We continue our consideration of what is brought to us in the Word of God, in the New Testament, as to Christ.
Having been designated the horizon of a new creation by resurrection, may I add one or two scriptures to those which have been foundational to our meditation thus far? We are moving at this time in the letters to the Corinthians: a paragraph in the first letter and a paragraph in the second.
In 1 Corinthians 2, beginning at verse 7, Paul says:
But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery,
Even the wisdom that hath been hidden,
Which God foreordained before the worlds unto our glory:
Which none of the rulers of this world knoweth:
For had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory:
But as it is written,
Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not,
And which entered not into the heart of man,
Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love Him.
But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit:
For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him?
Even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God.
But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God;
That we might know the things that are freely given to us by God.
Which things also we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual words.
Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him;
And he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged.
But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no man.
For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.
Then, in 2 Corinthians 3, at verse 16:
But whensoever it shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
There is an alternative rendering: “Where the Spirit is Lord, there is liberty.” Now the Lord is the Spirit; where the Spirit is Lord, there is liberty.
We have been, shall I say, trying to see the Apostle Paul in approaching the confused, tragic, dishonouring condition and situation in the church at Corinth. He made it his business to show them that all that kind of thing was simply the fruit of the first Adam’s sin and failure.
It was really the outcome of Satan’s complicity with man, and man’s complicity with Satan, at the beginning. That started up this whole history in the world, and it found its way into the church at Corinth from the world through the same medium by which it came in at the beginning: the soul of man.
It is always like that when the whole life is projected with self in view—self-interest, self-assertion. That provides a very easy and useful way for the forces of evil to move in and do what it has ever been their object to do.
First of all, they did it in heaven before they were cast out; then they did it in man. That is, they brought about a state of confusion, disruption, disintegration, rivalry, faction, division, and all that kind of thing.
That is the history which began when Adam opened his soul to the evil powers. The Old Testament is full of that history. Moreover, that is exactly what is in this world all through its history, and never has man been made more aware of it than he is today.
What a state this world is in! You might say almost hopeless, if not utterly hopeless: confusion, strife, antagonism, disruption, rivalries, factions. It is a situation extending and exhausting all the wit and wisdom of this world to cope with.
It has ever been like that, and it is like that in the world. It is a cosmic discord shot through the universe.
And in Corinth those forces found an opening because these people were so much living on what the Apostle here calls the natural level and side of life. So you find in the church simply the repetition of what is in the world: divisions, confusions, and so on.
Over against that, the Apostle is setting that which belongs to a side of the Cross which knows nothing, really, in experience and history, of the power of Christ’s resurrection. Christ in resurrection is an altogether different order from that, inasmuch as the last Adam is so far removed in character and nature from the first Adam.
Thus, the Apostle puts this matter of resurrection into the context of that situation where the world had, in its period, seeped into the church. He puts right into that context this large amount in these letters on the matter of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and our resurrection with Him.
He shows that Christ in resurrection is of another order, that He is of a spiritual order.
The Apostle says, “Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more.” He is thinking of himself in the earlier days of his life, when he knew all about Jesus of Nazareth—the Man of Galilee, what He had done, what He had claimed, and what had happened to Him. He knew all about that human history: Christ after the flesh.
This comes as the completion of his statement that He died for all, that they which live should henceforth live not unto themselves, but unto Him Who for their sakes died and rose again. Henceforth, we know no man after the flesh. Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more.
That kind of knowledge is closed; it is finished. Our knowledge of Christ now is of a different character simply because Christ is of a different order in resurrection. Christ in resurrection is a spiritual Person.
That does not mean that He is disembodied or a bodiless Person. We know very differently from that. But He is of a spiritual order altogether different from men as we know them.
And, says the Apostle, there is no knowing Christ now at all except in the only way in which He can be known: by experience, and only by those who also are spiritual people.
This is fundamental to the very beginning of the knowledge of Christ: a spiritual order of persons, having made the beginning of a new creation life by a definite work of the Holy Spirit, and being constitutionally different.
Their life is required to be on the basis of that beginning: progressively spiritual life. Our statement, then, is that Christ in resurrection is the first of a new spiritual order of humanity.
Over against that, the Apostle is very emphatic. We have pointed out that any man or woman who leans toward their own natural level and realm of life is put under an embargo, is in a state of deadlock, under a handicap, where knowing the Lord is concerned.
“The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God.” What a thing to say! They are foolishness unto him. Things which eye saw not, ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man—things which God has prepared for us—are foolishness to the natural man, and he cannot know them.
Written over him, whatever he may be in this world, great in any way whatsoever, so far as the things of the Spirit of God are concerned, is the word: cannot. Cannot! He just cannot.
