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God's Reactions to Man's Defections - Part 2

by T. Austin-Sparks

Part Two

GOD'S METHODS AND MEANS OF RECOVERY

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Reinforcement of Spirituality

The Corner Boards of the Tabernacle - Paul's Letters to Timothy: A Critical Point - Christianity Wholly Spiritual - Spirituality must be Recovered or Reinforced - Spiritual Strength of Christianity at the Beginning - A Dispensational Crisis - Imminent Departure of Paul - Secession from Paul - Spiritual Decline

Chapter 2 - The Divine Reaction

Peril of Moral Laxity - Becoming Behaviour and Apparel in the House of God - Beginnings of Formalism, Institutionalism, Ecclesiasticism, in the Church - Responsible Men in the Church must be Spiritual Men - John's Writings: A Renewed Call to Spirituality - Timothy an Instrument of the Divine Reaction - Weakness and Dependence the Ground for Spirituality - Strength through Grace - All Functions to be Spiritual, not Natural or Official - Endurance only Possible through Spiritual Measure

Chapter 3 - The Divine Resource

Christians are Super-men in Christ

Chapter 4 - The Retrospective Feature

"Remember Jesus Christ" - Christ the Embodiment of Godliness - Incorruptible Life in Christ - The Counter to Corruption - Christ's Knowledge Spiritual, not Academic - Christ's Influence Spiritual, Not Psychic

Chapter 5 - The Spiritual Basis of the Christian Life

Back to the Beginnings - The Gospel of Spirituality - A New Entity - Natural versus Spiritual - The Sovereignty of the Spirit - A New Faculty - The Significance of Pentecost

Chapter 6 - The Testimony Of Jesus

What is the Church? - The Church a Spiritual People - For what does the Church Exist? - The Living Presence of Jesus - Expressing the Nature of Christ - The Holy Spirit Governing from Heaven

Chapter 7 - The Responsibility of The Christian

The Christian as Trustee - The Christian as Warrior - (a) On Active Service - (b) With Undivided Interests - (c) Alongside of Others - The Christian as Athlete - The Christian as Craftsman

Chapter 1 - The Reinforcement of Spirituality

In the life of the people of God, whether individually or corporately, there constantly occur times of crisis, or turning-points. The Old Testament describes many such times of particular and peculiar peril in the life of the Lord's people, and shows how God has moved to meet the situation at such times. This has been true also in the history of the Church, again and again, ever since New Testament times; and it is true in the life of any local company of the Lord's people. When, for some reason, conditions are critical, and a turning-point has been reached, at such a time it is very important to know how the Lord would meet the situation and the need.

The Corner Boards of the Tabernacle

May I remind you of a provision which the Lord made in the construction of the Tabernacle in the wilderness? The Lord gave instructions that, in the erection of the boards of the Tabernacle, at the corners there should be an extra board, reinforcing the turning-points. Of course, corners are always delicate things, perilous things; turning-points are always fraught with great possibilities. You come up to a point where a turn is going to made, a new course is going to be followed, and that turning-point needs to be negotiated with much wisdom and care. Something extra must come in there to cover it. And in that infinite wisdom of God - the recognition not only of the weakness of a corner in natural things, but of the perils connected with turning-points in spiritual life - the Lord made and makes a provision; He covers it, prescribes for it. As in the boards of the Tabernacle, there must be some real reinforcement at that delicate and dangerous point of crisis.

Let us just dwell for a moment or two upon the Tabernacle; we shall come back to it again presently. You know that it was, in type, the shrine of God's testimony. It is called the "Tabernacle of testimony", or "The Testimony". In type it was what Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, calls "the mystery of Christ" - the shrine of the mystery of Christ into which no natural eyes may peer. And in this shrine of the testimony of God concerning His Son, Jesus Christ, there are these turning-points; and because this testimony is involved, they are, as we have said, always precarious places and times. If something goes wrong here, if something goes wrong at this juncture, it is going to have very serious effects in the future. The next phase of things is going to be affected by what happens as we turn this corner, by just how far we negotiate this present difficult situation - whether in our lives, or in the work of God, or in the history of the Lord's people, locally or generally. The future is involved.

We have come up to this point: here are the boards all leading up to it, and from this point onwards a new course has to be taken; but oh, this new course has got to be very, very carefully safeguarded. All that has been in the past, all the labour, the work, the suffering and the cost, may be hazarded at a point of crisis by any weakness or lack of care, when we come to this issue. All the future may be made unsafe, weak, clouded by regrets, if this turning-point is unguarded.

Paul's Letters to Timothy: A Critical Point

Now it is with such a turning-point in the Church's history, and with the Lord's way of handling it, that we are confronted when we take up Paul's two letters to Timothy. We find ourselves at one of the major turning-points in the history of the Church - a turning-point fraught with momentous issues; and those issues have thrown their shadows right down the centuries to the present day. We need to know what was God's provision - which remains as His provision - to meet that which came in at the turn of the road then. For the values that we have given us here in these two letters - and you will never call them 'little' letters again, if ever you have - were meant to cover this whole age, because the Holy Spirit, who gave these letters through Paul, foresaw the far-reaching effects of what was happening. And what is of general and comprehensive importance here has its own application to all those minor crises that occur in our own personal lives, or in our life together as God's people.

Such a crisis, then, was the occasion of Paul writing these two letters to Timothy. And may I say again, for I do want to make clear this very, very important thing: this is an inclusive and comprehensive example of all crises in the spiritual life, an example in principle and in nature: that is, it has all the features of any spiritual crisis, and it therefore contains all God's method and means of meeting any spiritual crisis. We are not just dealing with Church history - we are dealing with our own history. We need to be met at that very point in our own spiritual lives.

Inclusively, then, the Divine method of meeting any critical situation is - what? It is the reinforcement of fundamental and essential realities. That is what these two letters contain. The reinforcement of the boards at the corner, in the re-INforcement - and ENforcement, if you like, for Paul commands here, as well as exhorts - of fundamental and essential realities, is God's inclusive method of dealing with any threat, or any possibility, or any actual change in the course of things. And there is one all-comprehending fundamental of true Christianity, and that is spirituality - its essentially spiritual nature. So that God's method in meeting any critical situation in the Christian life is to reinforce, or to recover, spirituality.

Christianity Wholly Spiritual

For true Christianity, from its very beginning, through all its growth, to its final perfecting, is wholly spiritual. A true Christian is fundamentally and essentially, by his very being and existence, a spiritual person. All our growth in grace is not the growth of time, of years, or of the acquiring of knowledge about the things of God. True growth is just our own spiritual growth, and before God there is no other stature, no other growth. God takes infinite pains to see that our growth is spiritual growth. And the consummation and the perfecting of the life of the Christian is a wholly spiritual thing. For the consummation is a spiritual body. "If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body... that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural" (1 Cor. 15:44,45). Those words, as you know, apply to the resurrection body. "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body" (vs. 44). So it needs a spiritual person to occupy a spiritual body; and if the spiritual body is the consummation of the Christian life, then the Lord would have, not a poor, little spiritual person occupying a consummate body; He would have us full-grown, so that the perfecting of the Christian life is in keeping with its consummation: it must be spiritual.

Everything else in the Christian life is spiritual. As the people are spiritual people by their very birth by the Spirit, so their work and service are spiritual. It is not a matter only of how many things we do, but of the spiritual quality of what we do. There can be tremendous spiritual value intrinsically in a 'small' thing done in the Holy Spirit, while very little may come of a vast amount of feverish activity in what is called Christian work. Everything is judged in Heaven by its spiritual value. The warfare is spiritual; you have no need to be reminded of that. "Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but... against the spiritual hosts of wickedness..." (Eph. 6:12). Our knowledge and our understanding as Christians are spiritual. Our fellowship is spiritual - our relationship with one another is a spiritual relationship, in the unity of the Spirit.

All government amongst Christians is spiritual. It is not autocratic, it is not official - it is spiritual. Very, very few Christians today are able to discern and discriminate between human government and spiritual government in the House of God. They confuse the two, and thereby bring in many, many complications. Government in the Christian realm is spiritual government. Guidance is spiritual guidance "led by the Spirit" (Rom. 8:1-4). The methods and resources of the Church, of Christians, are spiritual methods and resources. All this makes up the comprehensive truth that the fundamental reality of the true Christian life is spirituality: that is, that it is all of the Holy Spirit.

In one of the closing chapters of the prophecies of Ezekiel (47:1-12), there is brought into view the river - the river rising in the sanctuary, broadening and deepening on its way - and on its banks trees, bearing fruit every season, and the leaf unfading. I believe that to be a foreshadowing, a pre-figuring, of what we have in the book of the Acts. The trees are men, planted by God, drawing their life from the river of God. How that river broke out in the sanctuary in the days of the 'Acts'! And how we see the men planted then by God on the banks of that river; and the fruit - how abundant was the fruit! Trees, sustained by heavenly life, carrying on a heavenly testimony: in a word, spiritual people, men and women whose life and resource and everything was the Spirit of God - for it was the Spirit of God who broke out in the sanctuary on the day of Pentecost. God's testimony down the whole course of the river requires spiritual people, drawing upon spiritual resources, and that is what we have there.

Spirituality Must Be Recovered or Reinforced

Now, all the troubles inside of Christianity - and 'Christianity' is a big term; it comprehends a very great deal; you can localise it and personalise it, if you like - all the troubles in Christianity are due to loss or lack of spirituality. God's method, ever and always, in getting over some trouble in us, whether personally or together, locally or in His Church, is always a reinforcement of the spiritual life. We never get over any trouble without some strengthening of our spiritual life. Is that not true? When we are faced with some crisis, we are not going to be able to patch it up, put it right, do something about it outwardly - we have got to come into a new spiritual position about this. We shall never get through until we have got a new spiritual position, or until our spiritual measure has been increased.

It is futile to try to get rid of any troubles in Christianity at large, or locally, or in ourselves, along any other line but God's line: recognising, 'This is a crisis - everything in the future depends upon how we get round this awkward corner, this difficult situation - all the past is going to be jeopardised if we do not negotiate this spiritual situation triumphantly.' How will it be done? By an extra board - by the reinforcement of what has been in the past against the future, holding everything intact by a strengthening of our spiritual life. So the Divine safeguard, or remedy, for every trouble is the reinforcement, or recovery, of spirituality.

Just look again at those boards of the Tabernacle. Firstly, they were made of acacia wood, which is known for its great strength and power of endurance. Secondly, they were of considerable height - ten cubits - which is higher than any man naturally: this is something of greater stature than you or I are naturally - we who comprise the House of God. Thirdly, they were upright, standing on their feet. Those three things are very significant. Here is something that needs strength that is more than ordinary strength, for endurance. Here is something that means stature that is more than ordinary human stature, to rise above. And here is something that must really be on its feet, established.

Spiritual Strength of Christianity at the Beginning

Now you have the New Testament crowded into those few things. And these letters to Timothy, from which we have momentarily digressed, are just full of those very things. How wonderful these things are seen to be in the beginnings, are they not? For, you know, even at the beginning of the Church's history, it was a tremendous corner that was being turned. The coming of Christ Himself represented the biggest crisis in all history. It was a universal turning-point; from that time onward, things were going to change. And into that tremendous crisis right at the beginning the Church was thrown; it was a delicate, dangerous, perilous time. All the succeeding generations would be coloured by how the Church behaved and got through those critical days.

Look at the strength of the human 'boards'! Was it just human strength? Think of Peter only a very little while before: how much could he take, by that fire in the courtyard, with the finger of the maid pointing at him? He just crumpled under it! But look at him - and the others - now! Are these men on their feet? are they standing upright? They are not only standing on their feet in the Lord - they are putting other people on their feet! Look at that poor fellow who has been lying there at the gate all those years, unable to use his feet (Acts 3). Peter takes him by the right hand, and up he comes - he is on his feet right enough! The same thing happens again later (Acts 14:8): they are putting people on their feet.

And out of that grew the rich ministry that we have in the New Testament about being "established". Being established just means 'standing up'. You and I will be no good to the testimony of the Lord unless we are spiritually on our feet, standing up. When we lose our feet, when we break down, when we let go, it means that the testimony is let down. If you have lost your feet, been knocked off your feet, or if you have not been on your feet for a long time, or if you have been up and down over a long period, you will have to have a crisis over this. You have got to get round that corner. All that has been is in the balances with this present issue; all that the Lord would have in the future is made possible, or will be all wrong, unless you get round this corner quickly, and get your feet in the Lord.

You know what I mean by 'getting your feet in the Lord': it is having what Paul calls "full assurance" - "assurance" - that is, about your salvation. For these boards, as you know, were founded in two basic things - two sockets - made of silver. Now silver signifies redemption, and the double testimony under their feet emphasized or reinforced this twice over. Two is always sufficiency of testimony, is it not? - and they were in that. We need to have assurance of our salvation, certainty about this matter. Until that is so, there is no strength and there is no uprightness; there is no endurance, no stature; no measure. And that applies to many other things besides our foundation, our confidence, our faith, our certainty with the Lord. These are things which must really characterize the true Christian. These are the constituents of a spiritual man, or a spiritual Church.

A Dispensational Crisis

Now, if you have been thinking in Timothy's letters, if you know those letters at all, does it not all come back to you? Paul's Lord was making him write those letters on these very things at a time of tremendous crisis. The whole crisis in Christianity, at this turning-point in its history, was focused in this young man himself. These letters to Timothy are nothing less than dispensational in their significance. They contain far more than those favourite texts: "Take thy part in suffering hardship, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 2:3); or, "Fight the good fight of the faith" (1 Tim. 6:12); or, "That the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work" (2 Tim. 3:17); or, "A vessel unto honour... prepared unto every good work" (2 Tim. 2:21).

How we love these fragments! Yes, but do remember that every one of them is set in the background of a crisis for the dispensation, for, until you recognise that, you have not really got the value of the fragments. Why 'take your share of hardship as a good soldier of Christ Jesus'? Because the dispensation hangs upon it, Timothy! This is not only for you, but for the future. Why be "a vessel unto honour", why "lay hold on eternal life", why "fight the good fight"? There are far, far-reaching issues at stake, right on to the end of Christianity's history - that is why! These letters were not written to Timothy just for Timothy's sake, for the time being, to help this young fellow along in his own Christian life. And they were certainly not written just to give us nice fragments for our own Christian life. These letters were written at a most critical time in Christianity's history, and all their fragments relate to that.

