SPIRITUAL INTELLIGENCE
[p. 365] SPIRITUAL INTELLIGENCE
1 Corinthians 10:15; Genesis 3:20; Genesis 5:21 - 24; Genesis 8:20,21
Spiritual intelligence is what is in view in this meeting. What is in mind is to present the way to spiritual intelligence, and to indicate that spiritual intelligence leads out of this world into another world, “that world, and the resurrection”. In other words it implies movement in those that have it. God speaks in 1 Corinthians 2 of the hidden wisdom which He prepared before the world for our glory. This could not be opened up to the Corinthians because of their poor capacity, but the apostle intimates to them that there was that which was before the world prepared of God for us. This great fact is presented early in the epistle as an incentive to the saints to go on to what belonged to full growth, so that in the latter part of the epistle the apostle enjoins that in their minds they should be full-grown, but in malice they were to be babes. Now the epistle to the Romans and the epistles to the Corinthians contain the fundamental elements of knowledge. In speaking of knowledge or spiritual intelligence we have to bear in mind the power for acquiring it. That is what is called the mind. In Romans this great faculty in a governing way is to enter into all activities (see chapter 7:25), not indeed his natural, carnal mind, but the faculty itself. Man has what the lower creature has not; he has the faculty of thinking in correspondence with God; and of the christians in 1 Corinthians 2:16 it is said, “We have the mind of Christ”. The statement implies what is characteristic of christians. The apostle does not say ye, but we, have the mind of Christ. Such statements usually imply what is characteristic of christianity; and if characteristic, why not of me? That is how the believer is urged on to greater things. So in Romans, in that well-known analytical chapter,
[p. 366] namely chapter 7, the writer arrives at a great result. He speaks of the inner man — some consciousness in his deep inwardness which answers to God, an experience that each believer ought to seek to determine in his own history; and then he says, “Genesis 1 myself with the mind serve God’s law”. He arrives at it in his own consciousness according to God. In the analysis he has learnt to name things that are inside him. It is no question of anatomy, it is a spiritual analysis, a very remarkable thing and he arrives at the result: “I myself”. Who is this “I myself”? A man arriving in self-consciousness as on God’s side against the flesh, standing on his own feet against the inner workings of sin in the flesh. It is as if he were to hoist the flag of victory at a certain point against sin in the flesh. One who does this is potential material for God. It is a great moral triumph that every young person here should achieve, that his mind is enthroned as it were on the side of God. It is to be in this sense an intelligent dictator in the person. Not now the corrupt mind of the flesh, but the renewed mind, at least renewed in principle.
In chapter 12 it is said, “By the renewing of your mind”. This word ‘renewing’ is a very important word for the young believer to understand. The body is subservient to this dominant faculty renewed thus. The person, of course, the ego, is responsible, but the mind is in control: “I myself with the mind serve God’s law”. That is the foundation, beloved young believer, of the priesthood in your soul. The Spirit of God comes in immediately through redemption to support in taking up this attitude; and hence in Corinthians, as I said before, the apostle says “we have the mind of Christ”. What a great thing it is to have a faculty capable of thinking like Christ! Think of Christ, beloved friends, coming into this world as Man, and looking around on what was in [p. 367] it! He would name things as they came before Him; and that is one feature of the intelligence that the believer has, it enables him to put right names on things. The Lord found things extremely strange; it is said, “He was in the world, and the world was made by him” (John 1:10). How different it was from that wonderful world He brought into being as described in Genesis 1 and 2! One reverts to that account in Genesis 1 and 2. The God spoken of there who said, “Let there be light” was Jesus. It is said, “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3). It was He who said, “Let there be light; and there was light”; it was He who worked day after day until the sixth day when He made man, and now, according to John, He came into that world, but Oh, how different! Sin had intervened to spoil it. It was so utterly degraded in intelligence and feeling that it did not know its Creator; and so now instead of pronouncing things good, He has got to name things, as they were. One has only to appeal to the gospels for a proof of this. What names He gave things! He hesitated at nothing through fear; He named everything fearlessly, so that the world became exposed. The names He gave things stand, and serve us today as in the same world.
