THE ESPOUSAL OF THE SAINTS TO CHRIST
[p. 541] THE ESPOUSAL OF THE SAINTS TO CHRIST
2 Corinthians 11:1 - 3; Genesis 2:18 - 25
I have in mind to speak of man, as inclusive of man and woman; that is, male and female; and I have selected this verse in 2 Corinthians with a view to speaking of woman, because the epistles to Corinth enlarge on her; they enlarge on her in the sense in which they enlarge on other things also; that is, in the abstract sense. The first chapter of the first epistle deals with the truth in an abstract way, a way found elsewhere in both epistles, because it enables the Spirit of God to deal with truth, not as practically expressed, practically carried out, but with a view to basing other things on it; as, for instance, the principle of gift. The apostle says, “Ye come short in no gift”, 1 Corinthians 1:7. This can only be understood abstractly; and so, with other passages and things, as for instance, the question of leaven; “Purge out the old leaven”, 1 Corinthians 5:7. That is not abstract, but alas, very concrete, especially at Corinth, the city that was famed for its wickedness, for its looseness, and so it was to be purged out; the apostle afforded the means judicially of purging it out, at least, in one person, an incestuous person, who was put away. But then the apostle says, in urging or directing them to purge out the old leaven, “that ye may be a new lump, according as ye are unleavened”, 1 Corinthians 5:7. That is what I mean by abstract, and it is found throughout the first epistle, and the second too, and I believe the very passage I have read involves it, because the condition of the Corinthians hardly afforded much of a concrete nature in the way of chastity; whereas the apostle had in mind to treat of the brethren at Corinth, men and women, as a unit; they were to be presented to Christ. Indeed he had done this. He said, “I have [p. 542] espoused you unto one man, to present you a chaste virgin to Christ”, 2 Corinthians 11:2. How he succeeded I am not prepared to enlarge on, but certainly the second letter indicates that there was considerable progress in the ministry, although he had to say, in the closing chapters of the second letter, that he had much to deal with, judicially, the very worst things too, but was hindered because of the delayed obedience of the Corinthians, their obedience was not yet fulfilled. It was in the course of fulfilment, God working, but the apostle reserved his judgment as to the wickedness that he was obliged to speak of.
It is solemn and sorrowful that there should be any such thing in an assembly of God; and yet the gathering at Corinth is called an assembly of God; specifically called “the assembly of God which is in Corinth”, 1 Corinthians 1:2. There was serious evil, as I said, but it was not overlooked or condoned; the apostle had in mind to deal with it, and in view of doing so he was waiting on the Corinthians so that they might judge themselves. They had judged themselves to a considerable extent, but not wholly, and therefore he waited, showing how patient God is with His people. Paul says therefore, “having in readiness to avenge all disobedience when your obedience shall have been fulfilled”, 2 Corinthians 10:6. He does not spare them; he was ready to avenge all disobedience. Therefore when their obedience was fulfilled, and doubtless it was in measure, then the wickedness undoubtedly would be driven out.
Now, having said so much, with a view to the clarification of my subject, I turn to the passage in Genesis, in order to point out the need of the feminine side of the truth being present substantially. It was really scarce at Corinth; I mean the true character of the female was not much in evidence, and it may be so today, amongst the brethren; there may be a scarcity of the feminine, in the true sense. I am thinking of it only in the true sense, and so I refer to Genesis 1 to bring out my point, and to show [p. 543] how the feminine side can be scarce, or even not present at all.
Solomon said, in Ecclesiastes 7:28, that, “one man among a thousand have I found, but a woman among all those have I not found”. The dear sisters will understand I am not attacking them, for in truth I am not. I want to bring out the doctrine that is involved in what I am saying, and that is seen in Genesis 1:26. God says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion”. The word man in that verse alludes to the material of which he was made; that is earth; he was to be earthy. In the next verse we have Man — the Adam — a more dignified reference, although it still refers to earth or ground, yet it is more dignified, and includes “male and female”, as it is said; “God created Man in his image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them”, Genesis 1:27. In truth the meaning of it is, the Adam; that is, there was a great being now whom God had brought forth, and he is in God’s mind in view of His counsels. Then He says to them; that is to say, to Man, “Be fruitful and multiply”, Genesis 1:22.
