1 Corinthians 12
The subject of which the apostle treats in this chapter, as an exposition of the principle (which subject is continued in the next chapter, where we have the spring of power, and in the one after, where we have the practice), was one most deeply needed at that time by the Corinthian saints, and not at all less now. For there is no greater forgetfulness of any part of the truth of God amongst Christians, than as to their great need of the Holy Ghost on the one hand, and as to God's great gift of Him on the other. Indeed, it is bound up with all the distinctive blessing of the church. Not that these chapters contain all, nor that they exhaust every side of the blessing; for we have here the church more particularly viewed as the scene of God's power, not so much as the object of Christ's affection. For the latter we must look into Ephesians. But here we have the truth of the church (not the individual) viewed as that to which God had given the Spirit of “power,” of “love” (which the apostle treats of in chap. 13), and of the “sound mind” that should be shown (which we have in chap. 14).
The Spirit of power was there; but, whatever the energy He works in, the Holy Ghost has in no way set aside responsibility. Man cannot understand this. A divine person, His office is to be here, that He might be in the saints, the dwelling of God, and that they should have therefore an infinite resource; but, at the same time, not so that the might of the almighty Spirit of God could not be thwarted and hindered, or the testimony which was intended to be borne not be spoiled—not only ruined in its object, but turned to wholly different objects.
This was the state of things which came then before the apostle's mind, as a matter for warning, especially in chap. 10. Much more is it that which is actually found around us at the present moment, out of which the word of God has called us to emerge. But what we have to remember, beloved brethren, is that every one of us is apt to turn back more than we suspect to what we have left behind. And hence there is a continual source of weakness, even greater than, though not so gross as, was found amongst the Corinthian saints. We see plainly in them how little the evil effects of that out of which they had come had disappeared from them. They were no doubt but young in the truth; but length of time does not eradicate evil, being in no way a cure for anything that savors of man. There is only one means, which is divine power by the truth; for, if this works in us, it works in self-judgment. Divine power invariably—if there is to be deliverance from evil—makes us sensible of it, as well as to judge ourselves in the light of God. There is not nor can ever be practical deliverance, until the Lord, by the power of His own truth brought home by the Spirit, makes us to sit in judgment on ourselves, searching and trying ourselves to the very core.
But as for the Corinthian saints, they were accustomed to a great deal of a different species of evil—having been under the influence and working of Satan, as he wrought powerfully in the heathen. Even before Christ came, there was a vast deal of demoniacal power in the world. We see it surrounding the blessed Lord at every step. No doubt there were different forms of Satan's power; but one of the worst was that which, usurping the name of God, had given to the Corinthians the idea of religions power. Out of this terribly false condition the Corinthians had come into the church.
And have we no special danger? or if so, what? We have emerged from a state of things, not, it, is true, of that gross character, but from what is not less really foreign to the mind of God. We have come out of what is in point of fact a corruption of Christianity; and hence, therefore, we are very apt to bring in thoughts, feelings, and habits, which we do well to bring to the test of the word of God—even the oldest of us. But those who are comparatively young in the way need it more particularly; they have never yet proved duly their convictions; they have accepted a quantity of things, much more than they are aware of, on the acceptance of others, rather than by divine teaching for themselves. Along with much that is good, there is always the danger of our mingling a little of ourselves in every step of that process, and in particular we ought not to let in, or slip back into, what we have got out of.
But now for the principle. There are two main ideas among men around us, out of one or other of which we have all come. The one which most extensively prevails is that which I may call the Catholic idea, though perhaps most individuals in this room have known comparatively little of it as experience. Still it is before our eyes, and we are constantly in contact from time to time with persons who suffer from it; and it is well to know how to meet it. The Catholic idea is mainly characterized by this: all blessing, all privilege, is in the church; the grand object of God is the church; there is the Savior, life, pardon, every blessing; the only means of having these is to be in and of it; and this, too, as a present thing. For the Catholic idea does not venture far into the future; nor is heaven so much the object of its contemplation as is the earth. The notion is that, all privilege being concentrated in the church, the individual has scarcely any appreciable place. He is merged. He is merely a cypher, and all his importance is because he belongs to the church. As to himself, why he is not even allowed to call himself a saint; and, as to being a saint at all, it is a question for the church to settle. Not God, but the church determines whether he is to be a saint or not; and perhaps it is not done till fifty years after he is dead and gone. Now, no doubt all this is very gross ignorance; yet it is the form that the Catholic idea has taken. And remember, in speaking of this I am not referring merely to Romanism, but to ancient Christendom, under whatever guise it may present itself.
