2 CORINTHIANS 1 (SECOND READING)
2 CORINTHIANS [p. 197] 1 (SECOND READING)
CAC It is evident that the gift of the Spirit is so great and viewed in Scripture in so many ways that the difficulty is to compass it at all. It must be so when a divine Person comes in and is pleased to take a place on man’s side, indeed to dwell in men. The very fact that it is so shows what an entirely new footing everything stands on for God: we must begin with that, that everything stands for God on the footing of Christ, of His death, His resurrection and ascension. I think if we see that everything is on that new footing for God we shall begin to understand the possibility of the Spirit being given. I do not know if anyone could understand the possibility of it apart from those great realities.
Ques Do you connect what you are saying with verse 20?
CAC Yes, I think things are summed up there. All the promises of God are yea and amen in Jesus Christ, in the Son of God. In Him is the yea; He is the affirmation and substantiating of everything that is in the thought of God for man. It is of the greatest importance to see that God would have His people intelligently in the Spirit. There is no thought in Scripture or suggestion of people having the Spirit and not knowing it. To have the Spirit intelligently involves the understanding of the footing on which everything stands for God, and it supposes the activity of faith.
Rem Everything is viewed here from the standpoint of what we are in Christ Jesus.
CAC Yes, I think the saints are in Christ Jesus by the work of God. That is, a most wonderful operation of divine power has taken place in everyone who has been transferred in faith and affection from Adam to Christ; it [p. 198] is the work of God. There is a tremendous action of divine power, resulting in a company of persons in this world being transferred in faith and affection from Adam to Christ.
All the promises subsist in the Son of God; there is no yea and nay, no uncertainty, nothing in a provisional way; it is all yea in Him. If you think of man after the flesh, the first man, he was always nay; he was the negation of everything in the will of God. If you look at him in innocence, he was corruptible; if you see him fallen, every kind of evil has place with him; if you see him under government, under the promises, under the law, in the presence of the divine testimony of the prophets, in the presence of Christ, and in the presence of the Holy Spirit, he is a negation. Now you turn to another Man — all this is presented in the gospel, it is not advanced truth — God has established everything for His own pleasure in Christ. If you have faith in that Man who is risen, ascended and glorified in heaven, you receive the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Spirit. If people have not faith in Christ risen and glorified how can they receive the Spirit? He is preached in order that men may be transferred in faith and affection from Adam to Christ; then God gives the Spirit. The Spirit is given in relation to all that God has brought in and established for Himself in a risen and glorified Man; there is no other footing on which the Spirit could be given. Therefore the faith that secures the Spirit is faith in a risen and glorified Man.
God never withholds the Spirit a minute longer than is necessary. God is the giving God; that is exactly the character in which He is set before us by His blessed Son. God is the Giver, and what does He give? He gives the Spirit. In John 4 it is not that He gives His Son, but that He gives the Spirit: “If thou knewest the gift of God, and [p. 199] who it is that says to thee, Give me to drink”. Who was it? The Son of God. What does He give? He gives the Spirit. “Thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water”. That is the immense thought which was welling up in the heart of God in regard of man — He gives him His Spirit.
Ques What is your thought as to the anointing in connection with the gift of the Spirit?
CAC If we have faith in that glorified Man in heaven, and affection for Him, all is maintained in the power of the anointing now. God makes a choice of a man to be a priest, and He makes choice of another man to be a king; and when God has called a man to any position He has him anointed so that he may hold the position that God has given him in divine capability. That is the idea of the anointing as I understand it. We do not simply hold faith in Christ Jesus and affection for Him in a way that is apart from the Spirit, but we hold it in the power of the anointing.
Ques Is John 4 an initial or final thought?
CAC If you speak experimentally, I doubt whether we begin with John 4. I think the starting point on our side is that the Spirit is given to shed the love of God abroad in our hearts.
