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The Spiritual and the Natural Man

by T. Austin-Sparks

Transcribed from conference messages given in May, 1968.

Contents

Chapter 1 - A Process of Transformation

Chapter 2 - God's Pattern

Chapter 3 - A New Order

Chapter 4 - The Battle Over the Spiritual Man

Chapter 5 - The Body of Christ

Chapter 6 - Transformation

Chapter 1 - A Process of Transformation

For our meditation at this time I want that we should read from the first letter to the Corinthians at chapter 2. Chapter 2 of the first letter to the Corinthians:

"And I, brethren, when I came unto you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the mystery of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

"Howbeit we speak wisdom among the perfect: yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, which are coming to nought: but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds unto our glory: which none of the rulers of this world knoweth: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory: but as it is written, Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man, whatsoever things God prepared for them that love Him.

"But unto us God revealed them, through the Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God. Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. Now, the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ."

And one fragment from the second letter and chapter 3. I want to condense this eighteenth verse of chapter three: "But we are transformed into the same image." We are transformed... that is, we pass from one form to another.

As I have moved about amongst Christians in many parts of this world, and in many situations, one thing has been growing upon me more and more strongly. In the presence of a great deal of confusion amongst Christians and many complications in Christianity, the feeling that has become stronger and stronger with me is the need that Christians should really know what Christianity is, really what it is that they are in as Christians. That sounds, perhaps, rather drastic, but I am quite sure that a very great deal of the trouble - and I think we all agree that there is a good deal of trouble in Christianity generally - a very great deal of the trouble is due to a failure to really understand what Christianity is. And it may seem strange that I should come to speak to you, mostly experienced and more or less mature Christians, about the true nature of Christianity. Well, if you feel that that's presumptuous and hardly called for, be patient, and I think before we get very far you will feel as I do: that although we know a good deal about Christianity as it is in the New Testament taught, we too are very often in difficulty ourselves for the simple reason (or the profound reason) that we haven't really grasped the meaning of what we are in.

May I say this to you (and a moment's thought I'm sure will make you agree) that this major part of the New Testament, particularly after the book of the Acts, I mean all these Letters which make up the larger section of the New Testament, it is all bearing upon this one thing: to make Christians understand what Christianity is. And if that created the New Testament, and it was all to Christians, surely we have to conclude that even New Testament Christians needed Christianity explaining to them, that even then there was this necessity of just defining the real nature of that into which they had come.

Well, begin with the Letter to the Romans. Was that necessary for Christians? And it was written to Christians, but what was it written for? To put them right in the matter of Christianity! Apparently those people were not quite clear in their position, in their lives, in their hearts, as to the implications of that into which they had come by faith in Jesus Christ.

Proceed, as we are going to do, into the Letters to the Corinthians, and what are they? Set over against a background of real confusion and contradiction, as we know, in Corinth, those Letters were written really to try to make those Christians understand what Christianity really is. And so on and on through the New Testament that is the object of it all; that we and all who believe in the Lord Jesus, should really have a clear understanding of what this is, of the meaning of the name we bear, the meaning of that which we believe and into which by faith we have come by the grace of God. And we can gather it all up in this simple statement: that the whole Christian life is an education as to what Christianity is. Is that true? Do you not sometimes stand in the presence of some situation, some difficulty, some trial, some complication, some perplexity, some experience, and say: "What does it all mean? What does it all mean? I am a Christian. I have put my faith in the Lord Jesus, I trust in Him. I am His, but I don't understand what it all means. My experience... why? I'm going this way, but why has this come my way? Why is my life such as it is?" These many things are so full of mystery and perplexity. "What is it that I have got into? Is this, is this Christianity? Is this really what I have to expect and accept? If so, I need understanding, I really do need enlightenment, I need help, as a Christian, for this thing is often beyond me altogether."

Alright, that's the setting - is that true? Well, if there is anyone here this evening who has never been that way, never had a moment like that, whose path has been so nice and smooth, with everything so right and perfect and well adjusted and without any kind of trouble, I think I'll excuse you if you would like to get up and go home again, for I haven't anything to say to you! So I must assume that if you don't go out, you agree! And I think that's true.

Well now, what is it? What is it? What is the point, the point at which these words in 2 Corinthians 3:18 are focused? "We are transformed...", we Christians, and it is the present active tense: 'We are being, being transformed'; the process, we are in a process of transformation, passing from one form to another. There is a sense in which that fragment, that condensed verse, put into those few words, touches the heart of the whole New Testament and explains everything.

Well, having said that, we come back to the chapter which we read, the second chapter of the first Letter, and this Letter (indeed both of these Letters, and I go further: all the Letters, but this as an example, a very good example) this Letter is built around two contrasted words, they are in this second chapter of the first Letter. Those two contrasted words describe two different types of humanity, two different manhoods, and between the two, firmly and squarely, the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ is planted.

Look at the chapter and read it again, read it in the light of that last statement: "When I came to you... I determined, determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified", and everything afterward rests upon that distinction; the distinction here between these two types which the Cross divides and says: 'That belongs to one category of human beings and this belongs to another category of human beings.' And there is a cleavage cut by the Cross of Jesus Christ between those two which separates them and makes them two different species of mankind. That, that truth follows right through this Letter. You must read the rest of the Letter, and the second Letter, and as much more of the New Testament as you like, but read through this first letter with that which I have just stated in your mind. The apostle here speaks about a foundation and a building. He says: "Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ, but let every man take heed how he builds thereon...", and then he drives the wedge of the Cross right in, right into the superstructure, and he says of one kind of work and works, for "every man's works shall be tried by fire" he says, "Let every man take heed how he builds", one kind of work or works which are the product of one kind, one type of man, or Christian, and another kind of work or works, are the product of another kind. The first is going up in the flames, in smoke and will never be found in eternity. It has gone for ever. The second will abide. That's the apostle's word: "will abide" will abide! It will abide the fire, the test, it will abide time, it will abide everything and be found in the ultimate structure, the building of God.

You see, he is applying this principle of the divide, the divide between two kinds of people, Christian people, and two kinds of work, or fruits, from each respectively. And the building, he says, as to its eternal value, will be determined by who is producing it; what kind of man, manhood, is producing it. Which of the two is producing this building? Building on Christ, building on Christ... think about that! These are not non-Christians. What an immense amount is being built upon Christ that is going up in smoke! And I say it's going to be determined, "for every man's work will be tried by fire," and its real value and its endurance will depend upon where it comes from, that is, from which of these two types of manhood.

Now you are wondering what the two words are which define the two. Well, you read the chapter, chapter 2 of the first Letter: "Now, the natural man... he that is spiritual." There are the two words: the natural and the spiritual Christians - not unconverted people, not non-Christians. Is it necessary for me to put in all the detail to confirm and ratify what I am saying? May I remind you that the apostle Paul had been in Corinth for two whole years with these people! And I don't know what you think, but if you had the apostle Paul with you for two whole years, going in and out, concentrating upon you, what you would have had! There he was for two whole years, amongst them going in and out, teaching probably every day, for some time. And then he went away and he went away for five years. He was away for five years and then he sent to Corinth to get... well, he'd heard some things which were reported by the household of Chloe. He got a report. I wish everyone would do what the apostle did - not take the report without investigating it. He got the report, but he immediately dispatched a reliable messenger to investigate, to either find the thing was not true or to find that it was. The messenger went and came back, and said: "It is all true, and worse; worse than the report." In five years... the deterioration.

You are perhaps are startled by that, shocked, and will say: "Can it be?" Ah well, remember the messages to the seven churches in Asia in the Revelation, remember how those churches began, all of them. There were wonderful things in those churches at the beginning. Read the story of the beginning of the church in Ephesus, my, what a movement - a move against such tremendous antagonism and hostility - they came out clear, and brought all their magic books, and the price is given (a tremendous amount they represented in human values) they brought them out into the street, perhaps the market place, or some open space, and set them all aflame; burned the whole lot. That is thorough-going devotion! Where are you with that church in the Revelation? "Thou hast left thy first love. Repent, repent! Consider from whence thou art fallen...". What can have happened? What can have happened? Well, I put that in by way of emphasising this possibility, at least, of declension.

Why, why, why in Corinth, why in Ephesus, and why in all the others that declined as they did? You come back to the two men: the two men inside of one man, the two men instead of each individual. It is not a dividing of a company into this category and that category, but the two things in a person. You know, we are all, if we are the Lord's, in some measure at least, natural and spiritual. Do you agree with that? Well, it doesn't need arguing does it? You know, I know. The question is not whether we are altogether perfect and there is no more of the natural in us. That's not the point. The point is: Who is dominating? Who is governing? Which of the two? Here at Corinth, as we see by the Letter, it was the natural man that was in control, the natural man in the men (and the women) that had taken ascendancy over the spiritual man.

The two words, then, are 'natural' (and you need not that I should tell you that the Greek word is 'soulical') and the 'spiritual'; the spiritual. The man of soul - the man of spirit - always in conflict. Who is going to have the upper hand, the mastery, in every one of us? The two are in each person.

Now, what is this natural category, this "natural" species? Well, look at the Letter again. First of all, first of all the dominance, ascendancy, and control of intellectualism. We read the chapter, read it again: the wisdom of this world. The wisdom of this world; that is the thing that is being marked and underscored as a part of the trouble at Corinth; the control of intellectualism: the natural reason, the natural mind, the idea, the idea that you are going to solve the problems of life along intellectual lines. Will you tell me that that is not a peril of Christianity today? Why, it's everywhere! It's everywhere, it shouts at you from the religious press. You may not read so much of it, but it is my business to be familiar with what is happening, what is happening in the Christian theological world. And I tell you, friends, that as I receive certain Christian magazines, theological magazines, I find death. They are wearisome to the spirit. All this terrific effort to solve the problems of Christianity by the human intellect; the research, argument, discussion and debate, theses, and what-not; philosophical Christianity trying to solve spiritual problems; and what a weariness it is! I put down these papers sometimes, I can't finish the things, they are so dead, so utterly lifeless. And that sort of thing is everywhere. Everywhere! It is thought that if you go to our seats and seminaries of learning with a clever brain, able to put out a convincing argument, you are going to save those souls. There was never a greater fallacy!

And this Letter to the Corinthians says that. Read this second chapter again, it's saying that, Paul is saying that. Paul was an educated man, so much so that for two thousand years the best scholars have found him beating them at every point, and they haven't mastered him yet! Go to your religious bookshops and look at the shelves on the expositions of the New Testament, and you will find that Paul predominates.

I got a book by one of our leading professors of theology in the university and it was called A Portrait of Peter. This man, with all his learning, with all his learning set out to give us a portrait of Peter. I opened the book and I found that the first few pages were wholly occupied with Paul! He couldn't get to Peter because Paul was in the way, and the issue, the issue of his attempt was: "Well, Peter's a great man, but Paul was very much greater!" Yes, this man Paul was an educated man, an intellectual man, a learned man. You cannot, you cannot discredit Paul along that line, not at all, he will beat you every time in that realm. But, listen: "You Corinthians, when I came to you I came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, I was with you in fear and trembling! I had determined, made up my mind, come to this resolved position that I would know nothing amongst you intellectual Corinthians save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." What was Paul's conclusion? "It is no use, however much I may have of the schools, whatever I may know, however I might be able to argue with the learned Corinthians or Athenians on Mars Hill, I will get nowhere along that line with a spiritual situation like this. I have made up my mind." It is part of the natural man to think that you are going to be able to build up something by intellectual, scholastic, academic acumen. The fact is what intellect can build up, intellect can pull down! What the Spirit of God builds, nothing can pull down.

Then look again at this prominent word: power. Wisdom, power, that's in the chapter: power... power. And there at Corinth there was a worshipping of natural power, ability to conquer by natural strength. You can call it 'powerism', for it was an 'ism' there. "Crush by your superior strength, impose something forceful, mighty, upon people, and you will win. Be only strong enough and you can solve all the problems and change all the situations." 'Powerism' - the natural man's idea of how it is going to be done.

And then, as is shown so clearly here, intellectualism, powerism, emotionalism has a large place - going to capture, captivate and master, and gain your end by force of emotion: stirring up people's feelings, playing upon their feelings, working upon them until, until they make a response, almost hysterical. And if you do that well and thoroughly, you will get some Christians by that means! The apostle is saying: "Not at all, not at all." It's evident that these Corinthians were very emotional people, you see.

What does the apostle put over against those three aspects of the natural man? Over against the wisdom he puts foolishness. He says "through the foolishness of the preaching"... that some might be won, the foolishness of the preaching... foolishness! It's a great thing with the apostle Paul is "foolishness", if you'd like to go through his writing: "We were fools for Christ's sake" counted as foolish. What did he mean? Well, he didn't mean be simpletons, or what we immediately take to be the meaning of being foolish. What Paul meant by foolishness was the denial, the denial that intellectualism can find out God. "The princes of this world, and the wisdom of this world did not find out God", he said, could not find out God, could find out nothing to do with God. Are you recalling the whole chapter? "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: neither can he know them." Neither can he know them! The denial that all the wisdom, the philosophy of the Greeks as there in Corinth where they boasted of this thing so much, all of it, never got through the barrier, never got through the barrier to find God; never could succeed. That is what he calls foolishness, what he means by foolishness, that all this power of mind projected and asserted in any way whatever, will come up against the barrier and not get through, will not find God, or the things of God. It is all written off as foolishness when the quest for God is pursued along that line. How foolish it is! And he gives a wonderful, almost a startling example of this: "The princes of this world's wisdom, by their wisdom, killed the Prince of Life." Not much sense in that, is there? Not much logic in that, not much philosophy in that!

