DIGNITY

^[p. 305] DIGNITY

1 Corinthians 12:12,13; Exodus 40:9 - 16

I have in mind to occupy you, dear brethren, with the dignity that is divinely intended for us, specially viewed in a collective way. These epistles, that is 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, dealing with the saints in a collective sense, introduce this thought of dignity. This first epistle introduces it, and also the next one, that is under the thought of anointing. The expression here in verse 12, “the Christ”, alludes to the saints as most of us will be aware. The context shows that; the context shows that it is a question of the saints viewed organically. That is the figure, being the human body in its members. That could not represent Christ personally; it is a question of the saints viewed as His body. The second letter actually uses the word ‘anointed’. This in the first epistle, is more abstract; in the second letter their state had improved and accordingly the apostle by the Spirit is able to speak more concretely. Hence he says that “He that establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, is God” (2 Corinthians 1:21). The saints in Corinth are linked on with the apostle and with christians generally in that statement: first in regard of the Spirit as anointing; the second as sealing; and the third as the earnest. In this way, dear brethren, the saints would be dignified. They would be dignified by the apprehension of the Spirit upon them, for that is the idea of anointing. The question should arise as to our public appearance, what is upon us. We read elsewhere of the Spirit of glory and of God resting upon us. What dignity that is! No great personage on earth can confer anything at all to be compared with that. And then in relation to that, the sealing, namely that I belong ^[p. 306] to God. Let no one claim me; that is the language of one who understands the sealing. Let no one put a badge of ownership upon me; let no one endeavour to honour me by any public symbol. God has put His seal on the christian. He is worthy of Him. God would not put His seal on what is valueless. These epistles stress the value of a saint, and if God seals us it is as of some value, a value of course because of what one costs but also because of what one is, that is, what one is as the work of God. “He that establishes us with you”, says the apostle, “in Christ, and has anointed us, is God, who also has sealed us” (2 Corinthians 1:21,22). How the apostle moved about as the property of God! Heaven looked down upon him as he moved; every step of the apostle, we may say, viewed in that way was of interest to heaven. He was God’s, “whose I am”, he says, “and whom I serve” (Acts 27:23). What dignity is in that! And then his enjoyment — what enjoyment such a one has! The enjoyment lies in the earnest of the Spirit. The earnest is not all, but it is much. It is enough to satisfy and make the believer thus an influence for good, a possessor of buoyancy. That is what the earnest does, the earnest of the Spirit. He continually brings in, beloved, thoughts of God into the heart; constant freshness marks the activities of the Spirit as in the believer. He makes good as the earnest, He gives us to taste in a very real way what God has in mind for us, what God is, which is the greatest thing of all.

It is well surely to bring in what Christ is before God, but let us never forget, beloved, what God is. Christ is God, of course, but God has maintained His own majesty and supremacy, what is proper to Deity always, and He looks for His people to know something about that. He looks for His people to have in mind what He is, what He is Himself that He dwells in light unapproachable, that He is the King of the ages, immortal, invisible. He expects us to think of Him ^[p. 307] in that way. He gives us to understand that we cannot compass Him, but He expects us to have Him before us in that way, and the Spirit which is the earnest will not fail to keep Him before us in that way, to accustom us to Him, so that as the Son is subject to Him who has subjected all things to Him, God will be all in all. The ‘in’ there is a very powerful thought. It is not merely an idea of God, it is God in power in a Person and in all things. The Holy Spirit, dear brethren, will not fail to occupy us with God in that way.

So that in this second epistle Paul says, If I think of God, I am beside myself. He is sober for the sake of the saints, but he would be beside himself to be free of all encumbrances, to be free of all blinding or darkening thoughts, to be with God. Jesus had led the way in that, dear brethren. The Scripture furnishes us with enough to indicate how much time the Lord Jesus personally spent with God, how He spent His nights on the mount of Olives. But I am speaking now of the earnest, how it tends to make the saints buoyant spiritually, and in this way a testimony to what God is.

Now this verse in chapter 12 of the first letter has in mind what we are, viewed as the body of Christ. “So also is the Christ”. That is, as you might say, the anointed vessel, the saints viewed here in testimony, for that is the thought — that there is to be a representation of Christ here — “So also is the Christ”. A very remarkable term to use as designating the saints, but with great dignity that we might be equal to the expression of Him here in testimony.