Imminent Departure of Paul

Now take the fragments in their setting, and they acquire new meaning, new significance. You will understand why Paul is so serious - his appeals, his exhortations; his repeated "O man of God", "O man of God" (1 Tim. 6:11; 2 Tim. 3:17). Was there a crisis on? Well, there are plenty of proofs in the letters themselves of that fact. You can pick out some of the indications. First of all, be reminded that these were the last writings of the Apostle. The second letter was probably the last thing that Paul ever wrote, and he wrote it within perhaps hours of his execution. Paul is going, Paul is passing from this scene; Paul's personal ministry, in word and in writing, is coming to a close. There is going to be a real loss and a real gap, tremendous loss to the Church. It is a crisis. If God takes away any servant of His through whom He has met His people in some rich, full way, there is always a great gap, and that gap does not become smaller as time goes on. You are always wishing that that servant of God were back to help; you are always saying, 'Now what would he say, what would he do?' I do not exaggerate the point. This letter contains this. Paul says: "I am already being offered up" (2 Tim. 4:6). Is that a crisis? Well, if it is - and it is - we need something, Paul, from the Lord to meet this situation. The Lord must reinforce us at this turn in the road.

Secession from Paul

And these letters do that! You see that, as we go on. Ah, but not only so - the letters reveal a secession from Paul. He cries: "all that are in Asia turned away from me" (1 Tim. 1:15). And, although we know that some did leave him because it was too costly to stay with him, and that the peril of his death was overshadowing any association, it is difficult, in looking into this matter, not to conclude that the turning from Paul by those in Asia was on DOCTRINAL GROUNDS. You say, 'Where have you the evidence for that?' The evidence is abundant, and will be brought forward presently. There is a secession from Paul because of his teachings, his line of things; because of the standard that he has raised, because of the level that he has insisted upon. They cannot go on with Paul, and that is a crisis. Anticipating somewhat, we may go further, and say that the outcome of that secession from Paul may be seen in the first chapters of the book of the Revelation. The condition of the very churches in Asia that Paul had been used to bring into being, beginning with Ephesus, of which Timothy was the overseer - the condition of those churches in the first chapters of the Revelation is seen to be resultant upon their turning from the man whom God had used to bring them into being. It is a very critical thing to let go something that God has done, to lower your standard. We shall come back later to consider how terribly the standard was lowered. It is most dangerous, it represents a tremendous crisis, to weaken on anything that the Lord has shown to be His will. So, they were leaving Paul.

Spiritual Decline

And then, look at the change in the nature of things indicated by these letters. They are just full of a lowering level of spiritual life, in every way, a loss of spirituality, a decline. It is a crisis. Without going into details, all I will say at this point is this: that, where God has given richly, where God has given in any fullness, where God has called to anything more than the nominal and shown His mind to be spiritual fullness, the peril is always present of losing, letting go, declining, dropping away to some lower level, perhaps because of the cost of going on, or for some other reason. This peril is always present.

Now I come back for a moment to where we started: reinforcement. The Lord is always seeking to strengthen our spirituality in order to guard against these threats and perils which are ever imminent, never far away. And is it not impressive that, when there is a time of danger, of peril, of a threat, of a crisis in the spiritual life, the Lord puts us into such a state of agony and suffering and distress that we have got to get a new position with Him altogether, or we shall not get through? How faithful He is! Because of a threat, because of a danger, He may plunge us right into a sea of difficulty and trial, in order to strengthen our swimming powers, to get us into some fuller measure, so that we shall not so easily be caught there again. When anything like that reappears, we shall recognise it for what it is, and know that we have got to keep our feet, keep our balance, keep steady.

So these letters are just full of exhortations to Timothy "Be strong", in other words 'Be steady'; "Take your share of hardship"; "Lay hold on eternal life" - all because of what Timothy signifies in the whole dispensation.

Chapter 2 - The Divine Reaction

Let us consider a little further some of the indications of the existence of a real crisis at the time when Paul wrote these letters to Timothy. We have noted the first feature of that crisis in the imminent departure and withdrawal of Paul himself from the scene. Undoubtedly the Apostle was writing largely for that very reason. The things he was saying to Timothy were said largely because he was going. These things needed saying, because the responsibility was going to be left to others, and to Timothy in a particular way. It constituted a very big change that Timothy and the faithful men mentioned by the Apostle (2 Tim. 2:2) were to take up the work and the responsibility, to stand in the place that Paul had occupied. And so the Apostle was laying the burden very heavily upon Timothy and these others, because of his near-at-hand departure.

Then we took note of that secession from himself, to which he refers. All those who were in Asia had turned from him; they were no longer prepared to follow Paul, no longer standing with him in the truth and purpose for which he had given his life, no longer faithful to the great revelation which God had given him. Perhaps they did not have an adequate apprehension of how great a thing it was that had come through Paul. For it is difficult to believe that anyone who had a real apprehension of the greatness of those things could turn away like this. However, be that as it may, they were leaving Paul, which meant that they were leaving what Paul had sought to realise.

Peril of Moral Laxity

Furthermore, we began to note the change toward a real state of spiritual depreciation, indicated by the content of these two letters. I will not turn you to every fragment and every passage indicative of these things, but it does not take very long to read these letters, and I would suggest that, after having had it pointed out, you take them up anew and read them carefully. Read them again and again. The Apostle refers to some things that are worse than sad or grievous - they are quite evil. There are things creeping in and having a place amongst Christians, such as moral laxity - carelessness in moral conduct and relationships; truly a sign of a lowering of spiritual temper, temperature, standard. The beginnings of it, so far as the Church, so far as Christianity was concerned, are traceable in these letters. The Apostle is saying, in effect: 'These two things cannot go together: spirituality - a real, true spiritual life - and moral laxity.'

Perhaps you think that that is a terrible subject even to mention. I do not know whether that is so, but the world is a terrible place, a terrible place, morally, and we all have to live here. The atmosphere is full of it, the papers are full of it, and it is not always easy to keep that atmosphere, if not that kind of life, altogether at bay. It insinuates itself, and it is a very, very persistent means employed by the Devil to ruin the spiritual life. The enemy will not scruple to catch the people of God on the line of moral laxity, and if he can do that, he has ruined their testimony.

You remember that we began our last chapter by referring to the Tabernacle as the shrine of the testimony of God, and to God's recognition of the need to reinforce the corners, the turning-points - that is, to reinforce spirituality against the perils and dangers of a corner, a change-round from one line to another. You see, it is the TESTIMONY that is involved. And let me say this: that, far from being the least involved, or the most immune, Christian people are more in danger of this very thing than anyone else. If the enemy can get a Christian on that low level of life, at that point, he has struck a masterblow. If he can get a servant of God overcome there, he has surely consolidated his ground against the testimony of Jesus. Therein is a long and terrible history; it explains much. Hence - 'Timothy, Timothy, "flee youthful lusts" (2 Tim. 2:22): beware of the encroachment and inroads of this moral laxity that is in the world - flee from it.' Is that an unnecessary word? Forgive me, if you think so. But we have got to reinforce against anything like that for the testimony's sake.

Becoming Behaviour and Apparel in the House of God

But that is not the whole of it. I must say here some things that I would rather not say, and if they do not apply to you personally, your enlightenment and being made aware may be helpful to some others in danger. For another feature of the change and the lowering level of spirituality marked in this letter is unbecoming behaviour in the House of God. The House of God is mentioned, as you notice here, and one of Paul's emphatic words here is "how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God" (1 Tim. 3:15); that is why he wrote this. There is such a thing as unbecoming behaviour. And he touches upon the women - the women with unbecoming dress, or lack of becoming dress. Now that is not something that we like to mention but should it not be mentioned? It is a mark of poor spiritual life, of a low spiritual level, when that happens; these things are a barometer of spiritual life. For spirituality is pre-eminently practical. When we speak of 'spiritual' things and 'spirituality', people sometimes make a joke of it and say, 'Oh, they are so spiritual!' Well, if you can think or talk like that, you have not any idea of what spirituality is. Spirituality is tremendously practical: it touches your dress, it touches your behaviour, it touches your conduct as a Christian! Spirituality says, 'You will not overdo it and you will not underdo it; you will have a proper, dignified behaviour'. That is what is here.

But is it not a pity that these things which Paul wrote, concerning women, sisters, for instance, have been taken out and made subjects in themselves, so that Paul has been reproached that he ever said such things? That is complete mishandling. Why not recognise that this is set in a decline of Christianity, and that these things are marks of spiritual decline? That is why they have to be spoken about; they are not things in themselves. Naturally, you may have your feelings about them. You might, for instance, be called old-fashioned, not up-to-date; you have not moved with the times. But if you are spiritual, you will have another kind of argument. You will not be behind the times, and you will not be moving with the times: you will be moving with Heaven, and that is a different standard altogether.

Beginnings of Formalism, Institutionalism, Ecclesiasticism, in the Church

Let us note other indications in these letters. On the outside there was the beginning of an altogether new situation with Christianity itself. We here have quite clearly indicated the beginning of ecclesiasticism, clericalism, formalism, officialdom in Christian orders. It is all here, it has started. Paul died, Paul was executed, and there was a period of some twenty-five years without any historical record of what was happening. Then we come to the writings of John, followed by silence again. And then men began to write, and we have the writings of men called the Fathers. What do we find? Immediately they begin to write, at the end of the first Christian century, we find that clericalism is in full force and so is ecclesiasticism. The whole principle of spiritual men as overseers has been resolved into a system of prelates, bishops, and what not - a non-New Testament system. This is officialdom: men in high position ecclesiastically, governing in an official way. It has come; here are the beginnings. That which was spiritual - spiritual men, men of God, functioning as overseers of the Church and of the churches, because they were spiritual men - has now given place to men who are officials, ecclesiastics, clerics, and so on. A tremendous change has taken place, and it has come right down through all the Church's history.

The Christian ordinances were changed and the Christian doctrines were changed. The ordinance of baptism, for instance, was changed at the end of the first century. I am not going to enlarge upon these things; I am taking them as indications of a change - the turning of a corner - the coming in now of something organized in the place of that which was organic, of something institutional in the place of that which was spiritual. It is the movement away from what was spontaneous. And how spontaneous it was! In the early days the Church was just springing up and pressing on and expanding and growing by the sheer life that was in it; now it is organized, now it is a self-conscious entity, making its own appointments, and so on. The change led to infinite loss of power, and all the unhappy conditions that we have today.

Responsible Men in the Church Must Be Spiritual Men

Now, the point is that the Holy Spirit saw this encroachment, saw this thing beginning, and sought to react to it. Through Paul He wrote these letters, pointing out that elders and overseers in the Church must be essentially spiritual men: they must be known for their spiritual life and measure, as well as for their moral character; and everything in the House of God must be spiritual in its nature and value, not official. The Lord's word, then, now and ever, is: If you want to recover the power of testimony in this world, recover spirituality! If you want to have that impact and registration which was known at the beginning you must recover the spiritual state which existed at the beginning. Everything must be like THAT, not like this. A man's position in the House of God depends, where God is concerned, on his spiritual value and nothing more. You may dress him up and decorate him and 'lord' him, and call him by this name or that, but with God it is no more than that man's spiritual value that counts.

And what is true in the realm of those in positions of responsibility is true of everyone. Paul calls Timothy a "man of God"; indeed, he makes it personal, and says, "O man of God..." That is because of Timothy's particular position of responsibility; but, mark you, Paul uses that phrase of all others too, in the same writing. Why are the Scriptures given and to whom are they given? Are they only given to Timothy and to overseers and to men in particular responsibility? Not at all. "Every scripture inspired of God is... profitable for" this and that, "that the man of God..." (2 Tim. 3:16,17). Who is that? Every one to whom the Scripture is given is called a "man of God". So, if you have the Scriptures, you come into that category, under that designation; you are supposed to be a man of God, a woman of God. We are all supposed to be 'God's men'. What are God's men, the men of God? Again, that title belongs only to those who are in a spiritual position, not in any formal, official position. They are where they are because of their spiritual life, measure and value. We cannot underline that too strongly.

We thus see something of the crisis involved in this change from what was inward to everything being outward - offices and functions and positions and titles - the introduction of formalism. Paul is bringing it back to where it ought to be - to the person himself, the person herself. That is where he fastens it. In order to recover, and to safeguard, and to protect, responsibility must be in the hands of spiritual men and women.

John's Writings: A Renewed Recall to Spirituality

These are indications of the course of things, of the change that was coming over Christianity, and, as I said earlier, there is so much proof of this. Paul went, but somewhere John was going on. You know that Paul went in the terrific holocaust of persecution that led to John's exile. John is somewhere - and then he writes his Gospel, the Gospel of pre-eminent spirituality. You do not need that I should stay to show that the Gospel written by John was written with the object of bringing things back to spiritual principles. And then he wrote his letters: and John's letters are just full, from beginning to end, of spiritual essentials - life, light, love, and so on. And when you come to his Revelation, and read those chapters containing the Lord's challenge to the churches in Asia - Paul's churches -what do you find? Full development of those things of which we have been speaking! Moral laxity: "thou sufferest the woman Jezebel"; formalism, empty show: "thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead"; and so on. The thing has come about.

But, again, what is the Lord's reaction? It is a reaction to a spiritual position. What are 'overcomers'? Overcomers are simply those who have maintained or recovered spiritual ground. It is not easy, in a world like this, in the present course of things, in Christianity as it has become, to recover or to maintain purely spiritual ground. You will suffer for it, so the Lord said. I venture to say that it is far more difficult to keep a clear, straight spiritual course in the Christian life, than it is to live just as a Christian in this world. To live as a Christian in the world may be difficult, but you will find that there are difficulties in Christianity which you will never encounter from the world. Am I right? Yes, "a man's foes shall be they of his own household" has a very much larger meaning. A spiritual course in Christianity is exceedingly difficult - because of Christians. Christianity has become very largely the enemy of spirituality.