No scripture defines how we receive the Spirit. The gift of the Spirit is presented in different ways; no two Scriptures present it in exactly the same way. The Spirit is introduced in the simplest way in Romans 5 after speaking of believing on God as having raised up the Lord Jesus. I have been condemned sometimes for saying that faith in Christ risen is essential to the gift of the Spirit, but I believe it is a divine truth. You must have faith in God who has raised Jesus, that One who was delivered for your offences and raised for your justification. “Therefore having been justified on the principle of [p. 200] faith, we have peace towards God through our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom we have also access by faith into this favour in which we stand, and we boast in hope of the glory of God”. Then the love of God is brought in: “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” — we find the Spirit is there. It is not supposed that a soul should have faith in God as having raised up the Lord Jesus and not have the Spirit. There is the wonderful display that God has made of Himself in declaring His righteousness and power and love, and all is gathered up now in a risen Man; all that was displayed in the cross and resurrection subsists before God in a risen Man. There is the profound sense in the heart of the love of God poured out there; it is an unmistakable experience. We learn the love of God in the death of Christ, and a risen Christ is our righteousness.
There was no Spirit here indwelling, except in Christ, until Christ had been ten days at the right hand of God. When the Lord was here He did for His disciples a great deal that was subsequently the work of the Spirit, because there was a divine Person here in flesh. The presence of that divine Person effectuated great things for the disciples.
Acts 19 shows that in the divine mind the presence of the Spirit is a conscious reality, not merely something read about in Scripture. Paul could say, “Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye had believed?” We must pass to Romans 8 for a wonderful unfolding of the presence of the Spirit: you find that the christian is being set up there with the Spirit as power; it answers to the anointing, it is the Spirit of the anointed One. When we come to our side things are very feeble, but it is a great thing to understand what is there for us. I think that the presence of the Spirit for many saints is a thing they have hardly thought about and they are somewhat in the position of a man [p. 201] who owns a very impoverished estate which yields him small joy and revenue till one day he makes the discovery that there is a wealthy gold mine on his estate and all he has to do is to work it out. The presence of the Spirit is like that. We have a most wonderful resource of divine wealth and sufficiency in having the Spirit; now the thing is to give attention to the gold mine on our property and work it out and live on the wealth of it. It is like the woman in Elisha’s time who paid her debts with the oil and lived on the rest. So great a thing could not be brought about but by the Son of God coming here: He is introduced at the beginning of the gospels as the One who would immerse us in the Holy Spirit.
The assembly is the anointed vessel; the expression is used in 1 Corinthians 12: 12, “so also is the Christ”. The assembly is now the anointed vessel of divine pleasure in this world. Some of us have been seeing lately how important it is that the presence of the Spirit should come into manifestation: that is the point in 1 Corinthians 12, which is concerned with spiritual manifestations. There are great diversities in distributions but all make manifest that the Spirit is here. The great exercise for us is that the presence of the Spirit should come into manifestation.
Ques Have we to dig for it?
CAC Yes, the nobles dug the well. That is the great importance of prayer; the Lord connects the gift of the Spirit with prayer. The Lord Himself was praying when He was anointed and sealed; the anointing and the sealing came upon a praying Man. No one can be anointed or sealed apart from prayer. Do you think God could anoint an independent or lawless man? It is impossible — “Upon man’s flesh shall it not be poured”, Exodus 30: 32. The Lord puts the woman in John 4 on that line — “thou wouldest have asked”. So in another scripture He speaks of the Father who is in heaven giving the Holy Spirit to [p. 202] those that ask Him. In that connection it is striking that it was after ten days of prayer that the Spirit came at Pentecost. A people who knew the company of a risen Man for forty days were content to stay in an upper room in prayer, and to abide in that upper room; they were not only meeting there but they stayed there, withdrawn from the world. You can see in Acts 1 the suitability of the company to be anointed. Also when Cornelius received the Spirit, it was very quickly; Peter had only started to speak, as he says, “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them”. It seemed a very easy thing but the angel said to Cornelius, “Thy prayers ... have gone up”. How long had he prayed? We do not know, but it was a praying man who received the Spirit.