We have remains, as you know, which show how wildly this theory was taking root not very long after the apostles had disappeared themselves from the earth. No doubt there has been development since; but still the great idea was and is much what I have been endeavoring to set before you. This only is essential: all else is matter of detail and may differ. It is found in Romanism as well as in the Eastern Christian bodies; so it spread after the apostles left, far and wide and permanently.
But a new thing began at the Reformation. When the Catholic system had ripened into a monstrous head of corruption, when the results were morally unbearable among men, when the thought of the church had completely ruined or blotted out all right understanding of God, when on the one hand these who belonged to it, individually considered, were so little in the mind of men that it was no question of living faith, provided they belonged to the church; and, when on the other hand, all who were outside the church, no matter how real their faith or love, were considered heretics, and deserving of no better fate than to be punished soundly in this world for the good of their souls; then came up another and counter thought in which the individual only is prominent. The one point here was that a man should not only read the Bible for himself, believe and be justified for himself, but that, as by faith he becomes a child of God for himself, so he should have been left free to serve God for himself, and choose his own company and his own mode of worship. Here all thought of the church was completely lost, and consequently, giving up consideration of God's assembly, individuals of this way of reasoning combined and formed churches for themselves. This grew, no doubt, to a far larger extent, and was carried out more fully, than was contemplated when first acted on.
But we find, in fact, that those who justly insisted on the importance of individual faith as the saving principle for the soul, and as that which for this glorified God, began to collect together at last, sometimes in a country to themselves, and then again, when in that country there began to be divergences of opinion among them, they made their own distinct churches. If they did not like the great public church of the country, they chose to split off into different religious societies, all essaying to become churches. One was, as they considered, as good in principle as another; but the best church was that which suited a man's own mind. This was the individual idea carried out to its natural results, and such is exactly what we find around us now.
We have the two systems confronting each other in fact. We see the old Catholic notion in those bodies who make everything to be a question of church privilege, who say that it is in the church alone can be found eternal life, or at any rate the hope of it—I might almost say, only the chance, for it comes to this. The whole system is a question of the church dispensing, the church acting, the church pronouncing, the church teaching what is truth, and really saving: everything is a question of the church. But in the other case the church is lost in the individual. It is each person who by faith has received the gospel and become a Christian, who consequently uses his own judgment in forming his own church, or joining the church he likes best. Such is the two-fold state of things in general.
Let me now ask you, what is the truth of God respecting it all? And this is where the importance of divine revelation comes in. The Corinthians were in danger of drifting into one or other of these two rivals, as we shall clearly find in these chapters. It is not, indeed, a very uncommon thing to find a mixture of the two, and this mixture we may trace among the Corinthians. The great thing to which your attention is called is this: the blessed manlier in which the Holy Ghost interferes in order to establish the believer in the truth; and so, without controversy, the soul finds itself able, while kept from what is wrong in each of these principles singly, to enjoy all that is right in both, as God's will alone is.
There is no possibility of a thing holding its ground on earth, unless there be something which gives it a moral claim. There must be a fragment of truth in order to win and keep Christians together. So it is when we look at the Catholic idea, and in what is called the Protestant view. There is a measure of truth in each; but when we come to God's word, there the truth appears about both, and in this order: it is not the church first and then the individual, but the individual first and then the church.
So it is introduced to us in our chapter, as it is always in Scripture. Take Matt. 16: what is the question the Lord first puts? “Whom do men say that I am?” One of them gives an answer for himself—an answer which would have done for each, though he who spoke went beyond the rest. “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” This was a full confession of Christ, owning Him to be not the true Messiah only, but a divine person in the nearest relation to the Father; and the moment the Lord Jesus hears it, He brings out the purpose of His assembly— “On this rock I will build my church.” He had not then begun to build it, and He has not done building it yet.
