The same apostle wrote to the church of God in Corinth. That, of course, is historically true. Spiritually, it is the Word of God to us today as much as it was to the church in Corinth. The message is very up to date.
The apostle put his finger upon a point which makes it so. In his first letter, at the point now marked in our divisions of the letter by Chapter 10, he reaches right back into the history of Israel—to their exodus from Egypt, the passage of the Red Sea, and their life in the wilderness—and he says:
These things were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.
So, in that rich way, he takes hold of those things and brings them over the many centuries right into the time when he was writing. But the time in which he was writing did not comprehend all that is meant by “the ends of the ages.” Hardly.
We are in that period of this world’s history which will come to its consummation with the coming of the Lord again. Right up to that time, these lessons have got to be applied and taken account of. They are for our admonition.
So we can truly say that we are not just considering a New Testament writing which relates to some past time and situations in the history of other people of God. This Word of the Lord belongs to us and must be taken very seriously by us, because it bears very much upon the end time.
What I mean is this: the instruction here is going to count a very great deal in the life of the Lord’s people when the Lord comes. It is going to have a very large place in decisions which will be made then.
We saw this morning the foundation and the superstructure, and the apostle’s warning that in that day everything will be tested by fire. That is exactly where we are. So we are in quite a serious position when we come to consider what is here from the Lord. It is going to bear very much upon that great judgment of life and work in the day of the Lord.
That sounds, of course, serious and solemn, and it is, although I trust not sombre. Now let us come again to these letters to the Corinthians, and we are going to get more into them, I trust, at this time—the very heart of them.
These two letters circle round two men, or two types of men. They are called the natural man on the one side and the spiritual man on the other side.
That difference and distinction is made in other ways through the letters. For instance, Paul speaks about the first Adam and then the last Adam. He is only, in another way and by other words, returning to these two distinctly different classes of men: what he calls the natural man and what he calls “he that is spiritual.”
It is quite clear that he puts between the two the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and our union with Him in resurrection. It comes out very clearly in the second letter, in Chapter 5. Between these two stands resurrection, by which the two are distinguished.
The natural man is the man who lives, if not altogether, mainly on the pre-cross side of things. The spiritual man is the man who lives, if not altogether, mainly on the resurrection side of the cross.
Let us say here at once that it may be, or it may not be, that the apostle was dividing the believers in the church at Corinth into these two categories as absolute people. That is, he may have been saying, “Some of you in Corinth are what I call spiritual men, and some of you are natural.” That may or may not have been so.
I think it is more likely that he meant that some were living more on natural lines than spiritual, while others were living more on the spiritual side. Will that be so of us, dear friends?
I am quite sure that you will agree with me when I say that the battle is not always between such clearly defined and clearly cut classes of people that you can say of certain ones, “They are absolutely spiritual,” and of others, “These are absolutely natural.”
What I find is that the battle between the two is in myself. These two men are in me, and they are in you, and they are more or less in all believers. The whole issue is on which side we are living, the world in which we are living, and which it is that is mainly governing us and dictating our course.
Of course, the appeal is to get right off the ground of the natural man and right onto the ground of the spiritual man. That is the way of spiritual growth to maturity.
The apostle is not speaking to unconverted people. He is speaking to saved people who are in a state of spiritual infancy and immaturity, and unduly so because of their leaning toward the natural side of their make-up more than toward the Spirit.
Now, that may not be the most perfect way of putting it. I would say, if I tried to explain it better, no doubt I could do so; but I think that fairly clearly represents the situation. Spiritual growth, then, is a matter of movement and transition from one kind of man to another.
The Lord would have us all, as fully as possible, the other kind rather than the natural. Now, we have said that the thing which stands between these two is the resurrection.
We saw this morning that the large place which the resurrection of the Lord Jesus has in these letters is very significant. It is here in the fifteenth chapter of the first letter, and it is again in the fifth chapter of the second letter: those who live should henceforth live not unto themselves, because all died in Him.
I say this is very significant. The place that this matter of resurrection holds is not just, as many have looked upon it, Paul’s answer to a question which had been included in a large questionnaire sent by the Corinthian church.
They had, as we know from what he says, sent a number of questions to him for him to answer. His answers are found after the first few chapters in the first letter. Perhaps among them there was this question about the resurrection—the nature of the resurrection: “How are the dead raised? And with what body do they come?”
