We are occupied at this time with the matter of the transition and transformation of the Christian from one order of creation to another—from what Paul calls, in his first Corinthian letter, the natural man, to the spiritual man.
And he says in his second letter that we are being transformed into the same image—that is, Christ. For a little while this evening, we shall think together about this progress and process of the Christian life from one order of creation to the other.
In these two letters of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, we have a wonderful setting forth of this process, progress, and consummation of the Christian—from what he is in himself to what he is to be ultimately in Christ.
If you look again at the letter, or call to mind what you know about it, you will see that the apostle is dealing with the three parts of manhood. He deals very much in these letters with the soul life of the Christian; then he is dealing with his spirit, what he calls the inner man; and then he deals with his body, what he calls our outward man, which is perishing.
It is the complete man who, under the government of the Spirit of Christ, is here being dealt with.
He begins, of necessity, because of the situation in Corinth, with the soul. The soul man, translated in our version as the natural man—everybody knows that the word natural there in the original is soulish: the soul man. That is what man is in himself: his own natural life, how he is made and made up, and all that goes to make him a self-conscious being.
Over against that, the apostle is saying so much here about the spiritual man—“he that is spiritual”—making a very big contrast between these two. Later, he will come to the body of the man. In every case, in every realm, it is a matter of change: transformation. We are being transformed.
The natural man is being transformed into the spiritual man. His natural life is being dealt with on the basis of Christ by the Holy Spirit, to be brought not into annihilation but into subjection—not to get rid of the soul, but to capture that soul and bring it into full subjection to his spirit in Christ.
I do not know how you have felt in reading this first letter to the Corinthians, especially as you take it up from the tenth verse of Chapter 1, where the apostle begins his long section dealing with the wrongs at Corinth, cataloguing all the wrong things over there.
They were all bad, but some of them were very bad—really terrible things. And you might ask, be tempted to ask, “Were they Christians at all? Were they Christians? Could these people possibly be really Christians?” You are recalling, are you not, some of the things there at Corinth?
But it is impressive—very impressive—how the apostle begins his letter. What is he really doing? Really, what does he mean? He is going to uncover all this that is there, and he knows it before he begins to write; yet he writes like this:
Unto the church of God which is at Corinth,
even them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints,
with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place,
their Lord and ours.
Is he just seeking to get on terms with these people, saying some nice things to prepare them for the nasty ones? How can he, with his full knowledge of the situation at Corinth, speak about them in this way, and say the following things which he says about them, which are good?
In reading on, I say, you might wonder whether they were Christians at all. In reading on, finding these things in a Christian church, you might despair of Christianity. You might be very disappointed indeed with Christianity, and say, “Well, if that is Christianity, may I be saved from it.”
That is a very natural reaction to all of this. How does the apostle justify himself and proceed with this situation? The answer is given in a threefold way.
In the first place, he speaks of the Christian’s—of the believer’s—standing, not his state: the standing. These Corinthians had evidently come to the Lord Jesus, come in faith to the Lord Jesus. Evidently, the Lord Jesus was their foundation. He says so in Chapter 3.
They were Christians, and born-again Christians. The apostle says, “sanctified in Christ Jesus.” Their standing is one thing.
You cannot do anything until you have got the standing. He would not proceed to deal with the situation if there were not some ground on which to proceed. He is taking it for granted that there is a ground there. It may be covered over with a lot of unworthy things, but there is a ground there on which to work.
Given that ground, the Lord can proceed. The Lord can do His work. And so the apostle begins with the standing of these people in Christ, in Christ by faith, as over against their state.
Then he goes on to show that the course of Christian life, given that position, that standing, that foundation, is a process of making believers what they are: their approximation, by process and progress, to what they really are in standing.
Here is something, dear friends, that you and I need for our help when we come up against so much that is disappointing, so much that shocks us, so much that would almost bring us to despair. We need this.
In the New Testament, in the apostolic letters, perfection is future and not present. If you are looking for the perfect person now, or the perfect church now, you are going to suffer such disillusionment and disappointment. You will despair.
Some of us have poured ourselves out to have the perfect church, to have the perfect church—the last word, the thing that really does fully, wholly represent and express what we have in Ephesians. We have been terribly disillusioned and disappointed, have we not?
We have had to come back again and look at the matter. When we have looked again, we find that Ephesians is pointing on to the end. It stands in the ages to come as the perfect thing—not now, not now. What is now is the process, the progress.