In Genesis 2 we see what I remarked already, that at the outset the woman is really not there, although she is implied in the plural pronoun them, and in male and female. So God has to wait, so to say; not that He could not have made her at once, but He did not. There was in His mind clearly the thought that at some particular periods of the history of the testimony, there would be an absence or shortage of the female. Indeed, Solomon formally states it, because he has in mind the Messiah, and that He would be alone in this sense, and so it was for many a day. Genesis 2 brings out a principle according to which God acts; that is, to mention a thing, or a truth, or a principle, and then cause it to be waited for, so as to be appreciated. God has His own way of doing things, and we have to learn to wait on Him, and so it was that at the first even man was not there. The second [p. 544] chapter is the lengthening out of the first, in order to bring out something that is not in the first, something that was, nevertheless, in the counsels of God. So there was no man, “there was no man to till the ground”, Genesis 2:5. But presently there was, and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul, but by himself; and in that solitariness there is the idea of need. Jehovah Himself felt it first; there was not a man to till the ground, and then also there was no helpmate, suitable for him, when the man was there. God had His satisfaction in man up to a point, because He set him to work, but there was no partner, no helpmeet, no one to join with him, to reciprocate his affections or his intelligence; there was no woman. It is as if God would say, You will have to wait, Adam; and so it is that the Lord Jesus has had to wait, as I said before, for His bride. God gave the man something to do, for God would develop his intelligence, or rather He would show to himself as well as to others, what intelligence He had placed in that wonderful being called man. I have already remarked as to the article, entering into the title or name, the Adam, as distinguishing the man. A suggestion of distinguishment is in it, and yet he is alone. Now in the verses I have read, God is saying that it is not good for man to be alone, showing how God comes down to our way of thinking and speaking. “It is not good”, He says, “that man should be alone”, Genesis 2:18. To whom is He speaking? Well, we might say, to Himself. Possibly Adam heard, for Adam too, would begin to think that it was not good for him to be alone. He had looked for someone like himself, and did not find “his like”, verse 20.
Then, what is to be remarked is that God was developing the intelligence that was in His great creature, and so He begins to bring the cattle to him. It is a matter of showing how God can pause in His ways, in order to bring out principles that had not yet been brought out, and even names that had not been mentioned. God can [p. 545] wait, and pause, and He would teach us to learn to do that too, to wait on Him, to wait on His disclosures, to wait on His enlargements, for we shall not wait in vain. God loves to think of us and to look at us, as we are thinking that He is going to bring out something to us. We have been hoping today, dear brethren, I may say simply, that the Lord would bring out something to us, and I think we have had some good cause for satisfaction. So now, the thought was that God would see what intelligence Adam had, for intelligence marks Adam here throughout.
I cannot, of course, enumerate the creatures that might have been brought to Adam, whether it was the lion, or the cow or the sheep, but God brought them, and it was to see what Adam would call them. How God loves to look at us and think of us, as we are thinking and meditating and studying, so as to arrive at the truth, and as we arrive at it, to see its beauty, and its glory, for Christ is the truth. Thus the cattle are brought to Adam. His intelligence is being tested, and what a time it is, dear brethren, for the working out of intelligence in us. I believe John’s gospel is particularly intended for the last days, to work out intelligence in the brethren, in a living way. And so Mary comes in at the last, in the long line of teaching; for us it would really mean the expectation of teaching — from the first chapter of John to chapter 20. Finally she says, ‘Rabboni’, which we have often commented upon, but it simply is to show that she was learning, as a woman; she was learning from Christ. Now Adam, as I said, is giving names to the creatures, and God is listening, and He is not making any changes, nor making any corrections. Whatever man said was the name of any creature, that was its name. That is a suggestion of great importance, as I have been saying already, dear brethren, as to teaching, as to learning, as to how much we are learning, challenging us as to whether we are learning anything, and if we are learning [p. 546] accurately, carefully going over the truth, comparing spiritual with spiritual, having discernment too, for “the spiritual discerns all things, and he is discerned of no one”, 1 Corinthians 2:15.
Well, the process went on, and God caused Adam to sleep. I am just speaking of what we all know, what God did to bring out His great thoughts as to man. It was still the Adam, it was still the great creature that was yet without a helpmate, without a counterpart, but he is now asleep, and what is to happen? I am led in my mind to travel to the endings of the gospels, especially John 20, because typically it is a question of man, man in Christ. The Lord is now seen among the disciples in Jerusalem. Luke does not say that He comes, but that, “as they were saying these things, he himself stood in their midst”, Luke 24:36. He shows Himself to them, but John says He came; “Jesus came and stood in the midst”, (John 20:19) and then He showed unto them His hands and His side; that is, He would bring out what I am alluding to in Genesis. This bears upon how we are to be educated in the truth. We have first the man, otherwise there can be no opening up of the truth that I am aiming at; that is, the assembly in a feminine sense. With ourselves, likewise, if things are normal, if the men are learning, the women will learn too. All this is a question of the brethren learning the truth. What I refer to as a feminine element is scarce because of the want of learning, the want of education, and what is presented in the Man is to help us; so the man has to be put into a deep sleep. Will his education, his intelligence, awake with him? Will it stay with him? It will, and that was what God intended to bring into evidence, that Christ having died, came out of death with all the infinite intelligence that was there. So God, as the scripture says, took a rib from Adam and made out of the rib a woman. Adam was asleep. What a moment it was, dear brethren as the Lord Jesus lay in death. One feels he hardly knows how to think on those lines, what it was for [p. 547] God, for He was there, I mean in the type, He was there testing the Man. Presently Adam awakes, and now what will he do? What will he think? He is again put to the test, he has no longer a cow or a sheep to name, but an entirely new creature, one whom he has not seen before. He has been alone, I cannot say how long; it could only be a matter of hours, because the creation of woman must have been in the same day in which Adam was created. God can do things in a day or in a minute, in the twinkling of an eye. So Adam awakes, and here is this creature. Did he discern anything? Was she anything different from the other creatures? O, very different! God does not say a word to him.