So he puts what he calls 'foolishness' over against their wisdom, meaning a positive denial registered by the Cross of the Lord Jesus that mere intellectualism can find God and the things of God. It cannot, because that kind of man cannot, he cannot. The natural man cannot!

Over against the powerism of this mentality of the natural man, the apostle almost glories in using the word 'weakness'. He says that even Christ was crucified through weakness, and he is always speaking about his own weakness and glorying in it. What does he mean? He means this: the denial that this kind of human grip, hold, force, tenacity, assertiveness, can achieve anything in the spiritual world. My, what a building we are tearing down aren't we?!

Let me just put it this way. What the apostle means, and he says it, he puts it actually into words what he means is: the ability to let go. The ability to let go, to relax your natural tenacity and let go. Do you know that has been the test of man right from the beginning? Was it the test of Abraham, to let go even what God had given him in Isaac? The test of this man's real spirituality was his ability to let go. Was it true of Jacob? Was he a man of tenacity, of determination, a man who would get what he wanted at any price, at the cost of anybody else's convenience and wellbeing? He's going to get it. Isn't that the issue of Peniel, or Jabbok? "I will not let thee go!" That's Jacob! He has been like that all his life, holding on, tenaciously holding on to what he wanted, what he got or what he intended to have. But the finger of God touched the hollow of his thigh at that time, now you can see that he is a cringing man, how he meets his brother Esau after that!

You are not going, whether it's Abraham or Jacob or any of the others that we might mention, you're not going to get through with God fully and finally by your own natural determination and tenacity. One of the great lessons of the Christian life; is it not true friends? One of the great lessons of the Christian life is how to let go to God. Oh, of all the exhortations to be strong in the Lord, to endure, to "quit you like men and be strong", it does not mean with this natural strength. It is another kind of strength, and a very different kind of strength, a strength which is only seen by our ability to let other people sometimes have their way, to get what they are after and set us at nought, to hold, grip, maintain things in their hands to our disadvantage, and our real strength is in our weakness. I said the apostle had put this into words. Read the second chapter of the Letter to the Philippians: "He emptied Himself, though He was equal with God", emptied Himself, took the form of a bondslave... became obedient.... Well, has it proved to be the right thing? "We are being transformed...". Do you see the point now? Well, we haven't finished yet.

Over against intellectualism - foolishness; over against powerism - weakness; over against emotionalism - what? The denial that the quest, and craving, and pursuit of sensationalism will get you there. For I believe that was the heart of their lust for, and I use that word, their excessive desire, their outreach of soul for spiritual gifts. It is always impressive that it is to the Corinthians, more than, far, far more than to any other church in the New Testament, that so much is said about spiritual gifts. These demonstrations, this display, these things that you could see and glory in because you could see, it's all out. And I am quite sure, from what we read, that if you had gone into some of those gatherings in Corinth you would have seen some terrible things, shocking things, the behaviour of hysteria as they made these spiritual gifts, as they thought, as they thought, the ground and nature of their spirituality - and they are the most unspiritual church of all. Balance, balance over against unbalance, lopsidedness in the Christian life.

Do you notice one characteristic of these Christians, one defect which is written so clearly and so largely here in the Letter? The lack of the power of spiritual discernment, spiritual perception. And the absence of spiritual discernment and perception and spiritual intuition which warns, which says inwardly to you in the presence of things: "Go steady, go steady! Don't be carried away! Don't be thrown off your balance! This thing may be all right in its right place, under proper control, but be careful!" There is a snare in every spiritual gift, and if you make the gift the main thing and not the spiritual meaning of it, that thing, which in itself may be quite right, will lead you into trouble, get you into trouble. I am recounting a lot of history you know, when I say that. Perhaps some of the biggest problems that some of us have had to do with in people have been the result of this unbalanced quest for the manifestation and sensational aspects of Christianity. Our asylums are full of people who did that.

Well, perhaps some of you are not able to understand all this, but this is the situation here, and I am only saying it to show that there are these two orders, two categories of what I have called "species of humanity" which have their residence within one shell of the human body: soul and spirit. They're there, and the apostle writes to these same people - because the second Letter is only a continuation of the first in principle or on the principles, "We are being changed from one form to another". What is going on? What is the process of the Spirit of God in the believer? What is the meaning of all this that the Lord allows to come our way: this discipline, this chastening, these trials, these adversities, these difficulties? These strange things (to use Peter's word) "as though some strange thing has happened to you", things that seem strange to us as coming from God, or being allowed by God. What is the meaning of it all? To bring about the change, the transformation from one species to another, from one kind of humanity to another. Have you got that? There's something in this trial, in this adversity, in this suffering, under the sovereignty of God, there's something in this *intended by Him to make a difference in us. 'We are being transformed.'

It is certainly not wrong to have a soul! It is that which has to be saved. In the course of that salvation, the great lesson is how to keep the soul under the control of the spirit. This is what is meant by being 'spiritual'. This is truly "He that is spiritual".

[The final portion after the * is missing on the audio, but was given in this message when it was published as an article in the A Witness and A Testimony magazine in 1969, Volume 47-4 as "Christianity - A Process of Transformation".]

Chapter 1 - We Are Transformed

For our meditation at this time I want that we should read from the first letter to the Corinthians at chapter 2. Chapter 2 of the first letter to the Corinthians:

"And I, brethren, when I came unto you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the mystery of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

"Howbeit we speak wisdom among the perfect: yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, which are coming to nought: but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds unto our glory: which none of the rulers of this world knoweth: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory: but as it is written, Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man, whatsoever things God prepared for them that love Him.

"But unto us God revealed them, through the Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God. Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. Now, the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ."

And one fragment from the second letter and chapter 3. I want to condense this eighteenth verse of chapter three: "But we are transformed into the same image." We are transformed... that is, we pass from one form to another.

As I have moved about amongst Christians in many parts of this world, and in many situations, one thing has been growing upon me more and more strongly. In the presence of a great deal of confusion amongst Christians and many complications in Christianity, the feeling that has become stronger and stronger with me is the need that Christians should really know what Christianity is, really what it is that they are in as Christians. That sounds, perhaps, rather drastic, but I am quite sure that a very great deal of the trouble - and I think we all agree that there is a good deal of trouble in Christianity generally - a very great deal of the trouble is due to a failure to really understand what Christianity is. And it may seem strange that I should come to speak to you, mostly experienced and more or less mature Christians, about the true nature of Christianity. Well, if you feel that that's presumptuous and hardly called for, be patient, and I think before we get very far you will feel as I do: that although we know a good deal about Christianity as it is in the New Testament taught, we too are very often in difficulty ourselves for the simple reason (or the profound reason) that we haven't really grasped the meaning of what we are in.

May I say this to you (and a moment's thought I'm sure will make you agree) that this major part of the New Testament, particularly after the book of the Acts, I mean all these Letters which make up the larger section of the New Testament, it is all bearing upon this one thing: to make Christians understand what Christianity is. And if that created the New Testament, and it was all to Christians, surely we have to conclude that even New Testament Christians needed Christianity explaining to them, that even then there was this necessity of just defining the real nature of that into which they had come.

Well, begin with the Letter to the Romans. Was that necessary for Christians? And it was written to Christians, but what was it written for? To put them right in the matter of Christianity! Apparently those people were not quite clear in their position, in their lives, in their hearts, as to the implications of that into which they had come by faith in Jesus Christ.

Proceed, as we are going to do, into the Letters to the Corinthians, and what are they? Set over against a background of real confusion and contradiction, as we know, in Corinth, those Letters were written really to try to make those Christians understand what Christianity really is. And so on and on through the New Testament that is the object of it all; that we and all who believe in the Lord Jesus, should really have a clear understanding of what this is, of the meaning of the name we bear, the meaning of that which we believe and into which by faith we have come by the grace of God. And we can gather it all up in this simple statement: that the whole Christian life is an education as to what Christianity is. Is that true? Do you not sometimes stand in the presence of some situation, some difficulty, some trial, some complication, some perplexity, some experience, and say: "What does it all mean? What does it all mean? I am a Christian. I have put my faith in the Lord Jesus, I trust in Him. I am His, but I don't understand what it all means. My experience... why? I'm going this way, but why has this come my way? Why is my life such as it is?" These many things are so full of mystery and perplexity. "What is it that I have got into? Is this, is this Christianity? Is this really what I have to expect and accept? If so, I need understanding, I really do need enlightenment, I need help, as a Christian, for this thing is often beyond me altogether."

Alright, that's the setting - is that true? Well, if there is anyone here this evening who has never been that way, never had a moment like that, whose path has been so nice and smooth, with everything so right and perfect and well adjusted and without any kind of trouble, I think I'll excuse you if you would like to get up and go home again, for I haven't anything to say to you! So I must assume that if you don't go out, you agree! And I think that's true.

Well now, what is it? What is it? What is the point, the point at which these words in 2 Corinthians 3:18 are focused? "We are transformed...", we Christians, and it is the present active tense: 'We are being, being transformed'; the process, we are in a process of transformation, passing from one form to another. There is a sense in which that fragment, that condensed verse, put into those few words, touches the heart of the whole New Testament and explains everything.

Well, having said that, we come back to the chapter which we read, the second chapter of the first Letter, and this Letter (indeed both of these Letters, and I go further: all the Letters, but this as an example, a very good example) this Letter is built around two contrasted words, they are in this second chapter of the first Letter. Those two contrasted words describe two different types of humanity, two different manhoods, and between the two, firmly and squarely, the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ is planted.

Look at the chapter and read it again, read it in the light of that last statement: "When I came to you... I determined, determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified", and everything afterward rests upon that distinction; the distinction here between these two types which the Cross divides and says: 'That belongs to one category of human beings and this belongs to another category of human beings.' And there is a cleavage cut by the Cross of Jesus Christ between those two which separates them and makes them two different species of mankind. That, that truth follows right through this Letter. You must read the rest of the Letter, and the second Letter, and as much more of the New Testament as you like, but read through this first letter with that which I have just stated in your mind. The apostle here speaks about a foundation and a building. He says: "Other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ, but let every man take heed how he builds thereon...", and then he drives the wedge of the Cross right in, right into the superstructure, and he says of one kind of work and works, for "every man's works shall be tried by fire" he says, "Let every man take heed how he builds", one kind of work or works which are the product of one kind, one type of man, or Christian, and another kind of work or works, are the product of another kind. The first is going up in the flames, in smoke and will never be found in eternity. It has gone for ever. The second will abide. That's the apostle's word: "will abide" will abide! It will abide the fire, the test, it will abide time, it will abide everything and be found in the ultimate structure, the building of God.

You see, he is applying this principle of the divide, the divide between two kinds of people, Christian people, and two kinds of work, or fruits, from each respectively. And the building, he says, as to its eternal value, will be determined by who is producing it; what kind of man, manhood, is producing it. Which of the two is producing this building? Building on Christ, building on Christ... think about that! These are not non-Christians. What an immense amount is being built upon Christ that is going up in smoke! And I say it's going to be determined, "for every man's work will be tried by fire," and its real value and its endurance will depend upon where it comes from, that is, from which of these two types of manhood.

Now you are wondering what the two words are which define the two. Well, you read the chapter, chapter 2 of the first Letter: "Now, the natural man... he that is spiritual." There are the two words: the natural and the spiritual Christians - not unconverted people, not non-Christians. Is it necessary for me to put in all the detail to confirm and ratify what I am saying? May I remind you that the apostle Paul had been in Corinth for two whole years with these people! And I don't know what you think, but if you had the apostle Paul with you for two whole years, going in and out, concentrating upon you, what you would have had! There he was for two whole years, amongst them going in and out, teaching probably every day, for some time. And then he went away and he went away for five years. He was away for five years and then he sent to Corinth to get... well, he'd heard some things which were reported by the household of Chloe. He got a report. I wish everyone would do what the apostle did - not take the report without investigating it. He got the report, but he immediately dispatched a reliable messenger to investigate, to either find the thing was not true or to find that it was. The messenger went and came back, and said: "It is all true, and worse; worse than the report." In five years... the deterioration.

You are perhaps are startled by that, shocked, and will say: "Can it be?" Ah well, remember the messages to the seven churches in Asia in the Revelation, remember how those churches began, all of them. There were wonderful things in those churches at the beginning. Read the story of the beginning of the church in Ephesus, my, what a movement - a move against such tremendous antagonism and hostility - they came out clear, and brought all their magic books, and the price is given (a tremendous amount they represented in human values) they brought them out into the street, perhaps the market place, or some open space, and set them all aflame; burned the whole lot. That is thorough-going devotion! Where are you with that church in the Revelation? "Thou hast left thy first love. Repent, repent! Consider from whence thou art fallen...". What can have happened? What can have happened? Well, I put that in by way of emphasising this possibility, at least, of declension.

Why, why, why in Corinth, why in Ephesus, and why in all the others that declined as they did? You come back to the two men: the two men inside of one man, the two men instead of each individual. It is not a dividing of a company into this category and that category, but the two things in a person. You know, we are all, if we are the Lord's, in some measure at least, natural and spiritual. Do you agree with that? Well, it doesn't need arguing does it? You know, I know. The question is not whether we are altogether perfect and there is no more of the natural in us. That's not the point. The point is: Who is dominating? Who is governing? Which of the two? Here at Corinth, as we see by the Letter, it was the natural man that was in control, the natural man in the men (and the women) that had taken ascendancy over the spiritual man.

