What is the rule of God’s action to me? Christ! Very well, then I am as happy as can be! I do not think any saint gets on until he sees that God will not depart from Christ as the rule of His action—the cross as to a sinner, the glory as to a saint, the two centers from which God will act, and no other, gathering a poor sinner to one, and a saint to the other. The Holy Ghost is the power either way, but in a different character, overcoming the enmity of the heart that refuses Christ, and the descending power to connect with Him where He is. Sufficiency for such a ministry can only be met by God Himself, as to the enmity of the sinner, or conforming the saint to what Christ is in glory. How can we faint?
As to the new covenant in 1 and 2 Corinthians, the blood is the common footing of all God’s actings with regard to it, and ways with us (1 Cor. 11:25). There are two uses of the blood. One is, that it shuts God out where I am; the other is, that it opens heaven where God is. The scriptural use of the word covenant does not necessarily suppose two parties binding themselves, though it may be the conventional use of covenant, and sometimes three parties are concerned. In Genesis there is no second party. The moment God spoke He bound Himself. He might have done it without saying anything to anybody; but He says it, and binds Himself by Himself to Himself. It is a circle. The nature of a covenant is, “God is one.” He may take up Abraham by promise. The blood is the ground of it, on which God can carry out everything He said. It is contained in the first promise of God, which was not properly promise, because to Satan, but rather covenant.
The new covenant implies there has been another, when you get on prophetic ground. It is new, because it is associated with Christ, this new Man, now not only in purpose, as in Gen. 3, but in actual fulfillment. The new covenant, by and by, will take its character from the Mediator. Christ, where He is, gives it its character for us, and God is enabled to open out His purposes in connection with the Christ who is there—opening out life, righteousness, and glory to us. God is able here to carry out what was in His purpose in Genesis. He cannot act towards us without the blood. It is a new covenant, not because of a Mediator in new circumstances, but because connected with a new Man in a new place. The principle is in the Old Testament, but not the application. Paul applies it first to the supper in 1 Corinthians, then to the ministry in 2 Corinthians. The end of Hebrews is an important link, “The God of peace,” &c. It shows His connection with “the blood of the everlasting covenant.”
In creation God created light to shine upon a man, but now He says ‘In that man is my glory.’ God who gave light to man upon earth, now gives that light to shine in upon the heart of a poor ruined man. It is a wonderful; thing to receive mercy, instead of God claiming righteousness as He did by Moses. The glory follows the handwriting, takes possession of the vessel, away go the hidden things, all that is unsuited to it is expelled and removed. God’s order is life and liberty, and then the vessel is seized by the glory which expels all that was natural to us before. We let ourselves escape, because we do not come into close dealing with God. We are not turned inside out, until we are, as the glory fills us, away go these things. The world cannot get on without craftiness, a saint cannot get on with God with it (v. 2).
The “manifestation of the truth” is in contrast to the veil. It is ministerial, but also characterizing the ministry. Satan is always near where God is acting (v. 4). We find what we are familiar with in Eden very often repeated. God says, ‘I am going to shine,’ and Satan says, ‘Then I must blind.’ It was so at Pentecost. In creation the man and women are driven out. In the Church, God is nearer; man is brought into closer intimacy, Satan spoils again, and the man and woman are carried out dead. We are brought into liberty that never takes a liberty. Life does not take a liberty, it is in liberty. Could you take a liberty in heaven? It is the flesh that takes liberty, because it is never in liberty. Satan takes advantage of unjudged flesh, and God must judge. Ananias and Sapphira walked in craftiness, and were carried out dead.
This ministry necessarily brings everything down to death. In Adam we learn life and death; in Christ death and life. Christ wraps everything round Himself in the power of life, and carries it down to death to disentangle the life. In the measure in which we fail in this, the life is entangled. Rom. 8:37 is just 2 Cor. 4:10, 11. The high pressure of life puts everything down into death (v. 10), “always bearing about in the body,” &c., is what the life does, and it is internal and personal (v. 11); “for we which live are always delivered unto death,” &c., is external and relative. Stephen illustrates it. His body is the vessel of the manifestation of the life of Jesus, only the “mortal flesh” gone under the stones, “knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus.” Dying (νεκρωσις) characterized the Lord’s life here. He carried everything He found around Him into the place of death and judgment, in the power of the life that is now communicated to us, and enable us to go down to death in the same way. It is using life to go to death. Psa. 116 gives the same lesson, and breathes the same spirit of faith, however different the circumstances.
Verse 15. “For all things are for your sakes;” we had persons, now the ministry gives us things. It is the power of God taking the creature down to death, and God raising out of the dead to glory. Life in the body is to carry us down to death in the path of obedience, forcing its way down, not stopped by anything, and making everything tributary to itself. God works by the afflictions, for this surpassing glory.