Well, now, dear brethren, how touching that the apostle, in the light of all that has been said, should address the Corinthians as intelligent persons. He has already been saying to them that he could not speak to them as unto wise persons: he determined to know nothing amongst them but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. I had to feed you with milk, he says, not with strong meat; and then he says, ‘Ye are babes’, but babes in Christ; that is fundamental; that brings the Corinthians on to christian ground; I believe the apostle in spiritual tenderness and consideration for his beloved children in Corinth says,
“I speak as to intelligent persons”. Were I there with my present understanding I should have said, I am not going to be different from that. If the great apostle Paul out of consideration for me addresses me as an intelligent person, I do not want to deny that in practice. He could address them in this way not in a concrete or actual sense, but in a potential sense. In truth, it is the only ground on which we can address christians. As having the Spirit of God they are potentially capable of taking in divine thoughts, and it is important to bear this in mind, that one can speak to everyone in this room as a christian, and say, ‘You are an intelligent person’. Over against that Peter speaks of unconverted people as “senseless”. It is a statement of fact. Peter would by no means offend people unnecessarily, but in truth, knowledge according to God is only in the christian; as having the Holy Spirit he is capable of learning; and hence the apostle in approaching the great thought of the Lord’s supper, would bring in this thought, that the persons addressed were intelligent. Of all things in christianity the celebration of the Lord’s supper requires spiritual understanding. It is the introduction really to the service of God, and spiritual intelligence is required, which, as we had this afternoon, implies that we are priests to God. And if we are addressed as intelligent, the moral result of that in our souls ought to be ‘I do not want to be anything different; I do not want to degrade myself in the eyes of heaven and the eyes of the apostle. I have the means to acquire all knowledge; I must therefore lay myself out to acquire it’: and so you find in the different epistles which denote progress in the believer’s soul we have knowledge greatly stressed. The epistle to the Colossians speaks about the new man, and this new man is said to be “renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him”. Now that is an advance on what [p. 369] we have been speaking of. The new man is a creation, and he is after the image of his Creator. His Creator is really Christ; and the correspondence is in knowledge, showing the great importance of this matter.
Well now, I want to show you how, in the three passages in Genesis, knowledge such as I have been speaking of leads into another world, and enables me to move in that world according to it. So, in chapter 3 you have Adam naming his wife the second time. He had named her in chapter 2, but now he is naming her after he became a poor sinner, and she too had become a poor sinner. In chapter 2 Adam is more a type of Christ, and so Jehovah Elohim causes the creatures to come to Adam to see what he would name them, and whatever he named them that was the name of the creature — God as it were commending his great creature for his intelligence. As I said, he is there a type of the Lord Jesus; and so, in the naming of Eve in that chapter, Jehovah Elohim presents a woman to him and Adam says, “This time it is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: this shall be called Woman, because this was taken out of a man”. That is, he gives a reason for the name he gives her. There is nothing said as to this with the different lower creatures. We are not told that Adam gave the reason for the names he gave them, but here there is a reason, and bound up with it is the church as taken out of Christ, bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh. But in chapter 3 we have in Adam one like ourselves, a poor sinner, and an Eve like one of ourselves, a poor sinner. I say poor, but yet not poor, for there is evidence that they had faith, for God had clothed them. One of the most interesting transactions of God was the making of suits of clothes for Adam and Eve. Can we doubt that Adam gathered up intelligence in this? Moreover, God had said that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head. Was not that the thought of a living one? I think so. I think light shone into Adam’s soul as to the coming One, Him who says, “I am he that liveth and was dead; and behold I am alive for evermore” (Revelation 1:18). He it is that should bruise the serpent’s head; and now Adam names his wife Eve. Where did he get the word? It is suggestive of the origin of language. There is light in his soul; a language issuing from a living soul, from a living man, is worth treasuring. It is the language that every christian has characteristically in addition to his ordinary one. It is the language of faith. I believe that Adam is the first to use the language of faith; not that he is in the list in Hebrews; he is not; there is a reason for that: but there can be no doubt that his naming his wife Eve is the language of faith. And every name that a christian puts on anything or any person according to God is; the language of faith. Let us learn this language, And as learning it, put right names on everything and every person. I believe that every christian should have a judgment about everything and every person that he knows. You may have to take up names that others have given, but you take them up in faith. That is how the matter stands with Adam, he called his wife’s name Eve because she is the mother of all living. Following upon that we have Seth naming his son Enosh, which is a negative thought. We have the positive before the negative. Eve was the mother of all living. Seth’s son was a poor, dying, weak creature in Seth’s estimate of him. It is not that Enosh may not have been saved; I doubt not he was; but his father called him Enosh, a poor, mortal creature. That was also the language of faith. And the result was that from that time men began to call on the name of the Lord — a great result. The use of the language of faith induces faith in others.
