THE NEW COVENANT MINISTRY
[p. 47] THE NEW COVENANT MINISTRY
My subject tonight is the ministry of the new covenant. There are two aspects in which the apostle speaks of ministry in this epistle — in chapter 3 the ministry of the new covenant, God “has also made us competent, as ministers of the new covenant”; and in chapter 5 “the ministry of reconciliation”. The first is, in a sense, more positive than the second, because it speaks of what is substantive; the ministry of the new covenant is in effect, “the Spirit quickens”, that is, makes alive. What I understand by the word of reconciliation is the testimony that all that which was contrary to God or that stood in the way of the accomplishment of God’s purposes of grace has been completely removed on God’s part. At the close of chapter 5, we have “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us, that we might become God’s righteousness in him”.
I do not purpose at this time to go on to the ministry of reconciliation, but to say a little about the ministry of the new covenant. The apostle is led to it by the thought of a letter of commendation. The question which he raises in the beginning of the chapter is, Do we need to be commended to you, or do we want a letter of commendation from you? The answer to it is, You are our letter, because you are manifestly declared to be Christ’s letter, “ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart”. The writing was of Christ, made legible in the power of the Spirit, and is in contrast to the writing of the law on the two tables of stone; and this leads the apostle to speak of the ministry of the new covenant. The ministry of the new covenant is [p. 48] of the spirit in contrast to the letter, and the Lord is the Spirit. It is not simply an announcement, for it is said in connection with the Lord, “the Spirit quickens”. It is not exactly the Holy Spirit that is spoken of here, but the Lord is the Spirit. It is the spirit in contrast to the letter; the letter kills, the Spirit quickens. I will draw attention to that presently, because it does not do to confound the spirit with the thought of the Holy Spirit.
There are three distinct thoughts in the chapter. The first is the writing of Christ, you are Christ’s epistle, His writing. The second is, “the Lord is the Spirit”. And the third is, “looking on the glory of the Lord”. And on those three points, I desire to speak, for the ministry is a very important matter. But first let me say one word about the gospel, as spoken of in chapter 15 of the first epistle. It is an announcement of facts; the ministry is not simply an announcement, but refers to patient labour, which never ceases until the saints are alive in Christ. It is distinct as far as I understand it, from the truth of the church. It may lead on to it, but in itself it is a perfectly distinct ministry, the ministry of the new covenant. The work of the ministry is not done until you can say of saints that they are alive in Christ. There is a new plant there. I may illustrate it by Israel in the millennium. When the law is written in the heart of Israel in that day, then it is that Israel will live. I could not say that they will live in Christ, because the expression “in Christ” is hardly applicable to them, but they live, and that to God, in a state of things on earth in which life is possible. To use a figure which is employed in the gospels, they will carry their bed. The Lord said to the paralytic at the pool of Bethesda, “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk”. And that points to what Christ will do for Israel in the future, and refers to the moment when spiritually they will live. But the contrast to it here is Christ written [p. 49] in the heart. In the old covenant the law was written on two tables of stone, which were put in the ark. It is not that now, and it will not be that in the millennium. Then it will be the law written “not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart”. Now it is not the law, but Christ written. You are Christ’s epistle “ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart”.
Last week, in connection with the two or three introductory verses of the epistle to the Romans, I dwelt upon the glad tidings, seeking to show that what God has to say to us is His glad tidings concerning His Son. Christ is the resource of God, and God’s power of redemption or recovery is in Him; and therefore what God has to say to man in the glad tidings is concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. There is the point of recovery; not only has He effected the work of reconciliation, but all is to be reconciled in Him. Then I dwelt a little on some of the detail which comes out there, that He is “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness; by the resurrection from the dead”, and referred to those three expressions as really giving to us the great principles of God’s ways in grace.
