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.
This verse is one of those verses, our brother Stephen said, that we might well meditate on early in the morning, laying each one of these lines before us. If we did such a thing, it would not be long before we realized that this verse speaks of a different realm than we usually think. It is speaking of something more wonderful than we at first imagined.
In order to understand, we must go to the mirror to see the glory of the Lord. In the context of 2 Corinthians, this mirror is the Word of God.
As Paul makes this comparison, he says that Moses, when he went into that tent of meeting, took off that veil. As he looked at the law, he could see the Lord. But when the Jews read the law, it is veiled. They cannot see the Lord. They see the law.
Now we as Christians have an unveiled face. As we look in that mirror, which is the Word, a miracle happens: the Word of God becomes Logos. We see the Word—but no, we see Jesus.
This crucial matter of our new life is dependent upon our understanding and seeing the Logos within His precious Word. So our brother’s simple exhortation to us to meditate on the Word is surely a key to living in this new dimension.
I want to take the context of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians tonight and bring us into an understanding of this new dimension in which we live, because it is something quite strange.
For me, I was twenty years old when, by the grace of God, I was soundly saved. From the moment Jesus came into my heart, I knew I was in something different, though I did not know exactly what it was. I sensed a different atmosphere, but I did not quite know what it was.
But I had entered into Christ Jesus. He is our land of inheritance, and He is our new creation. Bit by bit, as I studied the Word, I began to see what this new atmosphere was all about.
Now, you know, I was born in Brooklyn and raised in New York. I do not know what it is like to grow up in one country and then move to another that is completely different, but some of you have probably had that experience.
If you moved here from Czechoslovakia and came to the United States, immediately you would see outward things: “Wow, look at all the McDonald’s. Look, there’s Google, there’s Amazon, there’s Apple, there’s food, restaurants everywhere.” At first, you see all the outward things.
You are not so aware of the whole spirit of this nation—the soul of this nation. You live your Czechoslovakian soul life, but find it does not quite mesh with the American way of life. You discover Americans are quite different from Czechoslovakians.
We have entered into a new creation. Something happened to us when we got saved. At first we see the outward things, but the key is to begin to sense that the whole spirit of this new realm is very different from anything we have ever lived in before.
Let us read some Scriptures in 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians that deal with this transition from glory to glory into this new realm in which we live. We will begin with 1 Corinthians 2:14-15. Please follow with me in your Bible if you can.
But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God,
for they are foolishness to him;
and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.
But he who is spiritual appraises all things,
yet he himself is appraised by no one.
Who also made us adequate as ministers of a new covenant,
not of the letter but of the Spirit;
for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
—2 Corinthians 3:6
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 being transformed into the same image from glory to glory,
just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
—2 Corinthians 3:17-18
For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,”
is the One who has shone into our hearts
to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in the face of Christ.
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels,
so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves.
—2 Corinthians 4:6-7
For momentary, light affliction is producing for us
an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,
while we look not at the things which are seen,
but at the things which are not seen;
for the things which are seen are temporal,
but the things which are not seen are eternal.
—2 Corinthians 4:17-18
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;
old things are passed away;
behold, all things are become new.
—2 Corinthians 5:17
Lord, we come to You tonight, and we thank You that You have brought us into a realm—our inheritance, the promised land—Christ Jesus, Christ in glory. Lord, we want to survey the land. We want to take the property that is ours in the name of Christ. We want to have revealed to us all that is ours in this new realm in which we live.
Do open our eyes that we may see all the things You have prepared for us. Oh, Lord, we come and say, “Mirror, mirror of the Word, reveal the Lord of glory to us.” In Jesus’ precious name we pray. Amen.
As we survey this new realm, let me pick out a few words that we read for emphasis:
That word transformed is the actual Greek word metamorphose. These are words—fragments—giving us insight into this realm in which we live. The realm is glory to glory. That is where we live.
New covenant, new creation, liberty of the Spirit, glory to glory, newness. I would like to add one more word: not only newness, but freshness.
This particular word new has two meanings, and more recent translators want to convey a second meaning: freshness. It is not only a comparison between new and old; it is a comparison between sameness and freshness.
In The Message translation, it says that if any man is in Christ Jesus, he has a fresh start. They are trying to bring out this essence of the new. It is like new wineskins and new wine: actually, fresh wine in fresh wineskins.