Whether this chapter is his answer to that or not does not matter. It is perfectly clear, I think, that as he opens that section and begins to deal with that matter, he does so by saying:
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.
This is something more than answering a question of merely mental interest. It goes far beyond anything speculative, anything that is just curiosity, even about the resurrection body.
In effect, he is saying, “Here are all these conditions about which I have had to write—so much miserable stuff that I hate even putting it down on paper. There are all these conditions which represent a state of natural life, and which contradict the meaning of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.”
You Corinthians may be positionally safe, positionally on right ground, the foundation of Christ; but in condition you are an absolute contradiction to your position. Your condition is a denial of your position.
So he brings in this matter of resurrection. You will notice that here, as in Chapter 2, he puts tremendous emphasis upon two kinds of persons: the natural, in the first Adam, and the spiritual, in the last Adam.
You have to be a little familiar with the language that he actually used in order to get to the heart of it. When he spoke about a natural man, he used the word soul—the soulical man—and he sets over against that man the man of spirit, the spiritual man. It is a little technical.
But when he comes to this matter of resurrection, he says:
The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
That is your difference: two men. The first man is of the earth, earthy. There is a distinction between these two kinds of men.
In resurrection, our ground is participation in the spiritual Man, because here is Christ spiritually. We do not know Christ after the flesh any longer. We do not now know Him as a Jew, even as Jesus of Nazareth, as the historic person of Palestine. Our knowledge of Him is spiritual knowledge, wholly and only spiritual knowledge.
Paul transfers that to believers and says that it should be like that with us. Well, I have got to come back to that again in a few minutes. What I am trying to indicate to you is this: these letters circle round these two types of men—the natural man, what kind of a person he is, what he does, how he behaves, and what he says.
My, God, what a lot there is! Far too much for us even to refer to. It would be overwhelming, dear friends, if I were to read to you what is here, by direct treatment and inference, as to how they behaved and what they were saying.
That, he says, is the man of soul, the natural man, who produces that kind of thing. It is just the truth of something that lies before resurrection. But on the other side, how different it is! What a different situation obtains under resurrection.
Here, then, are people before and after the cross—the resurrection: man not in the real good of the meaning of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and the man who can be, should be, and is to be in that good.
Failure to understand this matter of the nature of resurrection union with Christ is what we have here in this first letter drawn and stated in very dark and sombre colours.
What is the main difference? Can we focus it down on any particular thing that explains the difference? You look again even at the very word itself, natural, or soul, and then see it in its context.
You will see that the man who is not living on the resurrection side of the cross, who is not the spiritual man, is the man who is egocentric or self-centred. Self-centredness, whose selfhood in every respect governs and dictates his course.
The aspects of that selfhood are very many, and they are brought out in these letters—too many for our study now. Very many indeed: self-defence, self-justification, self-preservation, self-advancement, self-assertiveness, and all that sort of thing. The life of that man is himself—his hope, his figure.
On the other side, the spiritual man, the man of resurrection, is the Christ-man. Christ, then, is the centre of his life. All his concerns are for Christ. His interests are Christ. All he is living for is the honour and glory of Christ, right in the centre for him.
We might anticipate a little by pointing out that this is the very thing the apostle seeks to impress upon these Christians in answer to all the charges that they were levelling against him.
The charges levelled against him, in this second letter, dear friends, run almost from start to finish. They are very terrible indeed. They were levelled against his person. They were levelled against his teaching.
I think it is better not to commit ourselves even to mentioning them all. We only have to indicate some of them: that he was mean and contemptible in his own presence; that he was boastful about his knowledge and readiness.
“His letters,” they said, “are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech of no account.” And on it goes. I have made a list like this of the things that are indicated as things to which he was subjected.
He had spoken about ministry given to him, not in the wisdom of this world, but in the hidden wisdom, the mystery. They snapped that up: “His gospel is a mysterious thing which no one can understand.” You know what he has to say about that.
All this is here. I say the second letter is almost entirely an answer to these charges against himself. But the thing that he is doing is the only right thing for any man who answers charges against him. He is not out just for self-vindication, to establish his own righteousness.
He is prompted by one thing. That is it, and this runs through everything. Really, after all that you say, after all that cruelty, all the untrue things, all the wicked things that you say, I am a man with a passion for my Lord. I am a man committed to Christ.
