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That Which is Born of the Spirit - The New Creation in Christ

by T. Austin-Sparks

A series of conference messages given in June, 1931. Chapter 1 was published in the July 1931 A Witness and A Testimony magazine with the note "to be continued", but was not continued. The remaining chapters are from unpublished manuscripts supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Image of His Son

Chapter 2 - The Essential Heavenliness of the New Creation

Chapter 3 - The Universality of the New Creation

Chapter 4 - The Lord Jesus as the Head of the New Creation

Chapter 5 - The Essential Corporate Nature of the New Creation

Chapter 1 - The Image of His Son

Reading: Philippians 3:1-21; Romans 8:29; 1 John 3:2; Galatians 4:19; Philippians 3:12,20.

I have it on my heart, beloved, that these days before us we shall in the will of God, be occupied with "That which is born of the Spirit," or "The New Creation in Christ Jesus"; and this morning, for a little while, we want to set the object in its place, or in His place, and see exactly what it is toward which the Lord is moving; what we might call the pattern in the heavens.

We are familiar with that phrase, we know to what it relates in the Old Testament, and I think by now we know that that pattern in the heavens, according to which all things were made in relation to the tabernacle of old, was but a revelation of Jesus Christ, and that tabernacle was the Lord Jesus in His many-sidedness, right to the very last detail; an expression of the mind of God. We know that in the Letter to the Hebrews that is taken up again, but there this difference is made that, whereas in the Old Testament it was a pattern of things in the heavens, here it is the very things themselves and you are introduced to the very things by the first words of that letter, "God Who in old times spake unto the Fathers in divers portions and divers manners, hath in the end of these times spoken in His Son," and the whole theme of the Letter to the Hebrews is the Lord Jesus Christ as the consummation of the whole of the Old Testament revelation. He in Person gathering up consummately all that God had before spoken, and thus not being a part, or parts, but being the whole; not being a shadow or a type, but being the very thing itself.

So truly, the Lord Jesus is the pattern and the reality toward which God is working; and we want now, immediately, to get that Object into its, or His place, because until that is so we shall be held to something less; we shall have an inadequate objective and dynamic for our lives here on earth. You recognise how true that was in the case of the Apostle himself. You remember that in Acts 9 he suddenly was met on the Damascus Road by the Lord in Glory. To his own consternation and amazement he discovered that that light above the brightness of the sun was Jesus of Nazareth, now exalted to the Right Hand of the Majesty on high, now glorified. That was Paul's first view of the Lord Jesus so far as we know. It was Christ in the glory. Philippians 3 is the practical consequence of that. That is "Things which were gain to me those I counted loss, yea, and I do count them but stuff to be flung to the dogs, that I might be found in Him." Tremendous statements - to gain Christ. The Lord Jesus is given to the sinner on the ground of repentance and faith; given, but Paul had come to a position where he saw that that which had been given had now got to be gained. Two realms of things, equally true. There was a gain of Christ far beyond the gift of Christ. The gift of Christ unto salvation; the gain of Christ unto glorification in the fullest Witness - That which is born of the Spirit. Philippians 3 is the practical outworking of Acts 9.

So many honestly think that all that matters is that you should be saved, and if you are saved you are done forever and you can get on with saving others. It is important to be saved, but the Word of the Lord makes it quite clear that to be saved from hell, saved from sin, to be saved from judgment, is only the beginning of things and that you may have that and miss the very great purpose for which you were saved. So that out of twenty-seven books in the New Testament, twenty-one are given up to leading believers into the fullness of Christ. A striking fact. There is this little parabolic element in the truth that we have just noted about Paul seeing Christ on the Damascus Road, when he saw the Lord Jesus in glory; in that moment he lost his natural sight and was blind and they led him by the hand into the City.

Beloved, that is a very good thing. Probably, it meant much infirmity to Paul for the rest of his life; we have traces that eye trouble followed him right through. But, spiritually, that is a very good thing, that we should get such a vision of the Lord Jesus in glory as to lose our natural sight. To have no eyes from that moment onward for anything but Him. To lose our eyes for things of the world, of the earth, for all that is less than Himself, and that you should gain spiritual vision which far transcends all the vision of the natural man, and those who have had a little bit of the revelation of the Christ glorified know how true this is, that they have no taste for anything else, that He fills their vision, and it is true that "things of earth have grown strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace."

We need to get the object fixed then immediately, Christ in glory, and Christ in glory as the pattern man according to God's heart. That brings in another factor, that while He is there as very God in the Godhead, and having all the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Him in bodily form, and while He occupies that place with the Name of Jehovah upon Him, it is equally true that He is there as man. He is the Man in the glory. He is the glorified man, He is the first born of many brethren. God has taken a man into the glory, and He has there consummated in the very person of the Lord Jesus man according to His own heart. We see what was God's thought before ever man was created and before the world was; when He contemplated bringing man into being He had a thought, a conception, a mind for that Being and that mind is revealed in the Lord Jesus when you see Him in the glory. That is man according to the original thought and intention of God, and the Lord Jesus is there as the pattern man according to God's heart, and unto that pattern God is working in and with all those who have come into His Hands for His pattern. It is a tremendous thing, and were the Scripture not here to prove it, it is far too big a thing for a man to dare to say. Here it is "whom He foreknew, them He foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son." That is a positive statement; and then literally "we shall be like Him for we shall see Him" - not as He was but - "as He is." Not conformity to Jesus of Nazareth as on earth, it is conformity to Jesus in the glory glorified with the Father, as He is.

God has glorified Jesus Christ and we are called into His eternal glory. What a prospect! And we who do groan in these bodies, and who know the burden of their weakness and infirmity, and who know so much of the awful havoc that sin and the curse has brought into the physical life of the creation, what a prospect for us when we read Philippians 3:21: "Who shall change, or fashion anew, the body of our humiliation that it might be conformed unto the body of His glory," not the body of His humiliation, the body of His glory - something to dwell upon with joyful anticipation if you know anything about groaning in the body. The body is only a part of this great work. God begins inside now and is going to finish outside later on. Blessed be His Name. In getting down to this thing more closely, we have to see that the Lord Jesus in His history from the Jordan to the Glory is the history of every believer. The Jordan for Him, His life here on earth, His death and burial and resurrection, His being received up into Glory and being anointed with the Holy Spirit, has a counterpart in the history of every Child of God on one side.

I am not now dealing with the great work which He did in the matter of atonement, in His great redemptive activity when He stood as our substitute and took upon Him our sin, bore it in His own body on the tree, coming under all the billows of God's wrath and coming into the full depths of judgment on our behalf. I am not speaking about that, that is a thing which we do not enter or share in; blessed be God! It is not necessary for us to enter into that at all now. We need not know judgment. There is no condemnation. He has taken that side for us, but there is another side, a representative side where His history is the history of every child of God. That, of course, opens up a very wide sphere which can only be very lightly touched upon in these moments, and we are coming, I think, in these coming days to see the content of that, breaking it up into its fragments. One merely intimates it here, that there has to be a beginning where the entire will of man as man has to be cut off and set aside, and the will of God has to take its place absolutely, and be established and enthroned as the governing law of man's life.

That was what happened at Jordan in the case of the Lord Jesus. At that moment, though having a sinless will, He had nevertheless a man's will, the will of the human, and that as something apart from, something in itself detached from the will of God, and that man's will, the will of the human, the natural will which He possessed was, although sinless, set aside for the will of God at Jordan and there from that moment for Him there was the one governing thing of all life in word, and thought, and deed, in goings and in comings, in acting or in refusing to act, speaking or refusing to speak, going or refusing to go, in the timing of things which He did, now or not now; and you will call to mind that on every one of these things you have examples of the acts of the Lord Jesus. In all it was a matter of "not My will but Thy will," and Jordan represented Calvary for Him in the matter of repudiation of the natural will of man and the establishment of the will of God; that He should henceforth not live unto Himself. And so He stepped out and was challenged immediately beyond Jordan on that very question. Challenged upon that matter as to whether He would act out from Himself; upon the most plausible basis that a man could act upon. You know the enemy very rarely puts it up to you to do a thing which he tells you is sin, but he usually tells you to do a thing on very good ground for doing it. He came to the Lord Jesus about bread and said, in fact, necessity knows no law, necessity requires it, it is necessary to do it, it is absolutely essential. If you have been brought to that position at any time you know how difficult it is. What necessity? An earthly interest or a heavenly interest?

That is the question. We have always to look to see if there is any higher necessity than an earthly one and we never discover until we have raised the question as to whether earthly interests are the necessity. If you take an earthly necessity as an argument, you become earthbound and get the thing horizontally - it seems to be necessary that I do this. The Lord may see it in another way. Get a heavenly necessity along that line. The enemy said necessity knows no law; but there is a law not of this earth, a law of heaven. So the Lord Jesus refused to act out from Himself, but always out from God. That was Jordan, and there has to be that crisis when once and for all in every detail of the life it is not going to be a government by the earth, a government by things here, a government by human reason, arguments, necessities, a government by anything that is less than the will of God, to which there is true abandonment. Christ's life from Jordan always was the outworking of that law.

We have to go into that more fully. But those three-and-a-half years from Jordan also have their counterpart in the life of every child of God because there you see a life of absolute dependence upon God for everything, accepted by Him, a voluntary thing but nevertheless very, very real; absolute dependence upon God, and because of that He is revealing what man is here upon earth according to the mind of God. A man who is God-governed and led in a God-consciousness every moment of his life, that is the earthly life of man according to the mind of God. The Lord Jesus reveals that man who walks here on the earth under the government and control of the Holy Spirit, to Whom he brings everything to get His authority; to get the mind of God.

As to Calvary; we do know from much that was subsequently written by the Holy Spirit, especially through one apostle, that Calvary is to have its counterpart in the life of every believer and in a very deep way, and while something to be accepted once and for all, it is to have an abiding meaning for every day. "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in the dying body." That is Calvary on both sides. Then being received up; we have much to say in these coming days about the heavenly life of the believer, but there is the necessity for us to be received up now and come into everything of this from above.

The next thing is this - there are a lot of people who stumble on this thing; that the Holy Spirit has come with the pattern, as it were, in His eye; He has seen the Lord Jesus in glory, He has seen the Man in the glory according to God's heart, perfected. The Holy Spirit knows that pattern through and through, every detail and He has come, and if we are truly born-from-above-children-of-God, He is in us and now, what the Holy Spirit is here to do is to work that pattern inwardly that we might be conformed to the image of God's Son. The point where so many people stumble is that they are trying to imitate an objective conception of Jesus; they get some objective idea of this wonderful Man, this beautiful life with loving acts and kindly works, and they have Him objectively, and try to imitate that life outside of themselves. Very noble, very good, but altogether inadequate. The imitation of Christ is not that. It is not a matter of outward activities, in the first instance. The Apostle puts us perfectly right on that in Galatians 1:16, "To reveal His Son in me." Beloved, you are not to go out to proclaim to men that they have to imitate Jesus Christ. There is a standard which God has which no man - apart from the mighty energies of the Holy Ghost - can attain unto. The standard of Christ cannot be reached in any energy of ours. Imitation is a poor thing. What we need is a new conception, a new operation inside. The Holy Spirit is here to make this inward, and blessed be God for that Gift - the Gift of the Holy Spirit. It is a great thing to know that a very member of the Godhead has come and taken up residence in every child of God, not to make them gods in themselves, but to conform them to the image of His Son. Not to bring into them Deity, and to transfer to them Deity, but to make them like unto the Man in the glory, and the effect is that the Christ in the glory is also now the Christ within, the hope of glory. That is our hope, and we have no other hope of glory other than that He is already inward. This whole thing is gathered up in all the energies and possibilities and capacities of the Holy Spirit; gathered up and resident within, and if we let the Lord have His way He will do His work.

Having said that much, I just want to say perhaps in closing this which is a preliminary of what we have before us in the coming days, that this great dominating objective of God, to have all the sons coming to glory conformed to the image of His Son, is the explanation of all the Lord's dealings with us here; all the conditions of our lives which He has allowed to remain; all the strange experiences through which we go; all the deep trials which form part of our life; everything in the providence and in the sovereignty of God where we are concerned has its explanation in the light of the thing which God has in view, and unless you recognise that, beloved, you have not got the dynamic to carry you through, you have not got a sufficient motive for going on. Take the matter of service, ministry, the work of the Lord unto which we are called. Anyone who is really in spiritual ministry, really in spiritual work for the Lord, knows how difficult it is, how hard, intensely hard, growingly hard it is. It is fraught with difficulties of almost every kind and one thing so real in this is the activity of the enemy apart from and beyond what men do themselves of themselves (if ever men do anything of themselves. I am not quite sure that they do).

