But to return. Chapter 10 introduces us to church ordinances and a responsible people who take that ground before God as Israel did. “Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed under the sea, and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea,” &c. Professing Christendom has found at this point an entrance of ordinances and sacramentalism, the only points within the reach of man in the flesh and the craft of Satan, for who could touch Christ in the glory, or the real church of God, as one with Him there? But baptism and the Lord's table and the supper, with all their varied and significant meaning in truth, by the Holy Ghost, could be corrupted and turned round to suit mere human ideas of self-importance, and the subtlety of the enemy, who always revives and works by that which God has judged and set aside in Christ at the cross.
Who knew better than Satan that death had closed up all the relations between God and the creature, and by man's own act too, by which he had been not only the betrayer, but the murderer of Christ? Baptism was the great outward expression of this solemn fact, the end of man in the flesh. “Know ye not that as many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized unto his death?” The enemy would not suffer such a testimony as this to proclaim to the conscience of Christendom the fact of death, and soon turned it round to suit his own ends, and by ways and means with which all are familiar declared baptism to express life, and thus affirmed that the baptized were regenerate by that ordinance, children of God, members of Christ, and heirs of the kingdom. Could there have been such a Christendom as this nineteenth century presents, if the scriptural meaning of baptism, and the Lord's table, and the supper had been kept before the heart in testimony as representing death, the death we had deserved, but judicially borne by the Lord Jesus Christ, who suffered in our stead, the Just One for the unjust? How significant are the warnings of this chapter x. to people who still “sit down to eat and drink, but rise up to play.” With many of them God was not well pleased, but they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things were our figures or types. “Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted and were destroyed of serpents.”
There is a difference, at least so I judge, between chapters 10 and 11, though both are alike sacrificial. Nevertheless, I take chapter 10 to be characteristically “the table of the Lord,” and therefore separative in its claims (as representing His title) from everything antagonistic to the Lord in the world around us; “Ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and the table of devils.” What little weight has Paul's challenge-” do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?"-upon the professing Christians of our day! Further, the table of the Lord is not only separating but uniting as respects the believers. “For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one loaf.” We are many members, but only one body, of which the one bread which we break is the symbol. So the “cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?” The body and blood of Christ are the only basis of assurance before God, and our communion one with another is on the common ground of the shedding of His blood.
The claims of the Lord upon us, founded on His rights and titles, extend from the table, as a new center, known by us in redemption, to “the whole earth and the fullness thereof.” All this is the Lord's, not asserted in creative title (though that be true too) but like Boaz who not merely had his Ruth but purchased the inheritance besides. We, believers, own the Lord's title to it all by resurrection, a title to be made good in divine power, when He comes a second time. Man in a state of nature, since Adam was driven out from Eden, is a trespasser, or at least an intruder in this creation, and is only in it by sufferance of God; but we are redeemed creatures, and owning the right and title of our risen Lord to the inheritance by redemption purchase, ask leave of no one to walk through the length and breadth of it, though we have not in fact so much as to set our foot upon. Whatsoever therefore “is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake: for the earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof.” our privileges as redeemed are new, so are our responsibilities; for this same Lord does not suffer us to do any longer the commonest things in an ordinary way, but says, “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” What an elevation, and what a motive is this! So also as to the style of our behavior in the Lord's inheritance, “Give none offense, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God: even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved.” God had put aside man in the flesh, judicially in Christ on the cross; but now we see the redeemed putting self aside in the power of resurrection life, and in the Holy Ghost, so that we anticipate the day of our perfect blessing, and begin while on earth to sacrifice self for the profit of others, and for the glory of God.
This redemption of the inheritance, and the Lord's title and claims, introduce us to chapter 11, where we get the new creation order, when all will be manifestly established in blessing according to God. The old creation order was God and the man and the woman; and this standing upon creature responsibility failed; but only failed to make room for the reserve of God and the introduction of Christ into a new creation-order; “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.” In this new order of headship, where the head of man is Christ, there is an end of all fear, for the head of Christ is God.
The supper follows this, and puts us into our places to feed upon the broken body and shed blood of Christ; or rather to be in that scene of judgment where in the understanding of our souls, in perfect peace with God, we are set to judge ourselves for the allowance or existence of anything in us, which Christ died to deliver us from, and which the judgment of God has condemned and put to death. It is a wonderful place to be set in, and to be told to judge ourselves, and that “If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged” of the Lord; and that even “when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.” But besides, and beyond these matters of self-judgment, we are gathered round the Christ Himself who died for us, and to remember Him in His death-not the living, risen, and ascended One-the object of our worship, and on whose name we called in the opening chapter of this epistle-but the night of His betrayment, when He took bread, and broke it, and said, This is my body broken for you-likewise the cup—only now given out to us from the Lord in heaven by our apostle. It is necessarily with this addition, “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come.” The church fulfillments of the death of Christ will be in our rapture into the heavens, and our being changed into His likeness, and our being presented in the presence of the Father's glory faultless and with exceeding joy.
