THE FOUNDATION AND THE BUILDING
THE FOUNDATION AND THE BUILDING
FER There are two things that the apostle certainly does not allude to here, namely, a material temple and a congregation.
GP Is this the church in any particular aspect; if so, in what?
FER It is evidently the church as the dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit, the temple of God.
FHB Is it not locally applied to Corinth? But what characterises the local assembly should characterise the whole assembly.
Ques What is the meaning of the foundation being laid?
FER The apostle was referring to the foundation laid in Corinth; but then the question is where was the foundation laid? That is what made me say it is not a material temple, nor a congregation. The foundation is not the structure, but it involved the structure.
FSM The foundation had been laid in their souls, you mean?
FER Yes, I think so.
DLH What is the idea of building?
FER The idea of building is doctrine built into people’s souls. People are formed by the doctrine. The structure is formed by building. The structure is outside of our individuality: it does not set it aside, but is outside of it. It is in the Holy Spirit. In the epistle to the Romans individuality is maintained throughout, even in regard to service. In the body of Christ you lose your individuality; you become part of the whole.
JSO You do not mean the individuality of the labourer, but of the person built in? In 1 [p. 331] Corinthians 3,
the individuality of the responsible labourer or builder is maintained.
FER Verse 16 refers to the saints collectively. When you get the true idea of the temple your individuality is gone. You are a stone in the structure.
GeoC Is the foundation laid once and for all?
FER In Corinth no one else save Paul laid the foundation. He says, “other foundation can no man lay”.
WH Does anyone else lay elsewhere, or is this the start of the whole?
FER I believe it is the start of the whole.
GP Does Paul speak here as a servant of the Lord or as minister of the church?
FER No one could take this ground of a wise master-builder except the apostle, I judge.
WB It was the start as to doctrine then?
FER The question is, where was the start as to doctrine? The start was made before the New Testament was written. It was by teaching not by writing. The doctrine connected itself so intimately with souls that it became part of them. The foundation refers to what had been laid in their souls.
It became the foundation in souls of a new structure, and that structure is entirely new and outside of what we are in our individuality as men on earth. Every one indwelt by the Spirit is of the structure; but it is fitly framed together in the Lord.
The foundation is not the structure. The latter may not be, in man’s work, of the same material. Let us refer for a moment to the previous chapters. In chapter 1 Jew and Greek have no place at all. Paul starts with a new man, and tells the Corinthians they are of the new man; they are of God of the new order in Christ Jesus. Then in chapter 2, we find that man’s mind is totally incapable, a spiritual man was needed, and in chapter 3 we come to [p. 332] the temple.
AH What do you mean by the structure; not what was in them, is it?
FER To understand the temple we must know what is built in; it is all of Christ. I do not say they were not the structure, but the point was, that they might know they were of it; not only in it, but of it — a component part of it, outside Jew and Gentile, and all those distinctions of man.
THR It is only that which is of Christ which is really in the structure.
GP What is the “wood, hay, and stubble” then?
FER Leading people to attach undue value to an outward or sacramental connection with Christ and the like.
THR You cannot separate the structure from persons.
FER Unity flows from union. To be really in the truth of the one body you must understand union. It is one thing to be united, and another to be in the truth of union. A person might be united, and in his soul be hardly out of Egypt.
GP Is the chapter a picture of Christendom?
FER I see in Christendom all that is spoken of here, “wood, hay, and stubble”. Defiling the temple is a step farther, and brings destruction on the defiler. When man lays down authoritatively principles to govern souls, you have got in principle the corruption of the temple; the Spirit of God is displaced. The great value of the temple is that the oracles of God are there.
WH What is the difference between the temple and the house?
FER Virtually they are the same thing. The temple is the dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit; the house is where God orders. The house is where you are to conduct yourself; the temple is where the oracles of God are. There is great good to be gained by being in the truth of the temple. If you want to [p. 333] get light you must be in the truth of it. I can think of myself as outside of man on earth — that is an immense thing. My individuality is merged in a new structure where Christ is all and in all. That truth comes out in the relations and conduct of the saints down here. This chapter runs, I think, with Colossians.
GP Where is the foundation laid, and by whom? Is it from Paul we get it?
FER I think so.
FHB Through Paul’s ‘doctrine’ of the Son of God as revealed in him?
FER The special testimony which laid the foundation was from Paul. The truth had been wrought in their souls. “I determined to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ”. As a matter of fact Paul had laid the foundation at Corinth.
FHB As to the truth a person may know Christ as Saviour and yet not know Him in this character as the foundation of the assembly.
