We will lay the foundation for our consideration at this time in the Word of God.
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God,
concerning His Son, who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead;
even Jesus Christ our Lord.
We shall return to that shortly, because it is there that we have the basic word for this time. Turn to the First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 15.
Now I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye received, wherein also ye stand,
by which also ye are saved, if ye hold fast the word which I preached unto you, except ye believed in vain.
Now if Christ is preached that He hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither hath Christ been raised:
and if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain.
Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we witnessed of God that He raised up Christ: whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead are not raised.
For if the dead are not raised, neither hath Christ been raised:
and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable.
But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them that are asleep.
For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
So also it is written, The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that One died for all, therefore all died;
and He died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him Who for their sakes died and rose again.
Wherefore we henceforth know no man after the flesh: even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more.
Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.
Now back to the passage in the first chapter of the Letter to the Romans: “Who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.”
“Declared” might be translated “designated” or “determined.” That is the focal point of our present meditation.
This word is the Greek word horizō, from which we understand the English word “horizon.” So we are presented with another aspect of the horizon which is Christ.
The statement is that Christ is made the horizon of a new creation by resurrection from the dead. We are therefore going to consider this horizon of resurrection—the horizon constituted by resurrection.
We now understand what the horizon is: it is the frontier and content of knowledge, of our apprehension and comprehension.
These letters to the Corinthians unfold what it means that Christ, by resurrection, has been constituted, designated, declared, the horizon—the whole range and scope—of a new creation.
By resurrection, He is made that, so that everything in Christ is known and apprehended, and entered into, on the ground of resurrection and in no other way.
This is no new subject, if I may call it that, with you. You have been made familiar over many years with the great meaning of resurrection in Christ. But in all our considerations of resurrection, we have followed mainly the power and life aspects of resurrection.
“The power of His resurrection” has become very familiar with us. It is not specifically that aspect which is to be before us at this time.
There is another aspect which governs the power and life factors in resurrection, and this is the character aspect of resurrection. Resurrection means a kind of person, and a kind of person is produced by resurrection.
For all the power and life of resurrection to be effective, there must be the kind of person that resurrection produces. This power—it is the exceeding greatness of His power by which He raised Christ from the dead—this power, this might of resurrection life, waits upon the kind of person and persons necessary for its expression.
This is not going to happen just anyhow, on any ground. There is a demand here.
Christ in resurrection is of an entirely new order, a new order of creation. The power which was demonstrated and exercised in raising Him from the dead is only transferred to those who are of that same resurrection-new order: a new creation in Christ.
This phrase with which we are so familiar, “If any man be in Christ, there is a new creation,” means, in Christ risen, there is a new creation. It is the order of things—the kind, if you like, the species of humanity—that comes up in resurrection and is before God eternally acceptable.
This is where the power of resurrection is effective, is manifested, is attestable.
You can see this quite easily when you recognize the particular significance of these two letters to the Corinthians.
Over the first letter, you may write one word which includes practically all that is in it, and that word is shame. You cannot read through, basically, the first half of that letter without blushing, without saying, “What a shame!” It is a shameful situation.
Over the second letter, you can have another word written, and that is the word glory: “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
What is it that makes the difference? You see, the heart of everything is Chapter 15 of the first letter: resurrection.
The apostle begins that part of his letter, having dealt with all the shameful aspects, by speaking of the gospel which he preached, which they received, wherein they stood, and by which they were saved. The gospel stands at the beginning of Chapter 15, but what does it turn out to be? It is the gospel of resurrection.
The gospel has a meaning, and the apostle is saying, “You Corinthians, who are in such a state as has been described in the earlier half of my letter, have not yet apprehended the meaning of the gospel.”
You accepted my preaching. You believed what I said. You took a position upon it, and professionally you are all right. But as to a real understanding of your position, you have a very poor knowledge indeed.