These are strong things to say, but, you see, it is a matter of the effectiveness of testimony, the purity of testimony. I am not at the moment touching upon the doctrinal side of things. A large part of these letters is given up to departure from former doctrine, and I may come to that in some measure later on. What I am concerned with just now is to demonstrate two things: firstly, that this kind of crisis happens, it is the kind of thing that happens again and again, it is a besetting peril all along the line, to drop from the full, high, spiritual level to which the Lord has called, away to something lower and something less; and then, secondly, that God has ever and always reacted, and still does react by trying to get His people on to a more spiritual level of things, to increase their spiritual measure, their spiritual life. It is the only way to overcome, it is the only way to get through and (to come to the letters again) to be able at the end to hand back the deposit to the Lord unspoilt. "O Timothy, guard that which is committed unto thee" (1 Tim. 6:20). 'Guard the deposit! Hand it back at the end, unsullied, unspoilt, undiminished, intact!' Paul, on that very matter, says: "I have finished the course, I have kept the faith" (2 Tim. 4:7) - 'Timothy, take it up and do the same.' That is the effect of it. "Guard that which is committed unto thee" - the deposit of God.

Timothy an Instrument of the Divine Reaction

Now let us come to the Divine reaction more particularly and specifically. I would ask you to take note of this. Timothy himself is at this point being marked out as the instrument of the Divine reaction to the existing trend of things. And Timothy therefore assumes the role of a SIGN. Now, that is not a new idea in the Bible, is it? Ezekiel was told by the Lord that He had made him a sign for the house of Israel (Ezek. 12:6,11; 24:24,27). And Timothy comes into that position or function, as a sign: he must himself be indicative of what spiritual features are, what spirituality is. Let us then look at Timothy - first of all, shall we say, negatively - remembering that he is himself a symbol of things essential to recovery. We are going to find much comfort and help here, all of us. What are these things?

First of all, weakness. You can despise Timothy, if you like; they did that when he was alive. Paul said to him: "Let no man despise thy youth" (1 Tim. 4:12). Naturally, he was despised, and in weakness. Then, dependence. It looked as though Paul was providing him with a set of crutches to help him to keep on his feet! So much of what Paul wrote to Timothy indicated these things about him. Speaking of Timothy naturally, you might say that he was evidently a very timid, nervous sort of young man, who needed all the time to be bucked up. Surely, Timothy must have been very weak, seeing all these things were necessary!

Weakness and Dependence the Ground for Spirituality

Look at it that way, if you like; but there are other ways of looking at it. This is the most suitable and promising ground for spirituality - indeed, it is absolutely essential to the thing that God is after and Paul was after! What shall we say about Timothy? Paul thought a very great deal of him; Paul, who did not usually err in the matter of wisdom and discretion, put Timothy into a very, very important place. Timothy was an apostle, although he was never called that. Timothy was an elder, although he was never called that. But Timothy was more. There was in Timothy a combination of all the functions from an evangelist to a church-builder. "Do the work of an evangelist". He was THE elder amongst the elders of the church at Ephesus - no small responsibility! Think of Ephesus. What was Paul thinking of, sending someone like Timothy to put things right at Ephesus, to take charge in Ephesus, to correct and to build in Ephesus? Preposterous to send a young fellow like that, of this kind!

Well, spiritual and natural abilities are in altogether different worlds! And when God reacts to recover, or acts to provide against a threat, a peril, a danger that has the characteristics we have noted, He brings His instrument down to nothingness - He empties it out and makes it more conscious of its weakness and of its dependence than of anything else. In this greatest of all works of God - the maintaining of His testimony in absolute purity and truth - there is no place whatever, amongst those who are involved, for assumption: for assuming that they are something, or assuming that they can do something, or assuming that they are called to this or that. There is no place, either, for presumption - that is, running ahead of God, running ahead of the Spirit. There is no place for self-importance, for self-sufficiency, for self-assertiveness - no place for any of these things. If you and I are going to be used for spiritual purposes, God will take us in hand to drain us of the last drop of anything like that, until we know that of all men we are the most unfit and unsuited to the thing to which God has called us; that from all natural standpoints we have no right to be in that position at all. That is God's way of making spiritual men and women.

Strength Through Grace

Now, if you are acute in your mental activity, you may have thought you are catching me out on this, because in these letters Paul is telling Timothy he must be strong, and I have just said he must be weak! Paul is as good as telling him he must be full, and I have said he must be empty! Ah, yes, but if Timothy was to be all that Paul said he must be, then it would all be spiritual and not natural. Is that borne out by the context? Of course it is! "Be strong" - but it does not stop there. "Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 2:1). That is not self-strength, that is not natural strength of any kind. "The grace that is in Christ Jesus" - be strong in that. So we see what is the strength in the case of Timothy, as the symbol of God's reactionary method and means in a day of declension. The strength is to be spiritual strength.

That works both ways. It is a word of encouragement to those who are conscious of no strength, who only feel their weakness; as though to say: 'Look here, that is not the criterion, how weak you feel, at all: the criterion is "the grace that is in Christ Jesus".' And it works the other way. If any of us should feel that we can do it, and press into the situation or into the position, and take it on, assuming or presuming, then we are in for a bad time under the hand of God - that is, if we are going to be of any use to the Lord. Any such attitude is going to be emptied out.

All Functions to be Spiritual, Not Natural or Official

"Let no man despise thy youth". Well, then, what is to be the reaction of Timothy when he finds men despising him? Suppose you are a young man: how would you react if you were in his place, and I said: 'Don't you let them despise you! Don't you let them have that attitude toward you!'? What would you do? You could act very much in the flesh, couldn't you? You could begin, as they say in America, to be 'chesty' - peacockish, they mean - and spoil it all by a false dignity, by an artificial personality that is not yourself. Authority in the House of God is spiritual. There is authority about a man or woman who has real spiritual measure, that weighs, that counts, and has influence. They may naturally be despised, but let spiritual measure be found with them, and you will find that in times of difficulty they are the ones to whom people turn. We may touch again upon spiritual authority later.

The knowledge and the understanding are to be spiritual. The office, if you like to use that word, whether it be of elder, overseer, teacher, evangelist, or whatever it is, is to be spiritual, not official. You do that because you are that. It simply comes out because that is how you are spiritually constituted - it is how the Holy Spirit has constituted you. And it is a poor thing to try to be an evangelist, or a teacher, if the Holy Spirit has not constituted you one. Oh, what tragedies we have seen, through people trying to be teachers, or whatever it may be, because they like it, it appeals to them, and the Holy Ghost has not qualified them for it. It is just like the peacock's tail - when it has gone! Still strutting about, but there is nothing behind it! Is there anything more pathetic? What is the good of it all, if it is not of the Holy Ghost?

Endurance Only Possible Through Spiritual Measure

"Endure hardness" - hardship - "as a good soldier" (2 Tim. 2:3, A.V.). Endure. just think for a moment what Timothy was called upon to endure at that time. You perhaps have not any idea of the situation. I have re-read lately the account of those persecutions of the Christians which came about through Nero, and through the Jews - the unspeakable horrors of cruelty to men, to women, to children, to families. I should shock you if I mentioned the inhuman, indescribable atrocities that literally hundreds of thousands of Christians suffered at the hands of those Roman Emperors. When Nero commanded the burning of Rome, a scapegoat had to be found upon whom the blame could be laid, and it was laid upon the Jews: and the Jews said No, it was the Christians; and so the Christians were taken. You are not surprised at the sufferings of the Jews, are you? Not only Christ, but hundreds of thousands of His precious children were tortured in unspeakable agony, for many decades.

Timothy was in the presence of that growing shadow. He knew that his father in Christ was in prison and shortly to suffer death. He knew that those who had been near Paul in Rome had left him. And Paul said: "At my first defence no one took my part, but all forsook me" (2 Tim. 4:16). Timothy was in the presence of that! Endurance! Who COULD endure but by the mighty power of the Spirit? You want spiritual measure for that, you need the enduring power of Christ for that; that is spiritual endurance, not just natural courage.

We see, then, that, at all times of peril to His Church, at all times of danger, when things are threatening, and a change seems to be coming about, the Lord, in the first place, always tries to get His people on to higher spiritual ground: He always seeks to increase spiritual measure, to bring things over from the merely professional and formal on to the ground of spiritual life and spiritual character. And, secondly, He seeks to remind us that we are 'GOD'S MEN': we are not the men of a system, not men of the world, not men of our own natural ambitions - we are God's men. It is significant, is it not, that Timothy's name (Timo-theos) means 'honouring God'. That is the key to everything, as with him, so with us; that is spirituality.

Chapter 3 - The Divine Resource

In thinking about Timothy as himself a symbol of the need, and of God's method of meeting it, we noted, on the one side, the neediness of Timothy - how he is presented in these letters as one in need in every way - and, on the other side, the urge that the Apostle brought to bear upon him, the tremendous responsibility which the Apostle indicated as resting upon him. We noted all the words of exhortation and command, which seemed to make such great demands upon this young man. "O Timothy...", says the Apostle, "I charge thee in the sight of God... and he appeals to him more than once to "Be strong", "Endure hardship as a good soldier", "Give diligence to show thyself approved unto God", and so on. And all this, as we saw, was in the light of the situation which was developing at that time - the terrible, terrible persecution of Christians that was coming about, to which Paul, so soon after writing this last letter, fell a victim - and Timothy knew all about it. It was indeed putting much upon a weak vessel. It was making tremendous demands upon one who, in himself, speaking quite naturally, was not of great account. Even physically he was apparently at a discount, for the Apostle refers to "thine oft infirmities." Evidently Timothy went down under some malady, repeatedly and often.

Well, what did it all amount to? This is the point; we only need to re-emphasize it. Paul was not calling upon Timothy to be more of a man than he was; he was not calling upon him to be a kind of super-man. If we talked to one another like that when we were a bit down under, it would not get us very far. If in our human language we used such expressions as: 'Well now, buck up!' or: 'Now then, none of that, no giving way!' or: 'Remember you are a man, remember you are a responsible person! You ought to behave better than that!' - I do not know how far that would get us. It might make us feel all the worse, thoroughly ashamed of ourselves; such utterly worthless creatures that we wanted to get out of it altogether. And so might Timothy have felt, if this had been what Paul was doing. He might have said, 'Well, Paul evidently does not think much of me; he has got a very poor opinion of me. I am good for nothing - I had better just give it all up.'

But that was not what Paul was doing. It is important to notice this great feature about his letters; we shall probably enlarge upon it in other connections later. Paul was not telling Timothy to be a super-man - for it wanted a super-man to stand up to this situation, to carry this load, to meet these emergencies - or to be more of a man than he was, IN HIMSELF. Paul was indicating to Timothy all the way through that Timothy's very life and work, his ministry and his position of responsibility, rested upon a Divine and supernatural basis. "The gift of God which is in thee..." Paul refers to that more than once in his letters (1 Tim. 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6). "God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness" (2 Tim. 1:7). Read them through again and note this. The strength that Timothy was to have, the ability that was to be his for doing and for enduring, was a strength and an ability which would not come from any spring in himself. He could be, and Paul was calling upon him to be, a super-man - but not in himself. "Be strengthened in the grace that is in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 2:1). He was really being called upon to be and to do far more than any human person could measure up to; far more than was possible even for the best of men, the strongest and the wisest of men - let alone a Timothy! But the Lord never lays upon us an impossibility. If He charges, if He calls or demands, He provides: His is the strength, His is the wisdom.

Christians are Super-men in Christ

Now, without taking that any further, I bring it to this focal point. Difficult as it may be for you and for me to believe it, especially at times, it is true that in a sense, and a very real sense, every Christian is a super-man or a super-woman. Every Christian is supposed to be something that no other person in this world, even at their best, can be. Every Christian is supposed to have knowledge and understanding of that which no other person at their wisest can know. Every Christian is supposed to do what no one outside of Christ can possibly do; and every Christian is supposed to go through what no one else can go through, in the way in which a Christian is supposed to go through it. There are imposed upon Christians demands which are super-human. There are given to Christians resources which are super-natural. The Christian life is super-natural, from start to finish.

It is very important for young Christians to recognise this, and for all of us to call it to mind. When the whole story is told, when we know as we are known, when we see all things clearly and no longer through the glass darkly, the one thought that will, I am sure, overwhelm us will be this: 'It took the infinite power of Almighty God to do that, and I didn't know it!' Our salvation demanded that. Salvation is not the simple little thing that I am afraid many people think it is, or make it out to be. However simple may be the turning-point, there are vast immensities of Divine power lying behind the rebirth of any one soul. And to get that soul right through and bring it at last into His presence, glorified, calls for the "exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward". Thank God, that power is available!

Now is that not true, dear Christian? You have been on the way long enough. You know quite well that you could not have got through; you may have said, 'It is no good, I give it all up', and contemplated another course, looked for a way out - the situation was so difficult, so trying. Indeed, it may even have been worse: perhaps you actually broke down, and went all to pieces. Yet, in spite of everything, in spite of yourself, in spite of the Devil and all his forces, you are here! How do you account for it? Well, there is something to account for it that is not in us, and in that sense we have surmounted a tremendous force of opposition and antagonism to our getting through to a glorious end. I have often said that, when we are there, we shall look at one another and say: 'Well, brother, we are here! You did not expect to be, did you? - but you are here!' Yes, even Timothy will be there. With all that he had to face, and all that was put upon him, he could yet "be strengthened in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." That lifts us above the level of any human possibility.

Let us remember that we are, as Christians, supposed to be something other than, and more wonderful than, any other people in this world, in every way. That wonder may be secret and hidden, not manifest to the world, but it is there. May the Lord help us to lay hold upon that which He has presented to us - for it is miraculous. "Lay hold" says Paul, "on eternal life".

Chapter 4 - The Retrospective Feature

I want at this point to return for a few moments to the matter of the boards of the Tabernacle, referred to in our first chapter, when we saw God's provision for reinforcing the corners, the turning-points, with an extra board. Turning-points or angles are always danger spots, and the Lord has always made special provision for such points in the course of His people's history. It is something to be taken up, if ever you are disposed to do so, in the Bible, and you will see how true it is. I have only to remind you, by way of instance, of the first chapter of the book of Joshua. You could not have any chapter in the Bible which represents a greater reinforcement of everything, taking up the past to carry it on to the future. That was a big turning-point, from the wilderness into the Land, and it certainly needed strength to turn that corner and negotiate that crisis safely.