Apart from what you might call the ordinary difficulties of life, and the work of the Lord, there are these extra difficulties where the enemy seems to have so much hold, and this whole situation of service would seem so often to say that the enemy is so strong, that the Lord has great difficulty in getting His work done. Do you believe that the Lord has great difficulty in getting His work done because of the enemy? This is something to face. There it is - the devil has a lot of liberty and seems to have a lot of power, and he makes great difficulties which constitute for the Lord's servant a very hard and strenuous time. That is true, isn't it? It seems that the Lord is up against something that He can hardly cope with, that the Lord is face to face with a situation that is full of almost insuperable difficulties. That is NOT the argument at all. Why has the Lord left the enemy here and given him such liberty, such a degree of power? Why does He allow our steps all the time to be met by these difficulties? Why is it that in the way of the Lord's will you meet something which brings you to a standstill? Why, if God is God on the throne, and the Holy Ghost is definitely strong and mighty? This is the problem for so many people.

The explanation is this. Not on the side of the enemy at all, not on the side of the Lord; the explanation is in us. The Lord is seeking a conformity to the image of His Son, and every difficulty and trial and obstruction and activity of the devil, is to draw us out to God and develop the features of the Lord Jesus in us. Spiritual ascendency, faith, the mighty faith of the Son of God. The features of Jesus Christ. The love of the Spirit. All these features of Christ have got to be fully developed in us. So the Lord thinks it worthwhile to let the enemy carry on and allow us to have difficulties, sorrows, and sufferings, even while we are living in an absolutely sovereign mighty Lord.

It is to bring out the features of Christ, and until you have got that you have not got the power to go through. If you begin to say the Lord is not with us, not able to meet this, or the power of God is not manifested, you have a lesser object and you begin to circle round yourself, not Christ in the Glory to Whom the Holy Spirit is trying to bring you into conformity. It is necessary to get your objective and see what the Lord is seeking to do with His children and how He does it. You cannot conform anyone literally to the image of another in any other way than by bringing them through experimentally. The thing is not done by teaching, doctrine, or by being preached at; you have got to go through it, and the whole fabric of our being has got to be reconstructed according to Christ. On the one side there has to be a breaking down of all that is otherwise in order that there might be a constituting of that which is of the Lord Jesus. The Lord gives us our object; that is what I am after this morning; to see the Lord Jesus. Don't you become spiritually introspective and get yourself as the object in view. No! Don't you have your spirit always before your eyes and analysing it. We have been saying lately that if we become occupied with ourselves, that is self-conscious, and self-consciousness is weakness. Self-consciousness in every form is weakness. We want to be occupied with the Lord Jesus.

Oh that there might be for us a vision of the man in the glory. Christ glorified - and that we could see that because God has got Him there, having taken Him through Hell, through death and the grave, and through all the judgment of God - God has got Him there - that is a triumph, and He is the first of a large number who are going to be there with Him. He is going to get us there. We are in Christ in the heavenlies, but we have to approximate to where we already are; we have to get to the place where we already are! He has got His Son in the glory and that is His supreme and His all-inclusive triumph. It includes our triumph, His triumph for us. So may the Lord lead us on from place to place in the train of His triumph to celebrate His victory over the enemies of Christ.

Chapter 2 - The Essential Heavenliness of the New Creation

We are occupied in these days with that which is born of the Spirit, or, the new creation in Christ.

One might remind you of the two passages which are so familiar. The one is, as you know, in John 3:6: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit". The other is in 2 Corinthians 5:17: "Now if any man be in Christ there is a new creation, old things are passed away, behold all has become new and all things are out from God".

We are not here at this time so much concerned with the fact of the new creation, or of there being a birth by the Spirit, as we are occupied with the nature of that which is born of the Spirit and of that new creation. We are taking it for granted that all here know the fact that everyone can say out of their hearts that they know that they have been born of the Spirit and that they are a new creation, or that there is a new creation where they are concerned. But I think we all know very well that there is a very great difference between the fact of being born again and knowing all about that which has been born.

The Physical and the Spiritual Realm

We have all been born naturally or we should not be here, but it takes experts and specialists a whole lifetime to fathom what has been born. It is a line of the closest and most continuous study, is anatomy and physiology, and we are learning more and more how little we do know about ourselves after all - the workings of this human machine, all the inwards and outwards. We know very little about it after all, but it is very important that we should know something about it, that we should know the nature and the laws of our being. And we are discovering how necessary it is to be acquainted at least with some of the greater laws of our physical life in order that there may be a maintenance of life in fulness and health and enjoyment, and ignorance in that realm may lead to a good deal of suffering, weakness and loss.

Now, if that is true in the physical realm, it is also true in the spiritual realm. We are in the spiritual realm and while we may rejoice in the fact that we have been born anew from above of the Spirit and that there is a new creation in Christ Jesus where we are concerned, there is a very great deal of ignorance prevalent amongst the Lord's people as to the constitution, nature, and laws of their spiritual life. I am convinced that this is the reason for a very great deal of weakness and failure, spiritual limitation, and loss.

While we do not want to be occupied with ourselves but with the Lord, it is very important that we should know exactly what we are and how we are constituted and what are the laws of our new life. If we get that settled as fully as possible, once and for all, we should be on the other side of a very great deal of our trouble. And so we are thus occupied not so much with the fact, as with the nature of that which is born of the Spirit. And the first thing upon which we are going to dwell for a little while as the Lord enables, is that of the essential heavenliness and spirituality of that which is born of the Spirit, for the Word declares that "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit".

The Absolute Heavenliness in the Life of the Believer

Now we want the full force of that to come home to us. If the Word of God divides things, then we must recognise the division that the Word of God makes. If the Word of God divides between spirit and soul and body, then we must recognise that division and see once more that what has been born anew is not our bodies (I suppose we know that quite well!) also it is not our souls, for soul and spirit are not the same in the Word of God; they are divided. And that which is born of the Spirit is spirit, and there you get the heart of the whole matter, of the nature of that which is born of the Spirit, of the new creation. But it is especially upon the heavenliness of this thing that I want to lay the emphasis for I am quite sure that it is here that most of the confusion exists and most of the failure to apprehend the secret of power and victory and effectiveness, lies.

I believe that the Old Testament and the New Testament are occupied, perhaps more fully, with the tragic results of misapprehension in this direction than with any other thing; and that is a terrible thing to say. The history of Israel in the Old Testament, which is far more history of failure than success, which bulks far more largely in the realm of disappointment, weakness, and breakdown than in the realm of triumph, victory and progress, has its explanation on this very one thing. We will see that in a moment.

When you come to the New Testament, the bulk of the New Testament is written with this one thing in view. You begin in Romans and go into Corinthians, and into Galatians, into Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians and right on to Peter, James and John and you will find that the one thing in view is either actual, or threatening, spiritual failure - either actually or threateningly, spiritual failure. In some instances the failure is there in a bad form and the letters are written to correct things, to seek to recover spiritual ascendancy and spiritual power which has been lost. In other cases the thing is threatening, it is hovering over, moving round, and the writers see the perils and they write to warn and admonish. And if you get to the heart of all this, both as to actual conditions of failure and from threatening conditions of failure, you will find that both in the Old and New Testaments one thing that explains it all is a misapprehension, or a failure to apprehend the fact of the absolute heavenliness of the believer's life. Now you can write that down and carry that into the Word of God and test everything by that and you will find it is true.

The Recovery of Spiritual Position in the Old Testament

Go back to the Old Testament and you will find the Lord separating His people from Egypt in the most utter and complete separation - that not a hoof was to remain in Egypt. Then His designation of Israel was this: "My Son... out of Egypt have I called My Son" and to Pharaoh "Let My Son, my firstborn, go that He may serve Me". My Son... out from Egypt. And when you turn to the book of Nehemiah 8:17 in relation to, as you remember, the Feast of Tabernacles: "And of the assembly all that were come again out of the captivity made booths and dwelt in booths, for since the days of Jeshua the son of Nun until that day had not the children of Israel done so and there was very great gladness". Now if you go back in that connection when the Feast of Tabernacles was established, Leviticus 23:34: "Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, the fifteenth day of the seventh month is the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto Jehovah. On the first day shall be a holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein. Seven days shall ye offer an offering made by fire unto Jehovah: on the eighth day shall be a holy convocation unto you and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto Jehovah. This is a closing festival, ye shall do no servile work".

Now coming back to Nehemiah 8:13: "And on the second day were gathered together the heads of the fathers' houses of the people, the priests and the Levites unto Ezra the scribe to give attention to the word of the law. And they found written in the law how that Jehovah had commanded by Moses that the children of Israel dwelt in booths in the feast of the seventh month and that they should publish and proclaim in all their cities, and in Jerusalem, saying, Go forth unto the mount and fetch olive branches, and pine branches and myrtle branches and palm branches, and branches of thick trees to make booths, as it is written" etc..

Now, the interesting thing is that that carries you right back to the coming out of Egypt. And if you will follow that thought back in the mind and in the commanding of God, you will find that the Feast of Tabernacles, that is, the dwelling in booths, was a testimony to the nature of the people's life when they were brought out from Egypt. Egypt is the place of houses, is the place of earth settlement, where you become a fixture in the earth. The bringing out of Egypt was the rooting out of the earth, the absolute break with all earth ties, the destruction of everything that was permanent and stable on the earth and a bringing out into a place of detachment and separation where, so far as this world is concerned, everything is very tentative, loose and uncertain and, if you like, very precarious from the standpoint of the natural man, where you have no certain dwelling place, and where you do not in any way construct that which is permanent.

So the Feast of Tabernacles, the dwelling in booths, was to be maintained as a testimony that God has rooted His people out of the earth, and from time to time dwelling in booths they were to declare that they were a people of the heavens, out with God, absolutely separate. Now, it was going back upon that very principle and the violation or ignoring of that law which brought them into all their trouble. Every time they made some connection with the earth, when they formed a link in some way, they came down spiritually from their high place and touched things down here with interest, concern, purpose and expectation, or allowed circumstances to drive them, to harass them into some alliance of some kind, some earthly resource, that immediately became the ground of the loss of their power because it was the loss of their position. And the Lord stood back from them and their enemies took advantage of their lost heavenly position and so there ensued defeat, failure, weakness and suffering. And now you notice in Nehemiah it says: "For since the days of Joshua it had not been so..." but you are in Nehemiah!

Joshua, the book of the heavenlies, possessing the land, coming up by way of the Jordan, the full cutting off by the Jordan to go to possess the heavenlies... you are continually in booths in the heavenlies, in Joshua. But Judges sees the people come down out of the heavenlies; they have tolerated things which were commanded to be destroyed and that has brought about a grovelling earthward, a tie earthward. And Judges becomes the most tragic book of the Old Testament, perhaps with one exception: the book of Malachi. It is a book of defeat, failure and weakness all the way through, because they ceased to recognise the heavenliness of their nature. That is Joshua followed by Judges and on in successive experiences of defeat until you come to the great captivity, Babylon - the religious system of this earth, man-made, man-constituted and they are in that. And they have lost their heavenly position in the mountains of Jerusalem, high up, in which the Lord delights.

But Nehemiah sees a remnant returning, two out of twelve tribes coming back, and they are reinstating the Feast of Tabernacles to declare that they, as a remnant, are a heavenly people. Here they have come back to the heavenlies and the Feast of Tabernacles comes in again. That is one of the laws of all recovery - recovery of spiritual position, which is the recovery of spiritual power, the recovery of the might in God - one of the laws is that you recognise firstly the essential heavenly nature of the child of God. I know as a teaching that may be very familiar, yet I am quite sure that for every one of us, myself included, this is the key of the whole thing. If we get this settled, we are on the way for everything else, because you know it is the place that tests us, it is the place that tests everything. You do not understand that, of course. It wants a little enlarging. You see, we now belong to the heavenlies; that is, we are no longer of this earth, we are no longer a part of the system of this earth - religiously or otherwise. We are no longer governed by the standards of this earth and this world. No longer do men's judgments and failures control our actions, our course of things - they are not supposed to - they ought not to, and everything is tested by the place. Is this thing a heavenly thing? Did it originate in heaven? Has it come out of heaven? Is it governed by the heavenlies, or is this thing something that has come by man's judgment, reasonings, standards and values?