I want to show, dear brethren, from the Old Testament, how this is worked out in detail, and I would first remark on the anointing oil. It is the anointing oil, it says. It does not typify the Spirit merely or only as a divine Person here. He is here as a divine Person, another Comforter, as Jesus says ^[p. 308] of Him. As such He is begged of the Father; the Lord graciously intimated to us how He would humble Himself in asking for this great gift. “If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will beg the Father, and he will give you another Comforter” (John 14:15,16). But then Jesus received Him, dear brethren, from the Father in heaven. He was anointed by Him on earth, but as in heaven He received Him, Peter says in Acts 2:33. He received of the Father the promise of the Spirit and shed Him forth.

Now I wish to dwell on this for a moment, so that we may have before us what the anointing means, how the Spirit is presented in it. It is the Spirit of a suffering Christ; that is the anointing — a glorified Christ, but a suffering Christ. The list of ingredients is headed by myrrh in Exodus, and I believe, dear brethren, that is what is in mind in the Acts, in the Lord, as we are told, presenting Himself living after He suffered. We have to understand Christ before He suffered: the most touching words came from His lips; no words can exceed them in feeling, in affection. It is not only with what Matthew and Mark and Luke furnish us, for they furnish us with very little of what transpired at the Supper in the last parting word, but John furnishes us with much more, and what he furnishes us with, beloved, is calculated to affect our hearts. They are the words of the Christ about to suffer. We have to remember that. The Holy Spirit alone can bring to us today the feelings of Christ before He suffered. Nothing that came out in Christ could fall to the ground. Everything is gathered up by the Spirit; He has the treasures. He it is too who searches the depths of God, we are told. How He understood perfectly all that came out in Christ here on earth! Not one item, not one word is lost, not a feeling either. All that Christ was here was pure gold indeed, carried forward to enrich the ^[p. 309] assembly, and is here still. It is here in the Spirit. His feelings before He suffered are here, but then there is what He was after He suffered. Those hands, as it were, could receive the Spirit from the Father and shed Him forth. Ah, the suffering hands of Christ! suffering no more, but still “after he had suffered” would convey the feelings, beloved, proper to the assembly. And the anointing carries those feelings, and dignifies us with them so that we are a suffering people here, we are representative of Christ. But the Christ must suffer was the word, and so it is now, if we are the Christ in that sense we must suffer.

As soon as David was anointed the Philistines sought him; they would attack him. As Christ was anointed, Satan attacked Him, and so as the saints were anointed in the Acts they were attacked, and wherever the anointing is there will be an attack; there will be suffering, but in such suffering there is dignity. How one might, were there time, go into the furnished examples of dignity in suffering! “When he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2:23). That is the dignity of the spirit of suffering, and that Spirit, beloved, is the anointing.

There are other ingredients too in Exodus, but I speak of the myrrh. The ingredients are to bring out, not the Spirit viewed as a divine Person abstractly, but what He is as here sent down by Christ, by which we are anointed. So that they were together, we are told, at Pentecost in one place. They were all together; they were together with one accord, too, in one place. They were according to Christ, and the Spirit came upon them from His suffering hands, as I may say, on high, to dignify, to characterise them here unitedly and individually. It is most exhilarating spiritually to go through the Acts, and see how this spirit worked out. What a testimony there was, first in the twelve and then in the saints ^[p. 310] generally, then in Paul and those who were with him, and it has come right down and it is what I have before me now, that we might have it in mind in these last days, a representation of Christ in a collective way in some sense, in some little way, but including this feature of suffering, unity, of course, grace and power too in testimony, but dignity in suffering, in being belittled for Christ’s sake.

