ESPOUSAL TO ONE MAN
[p. 505] ESPOUSAL TO ONE MAN
2 Corinthians 11:2,3; Romans 8:10; John 4:26 - 30; 1 Peter 3:3,4
These scriptures occupy us with one Man. The first passage directs our attention to the ministry, the apostle Paul representing that thought supremely in the New Testament, as Moses does in the Old Testament. The Lord had spoken to Paul in Corinth in a vision, telling him that He had much people in that city. The apostle would ever afterwards think of the city in that light, as all those who love Christ now, in going around from city to city, think of each city in relation to those who are of Christ in it. So that if Corinth were mentioned to the apostle at any time in his travels after he had been there, he would recall what Christ had there. Indeed, referring to the place the Lord’s people had in his heart, he said, “Ye are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read of all men”, (2 Corinthians 3:2). They were written there indelibly; they were his letter; they had an indelible place in his heart. Wherever he had the opportunity he would speak about them; they were “known and read of all men”. It is as if his very attitude in referring to them would impart his thoughts and his affections towards them.
The Lord had told him that He had much people at Corinth, but He did not tell him the number, We have not much in the way of numbers, save in the earliest days of the twelve; but as the Lord had said “much people” there were no doubt a good many. But the apostle would think of them as to what they could be made for Christ, for as yet the material was all potential. We might say that the pearl was there in the sense in which it is spoken of in the parable; it had to be sought and found. And the great servant would have in mind how much he [p. 506] could effect in the persons he found, for his work would not be completed unless the subjects of it were brought somewhat into accord with the pearl of great price. The apostle had that kind of an outlook, and, being a skilled workman, would work away with the great model in his heart and mind as one after another of these Corinthians would respond to the truth of the gospel. Although, as he says, he preached Christ crucified: “I did not judge it well to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2), yet he preached the Son of God too, for he also says, “The Son of God, Jesus Christ, he who has been preached by us among you (by me and Silvanus and Timotheus)”, 2 Corinthians 1:19. Whether they preached in different halls on the same night, or preached one after another in the same hall on the same night, we cannot say, but there was certainly a three-fold testimony to Jesus as the Son of God, and this testimony would have in mind to attract persons to Him. So that the apostle undoubtedly alludes to that kind of ministry when he says, “I have espoused you unto one man, to present you a chaste virgin to Christ”, 2 Corinthians 11:2 That was what he aimed at, and what he effected. Whether each saint at Corinth reached the full thought of what he had in mind has to be left; but, in general, he had succeeded in espousing them. They were really interested in Christ in such a way as to commit themselves to Him in a marital sense. That is how Paul looked at them, and how he had them in mind as he penned these verses.
Well now, I have in mind to occupy you with the Lord in the same way, so that there may be with us something in the nature of espousal. Espousal is not exactly marriage. The word “husband” in the Authorized Version in verse 2 is properly “man”; it may be used in the sense of husband, but the sense, properly, is man. The Corinthians had been brought [p. 507] into the covenant in that way, not in a light trivial way, but in a chaste way — “a chaste virgin” is the idea. So there was something in Corinth that aroused the hostility of the devil, as there is in this town now. The devil hates the saints, particularly because of their relation with Christ, for he hates Christ. He would attack the property of Christ, as the Lord said, “Why dost thou persecute me?” (Acts 9:4). It was the saints viewed as Christ who were being persecuted. So that knowing what Corinth was, as he did, the apostle would know the kind of wiles to which the enemy would resort to corrupt them; that is, what Corinth was had to be overcome. Wherever we are, in whatever city, town or village, the world is there in some way, and that is the test for us as in the place. Overcoming implies that we overcome there. The Corinthian saints had to overcome Corinth, whether it were its architecture, its profligacy, its wealth, or its learning, or whatever it was. One might be affected by one thing, and another by another, but whatever the city is has to be overcome if we are “to be to another, who has been raised up from among the dead”, (Romans 7:4). I believe that word “up” would mean moral elevation as well as the literal rising out of the grave. There is moral elevation in the suggestion “raised up from among the dead”.