[p. 371] The next point in mind is Enoch — the intelligence of Enoch. His name, it would appear, indicates a man who was highly disciplined. A man disciplined by God is sure to be an intelligent man; in other words he has been in the best school of the universe, the school of God. Enoch’s name implies that and what comes out in him is choice of company. It is a question of the use I make of my intelligence to choose my company. I am to move. With whom am I to move? I am to move with God. Enoch made the best possible choice; he selected God with whom to walk. There was plenty of society in those days; the race of Cain had flourished; the world had become developed; and world development means world corruption. There was plenty of company if Enoch sought that kind. But he did not seek that kind; he selected God, as I may say reverently, as his travelling companion. Let me commend this to all of you young people here: “Enoch walked with God”. God had been already walking before Enoch. He has been walking ever since. Millions have joined Him. No doubt most of us here have joined God in His holy walk. What a selection to make! Enoch walked with God; and what would be the drift of that walk? Enoch became less and less in view in this world, until it is said, “He was not”. You could not find him anywhere in the circumstances of this world. God’s walk leads out of this world and finally it is said, “He was not, for God took him”. God says, as it were, ‘I like this company’. Think of God wishing for your company. How He came to Abraham to seek him out as a companion, — His friend. So it is said that before Enoch’s translation, “He had this testimony, that he pleased God”. Doubtless much will come out after we are taken out of this world as to us, but I certainly want to know before I leave that I please God. I should not like to leave except with this sense that I please God. And surely [p. 372] that is what God has in mind for us. “How ye ought to walk”, says the apostle to the young Thessalonians, “and please God” (1 Thessalonians 4:1).
The final thought in mind is Noah. What comes out in Noah is that he too walked with God. There can be no doubt that he knew something about his ancestor Enoch. An ancestor like Enoch is worth speaking of. He followed in his footsteps and moreover, he was “perfect in his generations”, that is he was commendable amongst his family and relations — a most important thing to maintain righteousness in every way amongst one’s relatives. What comes out in Noah, among many other things, is that he discerned between what was clean and what was not clean. There was nothing said about anyone telling him the difference between the clean and the unclean. Israel in the wilderness was carefully taught of God as to the clean and the unclean, but Noah evidently learnt it instinctively; indeed, one can hardly walk with God without discerning the clean and the unclean, for surely in that walk there will be indications to aid us in this. It is a very solemn thing if God cannot walk with anyone; it means you are unclean. If I am walking with Him I find that out. Evidently Noah found things out that way. Noah passed through into another world, for that is the end of the divine walk. Where is God going? God has not come into this world to stay in it, as I was saying before; the Lord Jesus came into it, but not to stay in it. I mean the world in a moral sense. He says, “Now is the judgment of this world” (John 12:31). His presence here brought to light what it was and its moral judgment. So that the Lord Jesus is presented as walking in John’s gospel. He was walking somewhere. The truth is that He is going out of the world, as He says in chapter 13 that He should depart out of this world to the Father. His blessed feet carried Him via the cross out of this world into [p. 373] another world. Mary understood that those feet were carrying Him out of this world and she anointed them. That is what comes out in Noah. He passed into another world. Let me appeal to all the young people here to join God in His holy walk. As with Him in this walk you will do great things, for Noah is just the counterpart of Enoch. Noah represents a man who does great things, and such men, men that can do things for God, are wanted in every locality where there is a meeting, in this country and in every country. So Noah arrives in another world with everything intact that was under his hand; he lost nothing on the way, so that arriving at this new world, typically, he is fresher and more vigorous in coming out of the ark than when he went into it. What a vista opened up to him of Ararat as he looked on to the new world. Who is to people this world? Is it again to be filled with corruption? In Noah’s mind it is to be filled with God, of whom and through whom and for whom are all things; and hence he built an altar to Jehovah and offered of all clean animals and all clean fowls. His instincts, developed in his walk with God, now stand him in good stead and make him a priest so that he knows what to offer, and he offers unselfishly of every clean animal and every clean fowl, and it says, “Jehovah smelled the sweet odour”. Need I repeat that that is a great end reached? Jehovah is pleased to condescend to refer to His nostrils, that He smelled the sweet odour; and that was the outcome of this man’s affection for Him, corresponding with the name he bore, for Noah means rest; and God smelled a savour of rest in this man’s sacrifice. You can see, beloved friends, how this matter of intelligence enters into another world and establishes the service of God, nothing short of this: travelling with God is not short of this; as it says, “Then shall come the end”;
[p. 374] what is the end? God is to be all in all. May God help us to keep this before us so that His service may continue and enter into eternity, as it is said, “To him be glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages. Amen” (Ephesians 3:21)