THE SPIRIT'S SERVICE AMONGST US COLLECTIVELY
THE SPIRIT’S SERVICE AMONGST US COLLECTIVELY
JT The Holy Spirit alone can maintain the saints in their localities in regard to the mind of God. These letters do not deal as much with the Spirit in the individual believer as with Him in the saints viewed collectively. The divine record shows that littleness outwardly marked the apostle before the Athenians. He left Athens, where much would be made of him, as he had been taken hold of by the leaders on Mars’ Hill, addressing them as Athenians, speaking to them in the most telling language; he left Athens and instead of being found in such a place as Mars’ Hill, he is sent to Corinth just as he is, a tent-maker, a craftsman, and he stays there with two that were of the same craft. Then he tells in his ministry that he determined to know nothing among them but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I had in mind that their faith and the position indicated correspond to our own. It is not a time in which we have anything to lean on outwardly. He stayed there eighteen months but then the seed remained and then it was a question of faith; their faith would stand, stand in the wisdom of God. It has been noticed here that the revelation is by the Spirit, not as in the gospel, where the revelation is by the Son. God has revealed these things by the Spirit.
Rem Would you mind saying something in regard to that? Perhaps we do not always have the right thought in regard to what is spiritual.
JT It must be connected with the Holy Spirit. It has to operate in that realm. It does not refer simply to those who have the Spirit. It is a fuller thought. We have in the gospels and in the Acts the [p. 234] idea of being sealed with the Spirit. Indeed, in the epistles, too. The Corinthians were not spiritual; they could not operate spiritually. As to the Galatians, there were those who were regarded as spiritual; they were not all. So that the Spirit of God differentiates even in Galatia, “Ye who are spiritual”.
Rem It surely affects each one of us that it is possible to have the Spirit and to have the gifts and yet not be spiritual.
JT “The spiritual discerns all things”.
HG With such a remarkable servant and with such a remarkable gospel that he preached it is surprising that he had to say that he could not write to them as spiritual.
JT It must have been a great concern to the apostle. He would have been searching his heart as to whether there was anything in his ministering that hindered.
HG You can judge a man by his converts.
JT I do not think it is always the case. Like those in 1890, they were nearly all Mr. Darby’s work. It alludes to the soil. We have good evidence that the Corinthians were amenable to correction. It is a great thing to accept correction. What marked the beloved apostle throughout is his amenableness to correction. Do you not think it is a great sign, Mr. G.?
HG I think it would show that he had Christ before him, not himself, would it not?
JT I think so. It is one of the best signs of the work of God. Take a man like David or like Peter; take the Corinthians. They are all ready for correction. The apostle had double joy in them. There were two conversions. Most of us need several conversions.
HG I am sure of that.
JT Is it not remarkable, “When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren”, Luke 22: 32? It [p. 235] is a good feature about the Corinthians that they are amenable to correction. The second epistle shows that they were willing to be corrected and breathes out Paul’s great joy.
WB There are no commendations that I remember in Corinthians.
JT These letters to Corinth would encourage all of us especially where correction is necessary. It is necessary all the time. The Psalms and the prophets show that God is constantly bent on correcting His people but they pull away the shoulder. I do not know of anything so fine as the great attention the Spirit took in writing to these common people. So much is being opened up to us in chapter 2, even the “depths of God”. David blundered often but was wonderfully corrected; so here in Corinth, they quietly listened to what the apostle had to say.
Ques As to the spiritual side, what did Paul mean, “But ye are not in flesh but in Spirit, if indeed God’s Spirit dwell in you”, Romans 8: 9?
JT Well, he refers to a state. You change your state. You have in Romans the change of man and the change of state. The change of state lies in the Spirit. If the Spirit of God dwells in you, not simply that ye have Him, but if He dwells in you, He is not disturbed in you. He is not contending always for His footing there. If He dwells there then you have made it comfortable for Him so that you are not in the flesh. That proves you are not in the flesh because the Spirit of God dwells in you.