But the serpent would not fail to use what is available to corrupt our thoughts from “simplicity as to the Christ”, whether it be an old man who is converted, or a middle-aged man or woman, or a young man or a young woman, or even a boy or a girl. For God works in men and women from almost the outset of their being on earth, and, indeed until they leave it. But Satan would select that peculiar form of corruption that would be most likely to damage one, for the idea of “a chaste virgin to Christ”, you understand, applies to all the saints.
[p. 508] It is a collective thought here, as if the assembly at Corinth was set up intelligently in that way. The Lord’s supper, of course, might be introduced to show how the espousal worked out. The Lord would have His part in every occasion; that is, “the time of love”, (Ezekiel 16:8). It is to Corinth that we have most of the instruction as to the Lord’s supper. And every occasion should be a love occasion, dear brethren. It is a very important thing, as we sit down together at the Lord’s supper, to leave ample room for the exercise of this kind of love, the love of Christ, and of His saints as espoused to Him. Ample room should be left for it, because He is entitled to us; we are His; He has secured us at infinite cost, and there should be room made for the constraining love of Christ and the responsive love of the saints. The Lord looks for it as we come together in assembly. He would impress us with the cost at which He has secured us, and what cost there has been to God, too, for the Lord is the Mediator of a new covenant, as well as being our Husband, as it were. He is the Person for whose pleasure we are to be, as it says, “to be to another”. It is a question of who He is, in that sense, and what He is, as the Mediator of a new covenant. So it is an important matter, dear brethren, to keep in mind that the Lord should have His time, and that we should be to Him, “who has been raised up from among the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God”, (Romans 7:4).
You can understand how the devil would be aroused from the beginning of Paul’s service at Corinth, the Lord having told Paul about His people in that place. You can understand how the devil would be set to prevent the Lord from obtaining what He had there, from really securing it. Whether it would be by corruption from without, or whether by disorder within, or by rivalry, the devil set to work, and with great success, alas!, to damage what [p. 509] had been so secured by the service of the great minister and those who had worked with him to present the Corinthian saints as a chaste virgin to Christ. The apostle alludes to the kind of subtlety with which Satan began, because his earliest movements in God’s creation have not been lost sight of. We are told: “The serpent was more crafty than any animal of the field which Jehovah Elohim had made”. (Genesis 3:1). Of course, we know now, that however he spoke to Eve through the serpent, he is nothing less than a great spirit, but set against Christ. So the apostle alludes to that, and says, “... as the serpent deceived Eve by his craft”; the serpent was more crafty than all the other animals, and the apostle knew that he would not fail to have recourse to his old methods. He does not, as far as one can see, cast aside any of his old methods. I suppose he used his best ability when he attacked Eve. God had performed a great Work, having brought order out of chaos, and everything was very good, and God blessed it. But then, here is Eve; she was not called Eve when she was created; she was called Ishshah; that is, her name was derived from her origin; she was the counterpart of Ish — she was Ishshah. That was not a question of life, exactly, but Eve implies life out of death, in a moral sense, sin having come in; whereas Ishshah means that she was taken out of man, and that before sin came in. She was the greatest expression of the handiwork of God, next to Adam; in fact, she was the shining out, the effulgence of Adam; she came out of Adam.
