GOD'S WRITING IN THE HEART TO THE END OF OUR BEHOLDING THE GLORY OF THE LORD
GOD’S WRITING IN THE HEART TO THE END OF OUR BEHOLDING THE GLORY OF THE LORD
There are, in the passage before us, two principles taken up from the type of Moses bringing down the tables of the law: the first is writing, and the second is glory. The one was the accompaniment of the other. The introduction of the tables of stone on which God had written the ten words was accompanied with glory. The glory was in the face of Moses, the writing was on the tables of stone. Now, you get the antitype of that in this chapter: the writing is in the heart of the Corinthians, and the glory in the face of Christ. And what I want to make plain is the connection between the two things, for the one is really dependent upon the other; when there is the writing, then there is “beholding the glory”. If the Corinthians were the subject of the writing, the writing qualified them to behold the glory. The apostle speaks of that in the last verse of the chapter: “We all”, he says, “beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord the Spirit”.
I do not think, as far as I understand the passage, that the apostles were the only ones who looked at the glory of the Lord, for he says “we all”. There is no veil now over the face of the Lord — that is the idea of the last verse.
The two points I have indicated are of great practical interest to us. They make evident the greatness of Christianity — what a contrast it is to all that went before, though it is the antitype of it. The writing upon the tables of stone and the glory in the face of Moses were evanescent. Where will you find the tables [p. 101] of stone now, or the glory in the face of Moses? That glory was there but for a moment, it all passed away. Moses passed away; he had to die in the wilderness, he was not permitted to enter the land; and I suppose the glory passed away from his face long before he died. But the writing to which the apostle refers in the antitype is the real writing of God in the tables of the heart, and the glory with which that is connected is eternal. It is the reality in contrast to the type.
There is another important point connected with the subject, which we shall see more distinctly presently. Beholding the glory of the Lord is pretty much equivalent to entering the holiest. What the epistle to the Hebrews opens up to the mind of the Jew, this chapter opens up to the mind of the Gentile. To the Jew the idea presented was entering the holiest; here, to the Gentile, it is beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face. If you behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, you have entered the holiest, I think that is sufficiently plain.
I would desire first to give you the scripture idea of a veil. It is that which conceals the glory of God. You get an example of it in the Lord upon earth; the glory of God was in Him veiled. The glory of God was there, but under a veil of flesh. The Lord had taken the condition of man, in humiliation, down here. Now we have, in contrast to that, “beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face”. There is no veil upon the face of the Lord. He is declared to be the Son of God by the place in which He is.
I will give you another illustration of a veil. Providences are a veil behind which God hides His glory. We are all familiar with the providences of God, in which a great many things come to pass in the world which are not according to God’s glory. The providence of God is inscrutable. It is a wheel within a wheel — a kind of riddle which no one can read. That came out in the case of Job. God allowed a great [p. 102] many terrible things to befall Job in His providence, but the glory of God and His purpose in regard to Job were hidden behind. And so it is to this day; we see the providence of God, and the varied things which God permits in His providence, but they are no expression to us of His glory.
If you look at Revelation 4 and 5, you see the glory of God, the throne and the One that sits upon it, and those that surround the throne. You get the Lamb in the midst of the throne, and the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders. You get the glory of God coming out there, but in chapter 6 you find horses sent forth into all the earth, symbolising providential dealings and forces that hide the glory of God. This will not always be the case; the time will come when God will no longer hide His glory behind a veil of providences; the veil will be put aside and the glory of God be revealed. The sun is always shining, but it is often veiled by clouds. And so with the glory of God; though hid by providences, it will in due time shine forth. But the Christian is able in the meantime to go behind the providences of God, and see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
I will now take up the two points, viz., the writing, and the glory as connected with it. And I think that glory must be connected with writing. The ten commandments were first spoken to the children of Israel from the top of the mount. There was no writing or record then. The people heard the voice of God, and God intended that they should hear it. I suppose the idea prevailed that if God spoke to man, and man heard His voice, man would die, but in contrast to that idea, the truth came out that God spoke to man, and man lived. Man being under sin, and death as the judgment of God, one could understand the idea that if God spoke to man, man would die, but the contrary comes to pass.
[p. 103] But when Moses came down from the mount, he brought with him the tables of stone. That is, he brought down a record, and this proved that, beyond the fact of the voice of God speaking to man, a record was in the mind of God. Writing is a record. A thing committed to writing is recorded, and it was in the purpose of God to have a record or transcript of His mind. For the moment, the writing was on tables of stone. Moses brought the tables of stone down to the camp, but the children of Israel were sitting down to eat and drink and rising up to play. Moses broke the tables of stone and went up to the mount the second time, and received other tables written, we are told, with the finger of God, which he brought down into the camp and put into the ark of the covenant. What that witnessed was that the law of God must be vindicated in Christ before it could be written in the heart of man. The tables of stone were put up in the ark, they were hid there, it was the divine provision for them.