HG It is the power of the reception of light from God and then the communication of the light in a simple way, not simply as an apostle but as any servant. “Communicating spiritual things by spiritual means”, would apply to anybody (1 Corinthians 2: 13).
JT Quite so. So that in chapter 2 he finishes up with the state of the believer. It is most essential for it could hardly apply to the Corinthians, but “we have the mind of Christ”. Of course, it applies to himself, but it is put in an abstract way to apply to anyone to whom it does apply. That is brought in, I think, to prepare the way for the temple. Chapter 2 is more what is revealed to us and those that love God. It is shown how they can be so, for the Spirit of God enables a man to take in the things of God. “The things of God knows no one except the Spirit of God”. It enables us to take them in. The mind of Christ. He brings in the spiritual without saying who the spiritual may be, he “discerns all things, and he is discerned of no one”. That is the abstract thought, but if they exist, they must exist somewhere and the question is, do they exist in our meeting? Are there any spiritual in our meeting? Persons that discern things and then as to how people think. How do I think? We get the mind of Christ with thinking as He thinks. Well, that is a great point because we think very naturally, you know. We think very naturally about everyone.
HG Paul went to Ephesus and it says, he “laid his hands” upon the disciples and “the Holy Spirit came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied”, Acts 19: 6. Would you say that the assembly is viewed as the anointed vessel? These saints as taking character from the anointed Man and the assembly ought to have the mind of the anointed Man.
JT Well, exactly. “So also is the Christ”. The anointing is public, but it works out inwardly. What I am externally is not something put on. That is really what is in mind and I think the anointed vessel in chapter 12 depends on the mind of the Christ in the hearts in each of us. One has often noticed that persons have come in. They look at things and say, I have never heard of them before. Well, if I brought a flower to such, what would he know about it? He would not know anything. The glory of Solomon [p. 237] does not come within the range of botany. But whatever you present to the Lord, He says something about it the cleverest men would not know. The Lord would bring us to think rightly.
HG Having the mind of Christ is the outcome of this.
JT This is all leading up to chapters 12, 13 and 14.
HG The thought of the anointing is made possible.
JT We are to be built up together and we must learn to think spiritually and not naturally. It is humbling to see how saints look at things. There is so little spirituality in our ways.
WB I suppose the book of Jude would be the product of this.
JT Well, exactly. The Corinthians acted carnally, being carnal but yet christians. But Jude says these are natural men, but to be a natural man, there is no change at all. Natural men are always materialistic.
JB How can the saints be brought on to this line?
JT Well, I think one needs to begin to say to himself, I must be the thing I am speaking of. And that is the apostle’s way here. He was an exponent of the thing he preaches.
JB That brings in the holiness in verses 16 and 17.
JT Yes, in his way of speaking of things, he says, “And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power”. Demonstration of the Spirit! If I can be a thing in any little way then my speaking takes form. People know that. As the Lord said, “Altogether that which I also say to you”,
John 8: 25. In the Lord’s ministry He never stopped to gratify natural curiosity. If I am just governed by a natural way of looking at things, I am out of [p. 238] it.
HG In John 6 the Lord says, “Whence shall we buy loaves that these may eat?” But it was much more difficult to natural men.
JT Things became increasingly difficult to them in Capernaum. The Lord says, “Will ye also go away?” and Peter says, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast words of life eternal; and we have believed and know that thou art the holy one of God”. What a joy that must have been to the Lord! Well, then He says, “Have not I chosen you the twelve? and of you one is a devil”. He does not let us off. They do not get off without the twelve of them coming under such a spiritual thought as that. They have the two elements in the twelve. One growing in the apprehension of Christ and the other one a devil. The Lord makes no attempt to make a show outwardly but there was a wonderful spirit in Peter. It was not a revelation there. It is not like Matthew 16. Peter says just what he has arrived at. He does not say, “Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God”, but he says, “thou art the holy one of God”. That is what he saw and that is what he spoke of. It is to bring out the quality. How the Lord is working for quality amongst us! It is a beautiful touch how the Lord would praise that. How much Peter would come into His mind in that statement!
