See 2 Corinthians.
The object of the paper inserted in your recent number upon “Church Establishment and Church Endowment” was to bring forward from the First Epistle to the Corinthians the teaching by the Holy Ghost on those two important subjects, and to present them to the hearts and consciences of “the sanctified in Christ Jesus,” as a word in season for the perplexed, and to show the Lord's claim on their obedience. It yet remains to examine what the purposes were, on account of which “the church of the living God” was thus established and endowed; and these I desire now to trace, from the Second Epistle to the Corinthians.
Let me observe at the outset that the professing church has long separated in practice the necessary connection of these two epistles: necessary I mean if the Church was to be “the Epistle of Christ,” known and read of all men.
Gifts, and ministries, and endowments by the Holy Ghost, such as miracles and tongues, distinguished the Church as the vessel of display in the earth, and was the new proof how God could accredit and enrich this mystic Eve, the body and the bride of Christ.
Jehovah had bestowed much upon the beloved nation of Israel, and upon her prophets, priests, and kings; but it is to “the great salvation,” which began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him; that God Himself bears witness, “both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to the Holy Ghost, according to his own will.” Never was there such an opportunity for Satan to turn all these endowments against God as now, for God had never before put such things into the hands of man as His servants. As a consequence we are told by Paul in this epistle, “such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ; and no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light,” &c. To the beloved Corinthians Paul said, “Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us, and I would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you.” Gifts, moreover, and ministries, were the proofs from the risen and ascended Lord of His love to the Church, for He gave them; and they were “enriched by him in all utterance and in all knowledge.... so that ye come behind in no gift, waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
But besides the ascension and the coming of the Lord, there is the great, but forgotten, fact of a rejected Christ and the Christian's present association with his Lord and Master in that rejection by the world. This identification with Christ in suffering is what the apostle brings out in this second epistle and puts in the foreground. A mere glance at Christendom will show any thoughtful mind how its churches have contended for establishments and endowments, and gifts and ministries, though never reaching them according to the divine order of 1 Corinthians, and have entirely abandoned the idea of present participation with a rejected Lord, by their avowed union with the state and the world, which cast Him out and crucified Him.
With these introductory remarks let us now proceed with the Epistle itself; and observe how differently it is cast in all respects from the previous one. God Himself is presented as “the Father” of our Lord Jesus Christ, and “the Father” of mercies, and the “God of all comfort,” who comforteth us in all our tribulation, &c. Let it be observed too that this form of presentation is peculiar to this epistle and is necessary for the objects proposed, “that we might be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” The purpose of the Holy Ghost therefore is to skew the church of God at Corinth that they were called out into association with Christ their Lord on the earth as well as in the heavens. They were not only “to come behind in no gift” from the ascended One, but to come behind in nothing that faithful allegiance would bring them into with the rejected One, knowing “that as the sufferings of Christ abound, so our consolation aboundeth by Christ.” Human nature could thrive, and vaunt itself, and even make a gift of the Holy Ghost the pedestal for self-exaltation in the first epistle; but human nature can never connect itself with the pathway of our Lord, in the descending steps which brought Him down to the obedience of death.
Paul could say here of these Corinthians, “Our hope of you is steadfast, knowing that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation.” Such a path can have no attraction except for a new creature in Christ, as led by the Spirit into real discipleship with our Lord. It is only as our steps follow on in the footprints He made for Himself and left for us that we descend into the region where He once was, and lived, and glorified God. Let us ever remember that the consequences of our obedience are not our care, but the consideration of Him whose will we follow. It is at this point that the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort meets us; and it is here too that, as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation aboundeth by Christ. Paul could say, as to the trouble which came on them in Asia, “We were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life; but we had the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.” The two positions are remarkable into which the Spirit leads these believers. Here they are united in life and obedience with the humbled, rejected, and suffering Christ as their example; whereas in the first epistle they were gathered upon the confession of their standing, as the sanctified in Christ Jesus, calling upon the name of the living, risen, and ascended Lord, as worshippers with all in every place—both theirs and ours.
The enemy knows if he can separate these two parts of a whole Christ in the life of a believer (as he has done, by separating these two epistles in the history and ways of the Church on earth), he has spoiled all testimony for the Lord below; and consequently we look in vain for anything collective, anywhere, that stands unmistakably, as “the Epistle of Christ” known and read of all men.