The antitype is seen in the new covenant, in which God speaks again about writing. He writes, this time, on the fleshy tables of the heart. “I will put my laws into their mind and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people; and they shall not teach every man his neighbour and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all shall know me from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more”.
Now, the new covenant is in evident contrast to the old. The old was connected with the writing of God upon the tables of stone, but the new with the writing of God upon the heart and mind of man, and this means an effective work of God in man which makes man a reflex morally of God. God works thus to make man responsive to Himself. The law was in [p. 104] itself good, but if man could have kept the law, he would hardly have been responsive to God, for the love of God was not yet made known. The time of response to God had not yet come, and that is shown plainly enough in the fact of the ten commandments being written on tables of stone. The tables could give no response. The effect of the writing of God is not simply that a man becomes acquainted with the grace of God, but that man responds to the grace which is made known to him. He apprehends that God loves him, and then it is that he loves God, and is thus responsive to God.
Now, there was another point that came out in connection with the writing, viz., the glory in the face of Moses. Moses came out from God, he came from the glory where God was, and he carried in his face the reflection of the glory. His face shone when he came down to the children of Israel. It brought out this, that the writing had the ratification of glory; and signified that when the moment came for God to write in the heart of man, man would then behold the glory of the Lord. For the moment, the glory was there in type, but the people could not bear the glory, nor were they allowed to see the end, and therefore Moses put a veil upon his face when he spoke to the people, but when he went in to Jehovah the veil was taken away. You get the apostle applying this as a figure to Israel in his time. When Israel turns to the Lord, the veil, which is for the moment on their heart, is taken away, as it was in the case of Moses.
I hope you will be able to carry together the two thoughts of the writing of God and beholding the glory of the Lord. If we have the privilege of beholding the glory of the Lord, of entering the holiest, our competency to behold the glory is the fruit of the writing of God in us. It was that which enabled the apostle to behold the glory of the Lord. Do you think the bulk of Christians in the present day behold [p. 105] the glory of the Lord? I doubt it. I am not unchristianising them for a moment; they believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, but I do not much think that they behold His glory. The reason is that the lines of God’s writing are so poorly impressed on their hearts. Israel will be in advance of many Christians, for they will behold the glory of the Lord; not, perhaps, in the sense in which we do, but they will turn to the Lord when the law is written in their hearts and they will all know the Lord. “All shall know me, from the least to the greatest; for I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more”. Every one, from the least to the greatest, will have the knowledge of the Lord in that day, but then I think it is the blessed result of the law being written in their hearts and minds. Now, in the application to ourselves (for with us it is not the law written in the heart), we have something very much greater. What the apostle speaks about in the early verses of the chapter is not the law written in the heart, but a writing of Christ, ministered by the apostles, and in lines, not of ink, but of the Holy Spirit. That is, the Spirit of God is spoken of here in contrast to ink. I do not know whether you have ever noticed how an inscription is made upon marble. The letters are first cut out with a tool, but afterwards, they are lined in with ink. That is what the apostle, I take it, refers to here, and in contrast to the ink we have the Spirit of God. The lines become indelible; they are intended to be so. They are in the Spirit of God — a permanent record of God. Now, I do not think that the work of God in a man’s soul is done by an instrument. I think I can tell you to what extent God is pleased to employ instruments. Speaking in a general way, any light which man gets in regard to God comes to him by an instrument. I do not think that any instrument is seen in new birth, because it appears to me to be entirely and exclusively the work of the [p. 106] Spirit of God. I think this comes out very markedly in regard to Israel in the future — they will be born again; a nation will be born in a day. That must be the work of God; there will be no instrument employed there. But in the enlightenment of a man’s soul (for that is what a man wants when he is born again) a human instrument is employed. The light exists, for the full light of the revelation of God was in the cross of Christ, but God uses human means to bring that light within the reach of a man’s soul, and that is where the preaching of the gospel comes in. The commission to the greatest preacher that ever lived was “to open their eyes”. When do you think a man’s eyes are opened? When he is undeceived. The apostle was to enlighten the Gentiles, undeceiving them as to God. They were in the kingdom of Satan, in bondage to idolatry, and he was to open their eyes that they might “turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they might receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among them which are sanctified, by faith that is in me”.
The evangelist has to do a wonderful work. He may reason with people, like Paul did with Felix; he may persuade men, “knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men”, but the great object to which all his means tend is that he may enlighten the souls of men in regard to God; in other words that he may open their eyes, that men may be undeceived by being enlightened with the revelation of God. And therefore you can understand that the more the soul of the evangelist is pervaded by the revelation of God, the better able he is to carry out his work of enlightening the souls of men.