The craft lay in the devil’s scheme to bring in something in relation to her that would bear on her husband; something to divide, to break up that wonderful combination, or, as I might say, that organism; for the woman is out of man, bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh — a remarkable thing! It is a mystery; the apostle treats of it in that way [p. 510] in Ephesians, and we may be sure, dear brethren, that what is divinely mysterious is what the enemy would spoil if he can. And, of course, we are to understand mystery; we are to get outside the range of the natural man. So the devil would spoil the mystery; there was nothing of the kind in relation to other creatures. The serpent, in a certain sense, stood over against all the other creatures, for he was superior in craft to all other animals. Man was superior in the wisdom and intelligence that God gave him, and in his links with God. So that you can understand that Satan was jealous of that, and would spoil it, and he did. So he spoke to the woman. The apostle was thinking of all that as to what might happen at Corinth, and indeed, what had happened at Corinth, and what is happening now. We are all in danger of the craft, the subtlety, of this being, and how he would spoil what is particularly for Christ in a collective sense; for that is the mystery, and to secure that the apostle Paul was called out and peculiarly fitted to minister it. He combated for the Colossians that they might be “united together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the full knowledge of the mystery of God”, (Colossians 2:2). Satan was against that, but Paul was for it. He was toiling for it, and combating for it, that Satan should not succeed. He had succeeded to a considerable degree undoubtedly, here at Corinth, but the apostle spoke of it as though he had not; he says, “I fear lest by any means, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craft, so your thoughts should be corrupted from simplicity as to the Christ”.
Now the question may arise as to what this simplicity is, and I think a further reference to Satan’s craft, and his attack on Eve will bring it out. Simplicity in her case, as the serpent spoke to her, would have saved the situation. He was a hideous [p. 511] creature; there was nothing attractive about him; he did not appeal to her affections, I am sure; there was nothing of that. It was a question of intelligence. His head was to be bruised, which would suggest the spoiling of intelligence used against God. So that it was not a question of attractiveness; there was nothing in him to attract anyone’s affections. It was a deeper thing; his attack was an appeal to the intelligence. So the Lord’s supper is introduced in that way — there is the question of the Lord’s rights over us, and of the mystery. The apostle says, “I speak as to intelligent persons: do ye judge what I say”, (1 Corinthians 10:15). The enemy was seeking to spoil that through their misconduct, possibly even in the assembly meeting at Corinth. What a disgrace! And how jubilant the enemy would be to occasion that disgrace as spoiling that which is most precious to Christ! How Satan would think of the Lord’s words to Paul, “I have much people in this city” (Acts 18:10). And he would say, I am spoiling that!
So the serpent asks, “Is it even so that God has said ... ?” (Genesis 3:1). He raises the question of the restriction put on Adam and Eve in regard to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is a question of the knowledge of good and evil; that is the point he was making. Knowledge is a very attractive thing; learning is a very attractive thing; and it causes pride. I do not know of anything that promotes pride more than education; not that it is not needed, in a sense, but it is a subtle thing, and the enemy is using it to cause pride in our hearts. Eve listened to him. Now if she had been simple — and if we are simple in the same sense — a deaf ear would be turned to that sort of attack. She would have said. Why should I listen to that creature? There is nothing about him to attract me. Why listen to him? He was raising the question of knowledge; for he had in mind to shut God out of Eve’s thoughts, as her descendants,
later “did not think good to have God in their knowledge”, (Romans 1:28). Had she been simple, Eve would have said, I will call my husband, but there was not a word about that. Now, dear brethren, something of this kind may arise with us, we will say; something appealing to our intelligence, as in the suggestion: “Ye will be as God”, (Genesis 3:5). It suggests that intelligence makes us great. That is the key to the inflation of this present world: “Ye will be as God”. But if the woman had been marked by simplicity as to her position in the recognition of her husband, she might have said to the serpent: There is my husband; he existed before me, and surely I ought to ask him about this matter. But, no! And this is the point to see, dear brethren: it is the tendency to take things on and to listen to things that are said, leaving the Lord out of the whole matter. Is there anything I can afford to go on with, and leave Him out? I do not think so. Simplicity as to Christ would say, All wisdom is there in Him; why not consult Him? Adam was the woman’s head. Paul says, “Adam was not deceived; but the woman, having been deceived, was in transgression”, (1 Timothy 2:14). The woman was deceived; it was because she was not simple, in that sense. Why did she not refer to Adam? Why not bring him in? When the angel came and told the wife of Manoah a certain thing, she immediately told her husband; and Manoah prayed that the angel should come again, and the next time he came, she brought her husband. That is the idea; she was not corrupted from “simplicity as to the Christ”. But Eve was.