JB Would Peter speak of the belief of the others?
JT It might be thought that the others were all covered by it. Judas was not. In John 6 it is to bring out in the disciples what He is going to make of them. They do not appear in chapter 5 at all. The disciples are seen with Him. It is one of the most difficult chapters in Scripture but it brings out this wonderful period. The gold of that land was good. The land was continually telling it. That is the idea. So that the apostle is aiming in chapter 2 [p. 239] to bring out what is possible, because it was possible then and is now for persons to be spiritual and have the mind of Christ.
HG I met a man the other day on a boat. I did not know him but I got to speaking with him and I asked him a few questions about the deity of Christ, as a great Mediator and His dying. ‘Oh’, he said, ‘that is just folly to me’. And then I thought of the scripture, “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him”. They are not folly to me. They are my life. My whole existence, so to speak, hangs upon that.
JT Very good. This is a very significant scripture, as to how it applies today. Have I the mind of Christ? I suppose I shall never arrive at the temple, I shall never arrive at the temple save through chapter 2. The idea of the temple is a different aspect. The Spirit wants us to be together temple-wise and body-wise. I think we have to understand what these terms signify. Now if I am supposed to understand how to meet the brethren temple-wise, I have to learn in chapter 2 what the Holy Spirit means to us so that we can think as Christ does. If you get persons sitting as we are this afternoon, then you have a medium, because the universal temple is a medium. He is here helping or hindering but in spiritual condition and character as here temple-wise.
They take notice of what he says. It is a remarkable thing in the gospels how things appealed to people in whom God had wrought.
JB Peter speaks in John 6 of Christ “the holy one of God”. He discerned Him, did he not? The Lord was discerned by Peter; would that add further to Peter’s spirituality?
JT Well, it would to that extent.
JB But the others did not discern.
JT I wonder if we have any thought about the temple? What he stresses is that “Ye are [the] temple of God”, the article not being there. It just indicates what is characteristic.
WB I thought that the Lord is indicating the question of holiness in a general way. We would be very thankful if there was more said about that.
JT Well, as soon as you get the thought of the temple you begin to see that you cease to be a spectator in the meeting. You cease to be merely that and begin to see that you have something to do with it.
Something to do toward its prosperity.
Rem The temple is something that is built up, not just raised up. Each one of us has to feel the effects of what we have before us.
Rem Being built up “on your most holy faith”.
HG But if we had a real appreciation of the value of the temple and that it was really a spiritual thing and see that we are component parts, we would see it completed, the thing alive.
JT That is a great help, because Simeon is that.
He is the subject of the material that the Lord would use. He must be what we are speaking of. It says, “There was a man in Jerusalem”. Now that raises the question that is mentioned about him and it is all in view of what follows and what we are speaking of this afternoon. “There was a man in Jerusalem”.
The preparation does indicate that he had come to it.
The sentence implies that he was characteristic in that place. Now Jerusalem is not simply a city geographically. Luke would bring out what it is in the mind of God. It is Luke that tells that the Lord “wept over it”. Now if a man is spiritual he would be in the centre. That is the place. There is a lot of history behind that. It was hard to get people to Jerusalem in the days of Nehemiah. It is hard to get people into it now. It refers to a great spiritual thought. So that although we are speaking here of the whole company, what would mark a spiritual man is that he is in Jerusalem. He is in the [p. 241] centre of all that is of God. He is in the centre of things. He is not an alien “from the commonwealth of Israel” or a stranger “to the covenants of promise”. It says of him, Simeon, that “he came in the Spirit into the temple”; and it was revealed to him by the Spirit “that he should not see death before he should see the Lord’s Christ”. Now there is the idea of the man who moves by the Spirit. I think that helps, in what we are trying to bring forward, in what we are speaking of. I am in Jerusalem when I am in the temple.
