COMPETENCY
E.C.Burr
2 Corinthians 3: 5; 1 Corinthians 3: 9, 10; 2 Timothy 2: 1, 2
I should like with the Lord's help to say a word about competency. It comes into the scriptures read and into other scriptures as well. No one giving an address can, in the compass of their own capacity and of the time, exhaust the concordance on any subject, but one would look for some thoughts that might leave an impression on the brethren. I expect we all feel continually, perhaps especially today as we think of circumstances and problems and issues that we know of, the need of competency.
As we said in prayer there is One who is competent for every thing. The Father loves Him and gave everything to be in His hands because He knew that He could trust Him with everything. We remember how Mr Taylor sen speaks - it must have been just after a presidential election - of the people of this country having installed into office a man whose qualities they knew; he goes on to say that God has installed into office a Man whose qualities He knew. God knew that the Man He had installed into office was competent for everything. There is no exigency that can arise in all the things that God has established in Christ that Christ is not competent to deal with. It is as true now as it was when He was on earth that He has done all things well: nothing that He has done needs correction or adjustment. If we have any backward view of time in eternity it will be to see that everything that Christ has done has been done well. As we look back - as the hymn (No 299) says, 'With Him look back on all the way; To learn the meaning, at His hand, Of every deed in every day' - we shall also learn 'The grace which God our Saviour showed' and shall look back and see that things that we thought were problems and difficulties have been worked out in the wisdom of His own hand and in the care of One who is doing all things well at the present time just as He was then. I do not think you could believe that "all things work together for good to those who love God" (Rom 8: 28) if you did not believe that the Man into whose hands He has given everything was still doing all things well. And He is doing all things well. It may not appear so to us; we have many problems and exercises.
The Lord has not exactly taken us into current problems while we have been together in these meetings - perhaps that is a sign of His grace and it is certainly a sign of His mercy - but He has led us round things that would help us in regard to present matters. In all these matters He is still doing all things well. We may think we see the tumbling of brethren, the tumbling even of local assemblies, but we know that He does all things well and nothing happens that is outside the competence of the One into whose hands the Fattier has given everything.
Therefore if we are to increase in competence we need more of the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ so that things may be done well as they are done in His Spirit. Difficulties and problems occur, we have things that confront us in our own localities, and each of us knows its own locality best. Maybe we sometimes think that we are confronted with a situation in which there is something that is bound with chains, and then it breaks out again and has to be bound again - He is competent to have it sitting and clothed and in its right mind. We may think that we have a situation in which all had been spent on many physicians and it has grown worse - He is competent to set persons free in the sense of forgiveness and establishment and restoration. We may think that we have every bodily disease and weakness in a moral sense - He is able to heal every one of them; He is competent for everything. This is the level on which God is working out things at the present time.
Now Paul in 2 Corinthians had complicated and difficult things to deal with, problems that in themselves were simple yet it took great difficulty to bring the Corinthians round to it. You would have thought that if a man had someone else's wife the whole of the assembly of God in a place would have risen up to deal with it in a moment. Not so at Corinth. Paul comes in there and he has to write with severity, in the power and the competence that he has an apostle, bringing in orders as to how things are to be dealt with. That power does not exist today. We are not in circumstances where apostolic power in one man can dictate what is done assembly by assembly; but competency is not gone, and Paul in the second epistle says "our competency is of God". I will not now go into the question of being new covenant ministers; what I am anxious to bring out of 2 Corinthians 3 is that competency is of God, and there is no power that is effective unless it is the power of God. The power of man will do many things. Through the skills that man has, and especially the mental and dialectic skills, he can bring in argument and conviction and persuasion by very many different means. There are men who are very easily able to understand the makeup of other men; these men on the whole are dangerous because they can sort out the characteristics of another man and play on them so as to bring about the result in the other man that they are seeking after. This is not the competency that is of God. That competency takes up things as God sees them in their whole environment and totality; "our competency is of God" excludes every other power and argument. When God has spoken, competency has been expressed. When man has spoken there may be argument, and persuasive argument: but wait till tomorrow and somebody with more argumentative skill will come in and turn the whole situation round because the thing is of man and not of God. When God has spoken there is finality.
