THE SPIRITUAL MAN
THE SPIRITUAL MAN
Suffering is not the normal state of any creature. God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good. If the creature be good, it must be happy when true to its own nature and make. If the creature has lost the goodness in which the Creator had made it, it is no longer in its normal state, nor in a happy state. Now the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain, for the creature has been made subject to vanity. Man is fallen, and every creature, instead of fulfilling the end for which it was made, has to be constrained, one and all, in order that they may in some degree contribute to the comfort and benefit of man on the earth. Not one offers its services voluntarily, or yields its services without constraint. As man is fallen and perverted because of his own will, it is plain that there can be no return to the path of duty, or any continuance in it, except as his will is subdued and he is constrained into subjection to God. The first thing necessary to a perverted state is subjugation,
[p. 285] in order to reverse or counteract the wilful working. The higher and greater the ability, the more damage ensues when it is ill-directed. A horse when ungovernable does more mischief than a fly. The perversion is the same in both, but the power of the former is so much greater than the latter, that to control him is a greater object and necessity than to control a fly. Man in nature now is sinful and knoweth not the things of the Spirit of God. The things of God can be known only by the Spirit of God. Hence there are two things which must ensue; one, that the natural man should be suppressed or unheeded; and the other, that the Spirit of God should be active. Both must occur together and be continued together, though each with the very opposite effect, one silenced and the other acting. Now to silence or suppress the flesh there must be the taking up of the cross daily. There is no other way of suppressing or silencing the natural man. And while this is pursued, the Spirit of God at the same time presents and unfolds Christ; and when His mind rules in us, we are spiritual. A man might be the recipient of the grace of life, and enjoy it, or possess a gift of the Spirit, and not be spiritual. Knowledge of the work of Christ does not make a man spiritual. The Corinthians were highly gifted, and had the benefit of the greatest gifts, and yet they were carnal, and walked as men; they were not spiritual. It is only as the Spirit of God governs me, and when by crucifixion the natural man is silent and inactive, that I am spiritual. Without the work of the Spirit there would be no sense of life or forgiveness in the soul, but the possession of Him, even in power, as was the case with the Corinthians, does not make the possessor spiritual. To be spiritual, it is required that you should be free from the influence and thoughts of the natural man; “he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man”. When one is born again there is a new work, and as there is faith in Christ, there is the [p. 286] enjoyment of a new life; but this does not make a man spiritual, though he could not be spiritual without it. To be spiritual a man must not only have received of the Spirit, but he must not receive from the old or natural man, that is, from any other source.
It is neither the possession of the gift of the Spirit nor of actual spiritual tastes that makes a man spiritual. The mark of a spiritual man is that he judges of things according to God and not according to man. He might appear, from his love of truth or his ability to impart his knowledge of the Scriptures, to be very spiritual, yet when he acted or gave counsel about an action, or a course of action, it would be seen from which side, God or man, he formed his opinion. It is the action or the counsel indicating an act which shows on which side the control is. The act necessarily tells the nature of the control. A man is not controlled by the Spirit of God if he acts in nature. It is the act therefore that indicates what is within. As in type with Joshua in Exodus 17, his act — prevailing over Amalek or the reverse — indicated whether Moses’ arms were uplifted or not. There must be power to produce an act. A desire is not power. “The soul of the sluggard desireth, and hath nothing”. Faith is only shown by works, and the works tell out the real nature of the faith. That which controls me and orders my course must always be the prominent and greater power, and hence it is in vain to say that one was taken unawares to excuse one’s conduct; the conduct is the evidence of the power which is paramount. Hence, though there is a spiritual growth in the soul, yet if the flesh be not suppressed, the cross daily carried, there will be an acting in it. It is uppermost; it is ever ready, if not subdued, to express itself, and to lead.
We must constantly remember that the natural mind, the mind of the flesh, is as it were at home in us; the spiritual mind is the stranger, and quite beyond the natural in all its desires and thoughts; therefore the [p. 287] easy and ready thing for man is to look at things according to nature, and not according to God. In order to judge of things according to God, we must set aside the suggestions of nature, and inquire how the word of God would lead; and this is faith, and not sight. It is faith which guides the spiritual man. Faith looks to God, sees His mind and accepts it, not only as the best, but also as quite possible, however improbable to nature. Abraham, even when accepting the word of God, says, “O that Ishmael might live before thee!” Ishmael was the child of his self-will; he would substitute him for the child of promise. The child of promise was as yet unseen, of faith; Ishmael he could see. This is unspiritual, accepting the mind of God, but seeking to have it fulfilled in a natural way. The correction for this is, “Cast out this bondwoman and her son: for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son”. It is not enough that there is an answer to faith, but when the answer is confirmed, when Isaac was weaned, in the same day Ishmael was cast out. There is no real spiritual control unless there be a practical bearing about of the dying of Jesus. The simple fact is that, in order to be spiritual, one must not be natural; and the only way not to be natural is to take up the cross daily and follow Him, and this can be done only in faith by the Spirit.
