Read now, please, in the second letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 3.
Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? Or need we, as do some, epistles of commendation to you or from you?
Ye are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read of all men;
being made manifest that ye are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in tables that are hearts of flesh.
And such confidence have we through Christ to God-ward:
not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God;
Who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
But if the ministration of death, written and engraven on stones, came with glory, so that the children of Israel could not look steadfastly upon the face of Moses for the glory of his face; which glory was passing away:
how shall not rather the ministration of the spirit be with glory?
For if the ministration of condemnation is glory, much rather doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.
For verily that which hath been made glorious hath not been made glorious in this respect, by reason of the glory that surpasseth.
For if that which passeth away was with glory, much more that which remaineth is in glory.
Having therefore such a hope, we use great boldness of speech, and are not as Moses, who put a veil upon his face, that the children of Israel should not look steadfastly on the end of that which was passing away:
but their minds were hardened: for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remaineth unlifted, which veil is done away in Christ.
But unto this day, whensoever Moses is read, a veil lieth upon their heart.
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.
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.
Therefore seeing we have this ministry, even as we obtained mercy, we faint not.
We have been seeing that this whole second letter to the Corinthians has to do with the matter of the ministry of the Lord’s people. You will have noticed in this chapter that word ministration, or ministry, used repeatedly: the whole question, the whole matter, of ministering—administering Christ.
And you will also have noticed that this ministry is the ministry of glory. That word, and the thought connected with it, occurs so many times in this part of the letter. It is the ministry of glory which is entrusted to the Lord’s people.
But that statement may not help you very far as it stands. We need to get inside this section and see what that really means. It is a very full section—this Chapter 3 and part of Chapter 4. Indeed, it goes right on, and it has to be divided into its several phases.
We will, this afternoon, just look at and consider the first of these phases: what we may call the contrasted ministry. That is, the contrast between the ministry of Moses and the ministry of Christ, or the ministry of the Spirit.
The apostle, in his very full and rich knowledge of the Old Testament—which was his own Bible—takes a great deal from the Old Testament in this letter. Here, in this matter of ministry, as he begins to get more deeply and fully into it, he takes this Old Testament incident and makes it the ground for explaining the real nature of New Testament ministry, the ministry of the New Testament church.
It is the incident of Moses going up into the mountain, into the presence of God, and receiving the law for the people of God. Then he came down from the mountain with the radiance of God’s presence and God’s glory upon his face as he came down to the camp.
The glory was so strong that the people could not, it says twice, steadfastly look upon his face. They took a glance, but they could not hold their eyes in the direction of Moses. They could not endure it. It says they could not look upon the face of Moses because of the glory.
And so, when Moses entered upon the ministry of preaching and expounding the Word of God, because the people were unable to look, he put a veil over his face. From behind the veil, he read the Word of God.
Paul takes hold of that, and now he uses the principle that is there for these Corinthians. He uses it in the first letter, and he uses it here.
By way of explanation, true ministry is for the church. And the apostle says, in that comprehensive statement, that the veil rests upon their hearts to this day. To this day, after the centuries since that incident, right up to now, the veil still rests upon the heart.
Now, without dealing with all the details that Paul mentions about the incident—and it is not all easy to understand—let us get right to the principle that is here. Because, you see, what Paul means, or shows to be meant, by this veil is something more than just the literal thing.
It touches upon a very deep and real thing in human life. That veil is carried over into the New Testament, into the Gospels, and is carried on to Corinth.
The veil is represented by all the types, symbols, and forms employed by God in the Old Testament as means of representing spiritual realities and spiritual truth, but not being such themselves.
These figures, types, and symbols of the Old Testament, with which we are so familiar, are just Old Testament parables. They hold the same principle as the parables of the Lord Jesus.
You know the disciples said to Jesus, after His long discourse in parables, “Why do You always speak to them in parables?” He said, “It is not given to them to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.”
What lies behind the veil of symbols, types, figures, forms, and outward expressions of God’s thought? What lies behind the meaning of things—the real spiritual meaning of things?
There are two worlds between the things and their meaning. That is just as true in Christianity as in Judaism: two different worlds between things stated, presented objectively, and what they really mean as the spiritual thoughts of God.
So the apostle gives us a collection of negatives. You notice? “Not, not, not,” he says three times:
There is the veil. Ink, stone, letters—the veil. And he is just knocking that down: not that; not that enough; that is not the thing.
Not ink, but the Spirit of the living God. What a difference! Not tables of stone, but hearts that are flesh. Not the letter—the verbal statement—but the Spirit.
These are tremendous contrasts, and they are the contrasts between the ministry of Moses and the ministry of believers in this dispensation: the contrasted ministry, the great difference.
When it comes to the Spirit, the veil is taken away. Symbols are gone; they have finished their place, served their purpose, and led us to the real end. Types, yes, all right; types and figures are very interesting. You can spend many days and hours on the tabernacle in the wilderness and all such things. They are very interesting—almost fascinating.