What we need to learn beloved, especially in circumstances out of which confusion and difficulty grow, is that it is only the competency that is of God that will be effective. Many means may be sought, many arguments may be used, many instruments used, instruments ranging from the fountain pen to the telephone and from the duplicator to the transatlantic cable, but unless the competency is of God the result will not only be lack of advantage but it will tend to be disastrous. Therefore let us get back in to the sense that the competency which is of God is available at the present time. God has not left the assembly of God in a place without the competency of God. This is something which was established years ago in the ministry of beloved Mr Taylor sen. If you look over his ministry now, how much you see that you could have said of him (humbly as he would have accepted it) "he is a prophet, and will pray for thee, that thou mayest live", Gen 20: 7. I say that carefully because we do not want to flatter even the memory of men, but in fact you can go to that ministry and find an answer to nearly every problem that arises in our day. But one thing that the Lord gave him to say is that there is enough in each local assembly to deal with its own problems. The assembly characteristically has the competency which is of God. God does not need the ability of man as such in the local assembly; He uses men because the Spirit does not just make sounds in the air, He speaks through some body. Would that each of us was so directing ourselves and our state that we were more available to the Spirit as a means of His speaking through us rather than our own minds and our own ability.
But the local assembly is so equipped by God that the competency of God is there. Therefore it is not possible for a problem to arise in a locality which the locality cannot itself resolve. It may be that, in these days of weakness and brokenness, some help from elsewhere, if it is available and if it is under God, could be brought in to assist, but someone coming in from outside cannot bring in a judgment in the place to which he goes. All he can do is to leave the brethren in that place with the competency which is of God so that they come to express the judgment of the assembly of God in a place. I cannot come to Philadelphia and express assembly judgments here. Why? I am not local. The Lord has given enough capacity in this local assembly, and in London, Plainfield, New York, Cleveland, small localities like that where there is the light and the maintenance of the truth of the assembly, that competency of God is there. Anybody coming in from outside place to do what is right according to the competency which is of God.
I am impressed that Paul takes no other ground in Corinth. He is an apostle, certainly; bondman of Jesus Christ, certainly he is that too; if he speaks to "called saints" he is conscious of being a called saint, but the ground that Paul takes is "our competency is of God". You will have learned from the Acts already that if it is of God you cannot fight against it (see chap 5: 39). And anyone who is seeking to overthrow competency which is of God has also to face the other scripture; "Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?", 1 Cor 10: 22. If the competency which is of God is in operation then none of us is in the end competent to resist it. Maybe we shall be able to interfere with its progress for the moment. Daniel, as we know, prayed three weeks before he received an answer because it was interfered with on the way; but at the end the divine answer comes through and the competency of God must prevail. Therefore the first thing we would arrive at, beloved, is that in each of our places we are going to make way for the competency which is of God and not just for the opinions of men. There have been opinions expressed which have the authority of Scripture. Paul twice says "I give my opinion" and that has come down to us as Scripture. But if I give my opinion I submit it to the brethren in the light of the temple, and in the light of the knowledge of their having the Spirit; and if what I have expressed as my opinion has the competency of God it will persuade comes in as a help in order to rally what is of God in the one who is with God; if it does not have the competency of God a little child who has the Spirit could overthrow it. Therefore let us get back to the competency of God in everything we have to do. The things we have to do that are the most problem are the administrative things. Few of us know enough about the truth to be able to answer every question about the truth; it is astonishing though how many think they can resolve every administrative question just on their own. The question is, Is your competency of God or is it of man? Is it zeal? Zeal is right in its place; it is like the cutting edge on the tool that is needed for the conditions, but zeal alone may in the end prove to be a broken reed - you can put a certain amount of weight on it and in the end it bends under your hand. And there is a certain reed spoken of in scripture, "that broken reed, upon Egypt, on which if a man lean, it goes into his hand, and pierces it", Isa 36: 6. That is often the characteristic of zeal - you lean on it and it pierces through your hand.
