2 CORINTHIANS 1 (FIRST READING)
2 CORINTHIANS [p. 191] 1 (FIRST READING)
CAC The way the apostle connects the character of his own service with the stability of God’s ways in Christ is very beautiful.
TH He was jealous lest the effect of his altering his plans should disparage his ministry.
CAC There is the very practical suggestion in all this that the ways of a servant must be in keeping with his ministry, even in such a matter as his going to a place or not going. It was all to be ordered on the same principles as the greatest ways of God in Christ.
TH There is a tendency in us to use lightness; we might make a promise and when the time comes not be able to fulfil it.
CAC Of course you might fully purpose to do a thing, and in the ordering of God you might not be able to.
A Paul was often hindered.
CAC Yes; he says elsewhere, “Satan hindered”. He tells them (verse 23), “To spare you I have not yet come to Corinth”. If he had come amongst them in the state of disorder they were in, he would have been very severe and he did not wish that. He did not change his mind in a capricious way; he had a reason.
TH “Lest my God should humble me as to you when I come again”, 2 Corinthians 12: 21.
CAC Yes. Paul had great exercise and sorrow of [p. 192] heart about their state; they were his children. He had an object in not going to them; he did not do things in a careless way.
A Would you say that ministry either produces exercise or hardens?
CAC It always produces exercise where there is a work of God. But sometimes you feel there is nothing to work on, so that nothing you say or do has any effect.
When there is a work of God, divine ministry always produces exercise.
TH We could always find a cause for self-judgment.
CAC Sometimes we find nothing else! Paul had confidence in the Corinthians, but at the same time great exercise. He was on a positive line, not yea and nay. His was a positive ministry of Christ, and his ways were as positive as his ministry.
A False teachers tried to trip up the apostle.
CAC His ways were a great contrast to theirs. They tried in every possible way to disparage and reduce him.
He had purposed to go to Corinth and had not gone, and people might have said that he was walking in the flesh and that there was nothing divinely stable in him. So he had to tell them it was not so. There was the same stability about the servant as about his ministry. It is a great principle that the servant’s ways are to partake of the same character as his ministry.
How wonderful it is to have to do with One in whom everything is yea! It is a contrast to the other man in whom everything was nay. Man in the flesh is all nay, and sometimes there is a mixture of the two in us: sometimes there is a bit of Christ and a bit of man in the flesh; that is mixing up yea and nay. The character of the work of God in the saints is that they become marked in all their ways by the stability that is in Christ; there is nothing doubtful about them. We have just sung a line of a hymn, ‘Doubtful no promises remain’. God’s promises never were doubtful! Why not say, ‘Faithful God’s promises remain’? They were always faithful and they have been verified in the fullest way in Christ. He is the Yea of them. Christ is the first and the last. He was the starting point in the heart and mind of God from whom all promises flowed; He is the root and offspring of David; everything springs from Him. The promises were unfolded through many centuries, but in the mind of God Christ was the source of every one of them. Saints of old lived on promises, but now we see them all established or substantiated in Christ. And we have not only promises, but the revelation of the promises and God fully revealed in Christ.
TH Was the word to the serpent a kind of promise?
CAC Clearly so; and Adam and Eve could lay hold of it.
N Then we go on to Abraham. Christ is presented as Son of Abraham and Son of David.
CAC Yes, the key to the whole gospel in Matthew is that He is Son of David and Son of Abraham. He is seen as the true Solomon and the true Isaac in Matthew. The first twelve chapters show Him as the true Solomon, finishing with His rejection; and then what He is as the true Isaac is taken up in resurrection.
TH Could you explain that?
CAC The son of David is Solomon, and the son of Abraham is Isaac: Jesus is both in the gospel of Matthew. The promises to Abraham stand in contrast to all the confusion man has brought into the world as seen in Babel. Babel represents what the world has become in the hands of men, a scene of confusion. We see Babel now; men’s tongues are confounded morally, not only grammatically; they cannot agree, cannot fit in with one another. God is going to adjust it all, and that by Christ.