So, dear brethren, this is the safeguard. If we are to avoid corruption from simplicity as to the Christ, let us not listen to anything or take anything on without consulting Him. Let us see what He thinks about it. The Corinthians were moving without Him; they thought they knew better, indeed! How [p. 513] often things come up which remind us of that! People think they know better than the Lord, but they do not. Simplicity as to the Christ means that I recognize Him as Head; it is simply a question of “holding fast the head”. (Colossians 2:19). It is a question of seeing that all wisdom is in Christ, positively; indeed, He is called “God’s wisdom”, (1 Corinthians 1:24). Let us see to it that we take on nothing without Him, and we will shut out the serpent. He is foiled as we adhere to the simplicity of our position. It is a covenant, I might say; it is a question of consistency, but also of simplicity as to the Christ, and thus o defeating the wicked one who would spoil us for the purpose for which the Lord has taken us on.
Now I want to show, briefly, how this works out from Romans where we get the fundamental principles of our whole position: “If Christ be in you”, says the apostle, “the body is dead on account of sin”. One can understand a saint at Rome who had been a votary of the emperor being struck by that verse, for the Roman emperors were idolized and deified, and would become attractive to the citizens of Rome, as great men are today. Next to national feeling and the like, one hardly knows of anything more attractive and besetting to people’s minds than a hero; you may hardly realize that some person of this kind is carrying you away. Well, the apostle is writing to the saints at Rome, and he says, “If Christ be in you ... .”. He had said much before which led up to this verse. And now he is developing the truth about the Spirit; indeed, this chapter is mainly about the Spirit. You will find that the Spirit is mentioned here perhaps more than in any other chapter in the Bible; and it is because of the instruction needed as to the Spirit. And the apostle brings in this expression, which is not a characteristically Roman truth; it is rather a Colossian truth: “If Christ be in you ... .”. It is a hypothetical statement — and if that be true, “the body is dead on account of sin”. That is a remarkable thing! It means that the serpent cannot get at you through your body, the body being viewed as the vehicle of sin here: “the body is dead on account of sin”; or, we might say, on account of the working out of sin. Well, surely there is more to be said as to the Christian than that; so the verse goes on, “but the Spirit life on account of righteousness” . Now one can understand how this scripture and our passage in 2 Corinthians 11 run together. How effectively the serpent would be shut out if the body were dead. And so, as I was saying, the woman should have said to the serpent: Adam is near, and I will consult him in this matter. But, no! she saw “that the tree was good for food, and that it was a pleasure for the eyes, and the tree was to be desired to give intelligence” (Genesis 3:6). That was as far as she could see; but how can one see aright while under the influence of the serpent? Things will look very different under that influence. The district of Sodom was like the garden of the Lord to the eyes of Lot, but not to the eyes of Abraham. How differently things look when you are under the influence of the serpent! Had the woman gone to her husband, she might have changed her mind; she might have said, This is a peculiar influence under which I have been; it would shut out my husband; it wants me to think without him. Had she gone to Adam she might have been saved, but she did not. She partook of the fruit of the tree, and gave to him, and he partook of it. She came under the influence of the serpent and, evidently, Adam came under hers. It is the terribleness of bad influence, and none could be worse than that of the serpent.