Now we come to Paul in 1 Corinthians 3 where he does not actually use the word 'competent', but nobody would call an architect wise who is not competent. For instance, someone might try to put up, say a meeting room, and unless they have the strength of the walls properly related to the weight of the roof the thing will not stand up and the man will be shown to be incompetent because he was not wise, and he will be shown to be unwise because he was not competent. Now Paul is not speaking about building meeting rooms in Corinth. He is saying, I am a wise architect or "master-builder" (A.V.). That is to say Paul was competent in things which relate to the structure of things for God in the city to which he was writing. He was not just a wise architect in relation to Corinth but also in relation to Ephesus. I do not think he built on a different design and scale for Ephesus. Maybe the building at Ephesus was seen to have more beauty and more in it than what Corinth actually appeared to have but by the time Corinth had been cleaned up and the evil had been judged, and what needed to be put out had been put out, I think you would have discerned that in Paul's mind the architecture of Corinth was intended to be the same as the architecture at Ephesus. But Paul is a wise architect and he is competent.
Now we are not so much concerned in our day with the building of things. Things were built in Acts 2, the Spirit came and filled the house and then sat upon each one of them; and from what was established in the Spirit then things have come down to our day. They have come down over centuries of difficulty, centuries which Mr Taylor sen refers to as a great gap in assembly history, and they have been carried through.
But, beloved, we did not start anything. We, if we are in anything, are in the final stages of what the Lord has in His testimony on the earth; we are in the recovery of the truth. We have not therefore to set about an architectural exercise on what local assemblies ought to do. We have light as to that from the Scriptures. What is needed most often is the service of a wise master-builder and therefore a competent person in regard to the maintenance of the building in its local manifestation which was put up in Acts 2. The house was there and it was filled and what has been needed ever since is maintenance. It quite impressed me the first time that I went into my own office - and there were people there who were responsible for what goes on physically in the building - on the wall were the plans of the building. Now if any modification needs to be made, if there is any question of extra weight being put on the floor, or a wall being taken down to knock two offices together, what do you do? You go back to the original plans and you can see from them what is possible within the structure that you have to deal with. Equally if you want to find out why the drains do not work you can go back to the original plan and you need as much competency in the man doing the maintenance as you do in the original building. So a wise masterbuilder and a competent one does not go for the saw of division when what is needed is a brace underneath; and he does not go for the chopper when what is needed is the sand paper. Nobody ever produced smooth wood just by chopping away at it. Some people are very expert and I know that antiques that have been made with choppers are prized for the chopper marks; but things that have been smoothed according to God do not bear the chopper marks any longer, they bear the sign that the right tools have been used in the circumstances that existed. I believe, beloved, that we have got into the habit of too easily reverting to dividing tools when what is mainly needed are tools that will hold things together; and it may be that if we were more familiar with our spiritual tool chests we would be more successful in our local assembly because otherwise we tend to leave marks all over the furniture which are not approved by the Master of the house. Therefore let us see to it that the competency of the wise master-builder is entering into our maintenance activity, and if we really want to know what maintenance is needed let us go back to the original plan. Let us not think that we can redesign the whole thing, it is too late in the history for that. The original structure was built with the competency that is of God; who am I therefore to try to alter that structure? The Lord has committed to me in my place, and to you in your place, responsibility for the maintenance of the structure. Beloved brother, take it up. Beloved sister, when somebody competent takes up the right tool in a place do not push on his elbow or anything like that, it tends to produce scars in the structure that should not be there. If somebody competent with the competency of God is doing something, let him do it. If the wise master-builder is saying, I have cemented those things together and it will take about a week to stick, leave them to stick, do not come and test during the week how strong the joint is. All these things are homely by way of illustration but I think you can see the point, take the right tools and let competency which is of God work with the tools so that the right result may be produced. Ministry is available to enlighten us as to what is in the Bible, but in the Bible itself, you get first of all the plans of the original structure, and if you want to do anything competent you must go back to the plan of the original structure. Therefore, beloved, let us be wise, let us go by the right textbook, let us be sure that the Bible is the textbook; and let us go back to it in the Spirit, the great operating power, the greatest lubricant for competent tools that there has ever been, the power of the Holy Spirit working competently so that damage is not done to the structure which even the person trying to repair it valued and yet brought in a degree of ruin to it because he was not going by this book. Therefore let us be sure that we are learning to be wise, not bringing in amateur, inexpert attitudes; as it is well said, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. What we need to do is to increase in knowledge: not just knowledge in our heads, not just knowledge that can quote chapter and verse from some book but the knowledge that is related to wisdom so that we know precisely what to do in the circumstances that exist. If you need time to go and look up the Scriptures do not let anyone push you off the need for time. Wait on the Lord. It is far better to wait on the Lord an extra two or three days than it would have been to raise Lazarus the moment he was missed - the glory of God would not have been manifested. The great thing, beloved, is to learn wisdom and competence from the Man who does all things well.