[p. 194] In David we see the weakness of man, his inability to hold anything for God. David had come to that in his last words (2 Samuel 23); he says, “The ruler among men shall be just, Ruling in the fear of God; And he shall be as the light of the morning, like the rising of the sun, A morning without clouds; ... Although my house be not so before God” — that is, everything connected with himself was no good — “Yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, Ordered in every way and sure; For this is all my salvation, and every desire”. David looks away from all the weakness attaching to himself; he was dying, it was the extremity of weakness: everything was slipping through his fingers, but slipping into Christ’s. It demonstrated the absolute weakness of man, but there is One, the true Son of David who can take it up with a strong hand and hold it for God. All through the millennium, as we read in Psalm 72 “men shall bless themselves in him”, “His name shall endure for ever”. It gives one such a sense of comfort and stability that we have come to a Person in whom everything is secure. What a wonderful thing it is to be firmly attached to that Person!
N How do you understand, “for glory to God by us”? (verse 20).
CAC God has been pleased to get the glory and praise of His ways through the saints; if He does not get it through us He will not get it at all. It is most important from God’s side that we should have our hearts firmly attached to Christ, otherwise He will not get the praise and glory due to Him.
N Why is He not only the Yea but the Amen?
CAC He is the confirmation of all God’s promises; they are affirmed and confirmed; there is nothing more to be added. We have the Alpha and the Omega; that includes every letter in the alphabet. All is out; God has nothing more to tell us about Christ or about Himself.
“Yea is in Him” . You will never through all eternity get a bit more light than has come out in Christ; and you will never find in heaven anything about God that has not shone out in Jesus. What a Person to study, is He not? “Yea is in Him”. That is, the verification of all divine truth is in the Person of Christ. It is an immense thing to see that everything there is on the revelation side and so the blessing side is in Him. If I want to know the character of my blessing as one called of God I have to look to Christ to see it. Christ is preached and all that is in Him is presented in grace to all men: every person in the world is welcome to take hold of it and possess it. We preach a Person, not only One who died (we could have nothing without that) but a living glory-crowned Man at the right hand of God in eternal and blessed acceptance. All that is there in Him is for every man. The thoughts of God in regard to every one of us are set forth in Christ; they are so great we do not take them in. I could say to any man ‘God has shown you the most wonderful favour, He has provided you with a Lord and Head, and everything set forth in Him is for you’.
TH God falls back on sovereignty; not one of us, if left to ourselves, would accept the gospel.
CAC That is the only hope for us. If God had not wrought by His Spirit in us we should never have believed the good news. Here it is all looked at as the work of God: He has firmly attached us to Christ, has anointed us, has sealed us and has given us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts. It is all God’s doing, and it is for the glory of God by us.
N What is the character of the anointing?
CAC God has brought us under the same anointing that Christ is under in heaven, so that we are firmly attached to a glorified Man in heaven by the same anointing. He has companions, and He is anointed with the oil [p. 196] of gladness above His companions: how remarkable that we share it! Unity is the effect of the anointing. If it is so fragrant to God, we should value it more. We are exhorted to endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit in the uniting bond of peace. If saints were really attached to Christ in the power of this anointing there would be unity in a blessed way; it is because there is not this firm attachment that we do not see unity. Attachment to Christ means detachment from self, and it is self in some form or other that spoils the endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit.
N Have you any thought as to the order in which these things — the anointing, the sealing and the earnest — are stated?
CAC The anointing would seem to stand here in relation to our being established in Christ or firmly attached to Him. Then the sealing would carry God’s mark just as the blessed Lord did in everything He said and did, as we read, “him has the Father sealed, even God”, John 6: 27. I think every word and act of the blessed Lord carried the Father’s mark; all was done in the Spirit. So the saints in this way carry the mark of God by being linked up with a glorified Man in heaven. Finally by having the earnest of the Spirit we participate even now in the joy of all that is still behind the scenes. Everything is yet below the horizon, but saints, as having the earnest of the Spirit, are in presence of things to come. The Spirit not only shows these things to us as pictures, but brings us samples; we taste the grapes of Eshcol. It would all come in with firm attachment to Christ.