The former paper treated mainly of Church Establishment, as connected with 1 Corinthians; but there is a very full and precious scripture in this, which speaks of Christ establishment and is its counterpart: “for all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us is God; who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.” This is the circle of our present and eternal blessing, where God and Christ and the Holy Ghost are alike interested and occupied with us, till all things “shall be to the glory of God by us.” The brightness of this eternal blessedness opens itself out to the faith of all, and links itself peculiarly with the sufferings of Christ and with the sentence of death in ourselves.
Another grand subject of this epistle is “the ministration of the Spirit,” which is taught in the central chapters, from 3 to 7 and is properly introduced by the verses just quoted, as to our anointing and sealing. Before passing on it may be well to observe that this same scripture, which finishes with “the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts,” should be taken as a companion picture to that with which the first epistle opens, “of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who from God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption,” that he who glorieth, “should glory in the Lord.” In this last instance, it is what God has made Christ to be unto us, that we might glory in the Lord; whereas in the other it is what we are as established by that same God in Christ, and of which the Holy Ghost is the witness to us and seal and earnest. The soul will readily feel how necessary these two descriptions of our blessing are if we would understand who the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is; and how He has suited us to Himself by the work of Christ for us, and by the work of the Spirit in us, for His own present joy and the delight of His Son, and “that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.”
Here comes very fairly the question, What ministry has God in reserve for this new race of people” the sanctified in Christ Jesus?” and in whom is it to be opened out to them? and in what power can it be wrought out and ministered as the faith of God's elect? The chapters which now lie in order before us, supply the answers to these important queries. Historically there have been two ministries, with their respective ministers, and their ministrations; the first was introduced upon the earth, at Mount Sinai, by Moses, by bringing in the law, under which the nation of Israel bound itself by a covenant of works, “all that the Lord hath commanded us, we will do.” Whatever the outward glory was, with which this giving of the law was accompanied (so that even the mountain and Moses quaked) it was a ministry which claimed righteousness from man and was formally written and engraven in stones. In effect the law brought in the knowledge of sin. “I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet;” and consequently it became “a ministration of condemnation” to all who were under it, and had thus accepted its conditions on the footing of their own responsibility. Rewards and promises to the obedient were out of the question, and in fact forfeited by the transgressors of the law of Moses; and its threatenings and curses were earned instead, so that this ministry became further (as stated in our chapter) a “ministration of death.” The law and its demands upon the people, expressed by the words “thou shalt,” and “thou shalt not,” and accepted by them upon the old covenant of works “do this, and thou shalt live, or do this, and thou shalt die,” has brought out the great fact that, if there “had been a law which could have given life, then verily righteousness should have come by the law.” The ministry engraven in stones consequently brought the knowledge of sin and condemnation and death; and equally proved that unless “the Spirit, and the water, and the blood,” found their way in by the grace of God, all were cursed, and under the curse.
The present ministry is from the heavens, and is founded upon the finished work of Christ upon the cross below, where He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. God has raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, by the blood of the everlasting covenant, and has crowned Him with glory and honor. Moreover, He has founded a new ministry, upon the worthiness of this Christ and Lord, “not of the letter which killeth, but of the Spirit which giveth life.” It is this ministry which Paul contrasts here, with the former, and which he characterizes as a ministration of the Spirit, a ministration moreover of life and righteousness and glory, from the living and exalted Son of man, at the right hand of God, by which we are brought into liberty, and are changed from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord. This ministry by the Holy Ghost, from the heavens now—or when applied prophetically to the nation, and the Gentiles, and to the ends of the earth in the millennium—is based upon the blood of Christ—the blood of the New Testament; but this may, and does open itself out, as to the kind of blessing, to the heavenly and earthly people, according to the manifold counsels of God, and the place in which Christ is; whether as now hidden with God, or as by and by displayed in power and glory in the midst of the sons of men.
Promises, covenants, and types, and also prophecies had announced the Lord as the seed of Abraham, and indeed as the Son of David, and heir of all that God had bestowed upon his progenitors, to be substantiated when the Messiah comes again, and his people made willing, in the day of His power. In the meanwhile Jesus has been rejected, and all this earthly order is therefore in abeyance. Moreover, the veil is upon the heart of that people, until they shall turn to the Lord, and then shall the veil be taken away.