The two words, then, are 'natural' (and you need not that I should tell you that the Greek word is 'soulical') and the 'spiritual'; the spiritual. The man of soul - the man of spirit - always in conflict. Who is going to have the upper hand, the mastery, in every one of us? The two are in each person.

Now, what is this natural category, this "natural" species? Well, look at the Letter again. First of all, first of all the dominance, ascendancy, and control of intellectualism. We read the chapter, read it again: the wisdom of this world. The wisdom of this world; that is the thing that is being marked and underscored as a part of the trouble at Corinth; the control of intellectualism: the natural reason, the natural mind, the idea, the idea that you are going to solve the problems of life along intellectual lines. Will you tell me that that is not a peril of Christianity today? Why, it's everywhere! It's everywhere, it shouts at you from the religious press. You may not read so much of it, but it is my business to be familiar with what is happening, what is happening in the Christian theological world. And I tell you, friends, that as I receive certain Christian magazines, theological magazines, I find death. They are wearisome to the spirit. All this terrific effort to solve the problems of Christianity by the human intellect; the research, argument, discussion and debate, theses, and what-not; philosophical Christianity trying to solve spiritual problems; and what a weariness it is! I put down these papers sometimes, I can't finish the things, they are so dead, so utterly lifeless. And that sort of thing is everywhere. Everywhere! It is thought that if you go to our seats and seminaries of learning with a clever brain, able to put out a convincing argument, you are going to save those souls. There was never a greater fallacy!

And this Letter to the Corinthians says that. Read this second chapter again, it's saying that, Paul is saying that. Paul was an educated man, so much so that for two thousand years the best scholars have found him beating them at every point, and they haven't mastered him yet! Go to your religious bookshops and look at the shelves on the expositions of the New Testament, and you will find that Paul predominates.

I got a book by one of our leading professors of theology in the university and it was called A Portrait of Peter. This man, with all his learning, with all his learning set out to give us a portrait of Peter. I opened the book and I found that the first few pages were wholly occupied with Paul! He couldn't get to Peter because Paul was in the way, and the issue, the issue of his attempt was: "Well, Peter's a great man, but Paul was very much greater!" Yes, this man Paul was an educated man, an intellectual man, a learned man. You cannot, you cannot discredit Paul along that line, not at all, he will beat you every time in that realm. But, listen: "You Corinthians, when I came to you I came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, I was with you in fear and trembling! I had determined, made up my mind, come to this resolved position that I would know nothing amongst you intellectual Corinthians save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." What was Paul's conclusion? "It is no use, however much I may have of the schools, whatever I may know, however I might be able to argue with the learned Corinthians or Athenians on Mars Hill, I will get nowhere along that line with a spiritual situation like this. I have made up my mind." It is part of the natural man to think that you are going to be able to build up something by intellectual, scholastic, academic acumen. The fact is what intellect can build up, intellect can pull down! What the Spirit of God builds, nothing can pull down.

Then look again at this prominent word: power. Wisdom, power, that's in the chapter: power... power. And there at Corinth there was a worshipping of natural power, ability to conquer by natural strength. You can call it 'powerism', for it was an 'ism' there. "Crush by your superior strength, impose something forceful, mighty, upon people, and you will win. Be only strong enough and you can solve all the problems and change all the situations." 'Powerism' - the natural man's idea of how it is going to be done.

And then, as is shown so clearly here, intellectualism, powerism, emotionalism has a large place - going to capture, captivate and master, and gain your end by force of emotion: stirring up people's feelings, playing upon their feelings, working upon them until, until they make a response, almost hysterical. And if you do that well and thoroughly, you will get some Christians by that means! The apostle is saying: "Not at all, not at all." It's evident that these Corinthians were very emotional people, you see.

What does the apostle put over against those three aspects of the natural man? Over against the wisdom he puts foolishness. He says "through the foolishness of the preaching"... that some might be won, the foolishness of the preaching... foolishness! It's a great thing with the apostle Paul is "foolishness", if you'd like to go through his writing: "We were fools for Christ's sake" counted as foolish. What did he mean? Well, he didn't mean be simpletons, or what we immediately take to be the meaning of being foolish. What Paul meant by foolishness was the denial, the denial that intellectualism can find out God. "The princes of this world, and the wisdom of this world did not find out God", he said, could not find out God, could find out nothing to do with God. Are you recalling the whole chapter? "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: neither can he know them." Neither can he know them! The denial that all the wisdom, the philosophy of the Greeks as there in Corinth where they boasted of this thing so much, all of it, never got through the barrier, never got through the barrier to find God; never could succeed. That is what he calls foolishness, what he means by foolishness, that all this power of mind projected and asserted in any way whatever, will come up against the barrier and not get through, will not find God, or the things of God. It is all written off as foolishness when the quest for God is pursued along that line. How foolish it is! And he gives a wonderful, almost a startling example of this: "The princes of this world's wisdom, by their wisdom, killed the Prince of Life." Not much sense in that, is there? Not much logic in that, not much philosophy in that!

So he puts what he calls 'foolishness' over against their wisdom, meaning a positive denial registered by the Cross of the Lord Jesus that mere intellectualism can find God and the things of God. It cannot, because that kind of man cannot, he cannot. The natural man cannot!

Over against the powerism of this mentality of the natural man, the apostle almost glories in using the word 'weakness'. He says that even Christ was crucified through weakness, and he is always speaking about his own weakness and glorying in it. What does he mean? He means this: the denial that this kind of human grip, hold, force, tenacity, assertiveness, can achieve anything in the spiritual world. My, what a building we are tearing down aren't we?!

Let me just put it this way. What the apostle means, and he says it, he puts it actually into words what he means is: the ability to let go. The ability to let go, to relax your natural tenacity and let go. Do you know that has been the test of man right from the beginning? Was it the test of Abraham, to let go even what God had given him in Isaac? The test of this man's real spirituality was his ability to let go. Was it true of Jacob? Was he a man of tenacity, of determination, a man who would get what he wanted at any price, at the cost of anybody else's convenience and wellbeing? He's going to get it. Isn't that the issue of Peniel, or Jabbok? "I will not let thee go!" That's Jacob! He has been like that all his life, holding on, tenaciously holding on to what he wanted, what he got or what he intended to have. But the finger of God touched the hollow of his thigh at that time, now you can see that he is a cringing man, how he meets his brother Esau after that!

You are not going, whether it's Abraham or Jacob or any of the others that we might mention, you're not going to get through with God fully and finally by your own natural determination and tenacity. One of the great lessons of the Christian life; is it not true friends? One of the great lessons of the Christian life is how to let go to God. Oh, of all the exhortations to be strong in the Lord, to endure, to "quit you like men and be strong", it does not mean with this natural strength. It is another kind of strength, and a very different kind of strength, a strength which is only seen by our ability to let other people sometimes have their way, to get what they are after and set us at nought, to hold, grip, maintain things in their hands to our disadvantage, and our real strength is in our weakness. I said the apostle had put this into words. Read the second chapter of the Letter to the Philippians: "He emptied Himself, though He was equal with God", emptied Himself, took the form of a bondslave... became obedient.... Well, has it proved to be the right thing? "We are being transformed...". Do you see the point now? Well, we haven't finished yet.

Over against intellectualism - foolishness; over against powerism - weakness; over against emotionalism - what? The denial that the quest, and craving, and pursuit of sensationalism will get you there. For I believe that was the heart of their lust for, and I use that word, their excessive desire, their outreach of soul for spiritual gifts. It is always impressive that it is to the Corinthians, more than, far, far more than to any other church in the New Testament, that so much is said about spiritual gifts. These demonstrations, this display, these things that you could see and glory in because you could see, it's all out. And I am quite sure, from what we read, that if you had gone into some of those gatherings in Corinth you would have seen some terrible things, shocking things, the behaviour of hysteria as they made these spiritual gifts, as they thought, as they thought, the ground and nature of their spirituality - and they are the most unspiritual church of all. Balance, balance over against unbalance, lopsidedness in the Christian life.

Do you notice one characteristic of these Christians, one defect which is written so clearly and so largely here in the Letter? The lack of the power of spiritual discernment, spiritual perception. And the absence of spiritual discernment and perception and spiritual intuition which warns, which says inwardly to you in the presence of things: "Go steady, go steady! Don't be carried away! Don't be thrown off your balance! This thing may be all right in its right place, under proper control, but be careful!" There is a snare in every spiritual gift, and if you make the gift the main thing and not the spiritual meaning of it, that thing, which in itself may be quite right, will lead you into trouble, get you into trouble. I am recounting a lot of history you know, when I say that. Perhaps some of the biggest problems that some of us have had to do with in people have been the result of this unbalanced quest for the manifestation and sensational aspects of Christianity. Our asylums are full of people who did that.

Well, perhaps some of you are not able to understand all this, but this is the situation here, and I am only saying it to show that there are these two orders, two categories of what I have called "species of humanity" which have their residence within one shell of the human body: soul and spirit. They're there, and the apostle writes to these same people - because the second Letter is only a continuation of the first in principle or on the principles, "We are being changed from one form to another". What is going on? What is the process of the Spirit of God in the believer? What is the meaning of all this that the Lord allows to come our way: this discipline, this chastening, these trials, these adversities, these difficulties? These strange things (to use Peter's word) "as though some strange thing has happened to you", things that seem strange to us as coming from God, or being allowed by God. What is the meaning of it all? To bring about the change, the transformation from one species to another, from one kind of humanity to another. Have you got that? There's something in this trial, in this adversity, in this suffering, under the sovereignty of God, there's something in this *intended by Him to make a difference in us. 'We are being transformed.'

It is certainly not wrong to have a soul! It is that which has to be saved. In the course of that salvation, the great lesson is how to keep the soul under the control of the spirit. This is what is meant by being 'spiritual'. This is truly "He that is spiritual".

[This final portion after the * is missing on the audio but is present in the version of this message published in the magazine.]

Chapter 2 - God's Pattern

One of the difficulties of meetings of this kind which are consecutive, is that the company changes all the way through. In some cases fresh friends come in from meeting to meeting and it's just difficult to follow straight on. I say that because we have started on a course which is consecutive and we cannot go back over what has been every time. But for those who are with us anew, I will try to help them in and perhaps the best thing to do is just to pick out one or two of the fragments of the Word by which we are being led and then come to the special part which is for this morning.

In the first letter to the Corinthians, first letter to the Corinthians in chapter two (it is the whole chapter that needs to be in mind, but we cannot read that now) you will notice what it is about, the line that the apostle is following, and I just pick out these two fragments. Verse 14, "Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness unto him, he cannot know them because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual discerneth or examineth all things." Those two designations: "the natural man" and "he that is spiritual".

In the second letter to the Corinthians in chapter 3 at verse 18: "But we all with unveiled face, reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image". We are transformed into the same image.

I add a fragment in the letter to the Romans chapter 8, well known, but helpful in this connection, at verse 29: "For he whom He foreknew He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son". Foreordained to be conformed, made with the form of His Son, we are being transformed into the same image, from the natural man, to "He that is spiritual".

Now you are going to have some surprise when, on this day when we are thinking so much about the resurrection, I am going to take you right away from the end of the life of the Lord Jesus here on this earth, to its beginning. In the gospel by Luke, if you will please turn to chapter 1 and verse 26 and onward, chapter 1 of Luke's gospel at verse 26:

"Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee. But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this might be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found grace with God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call His name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High: and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David: and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His kingdom there shall be no end. And Mary said unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee: wherefore also that which is to be born shall be called the Son of God."

This falls right into line with our present consideration. We are seeing that Christ is Christianity. If we really do need, as we do, to understand and know what Christianity really is, amidst all the confusion that has risen within the compass of that word "Christianity", to understand the real nature of this into which we have come requires that we shall have a true, a genuine spiritual understanding of Christ. And that is not as simple as it sounds when it is stated like that. For the oldest believer, one who has gone longest and farthest with the Lord, still realises how much he or she needs to know and understand the Lord Jesus. And if we want proof of a statement like that, let us remember that so great a servant of Jesus Christ, with so great a revelation of Jesus Christ, who could say that he had at a certain time been caught up into the third heaven and shown unspeakable things which is not lawful for a man to utter, who could say "I will come to visions and revelations of God", a man with all his spiritual history and spiritual knowledge, in the closing days of his life in his prison, is still crying, "That I may know Him". "That I may know Him..." still the predominating ambition and quest of a man with all that. Everything, therefore, is a matter of knowing in a spiritual way the Lord Jesus, so that Christ is really Christianity. It is not a system of truth, doctrine, teaching, practice, creed and so on, it is a Person. And yet a Person beyond all comprehending.

Well, now we come to this next phase of our present consideration. Paul said here to the Corinthians, "I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ. Amongst you, all I intend to know is Jesus Christ", and then he says, "And Him crucified". And Him crucified. Jesus Christ; to know Jesus Christ among you. That was excluding one whole realm of things and focusing and concentrating everything upon this Person: Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. Why? And here again is the key to our New Testament, as well as to these letters: Jesus Christ has come into this world as the first and representative of a different type of humanity. A different type of man has broken into history in the Person of Jesus Christ. And it is this that gives the meaning and explanation to the incarnation, the miraculous birth of the Lord Jesus, the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus. And you know that the two things about which there has been more controversy than anything else where Jesus Christ is concerned, where all the schools of theological interpretation have been in conflict, the two things are the birth and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus - many other things of course, in His life and so on, but the two main points of controversy have been the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection. It's very significant that it is so.