It is the place that tests everything. That is a difficult thing to say and get over to you, but you ask the Lord to show you what that means; but it is true all the way along in life and service. The test of everything will be: is this of heaven, or is it of man? Is this from above, or is this from below? Has this come from the Lord, or has this come along the earth level? Are we being governed by how men think and speak and judge and act, by the accepted traditions of men, religiously? Are we being governed by a system that has been set up here on the earth and because we are expected to do this thing, it is the right and proper thing to do according to all Christian tradition and the accepted order of Christian life, are we doing it because of that, or are we getting it straight from heaven? It is the place that tests.

The Recovery of Spiritual Position in the New Testament

Our new place in heaven. The Lord Jesus was an example from Jordan onwards of the new man according to God's heart, the new creation: that which is born of the Spirit. In this connection you noted there was never one moment or instant in the life of the Lord Jesus here on earth when He was influenced or governed by anything that was here on earth. If He ceded certain claims of man He only did so for the moment in case He was morally involved so that He accepted the supremacy of this world system, but He did so because there was nothing morally involved and nothing spiritually involved in it. He paid tribute. Every believer has to pay rates and taxes, there is no moral truth involved, but you note He had a reservation. His way of approaching that thing betrays (if I might use that word) a reservation about it "lest we be thought to be disputing their rightful claims, go to the sea and you will find a fish". Now He has a supernatural element in the whole thing and He is only doing the thing with a reservation. We do not recognise that the government of this world is the supreme government.

It is clearly manifested in the sending out of the twelve and the seventy; He first of all forbade them to go into the houses or places outside the Covenant. "Go not save unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel." Why? Because He was enforcing His rights within His own house historically; saying in effect, "You are going where I have rights. I have a right to be recognised, to be received and to be cared for. You go, and in My name your presence is a declaration of My rights; now, if they receive you not, shake off the dust..." etc., etc.. He has claims, heavenly claims, and He has that reservation all the time in His walk here, but it is not on that side that I am thinking particularly. The Lord Jesus was not governed by things here below, He never allowed what men thought was the right thing to do to govern His course and His conduct. He never allowed this world in any way to influence Him.

What was here as a system was not the thing that influenced His conduct. His own brethren said to Him one day concerning the Feast of the Passover, "Go up to the feast and do Your works openly, for no man doeth anything in secret but openly - for His brethren did not believe in Him". His attitude was, "I go not up to this feast - you go up - My time is not yet". They would try and influence Him by man's way of doing things and by argument that sounds quite good, "Don't do things in a corner secretly, come out into the open! If there is anything in Your claims at all, why not come out; do not do it in secret, prove that You have nothing to be ashamed of, let the world see." These are all very plausible arguments and might from the natural reason make some appeal, but He just puts them aside. "You can, I cannot; My time is not yet." When they had gone up then He went up; in the meantime He had discovered by fellowship with the Father, with the heavens, that the time had come for Him to go. His going up was under heaven's rule and not under earth's rule.

In the case of His own mother after the flesh, at Cana: "They have no wine...", "woman what have I in common with you" meaning, not as our Authorised Version would convey which is very harsh, "Woman, what have I to do with thee", but meaning, "Woman, your mentality and Mine are in two different realms, what you are thinking of, I am not. You are thinking down here in this earth realm that here is an opportunity for Me to give a display... I am not dwelling in that realm. I have bigger things in view than that". So He put back that because though it would come, perhaps through the channel of most tender human affections, He would not be drawn out by the appeal of His own mother to whom, doubtless, He was greatly attached and devoted. But He was in fellowship with heaven and He got it from heaven, not from His mother, and then He said, "Fill the water pots with water".

You remember how the two sisters in Bethany made their tremendous appeal to Him concerning their brother, "He whom Thou lovest is sick, come". He tarried. They would influence, they would persuade, there was every reason humanly why He should hasten to save the situation, but He tarried until all human opportunity, all human chance was gone and then at length when there was no human ground whatever of hope, He approached the two sisters. He has been in prayer, but you only get His acknowledgement of the answer to a prayer which is not recorded, a prayer which was most likely a silent prayer, but His acknowledgement of the answer to that prayer is made audible "I thank Thee O Father that Thou heardest Me, Thou doest always hear Me" (John 11:41,42), and then He cried, "Lazarus come forth" (John 11:43). All the persuasion and influence of loved ones on the earth and human need, human cry, and a desperate situation, would not touch Him in that realm. He would not allow that to come in as a consideration at all, but kept Himself detached from the earth because of this thing. He waited for God's moment and God's word.

All those declarations of His about the Son not being able to do anything out from Himself, not speaking the words or doing not the works, but the Father speaking the words and the Father doing the works - "Whatsoever the Son seeth the Father do" - etc., this all shows how absolutely the heavens ruled in His life and that He was not of this earth. Now He represents the new creation, the new man, that which is born of the Spirit as God's thought for every believer - something absolutely cut off from this world, absolutely severed from this earth in its essential nature. You must guard what I am saying against any false application of this principle in ignoring your moral obligations on the earth and of cutting yourself off and going into monasteries and convents. I am talking about that inner reality of every believer's life, that there is that which is the true new creation within every believer which is not of this earth, and has no relation to this earth. It has come down from heaven, is born from above and belongs to heaven and always gravitates towards heaven, and makes us (or should make us) increasingly realise that we are strangers on the earth. The believer is both a mystery and a stranger in the world and we must accept that. "If ye were of the world, the world would love its own" the world knows us not because it knew Him not. We are a mystery in the earth, something cut off from this earth.

It is something very much more than giving up going to the pictures, or to dances and things like that, and being not of the world. That can be merely legal; you must not do this that or the other because you are a Christian. That side of things can be so legalistic and hard. To realise that the centre of your being is not of this world and you cannot have any enjoyment and fellowship with that which is of the earth, that is another thing. That is going to be pressed in the believer's life right through to a point where you are completely lost and it becomes increasingly an agony to touch earthly things; a spiritual agony. When you have touched something which is earthly there is a tremendous kickback and you feel that death has come in, an arrest, and you have to go back to the Lord and get your position again. That is the nature of that which is born of the Spirit and the Word of the Lord makes that perfectly clear.

Now, I want us to get to one thing that I feel to be tremendously important for us who are in the testimony of the Lord in a practical way. It is this: that being essentially heavenly in our very nature and constitution, we have to come into everything which is of God as from above. Here is another thing which it is very difficult to pass over to other people and it is a matter upon which you really do need the Lord to give you power of understanding. Do believe me, whether you understand it or not for the moment, I am saying what I believe to be one of the most important and vital things for a believer and a servant of God to recognise: that is that we must come into everything which is of God, from above. It is impossible to come into the things of God horizontally; that you see something here that is very good, that is of God, is very true and the blessing of God is upon it; it is something that you covet, something that you want to be in, and you say, "Now I am going into that, to join that" and... you cannot. You cannot do that. That is impossible. Let me tell you that you cannot join the church of God. We have heard many people say that they are going to join the church. That is impossible. You cannot join anything that is of God. You cannot come this way into anything of God. Leave the horizontal line. Whether it be truth, or service, or fellowship, or any other aspect of what is of God; you cannot come into it because you see it and so you are going to join it, or get into it.

There is a system of phraseology which represents that whole conception of this. People are going to "take up" Christian work, to "be a member" of such-and-such a fellowship, going to "go into" this thing. Let me tell you that it cannot be done. They are going to have that truth; they are coming into that truth. No, along the line of their thought, it is impossible. How do we get into that which is of God? First of all by getting out of everything that is of the earth. How is that done? By the Cross. The Cross acts as a knife which absolutely severs the new man from the old. There is a severance. We have read Colossians 2:11-12, and we have seen again that there baptism and circumcision are brought together as one and the same thing - that circumcision of Christ, which is the putting away of the whole body of the flesh, and immediately follows the word of the Cross, and the Cross is that severing knife by which the whole body of the flesh, the old man, is cut off: encircled, circumcised in a cutting off utterly of the old man by the Cross. "Having been buried with Him in baptism". Baptism is a declaration and testimony to the fact that the old man has been put away by a complete cutting off and that he does not come into this kingdom at all; he has no place in this new creation; there is no way in for him; he is cut off, so that you cannot join or come into a thing that is of the new creation; the old man cannot come in that way.

Then, "If ye died with Christ, seek those things which are above". There is your heavenly life, for our citizenship is in heaven. It is the valuation of everything which is this side of the Cross. The old man cannot come into that. That which is in that is from above. The Cross has been recognised, accepted and appropriated by faith in all its severing work from the old man, the old creation - the circumcision of Christ - and we have taken our place by faith into the death of the Lord Jesus, put away completely and forever as having no standing before God. We are buried, put out of sight, covered, and for evermore that has to be your attitude towards the natural man. This is to be an attitude maintained. It is to be a daily exercise of repudiation. It is not that the old man is annihilated, but spiritually in the sight of man and the judgment of God, he is out and we have to put him where God has put him; his judgments, interests, ways of looking at things and arguments have to be put back; we must get it all from above. Does the Lord look at things like this? These are not the best arguments of the religious old man. When he is put fully out of sight in one act, an attitude forever to be maintained then comes: the resurrection act of the Holy Spirit. And resurrection and ascension are a continuation of one act of God. God raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand; resurrection and ascension - one act. And resurrection is to the heavenlies. Nothing is intended to be permanently on the earth.

After the resurrection of the Lord Jesus you can never be sure of Him being located on the earth. If He comes, He has gone. He does not belong here at all. When Mary would embrace Him, He says, "I am no longer to be held here". She would in effect say, "You will never go again" - No! The resurrection means the resurrection to a new realm, a heavenly realm; we are not of the earth now in any settled way. We come down to everything that is of God as from the heavenlies. The Lord Jesus in the person of the Holy Spirit came down, not to have permanent residence here, but to make something here a heavenly thing by His heavenly presence in it. And the church has become a heavenly body because a heavenly Lord has come into it and made it a part of the heavenlies, and it is spiritually situated, seated together with Him in the heavenlies. This is the point: now through death and burial, resurrection, ascension, everything of God has to be come into as from above, so that you have to be able to say about every bit of truth: "I did not come into this along the line of human apprehension, of mental appraisement, l came into this by revelation of the Holy Spirit. God showed me this. I did not get this from man or any company of people; from a fellowship, or some who represented this interpretation. This I got from above." You get it that way, and you have got it. It is Life. Believe me, you never get any bit of it without going through something terrific. We have seen and heard people say, "Yes, I see that; I believe that" and it is the natural human seeing all the time and you know that they are not in it. They grasp it with their mind, but the impact of the heavens is not in it. They have not come into it from above. It is difficult to explain, but ask the Lord for it; do not go away and say that that fellow has been talking up in the clouds this morning, ask the Lord, say, "I do not understand it, but there seems to be something there; if there is, show it to me". Ask the Lord. Do not put it away because you cannot grasp it with your mind; ask for a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of His Son. Coming into the truth of the Lord Jesus you have to come into it from above. The work of God is exactly the same as the truth of God.

The Cross has to be applied to the man, not only as a sinner, but as a preacher, organiser of Christian activity, and a runner of churches. It is true. Have you come into your spiritual life from above? It is possible to be a child of God and be serving the Lord in all good conscience and good faith for a series of years, and yet not be in it as we ought to be, and one is not saying that because you are not in it in this way that you are not saved. There is a difference in being born, and understanding the nature and laws of your new life. And the Lord must bring His people to see this: that they are not only born again, but a wholly new constitution, a heavenly system has been brought into being and we have to be ruled from the heavens, governed by a heavenly government, translated out of the authority of darkness, separated from the earth, the world spirit, separated from ourselves; religiously as well as sinfully.

We have to be separated from that realm in which the god of this world governs. We are out of that. That is the meaning of Jordan at the end of forty years. The normal and right course would have been in about eleven days to be in the land. That is God's order, God's thought. God's thought was never forty years in the wilderness. That was necessary because they were carnal Christians. God meant them to come out into a heavenly place where everything was of Himself: feeding them from heaven, providing everything from above, making everything heavenly; but they wanted everything along the line of the senses. So, forty years of carnal Christianity (if you care to use that term) ensued, not in the will of God. And Jordan had to come as the double emphasis upon the fact that God's idea is for those who come out of Egypt to live in the heavenlies. How many of the multitude went into the land to possess it? Two. I fear that percentage is dangerously near the truth today.

While there are multitudes saved, the percentage of carnal Christians who are not living the heavenly life is very great. The percentage of those who have entered into the land, into the inheritance, living out from God, living upon all the heavenly resources, is very small indeed.