Now, if the body is dead, that is the end of the serpent’s power over the body; he works through the flesh, through its lusts, and pride, and all that;
but the secret is: “If Christ be in you ...”. Had Adam been in Eve, in that sense; had he been “the hidden man of the heart”, she would have consulted him; but, no, she went on by herself. She brought him under the nefarious influence of the serpent, and there he was; and there we are! “By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death; and thus death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned”, (Romans 5:12). There it is! But Romans is the recovery epistle, and so we read, “If Christ be in you” — that is the test. Has Christ come into you in such a way as to fill your mind and your affections? Then the body is dead; that is, in relation to sin. Whether this be a potential matter, whether you have come to it in your mind, or whether it is actually worked out in you, makes no difference from the point of view from which I am speaking. That is the legitimate result of Christ being in us; therefore how important to see that it is Christ, and not simply doctrine! Christianity is Christ in that sense, brought to us in the gospel, and getting a place in our hearts, so that He is in us. “The body is dead”: that is, it has ceased to respond to the influences of the devil; the flesh is not allowed to act lest there should be sin. The Spirit takes the place of that; the believer is “not in flesh but in Spirit” (Romans 8:9). The body is viewed here as representing the lusts, as having been the vehicle of the flesh; we have to understand it in its context. In chapter 12 the same body is presented as a living sacrifice but here it is viewed as dead. It can only be a living sacrifice in the sense of the Spirit being in it, and the flesh negated; so the Spirit is life on account of righteousness. What a change this would effect in a Roman citizen who might have been full of love for the emperor, and for the empire! Now he is full of Christ, the body is dead on account of sin, and the Spirit in him is life in view of righteousness. So that he moves about [p. 516] the city of Rome as a vessel of righteousness. What a triumph, dear brethren! Surely it was not written for their sake only, but for the saints at any time, and for ours, so that we might be moving about as vessels of righteousness, the Spirit being life in view of righteousness. How it recalls Christ: “If ye know that he is righteous, know that every one who practises righteousness is begotten of him”, (1 John 2:29).
I want to show now from John 4 how Christ came into the woman spoken of there. She had had five husbands! That is her history, and the one she then had was not her husband. You can see how far away she was from the idea of being espoused to one man, a chaste virgin to Christ. Could anyone be further away? And yet she is only a picture of any or all of us. How far away we are naturally from the divine idea! And yet the gospel proposes to bring us to it in spite of the terrible obstacles. This woman comes to this. She had come out to the well with her water-pot, intending to fill it and carry it back to the city, but she left it and went back to the city without it. Why did she leave her water-pot? She was teachable, spiritually; she had taken in spiritual thoughts. Dear brethren, we shall never reach the idea of spiritual ministry unless we begin to take in spiritual thoughts. The chapter is full of spiritual thoughts. The Lord set out to impart to that woman spiritual thoughts, to give her spiritual ability. He presented spiritual things to her, and did not hesitate to bring before her the greatest spiritual thoughts, going so far as to say to her, “God is a spirit”. That is the foundation of what He was talking about; He wanted to lead her on spiritual lines. If she is to have to do with God she must be spiritual. In truth it is a question of teaching, and the root of the teaching is in chapter 3 where the new birth is spoken of by the Lord: “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (verse 6). It is not a spirit,
[p. 517] but spirit; it is the character of the thing. It is not that another spirit is imparted to the person, but “that which is born ... is spirit”. It is that character of things, and it is fundamental in that sense; so that the Lord’s words to the woman, that “God is a spirit”, would be in keeping with that.
And now, we may say that the woman shows that she had not been listening for naught, and that is important in these matters. If we are not taking in spiritual things, we are not profiting by them. She was now beginning to be spiritual in her thoughts; a great change had come about in her. She left her water-pot — that is the token that this woman had been listening spiritually — and went away into the city. She had become the water-pot herself; that is the lesson. She was carrying water to the city such as she had never taken there before, nor could have carried before. She was the vessel herself. And when she went to the city, she went to the men! I want to bring out, from that, that her body was “dead on account of sin”. Christ was in her! She says, “Come, see a man who told me all things I had ever done: is not he the Christ?”. It is a matter of intelligence; she is not yet speaking of Christ’s attractiveness or His loveliness as we get in the Song of Songs; it is a question of how He appealed to her intelligence. What I am speaking of is most important. If persons can be secured spiritually, through their intelligence, they can know how to triumph over any attempt of the serpent to divert them from Christ; they have an answer for him. Indeed, they do not need to answer him; they turn away from him, as discerning the voice of their Saviour and Shepherd. It says, “The woman ... went away into the city, and says to the men ...”. That is not for nothing; it is mentioned with the greatest care by the Spirit of God; she says, “Come, see a man who told me all things I had ever done: is not he the Christ?”.