“If, as you say, we are beside ourselves”—in other words, if we are mad—“it is for God; or whether we are of sober mind, it is for you.” All right, we may be mad, but even our madness must be used for the glory of God. That is where our heart is.
You see the point? It is, after all and through all and in all, a man with a heart for the Lord. That is the answer to everything.
Yes, there may be truth in a lot of these things—not all of them, but some of them. He may be weak, if you like. There may be something about his person that you despise. There may be something about him that you do not like or take to. His kind of teaching may not be the thing that you would go after.
There is a lot more, but behind it all and beneath it all is a heart absolutely consumed for his Lord. That is the answer, the only answer to give.
Oh, Corinthians, if only you would stop looking as natural people upon me with your natural eyes, and seeing in me what you think naturally is there, and would focus upon the Lord Jesus—what there is of Him—and know me not after the flesh but after the Spirit, that would indicate spirituality on your part.
That is how the spiritual man goes to work. You see the point? Two kinds. The spiritual man is the man who has spiritual judgment.
Now the apostle, as you notice in the early part of his first letter, does focus upon this matter of the mind and the judgment:
I beseech you, brethren, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfected together in the same mind and in the same judgment.
And again:
Who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.
“The spiritual man judgeth all things.” He focuses upon this matter of mind and judgment. Now, you see, just be careful what we are getting at. This describes whether we are spiritual people or not. This determines on what side of the cross we really are living.
Whether we are governed in ourselves by the first Adam or the last Adam is seen in our intelligence, our minds, our judgment, and our tendency to judge.
The error of the Corinthians was to exalt the natural man, especially because of his learning. Note Chapter 2 of the first letter: it is all about the wisdom of this world. What emphasis the apostle puts upon the wisdom of this world.
The meaning is this: you Corinthians, living on the natural side and the side of your soul, think so much of the wisdom of the natural man, the wisdom of this world, that you put him above the Holy Spirit. That is actually what it says.
It works out in this way, dear friends. People think that because a person is highly educated, has great scientific knowledge, industrial knowledge, political knowledge—whatever knowledge there is in this world—because someone has that in large measure, they are the people to go to and ask questions about spiritual matters.
You will take their judgment on spiritual matters before you will take anyone else’s. What does the apostle have to say about that?
Referring to the wisdom of this world, its knowledge, all its education—much of it centred there in Corinth—he says that all this is written off as nil in the realm of the things of the Spirit.
Let there be a man with all that the world can give by academic instruction, by philosophical status, by research, and every other pursuit of knowledge. Let there be a man, or men, who have it all:
The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them.
So do not consult the wise of this world about spiritual things on the basis of their natural wisdom, because it is fatal to do that. It may be very helpful if he happens to be a spiritual man as well as an educated man, and has a facility for presenting his thought because he has a trained mind. That is another thing.
But to allow his judgment to influence any course in spiritual matters on its own ground is to do a thing that is contradicted by the fact that the natural man, in the wealth of his wisdom, cannot know the things of the Spirit. He just cannot know them.
But they were exalting the natural man, making a lot of the wise of this world. Tell me, is not that always a peril?
You come into touch with a highly educated person. Is not your peril at once to make something of him, to give him some place in church affairs, to honour him amongst Christians more than others?
Then put it the other way: those who are not so favourably advantaged, capable, or learned—the poor, the illiterate—what sort of a place do we give them? Is it not a peril, at least always, to set them aside as not counting for much?
Having no room for them, we say, “After all, what are they?” The apostle is striking a tremendous blow at anything like that. Here is utter natural-mindedness, and it is ruled out of this realm of the Spirit as a ground of appeal or even of admission.
Over against that, he says, “Ye behold your calling, brethren, how that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called.”
Not many wise after the flesh.
Not many mighty.
Not many noble.
God has chosen the foolish, not because He puts value upon foolishness as such, nor because He holds a brief for ignorance, but because He sees the possibility of giving something where, so often, the natural man’s self-sufficiency closes the door.
If we are poor, if we are ignorant, and we know it, yet we are not just living on that and saying, “Well, I am poor and ignorant, and therefore nothing is ever possible for me.” I am all that, but the Holy Spirit is quite equal to what I am and can make good all my deficiencies, and give me even more than those who have natural advantages.
That is the position, you see, between the natural and the spiritual on the matter of wisdom. He passes at once to the matter of power.