My dear friends, be quite sure that that which you are in, which is of God, you are really in and that you are not thinking that you are in it because you can only really be in it as you come into it from above. You must be able to say in a true sense, "I came down from heaven. This is not something I have adopted, something I have taken on. No! It is my very life, my very being". You cannot resign from that. It is you and you are it, and the Lord must have us there, and while He does not take advantage of it in a wrong way, it does give Him what He needs in a right kind of ground for working that fuller conformity to the image of His Son. You see what I mean, if you join a thing, you meet trouble and difficulty, and you give it up, but when it is your very life, you cannot give it up because you say "it is me".

May the Lord bring His Word into our hearts.

Chapter 3 - The Universality of the New Creation

Reading: Rom. 8:29; 2 Cor. 5:16-17; Eph. 4:24; 4:13; Col. 3:9-11.

Now what we have before us in the continuation of this great matter is the universality of that which is born of the Spirit, or the New Creation. In the previous message we were occupied with the essential heavenliness of this new creation, and one of the primary features of heavenliness is universality. If you look into the Word in its symbolic sense you will always find that heavens are intended to be, and are, used as symbols of universality. Just as the sea also represents universality and fulness, so the heavens are symbolic of that. And that fulness of which we were speaking has as one of its primary features, universality. And it is upon that universality that we shall dwell for a little.

But first of all let us take special note of this thing: the absolute necessity for an adequate background to everything that relates to the Lord's dealings with us in redemption, in regeneration, in sanctification, and in all those sovereign and providential activities of the Lord in our lives. In order for us to have a sufficient motive for endurance, consecration, and allowing the Lord to chasten and discipline, we must get the setting of things.

The Lord has been speaking some very strong and straight things to us. He has been bringing with very great force His word of the Cross to apply to the old man, the natural man, the flesh, and we have felt the tremendous impact of that word. It is calculated to slay us outright and to leave nothing unless we get the setting of it. And we must be reminded that the Lord's object is not to annihilate, to wipe us out, to limit us or to take away in order that there might be less and less until there is nothing. The Lord's whole object and motive in all the operations by His Cross is enlargement and emancipation. When the Lord desires and decides to come into the life of His people it is never with the object of curtailing their life, reducing it, bringing it within severe limitations; it is always to eliminate the limiting features and to destroy those things which keep them earthbound and confined in order that they may be emancipated into that very universality of His own Person and life and purpose. Unless we recognise that, we shall receive His word of slaying in such a way as to make the whole thing appear so hard, terrible and cruel and we shall regard the Lord's dealings with us in a wrong light as coming from a Hand that is against our interests, that is working to our impoverishment, that really wants us to be reduced to something less than we had hoped for or expected. It is so easy to receive that insinuation from the enemy that this Cross is intended to make your life less than it could be and to cut off and continually cut off until everything is reduced to a minimum and you are a poor little thing boxed up and you dare not breathe or extend or expand yourself at all; you dare not look for things large or great, living always in a coffin. That is not the Lord's thought.

The Lord does not want you to live with your head in a coffin. I went into a monastery on one occasion and the brother first of all took me down into the under part of the monastery and showed me a series of empty coffins. He said that when a brother comes into this monastery, he is first given his coffin and he is told that he is bound to this thing for life and that beyond this he has no life whatever; and his coffin is given him to show him he is here to the end. We are not going to live with coffins, but a good many folk think that the mystery of the Cross is intended to bring about that atmosphere of the coffin and to make them feel they are already embalmed! The Lord deliver us. The enemy would just like to interpret the mystery of the Cross in that way... it is always dying and nothing but dying, when all the time the Lord is out for emancipation. He is out for enlargement and all His activities with us, though sometimes severe and painful, and do look like cutting off, all those activities have in view universality if we have been planted with Him in the likeness of His resurrection; it says that just as emphatically as we have been planted in His death.

What is resurrection, but emancipation? The resurrection of the Lord Jesus was a complete and utter, absolute loosing from every kind of bondage and limitation; from the moment the Spirit raised Him from the dead, set Him free from the bands of death, there was no more hold over Him in the universe. Death had no more power over Him. Human sin had no more place in His sphere of things as something which was upon Him, voluntarily accepted, of course. Judgment was forever destroyed.

Sonship

World limitations went and He became the absolutely universal Christ without limit or dimensions, and that is the meaning of the resurrection. That is the meaning of sonship because it is in resurrection that sonship is manifested, on the ground of resurrection that sonship becomes a manifest reality - "Declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection of the dead". It is in the power of resurrection that sonship is manifested: sonship, that which is born of the Spirit, that new creation in Christ as inherent universality. Conformed to the image of His Son... the new man created now after the image of Him that created him.

You see that this thing in the thought and purpose of God is an enlarging thing. Sonship is timeless. Notice how immediately you are brought by the Spirit through the revelation given to the apostle Paul, into relation to God's supreme thought about this world and about the church. You come into contact with that which is called "the eternal purpose", "that which was purposed concerning His Son before times eternal", and then you have these simple statements, "Whom He foreknew... them He foreordained". We were chosen in Him before the world was; here you have got into the timelessness of the new creation, of that which is born of the Spirit, of the sons in the Son. They are no longer children of time, and if we understood the dealings of God with us along this line which called for the development of infinite patience, we should see that the one thing that patience relates to is timelessness. I expect you have recognised that before now. God is not circumscribed by time limits, and that patience of Christ has to do with all the ages which God has at His disposal. The Lord would let us know that He has eternity at His disposal, and we need not be in a hurry. Our trouble is that we feel we have one life and we must be in a hurry. A few years taken out of the vast eternities are to have eternity in them.

God is working with eternity in view, not with spans of years, and beloved, God can crowd eternity into a few days. In the intense agony of suffering, in a few days, weeks or months, there has been crowded eternity, "Our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." The things which are of time, a passing moment, have an eternal weight in it; that passing moment, of course, is a moment of agony sometimes, but there is eternity in it. We cry out, "What is it God means by this destroying or taking from us, this cutting off?" God has eternity in view. It is the universality of things in relation to the sons of God, and sonship is an eternal thing, a timeless thing. It dates back to eternity past, before ever this world was, and moves on to the eternity to be, when time shall be no more. That is sonship: that which is born of the Spirit. Timeless... and what is true in the matter of time is true in the matter of space. It may be difficult to grasp, but it is true: sonship is a spaceless thing, it is universal in its range.

If the Lord Jesus in His resurrection represents one thing more than another, it seems to me that He represents the nature of that which is spirit as differing from that which is flesh in the old sense. Spaceless... distances count for nothing. Human dimensions have no standing; He ranges heaven and earth in a moment, He touches bounds in an instant. The length and breadth and height and depth are all compassed in a Person in an instantaneous moment. And the Lord is seeking to get us out of our limitations into that realm where we function spiritually to touch the ends of the earth; where spiritually we come into the inheritance of the universality of our Lord Jesus as Sovereign Head of the church, and where everything from that moment is universal and not merely local. This is a tremendously important thing.

What is the Lord after in a little company of His people which may be comprised of many nationalities? That has been my enquiry all the time. What does this mean? Surely there is but one explanation: the Lord is seeking to bring about that oneness of vision and vocation where everything which is of earthly distinction is entirely lost and where there is a universal ministry constituted in all the nations without nationality; where every kind of earth bond is entirely eliminated. That is the nature of His instrument. It is the nature of the church.

You have put on the new man where there is neither Swiss, French, Armenian, German, American nor anything else, but where Christ is all and in all. The universality of Jesus Christ. There can be neither Jew nor Greek. Not "there is not", but, "there cannot be" circumcision nor uncircumcision on the earth, but where it is all of the heavens and therefore universal. Oh, the need for this emancipation in spirit!

The only way in which there can be any true realisation of the universality of the Lord Jesus is by a spiritual operation of God in our hearts. We could be at conferences as those various nationalities and various denominations and we could say while we are at a conference that we are not going to be different nations, we are going to sink all that for the time being and have common interests. When we leave this conference we could go back to our French, English, American and all the rest of it. We could do that and it would be a caricature, it would be an entirely false conception of the truth of the body of Christ. You need to have the thing done inside by the Holy Spirit, to be absolutely emancipated from all that is of this earth, to be brought into the heavenly universality of the Lord Jesus Christ where everything else ceases. Not to divide you merely from other people, but where it ceases to have a place in your own heart, where you do not regard yourself as belonging to that any longer, but where you realise you are out of every kind of earth system and earth order, and you are now with the Lord in the heavens and that the universe is the sphere of your spiritual operation, and that everything with which you have to do although it may be local, has a universal relationship.

That is how it was with local assemblies in the New Testament. They recognised that their ministry was not just within that parish, but wherever there was ministry in the Name of the Lord, that was their ministry; so that the apostle wherever he went had them with him co-operating definitely in spirit, recognising that the ministry was one and that there was a universal ministry though located in one spot.

The Thessalonians were instrumental in going right through all Asia. The Ephesians: a similar ministry, through them the Word went into Macedonia. It is wonderful to see how this universal principle operated in local assemblies which did not regard themselves as local companies, but as universal factors - in that they had interest in other nations. It was a spiritual thing, a thing into which they came from above. Nations ceased to be nations for them; the whole world was one, and Christ was a universal Christ, and wherever a child of God was, or a company of the Lord's children, there Christ as universal Lord was represented and implied.

Wherever there is a child of God, or two or three or more children of God, there Christ, not as local but as universal, is represented and implied. The universal Christ is there represented; it is not the local Christ, it is the universal Christ, the Lord Jesus who now is Lord of all - Lord of all and the head of every man. So that which is born of the Spirit, this new creation in Christ where old things are passed away, where there is no longer to be Greek, Barbarian, bondman, freeman, where all that has gone and this new man is brought in. That is sonship. And entering into that sonship is freedom from the whole system of satanic authority which governs the earth system and freedom from the law in the sense that now the nature of the Holy Spirit is in our hearts and we do not have to face up to something outward, some presentation of obligations and legal demands; the whole thing has become an inward power and you are emancipated from the imposition of a legality now, because you have the law written in your heart. It is Christ in you.

We have said before now that it is just as possible to be in legality in Christianity as it was possible to be in it in Judaism. Legality as Christianity is put upon you as a system and the natural Christian says you may do this and not do that etc., and your life becomes legalised and you are afraid to move for fear of what the brethren might say or think if you do this or that. We ought to be out of that. We should be free in the Lord. Sonship has freedom as its birthright. If the Son shall make you free you shall be free: free from Mosaic law, freedom from death, for now death is no longer in the hands of the devil; death is now in the hands of the Lord Jesus. He has taken charge of death; He lives and has the keys of death and of Hades, and keys are symbols of authority. He has the authority of death and of Hades and so while death still persists and is still operative here, the sovereign authority of the Lord Jesus over death is to make death work unto life for us. Flesh works death, but for the believer it works in this blessed way: when the believer touches flesh the Lord uses death to make that believer let it go. The believer knows when he has touched flesh and his first thought is to get out of this. The Lord drives them from death by using death. It is in His hands.

Now it is life triumphant over death, that is, making death serve the purpose of God. Death is working in this mortal body, but there is another power also working in this mortal body and that is the life whereby Jesus conquered death. Look at Paul: carrying a body full of weakness and infirmity, a real burden, but a man who was doing a colossal work, things that the energy of man could not do without a nervous breakdown. What is the explanation of this? Life triumphant over death, but death working is making the life more manifest and glorious. Death is the servant of the Lord Jesus Christ to make life manifest now. That is why the Lord has not brought the redemption of the body up to date with the redemption of the soul. Our souls have been redeemed, but we have not got the full inheritance of our redemption in the body. "Waiting for the redemption of the body" and in the meantime we have the life whereby death has been overcome, working in these mortal bodies and the Lord is giving His testimony now along that line. Of course, that is the wisdom of God. If you saw a lot of redeemed, resurrection and glorified bodies you would want to join that company! If you want to join those, this is the way: suffer. And by suffering you will know the glory. People do not want to take that on. So He uses this very method to keep out those who are not going on with the Lord. The believer is a mystery to the world and in that sense, there is something that cannot be accounted for on any human basis whatever; it is Divine, of God, transcendent. Sonship is freedom from death, freedom from the law, freedom from the authority of darkness. The Son making free.

I want you not to forget that it is a process. This new man is being renewed after the image of Him that created him. Foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son; being renewed after the image of Him that created him. That is what is going on now. We are being renewed after the image.

Then it is a progressive emancipation. We are more and more shedding the things of this natural life, which govern and control and confine and strain and limit, and becoming more and more (or ought to be) emancipated people from all that is of the earth. This is just one of those things to which we have referred, which is almost impossible to explain to anyone, which it is difficult to get into, but if you get it, you know. It is a reality.