Peter, after he was the recipient of a revelation which flesh and blood could not make known to him, savours not of the things that be of God, but of those that be of men. Then Jesus said unto His disciples, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me”. The spiritual mind in a saint is like a diamond in a quartz rock. It is not enough to possess the diamond in the rock, but all the quartz must be broken away in order that the diamond may entirely and freely express itself. It is not enough for a man to know that he has spiritual tastes, or to seek the ministry that will feed them; but he must renounce [p. 288] and reckon dead the nature in him, which, like the rock, interferes with and hinders the expression of the diamond. Generally saints are satisfied if they enjoy truth, and like to hear it. They like to know that they possess a diamond; but they do not see that it cannot be in its true brilliancy while embedded in the hard rock, which obscures the light — the very thing which the diamond converts and glorifies. Nothing is more marked in Scripture than the fact that the one nearest in nature to the servant of God, if unspiritual, is his greatest snare. James thinks naturally for Paul (Acts 21); Peter, carried away by nature, influences Barnabas; and surely both of them were largely gifted and used of God. The possession of the diamond does not exempt from the quartz — the flesh, and there is no deliverance from it but in refusing it or mortifying it. In fact, the spiritual mind would be developed of itself if the flesh were kept under and silenced, if the quartz were all broken away.
Any one who surveys christendom, and sees here and there laborious servants of God and devout saints, must remark how possible it is for souls to be in possession of spiritual gifts who in their course and circumstances judge of things according to man’s mind and not according to God’s. This is the simple solution of the strange anomaly meeting us at every turn: that men with spiritual gift and taste are doing things after a natural way, and not after a divine way. And the great danger and consequent loss in preaching the gospel is that there is an enlisting of the natural mind into the acceptance of the grace of God, instead of making it plain that an entirely new power is now bearing witness of the goodness and mercy of God; and as His testimony is received, there is power by the word of God in the soul. If the natural mind be in any way admitted or enlisted, before such an one becomes spiritual there must be a casting off of what was enlisted; and this is always an agonising process;
[p. 289] in fact, the house built on the sand comes down with a mighty crash.
The loss with many is that, with the desire to acquire spiritual knowledge, there is not at the same time a constant simple purpose of heart to resist and refuse, as knowing Jesus Christ and Him crucified, all that for which Christ was crucified, and learning to walk here even as He walked. We are told in 1 Corinthians 13 that charity is the more excellent way, and it is simply the setting aside of self; and surely nothing confers so much benefit on others as being free of the flesh in oneself, instead of excusing it under a variety of pleas, one time because of one’s weakness, another because of one’s sensitiveness, and so on.
I have already shown how the act discloses the power by which I am controlled at the time of the act; but there is also another thing to be noted, and that is that a man with a gift to edify the saints is hindered, and often injurious, if he be preoccupied with natural things or warped by them. Evidently Barnabas was not spiritual when he insisted on taking his kinsman Mark with him, contrary to Paul; Acts 15. Isaac has the truth, God’s mind, about his posterity, but in blindness he seeks to be guided by his senses rather than by faith, and his judgment is warped because he did eat of his son’s venison; Genesis 27. We little know how truth is compromised and pared down because of the natural associations in which the saint has mixed; and this is only discovered by the weakness or inaccuracy of his acts and statements. David accepts the cart, an idea borrowed from the Philistines (compare 1 Samuel 6: 7 and 2 Samuel 6: 3), to carry the ark of God. It was right to bring back the ark, but the mode in which it was done betrayed the association into which David had fallen; 1 Samuel 28. There must be a clouding or misdirection of the truth if the natural mind be not entirely subject. Thus every servant knows how differently truth — the same truth — is presented by him at [p. 290] one time from what is presented at another; and if one does not walk in self-death, there will not be a correcting of the mistake, but a bolder assertion of it, which often ends in heresy. If I am daily carrying my cross, that is death to the flesh. I am led through grace to see where I have overstated or understated. I am less conformed to the world, and I am more transformed by the renewing of my mind, and thus able to prove what is that good and acceptable will of God. I am spiritual as I see things as the Spirit of God sees them, and there the natural has no place.