Leaving the resurrection for the moment, if we get there in these days remains to be seen, we've a long way to go. Let's start here, with this birth of which we have just read, what is called, and scripturally called, the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus. I have said that this is the point of controversy and point of difficulty in its real spiritual understanding. And the battle began, the spiritual battle of these ages began at that point when there emerged into this world and into history this One after this kind, this particular kind of humanity. So soon after His birth all hell rose up to quench that flame, to blot out that life and its testimony. Herod, that devil-dominated and driven man, went so far as to massacre all infant boys with the object of getting this One; just this One. And that was not Herod only, the Lord Jesus later Himself said of other men than Herod, "You are of your father the devil, he was a murderer from the beginning and the works of your father you do." The murderer behind Herod and all of his kind rose up immediately this type of humanity broke into this world. Well, that's patent isn't it? And the explanation? The explanation: you see, you have two alternative humanities, or mankind. You have the one that satan made. When he got hold of Adam he changed the humanity, the kind of being that man was, he changed that man by an evil spiritual fornication, he produced a race after his own mind; after his mind. Comprehensively the Word declares, "the whole world lies in the wicked one." A race after satan's mind of which he is, confessedly by the Lord Jesus, "the prince and the god of this world". A kind of humanity.

On the other side there is this kind, this type brought into history, into this world by God: another, an alternative humanity to that other, in Whom all that other is going to be judged and, if unrepentant and if not transformed and passed over from the one to the other, doomed to be blotted out of God's universe. Therefore all the painstaking work, labour and effort of the evil one and all the evil powers in the whole Adam race is going to be upset by this new kind of humanity. It's going to be; all his work is going to be undone in this. All that ever satan set himself to do in spoiling God's kind of man is just going to be undercut and blotted out in this One who has now broken into this world.

You can understand why satan said "We must, as soon as possible, in His earliest days, blot Him out, dismiss Him, get rid of Him". That lies behind this kind of humanity that is God-produced and not man-produced and not satan-produced; this kind of Man that is in His very conception God's act; a miracle. Well, you can understand why the rationalists who don't know anything about new birth take offense and objection to the virgin birth. What is, after all, the best testimony to and confirmation of the miraculous, supernatural birth of the Lord Jesus? It's our new birth. We don't have to argue it as theology, or mere Christian doctrine and creed, we know that Jesus Christ is a miracle because He's a miracle in us. But the rationalists don't know about new birth, therefore they can be caught in this controversy over the birth of the Lord Jesus.

Well, the explanation you see, of this antagonism, and this animosity, and all this confusion, the enemy is the author of confusion, all this confusion about the Lord Jesus in His very conception and inception and nature and being, is because of this one thing which runs right through the New Testament: another kind of manhood, or mankind has been introduced into history and introduced not as an afterthought, not as an afterthought, but foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son. Out from the eternal thought and intention of God, the image is introduced to which the believers, the church has to be conformed, into whose likeness we are being transformed. Now, you see, this is all worked out in your New Testament.

You want to understand your New Testament? Anywhere, anywhere read it in this light: what is this all about? What does it mean? What is it after? What is the portent of this? Every bit of it is to bring Christ into view and to show this transforming work of believers. Isn't it all through the New Testament, that? First you have the magnificent presentation of Him in person in four portraits of four gospels. In the great wisdom and sovereignty of God it all begins with a four-fold portrait of the Man. And then from then onward by the Holy Spirit the work begins and proceeds to transform and conform a people to that Man. So different, so different. There's a mystery and a miracle that lies right at the very heart and root of this thing.

The Christian life begins in truth, begins with a miracle, a supernatural act; you and I know that if we're born again. And it proceeds on the basis of that miracle and that mystery. It's something other and something different that God is doing, He's not just allowing us to go on our natural course. There's a lot compassed by a statement like that, isn't there? That under the Holy Spirit's government we are not allowed to go on our natural course, we are continuously brought up against the demand for something supernatural, something above the natural, more than the natural, we are continually brought up against the fact that naturally we cannot rise to this standard. We cannot meet this demand. We cannot go through this experience and challenge, we need something more than we have in ourselves. We need something supernatural. That's the whole history of the Christian life. It begins on that supernatural basis, for no man can beget this type, "that which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit". And, "which were born not of the flesh, not of the will of man," it cannot be done. It cannot be done, you cannot produce this order by any natural means whatsoever, it's only produced by God.

I am saying things that you all know and agree with, I'm quite sure, but I have just said that the whole New Testament opens out along this very line. We were in 1 Corinthians 15 for a few moments this morning, you see? In Adam - all die. In Christ - all made alive. The first man, Adam; the Last Adam. And the contrasts are simply the contrast of two orders of creation altogether between the two: first and last. The second man and the Last Adam. Always be careful how you quote scripture. The second man, yes, but the Last Adam; no more races after Christ. There's not going to be another race after Christ, finality in humanity is in Him, the end. "If any man be in Christ", says the apostle, there is a new creation. In Christ: a new creation.

And so we come back to our starting place, we are being, in the process of being, transformed into the same image. And all I'm going to say again this morning in this brief time is where I closed last night: it depends entirely upon which of these two orders in each one of us is predominating. The Corinthians were Christians, they were born again believers, they were addressed as such, but during the five years between Paul's first visit to them and sojourn amongst them, and his letter, there had become such a degeneration and decline in their spiritual life, they had opened the door so widely to this world, that as Christians predominantly the natural man was in charge. And so you have this terrible letter of all these things belonging to the natural man.

He has to say, "I could not speak to you other than as babes" as babes. Well, they were babes. They were babes. It is alright to be a babe while it is time to be a babe, but after seven years... he was there with them two years and then five years later he wrote his letter, after seven years you ought to at least begin to have emerged from babyhood oughtn't you? You'd think it strange if a child of seven years, and by the way seven years is the most original time of life, a child of seven is the most original person in creation; it's all original now, you parents know that quite well by the questions that are asked. My eldest daughter at about that age, after coming to the service and hearing the chapter read about the end of the age, the end of the world rather, as it is in the Authorised: "the end of the world", that phrase. When we got home, she said, "Daddy, if a man went up in a balloon and while he was up the end of the world came, what would he come down on?" I tell you, at seven years they can put some posers to you, it's original, but that's just by the way. By the time you get to seven years of a spiritual life you ought to begin to emerge from that infant state of irresponsibility. And here they were at that time in their spiritual life, he says, "Babes still, had to feed you with milk, not with meat, you are not able..." That's a terrible situation; terrible situation.

It's a matter of which of our two, the two sides of our make up is really in the ascendant: the natural or the spiritual. Or in other words, whether we are really in the process of being transformed and conformed. Well, the answer will depend entirely, as I said before, last night, upon our reaction to God's dealings with us as children. Over to Hebrews, Hebrews: "God dealeth with you as with sons... despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor think when thou art reproved... him whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth..." Your reaction to His dealings with you. If it is, like Israel in the wilderness, murmuring, complaining and shirking and all the time rebelling and wanting to get out of it and say, "Let's go back" forgetting, forgetting the tyranny of Egypt, to go back from under the hand of the One who was seeking to make them, in difficulties and adversities, discover things about Himself and what He could do.

Now to bring that right up to date, dear friends, you and I are really in a school, and a very practical school under the hand of God, where it is necessary for us to know Christ. "That I may know Him..." and here is the focal point of the knowledge: "and the power of His resurrection". Anyone here telling me they don't need to know that, the power of His resurrection? Well, we are here under His hand to learn that, to know that. It is a wonderful, wonderful thing to know the power of His resurrection maintaining us, enabling us, causing us to supersede those things which limit and make impossible our life and our service, we are up against this all the time; we are in this battle with forces of death to quench, to put us out.

And the Lord doesn't put us into situations and circumstances where it's all easy and straight sailing. He doesn't do that. He does just the opposite for Christians. He puts us down in places where, my word, we can't go through, we really cannot live unless the Lord Almighty sees us through this. And that's what we are there for: to discover the Lord Almighty and the power of His resurrection. If we say, "Well, I am going to resign. I am going to quit. I am going to find an easier way than this, a simpler way than this..." you take yourself right out of the hands of God, and out of the realm of making spiritual discoveries of Jesus Christ. We will leave it there.

You see, this is very true isn't it? Very practical. This spirituality is very practical, we are being transformed, passed from one order to another: the Adam order, to the Christ order; to the natural - from the natural to the spiritual. And this is the way, a practical way, but keep always in mind this: there's an image. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews puts it this way: "Looking off... unto Jesus the author and perfecter of faith". Remember, God has got His Pattern, His Order, "in His Son" - He's there. And we behold, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, and again while we look not at the things which are seen, so near and pressing upon our consciousness and trying to obsess us with themselves, but we look through to Him Who through these things, which are very real, is seeking to produce something more of Christ. May the Lord help us so to view and interpret His ways with us.

Chapter 3 - A New Order

We have got far enough to make it unnecessary for me to let you know what it is we are concerned with at this time, other than to remind you again of the second chapter, of the first chapter, of the first letter to the Corinthians. The first and the second chapters really, of that letter, in which, for very necessary purposes and very good reasons, because of the situation at Corinth, the apostle begins his letter with this great discrimination between two kinds of people that Christians, Christians, can be; what he terms: the natural man, the natural man, and the spiritual man. And that, in his second letter, he says just quite precisely, that a transformation is supposed to be going on in Christians, a passing from the one type called the natural, to the other, called the spiritual.

Now, this morning we were occupied with the birth of the Lord Jesus, because we had said that Christ is Christianity, and Christianity is only truly known and understood by a spiritual knowledge of Christ. And so we went to His birth in order to see one thing in particular: that it was not natural, it was not natural. That's where, of course, all the intellectuals have stumbled and all the rationalists have fallen down - it was not natural, it was decidedly spiritual - for the Archangel said to Mary, "The Holy Spirit shall overshadow you, therefore that which is born shall be the son of God. But you shall call His name Jesus." Severely and strictly the earthly human name. The two linked together: God and man, in this Person. That's a spiritual man or a spiritual woman in the inception; that is the very beginning: the linking of God with man, and man with God.

So we saw that by this supernatural (I was just going to say unnatural) but by this "above" and other than natural birth of Jesus, a new type and kind of humanity came into this world. And as I have said (forgive repetitions because it is very necessary for these things to make an impression on us, so we see something, and recognise it) so I repeat, that the whole of the New Testament following the birth of the Lord Jesus, has to do with the transition, the transformation, and conformity from the one, the natural, to the other: the spiritual. We understand that our new birth is not a natural thing.

Our relationship with Jesus Christ is by no means a natural thing, even at its beginning. This difference every one, every true Christian (and I'm sure it is true of all here this afternoon, this little company) everyone ought to be able to say quite, quite truly, quite definitely, "I'm not the same as I was; I am different. I am different! There is that now about me which has made me a different kind of person." Well, that's a simple way of putting it isn't it? But that's, you see, going right to the heart of it. The beginning: "Something has happened to me that I'm not the same kind of person", and it is upon that beginning, that beginning, that change, that difference, that distinction and discrimination that all the Christian life is built for its development and progress and what here the apostle calls "being transformed into the same image".

Well, that's largely repetition, and we are passing now, this afternoon, into the next thing which we come to with the Lord Jesus because it is the acknowledged and admitted regret of everybody, that we know so little about the 30 years of His life in Nazareth. We know practically nothing about those thirty years. There's one break at the age of twelve, which was very, very enlightening, it's an open window into the thirty years, but for reasons which will not stay to explore just now, the Holy Spirit has not found it in the scheme of things to give us a detailed account of His life during those first 30 years. You leave it, and leave it with the Holy Spirit's wisdom in doing that and accept it, and come to where He does definitely take up the story and the history that is at the baptism of Jesus.

The Baptism of Jesus

What we have to see is that it is just a part of this one inclusive thing, this new order of humanity which has come in with the Lord Jesus. Now, a great deal, of course, can be said about baptism, that's not my subject, but the baptism of the Lord Jesus is something that we must really understand.

I very often feel that we Christians, and people who are baptized, do get an understanding of this matter of baptism which is necessary to make this great difference, as a really fundamental thing to this tremendous difference in the kind of people, the kind of people. Baptism is so often taken now as something that you have to do if you're going to obey the Scriptures and if you're going to imitate the Lord Jesus. You don't like that word, you prefer to say follow the Lord Jesus, but it's imitating the Lord Jesus, very often: He did it and He commanded it, therefore we do it in obedience to a command. We may have a little more light upon the matter as to what it means, but as I have watched this in my own life, and in the life of so many, it has come to me more and more strongly that even yet there's light which we need upon this matter.

I was baptized when I knew very little indeed about the meaning of baptism. I was told that it was a command, I was told that it was the way the Lord went, and the Lord wanted us to follow Him in this way, and so we sang, "Follow, follow Jesus! And I will follow on..." and so on, as we went into the water. And it was external, very largely... like that, you see, an act of obedience, an act of devotion. We meant it, but with how little understanding! And ever since we've been learning the meaning of this.