As I have said, all the light of God has shone out in the death of Christ. The death of Christ is the declaration of God’s righteousness. The holiness of God is witnessed in the cross. The grace of God is set forth in the death of Christ. And the death of Christ is [p. 107] the expression of the love of God. “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. The power of God was seen, too, in the death of Christ. There it was that man’s foe was vanquished. Christ is not only the wisdom of God, but the power of God. The power of man’s great enemy was ended in the cross of Christ. The truth of the cross is the great stand-by of the evangelist. The more he is acquainted with the truth of the cross, the more effective he is, because by it he is able to affect men by bringing light into their hearts, and the light that he brings is the revelation of God. The evangelist’s capital is the knowledge of the love of God, but enlightenment is not all. Man’s heart has to be enlightened, but he has also to respond to the light, and that is where the work of God comes in again. Man’s heart is not only to be enlightened, but to be so affected that he may respond to the light. If God makes known His righteousness, man is to respond to it; he becomes the servant of righteousness. If God makes known His holiness, it is that man may be holy because He is holy. And if God reveals His love, it is that man should respond to that love. But all the response which man gives to the revelation of God is the effect of God’s work in him. This is not the work of the evangelist. The evangelist is employed to enlighten, but the response which the soul gives to the light is the work of God from beginning to end. He has begun a good work in us and will complete it for Christ’s day.
Now, that is what I understand to be conveyed by the passage before us. The apostle could say to the Corinthians: “Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart”. Every line that is engraven in a man’s heart is in the Spirit of God. If he loves God, it is in the [p. 108] power of the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, if he loves the saints, it is in the Spirit. Everything written in the heart of a Christian is in the indelible lines of the Holy Spirit and that work never can be effaced. If I have got a great deal of light in my heart through the evangelist, that light may pass away; but if there is response to it in my heart, written in the lines of the Spirit, that never can pass away. All that is really effected in the soul of the believer is the work of the Spirit of God. It is most interesting to contemplate the work of God. God concerns Himself about every individual soul, He is no respecter of persons. He patiently carries on His work in the soul. It is very possible for you and me to hinder God, like the Galatians. The point for us is this, that, having begun in the Spirit, we should go on in the Spirit, that the Spirit of God may be left free to do His own proper work in the soul. The practical effect is that man becomes a reflex of Christ, as Christ, as man down here, was the expression of God. The Christian has put off the old man and put on the new. You could not speak of Christ doing this, though it is the truth in Jesus. Christ could put nothing off and nothing on. He was and ever will be what He is. He cannot be anything different, because, as a Man, He is morally the perfect expression of God. What came out in Him as a Man was what He is. He was the Living Bread come down from heaven. It is totally different with Christians. We have put off the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and have put on the new man, which is created after God in righteousness and holiness of truth. It is all God’s work — a new creation. Now, the practical result is that Christians become the reflex of Christ, as Christ is the expression of God. When Christ was here upon earth, every blessed quality that marked Him was perfectly natural to Him. He was the heavenly Man down here, everything he expressed was of God and [p. 109] according to God. And the Christian becomes the reflex of Christ, that is, he is so affected by the light God has given to him concerning Himself, so affected by the love of God, that he becomes the reflex of Christ Himself.
Being thus the subjects of Christ’s writing, and having boldness to enter into the holiest, we behold the glory of the Lord. What I understand the glory of the Lord to be is that He is the minister, in power, of all that is in the mind of God. Every divine purpose is centred there; from that point everything will be set forth. If you go through the Old Testament, you will see that all the purposes of God were set forth in figure in different men. God set forth one thing in Adam; another in Noah; another in David; another, it may be, in Nebuchadnezzar. Thus, different men were used of God in Old Testament times for the setting forth of different purposes. Hence you see the feebleness of all, because there was no man then in whom every purpose could be set forth so that such purposes could be held as one system. There was as yet no man competent to hold all God’s purposes, and, as a fact, God was dishonoured in all. Adam fell; Noah got drunk; David sinned and became liable to death; and Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold and commanded all the world to be idolatrous. But now we behold the glory of the Lord, all God’s purposes centred and set forth in one Man, who has completely glorified God in regard of all that had dishonoured God. The glory of God has been secured in the very place where God has been dishonoured, and the One in whom God has been glorified is at the right hand of God, the centre of every divine purpose. He is Son of man — He takes up Adam’s dominion; He takes up David’s kingdom — He is ruler over the house of Jacob; He is Head of the Gentiles. Thus every ray of divine glory converges in Christ and is set forth to us where it cannot fail.
[p. 110] Now the time has come for glory; God has been glorified, sin put away by sacrifice, Christ is at the right hand of God, the centre and expression of divine glory. And now we behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, because the lines of the writing of God are in our hearts.
You are competent to behold the glory of the Lord as the effect of the writing in you of the Spirit. I am more and more persuaded that God does that work Himself, so that every line of writing in the heart of man should be engraven, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God.