Now what you will see in the passage I read in Exodus 40 is that Moses is directed by the Lord, by Jehovah, to take the oil. He says, “Thou shalt take the anointing oil”. You see how what I have been saying enters into this. “And anoint the tabernacle, and all that is therein, and shalt hallow it, and all the vessels thereof: and it shall be holy. And thou shalt anoint the altar of the burnt offering, and all his vessels, and sanctify the altar: and it shall be an altar most holy. And thou shalt anoint the laver and his foot, and sanctify it”. Now, dear brethren, I want just to say as to this part of the passage that the saints are in mind. The reading of this latter half of Exodus fills the mind if it is instructed as to what the types mean, it fills the mind with the saints; it fills the mind with Christ, of course. That is what is in the mind of God, Christ, but the saints also. And so these parts of the tabernacle are gone over, gone over, gone over. Why these repetitions? Just, beloved, because God is so pleased with the saints, so pleased with Christ, so pleased with the saints in relation to Christ that He loves to go over the ground. From chapter 25 onwards you have the raw material, as I might say, first. Then the pattern of the tabernacle in its parts; then again, we have after the second giving of the law, the people called upon to furnish the material, and they do, and again we have the list. And then we have the vessels employed in wisdom to make; “and he made”, “and he made”, “and he made”. The ^[p. 311] Spirit of God loves to go over the ground. How it should affect us as we come to see that He is going over the ground of ourselves, looking into our countenances, taking account of us according to what our names signify according to Christ. That is what it is, what the saints are to God, what Christ is to God, of course; what the saints are to God, what I am to God, what you are to God, and how He loves to go over, as it were, the saints according to their names, all written in heaven as the Lord says. ‘Do not rejoice’, He says, ‘in the results of your work, but rejoice in this, that your names are written in heaven’, and having said this He rejoices Himself in spirit, and later He turns to the disciples, ‘You are the ones’. He says, “Blessed are your eyes” (Matthew 13:16). That is how God regards the eyes of a saint; they are blessed. That is how He regards us. It is a question of the value of the saints, dear brethren. He says from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight” (Matthew 3:17). It does not say “all” there, notice. He leaves room for us. God leaves room for us; He carefully chooses these words. “All” His delight includes ourselves. Exodus implies that the saints are the centre. There would be no Exodus without the saints; there would be no Exodus without Christ, of course; there can be no heavens without Christ, of course, but there could be no assembly without the saints; there can be no heaven according to God without the saints.

That is what is in mind, and so you get the ground so covered here; and then as all the parts are made they are brought to Moses one by one, and they are all made exactly according to the divine command; Moses thought they were very good, and they were. And it says Moses blessed them. How the Lord, the true Moses, would convey to us His pleasure in us as we are taken account of with His vigilant eye as the workmanship of the Spirit, and how He would ^[p. 312] bless us, as the Lord did as He ascended! He lifted up His hands and blessed them. Moses blessed them, and then as I said, he is directed to anoint them. This is Christ in heaven. He blessed them with His outstretched hands, and He went up, and the Holy Spirit comes down. That is the antitype of the verses I read, where you have the tabernacle, that is to say, the saints viewed as together, viewed, as I might say, organically. That is what is in mind. Oh, how essential it is that we should hold to this unity, the unity of organism, not of organisation, but of organism; the vital links that are there, dear brethren, that is what is in mind. So that as we sit down in assembly this is held. It is held intelligently; we hold ourselves in relation to one another, as one bread, one body. Heaven knows that; heaven is pleased with that; and then there is the power of the anointing. There is the light governing the position, but there is the power, there is the anointing governing the position, so that the saints are together, not only as a matter of light, but as a matter of feeling, as a matter of conscious relation with one another in love. One would ask the brethren, Are the saints becoming increasingly delightful to you? If they are, you are growing; if they are not, you are not growing. It is an excellent test, What are the saints to you? What are the saints to heaven? The book of Exodus shows us. What are the saints to me? Moses says about Jehovah that He loved the peoples. He loved the tribes. Shall I be behind that? It is a test as to where I am spiritually. Why? The test is how much I think of the brethren. It is the measure of my thoughts about God. I do not love God one bit more than I love the brethren. That is what is in mind, and it is a test as to what I am thinking of the brethren.

I have spoken of how essential they are to God, but then they are beautiful, each one of them, and ^[p. 313] as I advance in the truth I see their beauty more and more, and I love them more and more, and serving them is much easier than it used to be. The more you love the saints the less onerous and irksome it is to serve them.