In other words, Christ crucified is the wisdom and the power of God. Now, they were exalting the natural man on the basis of his power. What power that may have been is not stipulated, though we can easily understand it.
Perhaps it was the power of his position in the world, of influence and renown. Perhaps it was the power which was in his hands because he was a successful man in business—the power of success in this world. Other kinds of power may have been included.
But this is the word, and they were saying, “Now, you see that man. He has made a success of it. He has gained eminence. He is in a good, high position. He is a strong man. He has a lot of influence. Go for that man. Count him.”
So they were making an idol of this world’s power, saying, “That is the thing. Be successful. Get promotion. Get into a position of power. That is what you would do in this world. That is the Greek ideal.”
The apostle comes down on that as he does on the matter of wisdom. He speaks much about his own weakness, and he puts a tremendous premium upon weakness here because it gives God an opportunity.
Now tell me, dear friends, is not our peril here often, even in the church, as in the church at Corinth: giving place to those who are something in this world, worshipping the idol of worldly success, saying, “He has made a success of life”?
Or, on the other hand, “He is a failure. He is a miss. He has never succeeded in anything. Despise him. Rule him out. Give him no chance.”
And the apostle says that is the natural man. The spiritual man does not do that. On resurrection ground there is a chance for everybody. On resurrection ground there are tremendous potentialities, because that is the ground of the Holy Spirit.
This mindedness betrays itself, you see, in our attitude toward fellow believers. We see it here in the way they despised the poor, the ignorant, and the weak, and in the way they would go to law against their own brethren in Christ to get their own rights.
That is the mentality of the natural man. Our attitude and judgment of fellow believers betrays our spirituality or our unspirituality.
It is so also as to the world and as to the service of the Lord: their preferences, their biases, their prejudices. There was an outstanding case in their mentality about the servants of the Lord—judging naturally, after the flesh.
Whether it is Paul, or Apollos, or Peter, after all, they are servants of Christ, ministers of Christ. Look upon us like that, with all our faults and weaknesses, all that you can say about us—and you will never be able to say worse than we say about ourselves. We know better than you do.
Nevertheless, with all that God knows, we know, and you may think you know, spirituality on your part requires that you look upon servants of Christ. Make more of the anointing than you do of the vessel. Indeed, make everything of the anointing. That is spiritual-mindedness.
How searching it is, how challenging! Whether we can understand and appreciate all that is being said in this way, we will understand this: the great thing required of us is that we should be spiritual men and women in these ways, that we should be men and women of the Spirit of Christ.
That perhaps leads me to close by underlining one thing: the difference between the world’s standard and heaven’s standard.
Where does this come up in the apostle’s letters? He lays himself out to draw their attention to the heavenly glory, the treasure deposited in the vessel. Then he says:
We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves.
What is he saying? “You Corinthians are making far too much of the strength and wholeness of this world’s man. The Lord makes everything of brokenness and fragility.”
The test of spirituality will, after all, be the measure of a man’s brokenness. I listen, and you will listen, to a man whom you know has been broken.
You will listen to the Word of the Lord through a vessel brought to utter dependence upon Him for everything. You know his history. You will be helped if you know that this is not just retailing Christian teaching and doctrinal truth, but that it has all come out of a history of spiritual travail and anguish under the Lord’s hand.
If the Lord’s messenger is like that, you will meet the Lord. You will meet the Lord. That is spirituality, and that is spiritual nature.
You will not misunderstand me in putting it like this. I am speaking of principles. We are not prepared to take our instruction from anyone whom we know has never been broken under the hand of God.
Intellectual, successful, calm, holding positions, and everything else in this world—but we are not going to have anything from that merely as such.
But if we know that they have been through the mill, that what they say comes out of travail in the presence of the Lord, then all right. We will not only listen, but we will be helped.
That is what the apostle talks about in these letters. Read them again in the light of that. Read the first four or five chapters of the second letter with this in view.
Paul was brought into the presence of God empty of his own sufficiency and strength, a vessel fragile, with nothing to depend upon in himself but what the Lord had done and put there. That is spiritual—spiritual.
May I say again: bring this right into a church, and put your finger upon it there. What is a church? The church, appropriately, is an emptied church, a weakened church, a humble and utterly dependent church whose spiritual value has been born out of anguish and travail.
A church like that will have a testimony. It will have influence. But it will be nothing according to the standards of this world—only according to the standards of heaven.