Now, when we come to the baptism of the Lord Jesus we have the standard thing, we do have the standard baptism, we have the meaning of it to the full in His own case. It had to be like that, not that I'm going to try to give you the full meaning in Christ, but I do want to put my finger upon one or two aspects or details which constitute this whole matter of the absolute difference in the human type which baptism is intended to set forth and His baptism as basic; the basic factors for all baptisms.

First of all then, let us remind ourselves of the universal nature of His baptism. How can I put it most impressively? Do we, have we, who've gone this way, and do Christians who accept this matter of baptism, realise that we were all drowned? Drowned in the depth of the flood. The people who have been drowned. Now, you think that's language or that's impressive or whatever it is and whatever your thought about it is, your feeling when I say it like that, but I'm keeping to Scripture. Do you know what Peter says in his letter about this? He's speaking about the flood, the flood that then was. You read the account of the flood. What happened? Well, all, all but eight people, were drowned; literally drowned. The flood overwhelmed them, they lost their lives. They went down into the depths and they were drowned corpses after the flood.

And it was universal, for that word, with the exception of these eight, the world was a drowned world. And Peter says that, "The like figure," he says speaking of the flood, "The like figure whereunto baptism does now save us". The universal engulfment of the world, of the race, is represented by the baptism of the Lord Jesus.

It is not necessary, I think, at this point for me to remind you that baptism is a figure of the Cross - being united with Christ in His death and His burial. You know that. The whole of the following New Testament says so explicitly, positively. You say, "Then why, if this represents the Cross, why was it necessary for Him to go to the cross afterwards? Why a space of three and a half years between His baptism and His crucifixion?" And the answer is quite simple, quite clear. At this point of His baptism Jesus stepped out of what was a private life, into a public life; out from an unofficial, into an official life; out from a waiting probationary period under the eye of God, into the open, on His world mission. At this point He took up the mission for which He'd come. It's official, it's public, it's before heaven, earth and hell. And therefore, because of all those features and factors, He must put the Cross in figure and type right there as the basis of His mission, of His teaching, of His working, of His living, and of all that went to make up the fulfillment of His world mission. He must put the Cross there.

All the elements of the Cross are found in His baptism. These are statements which, of course, I cannot stay to analyse, but it's there. And the point is that He is putting all the meaning of the Cross right at the very commencement of His official public life and mission, and basing it upon the Cross. We understand that. Now, that being the case, His baptism does foreshadow the meaning of the Cross. And it is universal. John the Baptist, when Jesus came to be baptized, pointed and said "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world..." Or rightly, "Who beareth the sin of the world..." bearing the sin of the world. It's universal. He is, in this sense and aspect related to the universality of humanity, God's inclusiveness of all men in this death, in this death, in this drowning because of sin - the sin of the world.

I'm not sure how many people being baptized, are aware of that, of that, that they are supposed to have been drowned people who, mark you, in the relationship which they held to the human race before that point, in that relationship, they had ceased to exist; ceased to have a being. Before the flood, in Noah's time, all those, all those who succumbed to the flood had no more existence in relation to that race, that people, after the flood. That's something finished.

This is tremendously searching isn't it? Now, this is what the New Testament teaches! We have got to grasp about the Lord Jesus that in His death He has carried us all the way under the flood of God's judgments because of sin and when we take this position and this step, we are supposed, in the reality of our spiritual life, not to exist any longer in that old natural type. The trouble in Corinth was they hadn't grasped the significance of what really they had come into through baptism, or they had forgotten it, or let it go and not got back to the other side of the flood.

There some of the strongest things in the New Testament are said in this connection. We read in this very letter about the people who came out of Egypt and perished in the wilderness although they had been baptized, it says, into Moses in the cloud and in the sea - perished in the wilderness because they had not maintained the ground which that baptism signified. And you go into the letter to the Hebrews and you know the almost terrifying things that are said there about going back upon these foundation things - going back on them. "It's impossible to restore them again to repentance... they crucify to themselves afresh..." well, that's a dark side of things, without turning upon it, but what I am emphasizing is this: that on the one side of the baptism of the Lord Jesus there is this universal engulfment of all the children of Adam in an act of God which winds up that race so far as His acceptance is concerned. The race goes, on but it's not accepted; it's out of court with God, is this race. That is what the baptism and cross of the Lord Jesus meant.

Well, that's one thing, but notice: there is this discriminatory fact in baptism. It's a dividing thing. Eight people went through the flood, survived, but they were not on dry land all the time. That is, they were in the flood, if the flood was not in them; they were in it. They passed through it. We are told that they survived and came out on the other side because of faith; through faith, through faith, through faith.

And so there is this discrimination between the natural and the spiritual, that those who survive are believers. And believing, in the New Testament, is not a mental thing. It is not a mental assent saying, "Well, yes, I accept that truth. I acknowledge that to be truth." That is not believing, in the New Testament. Believing is something more drastic than that.

In the Glasgow Billy Graham campaign I was sitting on the platform immediately behind Billy Graham, and it was a big platform and it had to take a good deal of responsibility. And Billy Graham just said this, when he spoke about believing according to the meaning of the New Testament: "The word 'believing' means this," he said, "I came along that passage, I went up these steps, and I walked onto this platform. And in so doing, I believed that this platform would bear me. I committed myself to it. If it had collapsed you know what would have happened. If I had stood back and said 'I'm not so sure that they've constructed that platform sufficiently well to bear my weight,' I wouldn't have come on to it. But I believed! I believed that this platform could carry me and see me through all these meetings. There was strength enough in it, so I just simply committed myself in faith." So that's the meaning of the New Testament word believing on the Lord Jesus. It's not mental, it's just an act of complete committal, "If I sink, I sink, but I shan't sink, I believe I shall survive". That's believing. That's very simple isn't it? But you see, that is just it; those that went into the ark believed that that ark could see them through what was coming, would carry them through the flood - through faith they survived.

It is discriminatory in this way and it discriminates between a race that does not commit itself and those who do. It's a different order; entirely a different order of being. The baptism declares that you and I, and all that would go this way, have recognised that we have been drowned in the great deluge of God's judgment on sin, universal. There is not one, no not one, says the apostle, not one righteous. It's universal: all have sinned. So that spiritual people are those who survive the judgment and come out on the other side, by recognition of how utter this division is.

How complete, how utter this division is! I could make this show it much more impressively, if I like to do so, if I chose to do so, for if you've seen drowned people, you'll know what I'm talking about. If you've seen people as I have, taken out of the water after being drowned, been there long enough, you know what I'm talking about. There's not much hope there, no, they've ceased to exist as organic parts of a certain order of creation.

We are of a new order entirely, of men and women, of people, of mankind, of humanity. A new order in Christ. There is in Christ a new creation. Put circles round that word new: new, new, new! What is this newness? Think about that, it is discriminatory - it divides between two races - that's the baptism of the Lord Jesus. And that is why in figure and in type He went to the Jordan and demanded that as representing the human race in the inclusive, universal terms of His title 'Son of Man' - the inclusive title of the race - that is why going there, He demanded this, because He knew how great, how tremendous His Cross was going to be in this one thing: a different type of humanity to be born, to be born.

And you can see how that from that moment of His baptism, His coming up, He is so different from other men that He's occupied minds for these two thousand years to try and define that something about Him; that something about Him which was inscrutable. That leads us, you see, into this new phase, but before we can go on, we have to come to the thing so immediately associated with His baptism.

There's no gap between coming up out of the water and immediately the heavens were opened, and the Spirit lighted upon Him in the form of a dove... the anointing, concerning which He began His ministry in Nazareth immediately with, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me because He has anointed Me." These are two parts of a whole: death, the resurrection, and the anointing. And what does the anointing mean? And I have said, mark you, these are two parts of one thing.

I don't believe that the anointing should be delayed till sometime after either conversion or baptism. I don't think that is a thing that lies somewhere further on along the road. In His case, in His case it was immediate and it's intended to be that this new order to which those belong who have recognised the meaning of His baptism and had stepped out on to it themselves in committal, this new order is characterised by the anointing of the Holy Spirit. It's a Holy Spirit order. It is the new birth, and "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit".

A spiritual man emerges from the baptism, or should, if we rightly understand. I believe that is why the apostles always immediately after they had baptized people, prayed for them that they might receive the Spirit. They put the two things together, but this is a new order and this new order is characteristic of the Holy Spirit; which, when we've said that, we haven't said enough; it wants explaining.

Well, if you move back again to 1 Corinthians chapter 2 you'll get some idea what the anointing means, at any rate, basically if not entirely, in that chapter where the apostle is speaking about the spiritual man, the spiritual man which the Christian is supposed to be, intended and meant to be, if rightly apprehending what has happened in the meaning of this baptism. The spiritual man is characterised by certain quite elementary things. The anointing just means that that spiritual man has capacities that no other human order has. It is searching isn't it? This is testing.

"Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them" and his reaction to them is: they are foolishness to him. What does that spell? What does that declare? The natural man is without certain essential capacities as to the things of God - the things of God. Oh, we've come into the things of God, haven't we, the realm of the things of God! What a realm! Inexhaustible! Inexhaustible; it would take us all eternity to learn the things of God and our whole Christian life should be just this: learning the things of God - all the way along, learning the things of God, things of the Spirit of God. The natural man hasn't the capacity for doing so; cannot know, cannot receive. His attitude is one of skepticism, cynicism, "All these things that you Christians think so much of, they're nonsense!" they're just nonsense to the natural man. And he acts accordingly, if the Corinthians are the example - there's an awful, awful thing for the Corinthian Christians.

And let's say this, but "he that is spiritual..." and you'll notice in the different translations that the translators have really come up against a difficulty here, they found themselves floundering here to translate into English the real meaning and sense of the original words. He that is spiritual... judgeth all things? Discerneth all things? Examineth all things? These are words that the translators have introduced either into the text or into the margin, revised or authorised, or margin, there they're juggling with a word. What does it mean? What is the meaning? Well, if they're beaten, I am of course, it's not for me to say I can do better. But what the apostle is saying is the natural man, the natural man hasn't the capacity for grasping, grasping the meaning and the sense, the implication of the things of the Spirit, but the spiritual man has capacity, has capacity for this by his new birth. And by the anointing a capacity is produced which no other species of humanity possesses. He or she possesses capacity; it may be in its infancy to begin with, and have to grow and grow until, well, we end this life, however long. And then, even then, we can say, "Wasn't I a fool; why didn't I see that before?" I think that we shan't talk like that or use that language in heaven I suppose, because they don't use language like that in heaven, but I'm quite sure that with all our study, all our experience, when we get to heaven we'll say, "Why didn't I see that? Why, really, didn't I see that?" and I think probably we'll spend all eternity with this, this remarkable, wonderful sense of, "Oh, I was blind, but this, and this and this! If only I could have seen...". However, there's a beginning here of this thing: the capacity for spiritual things, spiritual perception, spiritual discernment, spiritual understanding, spiritual apprehension - a capacity. That's the work of the anointing. It is the work of the anointing. And oh, dear friends, what a lot it does mean! What a lot it does mean.

I remember so well when I came up against this truth many years ago. I will say this to try and help out what I'm wrestling with this afternoon. I came to the realisation of this fact, that what I was really after, really after, both as for my own knowledge and understanding, and value, and good, and ability, and for my ministry, what I was really after could never possibly be realised along the line of any natural capacity. I read. Oh, how I read, and studied. I can see myself now, before I was married, in my own lodgings, alone with my book set up before me while I had my meal. And I remember studying such things as Edward Caird's "History of Religion and the Great Philosophers" - a volume like a family Bible - and having to get up from my meal and take a walk around the block to get my head steady - dizzy with it all! And that's the sort of thing I was doing, trying to find out God, trying to find something for my own spiritual good. And at last I had to say "I'm not getting there, I'm not finding what I'm after, I'm not finding what I'm after; it's eluding me".

And then, of course, I turned to the Scripture and I came to 1 Corinthians 2, "The natural man cannot," cannot, cannot - with all his effort he cannot! He doesn't get through, there's a barrier. But oh, what a tremendous thing it was to me when at that time I saw the Holy Spirit is for us, is given, and the Holy Spirit has all the capacity for knowing His own things and everything about God, the deep things of God! And if only I have the Holy Spirit, all that ever God wants me to know, I can know. I tell you, that from that day to this, that has been a real, real boon in my life; for life, for ministry, the Holy Spirit, the anointing, the capacity for seeing what "no eye has seen, nor heart conceived, what has never entered into the heart of man". This was here, the Holy Spirit is the capacity of all that ever God wants where we're concerned.

Jesus, being anointed, went out into His ministry and... two sides - what the apostle says here about the spiritual man who discerneth, discerneth, perceiveth, examineth, (whatever word you are going to choose) all things. He, he "examines all things but he is examined of nobody". I don't like the word examined, it doesn't help us. What the apostle is saying is this anointed kind of humanity is inscrutable to the world; the world just does not understand him or her. And the temptation of a young Christian is to try and make the world understand him, without being born again! And it's so difficult isn't it, young Christian, so difficult, to have to take this position, "They don't understand me, but I must accept it. They don't, they don't know, and I must just accept it, and not try by argument and discussion to make them know, until they're born again. My business is to bring them face to face with their necessity to be born again." That's Nicodemus isn't it? How the Lord tackles the situation of a very intellectual man, "I'm not going to argue with you. I'm not coming down on to your level to try and explain things to you. No, we're in two different worlds; you are of one world and I am of another, and in order to come where I am, and know what I know, you've got to come the same way: be born from above."

