APRIL 9TH, 1894

^[p. 88] APRIL 9TH, 1894

I am glad to send you a few lines in answer to your note. The idea of “spiritual” in 1 Corinthians 2 is as to the question of perception, as evidently the mind of man is not competent in things entirely beyond the range of its powers, and hence the necessity of the spiritual man for entering into God’s things. The thoughts connected with the “temple” and the “body” in 1 Corinthians are that they are privileges proper to christianity, and to which christians can therefore ever return. The truth of the temple (i.e., of the Spirit being here) shuts out man as such as to all his importance, he is not to be gloried in; and the thought of the body brings in the positive place of the saints to be descriptive here, by His grace and gifts, of another Man — the Christ. One man is put out, and another brought in. 1 Corinthians gives us the present responsible place of the saints. Ephesians shows us their place in the thoughts and counsel of God; hence everything begins from the Head and the body, and the temple is seen as going on to completion, and there is added in a kind of supplementary way the present status of saints as built together for a habitation of God by the Spirit. 1 Corinthians takes in general the present responsible side of the truth and Ephesians the counsel side.