"THE LORD IS THAT SPIRIT"
“THE LORD IS THAT SPIRIT”
The passage I have read is a somewhat difficult one, and for that reason I take it up in the hope that the Lord may enable me to make the thought plain, so that you may apprehend the mind of God in it. It is remarkable how very closely the dealings of God with christians follow His dealings with Israel, so that in what happened to them we get a setting forth in type of God’s dealings now. This is plain, for we are told that all that happened unto them happened unto them for ensamples, and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come. The failures of Israel are written for warnings for us. We have not simply the record of God’s actings for them, but of God’s discipline with them, and all for our admonition.
You first get the people delivered out of Egypt and brought to God by redemption. They are brought to God’s dwelling-place, that is celebrated in the song in Exodus 15. The Egyptian had been swallowed up in the Red Sea. The Israelites were brought to God and saved from the hand of the enemy, they were brought to God’s holy habitation, “Thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation”. The same thing is true in regard to us; we have been brought to God in the faith of the Lord Jesus, and delivered from the power of the enemy, and now we form God’s habitation, Jew and gentile are built together for a habitation of God by the Spirit, so that the type is fulfilled in christians.
The next thing is that God gave Israel a transcript of His mind. God would write. At that time He wrote on tables of stone; in christianity you still find [p. 465] the idea of writing, but instead of writing on stone in the way of requirement, God writes on the fleshy tables of the heart. The writing on stone effected nothing for the people, but God’s writing is effective on the tables of the heart, and what He writes there no doubt is Christ. And the apostle takes up the Corinthians in that sense, there was a real writing of God in them.
Now there is another point. When God has written, then He proposes to dwell, and in connection with dwelling He makes known His covenant; that was the order of things in regard to the children of Israel. The injunction after the writing on the tables of stone was to prepare Him a dwelling-place. He brings them to Himself and then He makes known to them in detail the terms on which they were to be with Him.
In christianity we find practically the same order; we are brought through redemption to God, that is the beginning; the idea is that we are brought to His habitation; then the next thing is that God writes in the power of the Spirit on the heart. Then you have the dwelling-place, Jew and gentile built together, and Christ as Son over the house of God. Believers are a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, and they learn by the teaching of the Spirit of God what God’s disposition is toward them.
A testament is a disposition; when a man makes a will he makes a disposition of his property, and his will shows his mind and thought toward those to whom he bequeaths his property. They not only get the benefit of the property, but they know the mind of the testator.
That is the idea of a testament with man, and so, too, on the part of God. In the first covenant all was conditional, because God was taking up Israel in the flesh, to see if they would be obedient. It was testing in their case, but in christianity it is no longer testing [p. 466] but God is pleased to make known His disposition toward us, and the terms of that we get in the new covenant.
The same holds good in a more definite way with regard to Israel in the future, the new covenant will make known to them God’s disposition toward them. He gives His laws into their minds and writes them on their hearts, that is, He gives them in the light of His mercy to delight in His law, and their sins and iniquities He remembers no more. The new covenant will be made good to Israel in the future by their being relieved of the pressure of death; death will be swallowed up in victory.
I could not say that a covenant is distinctly established with the christian. I do not think christians are the house of Israel or Judah, but if God has brought us to Himself and we form His house, so that God dwells among us, it cannot but be that God will make known to us His disposition toward us. Bringing us to Himself was not exactly indicating His disposition toward us, but He brought us to Himself in order to make that known. The fact of the Holy Spirit being here does not exactly in itself express God’s disposition toward us, but the Holy Spirit teaches us and instructs us in the mind and thought of God. It is that which I want to bring out from this passage.
If you look at verses 6 to 11 you will see that the first covenant was a ministration of death and condemnation. The new covenant is the ministration of the Spirit and righteousness, that is, the contrast is between death and the Spirit (and the Spirit in that sense means life) and between condemnation and righteousness.