Again in the Epistle to the Ephesians the same order is most marked. The individual Christian always precedes the body. Take for instance the first chapter: it is only in the last verse we see the church; and, if you look through the whole of the Epistle, it is regularly so. The individual is always set in his own place, and this necessarily is a question of faith; for faith is indispensable to the individual, and must be so. He cannot have faith for another. Each must have faith in God for himself. There may be the faith—the common deposit of the truth, which we all own; but still, when we look at faith itself, it is necessarily individual in the soul. Then follows the question of the church as the house of God and the body of Christ.
When one believes the gospel, one receives the Spirit, who not only is the seal of salvation, but also unites him to Christ as a member of His body There are divinely given relationships, whether individual or corporate; but the corporate follows the individual, the power in both being the Holy Ghost after redemption was effected, for the Spirit was not given till Jesus was glorified.
It is just the same thing in the chapter which is before us now.
The apostle opens the matter thus— “Concerning spiritual [gifts], brethren, I would not have you ignorant.” It will be observed that the word “gifts” is inserted by the translators. Nor is it correct; for the subject, though embracing gifts, goes farther, and takes in what is of far deeper moment as being the source of all, the presence of the Spirit working in the sovereign power of a divine person in the church, and by its members. Perhaps “spirituals” would give the idea, if our language could bear it without any addition. If we must, for clearness, supply a word, it should be “manifestations” rather than “gifts.”
Next, he tells them, “Ye know that when ye were Gentiles” —not “that ye were.” It was nothing new to say that they were Gentiles, but “when ye were Gentiles, ye were carried away unto those dumb idols even as ye were led.” That is, it was not a mere leaching, but rather in those heathen days a carrying away to what they would now look back on with pain, seeing the excessive folly of it as well as its daringness. It was Satan's direct opposition to the truth of God. They would learn that the true God is anything but a dumb idol—that He is one who has not only spoken to us by His Son, but Who opens the mouths that were once dumb to speak for Jesus Christ the Lord by His Spirit.
Thus the apostle brings in the test of spirits in the confession of Jesus as Lord (verse 3), “Wherefore I give you to understand that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed.” Here he does not, of course, mean only the precise term “anathema,” or “accursed;” but what he has, as I judge, in his mind, is this: whatever lowers Jesus is an impossibility to the Holy Ghost—a very simple principle, but one which is the only perfect test for all truth in the church of God. The apostle gives it in a double form, a criterion for as well as against. “No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.” If man ventures without the Spirit of God, he becomes a prey to the evil one who seeks to lower Jesus. The Holy Ghost alone knows what is proper to His person. And He does not speak of Him merely as the Son of God. The point where error comes in is in the Son of God becoming a man; for it is the complex person of the Lord Jesus that exposes persons to break down fatally. There are those, no doubt, who deny His divine glory; but there is a far more subtle way in which the Lord Jesus is lowered; and this is where He is owned to be a man, but where the manhood of the Lord is allowed in some way to swamp His glory, and neutralize the confession of His person. Thus, one is soon perplexed, and one lets that which puts Him in association with us here below work so as to falsify what He has in common with God Himself. There is but one simple thing that keeps the soul right as to this, which is, that we do not venture to pry and never dare to discuss it, fearing to rush in human folly upon such holy ground, and feeling that on such ground as this we are only worshippers. Wherever this is forgotten by the soul, it will invariably be found that God is not with it—that He allows the self-confident one, who of himself ventures to speak of the Lord Jesus, to prove his own folly. It is only by the Holy Ghost that he can know what is revealed about the Lord Jesus. But then we have the double guard: if a man lowers Christ, it is not by the Spirit; and if a man truly says that Jesus is Lord, it is by the Spirit. Here is the chief test for perpetual use in the church of God.
This is the truth about which we ought above all to be jealous. For there is a divine nature in the child of God that is sensitive to what affects Christ, and ought to be so. I cannot conceive anything more destructive to the soul than losing this sensitiveness. The person of Christ is a matter too serious, too fundamental, for any speculation to be allowed, and, in point of fact, the reason of it is this: the Holy Ghost, by whom is all true teaching, is not really with the soul that ventures to teach out of his own resources. He is here for the express purpose of glorifying Christ. Now this is a great thing to be simply settled on. The Holy Spirit of God is here for this very thing. It is not merely for comforting or edifying, though both come in; but the purpose constantly in view is this—He is come for exalting Christ, and guarding Him from all that lowers His glory. It is the aim and work of the Spirit of God as presented in the teaching before us.
(To be continued D.V.)