LES “If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill”, Psalm 137: 5.
JT Oh, that is constant throughout the Old Testament, the great place that Jerusalem had. The man that resides there is under the influence of the Spirit; all shows what people are brought into.
HG And Anna “coming up the same hour gave praise to the Lord”; and she spoke of Him as though she was in touch with what God was, too.
JT She contributed, did she not? What a beautiful touch she gave when she came in.
HG The meeting depends on the sisters.
JT It is immense. You get spiritual sisters in a meeting and you can bring things out better. There is power there.
HG It is quite an important thing then that the average sister in a spiritual way knows her proper worth. One feels the tremendous possibility latent in a spiritual sister. The brothers do not have it all. Theirs is just an active part.
JT We would see how incomplete the picture in Luke would be without Anna. The notice is made of “a man in Jerusalem” and then we are told what kind of a man he was, and how he was moved by the Spirit. Then we have the woman.
WB She was a prophetess. She had the mind of the Lord for the [p. 242] moment.
JT She was about one hundred and six years old, would you say, Mr. G.?
HG A widow of eighty-four years. Lived with her husband seven years from virginity. That makes it ninety-one years. Yes, she was well over the century.
JT As she must have been at least fifteen years old when she was married she would be at least one hundred and six. That is all brought in to encourage.
It is complimentary to her, so that the question of the temple is introduced very briefly, but the way is made for it in a fuller measure by chapter 2, and then it would come in about the building also, because the idea of building necessarily precedes the thought of the temple.
Ques Would you say that this has any individual characteristics? That is, this question in chapter 3.
JT Well, it reads, “Do ye not know that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any one corrupt the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, and such are ye”. It was a question of our knowing.
“Do ye not know?” is a feature that you get in this epistle. That is the saints knowing what is true of themselves. Of course, we want to know what is true in Christ, but also what is true in ourselves.
It is true of ourselves collectively here because the idea of building precedes these verses.
Rem If earlier we have had it more individually, now it is become a collective thing, so that there is a way that each one himself feels that God is building something here.
JT Yes.
Rem I have thought of this in connection with John 14. It gets into the company thought.
Ques Would you say that collective responsibility comes into view when we are in the responsibility [p. 243] and knowledge of the part of the temple as the dwelling-place of the Spirit?
JT Then you begin to see how essential you are.
That you are temple. “Do ye not know that ye are the temple of God?” Ye at Corinth.
LES Would you suggest that the temple is here in view of the Spirit diffusing the light of God?
JT Just so. The diffusion of the light, I think, would come in more properly where you have the anointing. It diffuses in a public vessel. This is more preceding the idea. It is for ourselves, you know.
It is a great deal wider than the assembly. It goes under the head of the anointing, where you are anointed to diffuse the light outwardly. We shall reach that in chapter 12. Now it is a medium for the mind of God to come in, not yet so much as to public testimony, but so that the mind of God can come into Corinth. It is a medium there. A very great fact. So that I do not need to go to Jerusalem. The mind of God can come to any here.
HG Is the anointing a representation publicly?
JT I think so, representing God here preparatory to it. The Corinthians understood what temple meant.
It is a great fact for them that they were to know that the mind of God could come in through them, not by reading or great learning, but by the Spirit being in them.
HG The son of a king would be trained from his birth in view of some day reigning himself. So that I suppose he would have the saints in Corinth understand their peculiar dignity.
JT We need to awake to this fact that we are the temple, the knowledge that the temple of God is holy. It raises the question of holiness and the Spirit.
Rem The eunuch went up to Jerusalem to seek the mind of the Lord there.
JT This would render that unnecessary.
[p. 244] JB Is it more the building that is in view, not the worship as yet?