Now I pass on to the ministry with a remark which I believe to be of great importance, that is, that while God speaks to us from the height of His glory, no one can at first take in the full import of what He says. The same thing may be seen when the Lord Jesus spoke to the woman of Samaria. He spoke according to the height of the glory of His Person, but she could not take it in. God can speak to man of His glad tidings concerning His Son, but you cannot at once take it all in. Every one of us in our history with God has to begin at the beginning, and the beginning is small. I have heard it said that a soul has to go back from Christ in glory to Christ at the cross. I do not [p. 50] believe there is any truth in it, for the simple reason that a newly awakened soul cannot take in all that God presents in the gospel. The apostle speaks in chapter 1 of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among the Corinthians by himself and Silas and Timotheus; but you do not really take in the thought of the Son of God when first converted.
I will tell you in a few words what I believe is the real progress of the soul in that respect. I am not speaking now of what people can repeat as a creed. Most of us have been familiar in that way with Christian doctrines from the time we could speak, because we have been brought up in the midst of Christianity. Anyone can repeat a creed, and in a country like this, where people are instructed in Scripture, they could tell you a great many of the truths in it. A class of children could do so, if they were catechised, and they might be simple and not question that they are truths. But when it comes to what a man’s soul really apprehends, it is quite another matter. The first thing which a soul under exercise really takes in in regard to God is the sacrifice of Christ. At the beginning, Abel, divinely taught, came to God through sacrifice; he brought the firstling of his flock and of the fat thereof, and there was no type of resurrection there; the fat simply refers to the excellency of the offering. And so now, if a soul comes to God, it comes by the sacrifice of Christ: that is the beginning, and in that stage of its history it is all that a soul can really take in. God has set forth Jesus to be a mercy-seat through faith in His blood. The thought that God has to be met by sacrifice is almost innate in man, and when he is brought into exercise as to his responsibility to God or as to his state, his first apprehension is that God has provided a sacrifice. The first thing for faith is the blood, and I do not believe anybody really begins except there. People may say that they have apprehended other truths, but I doubt it. They may [p. 51] think so, but their real beginning with God is that they have apprehended the sacrifice of Christ, that is, they approach God, like Abel did, by sacrifice. I quite admit there must be a work of God in them antecedent to this, but I do not go into that now. I am speaking of what the soul apprehends. You find the same order in the history of the children of Israel. The first thing they learned was shelter from the judgment of God, that they were under the shelter of the blood of the lamb when the destroying angel was passing through the land of Egypt.
I venture to say that until the work of Christ is apprehended, that is, until the thought of the offering is taken in, a soul cannot really apprehend the truth of the resurrection. It is not natural to man to believe in resurrection. Resurrection is of the supernatural power of God, and the real moral link with resurrection is in the value of the sacrifice. I doubt if any person really has faith in the resurrection of Christ if he has not first learned that He was delivered for their offences. The Scripture order of it is this, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. What brings about the resurrection is, that as sin came in by man, so sin has been removed in man. There was no annulling or setting aside of death until sin was gone. Sin brought death into the world, and therefore if death is to go, sin must be taken away. Sin is taken away from before God by the offering of Christ, and therefore death is annulled. “By man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead”. When the offering is apprehended, when the value of the sacrifice is seen, then the truth of resurrection, and the victory over death is taken in.
The next thing which I believe a soul apprehends according to God is the lordship of Christ. Its eyes are opened to see that Christ is the revelation, the [p. 52] embodiment, so to say, of all God’s thoughts with regard to man. It thus gets peace; but no soul ever gets peace until it apprehends Christ as Lord, and Christ is apprehended as Lord when the truth of His resurrection is accepted. We believe on Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. His lordship is based in Scripture on resurrection. For this purpose Christ both died and lived again, that He might have dominion, might be Lord, over both the dead and the living. I can understand resurrection when I apprehend sacrifice; and when I see the resurrection of Christ, then I understand His lordship, that He is in dominion as man in order that He may administer to men in power all the good that is in God’s thoughts for men. It is not now His going about in the world doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him, but the bringing in of good in power, for lordship implies power. If you want it detailed, you can read the beginning of Romans 5, “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom also” — that is, by our Lord Jesus Christ — “we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God”. “We are making our boast in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom now we have received the reconciliation”. Peace, grace and reconciliation are through our Lord Jesus Christ. He has brought to us with authority as Lord all the good that God has for man. He is the true ark of the covenant and the mercy-seat, the One in whom God addresses Himself to man, and the recognition in my soul of His authority brings into it all the good of which I have spoken. It is a practical truth, for just in proportion as your heart is subject to Christ as Lord you are really in the enjoyment of all the good which God has brought into effect in Him. It is a wonderful thing to be subject to Him, so that “whatsoever ye do in word or deed”, you “do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him”. The administration of all that God has for man is vested in Christ as Lord; all power is given to Him in heaven and upon earth — and what for? To subjugate all evil, and to introduce peace, and grace, and blessing, and joy, and reconciliation.
