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MANHOOD IN CORINTHIANS

^[p. 285] MANHOOD IN CORINTHIANS

1 Corinthians 3: 1 - 3; 1 Corinthians 14: 20; 1 Corinthians 16: 13, 14; 2 Corinthians 12: 2 - 4

I wish to speak this evening about manhood as seen in these two epistles. What is stressed in the first epistle under this head is manhood in the sense of growth, full growth; what is stressed in the next is manhood as an order of being in a certain relation, that is in Christ. Manhood is spoken of in both epistles in the sense of an order of being who is fallen and carnal, reprobate. That I am not intending to speak on, only it is well to keep it in mind. If it be alluded to as in this first epistle, it is to remind christians who are carnal that they are like reprobate man in conduct, that is, not absolutely so, but particularly in the sense of partisanship. Nothing is more prevalent among men as fallen than partisanship, arising out of personal preferences or national circumstances and environment such as national feeling. The race is peculiarly marked by this, and it is to the discredit of christians to be in any way marked by it. That is how the matter stands in the first epistle, but what I have in mind is to speak about men as according to God, first as in the first epistle in the sense of full growth, and secondly in the second epistle as an order of being in a certain position, that is, a man in Christ.

Under both headings the idea is not that of a male as we speak of it, or even a husband, but it is the matter of growth including man and woman, both are included under the same head; and secondly, that in the use of the word man in Christ, it is simply that order of being inclusive of male and female, only that spiritually the female is dropped, for in Christ there is neither male nor female. The idea of sex is dropped,

^[p. 286] indeed sex is provisional; as we understand it, it is a provisional matter, and not primary or eternal. The idea indeed takes form in Christ and the assembly, but it is understood that it is on a far higher level than the idea of sex we are accustomed to; it is finally attributable only to Christ and the assembly. I make these remarks so that our minds may not be confused, that it may not be thought that what I am speaking of refers simply to brothers. What I have in mind is the saints — firstly the idea of manhood expressed in growth; and secondly, the idea of an order of being — as over against angels, for instance, in Christ.

Now this matter of full growth is the main thought in one’s mind, and the main thought in the apostle’s, too. Without it christianity in its practical setting in the wilderness would mean it may have the name, but as embodying what is according to God it is impossible; and hence the great importance of understanding what is meant and conforming to what is meant. So in the first scripture in chapter 3, what appears is not only the evil of an unspiritual state, a carnal state indeed as it is spoken of, but what it deprives us of. It is very restrictive, as indeed the idea of a babe is naturally and necessarily very restrictive, and so spiritually. This is what the apostle has in mind in the first scripture I have read. He had great things for the Corinthians, even what he speaks of in the second letter, the fourth passage I read was in his mind. He had that in his heart at the time and much more, but he was compelled to hold it back because of the unspiritual state at Corinth. It was no satisfaction to him. It proves, however, what a vessel he was, and what power he had, and what control he had over himself. No one can serve Christ save as having dignified control over himself, that is, he rules himself as we get in Romans, “With the mind I myself serve the law of God”, Romans 7: 25. He acquires that in his own experience; he has got ^[p. 287] control. It is quite obvious that there must be the spirit of control in us. It is visible everywhere in creation; creation could not subsist a moment without the principle of control. It is lost in man. Man lost control over himself for he came under the power of the devil. Christianity enables us (or rather the gospel received into our hearts enables us) to regain control over ourselves. We are told that a man who rules his own spirit is better than he who takes a city, and the gospel teaches us to rule our own spirits, to acquire perfect control of ourselves, indeed self-control is one of the fruits of the Spirit.

Romans 5 is the instruction to this end for christians, so that the writer having worked out the great analysis, in chapter 7 reaches the point where he says, “I myself serve the law of God” — I myself. It is not the legislatures of the world, the police, or the armies, or navies of the world which accomplish this in men, it is the power of the Spirit of God. One arrives at the point where it is “I myself”. The speaker has gained his feet responsibly here before God, and serves God’s law; that is his determination and the Spirit of God enables him to do it. Now that works out in a marked way in Paul and his ministry. He had perfect control, holding back what he saw would be unavailing in speaking to the Corinthians. He says, “I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual”, not ‘I would not’ but “I could not”. It was a moral impossibility for him, and in order to be able to say that, he had to have perfect control. Though full of the most holy and spiritual matter, bursting, you might say, like Elihu, he has control, and he deliberately holds back things from the Corinthians, so that they were deprived of the most precious instruction in ministry because of a dwarfed condition, a babe condition. They were not unchristianised by that, thank God, because he says they were babes in Christ. They had the same status ^[p. 288] as a man in Christ, only they were babes instead of being men. Babyhood in Christ is incongruous, and it cannot answer to the mind of God. It was never God’s thought at all as a fixed thing; it is only in generation and not in creation. Adam was not a babe, neither was Eve. “In the image of God created he him” — that is man. “Male and female created he them”, Genesis 1: 27. Created they were in full growth, and a perfect delight to God in so far as it could be at that time, pointing on to Christ, of course in the distance, but even as creatures they ministered to God; they were the highest order of being in creation. So that the first babe we have in Scripture is Cain, and he is not called a babe. I do not suppose the word was in the vocabulary of man when Cain was born; he is called a man. Eve says, “I have acquired a man with Jehovah”, Genesis 4: 1. She had no other thought evidently; potentially a babe is a man and that was what was in her mind.