You will understand, dear brethren, that I am endeavouring to reach the point of the increase of the feminine thought, in view of the assembly, because the counsels of God require it. God is waiting for it, and He can wait, just as He did here, so now He is waiting for Israel, too, as we had it already today, “all Israel shall be saved”, Romans 11:26. They will be born in a day, a great matter, in due time. God will wait for that, in a certain sense He is waiting for it now, but He is waiting specially for the assembly now; He is waiting for the process which is essential, in order to reach the feminine thought. I mean, the process through which man must go, in order to reach the feminine thought. The apostle is saying that the saints at Corinth, men and women, are to be presented to Christ as a chaste virgin. You may say, I do not understand, but I hope you will understand, for it is a time for thinking; it is a time for thinking of ourselves too, and what God is going to do, what He is doing, the processes through which we have to go, dear brethren, to reach the divine mind, the divine ideal. Without fail it will be reached; nothing will be lacking, although there may be few in it. At Corinth, the process was going on, and it is going on now, in this hail. I say, humbly, that I am speaking ‘of Christ and of the assembly’, as Paul says, “I speak as to Christ, and as to the assembly”, (Ephesians 5:32) but he says I am speaking of a great mystery, and I am conscious, that I am speaking of a great mystery, and hardly understand it myself, I say that without any hesitation, yet my mind understands more than my affections, because the mind has greater power for understanding. But we must progress from the mind to the affections in order to get the true thought of God. The true thought of God in man requires a heart, man must have a heart; he must have affections.
So it is that Adam awakes and here is this great creature before him, you can picture her standing by him. Without speaking of things in any merely imaginative way one can visualise that there the woman is standing beside Adam, the man. And Jehovah does not say one word about it, but He brought her to the man, and the man is still the man. And the wonderful thing is that Adam is going to form words, he is going to increase the vocabulary, the spiritual vocabulary. Well, these are wonderful things, especially as they apply to Christ, and they are to be applied to ourselves too, because the Spirit of God is in us, and there are wonderful things possible where the Spirit of God is, where He dwells. I am not thinking of the mere thought of sealing, but of His dwelling, for then you may look for great things. And so it is that Adam uses two words, two new words, that do not appear in the divine vocabulary before. He says to Jehovah, “This time it is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: this shall be called Woman”. The word is Ishshah, a new word, “because this was taken out of a man”, (Genesis 2:23) that is, Ish, another new word. Now the blessed God is in the presence of a wonderful creature who can form new words, and they referred to a formation, and that formation was woman, she had been taken out of man. He puts the right name on her, a name that implies affection, because it is the name that would henceforth become the name for wife. And Adam himself would have [p. 549] another name too, which also implies affection; that is to say, his name would be called Ish. Of course Adam added to the vocabulary in naming the animals, but now he is dealing with a wholly different kind of creature. I am not endeavouring to teach you mere language, but what I am saying is true, and it leads up to what I have in mind; that is, that God is intending to work out the thought of the assembly. He is doing it, doing it every minute, perhaps with little success because of our poverty, and weakness and ignorance, but still He is working, in infinite patience, to bring about His great thoughts, and one of His greatest thoughts is the formation of the assembly; as Paul says, “I speak as to Christ, and as to the assembly”, Ephesians 5:32.
John the baptist spoke about Christ; he did not exactly speak of the assembly, though he did say, “He that has the bride is the bridegroom”, John 3:29. He said that much about the bride, but Paul is speaking about Christ and the assembly and God is helping the brethren to speak about Christ and the assembly, and to understand too the mystery, the great mystery, which God is working out. So, as I said, we are, I believe, under God, in for disclosures, not exactly fresh disclosures, but disclosures of things that have been known before, so that they may be known now in a fresh way, and perhaps known better. Anyway an opportunity is before us to learn better, not to be for ever learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth, but to learn at once, one thing at a time, as Paul says, “in part”, but in any case to learn.