Another translation, the Amplified, says, “The old has passed away; behold, the fresh and the new has come.” Are you living in the freshness of this new creation, under this new covenant, led by a new Lord? Everything is new.
The context is Corinth. There is nowhere that this newness, this new covenant, this new creation, this freshness, could be experienced more than in the church at Corinth.
When Paul and Silas set out on their second missionary journey, Paul intended to spend much time in Asia Minor. But the Spirit prevented him in order to bring him over into Greece. When they got into Macedonia and Greece, the destination the Spirit intended was Corinth—that wicked, sinful city of Corinth.
Corinth was one of the richest port cities in the Roman Empire, full of temples. The goddess Venus was the main worship there. There were temple prostitutes and all kinds of sinful things going on. What a dark city. Yet there were also schools of philosophy, Roman things and Greek things—a whole worldly place.
Paul got there by himself at first and started making tents with Priscilla and Aquila. He began talking in the synagogue, got kicked out of the synagogue, and so—you know what Paul did to avoid trouble? He moved next door.
As he preached the gospel, Gentiles began getting saved in droves, and conflict came into the city. The Lord had to come to Paul in the night and say, “Paul, Paul, do not be afraid. Keep on working here. I have many people in this wicked city.”
I always claim that for New York City myself: “I have many people in that city.” Paul, Silas, Timothy, and others who passed through worked there for two years in Corinth. My, my, what a new creation was started.
The Bible says, “Where sin abounds, grace much more abounds.” In places where sin is abounding, you would be surprised how hungry people are for the grace of God. The Corinthians were ready. They got saved, and the Holy Spirit separated them from the world around them.
They came into such life and freshness. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:
I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you in Christ Jesus;
that in everything you were enriched in Him,
in all speech and all knowledge,
even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you,
so that you are not lacking in any gift,
awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
There is a new-creation vessel: the church in Corinth. The sinners had been saved. First Corinthians 12 says that these Corinthians used to be carried away and led by evil spirits, but now they were being baptized in the Holy Spirit. They were pursuing what Paul calls “spirituals”—not merely gifts, but the pursuit of the Spirit.
The Corinthians were eager because they knew what it was like to be under the sway of demons. Now, to be under the sway of the Holy Spirit was something original and wonderful.
According to 1 Corinthians 14, when they got together for fellowship meetings, oh man, I tell you, the sparks were flying. People were ready to give a revelation, tell of a dream, speak a prophecy, speak in tongues, and have someone interpret. There was so much life when they got together—just like our fellowships.
Paul said, “I appreciate all the life, but you have to cap that life with order.” But they were full of life and freshness. Paul said that the testimony of Jesus Christ was confirmed in their midst.
What does that mean? It means that when a sinner or unbeliever came into their midst, they said, “Surely God is in this place.” That is the testimony of Jesus confirmed: when somebody can come into our midst as an assembly and say, “Jesus is here.”
Aquila and Priscilla found that young evangelist to the Jews, Apollos, and shared with him the more perfect way. He did not know about church life and the Body of Christ. When they ministered to him concerning the church, the Body of Christ, he said, “What are you talking about?” They sent him to Corinth, to see the Lord Jesus among His people in the Body of Christ.
I would have liked to visit Corinth in those days. I know you are already poisoned about Corinth. You already know Corinth is bad. We turn the corner and say Corinth is bad; we turn to Ephesus and say Ephesus is good. But listen: they all started out good by the grace of God.
The fresh new wine was poured out on an assembly, and they were transformed. It was a wonderful testimony. But of course, we know something went wrong.
Soon, problems began to become more and more problematic. This was probably the first church where the large majority were Gentiles. Up to that point, when Paul went to a place, he had a good minority of God-fearing Jews to set the standard for morality.
But Corinth was drowned by the world around them. Their morals were lax, their ideas were worldly, and that began to filter into the church.
When Paul wrote 1 Corinthians and sent it by Timothy, he said, “Now listen, you remember when I was with you, what was my message?” “Your message was the power of the Holy Spirit, preaching, and prophecy.” “No, no, no, no, no. What was my message? My message was the cross.”
“When I came to you, I did not come to you in Greek wisdom and use all kinds of rhetorical flourish, because I did not want your faith to lie in man’s wisdom, but in the power of God. I brought to you the word of the cross, and now in my letter of 1 Corinthians, I must bring to you again the word of the cross.”