In using again this illustration of the Tabernacle, the point that I want afresh to indicate is this: that the corners of the Tabernacle may be taken as setting forth an arrival at a certain point. That point had, so to speak, a past. Things had moved up to that point, and from that point there was a future, a new phase, a new course in the road. And the reinforcement at the corner was a taking up of what had been up to that point, and saying, 'Now, we must safeguard that, we must conserve that, we must ratify that; we must be quite sure that that does not suffer loss or is allowed any weakness, in order that everything that is yet to be shall take up those values and continue them in strength.' For God does not intend a fundamental change in things, a change in character, a change of nature, at any point: He just means that all that He has done and given shall be carried on safely and in strength up to and through the next phase.

Now, when we come to these letters of Paul to Timothy, we have to recognise that they are the last writings of the Apostle - a fact which in itself represents a corner being turned, one phase closing and another phase coming. It was like that; things changed when Paul went. And it was because Paul himself was conscious of this that he wrote to Timothy as he did. These letters are therefore by way of reinforcing the things of God, taking up what has been in the past and confirming and consolidating for the future. That is what God meant by these letters. And so we find in them first of all what we may call a retrospective feature, a look-back to the past. Timothy is taken back, right back to the beginning: to the beginning of Christianity, and to the beginning of his own work and ministry.

"Remember Jesus Christ"

Let us consider the retrospect as to the beginning of Christianity, which is Christ. Paul makes here a very strong and a very comprehensive throw-back to Christ, in two passages - one a recall, the other a very inclusive statement. The first comes in the second letter, chapter two, verse eight: "Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel". "Remember Jesus Christ". We have come to a crisis, we have come to a turn, we have come to a point where things are changing. What is our safeguard at this point? "Remember Jesus Christ". It is only a way of saying: 'Bring HIM into view again.' That is always God's method at any crisis - bring Jesus Christ into view again. Whether it be a crisis in a church, or a personal crisis in our own spiritual lives - "Remember Jesus Christ". How often the Apostle resorted to that method of dealing with difficult situations! At Philippi, for instance, where there was some trouble, some disagreement, some lack of singlemindedness, Paul resorted to this method: "Have this mind in you, which was... in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 2:5).

I will not stay to gather up all the material on this point. Let me just remind you of the big turning-point which we find at the beginning of the book of the Revelation. What a turning-point in the Church's history was there! Remember that the beginning of that book is a representation of Jesus Christ, comprehensively and matchlessly. "Remember Jesus Christ". It is always like that. Suppose you are having a bad time - so bad that it is creating a real crisis for you. "Remember Jesus Christ". It is the greatest help in every such time. Is there some trouble between you and another Christian? "Remember Jesus Christ". Is there trouble in the assembly? "Remember Jesus Christ". The greatest corrective is to REMEMBER JESUS CHRIST.

Christ the Embodiment of Godliness

But here is this other great statement, in the first letter, chapter three, verse sixteen: "And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness" (or 'God-likeness'); "He who was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, received up in glory." That is Christianity in a nutshell, a comprehensive and inclusive representation of everything upon which Christianity rests. There are other fragmentary retrospective features in these letters, but that is enough. The first great throw-back of the Apostle at this point of crisis and danger is to Christ, back to Christ; for Christ is ever the standard, not only backward but forward. At any given point where there are dangers, where changes are threatened, we must refer back to Christ, and from that point we have to carry on what has been of Christ from the beginning.

Here it says that Christ is the embodiment of godliness, or Godlikeness. It is a mystery: 'great is the mystery of God-likeness'. The Greek word (eusebeia) combines the thoughts of worship, devotion, and piety. Here Christ is said to be the inclusive, comprehensive embodiment of all this - God's likeness indeed. Now that has a very practical application in this letter, for the real purpose of God in the Church is God-likeness, or conformity to the likeness of God's Son. It is the great dominating purpose and objective of God in our very lives as His people. How shall we explain or define godliness? It is Christ - the reproduction of Christ, the expression of Christ. It is the bringing of Christ into the present situation. He is the embodiment of godliness.

Incorruptible Life in Christ

Just consider for a moment who Christ is. I am sure that many of us Christians have not really understood Christ - and we do need to understand Him. You see, Christ was more than one man among many, albeit better than the rest, a real improvement on all other men. You might find somewhere a man of very high moral character, of unimpeachable integrity, and you might say, 'A splendid specimen of moral uprightness and goodness - and Jesus goes one better.' No, He is not just one better than the best. He is not one man amongst many, although better than all.

Let me put it another way. The goodness of Jesus was Divine goodness, and not human goodness. It was by Him, Jesus, that life and incorruption were brought to light, through the Gospel (2 Tim. 1:10). The very best specimen of mankind, morally, that you can find is still corruptible: he can still be corrupted - he has the seeds of corruption in his nature. But not so Jesus Christ. There is no corruption, there are no seeds of corruption, in Him. It is incorruptible life that has come with Him. And the life that He gives to the child of God is incorruptible life. That is not ourselves, what we are; it is a distinct gift which, while being in us, is apart from us. And mark you, that is the key to our spiritual survival, in spite of a world of corruption, and a nature of corruption. He has given to us His own incorruptible life. Life and incorruption have been brought to light through the Gospel.

Let me say to young Christians: Be very wary of an insidious deception - partly through unfortunate mistranslations of the Scripture, but more through common language and phraseology about immortality, the 'immortality, of the soul'. The Bible does not teach it! The Bible word, where the translators of the Authorised Version have put 'immortality', is really 'incorruption' (see R.V.) - and incorruption is quite a different thing from what men mean by the immortality of the soul. They lump all men together in this and by their word 'immortality' lift us on to a level to which we do not all belong, and to which we can never come naturally. Incorruption is the TRUE immortality.

But immortality is thought of as continuity of existence, and we will allow that for the soul; but there is a very great difference between continuity of existence and incorruption, incorruptible life. Eternal life is a different thing altogether from just continuity of life. It is a KIND of life, a CHARACTER of life. It is the life which we have IN CHRIST. You see, this goes to the root of the whole matter. We have got to get right back to Jesus Christ. Christ is different from all other men in the essential nature which is in Him; and, when He gives us His own life, we as Christians are different essentially, with the biggest difference possible, from all other creations - because this is an eternal matter.

The Counter to Corruption

Now Paul sees corruption coming into the Church. Moral laxity, and all sorts of things which belong to this fallen creation, to this evil world, were creeping into the Church in Paul's day; corruption was manifesting itself in the life of God's people. What is going to be done about it? "Remember Jesus Christ"! For just consider: you and I have another life, through Christ, and we have got to live on the basis of that life, and to remember that it is not necessary for us to be corrupted. We have in us a life, the mighty life of God, which in Christ has overcome death and corruption, for man. "Remember Jesus Christ"! Remember that, in Jesus Christ, there is that which went through all corruption untainted, and it is still possible - and blessed be God, it has been proved actual again and again - for a child of God to walk in white raiment in the midst of Sodom and Gomorrah. Where Satan's very seat is you may find saints walking in purity. It is the marvellous miracle of the Christian life that we can be subjected to all the filth and all the horror, all the corruption and pollution of this world around us, and still go on, unstained, untainted.

So, when corruption is assailing, is seeping in, remember: your life is a different life from that. That is not your life, that is not for you; that is not your way, that is not the way of Christ. THIS life is not one imposed upon you by law - it is something in you by power. Thank God for this miracle. A young man or young woman, without a great deal of knowledge, instruction, or teaching, or experience, has to go out into this world, and, without another Christian anywhere near, be surrounded by people of the lowest type, and that young man or woman can be kept by the power of God unpolluted. This incorruptible life is very practical. Jesus is different. He is not just better than the rest; He is different, basically different from the rest. That is the truth about Jesus, and that is the truth about the child of God: not only a bit better than other people, but different. The life-principle is different. Is that important? Surely it is, if we are to negotiate this course safely to the end.

"Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments" (Rev. 3:4, A.V.). That is a testimony - "even in Sardis". And it is a throw-back to chapter one of Revelation, where Jesus is seen clothed with a robe down to His feet - the white robe of incorruption. "I am... the Living one; and I became dead, and behold, I am alive unto the ages of the ages" (Rev. 1:17,18, R.V, mg.). So He says, as clothed in this white garment down to the feet. What does it mean? Surely this: that He has been thrown in His death into the cesspool of human iniquity for us - "He was made sin for us, he who knew no sin" - and has come out undefiled, triumphant, in a white robe. And "thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments" - what is that? It is just His victory in the lives of these people in Sardis, where things were morally very, very black indeed. "Remember Jesus Christ".

Young man, if you are shortly going to get your call-up into the Forces, well, you are going into it. You may not find another Christian near to help you. You may be out of touch with all means of grace outwardly; it may mean a crisis for your spiritual life. Many have lost out at that turning-point. "Remember Jesus Christ". Remember - Christ in you is there as the power of an incorruptible life. It is possible for you to go through and come out triumphant because of Jesus Christ. And what is true in that connection is true in all others. You see the difference between Jesus Christ and all other men, even the best. His goodness was a different goodness.

Christ's Knowledge Spiritual, Not Academic

Take a move round to another angle from which to look at Him- His KNOWLEDGE. Now, no one will question or dispute that Jesus had a very wide knowledge, was tremendously well informed, was very rich in His understanding. Everybody in His day had both to recognise and to acknowledge it. Even His critics and enemies raised the question: 'Whence hath this man this knowledge?' He spoke as one having authority, and not as the very knowledgeable men, the Scribes; there was something extra here. But His knowledge was not the knowledge of the schools. He never went to college or to university. He had to work at home, hard and long, for that pittance to keep mother and brothers in food and raiment. He was not able to earn in order to put aside a nest-egg against a rainy day - if that is not mixing metaphors! - for, when it came to going out on His life's work, He could not afford a lodging, He had nowhere to lay His head. He had to work a miracle to pay His taxes.

No wonder they asked: "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" (John 7:15). How does He get this knowledge - knowledge which has extended and exhausted all the brains ever since His day? And they are still at it. Look at all the libraries that have been written on Him and His sayings! - and still we come back and wonder what He meant when He said this and that; we still have not fathomed it. So everybody will acknowledge that He had a very, very large knowledge: but whence was it? We say again: It was not the knowledge of the schools; it was something other and something different and something else. Well, we Christians have the answer; we know. But, mark you, that difference is THE difference between Christ and all others - the 'knowledgeable' people; and the difference between every simplest child of God and the wisest amongst men.

"Remember Jesus Christ". There is a source and a kind of knowledge, by which we can be got through, which all this world's princes of knowledge do not possess. It is a KIND of knowledge. I want to enlarge upon that later, but I am making the statement here. Unless we have this kind of knowledge, this spiritual understanding, this spiritual intelligence - this intelligence which is different, which is other, this mind which is the mind of Christ - we are not going to negotiate these critical corners in Christian life and experience and in the work of God. We need understanding more than the best understanding in this world to get round these crises. How are we going to negotiate this situation? It may be that you are facing such things. You are exercised; you are wondering - How are we going to get round this, how are we going to get through this? Well, there is a kind of knowledge, a kind of understanding, a kind of spiritual intelligence, available to the child of God, that will get us through. That is very true in experience and in history. If we had not known the Lord at certain times, where should we have been? Our knowledge of the Lord saved us. And many times our knowledge of spiritual principles has saved, our knowledge of how God does things has been a tremendous standby in times of need.

Yes, remember Jesus Christ. He had a knowledge which was more than all the knowledge of this world, and different: it was that which He had by the Spirit. These letters are themselves proof positive of this. Here is the new situation arising, and the big question is, How is the Church going to get through this crisis without disaster, without calamity? Well, the letters are just full of a knowledge, are they not, which meets the need: it is the knowledge of Christ. Do you know that Christ is mentioned twelve times in each of these letters? They are very brief letters; you can read them through in a few minutes, both of them; and Christ is referred to 24 times. When you get any word dominant like that, it surely gives a clue to what it is all about. Paul here is coming back with Christ: it is CHRIST, it is CHRIST - He is the One upon whom we should draw.

Christ's Influence Spiritual, Not Psychic

So much, then, for the matter of His knowledge. A word about His INFLUENCE. It is indisputable that He had an immense influence. His presence always made itself felt. He could not be anywhere without it being known that He was there. Without any need for Him to speak, things began to come out; His presence was a powerful presence. That does not need proving or enlarging upon. This mysterious influence and impact - what was it? Some people, of course, have tried to explain it psychologically: that He had a powerful psychic effect upon people. They have summed it all up in the phrase, 'a tremendously strong personality'. Well, they may think that if they like, but that is not the answer. His influence, His impact, was something other than the psychic, something other than just a strong personality. It was essentially SPIRITUAL. Evil spirits recognised His presence - demons cried out in His presence. This is not psychic; these are actual entities and intelligences. It is a registration upon the spiritual world.

Influence is not just a matter of having a strong personality, or being able to make a strong psychic registration wherever you are. That is a false conception of influence. So far as men and this world are concerned, you may be without the training of the schools and all the values of a rich education; you may have had nothing in your birth and inheritance and upbringing to make you an important person or a strong character: and yet you may exercise a very great influence, you may count for something more than all that. It is true again - and here is the miracle of it all - that "God hath chosen the weak things... and the things that are not", that He may destroy, may nullify, may bring down the things that are wise, and the things that are strong, and the things that are. It is so often a, humanly speaking, very insignificant little person who is counting mightily for God. There is a great difference between natural influence and spiritual influence.

In the churches in the book of the Revelation, we find that the testimony had lost its power and its influence in the world; and so it is today, very largely. What is the remedy? It is, as we have sought to indicate, the recovery and the reinforcement of spirituality. Spirituality is a tremendous power. Really spiritual people, be they what they may from this world's standpoint, are the people that count; they are the people of influence, and they are the people that are needed in this world. God needs spiritual men and women for the preserving and carrying on of His testimony. He needs reinforced spirituality. "Remember Jesus Christ". You can only account for Him - in His knowledge, in His influence, as in every other way - by the anointing of the Spirit. "God anointed [Jesus of Nazareth]... who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him" (Acts 10:38). It was the anointing. And we have the anointing - the same anointing. And so His AUTHORITY, to use the word of Scriptures, was not that of personality; it was SPIRITUAL authority. How we need that! His judgment of things, His insight, His power of discrimination, was not just human sagacity, not just a high level of human shrewdness; it was spiritual wisdom. This is what Paul argued out so thoroughly in his first letter to the Corinthians.