Figures, types, symbols, forms—all that Old Testament system and economy—when it comes to the Spirit, it is gone. It is not, not, not. Now what is it? The Spirit of the living God doing something inside, which it never did then. None of those things ever did anything inside, did they?
No. No symbol, no type, no form ever did anything inwardly. But now it turns to the Spirit, the Spirit of the living God; and from the outside He enters in. By that entering in, the ministry of glory begins.
Really, there was little or no glory, you know, in all that performance and paraphernalia of the Old Testament system. It was something done, something carried out, a building routine; something gone through almost with monotony, week after week, year after year, decade after decade—repetition, repetition, repetition. And so far as ultimate spiritual concern was involved, vain repetition.
The New Testament calls those things dead works. Yes, dead works—that is, they never meant real life. But it has changed over now. A tremendous change has taken place with the Spirit of the living God.
And now, not dead works, not monotonous routine in religious ritual with all the noise, but real life—the livingness of things. Everything lives. Everything lives.
It is the livingness which is the glory. Look into your New Testament and you will find those two things linked together: glory and life, life and glory.
You come to the end of your New Testament, the end of the book of Revelation, and you find these two things again represented in principle: the New Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down from God out of heaven, having the glory of God; and in the midst thereof, and on either side, the tree of life; the river of the water of life.
Life and glory are the actual things. The glory is by the life, and the life is the glory; and that is the ministry.
There is not some radiance that lights upon our countenance or otherwise, though the inner light does make a difference even in those matters, does it not? But that is not the point.
The point is the livingness of the church, the livingness of believers. They are not just ritualists. They are not just ceremonialists. They are not just sacramentarians. They are living ones.
And their presence is the great contrast between life and death.
Challenge? I said the book is full of challenges. It is. It is so practical. The test and proof that we have this ministry is that we, like the Lord Jesus when He was here, are a contrast to the dead conditions around us—in people and in things.
Is it not sad that so many Christians—professing Christians, and some perhaps really saved Christians—are so little a contrast to their environment, their surroundings, and the people of the world? Why? Because they are toying and trifling with the things of the world, and their contrast is dissolved.
Now, that is exactly what happened at Corinth in the first instance, during those four or five years after the apostle left them. They lost their testimony in the world, their impact upon the world. The world had made its own inroads into the church, as you know from the first letter and the first chapter: glorying in worldly wisdom, glorying in the world’s ideas of power, and so on.
Because the world had made its inroads into their lives, they had lost their impact upon the world. The ministration of livingness—that livingness which is found nowhere else—had been lost.
During so many centuries, called the Dark Ages and medievalism, the church lost her power, her light, and her impact. A very great deal today, in order to recover that, is by means of introducing things which are called life but are not life at all.
“Life, life”—they know it is life that is wanted, as we do. And so it is another kind of life. It is not true life. The true life, Jesus Christ, needs no crutches. It does not need entertainment, worldly attractions, and a hundred and one things to try to give an impression of life. It does not need them.
When the Lord Jesus is really present, when the power of the Holy Spirit and the Word of the Lord are present in richness, and the veils are removed so that the testimony of His life is in evidence, people will know it. And if they are seeking, they will know where to go for it, and they will be there.
I do not believe that it is necessary to have all these other substitutes for life in order to fill a place with people—not at all.
Well, you see, it is the ministry, or ministration, of life which is the glory, and which is the true ministry for the Lord’s people and the companies of the Lord’s people which should be the church universal.
The veil—remember? Christ present; Christ unveiled in the power of the Holy Spirit. That is what Paul is saying.
And two things will result from that. We shall be changed. We shall be changed. We Christians shall be changed—not as by conversion, now that we are Christians, but from glory to glory.
We heard a bit of it in the question we started with: glory. Is it not a sad thing that we Christians find ourselves singing—and whether we realize what we are singing or not—
Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?
Where is the soul-refreshing view
Of Jesus and His Word?
“Return, O wanderer, return.” Has the original glory really gone, that we need to be entreated to return? Well, we had it. The Corinthians had it. And the dew seemed to have flown.
But what we are reading now is the return. And he is saying, “I want glory.” There is a glory which is the lot of a true child of God. There can be from glory to glory. We, beholding, are being changed into the same image from glory to glory.
So the ministry is a matter of going on, is it not? Not starting and stopping, having and losing. Ministry in power calls for a going on, and that in the contemplation of the Lord by the aid of the Holy Spirit.
That is another phase which we will leave until later. Here, we are simply stating that the Word of God through the apostle is telling us as to the nature of our ministry.
Now, just another word on this matter of the veil and the removal of the veil. We have indicated certain things that it means, but what does it mean intrinsically?
Well, the presence of the veil speaks loudly and strongly of spiritual incapacity—limitation of spiritual capacity, does it not? They could not look steadfastly. They could not. There was an embargo; there was a limitation; there was a lack of capacity for looking, for seeing.
Paul says, “Unto this day.” That was not only true of Israel in the wilderness at Sinai. That was true of Israel in the days of the Lord Jesus. And, sadly, something of it was true of the disciples in the days of His flesh.