They were living as the natural man. Here is our problem: by the grace of God, He pours His grace upon us. We are wonderfully saved, and our hearts are full. He gives us gifts of the Holy Spirit. He gives us understanding of the Word of God, and we can preach it. That is what was going on in Corinth.
But unless those giftings—an outward thing—are stewarded by those who have an inward life, problems happen. Evidently, they had a group of men who thought they were good at preaching because they had a philosophical background. They preached, and all they did was cause division.
One preacher said, “Everybody should be a Calvinist.” Another said, “No, you should not be a Calvinist.” They had all these intellectual fights. Paul said, “I hear there are schisms among you.”
Your Bible studies may have charts with Greek words, Hebrew words, and a whole lot of stuff, but there is not life in it. You are making people with big fat heads like Martians, but they are not living out the life of Christ.
When Jesus came down to earth, He manifested the glory of God, full of grace and reality. These people had come to the place where they had the grace of God, but they did not have the reality. They stopped looking like Jesus.
They tolerated sexual sin. They had problems suing one another. They had problems with knowledge that puffs up instead of love that edifies. They had problems with selfishness and a lack of love at the Lord’s table. They had problems with ambition interfering with the ministry of the gifts of the Spirit according to the will of God. They became a mess.
Paul had to minister to them, and he sent off his first letter to the Corinthians. Let us stand, as it were, in the middle of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians as a starting point to see what Paul’s burden really is.
We can see that it is glory. Just as in Galatians, Paul said, “I am again in travail for you until Christ be fully formed in you.” Until you come from glory to glory. Paul is concerned for sons of glory.
In 1 Corinthians, I think the word glory is used three times, maybe four. It is all in chapter 15, where it speaks of resurrection. But in 2 Corinthians, glory is used twenty-two times. Glory, glory, glory, glory, glory. That is Gloryland. We are living in Gloryland.
There are different dimensions of glory. First, there is the Lord of glory. In Gloryland, where we live—in Christ, in the new creation—the center is Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. He is the power plant for that glory and that life.
In the center of this land, this new creation, is the Lord of glory, from whom we receive wisdom, righteousness, redemption, and salvation. He is the center of the whole new creation. He is the eternal Lord of glory. We touch eternity every time we touch the Lord.
Then there is future glory:
For momentary, light affliction is producing for us
an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.
How many of you are saving up glory coins in heaven, storing up a weight of glory? That is a funny phrase, because the Hebrew word for glory, kabod, means heavy. Glory is heaviness with the presence of God.
We are getting heavier and heavier—and I do not mean this way. We should be getting more full, more full, more full of God; heavier, heavier, heavier with God. We have this eternal glory. He is storing up things for us.
In the present process, we are going from glory to glory. What does that mean? He is speaking of the intermediate process going on right now. Every time we become a little more Christlike and Christ can be seen in us, that is glory.
Hopefully, next year there will be more glory than there was this year. From glory to glory. Christ in you, the hope of glory. It increases as we live in this land of the new creation.
The wonderful Holy Spirit arranges everything in our lives in order to work that eternal life, that eternal weight of glory, into us.
What is the issue Paul is dealing with in 1 Corinthians, as we turn the corner into 2 Corinthians? Living in the new, fresh creation involves how you walk and who you are.
How do you walk? Are you walking in the flesh, or are you walking in the Spirit? Who are you walking in? Are you walking in the natural man, or are you walking in the spiritual man?
Paul makes a clear distinction between the natural man and the spiritual man. The natural man cannot understand spiritual things. He is speaking about two grades of Christians: the natural man, thinking outwardly, looking outwardly, judging outwardly; and the spiritual man, able to appraise and discern things spiritually.
There is no understanding between the two. While I was going to school, I went to a Baptist school to become a minister. I became a student pastor while I was going to seminary, and when I became pastor of this small church, there were five deacons.
From the first deacons’ board meeting, I saw this thing clearly. We had two men who were spiritual and three men who were natural. Now, can you imagine deacons getting along? They could agree about the color of the rug, but when you came down to spiritually important things, the natural man and the spiritual man were clashing.
That is the second point: Paul says they are in opposition to one another. Can you imagine why Corinth was having such problems? The natural man and the spiritual man were in conflict. If you have conflict in your assembly, it is because there is a natural man in there—people living in the natural man.
The important thing is to know that the line of demarcation between the natural man and the spiritual man is the cross. You cannot go from 1 Corinthians into 2 Corinthians without a true and real experience of the cross.