What can God connect, during this interval, with Him who has been declared worthy to receive all honor, and blessing, and glory, and power? It is here that Paul says, in our chapter: “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves: but our sufficiency is of God; who hath made us competent ministers of the new covenant.” Paul was himself arrested by this glorified Son of man, “to be a minister and a witness both of those things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear to thee.” In the wisdom of God there were purposes and counsels which lay hidden, as Moses testified, “the secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but those which are revealed belong unto us, and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” It is these secret things, Paul says, which, “according to the revelation of the mystery, were kept silent since the world began, but now are made manifest and by the scriptures,” &c.
God had given away the earth, and had lighted up the path, which He was taking with His people through it, with types and promises connected with “the seed” and founded on the blood of the New Testament, which by and by will be ordained in the hands of the true Mediator, when the people of Israel shall be established under its blessings in Immanuel's land. God had nevertheless the heavens in reserve, and to give away to another and an entirely new race of people, when their Lord and Head had first taken His own place in them on the right hand of the throne of God. The Lord Jesus is thus to fill the earth and the heavens with His praise, and to lead not only His brethren after the flesh, and put them (as the true antitypical Joseph) into the land of Goshen; but likewise to carry the people of another standing and calling, into the Father's house which He is gone to prepare for them! God has made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which He hath purposed in Himself, “that in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one, all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in him, in whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated,” &c.
Though our chapters in 2 Corinthians do not stretch out to such a circle as the Ephesians, yet they open to us the fact that, under this present ministry of the New Testament, we have a ministration from life, in the risen and ascended Christ, to life in us by the Spirit—as well as a ministration of righteousness from the Lord where and as He now is, who is our righteousness, and by which we are made the righteousness of God in Him. This ministry is personal, and essential to us as individual believers, that we may know how suited we are by our new creation for all that is prepared for us, as our portion with the Lord, according to the Father's purposes and counsels, in the eternal glory for which we wait, and of which the Spirit is the seal.
In the meanwhile this personal ministration of life is to produce by the Spirit of the living God, in the fleshy tables of the heart, “an epistle of Christ, known and read of all men” —moreover, an epistle (as Paul says to these Corinthians) written in our hearts. Here we may pause and put a question to our souls: Is this the ministry I recognize—a ministration of life, righteousness, and glory, from the risen and ascended Lord in heaven, and written not with ink, nor on a table of stone, but with the Spirit of the living God on the very heart itself? Or am I still entangled with the former ministry of Moses and the voice of words on Sinai and the claims of a law which rightly demanded righteousness and said, This do and thou shalt live? How different are these two ministries, and how lamentable to see thousands of the Lord's people wandering back into the old house of Moses, instead of accepting with joy this present ministration of life and righteousness as the only existing ministry between God and His beloved people! When will they take their proper places in the Church of the living God, and in the conscious liberty whereby Christ has made His members free, by redemption through His blood?
What other ministration can there be for those who understand what the assembly of God is on the earth, and what else could the craft of the enemy do than blind people to it, and get them back into the house of bondage, to lean upon ritualistic observances, of which, when at their best, God said, “I have no pleasure?”
Never let it be forgotten that the First Epistle to the Corinthians gives the present pattern of true church establishment and church endowment, and that this Second issues the only true church epistle, known and read of all men, and the only ministry that can produce it; that is, a ministration of life and righteousness by the Spirit of God, written on the fleshy table of the heart! May God emancipate His own people and bring them out from responsibilities and disappointments as under the law, to stand in the privileges of His own grace and calling and the accomplished work of Christ, by which they are put in a complete acceptance with the Father!
But to return. There is every now and then to be found in the epistles (especially when some new or extraordinary subject is introduced, like “this ministry of life” of which we are now speaking) a further revelation of God and of Christ, suited to the occasion, and which becomes the testimony of the Holy Ghost. If God acts in grace towards men in their sins, and to plant them in His own righteousness, it must be from Himself.
In this chapter 2, for instance, there is consequent upon this ministry such a change as carries us beyond the mere natural relations of God and man, for another person, the Word made flesh, has come in, “the daysman who has laid his hand upon both.” The preaching of what He did in redemption upon the cross, ascends up before God as a sweet savor.