[p. 518] It becomes a matter for the men to decide; and it is a matter for your intelligence; your conscience, of course, as having been touched by a Man who can tell you all things you have ever done! Where can you get the like? As said the man in John 9:33 “If this man were not of God he could do nothing”. It is spiritual logic, I may say. She says, “Come, see a man”, but she does not end there — “who told me all things I had ever done”. The men are not influencing her now — her body is dead. They would have influenced her earlier, but not now. Christ is influencing her; Christ is in her! She is full of a Man who can tell her all things she had ever done. Surely, she would say. He is the Christ, but it is for you to see for yourselves. And they went off to see the Lord Jesus.
Finally, Peter uses a remarkable phrase: “the hidden man of the heart”. He is speaking of marital life, but he is also speaking of adornment in the wives. The adornment of women is a matter of great importance to the commercial world; if it did not have that to reckon on there would be great loss. Peter is speaking about adornment, and he tells the wives the things that are not to be their adornment: “Whose adorning let it not be that outward one of tressing of the hair, and wearing gold, or putting on apparel”. He says, “Let it not be that”, and then he uses this phrase: “but the hidden man of the heart”. What did the apostle have in his mind in speaking of “the hidden man of the heart”? He is not speaking of a person, but expressing a characteristic thought. As I apprehend it, it is a man in the sense of the new man, not a person, but a characteristic thought. And do I understand what is hidden in that way? What is the hidden man of my heart? It surely is a conception, dear brethren, but not so much the idea of a person, although it must work back to Christ. It must direct the mind to the Lord [p. 519] Jesus. He is the hidden Man, undoubtedly, but it is to be manifested. You cannot see this “hidden man” in the adornment of the world. He is in the hearts of Christians. True Christians normally have something in reserve, something secret, and they are thinking of that all the time. Whatever they put on, they are thinking of that.
Now, to show that it is a question of character or of a quality, the apostle goes on to say, “For thus also the holy women who have hoped in God heretofore adorned themselves, being subject to their own husbands; as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord” (1 Peter 3:5,6). That is the idea. It is well when we get a concrete example of what is in mind. This adornment refers to what is hidden, “the hidden man of the heart”. The idea should have begun with Eve, and should have come right down. Thank God, it found some expression in Sarah, a holy woman. She adorned herself in this way; she was one of those of whom the apostle tells us that they were in subjection. If we speak of this in a wider sense, what is it but the assembly as having a conception of a Man hidden in her heart? And all that is external must flow from that! And the fundamental thought in that is subjection. “The assembly is subjected to the Christ”, (Ephesians 5:24). It is not simply ‘subject’, but God has placed everything in subjection to Christ. It is not a question of our taking a position, but of our being placed in that position. The assembly is placed in subjection to Christ, and any move away from that position is lawlessness; because it is the place of the assembly; it is the place of wives in relation to their husbands; and any disregard of that is lawlessness. The apostle Peter can call upon one of old; he can bring her forward as a concrete case, a woman who had that kind of adornment in them hidden man of the heart. She was marked by calling her husband lord.
[p. 520] Well, dear brethren, I do not know if I have made as plain as I would wish, what this “hidden man” is, but I think the key lies in this word ‘hidden’. It is a question of determination inwardly as to quality. “The hidden man” is an expression covering both man and woman, as in “Let us make man in our image ...” (Genesis 1:26). That word ‘man’ covered both man and woman. It is a question of laying hold of qualities as seen in Christ, and of their coming out in us. That is the idea of adornment, and it works out in subjection, and we have this case brought forward of a holy, godly woman who illustrates it in her subjection, calling her husband lord.
That is what I had to suggest to you, and I commit it all to the Lord that through it He might have a greater place in our hearts, that His qualities may come out in adornment in us here below as loving Him.