The gospel is something more than assenting to preaching, or hearing preaching, and making some kind of gesture, or even commitment to that. There is demanded a statement such as that of the Lord Jesus in resurrection. It is the gospel of resurrection.
The gospel of resurrection is the gospel of a new creation.
Now, the inclusive and predominant thing here is the place of Christ in resurrection. With this we may be content this morning, because it is a foundation and a key to everything that has to follow.
The apostle approached this deplorable situation at Corinth—and “deplorable” is, after all, a very weak word if you really understand what things were like there—by nailing them down to the name of Christ.
In no other of his letters is the name of Christ so continuously reiterated and introduced. In the first nine verses of the first letter, the name of Christ is mentioned no fewer than nine times.
When you get that emphasis, you know pretty well what you have got to be and do. I am quite sure that, as I read through that from Chapter 15, you were impressed with the constant reiteration of the name of Christ: Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ.
You put a red line under the name of Christ in these letters, and you will see that that is the focal point of everything.
I say again, that in order to get this transition from shame to glory, from Adam number one to Adam number two, from the old creation to the new, the apostle focuses and nails everything down to the name of Christ.
This has a comprehensive application.
By the way, the first letter comes to this matter very early. It is not long before the apostle says, “One saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; and another, I am of Cephas”—Peter.
So they are making names, the names of apostles of Christ and servants of the Lord, human names after all, the focal point around which they would cluster and to which they would gather.
As for himself, the apostle said, “I will have none of it. I will have none of it. Who is Paul? Who is Apollos? Who is Cephas? They are ministers through whom ye believed.”
We will have no other names—none of these men can rectify this situation. No other name is adequate to meet these needs. One name only.
I take that particular point, the setting aside of every name for the one Name, as illustrative of all that is in these letters. It is a matter of understanding Christ, and understanding that Christ is the horizon of everything.
The indictment is clearly this: if these conditions, any or all of them, obtain among believers or in a church, it is a clear indication that Christ in resurrection has not been truly apprehended.
Such as are responsible for these conditions, either in heart or in a church, have not yet come to understand the meaning of resurrection.
Oh, the resurrection man is not like this. He is not like this at all. He is a very different kind of man. He is a new-creation man. He has left one ground.
When, in the second letter, Paul says, “If any man is in Christ,” now on resurrection ground, the new creation in Christ, “we henceforth know no man after the flesh,” he is saying, “Our ground is not the ground, ‘I am of Paul.’” That is knowing a man after the flesh. “I am of Apollos”—that is knowing a man after the flesh. “I am of Peter”—there is no answer to the flesh. And even “I am of Christ,” when merely party language, is no longer after the Spirit.
This is a new ground of relationship, a new ground of conduct and behaviour. This is a new realm altogether in resurrection, where it is not Adam, the first, in whom all die, but Adam the last, in Whom all are made alive in resurrection.
So it is important for us to come, perhaps, to the very foundation of things again. Recognize this: the apostle designates the gospel as the gospel of resurrection.
With most people, the gospel just means the most elementary things: atonement, sin, pardon, redemption—and thank God for them too. But the gospel is a much bigger thing than that. The gospel is the gospel of a new order of creation in Christ by resurrection.
It is the complete transition by death and resurrection from one federal headship in the first Adam to another in the last Adam. To understand the gospel, then, is to understand the meaning of resurrection as that of a new creation, a different and changed order.
We open out a little more broadly at this point. This is the reason why the Bible is a book of living people—people with a living experience.
The Bible is not essentially, supremely, a book of things. It is not a book of doctrine, of form and order and systems and techniques.
If any of these things do obtain—and there are doctrines in the Bible, of course, and there are orders in the Bible, there are ways of doing things—if they are there in the Bible, they only occur in relation to living people.
Out of relation to living people, they have no meaning, no sense, and no place.
God is not one little bit interested in things. He is not a bit interested in systems, in places, in names, in themselves. He uses places, He uses instruments and vessels, He uses something, and always only in relation to spiritual history in living people.