There is no single defined way in which people receive the Spirit; it is presented from many different aspects in Scripture. It is spoken of in connection with prayer; with obedience — “the Holy Spirit ... which God has given to those that obey him”; in connection with love — “If ye love me ... I will beg the Father, and he will give you another Comforter”; in connection with heart purity — Cornelius is an instance of a gentile receiving the Spirit in connection with heart purity: “The heart-knowing God bore them witness, giving them the Holy Spirit as to us also”, Acts 15: 8. No one receives the Spirit without purity of heart: the heart-knowing God is the only One who knows when people have turned from themselves to Christ. The Spirit is the witness to Christ and to the value of the death of Christ and also to the state of people’s hearts. It is God who purges the heart; you do not do it yourself: “having purified their hearts by faith”. God, in introducing faith, brought here all the elements of divine purity: we have a risen and glorified Man as the object of faith and love. It is surely a purified heart which has that object for its trust and love; no heart is purified apart [p. 203] from that. It is a great thing for us to get an impression of subsisting realities; then we are boards of acacia wood fit for covering with gold. There is no idea in Scripture of the Spirit being given to people in an unsuitable condition.
Rem It was a very interesting company in Cornelius’ house.
CAC Yes, they were all praying men. It is delightful to see the sort of men that Cornelius had about him. One is said to have been a pious soldier. What a lovely set of people they were, suitable for the Spirit! There must be something for God to put His Spirit on; He does not put It on flesh. “Upon man’s flesh shall it not be poured”.
I think prayer is a wonderful thing: there is nothing that gives God more pleasure than prayer. It is so foreign to the first man, because prayer involves the subjection of the will to God. You cannot pray as long as the will is active; you may try, but the heavens are brass over the head of a person in whom the will is active. I think Cornelius’ friends were like-minded with himself — they were all “before God”.
On the divine side there are no time limits to receiving the Spirit. God can effect in one minute what in other cases takes forty years. The boards of the tabernacle were made of acacia wood; it is called incorruptible wood, a kind of material suitable to be overlaid with gold. When God can look into a heart and see it centring on His blessed Son, there is material there on which God can put the gold; and He puts it on in order that what He is may come into expression in His saints.
Ques Is this all the anointing?
CAC Yes, but it partly runs into the sealing. It is obvious that a sealed person carries God’s mark; that is the primary idea of sealing. When we come to our side of it we have to remember how partial and fragmentary [p. 204] things are: we have to be continually enlarged and expanded to get an intelligent apprehension of it; we do not get it in a moment. It is the work of a lifetime to open out the different ways in which the Spirit acts; it is an infinite subject. It is not a thing to be dismissed by saying, ‘I have received the Spirit’, as though that were the end of it. We have not touched a tithe of the wealth for us in the Spirit.
Ques What about the indwelling?
CAC That is a wonderful idea because both the sealing and the anointing are more external; the very expression implies something external, but in the indwelling we have something within. The indwelling supposes that there are suitable conditions for the Spirit of God to take up His abode there, not as a visitant. In the Old Testament we see the Spirit as a divine Visitant, and it could not be otherwise because there were no conditions suitable for the indwelling of the Spirit. He could come upon this one and that one by certain acts of power, but there was no indwelling.
Ques Might we have the sealing and the anointing and not the indwelling?
CAC No. We have to learn these things as they are presented to us. If one has the Spirit, one has potentially everything connected with the Spirit, though one may not know anything about it practically and experimentally; therefore we need a reading like this to touch our hearts and produce a sense in them that we are not in the good of the Spirit and so we go to pray.
I think the earnest in the heart involves the indwelling; it is something within. The earnest is a wonderful thing because it makes the inheritance a reality at the present moment. The earnest of the inheritance is until the redemption of the acquired possession. The whole inheritance has not yet been redeemed but the earnest is [p. 205] substance out of it. If a saint has the earnest of the Spirit he not only has light as to the inheritance but he has the substance of it in his heart. It is one thing to have light and another to have the substance. If you acquire possession you are sitting down in the eternal tabernacles.
The Lord presents in Luke 16 the thought of being received into eternal tabernacles, contrasting it with all the responsible course in which the unjust steward was tested. It is a beautiful thought connected with the feast of tabernacles. It is like Ephesians 2; there you sit down in the eternal tabernacles. What a wonderful thing it is to be restful there! If we think of an Old Testament figure we think of branches of beautiful trees, palm branches and willows of the brook. Think of the luxuriance and shade and shelter of them! You sit down there in eternal tabernacles, and know of nothing that is going to intrude, As you sit there you trace the wonderful way the blessed God has brought you from Egypt to the scene of glory, to the brightness and blessedness and delight of His heart.