I will say a word about the old covenant, because it may make the idea of ministration plain. The old covenant ministered what was there; it was not God coming out in glad tidings to man, but taking up a [p. 467] people that belonged to Him and dealing with them as to what they were after the flesh. Hence, the covenant was the ministration to them of what existed. The covenant did not bring death and condemnation, they were already there, they had been there from the beginning, they came in by Adam. Israel was under death and condemnation, even if they did not know it. God took them up after the flesh, and the covenant meant, on God’s part, to bring home to them what was there, and it was thus the ministration of death and condemnation. Many took up the covenant in the spirit of self-righteousness, but if they had had any light as to what God meant, it was the ministry of death and condemnation. You get this brought out in Romans 7. I sometimes think that people have the idea that the law brought condemnation; the law brought a curse if they were guilty of breaking it, but it did not bring death and condemnation, and the covenant was a ministration of both. The reason is simple, it was because Christ had not come in; God was dealing with man, as man, not coming out according to His own heart. The first covenant was the expression of God’s will in regard to Israel, but not of His heart toward them.
When we come to the new covenant the point is this, Christ has come in and in Christ you have the expression of the heart of God, and that is the subject of divine teaching to saints. It is not exactly what we learn at the beginning, but we all have to learn it. When we apprehend the presence here of the Holy Spirit, then it is we begin to learn what is in the heart of God toward man.
But I believe it brings out what was in the heart of God from the outset. Death and condemnation were there from Adam, though not brought home to the gentiles; neither the one nor the other came in by Israel, but by Adam. Now in Christ God has been pleased to make known what His heart was toward [p. 468] men, what was there from the beginning. Instead of bringing to light what lay upon man by reason of sin, God brings to light in the new covenant what was ever in His heart toward man. He waited until Christ should come so that the question of righteousness might be met, but then He made known what was in His heart toward man from the outset; that is, I believe, the spirit of Scripture.
Everyone knows what the letter of Scripture is, but if you were to ask what the spirit of Scripture is, I would say the love of God toward man, that which comes to light in the new covenant. If you look at things in detail, Christ came here in the love of God. He came in to accomplish redemption, to put away what had come in by man. God loved man. I do not think the idea is exactly that God loved the sinner, but that God loved man. “After that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared”. Man had departed from God and fallen into sin, and death had come into the world. In due time the Son of God came forth, made of a woman, made under the law, in order that He might remove what had come in by the man that God had created, and at the same time as the expression of the love of God towards man. Christ came into the world to save sinners, but also that in Him God might express His love toward man. He came here with an object, and that was that He might taste death for everything. He came, too, to put sin away. “Once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”. Sin and death had come in by man, and by man sin and death were to be put away. That is what in principle Christ effected in the work of the cross, and now God has declared in the presence of the universe that the One who accomplished that work is none other than the Son of God. The glory of Christ is the witness which God has been pleased to give of this, and the Holy Spirit has come down [p. 469] here to report that glory. If you accept the truth that Christ is at the right hand of God and the Holy Spirit here, you have the testimony that Christ came from God. No one really knows who Christ is except by the Holy Spirit; it is by the witness and power of the Holy Spirit that we get to know that the Christ who died upon the cross and was raised from the dead and has gone to the right hand of God, is none other than the Son of God; and the Son of God came forth from God in order that He might express the love of God toward man. The Son of man was lifted up; that did not look like the Son of God, crucified between two malefactors; but it was the Son of God, expression of God’s love to man, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son”. The veil of the temple was rent in twain; there was a witness in that sense, but that was not the only witness. The Holy Spirit has come as witness that the One who died on the cross is Son of God.
Now the truth in regard to Christ going up and being exalted as man is that the higher He goes the nearer He gets to home. It is not that as He goes higher things are strange to Him. Things were strange to Paul when he was caught up to the third heaven; it was strange for the thief to go to paradise, but it was not strange for Christ to go into paradise; the nearer He was to paradise the nearer He was to home. The world was never a home to Christ, but He goes to what was natural to Him, but at the same time as man He had been exalted. He did not come out of heaven as man; He had become man by being born of a woman, but, personally, the closer He got to heaven the nearer He was to home. Christ at the right hand of God is the Son of God at home, and He is man there, and what that means is this, that He is man there for us without our sins. He was charged with our sins on the cross; God laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Now in glory He is man without [p. 470] our sins, and declared to be the Son of God, He is the blessed expression of God’s love toward man. We come into the truth of John 3, that the Son of man has been lifted up, for “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.