There is a very common idea about that along some line of disaffection, disagreement, or desire to be different from everyone else, we have come out of denominations and left churches as here on earth according to the present order and system of things. That is how the natural man regards such things. That is not true. Exactly what happened was this: before there was any thought whatever of leaving denominations and the organised system of Christianity, there was a revelation of the true nature of the church which is His Body. The Lord revealed through His Word that this is not the church according to His mind; that church is not the traditional church. The church is one body in the heavenlies under one Sovereign Head, the Lord Jesus - governed absolutely by the Holy Spirit and not by committees or anything else. This is a thing which is essentially spiritual in all its government, conception, and vocation and is not run by man. It does not belong to man; it belongs to the Lord Jesus and it is not for man to order, arrange or organize it. The Holy Spirit may do all that and men are to receive their orders from the Head by the Holy Spirit as servants of Jesus Christ, to do what He says.

Well, that is putting very imperfectly that which came with tremendous force; the result was that everything else fell away. You did not have to resign; it went, you found yourself no longer a part of it. Not that you were leaving, but you had already left. You were not in it. The danger for people today is that they get the idea mentally and they go and preach against churches and denominations and tell people to come out. Don't you do that, but ask the Lord to give you a revelation of the church which is His body and the heavenly nature of things, and when once that breaks in upon you, you will find yourself in a universal realm where everything is different. You are out. You see what I mean.

It is one thing to do this down on an earth level and another thing to come into it from above; but this is the great factor of the universality of the church which is His body because it is an expression of the universality of the Head, Jesus Christ. If you sit down and meditate upon and look thoughtfully and prayerfully into the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ as representing God's thought for His church and for every individual member of His church which is His Body, you will find that universality is in every fragment of that Person.

It would be a long study for us but it would be well worthwhile to study the universality in the life of the Lord Jesus. His birth was not a merely earthly, local thing. Look at the action of the Holy Spirit; born, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, or of bloods, but of the Holy Spirit. That is universality: lifting the thing right out of the earthly level of birth. The heavens came in, the angels clave their way through the heavens, and heaven comes into that birth. The nations are there. Men come from a far land - shepherds, creation, every form of creation round Him - sheep, oxen, shepherds, wise men, poor and rich, learned and illiterate, heaven and earth. There is universality in that birth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit. That which is born of the Spirit is universal. As it is from heaven it touches the whole creation, embraces all space, time, ages and eternities; that is not us by natural birth, but that is us by spiritual birth. It is universal. The Holy Spirit is in that to begin with and heaven is in that to go on with, and then to the whole creation that has its mission. Its vocation is to the whole creation. It is spiritual.

His baptism was universal. As a representative act it gathered up the whole creation and carried it into death as a foreshadowing of Calvary gathered round great companies of people. Prophets were all summed up in John the Baptist; the whole of the Old Testament was summed up in him. It commenced a new state of things altogether. Heaven opened and again came in. Hell from beneath was touched, if that going down into death touches, by symbol, that under realm. This is no mere right which is performed, to be got through as an observance, it touches heaven, earth, hell because right at the back of it is universality. Get the universality of baptism and you have your motive for your testimony. If only we get the dimensions of this thing. People say, "We want to be baptised because it is a command", or "We want to follow His example..." or "It is the right thing to do because of His command". This is not adequate. See hell in this thing, hell hates a testimony of that kind and heaven is in it, and the Holy Spirit is in it, all ages are in it, and sonship is in that testimony to your resurrection union with the Lord Jesus in death and burial. It is a vast thing.

His anointing was universal. See the universality of the temptation of the Lord Jesus. See how it touches two creations. It touches the old order of things in Adam; where the fall takes place because Adam used his own will rather than preferring the will of God. Now, if the last Adam could be caught on that ground, a second creation would be ruined by the devil. So two creations were involved in that temptation. "All the kingdoms of the world will I give thee for a moment's recognition of my sovereignty". It is universal. The Lord Jesus had come for all the nations of the world, but He was not going to get them through the hands of the devil, by obedience to him, but take them on the ground of His own authority. He has them. The temptation was related to universal possession of the nations.

We have seen that Man being renewed after the image of Him that created Him, the image of His Son as to His humanity - can you fix the Lord Jesus in any one isolated department of humanity? He had the blend in His humanity of everything. Has it not been proved during nearly 2000 years? Take the Lord Jesus to India, Africa, China, anywhere you like in this world, and you will find that there is something in Him that finds a universal contact. He is not a stranger anywhere on this earth when spiritually brought in. He is not fixed in any one mould that makes Him the Saviour of the British or in any one nationality, but there is that in Him which makes Him universal in His incarnation. He blends everything in His Person.

Take temperaments, the artistic temperaments; you know exactly how he will behave in given circumstances. Another is of the phlegmatic temperament and you know exactly what to expect from that man. Give him something to do and you know the phlegmatic man will not jump at it, he will take it up slowly, but once you get him started he will go on and that man, if he takes eternity to do it, will go quietly on with it. Another will come along and you ask him to do something and he is into that as quick as you like, leaving it half done. You know what that temperament is. You have six or seven temperaments to deal with and everyone is governed by their own temperament. You cannot put the Lord Jesus into any one of these. He has the best of them all. Artistic, at its best. See Him touching the flowers and nature. Phlegmatic, you never hear of Him running, He goes quietly, sets His face like a flint, and yet He is never slow in the uptake, never slow to appreciate a situation. He is responsive, not dull, not superficial, but sees underneath; that is the best of another temperament. As to sex, He is a man, but you cannot put Him altogether there, there is that about Him which has a mother heart: "Oh Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thee..." etc.. There is the tenderness of a woman. You get the merciless side coming out. Everything is at its good side in the Lord Jesus. What the Holy Spirit is trying to do with us is to bring about a conformity to the image of His Son where the best is brought out; the features of the Lord Jesus as very Man according to the mind of God. Those features are to be developed in us. Those which are contrary to that are being crucified, cut off.

It is not necessary for us to move in our temperamental circle, but to move in every circle and be helpful where we might gravitate deep, where we enter into fellowship with those who are simple... we do not wash our hands of them. There is a universality of ministry to all by the one Holy Spirit. Renewed after the image of Him that created him.

Of course there is a very great deal more to be said - transfiguration, resurrection, ascension, the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost and His Name - it is all universal. The Name which is above every name, at which every knee shall bow. That is universality; it is in the Lord Jesus. That Name is called upon us, we are brought into the Name of Jesus through the universality and the authority of that Name as raised in Him. That baptism of the Spirit, that advent of the Spirit at Pentecost is for us; a universal Spirit in the sense that the Holy Spirit is a cosmic Spirit. He relates to all realms, the whole creation; not only working in the believer, but operating upon the unbeliever and back of the things of this world since the Lord Jesus has taken the authority into His Hands. The sovereignty of the Spirit is there. See the great background of things.

If the Lord is Head and He is Head here, what about this flesh? The Cross is the necessity for this old man, the natural man, carnal man to be cut off, ruled out. Why does the Lord do this? Why is it necessary for the old man to go out? In order to achieve this. It is an emancipating process. It is enlargement the Lord is after; to get us out of the local into the universal; out of the present into that vastness of the Lord Jesus; it is to get rid of limitations and not create limitation, that He applies the Cross.

Our flesh has to be slayed in order that our spirit might be released. That is all. Yet one feels that it is so necessary when bringing home this great practical and experimental truth about the Cross and the old creation and the flesh, and self-life, and the great truth of the church which is the body of Christ. These things should not be looked at as merely things heard that are to be mechanically accepted and taken on as some terrible obligation, but we are to see there is a vast eternal background as a reason and motive for it all; that in God's view there is something more than you and I being crucified. It is not just to crucify us that the Lord is doing it. He has that eternal purpose in view all the time. He is working to a vast thing and to come into that we must be delivered from that which is less.

May the Lord by His Spirit bring us that which is in His own view in dealing with us as He does and every bit of cutting off here on the earth which looks like limitation is really the Lord's way of getting us out into that which is timeless and spaceless - that we may fulfil the heavenly vocation of the sons of God.

Chapter 4 - The Lord Jesus as the Head of the New Creation

Reading: Acts 2:32; Phil. 2:5-11; Heb. 1:5-9, 2:9,10; Eph. 1:22-25, 4:15, 5:23; Col. 1:18, 2:19; 1 Cor. 2:5.

We have been occupied with "That which is born of the Spirit" or "the new creation in Christ". We firstly dwelt upon the heavenliness of that which is born of the Spirit, that new creation in Christ - its heavenly origin and heavenly life, heavenly relationships, and heavenly resources, and its entire heavenliness of nature and vocation. In other words, its complete and absolute detachment and emancipation from all that is earthly.

Then we were occupied with the universality of this new creation, this that is born of the Spirit. Seeing that it is a matter not of time, but of eternity - from eternity past to eternity yet to be - it is timeless and it is spaceless; that is, it is not bound by any of the ordinary limitations of human life. It has a vocation which is universal.

Now we are to consider the Headship and Sovereignty of the Lord Jesus as Head of the new creation, Head of the church which is His Body, and possessing absolute sovereignty in every realm.

This new creation is constituted under the complete Headship of the Lord Jesus. That is clearly revealed in the Word of God as being the original intention of God concerning Christ, that He should be the Head over all things, universally Head, and that everything should come under His Headship and Sovereignty. That Headship and that Sovereignty is not recognised in the fallen Adam creation. All the rights of God in Christ are repudiated there, or ignored, but when God takes up His original purpose again and makes all things new, and brings in a new creation (that which is born of the Spirit as that which is differing from that which is born of the flesh) He reconstitutes the whole of the new creation under His original intention: the Headship and Sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ, that in all things He might have the pre-eminence.

If you have followed the line of representation which we have been pursuing, you will have noted that our first note was related to the birth of the Lord Jesus as being entirely heavenly, as being a true representation of that which is born of the Spirit. We have said as one of the first principles of our consideration that the Lord Jesus has been set by God the Father to be a representation of man according to the mind of God. And in all the features and phases of His life He spiritually represents God's mind concerning man. And in His birth (which is an entirely heavenly thing) the supreme factor of which is spiritually and by the Holy Spirit, we see the nature of every child of God as born of the Holy Spirit.

Then in the previous chapter you will have noticed that we were dealing with the person of the Lord Jesus in His humanity according to God - humanity after the mind of God - and we saw how in that humanity of the Lord Jesus, all the universal elements are combined and how He reaches out into all realms, spheres, all departments and comprises in Himself and becomes a universal Man with a heavenly life. It was His humanity mainly in view, the Man Christ Jesus in His manhood representing what God is seeking spiritually to do by the operation and energy of the Holy Spirit in every child of God to make for a glorified humanity. I am quite aware of the danger of this interpretation, but it is understood amongst us here that we are now dealing with the representative side of the life and work of the Lord Jesus. We recognise as in a place altogether apart, His Deity and that phase of His work of vicarious atonement with which we have no connection whatever only as beneficiaries. We enter into the good of that by faith, in redemption and salvation, but not receiving it as a part of our being. Deity is outside of us and always will be. One always feels the necessity always of stressing that, lest people might let their minds overlap into the thought that we are talking about the deification of humanity. Now we are taking the Lord Jesus as Son of Man, not as God, which verily He is, but as Son of Man as representing God's thought for every man when man is constituted according to God's mind: being born of the Spirit. So we have in view the humanity of the Lord Jesus, which represents humanity according to God. Now we carry forward the same principle of representation into this realm of the Headship and Sovereignty of the Lord Jesus.

We have touched birth and humanity; now we come to:-

Anointing.

This is another stage in the heavenly history of the Lord Jesus which has a heavenly counterpart, as we shall see.

We come to the place of His anointing when He came up out of the waters of Jordan, the heavens were open and the Holy Spirit in bodily form as a dove came upon Him, and He was anointed of the Holy Spirit symbolically, or typically, and that anointing meant that God had involved Himself in the life of the Son of Man in a new way. It does not mean, as certain schools teach, that Deity came to the Lord Jesus at Jordan and left Him at Calvary. But here, in an official way for purposes of service, purposes of office, purposes of His great commission and life work and vocation - where He stepped across the line which divided between His private life in the thirty years in secret and His public life in office in the three and a half years, at that point where He took up His great representative redemptive work, God involved Himself in a new way for the purpose of service and representation.