This is all perhaps too simple for you Christians, but what I am getting at is this: the anointing of Jesus, the anointing of Jesus was His capacity for His life mission; His capacity for His life mission. And capacity in His case, meant apprehending the mind of the Father. You see, it was a Spirit of sonship that had come upon Him. Heaven and the Father declared through the rent heaven, "This is My beloved Son!" - the attestation of sonship sealed by the Holy Spirit in His spirit - sonship. And from that time onward, by the anointing, on the basis of sonship, He could understand His Father, He could hear His Father, He knew His Father. It was a relationship. The Father and Son, Son and Father, in communion. And everything that He said, and everything that He did, and everywhere that He went, and everything through the next three and a half years until He went away, was on this basis of the close relatedness of a new order, another heavenly order, the Father-Son, Son-Father relationship. We have only the beginnings of that kind of knowledge, well, we have it if we are really born anew from above and anointed of the Holy Spirit. We do have the beginnings of that.

I'm quite sure you know very well when the Holy Spirit in you agrees or disagrees with anything that you say or do or have said, don't you? Don't you? You have many ways of putting that, "I don't feel comfortable about that..." some people have the language, "I haven't any Life about that..." Well, however you put it, you know what you mean, we know what you mean: the Holy Spirit within does not corroborate, agree, and go with us, but we have to learn a lot of lessons in that way, or He does it with life and peace, He bears witness, it's all right. It's a wonderful education is the education of the anointing, but it's the difference between two kinds of people - those who are living in the natural and trying to get through on everything by natural abilities and resources and capacities, and finding deadlock and impasse, go up a cul-de-sac and having to come back again because of no way through all the time - the natural. And the Christian and the others who are walking in the Spirit, the spiritual people who have at least this capacity of knowing, or having the beginnings of spiritual knowledge.

Well, I think the afternoon's time has gone for that. We just leave it there. How helpful it is to you, I don't know, but I'm sure that there's something that we have yet to move into at least more fully, of this matter of the different order of people to which we as Christians belong who are the Christ people, who are taking, taking their character and taking their capacities from Christ. That is true Christianity. May it be true in ever growing measure in the case of each one of us.

Chapter 4 - The Battle Over the Spiritual Man

If you are not acquainted with the fact, may I remind you that "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness unto him and he cannot know them because they are spiritually judged, but he that is spiritual judgeth all things, he himself is judged of no man". And Paul, when he opened this letter addressing the Corinthians, told them that he had definitely resolved that his presence amongst them would be with one object only, and that he would know nothing among them save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

We have been seeking to understand, I trust a little more clearly and fully, the difference that Jesus Christ and the knowledge of Jesus Christ makes as to the kind of person that we are and to which category we belong of these two mentioned: the natural man and this: "he that is spiritual". We have been looking at this Jesus Christ with a view to seeing what it is about Him that is of this category, and nature, or type called "he that is spiritual" - what that means, remembering that the Word has a lot to say about being conformed to His image. So I think we shall see further as we proceed this evening.

Now, we left the Lord Jesus this afternoon on the other side of the Jordan, the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit lighting upon Him, and the voice of the Father attesting Him as His beloved Son. And we saw that this image to which we are to be conformed, is one that stands on altogether new ground. Altogether new ground - ground where the Cross has been made effective in the life and the ground where God Himself can commit Himself; can freely say, as is the effect of this announcement from heaven, "This is My ground; to this ground I can commit Myself. This is what I desire and must have for the fulfilment of My purpose". For, as we saw, it was from that moment the Lord Jesus entered upon His great mighty ministry. And it was as though the Father said, "Now I have got the ground upon which I can proceed with My great purpose and My ground is a Man of this kind, after this order, a spiritual man, or a man of the Spirit".

But it is very significant, much more than interesting, it's impressive, that no sooner had God got His ground in His kind of Man, His spiritual Man, His Man of the Spirit, no sooner had God obtained that ground and declared Himself as committed to that ground, "This is My beloved Son", no sooner than there is a reaction - tremendous reaction from hell. And the very next thing in the course is that temptation of the Lord Jesus in the wilderness with which we shall be occupied for this little while this evening.

If you want it, of course, it's in the gospel by Matthew chapter 4: "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil..." and you know the rest of the temptations and what happened, and how the Lord Jesus, this Man of the Spirit emerged triumphant. And I repeat: how impressive and significant and instructive it is in this whole setting with which we are occupied, the whole setting of this different, altogether different, kind of Man as God's opportunity, God's occasion, God's ground, that the enemy reacts to that like this, in this determined, persistent, and very subtle way. I say, in the whole setting, it's most impressive.

It is as though the enemy Satan, who appears on the scene so quickly after these happenings, it is as though he said, "We must spoil this Man! We must undo this Man. We must do with this Last Adam what we did with the first: we must change Him. We must change Him or our whole cause is lost - all our work is undone. All our hope perishes if we cannot change this Man and conform Him, conform Him to the man that we have made, the man Adam that we have made racially. Conform this One to that, or all is lost! Our cause is a lost cause if we can't change this Man. If we cannot get Him off this ground onto our ground, if we cannot bring Him from the spiritual man ground to the natural man ground, then we are lost! We're undone." That's the issue. And I say again, how impressive, how significant, for undoubtedly that was the matter in hand in the wilderness.

The Battle Over the Spiritual Man

And if you know anything about spiritual pressures and spiritual conflict, if you know anything about the antagonisms and oppositions of the powers of evil, you know quite well that the object is always to try and provoke the natural man. It's the truth! To provoke you on that side of your being, to assert the old man and take natural ground. You understand that? How true it is.

And I remind you again, that with the Lord Jesus this was right at the commencement of His great mission in this world, His great mission of redemption, redemption of man, to redeem man from Adam's race and Satan's dominion; right there at the very commencement of that mission, this happened. As though, as though the enemy was saying, "We must frustrate and thwart the success of that mission of getting man off of our ground, out of our kingdom and dominion, onto this other one." A subtle, deep, terrible battle for the spiritual Man.

And what is it that is right at the heart of this? Well, note again: this is the beginning of the mission; in the wilderness with the devil himself and the temptation. The three temptations which you know, and we're not going to deal with them particularly, you know them. Right at the beginning this is the point and the nature of those temptations. You pass right from the beginning, right to the end, right to the end when this spiritual Man is about to complete the mission on the cross, and as He does so, He is in a prayer battle - a tremendous prayer battle about, not Himself this time, but about the others: "The men whom Thou hast given Me...".

And what is the word constantly recurring through John 17, that great, final outpouring of His heart concerning these who are to be the spiritual men - whom He wants to be spiritual men? And the prayer is all that they shall be spiritual men, but what is the word constantly recurring? You notice it? The world! The world... the world: "I am NOT of the world," He says, "They are not of the world. The men whom Thou hast given Me out of the world...." and so on.

In the wilderness it was the battle with the prince of this world and the spirit of this world. Look at the temptations - it would take us too much of my time to dwell upon each one, but look at those three temptations and it is as clear as the bright daylight that this is an attack along the line of the spirit of the world. And what is the spirit of the world? Can it be summed up in one word, one term? It can. It can, whether you fully grasp the meaning of the word I use, I'll define it afterward, but the one word which sums up the spirit of this world is: ego. Self. Self-hood. Self-interest. Self-realisation, self... oh, what a comprehensive thing that word ego is! Fill it out: egotism. That's the spirit of this world. That is the very spirit of Satan who said at the very beginning, "I will exalt my throne above the clouds, I will be equal with the Most High." I! Ego. Self. "Save Thyself," says he to the Lord, "Realise Thyself! Draw to Thyself! Assert Thyself! Consider Thyself, and if You don't, You'll lose everything. You'll lose everything: You'll lose Your life, You'll lose Your kingdom, You'll lose a following!"

Those are the three temptations, mark, "Your own life, Your own Kingdom! Worship me and all the kingdoms of the world shall be Yours - Your own Kingdom, Your own following! Cast Yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple and all men will say, 'This is the Messiah, come down from heaven', and You'll get Your following. They'll come after You!" Centred in self, so is the world: "And if only we can get this Man on to that ground, we've captured everything and defeated all His mission."

And so the Lord prays that great final prayer as He moves to the cross, "Father, those whom Thou hast given Me out of the world, I pray keep them from the world. I am not of this world, and they are not of this world." Do you follow that? It is very clear, this is the battle: the spiritual man, the natural man.

You come back to your first letter to the Corinthians and read again. And what are you in the presence of at Corinth? The inroads that the spirit of the world has made into the church at Corinth. You read all the things there the apostle has to mention, and every one of them in some way is an expression of the spirit of this world. The church is undone because the world has been given this place. "The wisdom of this world," says the apostle to them, the wisdom of this world. And all the other things there are just marks of this world where these, these Corinthians are seeking their own interests, their own ends, drawing to themselves, making themselves, self the criterion in its gratification. It's all there isn't it? It's all there. The world in Corinth has broken into the church, and so the apostle has to draw this distinction between the natural man who is actuated by self-interest, and the spiritual man like Jesus Christ where there's no personal interest.

A great, great fragment of Philippians 2: "He emptied Himself... took upon Him the form of a servant, being found in fashion as a man..." we're coming back on that perhaps in a minute. He emptied Himself, let go. The selfless spiritual Man. And he said to those in Philippi, "Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus..." the selfless mind... "Keep them from the world". It's the heart-cry of the Lord Jesus because He is fully acquainted with the immensity of the issue. He has fought this battle to such a point of exhaustion that God had to send an angel to strengthen Him after this battle.

So deep is the meaning of this issue - the spirit of the world, and the Spirit of Christ; the natural man, and the spiritual. As soon as the Lord gets anything that really is spiritual... shall I put that in another way? It's the same thing: as soon as the Lord gets anything that is really genuinely of Christ, there will be a terrific battle to spoil it. Isn't that true? Oh, look at Christendom! Look at Christianity! Look at the church and the churches over this world. In so, in so many instances, there was a beginning of something pure, something so good, genuine, and true, and in that beginning there was so much value, so much spiritual strength, beauty and virtue; something of Christ. But look now... look now! Nothing escapes, friends, don't you say "Never!", whether you're in the ideal or anywhere else, don't you ever say, "It can't happen to us".

I expect the church at Ephesus at one time would have said that, "It can't happen to us!" No, no, nothing escapes this onslaught, this determined purpose and intention of the powers of evil to spoil what is truly of Christ. They don't care about the formal thing, the thing that is just formal and institutional, traditional, but you get some genuine expression of Christ and there's a battle, and there will be a battle. And the battle? Oh, isn't it true, you do agree I'm sure, you've seen it; isn't it true the battle always arises on some personal interest, a personality complex, some personal element? The ego. Isn't it always just there that the trouble arises? The natural man... to be assertive over the spiritual. This is history and up-to-date history indeed.

Now, having said that, and anyone with any spiritual discernment can see how true it is and I'm only interpreting what you know by both experience and observation: the conflict over spirituality, it really is tremendous. But having said that, do you notice that this whole thing falls into two realms - what we may call the two conformities. The two conformities. To the Romans, the Roman Christians in his letter, the apostle said, "I beseech you by the mercies of God, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is" (and this is the literal) "which is your spiritual service, your spiritual worship, and be not conformed to this world". That's one conformity, "But be transformed by the making over again of your mind," the renewing, making anew of your mentality, transformed, "Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus". The transformed mind, you see, not the conformed to this world. The same word in another way was used by the apostle in what I have quoted from the Philippians, "He was found in fashion as a man and took the form of a bondservant". Here we are: taking a form, a fashion, "Be not fashioned" is one translation or version of Romans 12:2, "Be not fashioned according to this world", don't take on the fashion of this world, don't fall into line with the fashion of this world, don't be influenced by the fashion of this world, be transformed, changed over by another mind, the mind that was in Christ Jesus.

To the Galatians the apostle wrote, "My little children, for whom I am again in travail till Christ be fully formed in you", back with our word transformed, formed, fully formed in you. Now, of course, I can add a lot and spoil everything by putting on too much, but I'm going to close with one thing.

The Final Criterion

Listen: the final criterion, that is, the standard or judgment, verdict, conclusion, is after all, the measure of Jesus Christ.

I sometimes think that the Lord from above must look down with a pathetic look on His face; pathetic, sometimes perhaps humorous, for I remember my first flight by air. My first flight by air, I have had a good many since, but I remember the first, when I, when we climbed up a few thousand feet and I looked down on this earth and I saw people. And I looked; are they people or are they maggots? They looked like little crawling things on the earth. Minute crawling things, and yet look at them! They're dressing themselves up! Some of them are putting on a certain kind of garment, and their collars around the wrong way, and their mitres and their robes, and all this. These little, little tiny maggots on the earth doing all this, making such a show and display of pomp and ceremony... oh, isn't it pathetic?