There is no doubt that the grace of God enabled the Corinthians to do many wonderful things. Today, dear brothers and sisters, we need that outward power of the Holy Spirit that the Corinthians knew. We need those giftings and that pursuit of spiritual things.
But what good is it to have these things if we remain outward in our natural life? Even if we have gifts of the Spirit, but live the natural life, it actually quenches and grieves the Holy Spirit.
Imagine having spiritual gifts and using them in the flesh, quenching and grieving the Holy Spirit, while thinking you are spiritual all the time. The Corinthians had fallen into this because the new creation is a spiritual realm. It is an unseen realm. It is an eternal realm.
There is a need for the complete renewing of the mind from the mold the world tries to put us in. Only the Holy Spirit can renew a man, strengthening his inner man until Christ is formed in him. As is true with an individual, so it is true with the church.
My, my, my, how Paul struggled and agonized over the church in Corinth. There was so much there, but because they were not willing to lay hold of the cross and allow it to work in their lives, they were not manifesting the Lord. They were losing the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Wherever there is conflict in the midst, there is no testimony of Jesus. As they fought and struggled with one another, they lost that testimony. Paul was grieved and trying to minister to them.
In my early Christian days, as a saved man, I learned to use my best efforts to be a preacher and servant of God. I witnessed in every mechanical, human, natural way one possibly could. I had the four spiritual laws, and then the Baptists came out with their five spiritual laws. I used them all.
I went out and preached using my best natural mind. Corinth was trying to serve the Lord with its own strength, in its own flesh, with its own mind. Rather than having the testimony of Christ, they were losing that testimony.
Much of Christianity today is outward stuff—trying to serve outwardly in our own strength, without the Spirit of the Lord leading and dealing in the inner man.
If we do not have a vision of the Lord Jesus Christ perfecting His church and removing every spot and wrinkle, we can easily live a church life that is outward and natural. We need the Lord to save us from such a thing.
In 2 Corinthians, Paul reveals what is on the other side of the cross: that which is going on on resurrection ground, that which is being built in the new creation. Those who have come to live in Christ are now coming into Christ living in them, from glory to glory.
This transition going on—the only word Paul could find for it—is metamorphosis. Paul was agonizing in prayer for these Corinthians.
I remember our dear brother Lance many years ago. He spoke at the Richmond Conference and in a number of churches, mostly charismatic churches. In the seventies, many churches had discovered charismatic gifts and experiences.
I asked Lance on a number of occasions, “What do you think about that Baptist church? It is totally charismatic. Is it going through?” I wanted to praise God and see a good Baptist church. Lance would say, “You know what? The Lord is there, but I do not know if they are going to go through.”
He did not say “go through the cross,” but that is exactly what he meant. Here is a church with great spiritual power and great potential, but are they going to go through? Are they willing to let go of the natural man?
If you have spiritual sensation, you can tell when you are in the natural man and when you are ministering in the natural man. There is something deadly about it. If we are not willing to let that go, or if we deceive ourselves into thinking we are spiritual when in fact we are carnal, the Lord will not approve that ministry.
Second Corinthians 3 shows us that the new covenant ministry and the new creation can only be ministered by the Holy Spirit. New covenant ministry is His realm. The new creation is His workspace. Nobody else can do the work except the Holy Spirit.
The Lord may use a man as a pen to write Christ on the hearts of men, but the ink is the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, we are just scratching up people’s hearts. But if we have the ink filled with the Spirit and are writing on the hearts of men, this is new covenant ministry.
When John the Baptist spoke of Jesus, he said that One was coming who would baptize us in the Holy Spirit and fire. The Holy Spirit came, and the whole new realm began.
This realm is a comprehensive work of the Holy Spirit. It is not limited to only a few things, but it has at least four major aspects.
To be baptized in the Holy Spirit means that when you come to Christ, you are immersed in the Holy Spirit. The Corinthians readily experienced the endowment of power from on high. They were clothed with the power of the Holy Spirit in order to be witnesses to those around them.
The disciples were told to tarry in Jerusalem until they were clothed with power from on high. The Holy Spirit has power to penetrate this world’s darkness with the gospel of light. We who know the Lord need to be immersed in that power of God.
But it is more than that. As we are immersed, He leaves us under the water so long that we end up having to suck in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us.