There is the third great truth which the soul learns in regard to Christ, but not I think till the Spirit is received — He is the Son of God, that is His glory. The soul then apprehends His glory. It sees that were He not the Son of God, there would not have been virtue in the sacrifice, there would not have been ground of resurrection, nor suitability for His place as Lord; the whole stands together, and for the support and filling out of the other thoughts, it is really necessary to apprehend His glory, and His glory is that He is the Son of God. He is the last Adam, a quickening spirit.
I believe that is the way in which the soul is led on. And a simple illustration of it is seen in the case of the woman of Samaria. The Lord speaks to her according to the height of His glory. He says, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink” — Who was it said that to her? It was the Son of God, the Giver of the Holy Spirit. That is brought out in chapter 1 of John’s gospel. The Spirit abode upon Christ, and John the baptist says, “I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptise with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptiseth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God”. The Lord spoke to the woman according to the height of His Person, but she does not take it in in that way. The first thought she gets about Him is that He is a prophet. The second is that He is the Christ, the Anointed. She says, “Come,
[p. 54] see a man which told me all things that ever I did” — that is the prophet — “is not this the Christ?” She is led on thus, but as far as we can tell from the chapter, she did not then apprehend the glory of His Person, and I doubt if she was in a condition to do so until she received the gift. There is a great deal of difference to be made between the mode in which God addresses Himself to us, and the power for apprehension in our souls, because each of us has to begin in a very small and feeble way; but we are led on by these steps, first to take in the sacrifice, then the resurrection, then the authority or lordship, and then that which is the final thought in a certain sense, and the background of all — His glory, He is the Son of God.
I say this much by way of introduction, and pass on to speak of the three great points that come out in this chapter, which are very intimately connected with what I have been saying — the first point being the writing of Christ in the heart; the second, the Lord is that spirit; and the third and final point, “looking on the glory of the Lord” we are all “transformed according to the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit”.
The apostle could say to the Corinthians, ‘You are Christ’s epistle ministered by us’. Mischief had been at work among the Corinthians, and there had been an effort on the part of evil workers to undermine the authority of the apostle. But it is not possible to efface what is written by “the Spirit of the living God”. I do not know whether all quite apprehend the force of that expression. The writing is not exactly spoken of as the work of the Spirit of God, but the Spirit of God is put in contrast to the ink; that is, that every line of Christ which is written in the heart of the believer is written efficaciously, so to say, in spiritual lines; that, I take it, is the idea of the expression. The writer is Christ; you are Christ’s epistle, the letter that He has written, “ministered by us”, for [p. 55] the apostle was the agent; and as to the manner of the writing, not with ink, but with “the Spirit of the living God”, and then, “not in tables of stone”, referring to the two tables of the first covenant, “but in fleshy tables of the heart”.
The fleshy tables of the heart show the work of God as the foundation of all at Corinth., This was not the apostle’s work. Man’s heart is hard enough by nature, and if God had not prepared man’s heart, you could not speak about “fleshy tables of the heart”. It indicated a divine preparation for the ministry; it was not the ministry, but the preparation of God for the ministry. So, too, we get the same thing prophetically spoken of in regard to Israel; God takes away the heart of stone and gives them a heart of flesh. Before anything can be written for God in the heart of man, the heart must be prepared.