The point is this: Jesus Christ, Jesus the Anointed (for that is the meaning of "Christ"), is different, and superior. What was true of Him then is true today. In the way that I have indicated - wisdom, understanding, power, judgment, and everything else - He needs to be brought right into every spiritual crisis. "Remember Jesus Christ". It is all by the anointing. If we have any sense whatever of the real need today in the Church, amongst God's people - yes, and in ourselves - because of things as they are, as they have become, or as they are threatened, do not our hearts beat with Paul's in all this? We can take up Paul's concern. You see, this man just poured out his heart in these letters. There is something of a yearning, if not of a breaking heart, in the way in which Paul here says: "O Timothy" - "O Timothy, guard the deposit". That cry, that ejaculation, that bursting forth of his heart which is found through the letters, not just in that language, but in other forms, reveals Paul's tremendous concern about this matter of spiritual life, the reinforcing of spirituality.

We ought to share that concern with Paul today; we ought to feel like that. Are you concerned about spiritual things? Are you concerned about the way that, speaking generally, things have taken - the declension, the departure, the diversion, the dropping down, the differences, that have come about since the beginning? Are you concerned? Well, remember that it must be not just a sighing and groaning over it, but an intelligent concern, in the full and clear realisation of what the solution is - the reinforcement of spirituality in ourselves and in the Lord's people. May the Lord give us the concern of His servant in this matter!

Chapter 5 - The Spiritual Basis of the Christian Life

We today, as Christians, live in the full development of that which Paul feared. It is very largely - though, thank God, not wholly - present in Christianity today. But it is very necessary to recognise that this is always a persistent tendency in all Christian life. You and I can fall into this peril as easily as anyone else: indeed, to avoid it constitutes the greatest difficulty that any Christian has, and certainly that any body of Christians has - to avoid decline into a merely formal system, merely outward order, into something organized and institutional. All unconsciously, often imperceptibly, we move away from the essential spiritual nature of our life. I think you will recognise that this is a warning that has a place today, as protective and as recovering.

Let us now, through these letters to Timothy, widen our horizon a little, and be led out into the larger realm of this matter. We shall find ourselves moving in a very large sphere in this particular connection. These letters will lead us there quite naturally. We take up again the retrospective feature in these letters, looking back to the beginnings, to the foundations, to the essentials. In our last chapter we were occupied with the look back to Jesus: "Remember Jesus Christ". Now we are going to look back to the real basis of the Christian life, as Jesus showed it; but let us go through Timothy.

Back To The Beginnings

As we look into these letters, we find Paul reminding Timothy - yes, reminding him very forcefully - of certain things which lay right at the very root of his own life and of his service to the Lord. We have fragments like this: 1 Timothy 1:18: "according to the prophecies which went before on thee" - literally, 'the prophecies which led the way to thee'; in modern language, 'in accordance with the prophetic intimations concerning you'. If you look at the context, you will see that the time referred to was when Timothy was coming under the anointing for service, for ministry, for his active part in the Gospel. The Apostle is calling to remembrance the great principle, the great truth and foundation, of his life and work. Further, 1 Timothy 6:20: "O Timothy, guard the deposit". 2 Timothy 1:6: "Keep constantly blazing the gift of God which is in you..."; again it is dated back, as you see, to a particular time. 2 Timothy 2:2: "The things which thou hast heard from me..."; 3:14: "Abide thou in the things which thou hast learned..." You see all this takes Timothy back. Paul is calling up the past, calling up the foundations, calling up what has been. He is, in effect, saying: 'Now, Timothy, this has got to be reinforced, this has got to be consolidated, this has got to be confirmed, in the face of the present tendencies and perils, the present course of things. All this has got to be brought up in a new way, and re-established. We are going round a bend in the road, and that is always a dangerous place and time, and we need on such an occasion to be reinforced with what has been of God in the past.'

Now, I am not going to dwell upon these passages. I am simply taking up this factor of retrospect and résumé, which means confirming that which has been, with the future, this perilous future, in view. What does it all amount to? If you look again more closely, you will find that it all relates to the Holy Spirit. All this means, in effect, that everything at the beginning came by the Spirit; that everything, to use the other word, is by the anointing. 'Timothy, you stand where you are because of that original anointing, because at the beginning the Holy Spirit did something in you and with you. Timothy, your ministry and service so far have been because of the Holy Spirit. Now the threat and the tendency at this time is to depart from that basis, and for another basis of things to come in which is not essentially spiritual - it is something else.' It is very important that we should recognize that. I may say, in parenthesis, that never before in my own life have I seen such a contrast amongst Christians, and in Christianity, as there is today, and it is really the cause and root of all the trouble. It is a difference, not between the Christian and the world, but within Christianity itself, between what is spiritual and what is natural. And it is that that we must look at.

The Gospel Of Spirituality

Now, in order to be helped, we must take our retrospect much further back. We must go right back to John's Gospel. I said earlier that Timothy naturally leads us into a wider realm: and yet Timothy does not lead us back only. You know that John's Gospel was written long after Paul's two letters to Timothy. Although Paul's second letter to Timothy was the last thing that he ever wrote, it was years afterwards that John wrote his Gospel, his Letters and the Revelation. So that Timothy leads us right into the full development of this other thing. I wonder if you have ever really grasped this. We take up our New Testament in the familiar arrangement as we have it, and we say, 'Well, of course, the first things in the New Testament are the four Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John: that is the beginning of the New Testament'; but have you recognized that at least the fourth of those was written long after everything else in the New Testament? If you were compiling the New Testament chronologically, you would have to put John's Gospel right over near the end.

Now do you see what that implies? Why did John write his Gospel, his Letters, and the Revelation, as the last writings of the New Testament age, the apostolic age? The Gospel of John was written when this other kind of Christianity had become almost full-grown - this other kind of Christianity that is not spiritual, but natural. You have got to read John's Gospel in the light of the situation existing in the Church when it was written, otherwise you cannot really get its message, its values. It is a great call-back to spirituality. This Gospel of John is, as we know, the spiritual Gospel. It is not just the earthly life of Jesus: everything here is of spiritual, heavenly and eternal significance, not of earth and time at all.

You notice how it begins. Take the third chapter. The third chapter of John was written when the Church had left its first love, when the Church had left its first position; when Christianity had taken on an altogether different complexion from what it had at the beginning. This chapter is the enunciation of a fundamental principle of the Christian life which needs to be recovered. We know this chapter - or we think we do. Of course, we know the words. Perhaps we are almost wearied with that name, Nicodemus. And yet - I do not exaggerate; please believe me - I speak the truth when I say that I come back to that Gospel of John, after having known it, and read it, and studied it, and spoken on it, for many, many years, and feel that we really have not grasped this - the Church has not grasped what is here. It would be impossible for the present situation amongst Christians and in Christianity in general to exist, if what is in the third chapter of John really obtained! I am not exaggerating; I cannot be too strong about this.

And so, at the risk of touching on things which you think you know, let us look again at these words. We will not read the whole chapter, but consider the following passages. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born anew." (The margin says 'from above'.) "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth...." ('This thing is a mystery to you, you don't know...'): "so is every one that is born of the Spirit."

A New Entity

First of all, you have an entity: "That which is born of the flesh." That is an entity. That is not difficult to understand on the natural side. Every little new-born baby is an entity of the flesh: it is something quite concrete, something quite definite, and you do not find two in every respect alike. So far as the flesh is concerned, and the natural, that which is born is a definite, concrete entity - we know that. And, in just the same way, "that which is born of the Spirit" is a distinct, definite, concrete entity, altogether different, but absolutely real. That entity, born of the Spirit, is something quite definite and altogether distinct from that which is born of the flesh. With the new birth of every child of God, a spiritual entity has been brought into being, different entirely from the entity and the constitution of the natural, but just as real, just as definite.

I repeat: very, very few Christians seem to understand or know this. We have 'joined' something, we have 'joined Christianity', we have 'gone into the Christian religion' - put it how you will. It is something objective; we have come over into some other sphere of interests and activity and life and conduct. That is the idea about Christianity. The Lord Jesus here is saying - what the New Testament confirms through and through - that this is an altogether different thing; this is not one bit of the order of the natural, this is spiritual; the natural and the spiritual belong to two different orders and kingdoms. That is the context of these words. And therefore every born-again child of God is, in the innermost truth of their being, a different entity. It is not that they have 'taken on' something, or 'gone into' something. I have often used the word 'species' - they are a different kind of person in their very being, with another constitution, something constituted by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, all from above.

People are talking nowadays about visiting the moon. At the end of the century men will perhaps have landed on the moon - but not with their bare earthly constitution! No man, just as he is, will ever do that. He will have to have an apparatus which constitutes him, in effect, a different kind of person, in order to live out there. To go into that realm as he is would be disaster, destruction. And you and I will never be able to go to Heaven without a new constitution - and not an artificial one either! No make-up about this! It has got to be constitutional. There is a clear gulf, broad and unbridgeable, between what we are naturally and what we are as children of God.

If you really are a child of God, if you have come to the Lord, if you have really had the experience of salvation, you know that something has happened to you. This is explaining what has happened. And the Holy Spirit says, 'Look here, things have got off that basis.' We have got to get back there. We have got to recognize again this broad line of difference and division between what is natural and what is spiritual in Christianity. There are few things more important than that we as Christians should be able to recognize the fundamental difference between what is natural and what is spiritual. We have a new constitution, a different constitution, by the Holy Spirit.

Natural Versus Spiritual

The natural man is always trying to get things on to a natural basis. He must bring everything on to the basis of natural reason. He must be able to reason the thing through, to comprehend, to compass the thing with his reason. A very great deal of Christianity is just man taking hold of the Bible, of Christian truth, Christian doctrine, Christian things, and interpreting and applying by natural reason. And the Word of God is as distinct as anything can be: the door is closed to that, the door is CLOSED. GOD has closed the door. You are not going to get anything through by the power of your reason, however big it is - not a bit!

Look at our friend, Nicodemus. He stands for all time as an example. "How can a man...? How can these things be?" A good man, a clever man, an intellectual man, a religious man, but outside the door. The door is absolutely closed. Now, you can apply that everywhere. Man may be most devout, most devoted, most religious; he may be a red-hot fundamentalist, a champion of Christian doctrine; and yet it may all be in the realm of his own intellectual power and grip. There is a world that is closed to him, of which he knows little or nothing. He has 'heard the voice', but he 'knows not'. He has heard the sound, and taken the sound as the sum: but there is a mystery that is still outside of his kingdom; and the result of this is that there may be good, yes, devoted, earnest, sincere people, who, living in that realm in Christian things, cannot understand spiritual people, cannot understand the things of the Spirit at all. Spiritual things will always be a mystery, an enigma, to the natural mind.

"Remember Jesus Christ". The difference between Jesus and the Jewish leaders, in their radical and almost fanatical devotion to religion, was not a difference of religion at all. It was not that He was more religious than they. It was the difference between the spiritual and the natural in religion. To them He was an enigma, He was a mystery - and, of course, He was all wrong. He could not be right, for, you see, natural reasoning says this and that; but how off the mark they were. Now do you get the point? It is an exceedingly important one. A real walk with God in the Spirit, while, of course, never contradicting Scripture, but always being consistent with the Word of God, is very often a lonely thing amongst Christians. The tragedy is that it should be so, but it is very often like that. What then is spirituality? It is first of all a fundamental change in the being, in the entity, in the person: that is spirituality. After that, it has many outworkings.

The Sovereignty Of The Spirit

"The wind bloweth where it listeth, 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." A sovereign act of the Spirit. That takes us back to this other fragment: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh", and to that earlier fragment in this Gospel by John, which makes it so clear, so emphatic: "...which were born, not of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (1:13). This is something in the sovereign hands of the Holy Spirit and taken right out of the hands of men. You cannot convert yourself, you cannot convert anyone else; you cannot make yourself into this other creature, this new creation, and you can never make anyone else it. And you can never say when it is to be, either for yourself, or for anyone else. All that is a matter of the sovereign Spirit. If the wind decides to blow, it does not give you notice a day beforehand! It just blows, and when it blows you cannot say, 'You are out-of-date, you have come at the wrong time - this is not a convenient moment!' It blows, and that is all there is to it.

Now here you are touching a principle: the sovereignty of the Spirit, as represented by the sovereignty of the wind. You know quite well that [it] is useless to stand up against the wind when it really decides to blow. Carry that principle over further into the New Testament, and you will read three times: "And the Lord added to the church those that were being saved...", "there were added unto them...", "there were added to the Lord..." Who added? Did the apostles add? Not at all. The Lord added. There is all the difference between our being told to go and join a church, and the Lord adding to Christ, or between our joining what we call a church, and being added to Christ. We cannot join Christ at our own will, just when we want to, or think we will decide to, because being added to Christ involves being re-constituted on a different principle, and that is not in our power at all. It is the Lord Who must do it, so that the adding is His sovereign act: and when He decides to do it, it is wonderful, is it not? And if He does not decide to do it, you can work yourself to death, and nothing will happen. This is the work of the Lord.

Look at the day of Pentecost. The wind blew then - a mighty rushing wind. Was it sovereignty? "And there were added unto them in that day about three thousand souls." This was the sovereignty of the Spirit. How wide and far-reaching is the application of that! Oh, that Christianity were on that fundamental basis today - the absolute sovereignty of the Holy Spirit! Why is it not so? Because of the present sovereignty of the natural, because of the intrusion into Christianity of the natural man.

A New Faculty

Read again John chapter three. As we have seen, we have here a new constitution, a new entity - "that which is born of the Spirit". Here, too, we have the sovereignty of the Spirit: He blows where He will, and there is always a mystery, a glorious mystery, about Him and His work. But notice, further, that it is a matter of capacity. To Nicodemus, the Lord says: "Art thou the teacher of Israel, and understandest not these things? ...We speak that we do know... If I told you earthly things, and ye believe not..." 'Why, if you cannot understand the secret of the wind - and that is a natural phenomenon, that is an earthly thing that belongs to your world of reason - if you cannot cope with that, what will it be when I tell you heavenly things?' "We speak that we do know".