Paul, as the apostle and witness to this gospel of the glory of Christ, “thanks God who led him about as in triumph, and made manifest the savor of his knowledge in every place.” Moreover, he and his fellow-workers “were unto God a sweet savor of Christ in them that are saved and in them that perish.” The relations and responsibilities of men spring out of this new ground likewise; for “to the one we are the savor of death unto death, and to the other the savor of life unto life.” This is what the acceptance or rejection of this ministry of “the gospel of the glory” involved. Adam, and the fall of man, are no longer the exclusive subjects, but the grace of God, through Christ, brought to such an one as Saul, “the very chief of sinners,” and presented to any like him!
But if God in grace, through Christ, is thus active in love towards sinners in their sins, “the god of this world” can also use this ministry of the new covenant for his own objects against mankind. “If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.” No power would be equal to such a scene of ruin and wretchedness as the wickedness of Satan has produced, unless the Creator God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness upon creation's chaotic confusion, had done a far greater thing and given by almighty power “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,” to shine unto sinners dead in trespasses and sins.
Adam was created in the image of God in the Genesis of human life; but by this first man came sin, and death, and the long catalog of mortal woes. The last Adam has since come in, and by His atoning sufferings and death, has laid a new foundation for the operations of God in grace and righteousness. Redemption is become the new ground upon which God is displayed, and the second man in the heavens has taken His place as “the image of God” in them. It is from thence that Paul says, “God hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ.”
How little is this gospel of the grace founded on the blood of Christ on the cross, below—or this gospel of the glory, from the right hand of God above, presented to the acceptance of the lost and the undone!
Man is either left to struggle with himself and his own corruptions in a state of nature; or banded up to Moses and the law, instead of to the cross where the old man has been crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed. In such a case there is no ground left for a believer to take as a standing before God than redemption, and none but the Second Man to whom he can be conformed now or hereafter. Besides “the epistle of Christ” which the Corinthians were, and this “gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,” there is yet the fashioning power of this life upon us, whilst in the mortal body, and this I would desire to trace a little. In chapter iv., this life, ministered from the ascended Christ, put the ministers into the same place as the only true Servant took, when amongst His disciples on earth: “for we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake.” How entirely the place of the minister in our times varies from, and indeed, contradicts the character of our Lord's service, and that of the apostle's is plain, if we remember the way in which the Master quelled the strife that arose among His disciples, which of them should be accounted the greatest. It is the Lord Himself that gives the true glory to Christian service. Was He ever so great as when “the hour was come, that he should depart out of this world to the Father,” and He rose from supper and laid aside his garments, and took a towel and girded Himself, and poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet? How great was He in the eyes of all in heaven throughout the three and thirty years of His humiliation; when He emptied Himself, and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross! We are not living in the power of this life, and enough in the company of Him in whom it was seen to perfection, to be charmed by its grandeur in the midst of a world, whose “Kings exercise lordship.” The first thing for “a new creature in Christ” is to understand how this fact has necessarily changed his relation and standing to the heavens and the earth, and that his relatively new position to each is precisely what Christ's is. We must be truly one with Him, where He now is, in conscious exaltation as heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ, in order to get into our true place of service in the Church, where to be great is to be little, “less than the least of all saints.” Next in importance to our getting into position upon earth, into the place now that corresponds with the mind of God (like the Master found in His day) is the conscious dependence upon God, with which this ministration of life connects us: “we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.”
Again, outward circumstances in a world like this only call out this life from the risen Christ in greater brilliancy where it dwells. “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.” What a divine life and what a ministry “the Spirit of the living God” is working in the new creature, “for we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake!” The resources and confidence of this ministration of life are not only outside ourselves, but outside the world, and are found in the history and ways of the Christ who is our life, “knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise, up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.” Again, as to afflictions, do they stumble the man in Christ, or clog the divine life, or make it shine the brighter as it stretches itself away to its own height for relief? “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we look not at the things which are seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” The real strength of a soul will be in what it is consciously connected with. If it be far more with things unseen than with things seen, the things seen will become tributary to this life in Christ. When the spies compared themselves with the giants, they were grasshoppers in their own sight; but when faith in Caleb contrasted the giants with the God of Israel, then these giants were the grasshoppers. Life from the ascended Christ and Lord connects us by the Spirit with what He is, and our affections are set on the things at God's right hand. But, further, this ministry provides for every emergency, so that “we know if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven if so be that, being clothed, we shall not be found naked.”