Did He not say, “I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now”?
Howbeit, that will not always exist, for the Spirit of truth is coming. But now, “Oh, I have so much that I would like to say, so much that would be for your good, so much of heavenly value. I have many things to say, but ye cannot bear them.”
Is that not limited capacity? That is terrible.
The Lord has so much more than ever we have seen or received. However much we have seen or received, the limit has not been reached by any means.
The Lord groaned because of that limitation imposed upon Him by their lack of capacity, and He cried, “I came to cast fire upon the earth; and what will I, if it is already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”
He is only saying, in effect, “If only all these limitations of capacity in My men were removed, what a great thing it would be when I am able to give them all that I have, and they can take it.”
Now here in Corinth you have the exact situation. In the first letter, here is Paul groaning under this straitness, and he says, “I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal. I fed you with milk, not with meat; for ye were not yet able.”
Same word, same course.
Whether Paul wrote the letter to the Hebrews or not, we will not argue. But there you have the same thing in Hebrews 5:12: “When by reason of the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need again that someone teach you the rudiments.”
The time is long past for you to be at the rudiments. You ought to be teaching yourselves, but it is not so. You even now, after all, need someone to teach you the rudiments. “Let us go on,” not laying again the foundation of first principles. Let us go on unto full growth.
You see, this question of limitation of spiritual capacity—that is the principle of the veil: capacity for seeing, not things, but their meaning; not the letter, but the meaning of the letter.
Many, many Christians have had this experience. They know the letter, the verbal statements of the Bible. They have heard them said again and again, preached again and again, read them, these things; and then the day has come when, like a flash, they have said, “Why, I never saw that before!”
And now it is all alive. When your Bible—the whole Bible—gets like that, you know, it is very wonderful, is it not?
There you have it: our limited spiritual capacity for comprehending and grasping the real meaning of the Lord in the things that He has said—the intrinsic values. When we get those, something happens to us. We are liberated.
“It is where the Spirit of the Lord is,” or “where the Lord is the Spirit,” liberty. It is a liberation which comes by suddenly seeing. “I never saw that to be the meaning of that before.” You know what I am talking about. It is very true—very true.
Spiritual capacity. The Corinthians, in the first instance, were not able. They were not able; they had not got the capacity. “So I could not speak to you as unto spiritual.”
In this letter there is a wonderful unveiling of the hidden meaning of things. Paul is using the Old Testament; that is, he is not just preaching it as Old Testament, he is giving us the meaning: the meaning of the veil and the meaning of the removal of the veil.
And a lot of other things are going to follow from the Old Testament, in which he gives us the meaning. The veil removed; capacity created and enlarged.
What a challenge this is to ministerial life, is it not? For he is saying, “We have this ministry.” This is the ministry.
This is the ministry of something which has been made real in our own hearts—as real as things were to that man born blind when the Lord gave him his sight. He could say, “I was blind, but now I see.”
What a new world was opened to him! And, you know, you can argue with anybody like that as long as you like. Even the scribes and the Pharisees would come and argue with him, but you cannot undo that, and you cannot move him from that.
The last argument is not whether your theology or interpretation is the final word. My experience of the Lord is the final word: what the Lord has done in my life. That is the final word, and that is my testimony. That is my ministry.
Oh, that all preaching were of that kind, all out of something done within! So, you see, you do not have to go to college and be ordained for this. You do not have to have a society to make a minister of you. You do not have to put on any special kind of dress.
If you are ministering spiritual truth, you cannot help being a minister. You may, through many a discouragement and a hard time, say, “I am not going to minister again,” but you will be ministering again before very long. Do not make any mistake about it: you will be at it again.
It will be like the one who said, “I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in His name. But His word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones.” Then I opened my mouth; I speak. I cannot help it.
If it is like this, well, this sounds very simple again and elementary, but do we not need such words today? And do we not really need enlargement of spiritual capacity? We do. We do.
If we will come the Lord’s way, we will have it. And that is why the apostle, in the Spirit, introduces this whole matter of ministry with the afflictions of Christ. They are the words he uses: suffering, trials, the afflictions of Christ.
He was saying, in other words, and in more words, if you go the way of the cross, you will come the way of enlargement of spiritual capacity. The cross in its work has a wonderful way of breaking us open, of removing barriers, of giving us an open heaven.
If we will come this way, which we call the way of the cross, that is the way of spiritual capacity.
Of course, we can put that to the test. We know quite well—very well—that those who have never suffered, or suffered very little, have not got much to give. They have not got much to say to us, and we always know it. We always know it.
But we do know that, if there is anything that is of real value to us, it comes from some deep experience; it comes through a vessel of some experience of the cross.
Well, I think we will leave it there for the present. We have some more things here. The apostle tells us what is the nature of the ministry. This is the ministry which is the ministry of glory: the ministry of a created and enlarged spiritual capacity for grasping meanings, spiritual meanings, the inner thoughts of God.
But they become light to us, life in us, and life through us to others.