It is only in Christ that you can learn the terms of the new covenant. If you take in the blessed truth that the One who died on the cross, but who is now at the right hand of God, is the Son of God, you will understand God’s disposition to man. It can only be made good in those who believe; those who do not believe do not come into it. If man does not believe the gospel, you can very well understand he does not come into the grace of God — that being the subject of grace, he comes into the light of divine love as expressed in the Son of God at the right hand of God, and the covenant is the ministration of righteousness, because Christ is at the right hand of God without our sins. He has gone back to God. The sins are put away, but the love abides, and we get the gain of the covenant in the presence of the Holy Spirit in the believer. “The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us”. He instructs the christian in the teaching of the glory of the Lord.
The practical result to us is that there is no condemnation, there are no sins. We have redemption by His blood, the forgiveness of sins, because the One in whom the covenant is established is in the glory of God without our sins, and the perfect expression of love toward us, so that the more you come into the light of the glory of Christ the more you are instructed in the love of God, and the love of God is no new thing. God loved the world, and His kindness and love were toward man. But they could not come out until what man had brought in had been removed, and, that having been removed, the love of God has [p. 471] come out. Christ is the spirit of Scripture, and the spirit of Scripture is the love of God toward man, and everything that is secured for man in the Son of God is part of the expression of the love of God toward man.
Before all this came out, God’s wisdom was seen in testing man to see if there was any element of good in him, but this point has been demonstrated, and in the truth of the gospel we get the light of the love of God toward man.
I have thought sometimes that the fall of man was a grief to God, because God had set His love on man. Why should He not do so, for He is sovereign? But God had resources, for it is impossible that God should be baffled. Christ was ever the wisdom of God. In due time He came forth as man to undo the work of the enemy. He bore our sins on the cross, then He goes to the right hand of God, and is there the expression of God’s love toward us; and if it were possible for you and me to get up to heaven to where Christ is, we should only become more sensible of the love of God toward us. Hence, love and glory go together.
I think anyone can see what an exceedingly simple thing the new covenant is; it is really that God’s disposition toward those who believe is that love which was in His heart toward man from the outset, only it was hindered from coming out; but when the fulness of the time was come, that love comes out in the Son of God, and we are brought into the good of that love by the Holy Spirit given to us. That is what I understand to be the spirit of the new covenant.
I do not doubt the kingdom will be established in the light of God’s love towards man, and the eternal state in which righteousness dwells is the full expression of the same.
Now there is another word in connection with this, that where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty,
[p. 472] for the nearer you are to glory the more sure you are of love. Hence, where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. You have never known liberty except in the presence of love; even grace will not give liberty. I have had acts of grace shown me in my lifetime, but I think I should not be tempted to approach a man freely who had shown me grace; but on the other hand, if I knew that act of grace was the fruit of love that lay behind it, I think I would have liberty with that person. If you are in the light of love, there is liberty. You have boldness with God now, because you are acquainted with His love.
And we go a point further, “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory”. The thought is that being in the light of God’s love we are continually stepping up. We are changed into the same image from glory to glory. There is moral elevation. We are more at liberty from everything which once detained us, because the love of God is the best thing we can have, and in having it we are independent of things down here. If you are resting on props here, it is a proof that you are but poorly acquainted with the love of God, and God would have you to become more in accord with the scene of love where Christ is in glory.
Now I do not want to go further, because, after all, if one simple point comes to us it is great gain, and I think God teaches us in that way; and the one point for every one of us is acquaintance with the love of God, for no good thing could God withhold from those whom He loves: “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him”. And why do you love God? Because you have learned that He loved you. There is a bright future, but there is a bright present association with Christ now. The bright future is to be in God’s habitation above; He “hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus”.
May the Lord give us to understand the love of God better, and that God has satisfaction in His love, in that His love is appreciated by those who believe.