The Apostle enlarges upon that. He speaks about some minds being darkened: “If our gospel is hid, it is hid in them that are perishing, in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds.” Mind blinded, darkened—that is the handicap.
Now, what does this lead to? You may say that is negative, not very inspiring, not ground for encouragement. But it does lead to a part of the subject that is tremendously inspiring.
Paul never believed in mere negatives. Here we are with all this that we have read, and more, about the Spirit.
You notice that in 1 Corinthians 2:10-16, in those six verses, “Spirit” is mentioned six times and “spiritual” is mentioned four times.
You have taken note of what is said there about the tremendous possibilities and potentialities that are given with the Spirit. The whole state of utter hopelessness, helplessness, and impossibility is changed completely when it comes to the Spirit.
Those doors roll open wide. “God revealed them unto us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” And so forth.
Then, in the passage in the second letter, here it is: “There is liberty.” You will notice that the immediate context is that of the veil.
Paul says about Israel that whenever they read the Word of God, a veil is over their hearts. Here is the darkened understanding. But when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away. The embargo is removed; the handicap is set aside.
Now, the Lord is the Spirit. It is upon that that I want to dwell for the time that we have at our disposal: the necessity for the absolute sovereignty of the Holy Spirit for this life in the new creation and all that it means.
The necessity is the absolute lordship, or sovereignty, of the Holy Spirit over all that is within the horizon of Christ in resurrection.
Christ gave the teaching in essence and in completeness. Christ did the work in life and in death. Christ covers the whole ground in Himself, in His teaching and in His work; and He finished the work.
He could say, “It is finished”—more accurately, “It is complete.” That is what we are, in part, celebrating today. On the Cross, it is complete.
When He could say that, He could say the next and last thing: “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” Not merely, “I commit My spirit,” but, “I commend My spirit.”
To commend is more than to commit. Commendation is something honourable, something worthy. We sometimes use that word well-meaningly but, I think, improperly, when we say that we commend ourselves. Who can do that? But we can commit.
However, that is by the way. What I am saying is that He perfected everything in life, teaching, and work, and then went to the Father.
What did He do when He went to the Father? While it is not stated exactly in this way, there is plenty of evidence that this is what happened. In presenting Himself to the Father as the embodiment of a complete work, the Father then, in this manner of speaking, said to the Holy Spirit: “I have departed, and I have left with You, to go down there, this charge and responsibility and commission to make it good in those who will believe.”
The Lord Jesus provided the Holy Spirit with everything of teaching, character, and work. The Lord Jesus deposited it all with the Holy Spirit, or provided it for the Holy Spirit. It is in the good of all that that the Holy Spirit has come, and none of it is possible—not a fragment—without the Holy Spirit.
Herein lies, then, this necessity for the absolute sovereignty, or lordship, of the Holy Spirit. It is taught in 1 Corinthians 2, as we have seen; it is definitely set forth in 2 Corinthians 3.
Did I say that the Lord Jesus provided, in teaching and life and work? The Lord Jesus Himself had taught this very thing.
The Holy Spirit came to make actual what Jesus had taught. We know it was not actual before He went and before the Spirit came. None of what He had taught was actual in that sense. But He had taught this very thing.
We are so familiar with the Gospel by John, but I still think our familiarity robs us of a great deal of its real significance. We think we know John’s Gospel. We have only to mention a certain man’s name and, of course, we know: Nicodemus, Nicodemus.
That interview and intercourse between Nicodemus and the Lord is this very thing. On the one side, the Lord Jesus is drawing Nicodemus out to the point of utter hopeless despair as to understanding what He is talking about.
The Lord Jesus had spoken what to you and me now seem to be very simple words. To us, we understand. But when He said them, Nicodemus was thrown. At last Nicodemus gave the tremendous sigh, like a sigh of despair: “How can these things be?”
“Art thou the teacher of Israel, and understandest not these things?” The Lord is keeping him on the negative. “If I told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?”
You see the hopelessness of the situation with this man—a teacher, a learned man, a man from this natural standpoint, but without knowledge and helpless. He might not have used the language that a veil was over his mind, but certainly it was.
That is the natural man at his best. Then the Lord Jesus comes over to the point, and He gives this striking illustration and application:
The wind bloweth where it will,
And thou hearest the voice thereof,
But knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth:
So is every one that is born of the Spirit.
I will not stay with the details of how that fits into Paul’s statement that “he that is spiritual judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no man.” He is altogether beyond the natural man’s capacity to judge. “Thou canst not tell.” So is every one that is born of God: thou canst not tell.
But the point that I am particularly after is this: “The wind bloweth where it will.” The wind blows where it likes—where it will.
You cannot choose which way the wind will blow. You cannot decide for the wind. Indeed, if you know anything about it, you know that it is a sorry thing to try conclusions with a hurricane.