We have thus been guided to consider this ministry of life in the members of Christ, putting them into an entirely new relation with all things, whether present or future, temporal or eternal, seen or unseen; and as regards all the circumstances of the way, only laying these under tribute, so that they work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. This life, moreover, worketh down into death all in us that else would live, and, living, would be the link by which the flesh and Satan work, so as to connect us with this present world, out of which by the death of Christ we have been redeemed. We must be either false to the objects of our redemption, or else in the power of that life which we have with a risen Christ insist upon death with ourselves, and with the world, which by its own act, and by the judgment of God at the cross, is left under that death. “Now he that hath wrought us for the self same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.” This ministry of the new covenant, in connection with the ascended Son of man, gives these triumphs to us as the consequences and fruits of His work, that in us (who are not but have life) “mortality might be swallowed up of life.” The Church at Corinth and elsewhere was to be “the epistle of Christ, known and read of all men” upon every point in which its conformity by life and righteousness, and by the work of the Spirit of the living God, could make it manifest. Another and a totally different race of people, “new creatures in Christ” were to be seen in this old creation—men no longer living to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again—men who were bearing about in their body the dying of the Lord Jesus, in the presence of the very world that had put Him to death and cast Him out. Properly, this life in us takes up the fact of this judgment by God, and puts us in the place of death, and bears about the dying of the Lord Jesus. What else could this life in the power of the Holy Ghost produce in a new creature?
It requires a world such as this is in which to go down to nothingness, weakness, and death, just as it requires another in which to rise and pass up into its own height of glory, like Christ who is the life. It is dependent on nothing under the heavens nor obstructed by anything, but finds and forces its way in the pressure of resurrection power, drawing into fellowship with the sufferings of Christ, that in the measure in which the afflictions abound, so “the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort” may administer the consolations. It draws its sweetest motives from nothing lower than Christ. “The love of Christ constraineth us” and conforms its progress by the example of Him “who died for us and rose again,” knowing too “that we must all be manifested before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.”
Lastly, this life coming from the glorified One makes Him as He is the test and standard of its judgment. “Wherefore, henceforth know we no man after the flesh, yea though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more.... old things are passed away; behold all things are become new; and all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.” May God give us to know this ministration of life, righteousness, and glory, as the ministry under which we are placed, and to understand the Spirit of the living God as the power, which is adequate for all the purposes which are to be wrought out in us, so as to keep up the truth of death working by life below; and the other truth of life working beyond the reach and range of death, above, according to “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God!”
“The ministry of reconciliation,” to wit, that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses to them,” is the suited adjunct to this ministry of the new covenant. “The ambassadors for Christ” to His betrayers and murderers open their credentials by presenting God as beseeching men to be reconciled to God upon this new footing, “that he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” What “the sheet let down from heaven,” wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts and creeping things, was to Peter as the warrant from God to him to open the door to Cornelius and the Gentiles, this ministry of reconciliation was to Paul now, seeing its aspect was to the whole world. Therefore he could say,” This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief.” The Jesus whom Paul was persecuting when stoning Stephen, the Son of God in glory, Christ the Lord, and this blasphemer, the very chief of sinners, give the two extremes of “this ministry of reconciliation,” and they meet and are together.
Chapter 6 speaks of the ministers themselves, and what care should be taken that the ministry be not blamed, giving no offense in anything, but in all things approving ourselves in afflictions, in distresses, in stripes, by pureness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned; as unknown, and yet well known; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things. This part of the epistle closes with a solemn appeal to the Corinthians as to things which had interfered with the exercise of this life, “and straitened them in their own bowels.”
Their enlargement depended for manifestation, on their being “not unequally yoked together with unbelievers;” and it is important to observe that the Spirit of God delivers a soul, not by discussing with it that particular point by which it has been caught by the enemy; but by bringing the conscience up to the sources of life, and the springs of real Christian conduct. “What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness, and what communion hath light with darkness?” and again, “what concord hath Christ with Belial, or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?” These are the challenges which brace up the soul and free it from the spider's web; for the craft of Satan is to drop in the intermediate shadings between two extreme colors, such as light and darkness, and produce a Christendom in the place of Christ, and to confuse things, so that there is neither the Church nor the world to be seen in these last days of delusion. Men, and alas! Christians may call this kind of progress enlargement and liberality, but Paul has another word for modern advancement “straitened.” Many an exercised conscience groans under the bondage, and perhaps little thinks how near the door of escape is, if there were but simplicity of faith to pass through it. “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” Here is the secret of all real strength and enlargement of soul, found alone in this association with the living God, and in an entire separation from the evil, which straitens the new man.