Well, that I say in regard to the general course of our responsibility. I would like however to add a word about "competent to instruct others". The first thing is that nobody is competent to instruct somebody else unless he knows how to do the job himself. Therefore a need with us, especially if we are in what I have described as the parental generation - if we are the generation before the last in 2 Timothy 2 verse 2, if we are faithful men competent to instruct others also, that is to say in the generation before the others also - the need is not only that we be faithful but that we be competent ourselves. That involves two things: first that you are competent in the job. Many of us would have to look back and say that we have had opportunity for a great deal of spiritual education, perhaps over fifty or sixty years. We went right through primary school; and then spiritually, did we go on to college? Did you think that, when you had learned a bit, it was worth trying to find things out at a deeper level and on something more profound, and did you then put in a few years of college spiritually? I do not mean at the nearest university but a college that is in your own bedroom where you can get down before the Father who is in heaven and pray about the word. Go to the college that is on your own premises and find out something there and deepen in the word of God and the knowledge of God. "The Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God", 1 Cor 2: 10. If you want a spiritual college education you will find it in the Holy Spirit. As we remarked yesterday, the Father teaches, and the Son teaches, and the Spirit teaches; God Himself teaches. Have you learned to get out of the primary level of things and into the depths of God? Hebrews raises that very question: "leaving the word of the beginning of the Christ" (Heb 6: 1), as if we graduate from primary school and go on to something else. Hebrews itself points the way to things that are very profound; it needs someone who has been to college spiritually. Many of us are content with a primary education spiritually; many have left their college education, their graduation spiritually, to very late in life; but the Lord would allow us to increase our competence quickly, not by zeal but by devotedness. So you become a man who knows the Scriptures, who knows the truth, who knows what truth applies to a particular situation and who does not get out the hammer when the screwdriver is needed - a competent man.