See what you can do with a gale, with a hurricane. Can you command it? Can you control it? Can you direct it?
It takes things into its hands, and no man can say it may not. No man can give it any commandment. It has taken over. It has taken over.
If you have ever seen the results of one of these great storms of wind, rooting up trees and plucking up houses, carrying them far and wide, and spreading them everywhere, you know quite well that the wind blows where it likes.
So is every one that is born of the Spirit. The point the Lord is making is this: the Holy Spirit is sovereign.
And Nicodemus, like everyone else who wants to get into the kingdom of heaven, who has any hope whatever of coming into the new creation, has got to let go to the Holy Spirit—recognise and accept His absolute sovereignty.
You are not going to dictate to the Holy Spirit about anything. He is not going to suffer any of your restrictions, limitations, embargoes, or anything that you like to put upon Him. He will just not accept it.
He will say, “Accept My lordship, or go your own way.”
We are going to show that this is not just imagination or exaggeration. The Lord Jesus said that. When the Spirit came, is not that exactly what happened? What about Pentecost? “There came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind.”
What happened back then? Well, if the Holy Spirit at Pentecost did not take over, what did He do? If He did not take things out of men’s hands and take supreme sovereignty and lordship, then we have misread the story.
He established that day a law which we are going to see He followed out. But, in the first place, He took over, after the Lord Jesus had said, “The wind bloweth” at His own discretion, by His own judgment, as He will.
On the day of Pentecost, when the wind blew, that was the effect. It was something established. It was the word of the Lord Jesus carried into effect.
It is not long after that, according to John, that we find the Lord Jesus at Jacob’s well, by Sychar in Samaria. You know the story of the woman who came out to draw water, and the conversation that ensued.
Then the Lord Jesus skilfully brought her to the point. He said, “Go, call thy husband.”
She said, “I have no husband.”
He said, “Thou saidst well, I have no husband: for thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband.”
Then she said, “Sir, I perceive that Thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain,” indicating the Samaritan temple in Mount Gerizim, “and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.”
Jesus said unto her:
Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh,
When neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father.
God is a Spirit:
And they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth:
For such doth the Father seek to be His worshippers.
Notice: the question of the Spirit is up again. It has been illustrated, or symbolised, in the water of the well; now it is the question of worship in spirit.
But what does He say? “The hour cometh, and now is,” meaning that the new hour of a new dispensation had arrived with Him. They were then on the very threshold of the new dispensation of the Spirit.
This is the new hour, the new day, the figurative world. In this new hour, this new regime of the Spirit, neither this mountain nor Jerusalem—neither nor—in spirit.
The whole setting is like that, with its comparison and contrast. A whole system is obliterated by that statement.
He said, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” Neither here nor there; in the Name, wherever it may be.
When Jesus used the great word “whosoever” to Nicodemus, He struck a fatal blow at Judaistic exclusiveness. He dealt with it there and then. No—not Israel as the exclusive body to be saved. “Whosoever believeth.”
All exclusiveness in the matter of salvation was set aside. Now, to the woman, He says, “Neither here nor there.” That is a fatal blow at all localising of the Church of Christ, attaching it to any place, any geographical spot, any locality.
He says, in effect, “Wheresoever; neither here nor there; in spirit and in truth.” That is the ground of the Church. That is where Christ is. That is where Christ is the Church.
As we have been pointing out, this is the expression of the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit. The book of Acts is the whole wonderful story of the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit, is it not?
You can pick out various instances that demonstrate it. Take Peter.
Peter went up to the housetop, fasting and praying, and had that vision of the sheet let down, full of all manner of creeping things. A voice came out of heaven, saying, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.”
Peter the Jew, Peter the Hebrew, Peter the Israelite, says, “Not so, Lord.” The thing was done thrice.
Peter is in a dilemma—a dilemma created by his own interpretation of Old Testament scriptures. This thing is saying to him something which seems to contradict all his traditional beliefs and position.
Then there arrived three men. On the other side of the story, Cornelius was awaiting them. Peter was apprised of their arrival: “Three men are downstairs, wanting to see you.” He went down, and they told him the story of Cornelius and the angel having spoken to him.
An angel spoke to Cornelius; the Spirit spoke to Peter: “Go with them.” The Spirit.
The next day he went with his dilemma, perhaps in terror, this tremendous thing that he was being compelled to do against all his upbringing, teaching, tradition, and opinion.
There he was, finding a large company gathered. He began to speak unto them, and as he began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon all the Gentiles.
Oh, this awkward Holy Spirit! Why does He not do things as we would like them done? Forgive me for saying it like that. But you see, it was most embarrassing that He did this, obviously. He fell upon all of them, and a mighty thing happened.
