EXTRACTS

APT In 1 Corinthians 12 which you quoted in prayer at the outset, you referred to “And God has set certain in the assembly” (v.28), and then prior to that it says, “God has set the members, each one of them in the body” (v.18). How do you view those two thoughts in relation to service and anyone that God may take up like Paul?

JT I think it comes under the head of what we are saying; the head of classification. We are not all of the same value. It says in 1 Corinthians 12, “And God has set certain in the assembly—first, apostles; secondly, prophets; thirdly, teachers; then miraculous powers; then gifts of healings; helps; governments; kinds of tongues”, etc. The same would apply in principle to the body, “Now ye are Christ’s body, and members in particular” (1 Corinthians 12: 27). We are not all of the same value, but each has his own value, and that is what gives variety and such pleasure in the Lord’s mind, and what pleasure He had in Paul; “an elect vessel unto me”.

And then as regards the passage in Timothy so as to keep to the subject, you see how fitting it is that it should be brought up in Timothy—this question of the great house, as if God would have that brought into this subject. What is pictured in the great house is the great profession today of servants. It says, “But in a great house there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also wooden and earthen; and some to honour, and some to dishonour”. That would indicate there are many who are not really converted at all. But then what one had in mind was this matter applied to the profession of Christianity, persons who are viewed as vessels—whether they are unto honour or dishonour. And verse 21 says, “If therefore one shall have purified himself from these (that is, vessels unto dishonour), then we have the interpolation of the words there “in separating himself from them”—these words are necessary to the understanding of the passage, that it implies separation. A person might say, It is not in the original, but it is a question of spiritual intelligence as putting in words that are needed to give the sense, the full sense of the Spirit of God in this passage. So that separation is needed to bring out in the persons who are ministering professedly, whether they are real or not. If they are not real they have to be separated from; a very solemn matter, whether we are allied with persons who are not really Christians, because the apostle says elsewhere, “lest after having preached to others I should be myself rejected”, 1 Corinthians 9: 27. That is a very strong word, meaning he would not be saved at all. And so here persons who are to dishonour, who are questionable, you cannot say they are Christians, or that God so classifies them, and He says we must separate from them to be serviceable to the Master. We are constituted vessels to honour and sanctified and serviceable to the Master and prepared unto every good work if we are separate from vessels to dishonour. I thought it would be necessary to add this thought for us practically as to service in the midst of a mixed profession.

J. Taylor (Vol. 56, pp.338, 339)

I desire to enlarge on these points, because you can understand it is of very great importance that we should be set to enter into the purpose of God, and, as I said, it begins with a right judgment being formed. One would question oneself and others what judgment one has formed about things. I mean to say, what kind of judgment have you formed as the result of the gospel coming to you? If you have not come to Paul’s judgment of things here it is not a bit likely that you will ever leave them. You were born into them and accept them as a matter of course. The political economy in which you have been born—the social and commercial relations and the ordinary family relations and duties dependent upon them; all these things you accept as a matter of course. We have very little thought of them save that we are born into them and go on with them. But the thought of God is to set your heart and mind in movement in regard of all that. The gospel comes in to that end—it is light from God to us and is intended to set our hearts and minds in movement; and if we become active in this way we begin to form a judgment about things. People who have no definite judgment are practically of no use to God.

J. Taylor (Vol. 69, pp.17, 18)

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