How well does Paul add “having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God!” Here it is, if we may so say, that the Apostle of the Gentiles leads these Corinthians to the brazen laver, that they may wash themselves, and pass into the inner courts on their priestly service, bidding them remember that in our dispensation, “they are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” To them and to him and to us, all else summed itself up into infidelity, or idolatry, respecting which, in all its varieties, we are asked, “What agreement hath the temple of God with idols?” and go outside the camp of the day to Jesus, bearing His reproach. Here, this ministration of life, by the Spirit, has described its own circle; having commenced by writing on the fleshy table of the heart, and finished by cleansing the feet of the saints, and separating them from the Belial of that day, and this upon the authority and blessedness of the promise, “I will receive you,” a word of sufficient encouragement for every exercised heart, whether at Corinth, or in England, or elsewhere.
A few remarks on the remaining chapters may close this paper, my object being mainly to show from this Second Epistle, what church ministry really is, and in what it consists, just as in the First Epistle I attempted to show what true church establishment, and church endowments were, and what the assembly of God is which is to receive this ministry and its ministers, and to be the epistle of Christ, as altogether distinct from the world, “known and read of all men.”
The example of Christ Himself is introduced in chapters 9 and 10, and the grace in which He commended Himself to our souls is held out when a corresponding virtue is required from the life of Christ in us. For example, when Paul says, “As ye abound in everything, in faith, in knowledge, and utterance see that ye abound in this grace also [of liberality],” he adds, Ye know “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, for our sakes became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich.” It is the real secret of power to be thus associated with Christ, not only in life as we have seen, but in the known intelligence of life, which appreciates and loves according to God, what was manifested in perfection in our Lord. “Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” is irresistible as a moral motive, and as a new power in us, which binds the heart to Himself in a similar expression of grace, however different in measure, as all surely must be, though not in character.
So again in chapter 10 when Paul encourages them to another grace, he does so by reminding them of “the meekness and gentleness of Christ,” and that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down reasonings, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” Thus the things which straitened these Corinthians, were not only exposed in a former chapter, as resulting in an unequal yoke—false concords, mixed communions, and corrupt agreements—but are here hunted down to their strong holds, and their hiding places discovered to be in the flesh, and looking on things “after the outward appearance.” Nothing less than the knowledge of God for our faith, and the obedience of Christ for abiding fellowship in the truth, can be the upper and the nether springs for the inner man; and the saint who is watchful may often find an opportunity of bringing a stray thought into captivity, instead of being led into captivity, or being straitened in himself, by its escape. What had they reduced their standard to, when they said, “his letters are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible?” How tenderly yet effectually does he recover them from the point of their degradation, of “comparing themselves among themselves,” by saying, for “we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves. . . For not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commendeth.”
Alas! though the temple of Solomon, with its porches, and beams, and posts, and walls, was overlaid with pure gold; and though the house was garnished with precious stones for beauty, and the gold was the gold of Parvaim; yet declension began with its own king, and the glory which overcame the spirit of the Queen of Sheba was soon tarnished; and the Ichabod of Eli's days became the prophetic word to Solomon! The Egyptian king came up against Jerusalem, and took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, and carried away the shields of gold which Solomon had made, “instead of which the king Rehoboam made shields of brass,” &c.
The same enemy was at work in the church at Corinth, and the watchful apostle writes in chapter 11, “I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through His subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.”
False apostles and false doctrines are in the dark catalog of this chapter; the brass shields are substituted for the golden ones, which the great Egyptian has carried away, “Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.” What an opportunity does this day of departure afford to an exercised conscience (and thank God there are many) to refuse these ministers, though they bear with them the imitation shields of brass. The fine gold of Parvaim—the gold of the house of the Lord— “the word which ye have heard from the beginning” remains, and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. Are they ministers of Christ? asks our apostle. “(I speak as a fool) I am more; in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft.... If I must needs glory, I will glory in my infirmities. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not.”