When you read the many things that the apostle has to disapprove in the first epistle, it is striking that he can say to the Corinthians, that they were “Christ’s epistle”, and “manifestly declared” to be that. What do you suppose Christ writes? It was not the law in their hearts, the time has not come for that. I believe that in the issue of God’s ways, every family will bear some trait of Christ. When the law is written in the heart of Israel, they will bear that trait of Christ. But the present is not the moment for writing the law in the heart; but if Christ writes in the heart, He writes Himself; it was Jesus Christ that the apostle ministered; Christ was written in the heart of the Corinthians, and Christ was the writer. The result was real faith in Christ. He was appreciated in their hearts.
Now that involves a very great deal. It involves, to begin with, the practical displacement of self; for it Christ is come in, it is another man, from another source, another character of man altogether; that is what is presented to us in Christ. In Christ, as here in the world, we see a man anointed of God, bringing [p. 56] to man every thought of good that God had toward man, going about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him. We see Him, a Man here in the power of the Holy Spirit, for the will of God, maintaining what was due to God, and at the end offering Himself by the eternal Spirit without spot to God. That is what Christ did and was. We see the perfect contrast to all that was here in the world — man here seeking his own things and his own will, and Christ here simply and exclusively for the will of God. The One that had title to please Himself did not please Himself, but the reproaches of them that reproached God fell on Him. We see Him here in the presence of the hatred of man, bringing heavenly good and grace into this world, full of zeal for God, maintaining the righteousness of God, and bringing to man relief from all the pressure under which man lay. The Lord could say, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord”. That is what He was here for. And then He offered Himself to God to put away what was contrary to God, giving Himself for us “an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour”. That is what Christ was, and that is another man; for, although men had often acted in the power of the Holy Spirit before, there never had been a man anointed by the Holy Spirit and thus characterised by the Spirit. But that is what the Lord was. Every word He spoke, every act He did, and every miracle He performed, was by the Spirit of God; and He could say, “I do always those things that please him”, speaking of the Father. That is the Christ, the anointed of God, who has effected all for God and for man.
[p. 57] Now I want everybody here to apprehend by the grace of God, the contrast between such an One and yourself; and I ask you one simple question, do you not prefer that Man to yourself? You cannot have the two together; you cannot have Christ and yourself, and if Christ comes into the heart, self will have to go out. Isaac and Ishmael cannot be in the house together; and if Christ is written in the fleshy tables of the heart, you have practically to be displaced to make room for Christ. Isaac the child of promise is to be in the house, and Ishmael the child of the flesh has to go out. And so it is with each one of us. If Christ is written in the heart, it is not that I delight in the law of God, but I delight in Christ. A man delights in anything which is written in his heart. When the law is written in the heart of Israel in the future, they will delight in the law of God. For there are two things God gives them: His laws into their mind, that is, they get an understanding of them; and He writes them in their heart, thus it becomes their nature, they delight in it. If Christ is written in my heart, I delight in Christ. And there is power, too, connected with it, because it is written by “the Spirit of the living God”. But then, on the other hand, if Christ comes in in that way, we are displaced. Christ will rule there supreme, and all unsuitable to Christ has to go. I have to reckon now that it is not I that live, but Christ lives in me.
May God give us all grace to accept it, because it is not God’s thought that something is to be seen of Christ, and something of us; but we are an epistle of Christ known and read of all men. If you have any estimation of what Christ is, you cannot fail to delight in Him. The apostle says at the close of the first epistle: “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha”.