God was implied in that coming of the Holy Spirit at Jordan and it represented Godward the absolute Headship of God over Christ. The Head of Christ is God we have read, and inasmuch as the Holy Spirit came upon His Head, as the anointing oil was always upon the head of the one anointed, be he prophet, priest or king, so the Holy Spirit coming upon His Head represented that the Lord Jesus in this official way, came under the sovereign Headship of the Father. And from that moment the Lord Jesus, in a new way, was coming to recognise that now nothing was out from Himself, but everything was out from the Father and that He had to confer with and consult the Father on every detail of His life for the rest of His work here on earth.

So the Headship of the Father became recognised in that anointing; it came upon Him and it was for ever after "Not My will but Thine"; "I delight to do Thy will"; "I come to do Thy will O God". That was the significance of the anointing: that had excluded all that was of man as man and involved all that was of God as God in human life, so that God became the ruling, sovereign factor in the life of that Man constituted by the Holy Spirit according to God. That is the first primary factor in the anointing which came upon Him: the Headship of God over the Son. But it also implied, although there was to be a later realisation of it literally, that the Lord Jesus was also made Head over the new creation. It gave Headship to the Lord Jesus; it put Him in a place under the Father, but over the new creation, and constituted Him the authority for the rest of His time. And it was that authority which spiritually registered its impact upon the consciousness of everything round Him during the days of His flesh. Demons recognised that authority and cried "What have we in common with Thee; depart from us, torment us not" and the common people said, "He spoke as one having authority and not as the scribes", and rulers cowed beneath that secret operation of authority so that even Pilate realised he was at a discount in the presence of this One.

There was an ascendency about Him that was not merely the ascendency of His human life, but there was something implied which was above the kings of the earth, which made them feel small in His presence. There, all the time, He was put in that spiritual and moral position as Head over all things in the creation; its true fulfillment later on was implied in the anointing. Wherever God has anointed a chosen vessel, that vessel has taken ascendency over everything else. If God has chosen Abraham, then Abraham rebukes kings. Remember the great word of the Psalmist "He rebuked kings for their sakes, saying, touch not mine Anointed, do my prophets no harm"; kings of the earth are made subject to the anointed of the Lord. So that the anointing represents Headship, ascendency, elevation spiritually. In the case of the Lord Jesus, the larger fulfillment of that took place at His ascension. When God raised Him from the dead the thing became literal which was largely typical at Jordan.

We have read, "God raised Him from the dead, this Jesus, and He being by the right hand of God exalted and having received the promise of the Father hath poured forth this". What was the promise of the Father? The Holy Spirit. Being exalted at the right hand of God the Father, and having received the promise of the Spirit, the promise of the Father, He received the Holy Spirit in this full way literally, actually, when raised really from the dead - not typically - and exalted to the right hand of the Majesty on high. So that then He was fully anointed as Head over the new creation, over the church which is His Body, over every man; placed in the position of absolute sovereignty and authority by the anointing which He received in the presence of the Father in His resurrection, ascension and exaltation. That again is very clear. So that the Lord Jesus, having received the Holy Spirit, has been constituted absolutely pre-eminent, Sovereign Lord over the whole of God's new creation, over every member of that creation. It is not only a universal acceptance, but it is an individual obligation. It is important to get that in order to see the meaning of God's dealings with us individually.

Christ is the Head of every man and for specific vocational purposes over all things to the church which is His Body, the fulness of Him that fills all in all. The differences we make in those departments we may see later, but we are stating the fact for the moment, to get the background of this whole thing. Now, having recognised that, and from our hearts declared that Jesus Christ is Lord, having received of the Father the promise of the Spirit by which He has been constituted an anointed Head over all things, we are able to get on with the practical applications and significances of that great truth. And yet, there is always a danger of believing and assenting to a truth like that and in a day of challenge beginning to wonder if after all the Lord Jesus is Lord when the devil seems to have all his own way and things are all going wrong and all your Divine expectations seem to be upset; to have doubts as to whether the sovereignty and authority is in the hands of the Lord Jesus after all.

We want this to be brought out of theory into experience; out of the objective agreement to the subjective faith, so that it becomes a reality. That means then that we must begin to break up the meaning of this anointing and apply it. We have said that that anointing meant the excluding of everything which is of man according to nature, and that from the moment of the anointing, everything was of and by the Spirit. That is a simple truth and yet it carries a very great deal with it.

From that moment, "according to nature" is excluded. All man's wisdom, ability, strength - everything of man according to nature - is excluded when the Holy Spirit comes and takes up sovereignty. And everything from that moment has to be by the Holy Spirit alone, of God; old things are passed away.

What are the old things? I used to do it, or try to do it; I used to plan it, scheme it, bring my judgment to bear upon it; I used to run it... old things are passed away, behold all has become new and all things are out from God. That is the difference. The old things were out from myself; now all things are out from God. There is a new creation and the supreme feature of the new creation is that it is all of God, not a bit of man. Man by nature has no standing in it at all. He and all his human ability are excluded; it is God and God only in the new creation. It is God coming in in authority, in spiritual ascendency and in dignity. It is going to give to the weakest, the frailest, the most nervous, a new dignity which is of God and not of man and give them a position in Christ of spiritual ascendency and elevation.

It is a blessed thing beloved (and this is practical too) for the weakest, humblest, nervous, retiring, reserved, shrinking naturally, can now come to be by the Holy Spirit constituted into one at whom demons tremble, the powers of darkness are afraid, and there is registered the impact of God in sovereignty. That is a dignity that comes in by anointing. It is God involving Himself in the life of that one and all those who have come under the absolute Headship of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that is a thing that you and I need to understand and come into, for all of us are far too spiritually feeble and we ought to be mighty. We are far too easily set back by the enemy when the enemy should be set back by the Lord through us. It is so difficult today for the church to stand up against the flood of evil forces and there is not the testimony to the absolute sovereignty of the Lord Jesus. That ought not to be. There is far too much depression and defeat written in the faces of the Lord's people and in the very suggestion of their presence that to be a Christian is an awfully difficult, hard business and it is like carrying a tremendous burden and being people who have an awful time on the earth and the worst of it all the time. But while it is true we know sorrow, yet there is that "always rejoicing".

There is the other side where we know what it is to be persecuted, pursued, but not left behind. Persecuted, but not forsaken, cast down, but not destroyed; there is an ascendency all the time which is not our optimism, not because we have such a store of good spirits that we can stir ourselves up to be cheerful; it is that mighty fact of the ascendency of the Holy Spirit in the Name of the Lord Jesus in our hearts that we know that even in the worst hour, the darkest hour, we are coming out at length on top; it is not going to end in ignominy and shame and there is a "hope which maketh not ashamed". The ascendency of Christ by the Holy Spirit within: that which is born of the Spirit. We should be men and women in places where the devil does rampage, but with the Holy Spirit dwelling within in the sovereign pre-eminence of the Lord Jesus and the Name, recognising that he is not sovereign there, but Jesus Christ is, because we are there. The testimony in every member of Christ to the fact that God has anointed Jesus Christ as sovereign Head, and Christ is in us.

We are giving a very great deal away to the devil by our spirit of defeat. The enemy is able to hold his ground and property far too easily today because Christianity is making us such miserable people, we used to be bright but now we are morose and seem to have no joy, to be under things all the time. It is their Christianity that has taken away the very joy of life from us - God deliver us! That is giving the enemy ground, putting him in a place of vantage. All who have intelligence are to be able to see that there is in us something more than the best of this earth, that we have a satisfaction and an ascendency which makes us absolutely independent of all their so-called joys, with a joy that is more than their best. Not to look at us and say they won't go to this and do that because they must not; we have become Christians and are afraid to and are just about as miserable as can be. No, that is not the order. We should be those who are really spoilt for the world, who have something far more than they have! Well, that is the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus, the ascendency of the anointing, God coming in in authority and in dignity.

We may be amongst men nothing, accounted the off-scouring of all things, whom men would not look at when they were looking for one to do their big jobs, set at naught, and yet still there is that which speaks of a dignity, strength, power, grip, calm. There's no better word than ascendency; that which came out so gloriously in the apostle.

Paul, at the end of a hard life, with a broken body, having suffered intensely and been nigh unto death many times, yet when the sea is raging so that well-seasoned, sea-faring men are at their wits end, in despair and have not another line of resource but to just stand paralysed to see how things would go, came and took charge of the ship, carried the whole thing through and recaptured the morale of the whole crew. That is not the force of human personality; it is the ascendency of God in a man. "There stood by me this night the angel of God... saying, Fear not Paul." God had spoken in his heart and it was the Divine triumph over everything else. And that is a secret thing with the Lord. When others come to their wits end, the child of God is governed by that which is above all the forces of nature, and is calm. It is that to which the Lord would bring His children. That is really the power, and virtue, and inheritance of the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

It was always those anointed of God who, in the hour of emergency, took charge. They were there in the position of authority in the day of threatening disaster. Anointing then, must mean spiritual dignity - not to make us important in our own eyes, to give us a natural importance - it will make us feel very nothing. That is very necessary; it is to give spiritual dignity. It was always for that purpose. Anointing existed before Adam was created. We read of the anointed cherub that covered, referring to Lucifer in his unfallen state, in his high office in the glory before this world was: How art thou fallen. The anointed and the anointing constituted him a dignitary in the heavenly glories before this world was, and anointing is always in relation to spiritual and moral ascendency. We need to know that operation of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. It is not official; not formal, not ecclesiastical; it is spiritual, moral, in the highest sense of that word. It gives an elevation above the highest natural ability, and the highest natural dignity. The strong, and powerful, and important in this world cannot rise to the height of this sovereignty of the Lord Jesus in government and administration and will have to bow to it sooner or later.

The Body of Christ - The Medium of the Display of Christ's Headship

Now the next thing is this: that the Body of Christ (and every member of the Body of Christ) is intended to be the medium of the display of Christ's Headship. He has been "made Head over all things to the church which is His Body, the fulness of Him that fills all in all" so that the Body, and every member thereof, is intended to be for the display of the glory of the Head. You remember that the spiritual interpretation of the book of Esther largely comes down upon that.

Vashti was deposed from her position as queen. Why? Because she refused to hold herself at the disposal of the king for the display of his glory. She preferred to have a private party of her own and to reign in her own circle instead of going to the banquet of the king to be displayed for his glory. Reading the story as a bit of Eastern history, it might be a sordid story, but God is taking hold of these things, however sordid, that they may represent great spiritual realities.

The same is true of the story of the prophet Hosea and his wife: a woman running off and selling herself and giving herself to the most degrading course of moral or immoral life, and then the prophet having to go, and when men have no more use for her, the prophet having to buy her out of the public market. So degraded as to be put up for sale for anyone who would make a bid for her; and the prophet having to go and buy her back and restore her to the place of highest affection and deepest respect, and act as if she had never sinned. God loves that people Israel. That is me and you, but He says, "I love you as if you had never sinned and will restore you to a place as if nothing had ever happened". This is taken hold of by God and lifted and given a spiritual significance which carries you to the highest glories of New Testament revelation. Vashti goes; she prefers a private banquet where she could reign as queen on her own. She is deposed, and the king seeks someone who will live a life of selflessness for him and for his glory; and Esther comes in to take that place. She is sought for. All is for the king to display his glory, kingship and sovereignty, and Esther is brought to the palace for that purpose. Esther is the church, the Bride - the church is to be the instrument for the display of the glory of the Head. All her glory is His glory and of no one else.

When Rebecca was brought from the far country to Isaac, as they drew near she lifted up her eyes and said, "Who is this man?" "My Master's son; Isaac, your husband to be", and it says that she immediately took a veil and put it over her face. Her beauty was for no one else; it was reserved for him. That is it. The church is for His glory.

"The Bride eyes not her garment,

but her dear Bridegroom's face;

I will not gaze at glory,

but on my King of Grace."

It is for the Lord. The display of His glory. So the Body in all its members is to be the display of the sovereignty, glory and supremacy of the Head, the Lord Jesus. What a calling, what a vocation, what an honour!

But, you see, this is vocational. We so often take this angle, pleading with the Lord to display His sovereign power - that is just the very thing for which He has related us to Himself. There is no need for us to plead for Him to do it, but we should be in a position and condition for Him to do it. He has joined us to Himself for that purpose. When we hold fast the Head it is the sovereignty of the Head that is displayed. At Pentecost that is what happened. The Holy Spirit brought them into a right relationship to the Exalted Head and His sovereignty was instantly displayed, and the difficulty is not in our persuading the Lord to act sovereignly and mightily, but getting us to a place of selflessness where we will take none of the glory to ourselves. He is straitened in this fallen nature of ours. He begins to use us and we begin to be something and strut about like a farmyard bantam - taking God's glory, a name and reputation, and giving it to man. God is not able to use men today because of that. He will display His sovereignty when He gets us broken and empty enough to do it. He has anointed us with Himself for that very purpose; for the display of His Headship.