So that is the first thing, to be competent to do the job yourself. Then the second is that you have to be "competent to instruct others also". And the older brethren here will not think me unkind, I trust, if I say that there is evidence that the competence to instruct others is something that may have been rather lacking. You may say, It is a very difficult class I have, they do not sit still, they come in late for their lessons, when we are singing they talk; you may say all this goes on. But your competence to instruct others also involves first of all the ability to secure discipline in the class. No teacher is effective if he cannot secure discipline in the class. Now who is competent to instruct others in the principles of the house of God? One of the principles of the house of God is that you do not come in late, and you do not talk when you are singing a hymn; this is the house of God and you do not have private conversations during the singing of the hymn. Somebody should be competent to instruct others also in little details like that. So that you get a class that is not just sitting petrified, it is sitting interested but disciplined; that is quite a primary need. But then you may say, This class is rather difficult, they do not even seem to have learned first principles, hardly anyone knows the multiplication table let alone logarithms, and I cannot get anywhere with anybody. Beloved, is the lack of competence with the class or in the instructor? The only question Paul raises is that you be competent to instruct. I think that means that you must be able to handle the class so that the instruction carries through. As one thinks of the beloved young brethren in this country and in our own country, for a large part I see uninstructed young men and young women. I do not yet see in every place young people growing up, in regard to whom I would commit myself, saying that when they are a bit older they will be competent as wise architects. I see features of it in some but where I would like to lay the responsibility is on those who should be instructors. I do not charge the young people who are still in the spiritual sense in class, but what I would like to raise with us who are older, both brothers and sisters is, are we competent to instruct others also? One thing that will be needed to be a competent instructor is that your example testifies to what you say. To take just a simple illustration, it would be useless for me to stand up here and say a lot by way of instruction about the ill effects of hard drinking if someone came round to the house and saw me spend the evening doing just that very thing. Your example has to confirm what you say. It was a disastrous comment on somebody when it was said to them, Your actions speak so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. Therefore, beloved, let our actions confirm what we say. There will be a great deal of competent instruction in men and women whose example is such that they scarcely need to say anything. And there will be no profit in the next generation, who should be instructors, if there is not the committal by way of behaviour to the truth. All this raises the point with us as to how much we really value the recovery in which we have part. Do you want it to continue until the Lord comes? Will you be content if, after you have died, your children come along as far as they can and then give up? Or do you want a testimony in the light of the assembly here until the Lord comes? If you do I think you will have to start instructing others also, to start soon and be competent when you do it. It would be useless to have brought up a class that felt that the only tool that could be used in the assembly was the saw; it would be a terrible thing if a generation grew up that thought the only tool available was a dividing one. Yet there is enough in the history of the 1960s to make anyone in the next generation think that if trouble arises it should be chopped off. Is that not true that as you look back over the 1960s you think that the first tool to reach for is a dividing one? What is needed is those who have the power to heal. Paul in the end will not have instructors in Corinth but fathers. Who is competent to instruct others also like a father? Who? Ask yourself, who would you sooner entrust your children with for instruction, someone else or yourself? If your answer is not 'myself' then you have not sufficient confidence in the work of God in yourself or in what you yourself believe. Therefore the best instructors will be fat hers. The best of the next generation will be those who have been brought through in fatherly care, so that what was committed from Paul to Timothy and to faithful men is preserved in another generation who have learned from their fathers how to be competent in the things of God. So, beloved, as we look around what we see is the need for competency. Oh! the disasters of incompetency! Think of the 1960s, if I may refer to them again, when incompetent things were done and the result has been that when the saints came to repentance about them they had to go back and, as far as they could, put them right; but some things were done by incompetent workmanship that can never be put right as far as things here are concerned. You look back and you see it, and you know that incompetent workmanship has produced disastrous and scarring results. The thing is, beloved, whether we are going to be more competent in our own day. There are few enough who seek to walk in the light of the assembly. What we would desire is the skill that comes from the competency that is of God so that every matter in the assembly of God may be determined on that basis and not on the basis of the mismanagement of men.
May the Lord help us. I grow increasingly in a feeling regard to the next generation wondering how they are going to be brought through. I trust in the Lord just as you do, I pray for them just as you do, but Paul seems to me to underline that there is a need or competent instructors if the truth is to go on. If we need to do some homework let us do it, if we need, to improve our own skills let us do it, but let us care enough about the recovery to want another generation in which things are going to be carried through competently until the Lord comes.
PHILADELPHIA
29 May 1972
LOOKING ON JESUS
In heaven above,
Jesus is there, a scene so fair,
A scene of love.
There glories shine,
That He has won, God's blessed Son,
A work divine.
'Tis only He,
In glory bright, shall fill our sight,
Him we shall see,
And in that gaze,
God's glory too, shall fill our view,
Seen in His face.
Oh may our sight,
Fixed on Him there, for ever share
This deep delight.
In joyful rest
The soul is stilled, the heart is filled
And all is blest.
A.J.Gaskin
ABERDEEN