Now to go on to my scripture in Corinthians. Paul’s letters to Corinth are most peculiar in the language he uses; here he asks them to bear with him in “a little folly”. He says, “indeed bear with me”, (2 Corinthians 11:1) as reflecting the patience of God. Let God go on teaching us; how wonderfully patient He is in His teaching. And so He says through Paul, “I have espoused you unto one man, to present you a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest [p. 550] by any means, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craft, so your thoughts should be corrupted from simplicity as to the Christ”, (2 Corinthians 11:2,3) that is the danger, dear brethren. I am aiming now to set aside, to rebuke, in myself and in a general sense, to rebuke whatever the devil is doing, because he is doing much. How often we have to say, “Satan came also”, Job 1:6. He is set against the assembly; you say, he is set against Christ, of course he is, but the truth of Christ is out doctrinally, we may say, but the truth of the assembly is not out so clearly. The fact is that it is very little understood, as I said before. I am quite conscious of how little I understand, and yet in my mind I do see something that God is going to bring out, it is the idea of the feminine, and that the saints are all to be in it. Ultimately there will be Christ and the assembly, and the assembly will represent the feminine, and Christ will represent the masculine. I am not saying that that is all, for there are other things to be said, there are the sons of God and the brethren of Christ; eternal thoughts also. I do say that the assembly is going to comprise all that is Christ’s in this dispensation; there is no other family in this dispensation but the assembly, and the assembly is being developed, processed if I may use the word, a commercial word, but I am using it now to show how the patience of God is acting; what the patience of God is doing, processing, if I may so express it, the idea of the masculine in man into the idea of the feminine. It is the whole purpose in mind when Paul says, “I have espoused you unto one man, to present you a chaste virgin to Christ”, 2 Corinthians 11:2. He means all the saints at Corinth, not all the women, but all the saints at Corinth, and we have to understand what is meant. Well, the presentation time is coming, the Lord Jesus is going to present the assembly to Himself, a glorious assembly, and it is a feminine thought. There are other phases as we have seen; that is, there will be brethren of Christ and sons of God. But the assembly is a feminine [p. 551] thought, and it is one of the greatest thoughts that God has, or has had, and has now disclosed. It was hidden for ages, but now it is out, and the Lord would stir up in our hearts an admiration for it, because it is Christ over again, the man over again.
It is in this sense, I believe, that Paul sent the young man Timothy to Corinth, as if he would present in him the idea that he had in mind, the feminine idea; that is, subjection, the idea of subjection. When we come to eternal things we are told that male and female as now existent will disappear, Galatians 3:28, but that does not mean that there will not be the idea of male and female, because it will appear in Christ and the assembly. The Lord would bring us to it, bring us to the idea by processing. Timothy, a young man, suggestively sets out this thought, as reflecting Paul’s ways amongst the Corinthians, not his own ways, but Paul’s; that is, in subjection he brought in livingly the feminine feature which is eternally glorious in the assembly as “subjected to the Christ”, Ephesians 5:24. I hope you will understand. You will if you think and look into the scriptures. God has determined to have the assembly, and His is determined that we shall understand that we belong to it, and that we are to be presented to one man, a chaste virgin to Christ; that is to say, the feminine thought is attachable to us all.
Well, that is my point, my word at this time, and I commend it to the dear brethren. We can see what Paul had in his mind in saying, “Bear with me in a little folly; but indeed bear with me”, 2 Corinthians 11:1. We need to wait upon God as He teaches us, and be patient so as to get it; not to be for ever learning and never coming to it, but getting the truth, for we are told to buy the truth and not sell it; that is to say, to go thoroughly in for it. It will cost us something to really get it. And so it is, as I said, it is in this regard that Paul was concerned here in writing to these dear saints, and there were a good many of them at Corinth; you will remember, the Lord said to Paul,
“Fear not…because I have much people in this city”, Acts 18:9,10. He had what I am speaking of in mind, you may be sure he had, not simply that there should be converts, but that there should be the assembly in Corinth. Paul was there for eighteen months, teaching the Corinthians, and in the teaching is what I am speaking of. You can understand how concerned he was that the process that he had in mind should be a success in heaven, as well as on earth, that the genuine thought of God should be there. The Spirit of God is amongst us, the Spirit of God is with us at this very minute, I have no hesitation about that, and He is aiming at what I am saying, that we should come round to the truth of Christ and the assembly, and learn how the thing is to be expressed fully, the masculine expressed fully in Christ and the feminine in the assembly. God will bring us to that, and He is appealing to us, that we may come to it. The dispensation will finish thus, and will not finish until the end is reached. “Then the end”, 1 Corinthians 15:24. That word is always applicable; God has His own end in things, and the end comes, and the end of this dispensation is at hand, and again I say, it will require the assembly. The Lord is saying to us, See to it that you get the thought, and enter into it, enjoy it, sing the hymns lustily that speak of it, sing them really, and understand them, so that the service of God involving it may go on, until the end. May God bless His word to us.