That is part of the immersion: not only to be clothed outwardly, but to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who begins to lead and work from within as He quickens our spirit, gives us new life, and strengthens us in the inner man.
The third element is that we are baptized in the Holy Spirit and fire. Why do they include that fire? Because when the Holy Spirit immerses somebody in the Holy Spirit, they also experience sanctification and holiness.
Even the Corinthians had an experience of sanctification that separated them, at least outwardly, from worldly Corinth around them. When the Holy Spirit immerses us, there must be a sanctifying fire in our lives.
I love the songs of A. B. Simpson. He speaks of this: “We have a Savior, we have a Sanctifier, we have a Healer, we have a Lord, and we have a soon-coming King: Jesus only.”
Do we have a Sanctifier? The moment I was saved, something began separating me. Have you experienced that? Back in the charismatic days, many people around me experienced the power of the Holy Spirit, but no sanctifying work, because they were not taught what the Holy Spirit does.
The fourth aspect is even more wonderful: the Holy Spirit immerses us all into the one Body of Christ, where we become functioning members of one Body worldwide, baptized by the Spirit into one Body.
What a tremendous work the Holy Spirit does. But it cannot remain merely an outward work, as happened in 1 Corinthians. To get into 2 Corinthians is to make a transition.
In 1 Corinthians, we hear quite a bit about the gift of prophecy. But in 2 Corinthians, we see the ministry of a prophet. What is the difference between the gift of prophecy and the ministry of a prophet? The difference is the life of Christ in that man.
A person can be newly saved and receive the gift of prophecy. We remember Cornelius’s house: while Peter was preaching the gospel, the Holy Spirit came upon those Gentiles and Roman soldiers, and some began to prophesy from the moment they were saved. But that does not mean they were prophets.
Being a prophet involves a transition in which the gift of the Spirit is added to the character of Christ. The words are backed up by the life. A person is a prophet because his life is a prophecy; it is not merely words that are spoken.
This is all within the realm of what is called in 2 Corinthians the ministry of the new covenant. Jeremiah 31 speaks of a day when the Lord would bring His people into a new covenant:
I will put My law within them,
and on their heart I will write it;
and I will be their God,
and they shall be My people;
and their sins and transgressions
I will remember no more.
The Holy Spirit is doing exactly what He says. As it says in Ezekiel 11:19:
I will give them one heart,
and put a new spirit within them.
I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh
and give them a heart of flesh.
A responsive heart. That old stony heart has been thrown out, and you have been given a responsive heart—a heart that listens for the Lord, a heart that listens for the Spirit’s direction. The Holy Spirit is doing this whole thing in you.
In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul says that all this promise of the Old Testament has been fulfilled in the new:
You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men;
being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us,
written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God,
not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves,
but our adequacy is from God,
who also made us adequate as ministers of a new covenant,
not of the letter but of the Spirit;
for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
—2 Corinthians 3:2-6
The new covenant has come. The Holy Spirit has you in that land where He is Lord of all the work He is doing. He is writing Christ on your hearts. He may use a minister, a servant of God, a brother, or a sister as the pen, but it is His ink being indelibly inscribed on your heart.
The Holy Spirit, in this realm in which we live—this new covenant, this new creation—unveils the Lord of glory to us. What a wonderful promise that is. As we behold this glory, we are changed from glory to glory.
I want to emphasize the newness and freshness of the new creation. We touch this when we read 2 Corinthians, and all of it is being done by the liberating Holy Spirit. We are living on resurrection ground.
The cross has taken us through. We have gone through the Jordan. We are in the promised land. We are on resurrection ground. Things are done differently. They are led by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit of God is the new wine, the fresh wine, and we are the new wineskins. Fresh, new, full of life. But there cannot be any old man, fleshly man, or natural man allowed. This is a new creation. This is a fresh creation.
We need to grasp this more fully. Otherwise, we feel like foreigners in this new land and do not understand how things work in this new place. The Holy Spirit needs to show us the parameters of the new creation: glory to glory.
The Lord of glory is revealed to us in ever-fresh and new ways. As we open the mirror, suddenly the Word becomes Lord, and we see something new. As we see something new, transformation goes on in our lives by the Spirit of God, from glory to glory.
The Holy Spirit distributes gifts as He wants. But imagine that we are fresh, that we are new wineskins. Can you imagine how wonderful it is to live and gather in such a condition?