“I have acquired a man with Jehovah”. She is the first person to say “Jehovah” according to Scripture, and she uses that term, that appellation of God, to show that by His help she had acquired a man. Therefore, as I said, the babe thought is still future in the human vocabulary; properly the divine thought is man spiritually, so that the Lord says of birth that a woman remembers “no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world”, John 16: 21. Nor has God any other thought for a babe, even physically, than that, if he is born into a christian household, for He provides in the food for families the same measure of manna for the child as for the father, and it is important to see that; it is as if God said that the babe is just a man in a few years’ time.

In the mind of God it is manhood, and especially in a spiritual sense; that is, a converted person, one who has received the gospel, is evidencing he is born ^[p. 289] anew in that way, is in the divine mind a man; he is potentially a man. If he does not reach that it is the work of the devil, nothing less. The devil is working to thwart the mind of God, and that is exactly what happened at Corinth through what he brought in. Through his efforts many of the converts were apparently being dwarfed, instead of being marked by the beautiful growth that God intended, the beautiful manhood He intended and had delight in. It is said even of Jesus the blessed Son of God as become Man that He grew and “increased ... in favour with God and man”, Luke 2:52. How delightful that growth was! He grew up before Jehovah “as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground”, Isaiah 53:2. Every moment of that growth was delightful to the divine eye, and as the age of manhood was reached, heaven opened upon Him. The perfect Ideal of heaven was there, and God addressed Him as His beloved Son. “Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight”, (Luke 3: 22), and the Holy Spirit descended at the same time. What a moment that was for God, dear brethren, for heaven, too! He waited until the full age had been reached. It is not a question of the Lord’s Person; what He is as Son is inscrutable, “no one knows the Son but the Father”, Matthew 11: 27. No one knows it, nor is it said to be revealed.

He has revealed the Father. “No one knows the Son but the Father”. It is inscrutable, the nature of His existence in the Deity. His personal relations as become Man are utterly beyond our ken. No one knows Him but the Father. There are those who pretend to know He was Son before He came in incarnation. They introduce that into the Scripture, but it is introduced into Scripture by the human mind, not by the Spirit of God. The Son is addressed from heaven, “Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight”.

^[p. 290] The whole of the first chapter of John, which is the great chapter relative to the Lord’s Person, is a beautiful combination of light and divine life all centring in that Person, and the first mention of sonship is as “an only-begotten with a father”. He is seen by men. “We contemplated his glory”, we are told; that is, the apostles did, His disciples did, “as of an only-begotten with a father”, not ‘the’ Father, but “a” father. It is descriptive. They saw a beautiful halo of glory, the glory as of an only-begotten with a father, it was seen by men. That is the first mention we get of it. Those who put it in earlier do so at their own risk, and will have to say to God about that; they presume to know better than the Spirit of God. And then we are told, “No one has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”, John 1: 18. It is who “is in” not ‘was in’ the bosom of the Father, that is, it is the present place of Christ as Man that is alluded to. He is in the place of love. He came “into” it according to the preposition used, not that He was not delightful personally, but He came into that position. Heaven owned Him in that position as the object of supreme love, the love of the Father. He is in the bosom of the Father — it is a well-known idea. “In that day”, says the Lord, “ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you”, John 14: 20. It is the place we have in the Lord’s affections and the place He has in the Father’s affections. It is that One who declared God, dear brethren. I only refer to that casually in relation to manhood, how that the Lord growing up came into that. He was in it abstractly of course in an inscrutable sense always, but it is a question of God’s ways, God’s dealings, and the testimony and how it works out, so He is not declared openly from heaven to be the Son, until He reaches the full age of manhood. He “was beginning to be about thirty years old” (Luke 3: 23) — “was beginning to be”. So that we have the thought, as I said, of growth, and manhood owned as delightful to God in the growth, and at the same time God’s Son — “Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have found my delight”, and it is that Son in the Father’s bosom who declares God. “He hath declared him”, we are told.