JT It is the idea of the inner sanctuary. It is not the temple in the sense of buildings. There are two words used in the gospels and epistles: the one relates to all the buildings, the different buildings of the temple in Jerusalem, the other one is the inner sanctuary where the golden altar was and where Zacharias was offering incense. He was inside, but he was by the golden altar and Gabriel stood up by the right side of the golden altar. That is the thought. It was a heavenly servant to communicate the mind of God. It was not a question of a great building outwardly but of that particular place, so that you have the plural word used, “holies”. That raises the question not only of our spirituality but also of our holiness.
HG But if you had the mind of Christ, no question should be unsolved. One feels that it is necessary to follow the mind of Christ. We think of things still in regard to ourselves, and in regard to natural things without giving them the viewpoint of Christ. There should be a spiritual viewpoint.
JT You mean that it would meet all the difficulties that would arise? Difficulties are constantly arising in meetings. Well, if we come back to this, humbly taking it to ourselves, He will not leave us in the dark. We are sure to get light.
HG How simply the Lord answered every question here. He put all to shame. In a certain sense we ought to have the same kind of wisdom as having the Spirit. Is that going too far?
JT You have the very same word applied to the Lord. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”, John 2: 19. He spoke of the temple of his body. They did not know that but that is what He spoke about. That was the idea that the disciples [p. 245] could not understand; however, God would answer it according to His views, not theirs.
WB Every thought of God was infinite there.
JT So that when He was risen, it says, “His disciples remembered that he had said this, and believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken”; the Scripture is first, showing how the divine thought always comes in first.
Rem The divine thought would be nowhere else but here.
JT Would you not say that a meeting like this is important, for we humbly recognise the temple of God and that we can get the divine thought there? So that we can get the divine thoughts there as they got them from Jesus. It is the idea that the Holy Spirit is here and that the temple of God is holy so that we are challenged as to our holiness.
HG By desecration or unholiness or both?
JT I should think both. One that would do it by defiling or corrupting it in the full sense would be a wicked man. “If any one corrupt the temple of God, him shall God destroy”.
The very conditions of the people and what there may be in any locality, of course, affects all we are speaking about, but it makes it all the more important that we attend to the idea of holiness. We have the Spirit and the mind of Christ in chapter 2 but holiness is added here. The temple of God is holy. That raises the question as to what governs one in what one says. The natural mind may take in natural things, but spiritual things “are spiritually discerned”.
WB Moses was to takeoff his shoes at the burning bush and I suppose that is the attitude in which we are to get the gain of where God dwells now.
Rem Think of the great change at the beginning in the Corinthians. “The temple of God is holy, and such are ye”. They are holy, a great change which the Spirit alone could make.
[p. 246] JT The idea challenges us as to holiness.
JB There seems to be a further thought in regard to the temple — that the Spirit dwells there. We are warranted in looking at these thoughts separately. “Do ye not know that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” That is, you have two thoughts here.
JT Yes, you have to take up the idea of the temple in the persons, with all that is stated of them in mind, but they are regarded as having the Spirit. But the Holy Spirit dwells as a further thought. It would mean not that it dwells in me personally, but in us collectively. It dwells collectively in the saints.
HG The day of Pentecost tells of the appearance of “parted tongues, as of fire, and it sat upon each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave to them to speak forth”. I was wondering just how that would be. Do they go together, so to speak, to make the temple?
JT I suppose so, and you have that they are together in one place. So that the filling would mean that there is nothing else there and they began to speak as the Holy Spirit gave them utterance. So that there will not be a hindrance to mar the efforts of the divine work of those persons. “We hear them each in our own dialect in which we have been born”, speaking wonderful things of God. There was a tangible evidence of that. There was nothing to hinder. But you feel the poverty at Corinth by the way he has to speak to them as if they never realised, “Do ye not know?” But you feel the poverty is applied to ourselves, the poverty of our circumstances. We have to look at it theoretically. Where is there anyone that can speak of the wonderful works of God in the power of the Spirit? The meeting at Council Bluffs ought to be, as we look at it from the standpoint of the word, a temple. There ought to be [p. 247] ability to answer any normal question. No person in this town ought to be without light about God if he has any exercise at all, would you say that, Mr. G.?
