MAY 6TH, 1935

MAY 6TH, 1935

MY DEAR MR. —, — I am glad to send a few lines in answer to your letter. It seems to me that, as having the light of God’s mind in regard to what He has before Him, we are able to view all our fellow-believers in relation to that mind. But we have sorrowfully to feel that most of them know little or nothing practically of the truth of their divine relations with their fellow-saints. We might, indeed, own that we ourselves are only slowly learning what those relations are, and what they involve. But as to those who are still held in the trammels of human systems they are in a position which is so contrary to the truth that it effectually hinders them from any true apprehension of it. How could they get any idea of what the service of God is in His house when they are engaged in carrying on a service which is humanly ordered, and usually carried on in a way which does not require the power of the Spirit of God! There is a fixed order, and generally one person officially appointed to perform the service according to it.

According to 1 Corinthians 12 there are distinctions of gifts and services, all manifesting unity in their operation, so that it becomes evident that one Spirit is the power of all, and that there is an anointed vessel in which all are baptised into ^[p. 238] one body. Now to come into the truth of this in a practical sense saints have had to leave the whole human order which obtains in christendom. The recognition of the presence of the Spirit has led many to do so. This is the true starting point of godly exercise. For if the Spirit of God is here He does not depart from the order which was originally set up in His power, nor does He sanction what is contrary to it. While quite admitting that He acts sovereignly in conversion and in all ministry of the truth, yet it is evident that He does not act according to the divine order in systems which are quite contrary to that order. I understand the “divine system” to be that which is divinely regulated in every detail, and answers to the mind of God. Many saints have realised that human systems do not answer to this at all, and therefore they have left them so that they might realise, at any rate in some measure, what is true of the divine system. All those who have the Spirit have competency to fill a divinely appointed place in the divine system, but it seems to me that it is important to see that that system will not fit in to any human order, and therefore to move in it according to God requires separation. Apart from this I do not think there will be any spiritual apprehension of the truth of the body or of the house.

With much love in the Lord,

Yours affectionately in Him,

May 6th, 1935.