Well, now I say all that, dear brethren, to enlarge on what I am speaking of in 1 Corinthians, that the want of development and growth in the sense Scripture speaks of it in this epistle, the absence of that deprives us of the most precious things — things we really cannot afford to be deprived of. The apostle could not speak to them as unto spiritual but as unto babes in Christ. He could and did speak to them as babes in Christ. I quite admit they were young christians from the point of view of their conversion — they were not more than two years old — for he had been there eighteen months. He had not long left them when he wrote the epistle, but at the same time they had not grown like the Thessalonians the latter had grown much faster, and the apostle is able to speak more affectionately and less reproachfully to those young christians at Thessalonica. Here he says, in effect, ‘You are depriving yourselves of most precious things by not growing. You are only babes, whereas you should be full-grown men’, and the evidence he gives of this is very clear; and evidence ought to be furnished where accusation is implied. He says, “For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man?” 1 Corinthians 3: 3 - 5. This is the evidence that he furnishes. The epistles ^[p. 292] are full of evidence as proving certain allegations that he implies or charges directly, and here the evidence he brings forward of their unspirituality, of their babyhood instead of manhood, is that they were divided. There was emulation and there was strife among them, and they were following selected leaders as against other leaders. That is a common thing abroad. Christendom is full of it and therefore full of unmistakable evidence of this condition, and the fact is that our brethren in these denominations are simply excluding themselves from the most precious things. The Spirit of God is here charged with these things, freighted with them, and christians in these circumstances are excluding themselves from the benefits.

Well, now to go on to chapter 14 to show another restriction that lack of growth of this kind, babyhood, implies. The chapter, as you know, treats of ministry amongst the saints. The thought of it is very current, thank God, amongst certain of our brethren throughout the world, and refers to what we call ministry meetings. The term, of course, covers a meeting like this. It covers also a meeting of brethren to read the Scriptures in recognition of the temple of God, and particularly it covers a meeting of the whole assembly, as it says in this chapter, “come together in one place”, where two or three speak in a prophetic way. The chapter particularly stresses that kind of meeting and in the instruction relative to this kind of service, prophetic ministry, we have verse 20 introduced to show that the apostle had in his mind throughout the whole letter that there was a condition in Corinth that was hindering. It was not only evil but depriving the saints of the very best things God had for them; so he says in this verse in giving us the instruction I speak of, “Brethren, be not children in understanding”: but then he adds, “howbeit, in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men”. The word ^[p. 293] there is not the ordinary word for men, it is a word denoting growth applying to any person advanced in years, but here advanced spiritually, for mere years are nothing in themselves — nothing; it is years with God that count. Years of experience with God alone count in the christian. That is what he is alluding to, and he interjects this, as I said, into the information or instruction he is affording us in regard to these ministry meetings which, as I said before, cover every meeting of the saints for edification, whether readings, addresses, or a meeting for ministry where two or three may speak. This chapter covers all that, and this verse shows that the danger attaching to these meetings of hindering real edification lies in the want of full growth. That is the real difficulty, so he says, ‘Brethren, be men in your understanding, be not children in your understanding, be men’, that is, be of full growth in understanding. If there be any malice, and there should not be, be babes in that, never grow in that. It is most terrible to think of growth in malice, and yet it is possible. He says, The point is growth, but let it be in understanding for that is the point he is dealing with in this chapter — the question of understanding. He would rather speak five words with the understanding than ten thousand in an unknown tongue. What the instruction would show is that verse 20 would deal with anyone seeking to be distinguished by his part in such a meeting. That is, it is the babe condition to stand up and assume to speak to the Lord’s people with the thought of distinguishing oneself rather than distinguishing them. The idea is to distinguish the brethren whom you are serving. You are at the feet of the brethren, and you are to make the brethren greater; that is the idea, to make them more dignified and more efficient in the testimony. That is the idea behind all ministry, but the Corinthians were like babes. The apostle said to them in chapter 13,

“^[p. 294] when I became a man, I put away childish things” (verse 11). That is it — “put away childish things”. They were thinking of the gifts. For instance, if one had the gift of tongues, he could stand up and speak at length and people would say, ‘What a man that is!’ and yet the person praising him does not understand what he says. But you say, ‘That man is very distinguished, I would like to know and speak these things’. That is childish talk and yet it is just what the world of natural men would say. You go to college, to the universities, to acquire these things, because nothing distinguishes man or woman more than education. The devil knows it and uses it to this end, but it is child’s play spiritually. So the apostle is saying, ‘That is not the thing at all, understanding is the point’. He says, “I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also”, 1 Corinthians 14: 15. He does not refer there to the Holy Spirit, but to his own spirit and he is not governed by that; however free he may be, he is not going to minister because of that — he is under control. His mind is in control, in charge, and so if he gets up and speaks, he thinks of the saints, he is speaking as edifying the body of Christ and nothing else. That is a man.