HG Yes, I am sure it is so.
JT There was no need for Peter in opening his address to turn around and say, ‘Do you not know that you are in the temple of God?’ The crowd knew it. ‘We hear them speak’. But you feel the poverty here. Do you not know that you are that? They would not be accustomed to tell the people around them about God. There does not appear to be much evangelising effort around Corinth. And you know there is a lot of enquiry around. We notice in our parts how many enquiries there are. It is very true that the results of what we get for God are very, very small, but still the Lord says, “For a testimony to them”. Very important is the testimony to them. And if people come to meetings like these, well the day will come when the word will come back and God will receive something out of it. It is a testimony.
LES So the poverty of the man in Acts 3 was met by Peter and John saying, “Look on us”. The natural idea of the temple was superseded by what was there.
JT Oh, you see it throughout the early chapters of the Acts, without calling attention to it as was formally here. The thing was there manifested.
WB When you speak of the temple of God characteristically here, would it be the features of the temple?
JT Well, that is what is in the apostle’s mind. He dwells on just one side. That is the point he stresses, ‘You are holy’. What was needed to be stressed was holiness. The danger of corruption.
JB There is really encouragement in it. It is not said to the Ephesians. It is said to the Corinthians.
JT It was said to the Ephesians that the building “[p. 248] increases to a holy temple in the Lord”. It was growth. The building grew. Really, the whole gentile work of God was growing into a holy temple in the Lord; that is a great general thought. It was growing. Here it is simply that he had to tell them what they are and in doing so to stress the idea of holiness.
WB I have thought that the Ephesians awaited the day of display in the world to come, whereas here it would be present.
JT Yes, the temple and growing in the Lord alludes to this public regime when He is ruling. As such it will remain intelligible.
WB The Lord will be universally owned and the devil will be chained.
Rem Is the temple condition a Spirit of God living or dwelling in a condition of the certain place?
JT The divine mind would be there, so that the Lord speaks of Himself as the temple.
LES How is that brought out in the thought of the holies in view of the thought of the temple being realised?
JT It works out in a meeting like this. It becomes a question of atmosphere. I mean it is either that as together we promote feelings just working against the Spirit and leading to stagnation so there is no power, or that we act and think temple-wise, which promotes holiness. The physical effect is the checking and nullifying of natural feeling and the prevalence of the spiritual holy feeling. It is a question whether the meeting develops in that way. If there be the prevalence of spiritual headship people own their apprehension of the death of the Lord Jesus and then apprehend an increase in power and so the medium of communication increases. That is as I understand it.
WB A question constantly of the [p. 249] mind.
JT If I come in contact with a brother or a sister, do I promote the holy side or the natural side? If you get in company with non-spiritual persons, you feel it. You are shut up. There is something there that checks you, whereas if you come in contact with a spiritual person, you are enlarged, as Paul says. “Our mouth is opened to you, Corinthians, our heart is expanded”. And it affected some of them. I find in going around amongst the saints that the presence of certain brethren has an immense influence in what comes out in the meeting. When Silas and Timotheus came down from Macedonia, it had an effect on Paul in Corinth. That is to say, the thought of God was accentuated by the presence of those two men. And the word there alludes to the mind of God and to the structure so that it was the current of the mind of God. That was the line of these two brothers. Whereas, if two unspiritual brothers came to the town they would not help at all. You feel greatly checked by this. Now that works in every person in this meeting. We think, ‘I am in the current’. If I am in the current there is an accentuation of power so that we can see it is not a question of numbers. Numbers may hinder us. In fact, you may come together for the worse. By that I mean they might come together as unspiritual and the atmosphere become worse and worse.