Do you see the point? Here is a difference of capacity, a new and a different faculty of knowledge, of apprehension and comprehension and understanding. It is a spiritual faculty, for spiritual things. I know how familiar this is to many: it is not new; but there is an urgent need that we should bring this again to the whole realm of our Christianity. I am sure that it has not yet been grasped by many Christians, even of long standing in the Christian life, that, by their very constitution as children of God, they are supposed to have a faculty which makes them capable of comprehending and understanding spiritual things that no natural mind can understand. The youngest child of God is supposed to have this faculty. It may not be fully developed, but it is a constituent of their very being. Have you grasped that? And the very presence of that faculty is the basis upon which everything in the Christian life is going to be built. The Holy Spirit only builds upon HIS OWN foundations, upon what HE HIMSELF puts down as a basis. And that basis is a spiritual one: that which is of the Spirit is spiritual. All our growth, therefore, is going to be along the line of spiritual understanding, spiritual knowledge: not the accumulation of a vast amount of truth, or of religious, Christian information, but what the Spirit teaches us. It will be THROUGH THE WORD, but only WHAT THE SPIRIT TEACHES, for He has come for that very purpose.

Now, there must be a link between us and the Holy Spirit, which is in correspondence with Himself, and the link between the Holy Spirit and the born-again child of God is the renewed spirit of the child of God, with this new capacity, so that the child of God, over against the whole world of merely intellectual knowledge, is able to say: 'We know' - "we speak that we do know". It may be very little, but you know, you know now. As far as you have gone, it is a knowledge which is yours, which is new and altogether different. You are able to say: 'I don't know very much, but what I do know, I know; and the way in which I have come to know it is not because it has been presented to me, but because it has happened in me. Something has been done inside; and, although I cannot put it into words or theories, or compose it into a set of ideas, I know - I KNOW!' "We speak that we do know". There is something about spiritual knowledge which is so strong, so settled, so satisfying, so rest-giving. It is a new capacity. What is the difference? "If I have told you earthily things..." That is one realm: what about the heavenly things? 'Now, Nicodemus, with all your wonderful outfit of birth, upbringing, training, education, you are still in the realm of earthly things, and even there they are beyond you. You have not yet come into the realm of heavenly things.' Therefore, "Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born from above."

That is a very, very great need in safeguarding the whole Christian situation and in the recovery of spiritual effectiveness in this world: a fresh discernment of the fundamental difference between the natural and the spiritual - yes, even in Christian things. No one thinks that I am speaking about something that is extra to what is in the Word of God. I am speaking about the necessary faculty given by the Holy Spirit, and the necessary work of the Holy Spirit, in order that we should rightly know the mind of the Spirit in the Word of God. If we get on to any other basis than that, all sorts of things will happen, which will be very sad and very distressing and very wrong. The Holy Spirit said through Paul to Timothy: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God..." Paul is saying, in effect, 'Look here, we must get back to what the Holy Spirit has given, what has come from the Holy Spirit, and what, therefore, is spiritual. We must get back to what God MEANS.'

John 3 is a tremendous offset, not only to the world of the unconverted and un-born-again, but to a great amount of Christianity as we know it, which is clearly not the Christianity of a different entity, of a different constitution, of a different capacity. Let us be sure that with us it is the right thing, and not the false and the imitation.

The Significance Of Pentecost

Let me close with a word of warning. This is not necessarily a special revelation that is given to any particular persons. Be very careful there. It may sound a fine point, but it is a very important one. It does not mean that, because we are so reconstituted and have this other faculty, we get a special revelation. No, it is not a special revelation, but it is a special faculty for knowing what has been revealed.

This is the inclusive and comprehensive meaning of the advent of the Holy Spirit. What took place on the day of Pentecost corresponded, in the history of the Church, to what took place in the personal life of the Lord Jesus at the Jordan. At the Jordan He was baptized, signifying that He was buried, that something was put out of sight. In type, in figure, the natural man goes out of view. He rises in type another man. And then what? Heaven opens, the Spirit descends, and from that point everything is by the Spirit. "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness..." And then to Nazareth: "And He opened the roll, and found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me..." Everything is by the Spirit.

Again, let us be understood correctly. We have not said that in the baptism of Jesus an "old man" literally was buried as in the case of all other believers, but that - sin apart - He was taking representatively the ground that we all have to take in one particular respect, that is that nothing shall be in life that is not of the Father by the Holy Spirit. In Him it was wholly true, but in us it is a position to be taken and then made real as we seek to walk in the Spirit.

And so we come to Pentecost. Has the Church in its representation or nucleus been baptized into His death? Well, look at them! Before they are re-established on resurrection ground, they are baptized into His death right enough. They have come to an end of all natural resources, either for understanding anything, for seeing through anything, or for being able to do anything. They are as good as dead and buried - no prospect, no future. "We hoped..." - we HOPED, in the past tense - "that it was He which should redeem Israel", and that hope has now gone, there is nothing. Yes, they were indeed baptized into His death. But now, on the day of Pentecost, what do we find? They are raised as a vessel, and the Heaven is opened, and the Spirit comes and fills it, and from that time everything is by the Spirit. They had a new knowledge - and how their knowledge grew, even in the Word of God! The Word of God, which was for them the Old Testament, had been so largely a closed book, spiritually. They had only got it in the letter, and they were all wrong in their interpretation of it, as it came to be proved. Now the Bible is new for them, because they are on new ground; potentially in the new day of the Spirit.

Chapter 6 - The Testimony Of Jesus

We have seen that, at the end of the apostolic age, and with the close of the first Christian century, Christianity had completely changed. It had lost its primal, original character and nature. And it was in the consciousness of the onset of this change that the Apostle wrote these letters to Timothy, and sought to indicate the way - the only way, God's way - of keeping the things of God pure, maintaining them according to their original nature. In God's thought for 'Christianity' - I use that wide term for the moment - everything had been, and was intended to be, wholly spiritual; whereas that which was developing was a system - formal, ecclesiastical, outward and so on, ordered, governed, arranged and carried on by man. These letters are a strong appeal for the recovery and maintenance of that wholly spiritual character in every department and every aspect of the life of the Christian community.

Now I have used the large word 'Christianity' and the term 'the Christian community', and I am coming immediately to what they really mean - the proper term for them - for neither of those expressions is used in the New Testament. There is a term for what they are intended to mean, and that term is "the Church". I ask you to look at one or two fragments from these letters which intimate the matter.

"If a man knoweth not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?" (1 Timothy 3:5). We leave the context and immediate application, and just note that this that is called the Church of God is introduced, is referred to, as something that must have been known and recognized, as something taken for granted. There is such a thing as the Church of God. Again: "These things write I unto thee, that thou mayest know how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:14,15). Finally: "Therefore I endure all things for the elect's sake, that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory" (2 Timothy 2:10).

Here then we have, in both letters, attention drawn to the CHURCH. What we have been saying about this turning-point in Christian history, this change which was coming about, this departure from the original character and nature, was a CHURCH matter. It was not just 'Christianity', in that very general term; it was not only that certain Christians were losing out, that a state of spiritual decline had set in with some believers. It was a Church matter. The departure was the departure of the Church. And so these two letters are essentially Church letters: that will become even more clear to you if you just read them through.

Now it is quite clear, from the verses we have just read, that the Apostle was speaking of the Church in more than one conception. He was not saying to Timothy, who was in the church in Ephesus, and had a great responsibility given him by the Apostle in relation to that church, 'Now Ephesus is the church of the living God.' He was not saying that any local church is THE Church. But, to turn it round the other way, he was saying that THE Church as a whole should find its representation in every local church, that what is true of the whole Church, in the mind of God, ought to be true wherever it is found in a local expression. Any local church should be a representation of THE Church as a whole. And then the Apostle brings it down to the individuals, the persons, and, in effect, clearly says, 'Now, any one of you individuals can show what the Church is meant to be, as a whole, or else you can let it down. You are not just individual Christians - yours is a Church responsibility!'

What Is The Church?

This matter is of very great importance in the connection with which we are occupied - God's first supreme thought concerning the Church. What is the Church? That is the first question. I think Paul very definitely gives us the answer in a particular term that he uses. "Therefore I endure all things for the elect's sake..." (2 Timothy 2:10). If you look at the context, you will see that the Apostle takes that back to what he here calls "before times eternal". So the Church is something which is 'elect before times eternal', something quite clearly defined as an elect people, an elect body, which has its roots in eternity past, and therefore is not historical. It is eternal, and therefore it must be spiritual. We may just note one other relevant verse in this connection: "Who saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal..." (2 Tim. 1:9). "Purpose... grace... given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal". So the very first thing is that the Church, according to God's mind, is altogether different from, and above, anything that is historical - anything, that is, that has its beginnings and course and development in time. This is something which has its beginnings in eternity past, and its course is ordered according to the purpose conceived in eternity past. This is something not constituted by man, not brought into being by any human effort whatsoever: this is something which is constituted by the Holy Spirit, the eternal Spirit. And, as we were seeing earlier, that which is constituted by the Holy Spirit is essentially a spiritual thing. "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit."

Now that, as we saw, relates to the new birth of the individual: the individual Christian is essentially constituted a spiritual being by the work of the Holy Spirit. And what is true of the individual is true of the aggregate of the born-anew: the Church is something born of the Holy Spirit and therefore is a spiritual thing. That does not mean that it is abstract. I have heard someone, praying in a meeting, make the petition that the message should not be 'so spiritual that it was hidden and not manifest'. Well, we know exactly what he meant and are in full agreement, and I am not putting him right when I say that it is impossible for anything to be spiritual and not manifest. Can the Holy Spirit be present, active, living, and no one know it? What is spiritual is not just abstract, indefinite; something intangible, in the air, like a vapour or a cloud. What is spiritual is terrific, it is mighty; and so, when the Church was really a spiritual body, it was - and the word can be well applied - it was terrific.

I referred earlier to what the Church encountered, which was developing just at the time that Paul wrote these very letters. It caused his own imprisonment and his own execution, and it was the cause of much that Paul wrote to Timothy about being strong. For Timothy himself had been arrested with Paul and imprisoned, and later released. Paul (or the author of the letter to the Hebrews) wrote: "Know ye that our brother Timothy hath been set at liberty" (Heb. 13:23). But Timothy knew something of what was pending. He needed to be encouraged to be strong. I am referring to what the Church had to encounter in those unspeakable persecutions, horrors diabolical, indescribable, going on for many, many years, with the whole Roman world, the greatest Empire that had been, determined to blot out the name of Jesus of Nazareth by liquidating the last Christian on this earth; and it stood at nothing, human or inhuman, to do it. And when it had done its worst, the Roman Empire went to ashes and the Church rose out of them, triumphant, growing. Yes, anything that is of the Holy Spirit is a tremendous thing; nothing can stand before it. Spirituality, true Divine spirituality - that which is born of the Spirit and filled with the Spirit and governed by the Spirit - is not something abstract: it is a potent force in this universe.

The Church A Spiritual People

So the Church, according to the Divine conception, consists essentially of - indeed is - a spiritual people, and we must somehow get to the place where we see it as God and as Heaven sees it. And that means a tremendous adjustment for us to make. Our practical difficulty is this. In apostolic times, it was quite easy to see the Church as a single entity. Although it was represented in numerous local companies all over the Roman world, yet it was still a single entity: it was not then divided up into the '-ists' and the '-ans' and the '-ians' and the '-ics' and the 'isms' and all the other terminations that we know today. When you speak to Christian people today, they very soon ask you if you are an '-ist', or an '-ic', or an '-an', or an '-ian', and they say I am an... 'ist'. Ah, but there was nothing of that in the Church in the days of the Apostles. Whatever little differences there were amongst the Lord's people locally, the Church as a whole was one entity, everywhere, held together by spiritual ties and by spiritual ministries, but with no central government or sectional government of affiliated bodies. It was just one, everywhere. If you had gone from one province to another, from one country to another, visiting the Christians in every place, they would never have asked you whether you were an '-ist', or an '-ian', or an '-ic' - whether you belonged to some particular group, distinguished by a special name. No, you were a Christian - that was enough. You belonged to the Lord - that was enough.

But, with the closing of the apostolic age, things were changing - changing into what we have today. An altogether wrong and false mentality has grown up around the word 'church'. Most people today, when that word is used, think of one of these things with a special termination, or of some place or building - a 'church' - and that is the mentality that is common. Let us be quite clear: recovery of the original demands an escape from that mentality. Do not misunderstand me: I am not saying you have got to come out of this and that and the other thing - I am saying that you have got to get out of a MENTALITY. We need absolute emancipation from this earth mentality about the Church, into the heavenly standpoint; to see what the Church really is, as God sees it and as Heaven sees it. We must get free of the confusion which has been brought about by the historical institution called 'The Church'.

What is the Church, from Heaven's standpoint? Heaven does not look upon the matter in the light of these titles, and these sections, and these departments, and these bodies, and these divisions; it does not look at it like that at all. Heaven ignores all that, and looks for members of Christ, born-again children of God, spiritual people, in their constitution by new birth and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And wherever Heaven sees those - whether it be in an 'ism', or an '-ic', or an '-an', or anything else - that is the Church, and you and I have got to adjust to that. A CONGREGATION is not the Church, but WITHIN a congregation the Church may be represented by only two people. Out of 100 people gathered in what is called a church, 98 may be unsaved people, though adherents and communicants and all the rest, and two may be born-again ones. Those two are the Church, and the others are not! That is what the Church is. It is constituted by the Holy Spirit bringing through to new birth spiritually-made people.

I said Heaven ignores the other. In a sense that is true, but maybe in another sense it is not true, because Heaven will judge the other as a false thing. In a sense, however, Heaven ignores, and I say this because it is a thing that you and I have got to do: meet people - no matter in what they are; you may not agree with it, you may think it is false; you have got to ignore that - meet people on the ground of Christ, have to do with them, as far as you can, solely on the ground that they belong to the Lord. Our only enquiry has got to be: 'Do you belong to the Lord? are you born again?' That is all. And then, if they say, 'I am a so-and-soist: what are you?', we must reply, 'That does not matter; leave that out. We belong to the Lord: let us be content with this.' Until you and I can do that, we are held in the lifeless grip of a thing that has lost its spiritual power - because it has lost its true identity, its true nature, which was SPIRITUAL. Yes, we must adjust to Heaven's point of view. I am really only giving you the Letter to the Ephesians! That is how it is seen in Heaven.