Very dear friends, I have got to stop. I am having a bad time physically, and I do not know that I can go on much further unless the Lord really undertakes. If you lift your heart to the Lord.
But here in this letter, it is all dealing with this in-between—the beginning and the end. The perfection of believers is progressive and not final here. So the apostle comes in with all the teaching about the process.
He tells us what that process is: transformation from one kind to another. He is teaching the principles of spiritual progress in this letter—what he calls transformation into the same image.
We said that the apostle is here teaching the principles of this progress and transition from one type of man to the other: the natural to the spiritual, or to Jesus Christ. That is why he so repeatedly brings Christ into view.
Why he declares that, in this realm of the natural, where the personal, self-life of Christians is brought to the cross of the Lord Jesus, the apostle here shows what that cross means over against these natural conditions.
He is himself the embodiment of this truth of Christ and the cross. Notice how he comes, or came, to Corinth. He says:
I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.
And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.
In saying that, he has laid down the very ground of his appeal and his teaching. It is this: there must be a personal embodiment of the truth of the cross before we will get anywhere.
Think of this man—his calling, tremendous revelation, his ability to stand before princes and rulers and kings with all boldness. A tremendously strong and able man he was in so many respects. But when he comes to a situation like this, all that goes. It all goes.
Here is this, in other respects, tremendous man—such ability, qualification, courage—saying, “I was with you in much weakness, in fear, and in trembling.”
If we are going to deal with the strong soul life which is making so much trouble in the church, we will not deal with it with our own soul strength. It will never be done by our own natural strength. It can only be in our own weakness, in our own sense of dependence upon the Lord.
Much weakness, fear, trembling—that is a crucified man, when you think of the man who said it: a crucified man.
It is one of the great principles of spiritual helpfulness. The one who is going to help must embody the truth, be the embodiment of the truth being given. Like that, he himself, by the emptying of himself, was able to help these people. Only so could he really help them.
It was not himself, but, as he says here, it was Christ—so much Christ. “I preach Christ,” “I proclaim Christ, and Him crucified.” A crucified man preaching a crucified Lord.
When Paul determined to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and Him crucified, he covered a great deal of ground. There were three classes of people at Corinth.
There were the Romans, who had captured that province and ruled. The Romans were the embodiment of natural strength. There were the Greeks, the embodiment of natural wisdom—intellectualism. And there were the Jews, the embodiment of the life of the senses.
The Jews seek after signs: signs, those things which can answer to the soul’s requirement—demonstrations, proofs, evidences, that realm. “Jews seek after signs, and Greeks seek after wisdom.”
These three things made up the church of Corinth. Paul says, so far as your spiritual progress is concerned, all that has got to go in the cross of the Lord Jesus. All natural power, all natural wisdom—foolishness, he calls it—and all this craving for sense demonstrations and proof must go to the cross if you are going to make the progress of the spiritual man.
Christ is the power of God. Christ is the wisdom of God. And Christ is the sign, the great sign of God—not things and demonstrations, but Himself. He is the sign because He is the risen Christ.
With God, everything is centered and contained in His Son, the Lord Jesus. He is not a philosophy of wisdom or an intellectualism. He is a Person, a divine Person. The apostle is trying to draw them away from these things to the divine Person. But he himself represents that.
Now I must, I fear, by sheer necessity draw this to a close. I pass on to this great culmination in Chapter 15.
He starts with the spirit, the spiritual man. He has dealt with the soul, the natural man. Now in Chapter 15 he tells of the body. What arises from that chapter is this: the spirit of the man is the seed.
You see, the spirit of the man is the inner man, the real man—not his soul, nor his body. The real man is the spirit. What you are in spirit is the real man.
Now, says the apostle in Chapter 15, that spiritual man, that spirit man, that man of the spirit, that inner man—being renewed day by day—is the seed of a new body.
But God giveth it a body even as it pleased Him.
Chapter 15 says that the culmination of the spiritual process is transformation completed in the body: the physical body made like unto His glorious body. That is the transition, the transformation, and the end of our spiritual process.
A spiritual body, like unto His glorious body: transition from this to that. A body that is not subject to what we know in the body. The outward man perishes; the inward man is renewed day by day. But ultimately, in Chapter 15, the body itself is made like unto His glorious body.
The Lord fulfil all His designs in everyone.