it is not. It is a deception.
Instead of seeking the Lord, inquiring of the Lord, waiting on the Lord for a new release of divine life, we produce our own answer to the need. May God help us.
We need the Lord, and we need Him greatly. I thought this evening to speak about this principle, the principle of the organic. It is no easy principle to talk about. People will normally charge us with mysticism when we talk in terms like this.
My dear friends, it is not mysticism; it is spiritual practicality.
What is the point of having a system, a structure, a technique, a set of methods, a book of regulations, when the thing itself becomes the death of the work of God? Is that impractical? Is that common sense? Never.
Spiritual common sense is to recognize that we need the life of God. We need more of the life of God. We need the life of God in abundance. We need an overflow of the life of God.
The only way we can have it is to know what it is to lay down our lives for the Lord and for the brethren. The Spirit of God alone is able to empower us to do that.
If for no other reason, every one of us should seek for a new release of the Holy Spirit upon us.
Shall we pray?
And now, Lord, we do commit this whole time into Thy hands. Oh, preserve it, Lord, from misunderstanding, or misinterpretation, or those constructions seen from what has been said which are wrong or in error.
Dear Lord, we ask Thee by Thy Holy Spirit to convict us. O God, convict us, we beseech Thee. Convict us, Lord, of the need in our lives to know the death of the cross, so that we may know also what it is to walk in newness of life.
O God, convict us of the need to let go of our lives, to lose our lives for Thy sake and the gospel’s, that we might find them.
Convict us, Lord, of the need that we must fall into the ground, so that, Lord, there might be much fruit.
Oh, Father, preserve us from talking about the church, dreaming about the church, dreaming about the church, and never experiencing the church.
Lord, work. Oh, we ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.