It is wonderful to be there and to think that the ways of God have brought you there. We have the earnest in the Spirit, we have the substance of the inheritance. We have no more substance than we have in the Spirit. We all know much; we have read the Bible and many books, but we have no more substance in our souls than what is put there by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the Spirit of grace and supplication, and the Spirit of God in a man is characterised by that. I suspect that if we gave ourselves more to prayer we should be astonished at the extraordinary activities of the Spirit that would follow.
Then there is another thing which we must not leave out. It is one thing to acquire the substance of the inheritance, but there is another very marvellous thought of the Spirit and that is that He is here to glorify Christ. What kind of desire has God put in our hearts? Apart from [p. 206] the thought of our personal blessing there is something deeper and more soul-stirring and precious, that we should be here as vessels of the Spirit for the glorifying of Christ, that the eternal Lover of our souls should be honoured and glorified in this world. The Spirit is here to maintain the testimony of the Christ. We have to furnish oil for the light; the supply of oil depends on us.
Ques Would glorifying Christ be giving an expression of what Christ is?
CAC Yes, and there should be the witness here, the collective witness to Christ, because the glory of Christ is being maintained in the witness and God would in these last moments give a peculiar power to the witness. In Leviticus 24 we have the candlestick in connection with the day of apostasy. In Exodus 25 God has told us about it in the day in which things were inaugurated; but in Leviticus 24 the candlestick is seen in the day of apostasy when the man blasphemed the Name. In that day it was to be the jealous care of the priests to see that the lamp burned undimmed. As place is given to the Spirit one would be enabled to be here in power, established in Christ, anointed and sealed, and having the earnest; that would qualify us for assembly conditions and the collective witness to the glory of Christ, so that every one becomes concerned that nothing should interfere with the shining forth of the testimony of the Christ. At Corinth the testimony was there, the candlestick was there and its vessels but the light burned very dim, and the object of the epistle was that the light should burn in all its brilliancy. That is the great exercise for us; it takes us from our personal side of things to think of the wonderful witness of the Spirit to Christ. How we should long for it in the ministry, in the preaching of the gospel and in all the gatherings of the saints that there should be a distinct manifestation of the Spirit’s power glorifying Christ in [p. 207] this world. We are supplied through prayer; there is an immense source of supply, an inexhaustible reservoir in heaven; and the golden pipes are there, furnished with oil. What a result there should be in ministry! Look at Paul in prison! Look at the epistles to the Colossians, Ephesians and Philippians! What a rich ministry of Christ!
We learn what God is doing, “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit”, Zechariah 4: 6. As we give place to the Spirit we find the Headstone brought in with shoutings; Christ as Head gets His place as we give place to the Spirit. He glorifies Christ and Christ comes in as Head and everyone says, “Grace, grace unto it!”.
Ques Is all that the result of the indwelling?
CAC Yes, it is connected with it; it is the working out in result of these different aspects of the Spirit; they all have to be blended in the soul, and blended in the saints, because the distribution of the Spirit is spread over the whole body. We are not individually adequate for it, and even the saints we walk with are not; it is spread over the whole body.
Rem The baptism of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost involves all this.
CAC Yes, it involved the whole thing right through; it is a universal idea, because all, whether Jews or Greeks, have been baptised into one body and have all been given to drink of one Spirit. That is the external and the internal. The body as looked at in Corinthians is the external exhibition of the presence of the Spirit; it is looked at as a vessel in which the presence of the Spirit becomes manifest. As each individual carries out his distribution the unity of all comes into evidence; therefore it is quite impossible that what is of the Spirit in me should clash with what is of the Spirit in you. The Spirit is dwelling in thousands of saints all contributing in various [p. 208] ways, but in perfect unity and harmony. By the Spirit we are all baptised into one body; it is the practical presentation of it. Then we drink of one Spirit; that is internal.
We enjoy in our own souls first what we manifest in the body.
Ques Should we drink continually?
CAC I think in principle we have all been given to drink of one Spirit. There is no doubt that the allusion there is to the bread and cup. The body is connected with the bread, and the cup is connected with drinking into divine love. We are all made to drink of one Spirit; you have not one source of joy and I another. How far have we drunk into the one Spirit? So far as we have, we have come into joy. The thought there is not simply knowing the presence and active power of the Spirit in a unity that appears outwardly, but that every one has the inward joy of it in his own soul.