If you see things from heaven, you know what I mean! You see things from heaven, from heaven's standpoint, the Lord looks down with pity and says, "They make everything of that sort of thing. To them, it's all, and to Me? It's nothing. The only thing that counts with Me is just how much of My Son there is there! The only thing! I shut My eyes to all this, all this nonsense, this paraphernalia, this playing at things, this pretending, this make-believe. No, that doesn't exist for Me. They make everything of it. To Me it is nothing. The only thing down there which counts is how much of My Son is there! If there is some of My Son, of My Son, behind that sort of thing? All right, I fasten upon that and try to forget all the other". The criterion with God is just how much of this Other Man, this spiritual Man, this Son of His... and Paul was so much in line with the mind of God when he said, "Nothing! I know nothing! You're making everything of your philosophy, you're making so much of your worldly wisdom. You're making so much of this, and for me? Nothing of that. That doesn't, doesn't exist for me. I am determined to know nothing of all that; it's so much to you, but only Jesus Christ".

Only Jesus Christ. That's the criterion, after all, dear friends. It's not anything external, elaborate or otherwise, just the measure of this Other One, this different One, the spiritual Man Jesus Christ.

Chapter 5 - The Body of Christ

As we are getting nearer to the end of this time together, we naturally move to a culmination and a gathering up of what the Lord has been seeking to say to us. And so there has to be a certain amount of retrospect and repetition, but as little as we can make it, in order to link on for what yet the Lord has to say.

And you know that the basic portion of the word out of which we have been led to many other things, is the second chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians in which the apostle is seeking, very early in his writing to the church at Corinth, to re-emphasize, re-stress and underline the real nature of the Christianity into which these Corinthians had come, and of which they seemed to have lost very much - from which they had deviated and declined. And so he is calling them back from their declension. It's a real foundation and restatement of the Christian life.

You know, when he gets well on in this letter, to chapter 15, he does definitely state that he is telling them what was the gospel that he preached to them, "I make known unto you brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye received, wherein also ye stand, by which also ye are saved... I make known, I say, in what word I preached unto you... if ye hold fast, hold it fast... except ye believe in vain."

These two letters are for one purpose: to remind them (and he does so very forcefully) of what it was that they had come into. The necessity was this state of confusion which had come into their Christianity. And his way of approach, as we have been seeing, his way of approach to this whole matter is along the line of distinguishing between two kinds and types of manhood which can be characteristic of Christians. That is, that in Christians there can be two things, and the whole question and issue is: which of these two things is going to predominate? And the two things are set forth here in chapter two. And if you remember, when he wrote he didn't mark out his letter with chapters, you can just wipe out those numbers, he's going straight on, he's made a start, he's going straight on. He is not stopping at the end of chapter one and saying, "Well, that's that, we leave it for the time being and then next Sunday we'll read chapter two." He is writing straight through, without any breaks or interruptions; it's one thing.

You must remember, and this should be helpful to you, you must remember that the whole letter, and the whole of these two letters, have to be read in the light of one main theme. There are not so many themes here, although so many aspects are touched upon, you may say so many subjects are included. Every one, the whole, relate to one thing. You must read every part in the light of that one thing. If you do so, it will be a very helpful way of reading the letter and you'll have to say, as it moves on, it looks as though it changes from one thing to another, then another, and another. But you have to say, "But how does this relate to the basic thing?" And you'll find that that is the way of interpreting the whole of these two letters - every part, a part of one whole. And the one whole is: the transition from one kind or type of Christian to another; the two types being called now the natural man, the natural man (in the original: the man of soul) and then, he that is spiritual; that is, the man of spirit.

The natural man, being the man as he is in himself; the spiritual man, being the man as he is in the Spirit. And we know quite well that we can be in one of those two things. We can be in ourselves over anything. That is, self can be the dominating and governing thing, or we can be governed by the Spirit. We can be in the Spirit, controlled by the Spirit in our life. These two are here set over against one another by the apostle and the whole letter is to be read in the light of this one thing: the transition from one to the other.

As we have seen in the second letter, chapter 3, we are being changed, transformed into the same image. We are being made to pass from the one image, to the other. We are in transition. That is the nature of the Christian life and that is what Christianity is - the complete change from one type of manhood to Another, and the "Another" being Christ.

Now, we have traced that in the case of Christ, again by seeing that that is the meaning and significance of the incarnation, the birth of Christ, the virgin birth of Christ. There's another than the natural order of man that has been brought in. Christ did not come into this world along the ordinary natural lines, it was a work of the Spirit of God which produced His very being, His very body. As the angel said to Mary, "The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and that which shall be born of thee", a work of the Holy Spirit to produce something that is not the old kind, the known type, but something born of God - a different type of manhood; it's the meaning of the incarnation. From there we moved on to His baptism, we saw that as He placed His Cross in figure right at the commencement of His mission, His public mission, He was saying, "This mission I have come to fulfill requires the death and burial of one kind, the resurrection and bringing into being on the other side of the Cross of another kind." That is what the New Testament teaches about baptism.

The meaning of His baptism, then, was in the light of the Cross, which is its true fulfillment - the putting out of the sight of God of a type, a type. He is on the Cross, figuratively on the Cross, in the Jordan. He is taking the place of a whole race of beings which are being dismissed by God as never suitable for His presence, and coming out on the other side He is attested as beloved; that which is suitable to God.

From there we moved to the anointing. After His baptism the Holy Spirit coming upon Him in which, we saw, that this new manhood into which we are called, is a manhood wholly governed and led by the Holy Spirit; led by the Holy Spirit.

I don't know whether it comforts you or whether we can draw very much comfort from this, but the first leading of the risen Christ on the other side of the Jordan was into battle; by the Holy Spirit. That was Jesus led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And probably you would pause in the future when you're asking to be led by the Holy Spirit if you remember that! But here it's quite clear that the very first action of the anointing was to bring Him into battle. And as we have seen, it was the battle between the prince of this world and the One who was not of this world, but repudiated this world - the spiritual man over against the worldly man.

Well, we got on the details of that to show how the temptations were just an effort of the enemy to get this spiritual Man back on to natural ground and so spoil Him, the last Adam, as he had spoiled the first Adam, and retain the kingdom for himself, that is, satan. So much for the the battle over the spiritual Man and over what really is under heaven attested as approved of God, what really is in God's approval, "My beloved...". Anything that can be of that order is a thing which is contested by the enemy to spoil it and to get it away again on to the old natural ground.

These things all who have been here now know, but this is the way we have come. The anointing, the earthly life from that time onward was the life and the walk of a spiritual Man and that spiritual Man amongst men is different, there's something different about Him which the world cannot understand.

We're keeping to the text of 1 Corinthians 2, "The natural man understandeth not... he cannot know, cannot judge things, but he that is spiritual understandeth all things, judgeth all things", does know, but he is not judged of any man, or understood by any man. How true that was of the Lord Jesus! If ever there was a man who was misunderstood by everyone, even His disciples, misunderstood - it was the Lord Jesus. He was of a different order and they could not judge Him, they could not understand Him, He was, as we say, inscrutable. And that is true of everything that is spiritual and everyone that is spiritual. We're here as strangers in a world, and the deepest reality of their being is something that the world cannot understand. They're a mystery to the world, there's something about them that is different that altogether defies the world, and the world's understanding and comprehension. You know, that's how it ought to be, it makes, of course, the Christian life an exceedingly difficult one to live in this world, but then, you see, we are aliens here aren't we? We are pilgrims and strangers on the earth. We don't belong here, we speak another language. We don't belong and therefore we're not understood; or it should be so.

One of the great mistakes that many Christians and young Christians mistake, and make, is to try, try to make the world understand them. It can't be done. It can't be done! If you lower your standard in order that they might comprehend you and accept you as one of themselves, you see, you're throwing away the very truth and reality of your Christian life. Well, you don't try to be different, that is, you're not all the time trying to be awkward amongst people - the fact of your very being is that you're strange to them. You're of another order of creation and they can no more understand you than an animal can understand a human in many, many of the human ways. Well, that was the earthly life of the Lord Jesus and this is the meaning of the spiritual man.

And for the little while, this afternoon at any rate, to begin with, we're going on to the next thing that came in the case of the Lord Jesus, that is: the supper in the upper room. You see, there you have the actual history of the Lord Jesus. Isn't it interesting to note how Paul in these letters takes us through that history in a spiritual way now, not a historic way, but in a spiritual way, and how in this very letter he comes on the Lord's table.

You know that you rarely, very rarely come to the Lord's table without reading from 1 Corinthians 11. It is regarded as the formula for the Lord's table: "I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the night in which the Lord was betrayed He took bread and break and gave to His disciples and said This is My body which is for you... In same manner, after supper, He took the cup said, This cup is the cup of the new covenant in My blood which is shed for you..." and so on. Well, it's read. There are few passages, probably, that Christians are more acquainted with than this. There are a number of things gathered into it, a number of things gathered into it because it's so comprehensive. But what is the inclusive thing that is here? What is the interest? This loaf. What is this loaf? What is this loaf? He says, "This is My body, My body". He is contrasting by the "My", contrasting this table with the other tables, you'll notice, in the context other tables: tables of demons, tables of this world. "This is My body..." and it's different from all others. It doesn't belong to any other category, it is distinct and separate - something you need - there is not another Body like this. Of all the bodies in humanity, there's not another Body like this. He said "A body didst Thou prepare for Me", an act of God, a unique act of God, this Body. I repeat: there was no other Body like this one - a special act of God. His body from its birth was not an ordinary body; in its birth, was not an ordinary body.

Oh, looking at Him from the outside, perhaps He doesn't look any different, and yet there's something about this Man... something about this Man that you cannot understand; He's different. And when taking the loaf as the symbol of His body, breaking it, and distributing it, and saying, "Eat all ye of it", what was He saying? In the light of this discrimination in the types or kinds of humanity, what is He saying? "In taking My Body, you are declaring that you are a part of this other and different kind, or type of humanity". You are saying that you, you have become a very part of this other order that Christ is, and that He has become a part of your being, that you are different from other people. Is that what we mean every time we come to the Lord's table, and every time we read 1 Corinthians 11? Is that really what we mean when we declare by this act that we are not of this world, we are not in the innermost reality of our being a part of this old creation?

In Christ we are of a new creation, a new order of manhood. And perhaps that is a reason why the Lord is instituting this, and indicated that this was something to be repeated and repeated - repeated till He comes. We come back to the Lord's table repeatedly, perhaps week by week. It is to both remind ourselves and declare that we are a different people, we're a different people. That needs guarding, of course, not that we are superior in a certain sense and exclusive, but we're different - we are a Christ people. We are a Christ people - standing in this world where every force of satan and the world is set to draw us and drag us back onto that other old level of life, down to the lower level of the self-life. We come back and say, "No, we reaffirm today that we are on another level of life, in another realm of life, in another relationship of life: Christ in us and we in Christ - by this alone".

And the cup... in like manner the cup. With the same significance, but this, a body, needs a life. And you may repeat this so often and it become a dead form, a habit, a custom, a bit of Christian procedure which Christians do week by week. Oh, so often it's just that, but He has combined the cup with the loaf, and the cup, the wine, is always a type of His life. His life released from Himself to be shared by His people so that it is a living Body. The characteristic of this Body, this people is Life - they live! You can go to many communion services and while you may be very reverent in manner and solemn in voice and so on, you go away just the same, whereas the Lord's table ought to be a most living thing; not form, custom, repeated procedure, but a living thing from which we come away and say, "Yes we've had a ministration of Life, a ministration of Life!" Would that it were always like that!

But here, you see, it comes to these Corinthians on the line of the difference between Christ and the natural man - the spiritual man and the natural man. The spiritual man is like this: he is a man who has imbibed Christ and is changed, is changed into Christlikeness, by his (may we say): absorbing Christ into his being, making Christ a part of himself. Oh, far from being formal, far from being form and custom, something to be got through, because it's the thing that is done, it should be a testament of the fact that we, with Christ, are joined in another kind of God-approved humanity! Accepted by God under an opened heaven, the Father attesting, saying, "This is what I love, this is what I love!" Don't you think that our times around the Lord's table ought to have that perhaps as their major effect? The Lord, the Father, looking down and saying, "This is something I love: My beloved." It ought to be like that, the Lord make it like that. And so we are.

We see here that in the course of a continuous narrative or letter, without break, the apostle comes at a certain point to this part where he introduces into his main theme the Lord's table as a part of the whole and says "This Lord's table is a testimony to the fact that we belong to another race, another order, another type, the Christ type: His body, His blood, His life is ours; what we belong to."

Now note this other thing for the moment, you notice that right early in the beginning of this letter, the beginning of the second chapter, the apostle says, "I, brethren, when I came unto you came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the mystery of God, I came in amongst you, I preached," our revised text is 'the mystery of God', you notice the margin says 'the testimony of God' which is really the exact word: the testimony of God - came preaching, proclaiming the testimony of God. The testimony of God, of course, is Jesus Christ. He is the testimony of God, but do you notice that in this matter of the Lord's table, he says, "As oft as ye eat and drink, ye do preach..." 'proclaiming', that's the alternative word in the text, you do "proclaim the Lord's death till He comes", you do preach. "I came preaching, preaching, proclaiming the testimony of God," in this table you preach. You preach the testimony of God in Jesus Christ, you do proclaim the Lord's death till He comes.

This is the preaching; and for the comfort of some who may not think they do very well on a platform or in an open-air meeting, preaching is not always by being on a platform, or in a meeting standing up and talking. Preaching is what you are. You do proclaim. You see, dear friends, you cannot just pass the ministry over to the preacher or the preachers, whatever name you use for them, you just cannot do that.