WB If a man went away to the heathen and preached Paul’s doctrine, would he be laying the foundation or not?
FHB I suppose he would, if he were to preach Jesus Christ according to Paul’s testimony.
B You would still leave room for the other apostles, though the foundation has specially to do with Paul?
FER Everything is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets; but that is not exactly what Paul speaks of here: it is the foundation laid in Corinth.
JSO There is no failure in Ephesians. It is more — “Ye are builded together for God”.
WB You get the apostles of the Lamb in the foundation of the city.
FER Yes; but that is the city; in [p. 334] the temple aspect the assembly is strongly identified with Paul’s doctrine.
GP What is it to gather saints on the ground of the one body?
FER To gather them on unsectarian ground; but what we have to do is to build into people’s souls, so that they become really gathered. You want to produce it from within rather than from without. You want to build up in their souls the truth on which this new structure rests.
JSO I suppose you meant that ‘gathered on the ground of the one body’ has become a conventional expression, and that the truth should be so ministered to souls as to bring them out to Christ, and then they would be practically gathered on that ground.
FER Yes, exactly. You go into a town, for instance, and find five companies professedly gathered on the ground of the one body; it is only the idea of congregation. It is not distinctive now.
Ques What is to be distinctive?
FER Well, what I was speaking of this morning is distinctive: the inner and the outer. The fact is, all truth is levelled down to what a man is practically down here by the refusal of ‘mixed condition’. What are we aiming at in ministry? That is the question.
FHB There is a great deal of human work in gathering people, and consequently a great deal of scattering.
FER Exactly.
HCA You must be careful to build in the same truth as in the foundation. There may be a quantity of doctrine, but the saints are not built up by it, save as Christ is ministered. He is the foundation.
DLH The difficulty that exists in people’s minds as to this shows how very few are really gathered on the ground of the one body.
JSO The great principle of gathering abides [p. 335] the same.
FER Yes; but the taking up of even a correct term may become simply congregational. Unity, the truth of the one body, flows out of union.
THR You cannot build anything but what is of Christ into souls for this structure. If you have not the foundation of the Father’s revelation of the Person of the Son, you cannot build a spiritual structure; you must have the truth of the structure.
WH If asked how you were gathered, what would you say?
FER I should say, I thank God, though very poorly, I am in the truth of the temple through grace.
Rem They would not understand you.
FER Then I should say, Come and see — cannot you recognise that God is here?
AMM There is a tract highly valued among us: ‘The One Body, the Ground of Gathering’.
FER Yes; building and gathering are two different things.
FHB Gathering should be the result of building; the truth so built into souls that they could not be anything else than gathered.
JSO Only a person who has peace may be gathered, and has everything to learn.
FER The temple is not corrupted in this chapter. The apostle is warning them.
Ques Are not the temple and the one body distinct thoughts?
FER They are one thing, but two thoughts.
HCA I am persuaded that we want to know more about the temple. God was there; and building refers to the temple, not to the one body.
JSO You do not mean to say there are any new principles on which saints are to be gathered?
FER No; only terms that were used long ago do not do now, because many others take up the same terms as gathered on the same ground.
JSO But that is imitation, and we must go [p. 336] on with the reality. If I am asked the ground on which I am gathered, I should say that, though much humbled at all the divisions amongst those called brethren, they make no difference to me, for I am still clinging to the principles of God’s word which brought me out at first, and that the word abides, “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them”, and that I am where I am because the Lord is there. We must take care not to use terms and expressions which do not answer to the truth. The less we say about ourselves the better.
FER Now the truth of the temple is, that there is light there, the oracles of God are there, and we have to find that out.
DLH Correct principles may have been pressed, and persons accepted them, and yet not know union.
FER That is exactly my point. Souls have been apprehending things in a natural way instead of laying hold of them spiritually. You must apprehend the thing spiritually, and not be contented with the mere acceptance of truth. We must seek to use terms that will instruct people. I am speaking of ministry to confirm souls. They ought to be conscious of having come to the place where light is — that is what will test us.
FHB Yes; I know people have been settled by that. They come to the Lord’s table because they find light, saying, ‘That is where light is’.
JSO Light and the Lord’s presence.
DLH Is there not the idea abroad that an organisation was started some years ago, and now it is all come to ruin?
FER Yes; and the outward has come to ruin. People have attached undue importance to the outward bond. The bond is in the soul really. The character in which Christ is known is another important point. Some souls know Christ as Lord, but they do not know Him as Head. It is a question of that which is [p. 337] to characterise us who are gathered. I was speaking of building, not of gathering.