As soon as the thing—the doctrine, the system, the technique, the order—becomes something in itself, the Lord just leaves it to itself and says, “I am going on with living people. You can take responsibility for that; I no longer do.”
The onus is put upon those who bring anything into the realm of dead things, even though they may call the name of the Lord upon them. As soon as anything used by the Lord becomes something in itself and is separated from living spiritual history in a people, it is discarded by the Lord.
I will say that you can have a temple or a tent in Shiloh, nothing more than a shell, an empty thing. You can have a Jerusalem with all its wonderful history of divine use, and find it nothing but a ruin—no glory of God, really.
So you may go today to what are called Bible lands, whether it be in Asia Minor or in any other part of the New Testament story, and find nothing—nothing but places visited by the apostle and the apostles, in which God did something very wonderful. Empty shells, if there are any remains at all.
God does not commit Himself to a thing or to a place. He commits Himself to a living people.
That is the whole argument of the first three chapters of the Book of Revelation. God has no interest; Christ has no interest in things, even with His label upon them. He has interest only in living people—living people with a spiritual history.
God is not the God of the dead; He is the God of the living. That does not only apply to persons; it applies to things. He is the God of living people. He is the God of the living.
This brings us back here, you see: designated, horizon, the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
Ever, always, interminably, Christ is the object of God’s interest—the focal point and the inclusive horizon of God’s concern. Within Christ risen, which means within Christ alive, you find the interest of God.
Now, the practical application of this to the Corinthians, and to all others and to ourselves, is this: What are you set upon? What are you after? What do you want? What really are you working for? What are you building up?
Is it one single, all-inclusive passion for the name of Christ, or is it something else?
If it is a passion for the name of Christ, then all this in the first part of the Corinthian letters cannot have a place. No one can say, “I am of this one, and that one, and the other one.” No one can build something upon Christ. It can only be Christ upon Christ—only Christ.
How corrective this would be if really our hearts were burned up with this one all-inclusive name of Christ. How eliminating this would be; how excluding this; how triumphant this would be.
There is your victory in resurrection—not only over death as we think of death, but over all these features of death. “In Adam all die.” All these features of death.
The apostle is clearly indicating that these things belong to Adam; these things belong to the old creation, and they are in death. In resurrection, they cannot be. They just cannot be in resurrection.
In resurrection, it is Christ—just and only Christ.
One thing, dear friends, that we do have more than anything else is the countenance of God—the favourable look of the Lord. If the light of His countenance is lifted upon us, everything is there. We can go through anything if we are sure of that. We shall go through anything if that is true.
It will be strength; it will be comfort; yes, it will be everything, if only we can have the light of God’s countenance.
Just as it is equally true, to lose the light of that countenance is to lose everything. Nothing—nothing—is of any account if we have not His face turned toward us.
Where shall we find this countenance? Not in our Christian things, but in Christ. The face of the Lord is toward His Son. He has made Him, determined Him, designated Him, the horizon—the horizon of everything.
The gospel of God is concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, Whom He designated the horizon by resurrection. There we shall find the face of the Lord.
A new passion for His name, His honour, His glory, and all its wonderful meaning of resurrection: He has been given the Name which is above every name.
Passion for that Name brings us into all that it means to find ourselves within that whole horizon, that new creation, where the Son has risen, where the light shines—the face of the Lord.
Now, you notice the First Letter to the Corinthians begins, “Unto the church of God which is at Corinth.” The church of God which is at Corinth.
The second letter narrows that right down to the individual: “If any man be in Christ.”
All this that is here is for churches, but you are not going to escape by being in a crowd. You are not going to be hidden in what you may call a church.
The church must be a resurrection church, but it cannot be that unless its members are resurrection people. So from the collective it is narrowed down to the person: “If any man, if any man.”
It is the aggregate of this “any man”—all those who can be said to be like this, in Christ, a new creation—that makes a church. Yes, just that and only that: resurrection man and woman living in the meaning of the resurrection of Christ.
And everything else follows.