Having considered in these eleven chapters the scriptural nature of the church's establishment, we now come to chapter xii. to the remaining subject of the church's endowment. Such a church as this epistle describes where (Christ is everything from the foundation stone, to the top stone; and where the truth of the person, and work, and death of Christ is taught doctrinally under the anointing of the Holy One, and sacramentally set forth by baptism, and the table, and the supper) could only be endowed by the gifts of the Holy Ghost. Therefore we read, “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant;” and then follows the surprising catalog, or enrollment of what divine love could bestow on this new vessel of testimony on earth-the body of Christ. “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; there are differences of ministries, but the same Lord; there are diversities of operations but the same God, which worketh all in all.” What must the gifts be that spring forth from sources such as these, and how entirely independent and separate from any power under heaven, is this “church of the living God!”
Besides these diversities, which are necessary to the existence of a divine unity-there is the person of the Holy Ghost, which is beyond all His operations and gifts; “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” We are all conversant with the diversities that make up and constitute the unity of the human body; and this is taken as a figure of the church in verse 12, “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.” Scripture only recognizes one body, the body of Christ, not a congregational or a nonconformist body of Christians-much less an evangelical alliance-or a baptist, or a methodist body, but “ye being many are one.”
As we saw just now, there are not many suppers but only one Lord's supper, and not many tables but only one table of the Lord. “For we being many are one bread and one body;” nor are there many churches such as Popish, Greek, or Anglican; but we are all one in Christ Jesus. “Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels.... and not bolding the Head, from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, maketh increase with the increase of God.”
As regards gifts, God has set some in the church; first, apostles; secondarily, prophets; thirdly, teachers; after that, miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues. Such are some of the church's endowments. The purpose of this bestowment next follows in chapters xiii., xiv., which contain yet further direction as to their use for “the edification of the body.” In brief, it may be said that the gifts enumerated in chapter 12 need be baptized in the element of love, or the charity of chapter 13, in order to be rightly exercised for the edification and growth of the body, as described in chapter 14. The presence of a plurality of gifts in the assembly is recognized, and consequently directions are given for their exercise, affirming that “the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets,” and that God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the assemblies of the saints, adding, “Let all things be done decently and in order.” How generally an ordained minister and his flock or congregation has been substituted for God's order in the church, it is not here my purpose to expose. Nor do I think, where human rules have introduced such a flagrant contradiction as is generally admitted in what is called “the faith and order” of established and dissenting communities, anything is wanted but an exercised conscience before God to find the sure way of relief, and an “open door, which no man can shut.”
We come now to the magnificent chapter 15 or “the resurrection” chapter, the proper close to such an epistle, because the church's translation into the heavens to meet her Lord is her present and blessed hope. Satan knew this right well, and turned this chapter round into a burial service, and rung over it the funeral knell of the departed, changing a resurrection out of death into a burial service unto death and the grave and corruption. Let us examine one or two leading objects; and in the first place, what was in question at Corinth? Not whether any died, but if there was any resurrection. “How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?” The chapter is to prove a resurrection out of corruption, out of the grave, and out of death, and not a burial into them, which no one ever doubted. “Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming” are the key notes of this new chapter of our Christianity, which brings life and incorruptibility to light. Can it be called a burial service which introduces that great fact, “But now is Christ risen from the dead,” and affirms, “if Christ be not risen, your faith is vain, and ye are yet in your sins?” The enemy, who so successfully changed the meaning of baptism from death to “regeneration,” was equally skilful in turning this great revelation of Christ, and our resurrection into the heavens, into a funeral service and a requiem over the dead.
Further, this rising from among the dead on the part of the Second man by the glory of the Father—this rainbow which spans the horizon of our faith—puts the Lord by ascension into connection with His kingdom, in which He is yet to reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” The grand and distinguishing part of Christianity is the risen Son of man, the guarantee of the church's resurrection or translation to meet her Lord; the assurance too “that God has appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained: whereof he hath given assurance to all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.” How necessary it was for Satan that he should blind the minds of people to this twofold character of the resurrection is obvious to any exercised soul. An ascended Lord is the pledge to a believer that he can never come into judgment; whereas a risen Christ is the proof to an unbeliever that he cannot escape it. It is resurrection from the dead which has put the Son of man in his proper place of supremacy and headship of a new creation. It is by the future reign of the ascended One, as Christ and Lord that the kingdom shall hereafter be given up to God, even the Father, “that God may be all in all.” Henceforth let this chapter be owned as the record of our victories, for such in truth it is, since we can say, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” And again, “Then shall be brought to pass the saying, Death is swallowed up in victory.” What becomes us to do, as we quit this triumphant arena of our conquered enemies, but to bow our heads and say, “Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ?” If things were with a saint according to the old law of nature, he might and would still prepare for death, and pay this debt, as some say; but with the sanctified in Christ Jesus all debts and liabilities have been canceled long ago at the cross, and we are brought by Paul into connection with the blessed hope of the Lord's coming. “Behold, I shew you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.” Henceforth, there can be nothing common in the pathway of a saint. “As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” Is there anything common in the pathway of our Lord? “As Christ is, so are we in this world.”
Our epistle closes with church commendations upon a new footing, so that “if Timotheus come, see that he be with you without fear: for he worketh the work of the Lord, as I also do.” Likewise with proper church salutations, “The churches of Asia salute you. Aquila and Priscilla salute you much in the Lord, with the church that is in their house.” Finally, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.”
The Lord encourage His beloved people to step out of every system that will not bear the light and test of this epistle, and to accept the word which says, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” (1 Cor. 15:5858Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 15:58).) J. E. B.