So that as I said, these verses I have just read now refer to the saints; they refer to Christ too. We have what is inside; the ark of the covenant refers to Christ, the altar refers to Christ, anointed as we are told elsewhere, seven times, so that Christ has His pre-eminence in all this. Then Aaron is a type of Christ too; according to Leviticus he is anointed by himself. There again Christ must in all things have the pre-eminence, but, making due allowance for that, we may speak of the saints as delightful to heaven, and essential. So in the second part Aaron is brought in, as you observe. “Thou shalt bring Aaron and his sons unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and wash them with water. And thou shalt put upon Aaron the holy garments, and anoint him, and sanctify him; that he may minister unto me in the priest’s office. And thou shalt bring his sons, and clothe them with coats: and thou shalt anoint them, as thou didst anoint their father, that they may minister unto me in the priest’s office: for their anointing shall surely be an everlasting priesthood throughout their generations”.

You can see, dear brethren, what I have said, and how true it is that you cannot omit the saints here as to the tabernacle itself or as to the priesthood. You must have Aaron’s sons to fill out the instructions. And then, what does that mean today? I have spoken of the saints gathered together in assembly; that is the idea of the early part of the passage, and one would seek to make one’s remarks converge on the saints as together in assembly. How pleasing to heaven they are, as they hold each other organically; first in mind is the matter of light and ^[p. 314] then in power. They have all been baptised in the power of one Spirit into one body, and we have all been given to drink of one Spirit. That is a very real thing, beloved, and it is intended to enter into the saints’ position as in assembly: so that we are not merely together theoretically or merely as a matter of light, but all as a matter of feeling, that I love the brethren. The Supper really means that it is for persons who not only love Christ but who love one another. Hence the full instruction that John records that we love one another, and that love, dear brethren, is in the Spirit. It is a question of the Spirit, first the baptism and then the drinking, so that there is satisfaction in what we drink together, for we have all been made to drink, it says, of one Spirit.

That is what I understand to be the early part of the passage I have read; then the latter part alludes to the same persons, only functioning in service. The same persons — first it is a question of their relation to one another, what the saints are to me, whether I fit in relation to them feelingly, and then secondly as in this holy feeling to move in service. Christ moves, the High Priest moves. He is the first here. His pre-eminence is seen. What I am saying, dear brethren, is very important in regard of our assembly meetings. That is, that I sit down with the brethren, not merely in understanding, but I sit down with them as loving them. I look around on them — I do not mean literally, but it is right to look round on the saints. The Lord looks around on them. It says He turned towards them. Heaven looks around on them, as sitting there. What I am seeking to make clear is what the saints are organically, what we are as in relation to one another as in the bread, and what there is for God in that. The holy anointing oil is put on by Moses, by Christ. They are fit to be anointed, and then there is the service, priestly service. That is the next thing.

^[p. 315] You must have the tabernacle for the service, and the tabernacle alludes to the saints in relation to one another as anointed (even if they do not speak, it is there), in relation to one another inwardly, outwardly too, as together in one place, but inwardly, and then the service. You have now conditions for service and hence Aaron, that is Christ as Priest, moves now. He moves now; he is in relation to his sons. We must not isolate Aaron here; he is in relation to his sons. Christ moves according to the position whatever it may be in His perfect wisdom. We must give Him His place: and then Aaron’s sons are brought in. They are clothed and anointed; according to Leviticus their garments were anointed, the tokens of their dignity, I apprehend. All that is of God, whatever is there of God, is anointed, and it is to be active in the power of the anointing, which means the exclusion of the fleshly mind. That is what it means; there is no room for that in the assembly; so that we have the blessed service of the Lord, and His own brought into it in the power of the anointing.

Well, dear brethren, that is what I had to put before you. One could say much more as to this, as to how this service proceeds, for when we come to Leviticus, in chapters 1 to 7 the offerers are in mind before the priesthood is brought in and anointed; meaning that in drawing together, dear brethren, we draw together each with an offering; that is, each has got something. Then there is room for the priest in chapter 8 of Leviticus, so that what I have in mind would lead up to assembly service in the fullest sense, what we are in assembly as under the direction and leadership, according to Hebrews, of the Minister of the sanctuary, of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man. That is what God has in mind, and you can see how essential, dear brethren, it is to have before us the idea of dignity, which can only be by the Spirit of God.