All I need say, including this morning, is just this: dwell upon the power aspect, dwell upon the life aspect, and you may miss the whole thing unless you recognize that the power and life aspects of resurrection rest upon the ground of resurrection in character, in nature, in condition.
The first letter is so clearly showing this to me. Yes, you believe; there is no doubt about your foundation. Your foundation is all right. But even with a foundation like that, you may be building, building, building upon that foundation something that is just going up in smoke—not one bit of it is going to remain.
Oh, that which is built upon the foundation does not correspond to the foundation, Christ.
Then your position may get you through. You will be saved—“saved, yet so as through fire”—but not any more.
Or, if upon the foundation you are building that which is Christ in resurrection, you may have an abundant entrance into the eternal kingdom.
These are the alternatives: just getting in, that is all; or getting in mightily and gloriously, triumphantly, with the full approval, the benediction of the Father: “Well done. Well done.”
To miss that, to get in without that, would be a loss. That is the Bible’s way of speaking: to step into heaven and not find the door, so to speak, opened with “Well done”; just get in, be allowed to get in, without that. Something has been terribly, terribly missing if that is true.
No, the apostle says the foundation is Christ, and all that we do afterwards must be Christ. Oh, Christ, Paul, Christ!
So he reflects upon these conditions: division, derision, human preferences for this one and that one, likes and dislikes, dividing—this incipient schism.
If there had not been this triumph, either between these two letters or soon after the second one—there seems to have been such a triumph very largely, reading into the second letter repentance, godly sorrow, and setting things right—if it had not been for that, you know what would have happened.
You would have gone to Corinth and found half a dozen different churches: this one called by the name of Saint Paul; this one Saint Peter’s; this one Saint Apollos’ Church; and yet another would say, “This is Christ’s.”
A deplorable situation! Christ will not own that anyhow. No, the church is something else. “Is Christ divided?” He puts it in the form of a question; the margin puts it affirmatively: “Christ has been divided by your behaviour.”
Whether it is a question or an affirmation, the implication is the same: no right apprehension of Christ will ever result in this kind of thing. Never mind.
Right apprehension of the gospel and of Christ will correct all this.
Well, friends, you are wondering, “Why this?” I am wondering it myself. Not for any other reason than that I feel the Lord wants to say to us, “Let us see to it. Let us see to it that we have the right apprehension of what it means to be in resurrection union with Christ.”
Let us be quite sure that we understand the gospel, which is the gospel of resurrection, meaning another order of people—an order of people which will not tolerate, cannot allow, any of these things.
Of course, I know quite well that, in the main, Corinthian conditions may not obtain in companies of the Lord’s people today. There may not be such things as incest; some of the other things we do know are found even today amongst the Lord’s people.
But it is not a matter of more or less sin, the measure or degree of the kind. It is the nature which refuses to have this kind of thing, and by that very nature throws it off, holds it off, and bursts these bonds.
You have planted your seed, your corn, and what are you seeing all around? You are seeing the result of something that happened when that seed, that corn, or that bulb got down into the earth.
There came a moment when it said, “I am not going to have this. This is death. I refuse and repudiate this limitation. I am going to break out of this and get free.”
So, you see everywhere the effects and the result: a reaction against limitation—small, narrow, dark, dead—breaking up in a claim for life and living.
That is the power of His resurrection. That is what resurrection life will do wherever it is at work. It will say, “We will not have this state of things. We will not tolerate this. We will break through and out of this. We will get clear of this. We will shed all this. We will come up and claim our liberty in Christ from it all.”
That is spiritual history. That is why I said the Bible was a book of living people—living people, not things, dead things.
God wants people in whom there is the life of His risen Son, who will say, “Look here, we are not tolerating this. We are not having this. I am having nothing of this. This is death. This is darkness. This is bondage. This is limitation. This is shame. No more of this!”
Up and out by the power of God: the glorious liberty of the resurrection of the Son of God.
May we really be of that order: new creation.