Well now, I go on to the last chapter, because that is the standard he gives. He says in the verses read, “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong”. “Quit you” — that is, behave like men. It is spoken of persons acting, and the idea of acting is not foreign to Scripture. It is a good word.

The heavens and the earth act in concord, the divine theatre; the tabernacle was the representation of things in the heavens and on the earth. It is suggestive of the idea of the theatre, that God has a theatre into which He has come and in which He acts. What a glorious introduction of perfection in the incoming ^[p. 295] of Christ into manhood! He is the Christ of God here, to carry on the testimony of God in a perfect way, but He has a theatre for it, and now He has those called by the gospel, called saints. ‘Called’ is the meaning of the word at the beginning of this epistle. We have “called saints”, not called that by certain people, but called into a certain position. The Lord has called us as He called a little child and set him in the midst of the brethren. He called these Corinthians into a position — “of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption”,

1 Corinthians 1: 30. God has made Christ all these things to us. He has set us up in this way, and furnished us with everything necessary for the testimony. The Corinthians came behind in no gift, they were set up in this way and furnished to act in Corinth in the testimony of God. Well, that is the idea, the whole position, now how am I to act in this position?

“Quit yourselves like men, be strong”. Let your actings, your behaviour, your service, your incomings and outgoings be like men — not like babes, but like men. Then he adds to that as if to amplify it, “Let all things ye do be done in love”. Men are to be marked by intelligence and affection, everything done in love.

Having said all that, I would just like to speak of the second epistle, that is the great divine thought for us not as here in the wilderness, but as in heaven. That is what the apostle has in mind — “I know a man in Christ”, “know” not ‘knew’, the present tense. He knows the person — it was he himself; he knew that the man he was speaking of was himself, still now the same person as fourteen years before, and he is speaking of him in an experience that perhaps no one ever had but himself, and yet it was the experience of a man in Christ. It was no question of his gift or his intelligence, but of a man in Christ.

^[p. 296] I mean to say it was no question of what he was down here in power and service, but it was a question of God’s mind as to our order of being — manhood. The word used here is not what I have been speaking of in the first epistle, but a word which covers an order of being that we have part in. We belong to the most exalted order of being now, above angels. We take precedence of angels; that is the order of being. It was always in the mind of God, but now it is a fact. This manhood, this order of being in Christ, is exalted above all other creatures, and we as in Christ have that status; we have the supreme place, and so the apostle says, “I know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago, (whether in the body I know not, or out of the body I know not, God knows)”. What an experience! I cannot tell, God knows, he says. He admits he could not diagnose the thing. He was able to hear and see, but it was as a man in Christ. What I want to say is that what he is any man is; he reached an altitude that is proper to man now that Christ has gone up. I may say here the third heaven is not the limit to Christ, for the epistle to Ephesians tells us that He “ascended up above all the heavens” (chapter 4: 10), and Hebrews says the same, “holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and become higher than the heavens” (chapter 7: 26); “higher” indicates that He entered into an uncreated realm which is beyond our knowledge. No one can conceive of an uncreated heaven. The creature is incapable of it, but Christ has gone in. That shows who He is, He is God. He went there far beyond the heavens, but Paul is here intimating to us that he went as far as the third heaven to prove what heaven really means. The numeral three alludes to complete or full testimony as to the matter in hand. If you read your Bibles carefully, you will see he did not say he entered the third heaven, but he was caught up to the third heaven. The point is not a divine place;

^[p. 297] it is the character of the thing. And then he changes his words, saying that he entered into paradise, he entered into paradise, the preposition is changed. He went “as far” as the other, that is to say he went to a spiritual altitude, to prove what God has in His mind for us, for man in Christ, that order of being for whom in His kindness He has a place. How God would stir us up to that. The apostle kept it in mind all these years. In his mind in the wakeful hours of the night he would think of that experience, and say, ‘This is God’s mind for every man in Christ’. He was privileged to see before others this place that belongs to us, that the full idea of heaven is ours. So the opening verses of the great epistle to the Ephesians are just to impress us with that: that we are blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ. That is where our blessings are; however many they may be, they belong to that place that we belong to. It is to accustom our minds to the place of our calling and that the blessings are all there, so that we should not be earthly, but lay hold of the great thought of God as to the order of being to which we belong as recovered and set up in Christ in the heavens.

That is all I have to present, and I hope what I have said may be used of the Lord to stir us up to go on to full growth so that we may not be depriving ourselves, for want of growth, of the great things to which we have referred.

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