Accordingly the evidence which the apostle affords—of his apostolate is never derivative, or that he had Authority from others; but, “If I am not an apostle unto others, doubtless I am to you; for the seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord: for though ye have ten thousand instructors, ye have not many fathers, for in Christ Jesus have I begotten you through the gospel.” “Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me,...examine yourselves;...Know ye not that Christ dwelleth in you except ye be reprobates?” “Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds.” So his argument, as to dispensation, is, “When He ascended up on high, He gave some, apostles; some, prophets;” etc. Now the twelve were apostles, and had the express name from our Lord's commission before He ascended up on high at all. Yet they do not come into the apostle's contemplation in spirit at all (i.e., in any such character); because they did not, in that state, constitute a part of the dispensation of gift, authority by gift, of which he was minister and expounder. This was associated with the ascended glory of Christ— “When He ascended up on high, He gave.” Accordingly, when the apostle was called, he was called not as knowing Christ after the flesh (if he had, he would know Him no more); but as one who, as a Jew, in ignorance indeed, consented to that very act against Stephen which showed the rejection of the Jews; and was a killing apostle of the Sanhedrim who had been so guilty, to find any of those who called upon His name; he was identified, not with the believing, but with the unbelieving, portion of the Jews when the question was between them; and he was not a Christian at all while the church had this character. He was the witness of the calling of grace, and of the perception of supreme glory.
The manner of his call was declarative of both. He was in the career of opposition to Christ, and arrested to be the witness of His glory, and of whatever had been revealed to Him—not of His earthly career (to that he had been a spiritual stranger); not of His fellowship when risen with His brethren (from that he had been a careless outcast, or a bitter opposer to it), but of His ascended glory; not the patient tracing with slow under standing the unfolding of the Man Jesus conversant among them, till it followed Him, through the apparent death of all their hopes, by the resurrection, seen of Him forty days, into the known certainty of His exaltation, following Him to the clouds in which He should one day appear again so coming, and the witness of where He was, because the Spirit had been sent down from the Father. But the sudden and unlooked for perception of the heavenly glory of the Lord, above the brightness of the sun, and finding that this was Jesus; that is, beginning at the glory, the heavenly glory, and aware that he saw and heard the Lord speaking from heaven, he asks and finds that this glorified One, this glorious Lord, was Jesus, Whom he was persecuting.
Hence the mission of Paul was wholly of the glory in its source, not a witness of the sufferings and a partaker of the glory to be revealed, but a witness of the glory and a partaker of the sufferings; and so ever preaching this mystery among the Gentiles, “Christ in you the hope of glory.” This then was the calling of Paul, a sovereign calling by grace, revealing the Son in him—one born out of due time; and this when the church was entirely heavenly, entirely underived, and necessarily rejecting derivation, or he would have denied the character of his calling, and lost the authority of his mission, for the Jewish things would have remained. It was heavenly, underivative, of grace, and by revelation, and this of the glory; and drew all its character and all its evidence from this. And this is carefully insisted on by him, and urged by the Spirit of God. The ordination of the apostle stamped the seal on the same truth. First, it was secured by the divine counsels that he should preach and testify within and without the synagogues and congregations concerning the Lord Jesus. Without anything further than the calling spoken of, he preached the faith which he had once destroyed; as he himself expresses it, “as it is written, I believed and therefore I spake, we also believe and therefore speak;” as the other apostles, “we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”
And so is the energy of the Holy Ghost ever, whether it be the sure resurrection of Jesus, the revealed glory of the Lord, or with Jeremiah, in derision daily because of his words to the people—it is in his heart as a burning fire shut up in his bones; he was weary with forbearing and could not. If in liberty, there was the rejoicing as being counted worthy to suffer shame; if reluctant and tried by the abounding iniquity in a state ready to be judged, the word of the Lord was more powerful than the fear, though on every side: he believed and therefore spake. The glory of the Lord must be vindicated.; and it becomes a positive responsibility. Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed, and not to be set upon a candlestick? For there is nothing hid which shall not be manifested, neither was anything kept secret but that it should come abroad: and it is our business to manifest it in the truth and energy of the Spirit. Therefore “If any man hath ears to hear, let him hear;” and “Take heed what ye hear: with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you, and to you that hear shall more be given.”
Hence we also find the apostle declaring, “When it pleased Him Who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood, neither went I up to Jerusalem to them that were apostles before me, but I went into Arabia and returned again to Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days; but other of the apostles saw I none save James the Lord's brother.” Fourteen years after, he went up, but it was by revelation; and in conference he found that those who seemed to be somewhat added nothing to him; and this was the point with him. It was no haughtiness of spirit, and he was willing to try his word by theirs; but he found they could add nothing, and they owned the grace that was in him; though lie derived no authority from them, the appointed apostles of the Lord, and recognized none in them save in the sphere which God had allotted to them; and they owned the grace of God which was in him. When need was, he withstood them to the face, because they were to be blamed who were insisting upon the old ordinances. To such things he would give subjection, no, not for an hour.