Here we may say how truly is Paul a competent minister of this life, which first in the Lord Jesus Himself reached death in the obedience which could alone bring Him there, “that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us” —a life which could neither be worn down by the enmity of foes nor by the desertion of friends—a life which could not be worn out by the patient endurance of what was appointed Him, but a life which spent itself in doing the will of the Father that sent Him and found its own sustainment whilst doing it! So Paul, like a lesser light, is carried about in triumph wherever the Spirit leads him, whether beaten with rods or stoned, in shipwreck and in the deep, or in journeyings, in perils of robbers or in perils among false brethren, let down by the window at the walls of Damascus or caught up to the third heaven (as in chap. 12.), every step was but the pathway of this life, from the man in glory and now this man in Christ—a life which lived as truly upon death and by means of dying daily in this world as this same divine life will rejoice in the eternal glory, when surrounded by circumstances that are (not more suited perhaps, but) more proper to it, where God is and where evil cannot come! “He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.”
One thing more remains to notice in the last two chapters, that this ministry of life from the exalted Head, by the Spirit in us, which keeps its pressure of death upon the flesh, so that its own activities should not be straitened, is made perfect by weakness, in the absolutism of its own nothingness, and therefore of entire dependence upon the Lord. The persecuting power of Satan, let loose upon him at Philippi (so that he spoke in the beginning of the epistle of the trouble that came upon them in Asia, even to the despairing of life), was accepted by him as “the sentence of death, that they should not trust in themselves.” The God who raises the dead was all the nearer and far more present.
Every adversity was turned to account, even to Satan himself. So that at the close of this epistle, when Paul is at the other extreme of the afflictions of Christ and, “coming to visions and revelations of the Lord,” says, “whether in the body or out the body, I cannot tell; God knoweth.” Such an one was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. “Lest I should be exalted above measure, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messengers of Satan to buffet me.”
Here likewise Satan is turned to profit for Paul, in the history of this life, in “a man in Christ;” not in Philippian persecutions, but in the abundance of the revelations in the third heavens! “For this thing I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me, and be said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness.”
The Father of mercies and the God of all comfort opened the abounding consolations at the beginning, and now at the close we see the Lord Himself perfecting His own strength in the felt weakness of this chosen vessel unto Christ. What a use the Lord can make of us for Himself before we quit these earthly places, if we will only go to nothing, that Christ may be magnified in our body, whether by life or by death. “Most gladly therefore, he adds, will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” Old things are passed away, and all things are become new, and all things are of God; and the things that were gain to me I count loss for Christ. Reproaches and afflictions, with persecutions, are the Lord's bequest to us in this world: they are not misfortunes when met in the path of life and obedience, but they are (as Caleb said of the giants) bread for us.
We need difficulties and trials to prove that this life in Christ and in us will pass in its own title of suffering or endurance through the last and greatest of them. God wants them to bring in His mercies and comforts in the tribulation, and the Lord needs them to prove the sufficiency of His grace and that His strength is made perfect. Moreover, Paul adds, “Therefore I take pleasure [what a triumph!] in infirmities, in reproaches, in distresses for Christ's sake, for when I am weak then am strong.” In the unweariedness of this life, seeking objects upon which to express itself, he assures these Corinthians, “I will very gladly spend and be spent for you, though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved.” What a new rule for charity is this, or rather what another charity is introduced into the Church of God! In chapter 13 and last Paul again insists on weakness, even as Christ who, though he was crucified through weakness, now liveth the power of God. “We also are weak with him, but we shall live with him by the power of God toward you.” If they sought a proof of Christ speaking in him in any other way, let them “examine themselves, whether they be in the faith, let them prove their own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in them, except ye be reprobates.” How could they doubt his ministry of life and believe that through his ministration of the new covenant Jesus Christ had been received and was in them? Finally, he prays to God for them, that they do no evil, and is glad when he is weak and they are strong, and wishes their perfection, at the same time adding, “I write these things, being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness, according to the power which the Lord hath given me to edification and not to destruction. “Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace, and the God of love and peace shall be with you.”
This ministry here finds its culminating point, in making perfect and producing comfort in this state, where the God of love and peace may be known and can dwell—an enclosure of His own, in spite of the world, and the flesh, and the devil—a habitation of God through the Spirit! A benediction rests upon this temple of the Lord, this household of God: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen.” J. E. B.