Then Judaism rose up. When Peter got back to Jerusalem, they called him for an interview and called him over the coals for going in to these Gentiles and sharing their fellowship.
What was Peter’s answer? “If God gave unto them the same gift as He did also unto us, when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I, that I could withstand God?”
What shall we come to? He is free where He likes. And when He gets His way, it is no good withstanding Him. “Who was I, that I could withstand God?” Withstand God!
To have refused would have been to do what Israel did—and Israel lost everything. The Lord had gradually led the leaders of Israel steadily up to the point where, at last, Stephen struck the blow which, for him, was fatal as far as this life was concerned. He said, “Ye do always resist the Holy Spirit.”
That cost Israel much more than it cost Stephen—everything, for two thousand years. We do not know how much more.
You see the point? The Holy Spirit must have absolute free way, clear way, unquestioned way, of lordship and sovereignty, if all the values of Christ in resurrection as the horizon of the new creation are to be known.
This is the story of the book of Acts: coming into the glories of Christ in resurrection. Indeed, it is.
The Apostle who is saying all this is himself a supreme example. Paul’s teaching about the Holy Spirit issued from what had happened to him.
We said this morning that the Bible is a book of living people, not doctrines and systems, orders and forms and things, but a book of living people—people everywhere, individually and collectively, in whom God is interested. He is interested in them from the standpoint of spiritual experience.
Spiritual experience. When Paul speaks about the Holy Spirit, he is not giving us merely teaching on a doctrine. He is speaking of that which happened to him.
What happened to him? What did he conceive to be the thing that had happened to him? He put it in one word, a very expressive word:
That I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.
Have you ever been apprehended? I hope the arm of the law has never lighted upon you to apprehend you. But if you have been, you know quite well that the arm of a policeman is the arm of the whole power of the realm coming through that hand.
The whole realm is at work when that hand comes upon you. You have not merely to resist that hand; you have to reckon with the realm.
The Lord—that realm apprehended you. That whole kingdom came down by that hand and laid hold of you. That is how Paul thought of what happened to him.
“I was apprehended. I was brought under arrest. I was mastered. I was taken prisoner.” From that time onward, he delighted in thinking of himself as “Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ,” and “Paul, the bondslave of Jesus Christ.”
The apprehending meant the renouncing of all my personal rights to life and handing them over to Him: mastered.
This, I say, is a supreme example of the Holy Spirit blowing where He will, taking things into His own hands, and bringing them under His lordship and sovereignty.
Now, dear friends, it is not necessary to enlarge much upon that. Let us take the truth. The application is this: you and I want to enter upon a life of real heavenly fruitfulness, to know the working of His power in us.
Do not misunderstand me: not the feeling of His power. The majority in whom that power has worked mightily have not been very conscious of it—not very conscious of it.
Do not confuse consciousness of power with the working of power. You and I are here today because of the working of that great power, though few of us have sat down to feel the power.
But if we do want that power to work with all its fruitfulness, with all its glory to God in the end; if we really want to enter into this life of new creation and its fullness, to explore and exploit the horizon of Christ in resurrection, it can come in no other way.
This is the way Paul went, the way Stephen went, the way John went, the way Nicodemus was called upon to go—the way that all must go. It is the way of complete capitulation to the lordship of the Holy Spirit.
No setting up of anything to define the Holy Spirit. No constituting of any framework into which we are going to invite the Holy Spirit. No laying down of a rail on which we expect the Holy Spirit to run. Nothing whatever.
Let the Holy Spirit have His way. Make spiritual men; make us spiritual people; make a spiritual order.
This is the habit of men: always putting their hands on something, starting to constitute and crystallise it into some system and order, and quenching the Spirit, driving out the life. That is the dark side of churches.
Oh, no! We shall never go wrong if the Holy Spirit is in charge. The order will never be wrong if He is Lord. There will not be licence in this blessed liberty. There will not be confusion.
No, if He is Lord, it is a matter of being committed—utterly committed. Hands off to the Holy Spirit; hands up to the way of the Spirit; committed to the Spirit.
Recognising what the Lord says in those simple words, “The wind bloweth where it will; so is every one that is born of the Spirit”; recognising that “neither here nor there” is in the Spirit; and noting that the Holy Spirit took up those seemingly simple, yet eternally profound, words and carried them into effect, making them real in the churches of the New Testament.
Who shall say that He will not do it again? Who will say that the Spirit has changed in this matter? Give Him a chance. Let us give Him a chance.
Hands off the hands of our minds, our reasoning, our fixed and unalterable interpretation. Let us stand back for the Holy Spirit. Give Him way—enough—individually and in the companies to which we belong.
And we shall see. That is what He is looking for. He will bring in the risen Christ. But, oh, that He is the horizon.