JSO Though I agree with what is said as a whole about gathering, still you would not keep out of fellowship any soul that had peace?
FER Certainly not.
WH “Let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon”. What is that?
FER He is warning them against building what is perishable. We read in chapter 10 that Israel had the symbols of spiritual things — baptism and spiritual food and spiritual drink. Yet the most part perished in the wilderness by the flesh because they had no vital connection with Christ. The one body flows from the truth that all the members are one in the Head — unity flows from union.
JSO It is right to have the desire that the saved should be gathered out, but there is a danger of making it an object to get them to the table, instead of seeking so to minister Christ to souls that they come out to Him.
FER We are set in the close of the church’s history, not in the days of the first gathering out of the world. Unity is certain to come if you could only minister enough of Christ to souls.
B You must minister Christ to them to bring them in.
FER You bring them in to form them in the truth of the temple. You have not done with souls when they are gathered. They come out truly through the influence of pressure within. You must minister the truth in Christ to them afterwards.
JSO Three things have to be distinguished: Christian standing, Christian state, and Christian practice. Then there is also progress or growth.
FER Here you get the beginning of it, the foundation which is Jesus Christ. There is a difference [p. 338] between knowing Christ as Lord and as life. State connects itself with knowing Christ as life.
GP Christian state is spoken of among us, and people think it is walk.
FER That proves they do not know Christ as life. It is all the difference between seeing Christ in Romans, Colossians, and Ephesians. In Romans, He is Lord. In Colossians, He is Head, and you get all the moral excellencies of life brought out. In Ephesians, it is His exaltation as Man; it is not a question there of Lordship, nor of His completeness as Head; but as Man, He fills all things. We have to learn Colossians — the completeness of the Head: proper Christian state comes out of that. He is Head to the church, and Lord to the individual. You first individually find Him Head, and then as Head to the church. In Romans, everything is made to hang on the possession of the Spirit.
JSO Until you get the Spirit and Christ in you, you are not in the Christian state.
FER No; but you are started when you get the Spirit. The formative work begins with the Spirit. When you get to Colossians, you get something further, Christ is in you; and in Ephesians, further still: you are “raised up together, and seated together in him”.
B How would you proceed in seeking to find out the state of the individual?
JSO I always try to find out if the person can cry, “Abba, Father”, and understands that he belongs to the body of which Christ is Head in heaven; and that being gathered is not joining a body of Christians. You can hardly lay down rules.
B The building up would take place in visiting. It is not leaving it to an evangelist, but building up is a continuous thing.
FER To give souls the idea spiritually is the thing. You must present Christ as Head [p. 339] for that.
WB Would you ask them if they have faith for the path?
JSO One can hardly go into detail. The thing is to have the principles.
DLH “On this rock I will build my church”, Matthew 16. What is the force of that? Do you say the rock is in your heart?
FER It is the fruit of the revelation to the soul of Christ as the Son of the living God. The rock is, so to say, in the soul. Christ is laid in the soul as foundation — the confession is the rock. It is the Person of the Son of the living God, but apprehended as such by the soul. There is the apprehension of the revelation in the soul, so that He is confessed. Where was the beginning of it in Matthew 16? It was in Peter’s soul.
THR You would not have what was really divine as to it in Peter’s soul if it were not a revelation.
FER I do not think it went much further with Peter till Pentecost, but the rock was there; it was the apprehension of Christ outside the whole order of things with which He was connected down here. It could not fully come out till He had entirely broken with the links connected with flesh and blood.
WB You speak of the rock as subjective?
FER Yes, I do.
JSO The person partook of the nature of the rock; and the revelation cannot be separated from the Person of the Son of God.
FER Exactly. You must be careful that you build on the foundation what is congruous. The rock is not objective — the Person is objective.
THR I do not think that you will find it anything very new, that the rock is the revelation of the Person of Christ as Son of the living God by the Father. Christ builds His church upon this real and living work of the Father’s revelation in souls.
FHB The stone (Peter) was of [p. 340] the rock?
FER Yes; was built on to the rock. The stones have to be built up. The truth was put into Peter’s soul. A man is proved to be a stone by the confession. There is a laying a foundation in people’s souls of Christ, and there is a building up a superstructure. Saints have in the experience of their souls to come to Christ as the Living Stone — and thus they are built up.
Ques Is Matthew 16 and 1 Peter 2: 4 the same thing?
FER One (Matthew 16) is the divine intent; the other (1 Peter 2: 4) the experimental side “To whom coming”.
JP The truth that has been before us this afternoon is immensely important, it will bring down the ‘how much’, and bring up the ‘what sort’.