We have received the anointing in Him in order that the purpose of His being anointed as Head should be expressed through us. He has not received the anointing to Himself as Head; while He remains Head supremely, He has poured forth this, and the anointing oil has come down on us as born of the Spirit in order that the sovereignty might come down and be administered through the church which is His Body. This leads us to say that the matter of Headship is also a matter of subjection. Those illustrative passages come in here. "I would have you to know," says the apostle, "that the head of every woman is the man even as Christ is Head of the church". The head of every woman is the man. The very strength and very safety of the woman is in submitting in a right way to the headship of the man. You are not to take that merely as formal or legal. That has to be regarded in its spiritual and moral meaning. God has so constituted His creation that He intended man to be the protection and strength of woman, and that woman was to find her protection and safety under the shelter of the man. But that thought was intended by God to be an illustration of a heavenly law: that the church finds Her strength and safety in Her subjection to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Headship is not legal or formal, or ecclesiastical. Headship is spiritual and moral. That headship has fallen upon women sometimes. Someone has got to take that position over a family and if the man fails and the woman is spiritually and morally fitted to do it, she must; but it is not the right order and there will be a weakness while that lasts. The headship is not merely because there is a male person there. Headship is that there is spiritual and moral headship there.

When poor Barak refused to come up and take charge of the armies of the Lord, Deborah had to do it, but the Lord upheld the principle in that He did not mention Deborah in Hebrews 11, but Barak. But if Barak does not do it, then the spiritual and moral headship will fall upon Deborah. She will not act in independence, but seek to stimulate him and say "up Barak", try and get him to his place, but the principle of this is that Headship is not formal, legal or ecclesiastical appointment; it is spiritual, it is moral. And subjection to the Lord Jesus is not subjection on a legal or formal basis; it is the recognition of His absolute spiritual and moral right to be Head and it is in that the church finds Her safety and strength. Philippians 2:5: "Wherefore God hath highly exalted Him". His high exaltation, with the Name above every Name in which every knee shall bow, is in virtue of something - not formal or just legal - it is in virtue of a tremendous thing that He has done spiritually, of a great triumph, firstly by subjecting Himself to the will of the Father, and then being exalted to the right hand of the Majesty on high. He subjected Himself to the will of God and you and I will never know salvation until we have known what it is to become absolutely subject to Christ. Note that that brings us back to the Cross - the Cross and the Headship of Christ, the Cross and spiritual ascendency.

We have had the Cross brought home to us in these messages tremendously, so that many of us have reeled under its impact and felt the terrific force of its application to this old man. Why is that necessary? Why is it essential that the Cross should be laid with such devastating force upon this old creation? For two reasons which are two sides of one. It is because the old creation is under the authority of darkness and not under the authority of Christ in the spiritual and moral sense. The absolute sovereignty of the Lord Jesus as a thing established in the life of man does not hold in the old creation. There is a sovereignty, as it were, upon Him of the universe which governs all things from the throne, but that is not what I am thinking of. I am thinking of the display of the glory of the Lord Jesus in and through His own; and over the old creation there is an authority of darkness. There is the "prince of the power of the air", the "spirit that now works in the children of disobedience", and the only way in which that authority can be shattered and broken, the only way in which we can be delivered from the authority of darkness, is by Christ's work in His Cross where He met that authority to break it so that there might be the new creation without that authority governing it or having any power over it.

And the Cross represents for us our deliverance out of the authority of darkness, but that authority is established in our very nature by nature, and it has got to be broken. The devil has a grip upon the whole creation - "the whole world lieth in the wicked one", "the spirit that works in the children of disobedience", "the god of this age has blinded the eyes of them which believe not". He has an authority in that realm, and that authority works in every being, in the very best of them. And to be unconscious of that fact is probably the greatest proof of its existence because it is always true that the greatest advantage of the devil is to work unseen, and to leave no trace whatever of his operations. We are entirely deceived into a position where we do not believe that there is such a devil. That is the supreme evidence of the devil's work. He does not want to display himself as the devil. He wants to insinuate his non-existence if he can. "The god of this age hath blinded."

I always remember Bunyan's "Holy War" when Apollyon would capture Mansoul, the first thing he would do would be to get hold of the Lord Mayor Mr. Understanding and put him in a dark dungeon where he could not see what was going on. "Having the understanding darkened, alienated from the life of God". This is a grip that has got to be shattered. In the Cross the Lord Jesus did that for every son whom He brings to glory and the Cross has to be laid strongly and mightily upon our old man in that connection.

But there is the other side. The will of the flesh. The will of the flesh is the will of the devil. It is the will of him who said, "I will exalt my throne; I will be equal with the Most High". The will which confronted the will of God and captured the will of Adam and installed itself in the race of Adam; another will that is not the will of God, being ignorant of God's righteousness, going about to establish their own, etc. - another will not subject to God. And we know only too well that we never get into a clear place of spiritual ascendency, never know anything about spiritual victory, or have a clear knowledge of the will of God, until our will has been put absolutely aside, and we have no will in the matter at all. Until then we are tossed to and fro and go round in a circle and are in chaos until that will has been put away ready for the will of God and the Lord can lift us up and put us in the place where we are above things, whereas we have been beneath them. The Cross has to come in and break the will of the flesh; the self-will, anything that wills other than the will of God. So the Cross must break this nature in order to get us to the place of the absolute sovereignty and supremacy of the Lord Jesus.

Pride

And of course, one of the strongest features of the self-will is pride. Lucifer said "I will be equal with the Most High" and the prophet is made to say, "Pride was found in thee". Pride takes many forms. Pride can be a most humble thing in its pose. Pride can be a very sorry-for-itself thing. Pride can be a very hurt thing, but it is still pride. We can be those who are feeling very broken, but it is not we who are broken, it is our pride which has been wounded. If we knew the history of every rupture of fellowship amongst God's people, of every dissemblance which has come into the things of God, of every advantage that the devil has gained, I believe we should find pride in some form or another - someone having a personal interest, personally concerned, like or dislike, want or not want, a preference - somehow pride coming in through the "I". That is the thing the devil always uses to destroy; and it has to be smashed. Calvary sees the emptying right down to the last degree where there is nothing left of self and then there can be the lifting up, the exaltation into the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus.

The Lord has to break before He can elevate, empty before He can fill. The Cross must be applied to bring us to the absolute supremacy of the Lord Jesus. What we need is the complete assurance that Jesus Christ is Lord. We cannot serve in the gospel unless we are perfectly assured that the government is in His Hands. If we have any doubt about that, we are paralysed and crippled in service and in life. We must strongly grasp the fact that all authority in heaven and in earth is in the hands of the Lord Jesus, not in the hands of Satan. If we do not rest in that, we shall be altogether spoilt, we shall not be able to go through. It is a fact. Oh, to come into spiritual enjoyment of that fact; we have now seen the way.

May the Lord make it very real to our hearts that the new creation, that which is born of the Spirit, is constituted now under the complete supremacy and sovereign Headship of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is to be Lord over us in every detail. He is Lord by the appointment of the Father, and when we are subject to Christ, there is nothing impossible. His sovereignty operates. May we know more of it for His Name's sake.

Chapter 5 - The Essential Corporate Nature of the New Creation

Reading: Eph. 4:24,25; Col. 3:10; Rom. 6:4-6, 7:6, 12:2,4-6; 1 Cor. 12:12-14,20,27.

What I feel the Lord wants added to our series of messages is a word on the essential corporate nature of that which is born of the Spirit, of the new creation in Christ. It is into this that there are gathered in the fullest meaning of those things of which we have been speaking.

1. The Heavenliness of the New Creation

We commenced with the heavenliness in nature, life, resources and vocation of that which is born of the Spirit, the new creation in Christ Jesus. And that, while applying to the individual and being true of the individual, is pre-eminently true of the church which is the Body of Christ. That fact, of course, must come by revelation of the Holy Spirit before it can be apprehended and appreciated, but as a fact it has to be stated and we have to take facts to the Lord and ask Him to make them living realities.

So we must recognise the fact that the church, according to the Word of God, is essentially a heavenly thing in its nature, resources, life and vocation. Putting that round the other way, it is not an earthly thing; its life is not of the earth, its resources are not of the earth. Let that fall on you very heavily. The resources of the church, according to God, are not of the earth.

Its vocation is a heavenly vocation. We must always remember that while there is an aspect of the vocation of the people of God which is manward, the pre-eminent aspect is Godward. You find that borne out very clearly in the Old Testament in the worship of the Tabernacle and the Temple, for when you begin to deal with the Tabernacle, where you see God's mind, you always begin at the inside. God begins on the inside. He commenced with the most holy place and what was therein, and coming from God beginning there, indicates the true and highest nature of the vocation of that which represents the dwelling place of God; that is, its vocation is Godward before it is manward and we are called to fulfil a ministry which is more in relation to heavenly things than it is to earthly things. One would like to stay with that for a time because it is very important that we should recognise that we are such earthbound, earth limited creatures, that for us the span of our years here, and sphere of our activities here has counted more than anything else and if there has been limitation in earthly life and service, we have felt that was the governing feature, and that represented failure. Not necessarily so. The Lord is fulfilling through the church a heavenly ministry and vocation which far transcends time, and space, and this earth, and that explains a good deal - something of which we may mention in a few moments.

"That now unto the principalities and powers, by the church, the manifested wisdom of God is being made known". There is the heavenly vocation; and at most, the church in this age will have touched, so far as this earth is concerned, a very small portion. It will be composed of a very small percentage of the inhabitants of this earth. Not because God has doomed the rest, but He is taking out from the nations a people for His Name, and we know that the church is relatively a small thing in comparison with the vast multitudes of those who are on the earth, and always will be. And when the church is withdrawn and you see all that great margin of those not in and of the church, you say "Well, is this all? Is this all that the church was for?" and you begin to judge by measurements of that kind and you feel that it is a failure. But you have got to take eternity into account. This has to come into account, and something beyond that which is seen in the vocation of the church. There is something being done through the church by God in His wisdom, which goes beyond the bounds of humanity and beyond the limits of this earth. It is a heavenly vocation and it is unto God. The church is called to minister in a heavenly way.

2. Universality

Universality was the second meditation. The universality of that which is born of the Spirit and the church as the New Man. Note that is what it said in the passages we read. The church is the new man - one new man - it is universal in its range, in its influence, in its ministry. It is universal; it is not local, though it may have a local expression among local companies. It is not national; it is not international. I am afraid a good many minds have slipped up there and thought the church is international, that it is comprised of all nations. No! It is not comprised of all nations. It is not comprised of nations at all. The Word says, "where there cannot be Jew and Gentile" not "where Jew and Gentile combine", but "where there cannot be Jew and Gentile, bondmen, freemen". These things do not come in at all. It is not an international church. It is a super-national church, a new creation, a new man where all earthly distinctions are entirely lost.

And Paul, to come there, was given the supreme revelation of the church, the body of Christ, and is himself a personal representation of the teaching and ministry that was committed to him. God has wrought it into the very life of this man. And to me, one of the most striking things is how Paul, of all the apostles, the authorised Jew, is introduced with his threatening and slaughters, making havoc of the church, casting men and women into prison because this thing was a threat to Judaism. That man is here dealt with by the Spirit of God, so that the Gentile is eventually just as much as the Jew to him. The marvellous emerging of this thing was that he withstood even Peter to the face on this very question. Remember how the Galatian letter opens. With Peter and certain others "...I withstood him to the face because, before they were come down he went in and ate with the Gentiles, but when they were come he withdrew - I withstood him for his dissimulation". There is some hypocrisy that Paul could not tolerate now - this man who once had persecuted the Gentiles and would not have them, is now withstanding Peter to the face that he is withdrawing from the Gentiles because of the brethren and because of what they would say if they saw him going in to eat with the Gentiles. I feel that one of the miracles of New Testament history is that change in Paul so that he becomes the embodiment of the truth of the new man where there is neither Jew nor Gentile, where that distinction has been lost sight of entirely and it is not a matter of international movement, but One New Man and if there was ever one new man typically, that was Paul himself, on this very thing. That is the church, the Body of Christ, universal in its nature.