We are, every one who takes or partakes of the Lord's table, is a preacher, an ordained preacher, but your preaching is a declaration before heaven and earth and hell that in this table you have become a part of another order of creation. By the body and blood of Christ you're proclaiming that you are of the Christ order, proclaiming it! Wouldn't it be a good thing if that were true of all people who took the communion service! But when you bring it into the letter to the Corinthians it's, it's quite startling and testing isn't it? These people were coming to the Lord's table, but you see how they came, see how they came, what is said about them here, how they came to the Lord's table. The apostle summed it all up in one word: "He that eateth and drinketh unworthily..." in an unworthy manner.

My word, the context of that is shocking; how they came to the Lord's table - they brought to the Lord's table the old man. There's no doubt about it. They brought to the Lord's table themselves. It's all there, and it's a very terrible, terrible picture of the Lord's table at Corinth. I must leave you to read it again, their behaviour which was being rebuked. But the point is that coming like that with anything of that kind, "Let a man examine himself, let a man examine himself", look at himself, see, see now how he comes to the Lord's table, whether as the old man on the old man's ground, on the ground of the natural man; has he come to the Lord's table with that? Or is he coming really to the Lord's table on the ground of the spiritual Man? If so, if so, all those things that are in this letter are ruled out by the Lord's table. "There are divisions among you", can't have that in one body can you? That must go, that belongs to the natural man.

And there are a number of other things, to which I may refer later, which were characteristics of the Corinthians, which were a contradiction to the fundamental meaning of the Lord's table. The Lord's table, therefore, becomes a great test of one thing: whether we are on Christ's ground or on natural human ground.

Now you, many of you, perhaps wonder why this should be said to you - you are not Corinthians! I hope you're not! There may be very little of these Corinthian conditions amongst you, I hope that is true, however I'm not so sure when it comes really to the test, whether we shouldn't be found out in some of these things. You look at that again, but it's a great test of whose ground we are on - the ground of the natural man or the ground of the spiritual Man; the ground of the first Adam or the last Adam. The table is put there as a cleavage clean between the two.

And therefore, this table is a very sacred thing, but not always at the Lord's table to be a note of warning as here. While it... and it's a beautiful thing that the apostle says at the beginning of this letter, it is a beautiful thing, I think it's one of those things that needs to be taken note of very much. Right at the beginning he says, "Them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, their Lord and ours." There's not exclusiveness there when it comes to a matter of those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus who is their Lord, as He is ours. That's all right, that's inclusive, but then when you move on to this matter of the table, the table cuts in and says "Not for the natural man who is of this order of division and all these things".

Oh, be careful; examine yourself when you come to the table and see that you're not bringing the natural man, these characteristics, to the Lord's table. If you stand on other ground than that of the ground of Christ, might I remind you that Paul is so strong about this matter of Christ-ground that he opens this letter, and what is in our arrangement the first chapter, with its 31 further divisions into verses, it's a small section in this introduction, introduction to the whole. No fewer than nine times he mentions the name of the Lord Jesus. It's impressive isn't it? I don't know whether you mark your Bible, but you take red ink or something that shouts and underline the name of the Lord Jesus in these first 31 verses of this first section of the whole letter and that will always be a guide to the letter. And then in the second part, the second chapter going on, he said, "I, I came to you proclaiming, proclaiming... I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ." How utter, ultimate, complete is this concentration upon Jesus Christ right through! Jesus Christ at every point!

He says to every situation, "That's not Jesus Christ. That is not Jesus Christ!" Well, I think all this is just a build-up of this one thing that is a great divide in our humanity, in our humanity: the divide between what he calls the natural man, the man of soul and the spiritual man. And that is never to be more marked and clear than when we come to the Lord's table, because there we do, by taking Christ, declare we are Christ people, Christ people, and not of this other type.

Well, I think if I were to go on and say a lot more, I couldn't say anything more vital and we might spoil things by adding words, but dear friends, look at this matter of the natural man in the Corinthian letter, leading right on to this advanced point in the letter of the Lord's table and see all this that has led up to it. And what an appalling, appalling lot it is! What an exhibition of the natural man. All that comes right up to the Lord's table, the Lord sees and says "No!" to that, no to that; that's not Christ, that's not Christ, here is Christ and He is different, and you are different from them, if you really have rightly apprehended Christ.

Chapter 6 - Transformation

We are occupied in this time with the matter of the transition and the transformation of the Christian from one order of creation to another; from what Paul calls in his first Corinthian letter the "natural" man to the "spiritual" man. And he says in his second letter that we are being transformed into the same image - that is, Christ.

For a little while this evening we shall think together about this progress and this process of the Christian life from one order of creation, to the other. And in these two letters of the apostle Paul to the Corinthians, we have a wonderful setting forth of this process and progress, and consummation of the Christian, from what he is in himself, to what he is to be ultimately in Christ.

And if you look again at the letter, or if you'll call to mind what you know about it, you will see that the apostle is dealing with the three parts of manhood. He deals with his soul - very much occupied in these letters with the soul life of the Christian - and then he is dealing with his spirit, with what he calls the "inner" man. And then he deals with his body, what he calls our "outward" man, which is perishing. It is the complete man who, under the government of the Spirit of Christ, is here being dealt with.

He begins, of necessity because of the situation in Corinth, with the soul and the soul man; translated in our version - the 'natural' man. Everybody knows that the word 'natural' there in the original is the soul - the soul man. That is, what man is in himself, his own natural life; how he is made and made up and all that goes to make him a self-conscious being. Over against that, the apostle is saying so much here about the spiritual man, "He that is spiritual", making a very big contrast between these two.

Later he will come to the body of the man, and in every case, in every realm, it is a matter of change, transformation, or being transformed, the natural man being transformed into the spiritual man, his natural life being dealt with on the basis of Christ by the Holy Spirit - to be brought, not into annihilation, but into subjection - not to get rid of a soul, but to capture that soul and bring it into full subjection to his spirit in Christ.

I don't know how you have felt in reading this first letter to the Corinthians, especially as you take it up from the tenth verse of chapter 1 where the apostle begins his long section of dealing with the wrongs at Corinth - cataloguing all the wrong things that were there. And they were all bad, but some of them were very bad, really terrible things. And you might ask, or be tempted to ask, were they Christians at all? Were they Christians? Is it possible that these people were really Christians? You're recalling, aren't you, some of the things there at Corinth, but it is impressive, very impressive, how the apostle begins his letter.

What is he really doing? Really, what does he mean when he's going to uncover all this that is there? He knows it before he begins to write, and yet he'll write like this, "Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, their Lord and ours." Is he just seeking to get on rapport with these people, saying some nice things to prepare them for the nasty ones? How can he, with his full knowledge of the situation at Corinth, speak about them in this way? And following things which he says about them, which are good when reading on, as I say you might wonder whether they were Christians at all. And in reading on, and finding these things in a Christian church, you might despair of Christianity! You might be very disappointed indeed with Christianity and say, "Well, if that is Christianity, may I be saved from it!" - a very natural reaction to all that is here.

How does the apostle justify himself and proceed with this situation? The answer is given in a three-fold way. In the first place, he speaks of the Christian's, the believer's standing; not his faith, his standing. These Corinthians had evidently come to the Lord Jesus, come in faith to the Lord Jesus. Evidently the Lord Jesus was their foundation, because he says so in chapter three. They were Christians and born again Christians; the apostle says "called saints... sanctified in Christ Jesus". Their standing is one thing, and you cannot do anything until you've got the standing. He would not proceed to deal with the situation if there were not some ground on which to proceed. He is taking it for granted that there is a ground there, it may be covered over with a lot of unworthy things, but there is a ground there on which to work. And given that ground, the Lord can proceed, the Lord can do His work. And so the apostle begins with the standing of these people in Christ, in Christ by faith, as over against their state. And then he goes on to show that the course of Christian life, given that position, their standing, that foundation, the course of Christian life is a process of making believers what they are. Their approximation by process and progress, to what they really are in standing.

And here is something, dear friends, that you and I need for our help when we come up against so much that is disappointing, so much that shocks us, so much that would almost bring us to despair. We need this: that in the New Testament, in the apostolic letters, perfection is future and not present. If you are looking for the perfect person now, or the perfect church now, you're going to suffer such disillusionment and disappointment, and you'll despair.

Some of us have poured ourselves out to have the perfect church, to have the perfect church, the last word, the thing that really does fully, wholly represent and express what we have in Ephesians. And we've been terribly disillusioned and disappointed, haven't we? You've had to come back again and look at the matter. And when we've looked again, we find that Ephesians is pointing on to the end. It stands in the ages to come as the perfect thing, not now, not now. And what is now is the process, and the progress.

Very dear friends, I've got to stop. I'm having a bad time physically and I don't know that I can go on much further unless the Lord really undertakes... if you'll lift your hearts to the Lord.

But here in this letter it's all dealt with; this in between the beginning and the end, and the perfection of believers is progressive and not final here. And so the apostle comes in with all the teaching about the process. He tells us what that process is, it's transformation from one kind to another, and he is teaching the principles of spiritual progress in this letter, what he calls "transformation into the same image".

Would you allow me to stop for a few minutes, and perhaps you'll have a little time of prayer further. [Break].

We said that the apostle is here teaching the principles of this progress and transition from one type of man to the other, the natural to the spiritual, or to Jesus Christ. And that is why he so repeatedly brings Christ into view and why he declares that in this realm of the natural is where the personal self-life of Christians is brought to the Cross of the Lord Jesus. And the apostle here shows what that Cross means over against these natural conditions. He is himself the embodiment of this truth of Christ and the Cross.

You notice how he comes to Corinth, or came to Corinth. He says, "I was amongst you determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified... I was among you in much fear, and trembling, and weakness". And in so stating, he has laid down the very ground of his appeal and his teaching. It is this: that there must be a personal embodiment of the truth of the Cross before we'll get anywhere. Think of this man, his calling, his tremendous revelation, his ability to stand before princes and rulers and king with all boldness; a tremendously strong and able man he was, in so many respects, but when he comes to a situation like this, all that goes. It all goes. And here this, this, in other respects tremendous man of such ability, qualification, and courage: "I was with you in much weakness... in fear, in trembling...".

If ever we are going to deal with the strong soul life which is making so much trouble in the church, we will not deal with it with our own soul strength. It'll never be dealt with by our own natural strength, it can only be in our own weakness, our own sense of dependence upon the Lord, in much weakness, fear, trembling... that's a crucified man. When you think of the man who said it: a crucified man; and it is one of the great principles of spiritual helpfulness that the one who is going to help, must embody the truth, be the embodiment of the truth being given; it's like that. He himself, by emptying of himself, of himself, was able to help these people. And only so could really help them. It was not himself, but as he says here, it was Christ. So, so much Christ! "I preach Christ, I proclaim Christ and Him crucified" - a crucified man, preaching a crucified Lord.

When Paul determined to know nothing amongst them, he covered a great deal of ground. There were three classes of people at Corinth, there were the Romans who had captured that province and ruled - the Romans were the embodiment of natural strength. There were the Greeks - the embodiment of natural wisdom, intellectualism. And there were the Jews - the embodiment of a life of the senses, "Jews seek after signs", signs... those things which can answer to the soul's requirement for demonstration, proofs, evidences; that realm of wonderful works. "The Jews seek after signs, the Greeks seek after wisdom", these three things made up the church at Corinth.

Paul says, "So far as your spiritual progress is concerned, all that's got to go in the Cross of the Lord Jesus", and he let it go - all power, natural power, all natural wisdom ('foolishness' he calls it), and all this craving for sense, demonstrations and proofs, you must go to the Cross if you're going to make the progress of the spiritual man.

Christ is the power of God, Christ is the wisdom of God, and Christ is the Sign, the great Sign of God - not things and demonstrations, but Himself the Sign, because He is the risen Christ! With God everything is centred and contained in His Son, the Lord Jesus. And He is not a philosophy of wisdom and intellectualism, He is a person, a Divine person.

The apostle is trying to draw them away from these things, to the Divine Person, and he himself represents that.

Now, I must, I fear, by sheer necessity, draw this to a close. But I pass on to this great culmination in the fifteenth chapter. He's dealt with the spirit, the spiritual man; he's dealt with the soul, the natural man. Now in Chapter 15 he deals with the body. And what arises from that chapter is this: the spirit of the man is the seed, the seed. The spirit of the man is the inner man, the real man; not his soul, nor his body, nor his body, but the real man is the spirit. What you are in spirit is the real man. And now, says the apostle in chapter 15, that spiritual man, that spirit man, that man of the Spirit, that inner man, that inner man being renewed day by day is the seed of a new body. "God giveth it a body as it pleaseth Him". Chapter 15 sees the culmination of the spiritual process and sees the transformation completed in the body, a physical body, made like unto His glorious body. That's the transition, transformation, and the end of a spiritual process - a spiritual body like unto His glorious body. The transition from this, to that: a body that is not subject to what we know in the body. The outer man perishes, the inward man is renewed day by day, but ultimately, in chapter 15 the body itself is made like unto His glorious body. The Lord fulfil all His design in every one.

Table of Contents

Author's Rights

Contents

Chapter 1 - A Process of Transformation

Chapter 1 - We Are Transformed

Chapter 2 - God's Pattern

Chapter 3 - A New Order

Chapter 4 - The Battle Over the Spiritual Man

Chapter 5 - The Body of Christ

Chapter 6 - Transformation