For What Does The Church Exist?

Well, that is the answer, very inadequately, very briefly, to the question, What is the Church? The second question is: For what does the Church exist? We have it stated for us by Paul here, have we not, in the very words that we have read: "...how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and stay of the truth" - and there ought to be no full period there, only a pause to take a breath - "And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness; He Who was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, received up in glory" (1 Tim. 3:15-16). That is the deposit in the Church; that is the testimony of Jesus. For that the Church exists. It is to that the Apostle refers, you notice, more than once, when he says: "O Timothy, guard that which is committed unto thee..." (1 Tim. 6:20; 2 Tim. 1:14). 'O Timothy, guard the deposit, the trust...' The Church is the repository of the testimony of Jesus.

What is the testimony of Jesus? There are, of course, certain statements about it here, in the passage we have just read. But I am not going to take up these different clauses, because I am not at the moment concerned with Christian doctrine, or with the doctrine of the Church. I am occupied with the Church itself. But I turn you now to the Book of the Revelation, for, as we have said in our last chapter, the writings of John, written after Paul had finished his work and gone to glory, related to the full development of this very thing whose beginnings Paul had witnessed. The Book of the Revelation is peculiarly appropriate to this state of spiritual departure and declension, and you find that the all-governing thing of the whole book is this one phrase: "the testimony of Jesus".

John said that he was "in the isle... called Patmos, for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus" (Rev. 1:9). But there is a Divine sovereignty over the Roman Empire, over the persecutors and over the one who has sent him to Patmos - a Divine sovereignty which says: 'Right, this is what I have brought you here for! They sent you, but I have brought you! This is not their sovereignty that has put you here; this is Mine. I have something to say to the Church, and I have given you a quiet time to say it for Me.' 'I was in the isle that is called Patmos - because the Roman Empire sent me there? because the Roman Emperor sent me there? because the persecutors caught me and sent me there?' Not a bit of it! "I was in the isle... called Patmos... for... the testimony of Jesus". Now that may have been because he had stood for the testimony of Jesus: but it is very impressive, is it not, that that phrase runs through this whole book, and is seen, as we go on, to be the thing by which the Lord is judging, first of all the churches, and then, representatively, the Church as a whole. And, having dealt with the Church on the basis of the testimony of Jesus, He moves on to deal with the nations, and eventually with the Devil himself and his kingdom. It is all related to the testimony of Jesus.

The Living Presence Of Jesus

What is it? Well, the testimony of Jesus is presented to us symbolically right at the beginning of the book, in the declaration - we will leave the symbolism for the moment - made by the Lord Himself. "I am... the Living One... I became dead, and behold, I am alive unto the ages of the ages, and I have the keys of death and of Hades. Write therefore..." What is the testimony of Jesus? The present, living Person of Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. That is where it begins: the living Person of Jesus. Not the historic Jesus of Palestine of centuries ago - no, the right up-to-date, here-and-now living Jesus, manifested, demonstrated, proved to be alive in the power of the Holy Spirit. Is that carrying it too far? Well, then, why, when the seven churches in Asia are challenged, is there the seven times repeated "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches"? The Holy Spirit has got this matter in hand. The Holy Spirit is challenging - not concerning a creed, or a doctrine as such, but concerning the manifestation of the living Christ, there, and there, and there. The testimony of Jesus, whether it be in Ephesus, or Smyrna, or Pergamum, or in any other place, is just this: that the place where that church is - the town, the city, the province - is to know, in the power of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus is alive! That is where it begins. By its very presence, by its very existence, by its very life there in that place, the one thing that people are to know is that they have not got rid of Jesus. They have not been able to put Him out of this world - He is here, alive!

It is very simple; but that is what the Church is here for, after all. The very basic purpose of the Church is in the first place to make this world know that Jesus is alive, not merely declaring the doctrinal fact, but by living in the power of His resurrection. There are times in some countries when the Church is not able to preach and proclaim the truth of Christ, but that is not the end of its power. Even though silenced in words, it can still make known that Jesus is alive. Yes, the testimony of Jesus is: "I am He that LIVETH..."; "the church of the LIVING God, the pillar and stay of the truth..."; but it is more - it is the living victory of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. "I became dead, and behold, I am alive..." never to become dead again. "I have the keys of death...", the mastery, the authority, the power over death. 'I have absolutely triumphed over death and all that occasioned death - sin - in the power of the Holy Spirit.' That is the testimony of Jesus: His living victory, present where Christians are.

Are you thinking that this is all very wonderful and very beautiful, but is this practical? Listen! It is so practical that, if you are a living member of Christ, and if you are in a company of believers, born-again believers, constituted by the Holy Spirit, on this true spiritual basis, you will, without doubt, be taken into situations, conditions, where only the resurrection power of Jesus Christ will get you through! Your very survival will necessitate your knowing the power of His resurrection. For individual believers, from time to time, and for local companies of the Lord's people, just as truly as for the Church universal (as in those days to which I have referred), survival is a testimony to the fact that death has no place here. Death cannot swallow this up - death itself has been swallowed up in victory! What a glorious assurance that is! What a ground of confidence! What an encouragement! We come to times when it looks as though the end has come, we are not going to survive and get through. But never believe it! The life of Jesus was not taken from Him by men: He deliberately laid it down, by His own free will. "This authority", He said, "I received from My Father." The life of Paul was not taken from him by the executioner's axe just outside Rome. "I am already being offered, and the time of my departure is come." Here is a man who knows when it is the Lord's time for him to go to glory: he is just being offered up, and he is handing himself over. Paul never said, 'I am going to be executed, they are going to kill me'; he said, 'I am being offered up'.

If you and I are living on the basis of this One, Who says: "I became dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore" - if we are living in the power of His resurrection, our end will be God-governed, not man-governed. It will be when the Lord says, 'It is enough', not when circumstances dictate. God is in charge of this where His Church is concerned. And so, whatever the world does, whatever men do, and whatever the Devil does with the Church, local or universal, if it is really on this basis, it just cannot be brought to nought. Gamaliel is our standby here, is he not? 'If it is of God, you had better leave it alone; you had better not be found to be fighting against God. Be careful! If it is not of God, well, it will peter out sooner or later; but if it is of God, you can do nothing..." (Acts 5:34-39). And that from a non-Christian! You see the point. This is the Church which is to embody the testimony of Jesus in terms of a life that has conquered death, to be the embodiment of a living victory in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Expressing The Nature Of Christ

And then it is to be the expression of the living nature and character of Jesus in the Holy Spirit. That is far too large a matter for us to consider fully here; it can only be stated. But it must be stated, because, both in these letters to Timothy and in the Revelation, much is made of this matter of the expression of the Lord Jesus in His character. The decline was from a level of character, the departure was from an expression of what Christ is in His nature. We can never, never overcome the world, nor the Devil and all his powers, if that same Devil has got a foothold right in our being, if there is something there that is of himself in moral failure or delinquency. In the power of the same Holy Spirit, you and I have got to exemplify Christ - the Church must exemplify Christ, express what Christ is; not merely give out facts about Christ, but be the embodiment of Christ's nature.

That is why John, coming back at the end of the apostolic age, has so much to say about this matter of love. 'You don't know the Lord', he says, 'if you don't love your brother. It is no use your saying you love the Lord, if you don't love your brother - that is all nonsense'. In other words, it is hypocrisy. 'How can a man love God, Whom he has not seen, if he does not love his brother whom he has seen?' (1 John 4:20). That is John's argument. It is a matter of 'walking in the light as He is in the light' (chapter 1:7). So much of John's writings touches upon this thing. Look at those letters to the seven churches. What they are concerned with is state, condition, with lost spiritual life, in the sense of expressing what Christ is like in His nature. That is the testimony of Jesus. The testimony is lost if you and I are unChrist-like. It is no use using phrases, and making claims: these have to be substantiated by what we are like, and what we are like must be what Christ is like. The Church is for that purpose. It does not merely consist of a set of doctrines to be upheld - although the doctrines must be upheld; not of a number of ordinances to be maintained and repeated, not of congregations of Christians having meetings and conferences. It is to be the embodiment of Christ by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit Governing From Heaven

Now, coming back to the matter of the point of change that we mentioned earlier, the Church in which we find ourselves today, with all its break-up and division, its sectionalism and so on, is so different from what we have just described. How are we going to get over this? Well, it just depends where the seat of government is, does it not? As things are today, there is no one government of the whole Church on this earth, is there? We do not admit the claims of Rome. But it is not true for any section that the headquarters of the Church is any PLACE. The headquarters of THE CHURCH is in Heaven. THE seat of government of THE Church is in Heaven; it is nowhere else. And the Lord will not allow it to be anywhere else. When Jerusalem was beginning to assume the character of a governmental headquarters for the expanding Church, the Lord scattered them to the ends of the earth. No headquarters on earth! Headquarters is in Heaven.

At this point I would like to take you into the Book of the Revelation again, and indicate certain passages, though without staying for much comment on each.

"John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you and peace, from Him Which is and Which was and Which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before His throne..." (Rev. 1:4).

"These things saith He That hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works..." (3:1).

"Out of the throne proceed lightnings and voices and thunders. And there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God" (4: 5).

"I saw in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, having seven horns, and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God..." (5:6).

This book is, as you know, just full of symbols. Here you have these four references to the seven Spirits. It does not, of course, mean that there were seven separate Spirits. Seven is the number of spiritual entirety, completeness, fullness. When you come to the number seven, you have completed something: for instance, the seventh day marked the completion of creation. I need not go further. Seven is spiritual completeness: so that the symbolism here is of the fullness, the completeness, the absoluteness of the Holy Spirit. "These things saith He That hath the seven Spirits..." This that is going to be said is in the authority and the power of the Holy Spirit. HE is in charge of this matter, He it is that is inditing these things that are to be said, He it is that is before the throne. The Holy Spirit, in touch with the seat of government, is dealing with things down here. Have you grasped that? There are all these things down here on the earth, but the throne, the seat of the government of everything, is up there.

Note that the first connection of the seven Spirits is with the throne and with the "seven stars" which are "the angels of the seven churches" (1:16,20; 3:1). The throne of government of things down here is in the hands of the Holy Spirit, in the fullness of His power and intelligence. The "seven eyes" speak of His knowing all about it, seeing perfectly the truth through all the deception, through all the masks, through all the pretence and profession, through the 'name to live'; perfect perception, perfect knowledge, perfect comprehension. The Holy Spirit is governing in the fullness of His knowledge. And in the fullness of His power - "seven lamps of fire burning". This is not cold light, this is not just theoretical knowledge; this is not something abstract. It is a burning lamp, it is something that is alive with fire, with power: He has come to deal with this situation in the burning power of His judgment and of His knowledge. Things are alive with the Holy Spirit.

In order to pass with Him, then, the Holy Spirit requires that everything must be purely spiritual. It has got to be according to the judgment of the HOLY Spirit, the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit operates in relation to "The Lamb in the Throne". That is the testimony in relation to all our sin, and all our failure: it is the Lamb in the throne. But what we are saying is that the Lord's idea of a Church, in any dispensation, in any age, at any time, in any place, is that it is essentially a spiritual thing, essentially a heavenly thing; it is essentially governed by the Holy Spirit. The headquarters are in the throne, and the Holy Spirit administers the Church from Heaven. If He does not, then man will have to administer it himself, and he will make an awful mess of it, as he has done. Oh, for a people, wherever they are - whether local companies or the Lord's people at large - really to be under this government of the Holy Spirit!

I will close by saying this. Every one of us, and young Christians perhaps especially, need to realize this: that, in coming to the Lord, having received Christ as our Saviour, having become a Christian, having been converted - however you may put it - if you have been truly born again, you are not just a Christian individual. You are a part of an eternally foreseen, chosen Body, you belong to a great spiritual, corporate entity, you belong to every other truly born-again child of God. Yours is a related life and not just an individual life. So much depends upon your realizing that! You have not JUST 'become a Christian' - you have become something infinitely more than that. You have become a member of this timeless, heavenly thing, conceived "before times eternal", fulfilling its real vocation when time shall be no more. That is what you have come into! And you have come into a tremendous vocation, to be part of that which is to keep alive the testimony of Jesus in this world.

You see, the Devil and his vast kingdom of countless hosts of evil spirits, as Paul puts it, is out against one thing, and one thing only. From the beginning, when Jesus Christ was "appointed heir of all things" (Heb. 1: 2), Satan has relentlessly and unceasingly set himself to frustrate and spoil and destroy one thing - the testimony of Jesus. And if he divides us up and gets in between us, he has touched the testimony of Jesus, because the testimony of Jesus is so bound up with our united and related life.

Chapter 7 - The Responsibility of The Christian

Our final word will be very simple, but I trust vital. I ask you to look again at the Letters to Timothy, with special reference to four very brief series, or groups, of fragments.

Here is the first series:

1 Tim. 1:11: "...the gospel... which was committed to my trust."

1 Tim. 1:18: "This charge I commit unto thee, my child Timothy..."

1 Tim. 6:20: "O Timothy, guard that which is committed unto thee..."

2 Tim. 1:12: "...I know Him Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to guard that which I have committed unto Him against that day." (You will see that the margin gives the alternative: "He is able to guard that which He hath committed unto me".)

Now the second series:

1 Tim. 1:18: "This charge I commit unto thee... that... thou mayest war the good warfare."

2 Tim. 2:3-4: "Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier on service entangleth himself in the affairs of this life; that he may please Him Who enrolled him as a soldier."

The third series:

2 Tim. 2:5: "And if also a man contend in the games, he is not crowned, except he have contended lawfully."

The fourth series:

2 Tim. 2:15: "Give diligence to present thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, handling aright the word of truth."

I wonder what impression those passages make upon you. Hearing them, reading them, putting them together, what is the conclusion to which you come? What do they say to you? Surely they ought to leave one very definite impression upon us: namely, that THE CHRISTIAN IS A VERY RESPONSIBLE PERSON. Every one of those passages, and indeed, the much more lying behind them and in these letters, does really say very, very clearly and very strongly: We are in a position of tremendous responsibility. The Christian is, in the Word of God, looked upon as being a very responsible person.