What if we had many gifts of the Holy Spirit, all directed by the Holy Spirit through the lives of Christlike people? What a ministration that would be. We would gather into such life that it would be abounding and overflowing with freshness.
Imagine a time of fellowship where we gather and do not have thirty-six minutes of silence, then one man takes over for the last fifteen minutes. What if we had a time of fellowship better than 1 Corinthians 14, because people were sharing whom they had met of Christ?
Someone says, “I have seen a little more length of Christ.” Somebody says, “I have seen a little more width of Christ.” Somebody else says, “I have seen a little more depth of Christ.” As we share Christ with one another—for that is what fellowship is—we are brought into a whole new realm of height, width, depth, and length.
Can you imagine new covenant ministry? Each person who ministered—any brother or sister who ministered the Word—would be a pen in the hand of the Lord, full of the Holy Spirit, writing Christ on our hearts.
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is glorious abundance and liberty. Why is there freshness? Why is there newness? It is because when Christ was upon this earth, He was full of glory that was fresh, new, creative, original, and unpredictable.
Do you think Jesus was boring? Do you think He would have fallen asleep in one of His messages? I do not think so. I know the brothers in your assembly wonder how long you have been sleeping when they get through.
But Jesus’ words were never boring. His actions were always powerful, appropriate, and at the right time. Jesus would slip out when you wanted Him to stay, and He would stay when you wanted Him to slip out. You could not get a handle on Him, but He was totally fresh, new, and original.
His words were so original. He used parables, and people said, “Whoa, whoa, I never understood that before.” Jesus is a creative, original, living genius, and He wants that genius and originality expressed in His Body life—the new creation, fresh.
His energy was exhaustless. He lifted up everybody with whom He spoke. Oh, praise God when something is brand new and fresh.
Just last week in Manhattan, we had a prayer meeting, and a brother came early who is a missionary to an African country. He ministers in a camp that is ninety-nine percent Muslim. That dear brother and his four associates, I think, have been working there for five years.
Five Muslims have been saved. Now they have a church with six people in it: the brother and the five Muslims who have been saved. As he told the story, it oozed with fresh new wine.
They gather and ask, “How should we pray?” They learn the Lord together concerning how to pray. They wondered, “We have no worship songs in our language,” so they got together and started making them up.
You can imagine how simple the songs were: “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” But whatever they had, it was original. As he told the story, the wine just poured out. You saw this church in a new creation, learning how to worship, learning how to study the Bible, learning how to pray.
Are we the same, or are we fresh?
The cross has to deal with our natural man, or our assembly life is boxed in—boxed into tradition, boxed into sameness, boxed in and grieving and quenching the Holy Spirit.
You can name denominational boxes. Every once in a while, I let it slip that I went to Baptist cemetery instead of seminary. Do you know why I say cemetery? Because four years later, I came out a Baptist box. I was boxed in.
I did everything Baptist. In preaching class, you had to preach in ten minutes, and you were graded on how well you preached. Three points and a poem, everybody, because that was the way Baptists did it: three points and a poem.
We knew exactly how to worship: two hymns on the board, then take up the offering, then I preach for a while, then the last hymn, and everybody goes home. That was our worship service. It was all Baptist-boxed.
We had missionaries, pastors, and deacons. We did not have elders or anything. No, we had our Baptist box just the way we wanted it. When I came out of cemetery, I was all boxed in.
But our fellowship life can be boxed in. When it gets boxed in, it gets musty. What is that—mold? Why do so many churches smell like mold? I do not know. Meetings are predictable. Messages are always twenty minutes longer than they should be. Prayer meetings are grueling exercises.
Only the Holy Spirit can set us free from such a box. Are we living in the new creation? Each of us has a most unique experience and life of Christ to share with one another. Why put it in a few simple stereotypical boxes?
If we follow the Spirit’s anointing, there is life, freshness, and newness. Even when we are sharing old things, they are still new.
After sharing seven parables in Matthew 13, Jesus said:
Every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven
is like a steward who brings forth out of his treasure
things new and old.
—Matthew 13:52
You can bring old things out in a fresh way if you are a steward of the kingdom of God. We are not talking about novelty. We are not talking about making things up.
There was once a church called the Church of What’s Happening Now. They wanted all the latest things, all the latest gizmos, all the latest worship. You know what? The church of what’s happening now is not happening anymore.