And what after was his career because of the glory revealed to him, his ordination as men speak, if he did not go up to those who were apostles before him? The energy of the Spirit consequent on the revelation of the Lord still held its character in securing the breaking through the apostolic succession. There was no derivative link from the Lord; there was the revelation of the Lord and mission by Him, but no human ordination; and in this he worked long: not only was preaching or teaching strangers, but Barnabas, having gone to Tarsus to find him, brings him to Antioch; and it came to pass that for a whole year they assembled themselves with the church and taught much people. Who settled this? Who appointed them here? Who, Paul? Who, Barnabas? The grace of the Spirit of God wrought effectually in them, and so the apostles, as we have seen, had to judge; they perceived the grace of God that was given to him, and they gave them the right hand of fellowship.
But still in public mission had they no derivative authority from some human ordination? Or was not abstract apostolic mission the ground on which it rested? Long had it been so, for God was securing, in every way, that human dependence, human derivation, should be broken in upon, for its place, was gone in the earth. The dispensation was one born out of due time; it must prove itself by its energy from on high; so it had been proved both in preaching Christ and teaching the church. But now Barnabas and Paul were to be sent out on a definite mission, and of course they had derived authority now. Whence? Everything still is made to depend on the energy and calling of God. “As certain prophets and teachers were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Ghost said, Separate Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them; and when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. Did the apostle derive his authority, his apostolic authority, from his ordination? That would be a strange assertion; for he says he had it neither of men, nor by man.
If this had been his first going forth to preach, it would have been almost impossible to have hindered the conclusion that it had its source in this, and the apostolate would merely have been from the church at Antioch. Therefore the Lord, to maintain the character of the dispensation, makes the apostle not” confer with flesh and blood, but immediately preach on his calling, and afterward separates him merely to the particular work to which he was called, thus securing its underivative character. Its value was the energy of the Spirit of God, because of the glory to be revealed, and the heavenly character of the dispensation which had its place in the glory (to be revealed), not here at all, and so ordered of God. Otherwise apostolic authority is derived from laymen, by modern theory, self-ordained men, and the apostle's assertion of his apostolate falsified. But it was not; it was the Holy Ghost's separation of him to Himself for the work to which the Lord had called him; not the conferring a gift as if his apostolate depended on. that mission, for this the apostle denies at large in the Epistle to the Galatians, and passes by this going forth from Antioch entirely in the account of his mission which he gives to them; not the derivation of authority, for this he is equally earnest to deny.
In Paul then we have the founding of the service of this dispensation, resting on the fully recognized apostleship, but caused in the way it is founded to be, entirely of a heavenly character, springing from the Lord known then in the glory, having its working and energy by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, and breaking in upon the derivative character of the apostolate in the Jews by every careful arrangement of God; and the laying on of hands made little of as regards the apostolate, and coming not from superior derivative authority, but entirely—collaterally, that every link of the sort should be broken. And we may add, failing as to its earthly position, the moment the energy of the Spirit failed, the moment the unstained godliness failed which kept out evil, and left the operations of the given Spirit free. Because the witness of the glory among the Gentiles was not to take the place of the glory, any more than the witness of the resurrection among the Jews was to take the place of the resurrection-glory (and it was only a witness, and therefore shown only to the apostles and teachers among the Jews, and Paul for the Gentiles); but having been witnessed, to fail as regards holding any place here, though effectual by the Spirit to them that believe, that they abounding in hope through it might have an entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior, when He shall be manifested as the risen and glorified One, and sorrow and trial pass away.
And though the filling up as it were was in the ascended glory, of which Paul was the special witness, and therefore he labored more abundantly than they all, as the full testimony was to be given to the world in him, the continuous Gentile dispensation, yet, though he sustained it (by the energy of the Spirit) during his life, he knew well that it would end then, that is, as thus corporately held together. “I know this, that after my departing—shall grievous wolves enter in, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them.” It was not that God, in the word of His grace to which He commended them, as able to build them up, would not both gather out, and sanctify souls. But he felt and knew well that Ichabod was written on the dispensation, as on every other; till He comes Who could sustain it, enduringly in the present power of a manifested life, Satan being bound from before Him. So it was among the Jews, the resurrection-denying Sadducees being raised against the testimony of that, as the self-righteous Pharisees against the ministry of the Righteous One. So it was among the Gentiles, false teachers bringing into disrepute the energies of the Spirit of God, and thus devouring the flock, because of the feebleness of the shepherds. Oh! how little does the church know the service of crying and tears, the humility of mind which accompanies the watching the fold of Christ against the inroads of the enemy—of Satan. But it is gone. Yet there is One that is ever faithful, Who, be the shepherds ever so cowardly, does not let His scattered sheep be plucked out of His hand.
(Continued from page 117.)
(To be continued.)