When the Lord Jesus and His apostles appealed to people to come along and follow, to be saved, to become Christians, it was never just for their own pleasure, just that they might have a good time. The appeal was never to the pleasure-instinct in people, to the desire for a good time. They never, never made their appeal on that ground at all - that if you are saved, if you become a Christian, you are going to embark upon an endless joy-ride, a whole life of pleasure and gratification. Whatever there may be of good and enjoyment and profit to follow, the appeal of Christ, the appeal of His apostles, the appeal of the Scriptures, is always to people who mean business more than pleasure, who really are prepared to take serious responsibility for the interests of their Lord, and, if needs be, to allow themselves to be involved in trouble or suffering for His sake. They are the people He wants.

The Christian As Trustee

Here, then, we have this many-sided picture of the Christian as in responsibility. Let us take up some of the titles or metaphors used, which give the Divine conception of the Christian, very simply. In the first series, 1 Tim. 1:11: "According to the gospel of the glory of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust"; 1:18: "This charge I commit unto thee, my child Timothy...": 6:20: "O Timothy, guard that which is committed unto thee..." What is this conception of the Christian? The Christian is called to be, has the privilege of being, a trustee for God, a custodian of an infinitely precious deposit, committed to his trust. 'Timothy, you are in trust; Timothy, you are a trustee; Timothy, here is something precious put into your custodianship, given you of God to watch over, to guard for Him.' Paul calls it 'the gospel of the blessed God, which was committed to his trust', and he is passing it on. He has kept it intact, he has guarded it, he has preserved it: it has lost nothing; but he is about to go. 'Timothy, I pass it on to you, I hand it on to you in the Lord's Name. Timothy, guard it. It is for you to see that this Gospel, this wonderful Gospel, suffers no loss by any kind of carelessness, unwatchfulness, indifference, slothfulness, preoccupation or diversion, persecution or suffering, or anything else. Let there come to it nothing to spoil it, no tarnish, no rust, no injury. Timothy, guard it - do not let it suffer loss.' That is the Divine conception of the Christian.

What I want to urge upon you is just this. If you would claim to be a Christian, to belong to the Lord, I would that you would recognize this: that you are put in trust with the Gospel, that you are a trustee of "the gospel of the blessed God", that there rests upon you this solemn obligation to see that it does not suffer in any way through you, because of you, that on no account does it suffer, but that it is preserved in its pristine glory and in its entirety; and that you at the end do what Paul was able to do - pass it on intact, so that there will be those who come after you who will, in their turn, take it up from you and carry it on. Does that sound very simple, very elementary? Paul put his heart into this. 'O Timothy, my child Timothy - this charge, this CHARGE I commit to thee. Guard the deposit, take care of the great trust.' Will you believe, whether you are the youngest Christian or the oldest, or somewhere between, that you are a custodian of the interests of your Lord, and that those great interests can suffer because of you, if you do not take your responsibility seriously?

But that is a very elevating thing - it is a very strengthening thing to realize that, is it not? To feel that God has committed to me His interests, that I stand in this world, not just to be a Christian and try to live a Christian life, but as a responsible trustee of the very interests of God! Whether we like it or not, it is so. If you are a Christian, this great trust, this great Gospel, is suffering or being preserved by you; it is being let down or it is being upheld, whether you like it or not. But why not do what Paul was seeking to get Timothy to do? Realize this, face this, and take it up, as a solemn responsibility before God: 'I am a man with a charge, put in trust, a trustee.'

The Christian As Warrior

The next series of fragments begins with the 18th verse of chapter one of the first letter: "War the good warfare..."; followed by these so familiar words in the second letter, second chapter: "...a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier on service entangleth himself in the affairs of this life; that he may please Him Who enrolled him as a soldier."

(a) On Active Service

There are three ideas bound up with those words. Firstly, of course, the conception of the Christian as a warrior, and of the Christian life and Christian service as a warfare. Perhaps we hardly need to be reminded of that. It may be that you are a really war-scarred warrior: you have been in the fight and the battle has left its marks on you. You know it quite well. And yet it needs to be said - perhaps firstly to those who have newly donned the armour, who have newly come to the Lord. Understand that you have been enrolled in a spiritual army! That is what it says: you have been enrolled in a spiritual army, and your life-business is WAR. You are going to find that out sooner or later, whether you like it or not; but there is the fact. And that is a very responsible position. One, by failure in this warfare, may let down many and affect the whole campaign.

But, although the older ones may know it so well, and feel that you do not need to be reminded, are you sure that you do not? I think I know something about the warfare from experience; and yet, and yet - there is this subtle fact, that very often, when we are in a situation, and things are going on, we begin to blame people and circumstances, and get all worked up, and look for scapegoats, forgetting the reality of this thing - Why, the Devil is after something! Here the battle is on, there is no doubt about it; the air is thick with conflict; and we get our eyes on people and things. We are defeated, we are just beaten, rendered casualties, put out of the fight - simply because we lose sight of the fact, the abiding fact, that we are in a spiritual warfare, and that behind 'things' there are other, spiritual, forces.

We all need to be reminded. It is no small thing, you know, when we are really in a situation like that, and things are getting worked up to a fine pitch and stress, when someone comes along and says, 'Look here, the enemy is in this; he is trying to get you, he knows something or other, he is on your track; let us have some prayer about it'; and we get to prayer, and the whole thing goes. Sometimes just to remind one another of the fact is a tremendous deliverance: we find that it IS a fact. We have been attributing the situation to things and people, and there is all the time something much deeper than that behind it. We need to be reminded continually that we are in a warfare - for we are.

That is the first thing here - this conception of the Christian life - and we must get hold of it and settle it. And, although I don't like saying it, I don't think we are ever going to be out of this warfare here!

(b) With Undivided Interests

The second thing that is in these statements is that, if we are going to wage triumphant spiritual warfare, we must be ALTOGETHER in it. "No soldier on active service" (for that is the literal wording) "entangleth himself with the affairs of this life." He must be DISENTANGLED. One of the enemy's most successful tactics is to get us all tied up, tangled up with all kinds of conflicting things, or with some other interests, dividing us in our life and in our strength and in our application. Now this that Paul says to Timothy here does not mean, 'Look here, you must not go into business - you must come out of business, and be all on spiritual work.' It does not mean that you have got to leave everything else and come and be a full-time worker, or full-time soldier - it does not mean that at all. It is entirely possible - and, though difficult, this is what the Apostle and what the Lord would say to most of us - it is altogether possible for you to pursue your daily employment, and do it conscientiously and thoroughly, as you should, leaving nothing for reproach, while yet at the same time, whether in it, through it, or over it, your supreme interests are spiritual. The really governing things in your life are the Lord's things.

The warfare, then, may be in the daily business. But if you get all churned up and obsessed, you are put out of the war, out of the fight. Inwardly in our hearts there has got to be a disentangled spirit. Now that could be enlarged upon very much. The Apostle is saying: You must not have two dominating interests in life; you can only have one. You must not be a divided person who has, on the one side, interests in the things of the Lord, on the other side, interests in the world. That is no good; you will not be a good soldier if you are like that. If you have to be in this world, and do its work, and follow your profession, your dominating concern must be the interests of the Lord, and in that part of your life you must be disentangled. In a word, one thing over all must predominate; there must be no dividedness of heart or mind. "This one thing I do...", said the Apostle.

(c) Alongside Of Others

And the third factor or feature in these fragments is something which is not observable in our translation. You notice it says: "Suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus..." There are other translations of that clause, such as: "Take your share in suffering hardship..." Neither of them, perhaps, gives the exact sense of the original. This is one of the occasions when Paul uses one of his favourite compounds. You know that Paul was tremendously fond of compound words, and one of his favourite kinds of compound was a whole series of words with the prefix 'syn' to them. 'Syn' means 'together', and what he is saying here is this: 'Look here, Timothy, we are all in it. You are not alone in this; this is a collective matter, this is a corporate matter. This is something which, if it only related to you, might not be very important; you might not think it important enough to be seriously considered. But look here, Timothy, we are together - you must not let me down.'

This fact of the collective or corporate aspect of the conflict is a big thing, is it not? We are fighting alongside of one another and for one another; the battle is a common battle, and we must not let one another down. If someone else is having a bit of hardship, we must come and share the hardship with them; and if we are having a bit of hardship, they must come and share it with us. It is a tremendous factor in victory, to keep together in it. So it is the 'togetherness' of the battle and the warfare that is quite definitely thought of by the Apostle here.

The Christian As Athlete

Our next 'group' consists of just this fragment: "If a man contend in the games, he is not crowned except he have contended lawfully." Here, hidden behind the English translation, is a Greek word - athleo - from which we get our English words 'athlete' and 'athletic'. The Greek word means to compete in, or take part in, the public games or contests. The Christian is compared to a Greek athlete. Now that sounds like sport, but it is not! For the word is a very strong word, implying one who engages in a contest for the mastery. That is making a business of things, is it not? We, as Christians, are called to engage seriously in a contest, at the end of which there is a prize, which it is possible for us to lose. That is the conception. Of course, there is a very large background of the Greek games to this word of Paul's; he knew all about it. The Greek athlete was called upon to spend ten whole months in rigorous preparatory discipline and training before he was allowed to enter the contests. And the rules for training were stringent. He must shun many things; he must observe certain regulations; he must discipline himself and put aside all his own preferences and his own likes. He must recognize that this thing is so serious that, should he break one of the regulations of his training, he is disqualified, he is not allowed to enter.

Well, here is a contest, here is an engagement, which calls upon us to be very watchful, and to be in many directions self-denying. But don't mix this up with your salvation - you can never be saved by good works! To be a Christian you don't have to give up this and give up that, and do all sorts of things that you don't naturally like doing! This is not IN ORDER TO BE a Christian; but when you ARE a Christian, here is a vocation, here is a responsibility. Paul said: "I buffet my body... lest... after that I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected" (1 Cor. 9:27), and he is thinking of this very thing - this business on hand, this great responsibility into which he is called, this great contest. 'I must see to it that my body, my fleshly appetites, don't get the upper hand; I must keep a strong hand upon myself; I must learn the disciplined life.' To most people that word 'discipline' is a most hated word. Yes, but this is not just discipline for its own sake - it is because of what is involved. And we can lose so much - young Christians, you can lose so much, and you can be disqualified from the great calling with which you are called, and from obtaining the great prize, the real prize, which is set before you, if you do not learn the disciplined life. Keep under your body. A Christian ought to be a very disciplined person, with a life well ordered and regulated - nothing loose or flippant or careless. We ought to be people girded on a great business.

The Christian As Craftsman

And finally, the second chapter of the second letter, and the so well-known 15th verse: "Give diligence to present thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, handling aright the word of truth." The translation that we have in our Authorized Version, "STUDY to show thyself approved unto God... rightly dividing the word...", has given rise to a good deal of misunderstanding. Many have thought that this is a picture of the student in his study, taking the Word of God and cutting it up and putting it into all kinds of different watertight compartments and dispensational sections. A whole school of dispensationalism and ultra-dispensationalism has been built upon this word, and it is all wrong. We shall be led astray if we get that idea.

This has nothing to do with the study and with the book. The Revised Version has improved upon the translation: "Give diligence to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed..." It is true that your work is with the Word of God, but the picture here is not of a student, but of a craftsman, and what lies behind the Greek here is the stonemason. The stonemason has the specification before him of the stones that are to be cut and fitted into a building; and in the specification, or the blueprint, there are all the lines where the cuts are to be made, very finely, so that, when these stones are put together, they exactly fit, they belong to one another. It is the craftsman's job. With all the mass-production and the machine-made things of today, I think there are few things better than to see a real craftsman at work: really to find a craftsman, an old-fashioned craftsman, with his genuine hand-work, that is not the work of a machine.

Paul is talking about the craftsman. And he says, 'Now you have got the specification given to you in the Word of God. Don't toy with it, don't play with it, don't be careless about it. See to it that the truths of the Word of God are faithfully observed, that you handle the Word of God absolutely honestly.' In his second Corinthian letter you remember the Apostle used this phrase: "Not... handling the word of God deceitfully" (2 Cor. 4:2). What does that mean? Making it mean what it does not mean, for our own convenience - because it suits us so to interpret it! But "no... scripture is of private interpretation" (2 Peter 1:20). Our attitude must be: The Word of God says THIS; we cannot get round it. Don't try to get round it, don't try to make it mean something that it does not mean, and certainly don't be superior to it and think that you know better than what it says. Be absolutely honest with the Word of God. The Word of God says that; the blueprint, the pattern, the specification gives that as the precise line of things: then take it. Don't think that you can improve upon it; don't be careless about it. Take note of it.

The Spirit, the Holy Spirit, gave the Word. Here, to Timothy, the Apostle says so: "All Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable for..." this and that and that. The Spirit gave the Word. We must be adjusted by the Holy Spirit to the Word that He has given! That is 'rightly dividing', or, as literally the word is, 'cutting straight lines' with, the Word of God. Just be honest with it! Just let it mean to you what it really does mean, and don't try to get round it. "All Scripture is given by inspiration", by the Holy Spirit. Paul was not saying things just out of his own predilection, his own preferences, his likes and dislikes: he was speaking what has become Scripture. Don't get round it. Be honest. You don't stand to lose anything; you stand to gain the blessing of God. Yes, we must be adjusted to the Word of God: neither less than the Word, nor more.

We have been considering some figures, metaphors, similes, of the Christian. They are very clear, very simple; but I come back again to where I commenced. Put together, they do show that a Christian is a very responsible person, or is to be so regarded; one who must say to himself or herself, 'I am not in something that is just optional - my pleasure, my life; not something that does not matter very much - as though I could say, "I am saved, I shall get to Heaven all right!"' Oh, no! There is more than getting to Heaven, there is more than just being saved. There are great interests of the Lord to be served, and these are the people required for them.

So - 'Give diligence, take your share of the hardship as a good soldier, guard your trust, keep the rules, learn discipline.' "For thus shall be richly supplied unto you the entrance into the eternal kingdom..." (2 Peter 1:11). And so we, the successors of Paul in the battle and in the work, may be able to say, as he said: "I have fought the good fight... I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give to me at that day: and not only to me, but also to all them that have loved His appearing" (2 Tim. 4:7-8). We are in the same fight, the same contest, the same calling.