Novelty is not what we are talking about—just being original and doing something new. No, no, no. It is getting out of the box as we get out of our natural man and our old way of doing things, asking the Lord to show us His fresh way.
Would it not be a great revival in our assemblies if our brothers who ministered did so out of freshness—were a pen in the hand of the Lord, while the Holy Spirit wrote with His ink?
We have parameters. If you are speaking on Sunday, you have to speak an hour and ten minutes. That became a line for us when we had ninety-minute tapes. If you ran out of cassette, your message was over. So now a message is always ninety minutes long. How did we ever get there? I do not know.
How long should your message be? As long as there is life. If it is two hours, let it be two hours. But some brothers keep writing and writing, the ink runs out, and they keep going.
Oh, we suffer. My heart gets scratched up with an old scroll pen that has no ink in it. Brothers, we need freshness—something from heaven that you have seen from the unveiled Christ. If it is ten minutes long and living, it will satisfy our hearts.
There is no such thing as a time limit. A prayer meeting may go all night, but it should not be dead all night long. We have people who spend so long talking about what they want to pray about that we do not have any more time to pray.
In so many ways, we need to allow the Lord to pour fresh wine into these wineskins because we are in the new creation. This is to be a life that you enjoy fellowshipping, because the Lord is there in some creative and fresh way.
I want to end by giving us a look into something in 2 Corinthians. I want us to look at Paul’s testimony from another angle.
One reason for writing 2 Corinthians was that certain brothers accused Paul of not being honest, of being duplicitous, two-faced, poor in speech, having wrong motives, and bragging too much.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10:7:
You are looking at things as they are outwardly.
If anyone is confident in himself that he is Christ’s,
let him consider this again within himself,
that just as he is Christ’s, so also are we.
If you judged Paul outwardly, he was not the tallest man. He was bald. His voice may have been a little squeaky. He may have had difficulty walking because of all the times he had been stoned and suffered other things. He was not necessarily a nice man to look at.
Those who judged him outwardly despised him. But Paul said, “You are looking at things as they are outwardly.” The Corinthians were what I call an adolescent fellowship.
What is the problem with a teenage boy of sixteen? He suddenly looks at his dad and criticizes everything: the way he parts his hair, how stupid he is, the clothes he wears, and the fact that he knows nothing about the digital social media empire.
A child gets around fifteen or sixteen, and that is when you enter into omniscience. Suddenly, you look at your dad from the outside and say, “Dad, please.” Or, as the girls always say, “Please, Dad, do not meet me at the mall. I do not want to be embarrassed.”
The church in Corinth was going through adolescence, looking at Paul as an outward man. How did Paul respond? He shared his inward man. In his inward man, you see Paul the new creation. You see Paul, the minister of the new covenant.
We know Paul was an apostle, probably a prophet, a teacher, an evangelist, a spiritual father, and many other things. But those are outward labels. What Paul conveys in 2 Corinthians is fresh and unique.
In chapter 1, Paul is a comforter who has learned from the Comforter. Are you a comforter in the Body of Christ?
In chapter 2, he is the fragrance and aroma of Christ unto God. His life exuded a fragrance before God. Brother Flack’s face glowed like an angel, and the aroma of Christ came off him as it did Paul.
In chapter 3, Paul is a pen, writing Christ on people’s hearts.
In chapter 4, he is a broken vessel, bearing heaven’s treasure.
In chapter 5, he is an ambassador of reconciliation. Oh, for just one ambassador of reconciliation, one peacemaker in the house of God. That was Paul.
In chapter 6, he is a bondservant, willing to die daily to give life to others.
In chapter 7, he is a father sorrowing with tears because he had to administer severe discipline to his adolescent children. Oh, if we had fathers who sorrowed over their children as Paul did over the Corinthians—with tears, yet giving them the discipline they needed.
Paul said, “I was sorrowful, but now that I see it worked, I rejoice.” He was in anguish after writing those hard words that needed to be spoken.
In chapters 8 and 9, he was one who was poor, yet making many rich, as he collected a large charitable offering for the saints in Jerusalem.
In chapter 10, he was a warrior with divinely powerful weapons to tear down the boxes of Christians, to tear down strongholds, and bring carnal minds captive to Christ. What a powerful intercessory warrior.
In chapter 11, he was a jealous steward, standing in the light of the soon coming of the Lord Jesus and jealous to keep that virgin bride a virgin—not allowing the virgin bride of Christ to be deceived by other spirits.