3. The Sovereign Headship of the Lord Jesus

Then we went on to the sovereignty, the sovereign headship of the Lord Jesus, the sovereignty of the new creation. It is very striking to note that the New Testament begins with the gospel concerning sovereignty. Matthew introduces the gospel along the line of sovereignty. It is the King. Matthew - sovereignty. The striking thing is this, that having introduced the gospel along the line of sovereignty, before he gets to the end of his gospel, he has introduced the church as the instrument of that sovereignty. Matthew 16: sovereignty vested in the church so that the gates of Hades are unable to prevail against it. That is just it; the church which is His Body is the instrument of the administration of the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus as sovereign Head over all things to the church which is His Body. That is the nature of the church's power: authority and influence according to the mind of God. And there is a great quest to recover the church's prestige today, to recover its influence in the world, to reinstate it in the world as something to be taken account of and to be reckoned with. And there has been a great deal of deploring of the fact that in great international crises the church is not a factor, whatever men may mean by that. They are thinking of it as a force on earth with political, moral and social position, influence, and power, raising its voice of authority in the matter of ethics and public morals and so on. They do not mean this: the spiritual sovereignty of Jesus Christ through and by the church meeting forces of evil behind the world situation; that is another thing altogether.

It is one thing to raise a public voice to try and stem the tide of worldly forces, and world counsels, it is quite another thing to meet the principalities and powers and world rulers of this darkness, the spiritual hosts of wickedness lying behind the spiritual bondage of men whose minds are darkened, and who are governed by the prince of the power of the air. In that realm the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus counts, and it is in that realm that the church is paralysed. Earthly position and power is not the thing that the Lord Jesus desires for His church. The New Man stands in the sovereignty of his Head, the Lord Jesus Christ.

4. The Perfecting Through Suffering, Chastening and Discipline

We went on to speak about the perfecting through suffering, chastening, and discipline, and we want now to recognise that this relates not only to the individual, but that it is a corporate thing. It is the church's perfecting.

5. The Corporate Nature of the New Creation

We have all recognised that everything now in the believer's life is not only personal or individual; it is relative to all other believers, it is corporate, it is a part of a whole, and we should rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. And you will notice that when reading that passage I called attention to what followed, "speak everyone truth with his neighbour seeing ye have put on the new man" - the new man, a corporate new man - and it is a matter of relationships now with all other believers.

Suffering is one suffering; suffering is not isolated suffering, it is suffering in the behalf of the church which is His Body. Paul saw that principle, "to fill up that which is lacking". Paul's sufferings were corporate sufferings and we have to recognise that others are to come into the benefit of our sufferings. It is for the Body's sake. The blessing is the same. The ministry is the same. Here you have come to this then, that everything, while it has a personal application (seeing that we are severally members of Christ) has supremely a corporate meaning. It is relative, and all these things are gathered up in their various expression in the Body, the church.

Now, why this word? For this purpose: that the very term 'the Body', the very designation 'the Body' (which is the highest designation given to us for the church) that is the highest in the realm of what is corporate. When you are thinking in the realm of relationship, of oneness, then the thing which gets nearest, and which I think it is impossible to get nearer the principle of oneness, is the body. If you take the thought of a temple ("ye are stones built into a temple") it may be brought into very near proximity, you cannot get the above point; you still remain individual stones capable of being parted, separated, and the absence of one stone or more will not destroy the unity of the whole. You take the other designations of the church and you find they are intended to represent some particular aspect of the church like the wife or bride, and there you have the emphasis upon affectional relationship.

When you come to the body, that designation is intended to bring you to the final point of what is one; the body is one. Take the physical body as an illustration, because it is so mutually intertwined with itself that you cannot touch one point of this body without touching the whole. You tread on a tack; it only touches the tip of your toe but your whole body has got it! You have a bad tooth and you know quite well it involves your whole body. The oneness is so complete, and you cannot touch a point without involving the whole, and if you destroy one little part you have destroyed something which is vital, living; it is not a dead thing. We have nothing dead in this body, unless we are suffering paralysis. There is life to the tip and you can take hold of one hair of the thousands and your whole body has got it.

One wants to press this. It is the nature of oneness and everything is life in it. It is oneness of life, the oneness of an intricate system of energy all brought together and registered and passed into the head. That is the designation of the church in its highest expression of oneness. Is this what we have today in that which is called the church? That is not the governing principle of what is called the church today. There is this extra thing to take into account. We have not traced it, but it is implied, it is intelligent oneness. When you touch one of those points, you know it. It is not the fact of a mechanical oneness, it is conscious oneness, it is intelligence, and of course, the intelligence of this spiritual Body is the Holy Spirit - we are all baptised into one Spirit - and He is the intelligence of the whole from the Head, from Christ, in whom all the members are gathered up, as the Head. The Holy Spirit moves through the whole as its intelligent life, its conscious life. And beloved, it is that that the Lord wants to have recognised and understood and it is unto that that the apostle found it necessary to pray for believers that the eyes of our hearts might be enlightened - not the eyes of our reason - the sensitive affection organ being made alive to this great truth; you come into a sympathetic intelligence, knowledge, understanding of the oneness of all the members. So the very term "Body" is given to indicate the nature of the oneness of Christ and His members and all of the members together in Christ.

It is a matter of interdependence. What have we today taking the place of the body of Christ in this essential? I do not think l have exaggerated the truth; I have only sought to bring out what is true: we have committees, councils, companies of men coming together and organising, and arranging, manipulating and directing the things of the church along the lines of this world's business for the most part, and seeking by all kinds of means to draw upon this world's resources to keep God's work going. You know the whole system of things. Men running it as they run a business on this earth, and men have taken charge of the Lord's property. Men have taken charge of the church of God, but the church does not belong to men, it belongs to the Lord. The Body is for the Lord, it is the Lord's, and the Holy Spirit has come here to do the Lord's work and to carry out the Lord's purpose concerning His Body. If only we could get back to this, it is going to change things for us.

Building the Body, perfecting the Body is not our business - to see to the progress and expression of the church - that is not our business at all. That is the Holy Spirit's business; it is ours to be servants of the Holy Spirit, to do as He tells us: to give the word that He gives to us, to take whatever steps He dictates we should take, not to sit down and plan and scheme, order, and govern the thing and bring our judgment to bear upon it. What does the Lord say about it? And we are finding today the confounding of the counsels of men as they are trying to run the church of God, and at best it is not adequate, and the spiritual results are not ever where you have the most perfectly ordered and running machinery. The spiritual results are not those you have in the New Testament because man has taken the place of the Holy Spirit, and there has been a conforming to this age instead of a transforming by the renewing of the mind. The new man is a different thing altogether.

It is the interdependence of all the members that we want to emphasise; it represents the necessity for a tremendous emancipation. We have come into an awful inheritance of a long-standing system. The day was almost before the apostles had gone, when man pulled the church down out of the heavenlies and planted it on the earth and made it an earth thing and introduced man as architect and sought to make it a popular world movement with something to impress men, and draw men to it instead of leaving it to the Holy Spirit to draw men to it. That thing has been developed through all these hundreds of years and we have entered into that inheritance, and the Lord has got to deliver as much from a Christian system as from an anti-Christian system. It is just as big a thing as to deliver out of the power of darkness.

Forgive the stress of this, but it is important that if the Lord is going to have what His heart is set upon, things like this must be said. The new man is of heaven, not of earth. His life is from above, his resources are from heaven; though he might be in a wilderness, God can prepare a table in the wilderness and He has proved it again and again. Spiritually and humanly the resources are heavenly. It does not mean God will not use resources down here and give it into the hearts of His saints to bring their wherewithal to His aid, but it is how it comes. It is the Holy Spirit doing it, not our appeal, our going to people and saying that the work of God cannot go on unless you give big collections. It can go on. God can look after His work when men close their pockets. It is the direction of things; that the resources are heavenly, not earthly, and when one stream dries up the Lord has another one. With Elijah, when the brook dries up the Lord tells him to go to Zarephath, "I have commanded a widow woman to sustain thee". The Lord has a wonderful way of doing things. He can do it. It is the heavenly resource of the church, the heavenly life, heavenly nature.

As we have said before, the constant effort of the enemy, through man, has been to bring the church down on the earth and make it a popular movement, and he has damned the church by doing it every time. That is the way to do it - this is the doctrine of Balaam who taught Israel to commit fornication; that is, links with the earth; that which is outside of the covenant, and so they became cursed of God, and a curse always carries in its train failure to produce fruit. The thing has to come out of that connection, that relationship, that system. Now, if it is true, we have got to recognise the implication of it.

We have used the word 'interdependence'. "The foot cannot say to the hand, nor the eye to the foot, I have no need of you". There is interdependence. It means the Lord has brought into this wonderful life, that every member might get the benefit of the other members' strength and life, and be sustained and upheld by them, and that everyone has to live for the whole and the whole to live for everyone. And if you get that in representation, in part, wonderful things for God are going to be seen. When one or two according to God's order go out into some place where God has not got a representation and there are none there on that spot to sustain, support, succour, strengthen, it does not matter. There may be saints from the other end of the earth, but proximity does not count, it is no factor in the Body of Christ.

Let me prick your foot and then your hand and tell me which you felt first, which reached your brain first, and you will not be able for one moment to discern that, because your hand was nearer your head you felt it in quicker time than your foot. Proximity does not matter here. It is instantaneous; you can touch the farthest extremity of your body and it will register just as quickly as that part which is nearer your brain. You are just as near to the Lord Jesus in a company here as in the two or three who are three or four thousand miles away. There can be in that marvellous unity of the Spirit with the discriminating of all geographical situations, a mighty speedy co-operation with the saints thousands of miles away - without the necessity of even sending a cablegram! The Holy Spirit registers in you, So-and-so needs prayer; you pray, that synchronises in the moment of their need, and the thing is done. It is a working thing. Universal, timeless, sovereign. Even now. That is the order. Paul enjoyed that, he knew that. He said, "through your prayers". He was referring constantly to the prayers of the saints for him.

It is relativity in the spiritual realm, the relationship that is according to God, the new Testament conception of things, and although you may think it is a hopeless, despairing thing to expect to have anything like that universally today in this age, well, you do not abandon the whole thing because you feel it is hopeless to get all believers into that. Remember that end times have always seen God recovering His original idea by a remnant, by a nucleus. Back there in the captivity... who came back from captivity and reconstituted things according to God? Two tribes out of 12. What have you at the end of the Old Testament? The whole people lying under a curse except: "Then they that feared the Lord spoke often one to another"; you have a remnant according to the mind of God. That, today, is His way.

While, for the most part, the saints have lost the New Testament revelation of the church, and they are in something less, the Lord would have in the earth that which perhaps by comparison is very small, yet very precious because wholly according to His mind and it is having that revelation by the Holy Spirit. The Lord would have us to recognise this principle and co-operate with Him in it and, so far as we are concerned, stand in that: ruling out the earthly, the departmental, the divisional, and consequently getting into the universal thing in its spiritual vocation. Everything according to God's mind.

So when we have dealt with the individual application of all these things, we see that the supreme expression is collective, corporate, for this reason: that there is no one individual who is capable of entering! In this it is going to take all the members to enter into the fulness of Christ, the sovereignty of Christ; it cannot be bestowed in one member in its fulness. The glory ought never be given to a member in fulness. We must get the ultimate vision. What is the object of the Body ultimately? Why have we got bodies? Simply to express ourselves. To give expression to ourselves; that is all. It is the medium of making known ourselves, our mind, our thought, our desires. The Body of Christ is just for that. It is to be for the display of Himself, the manifestation of Himself, and ultimately the whole universe is going to see the fulness of Christ through the Body, the church; it is going to take the whole Body to do it. Christ is so great, His glory is so marvellous, that it will take a great multitude which no man can number, out of every nation etc.. That is the way He is going to do it: bringing many sons unto glory for the display of His glory that the nations may walk in the light thereof. We are interdependent for this one reason.

We need Christ in every member and every member needs Christ in us. That is an awkward way of putting it. The Lord strengthens our hands by giving to us through others, and He is against everything that is independent and freelance, that is contrary altogether to the truth of God; and therein you have the emphasis laid upon the necessity for subjection. "Subject yourselves one to another". Subjection in the house of God... though there is no independence. The opposite is independence, pride, personal action; subjection is coming into line with all the rest, working in co-operation and fellowship, order. This interdependence, this relativity, this corporateness is the principle of God's operation in this age and for the ages to come, and we must recognise it. It is spiritual, not mechanical, but spiritual, living, vital - by the Holy Spirit. The Lord open our eyes to understand it. It is necessary to believe what He has been saying in these messages.

We shall finish where we began in recognising the Lord Jesus in His place and we would not put the Body in the place of the Head for one moment.