In chapter 12, he was a man in Christ, caught up in ecstasy in the third heaven, and also a man in Christ, pierced in his flesh by a humbling thorn.
In chapter 13, he was a powerful servant, given full anointing and authority, but only for building up and not for tearing down.
That is the life of the new covenant. You may not be able to put your life in a box: “You are an apostle. You are a prophet. You are a pastor. You are a teacher.” No, but can you exude the life of Christ as a comforter, as an aroma, as a pen used by the Lord, as a broken vessel, as an ambassador?
This is the new covenant. This is the new creation. What originality. Every one of those manifestations Paul mentions, as he bears his soul and life before the saints, is Christ. You can see Christ in him as he pours himself out in those ways.
Let me finish by asking two questions as we deal with living in the new creation. First, I am going to assume you are out of 1 Corinthians and into 2 Corinthians now, are you not?
I hope you do not want to lag behind in the old era and the old natural mind, thinking you know what is best. There is death in that. The Lord will not allow that to live and stay in the church. He will throttle that thing right down.
No, no, no. We live in the new creation, where the Spirit is leading, the Spirit is in control, and the Spirit is working the character of Christ through individual lives.
Has the Lord of glory been unveiled before your face? Is that glorious transformation from glory to glory going on? I hope you would not say that you are the same this year as you were last year.
Has the Lord been unveiled to you? Have you been in the mirror? Or are you like the foolish person James speaks about, who looks in the mirror, immediately goes away, and forgets what he has seen?
Who gazes and keeps looking in the law of liberty? Are you looking in the mirror? The unveiling of the Lord of glory is shown to us. That is the central part of our being captured and transformed from glory to glory.
Paul implies in 2 Corinthians 3 that just as the Jews, when they read the law, had a veil over their face, Christians who live in the natural man have a veil over the Word. They can read the Word and the letter of the Word, but they cannot get through to see the Lord in the Word.
It is because they are in the natural man. Oh, how the cross needs to work on us. How hungry are you to live in the new covenant? How hungry are you to experience the freshness of the new creation?
Are you willing to lay down preconceived things, look in the mirror, and find the Lord—the Lord of glory? He is captivating when we see Him.
The second question is this: whatever your ministry may be in the Body—whether teaching a Sunday school class, helping with ushering, leading a prayer meeting, or opening the Word at the Lord’s table—are you writing Christ on people’s hearts?
It is easy to write a letter, just the letter of the Word, some knowledge. We read something and say, “Hey, good idea,” and we share it. But no, no, no. If you write Christ indelibly on somebody’s heart, they will never forget it.
You have written something there that is new covenant and will last forever. It does not matter how large or small the audience is, or how young the children may be. Write Christ on their hearts.
Be a pen filled with the Holy Spirit, writing Christ on their hearts, whatever our ministry is in the Body. The Lord wants us to be fresh, new-covenant, alive, new creation.
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. That is not freedom to do whatever you want. It is spiritual liberty, where you are living as a spiritual man: spirit, soul, and body.
If any man is in Christ, he has a fresh start. Old things have passed away. Behold, everything is fresh and new. Whatever way you have been in, whatever denomination or box you have been in, that box is not worthy of the new creation.
Take the limits off. Allow the Holy Spirit to take you through. But it is a land we have never been in before. We have to discover this land for ourselves, not only individually in a new creation, but in the Body of Christ.
It comes as we come before the mirror and say, “Lord, reveal Yourself to us, and pour out Your fresh wine upon us.”
May the Lord do that as we think about this wonderful realm: that we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are metamorphosed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Lord, the Spirit. Amen. May that be the Lord’s way for us.
Oh, Lord, fresh wine, fresh wine we need. Lord, not the old stale things of old, not the things that come out of the old natural man or even the old religious man, but the things that are born by Your Spirit as He is Lord, and there is liberty.
Oh, do bring us. Lord, allow us to let go of the old death clothes. Help us let go of the old wineskins. They have never done us any good. They have only held us down and caused us to quench the Holy Spirit.
Oh, Lord, we want to obey the Holy Spirit. We want to be touched afresh and anew. Oh, Lord, we know that will only come as we behold the Lord of glory in all His freshness.
As it says in Revelation, as a freshly slain Lamb, we see Him, and we find new life. Bring us fully into that life, from glory to glory. We pray in Jesus’ precious name.