Now I pass on to the next great thought, “the Lord is the Spirit”. It is the thought of the writing of [p. 58] Christ which leads the apostle on to the new covenant; because the thought of the writing led him back to the two tables of stone connected with the first covenant. The apostle says, “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament”; or covenant, “not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life”. I want you to miss the following verses, and to go on to verse 17; the intervening verses are parenthetical, and you cannot understand the run of the passage if you do not for the moment leave them out. “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life ... Now the Lord is that Spirit”. It must be perfectly plain to everyone here, that you cannot be with God on the ground of the old covenant. It has grown old, and is ready to vanish away. You must be on the ground of the new covenant. But you have not to do with the letter of the covenant, but with the spirit, and the spirit is Christ. In the first covenant they had the ark of the covenant, and the mercy-seat. And in the new covenant Christ represents that to me; that is, Christ as Lord in glory is the true ark of the covenant and the mercy-seat. If you want to know anything at all about God’s thoughts in regard to man, you must learn what is true in Christ as Lord. You will find it in the first verses of Romans 5. It is not what Christ was in His solitary path upon earth, beautiful and perfect as that was; but what is brought now to man in the lordship of Christ. We get peace with God, as I pointed out just now: it is what God is towards us, and access into the grace of God, and reconciliation. We have everything brought to us now in the Lord Jesus Christ. The thought it presents to me is this, that everything has been established for God, and to His glory, in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that it is now in Him as the mercy-seat, that God is addressing Himself to man,
[p. 59] and if I want to know what the bearing and attitude of God is towards man, I have to learn it in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not only that I appreciate what He is as Christ, but I apprehend Him as the Lord, and in Him and by Him I get all the good which God has for man. “Lordship” is an expression connected with administration, and the administration of all good which God has provided for man is placed in the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. All things are to be put under Him. “He is Lord of all”, that is the title He has, and He is Lord to the Christian; and as we have seen, it is when my soul has really taken in in faith the truth of the sacrifice, and I apprehend Him as risen, that I come under His authority and my soul enters into the enjoyment of the great good which is established of God in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a blessed thought that all the power of evil is to be set aside, and that all authority for this is vested in Christ. That is what God has brought to pass in His great grace. All authority is given to Christ in heaven and upon earth. Christ is Lord of all to suppress all evil, and set aside its power, and to introduce all the goodness of God’s heart for the blessing of man.
Now we get to the point of living. It says, “the Spirit quickens”, that is, makes alive; it is not exactly the Holy Spirit that is referred to, but Christ is in the heart in power, He is accepted in the heart as Lord, and the acceptance of Him as such is the power of God to quicken. When Christ comes into this world as Lord, He will bring life into it. When He is accepted as Lord in the heart of the Christian, He brings life into the heart: “the Spirit quickens”. The Christian lives because Christ lives.
Then it goes on to say, “and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty”. There you get the distinction between the spirit of Scripture and the Holy Spirit. All the Old Testament, every type and shadow [p. 60] of the first covenant, speaks of Christ. The children of Israel could not see it, “their minds were blinded”; they could not see what God was about when He gave the law, nor the import of the glory in the face of Moses; in fact they were not permitted to see it, as we are told here. We see in Christ the end of that which is annulled and have liberty in the Spirit.
There is one thought more. “But we all, looking on the glory of the Lord, with unveiled face, are transformed according to the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit”. It is a truth which has always been accepted, that when Christ was here upon earth His glory was veiled, in other words, He was here in humiliation. But when we look at Christ raised again from the dead, sitting at the right hand of God, and all power committed to Him in heaven, and upon earth, His glory is no longer veiled, we look at the glory of the Lord with unveiled face. Can you have any doubt about His Person, that He is the Son of God? Moses had to veil his face so that the children of Israel should not look on the glory of his countenance; it was typical of Christ. But now that is not the case. We look at the glory of the Lord with unveiled face. Following in the steps I have marked out, His sacrifice, His resurrection, His lordship, have you any doubt about the glory of His Person? Could all those things be true of anyone except a divine Person, One who came from heaven? Can you have any doubt that He is the Son of God? I am sure you could not. And therefore now you behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled face. And what is the practical effect of it? “We all”, the “we” is not merely apostolic, we all are transformed according to the same image — there is no longer divergence between us — “from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit”, that is, as we apprehend the glory of the Person of Christ, what He is as Son of God, as properly heavenly, coming from heaven, and “the firstborn among many brethren”, all of us are transformed to “the same image from glory to glory”; we all practically become superior to everything down here, and enter by the grace of God into what belongs to the circle where Christ is, into the fact of what He is as the perfect and sufficient object of divine affections, and that we are identified with Him where the love of God has its perfect rest and satisfaction in man. This is all individual. It is not the truth of the church but of the gospel, it is gospel ministry.
I have not much more to say. I only look to God to make the truth good in all of us. What we very often have to do is to go a good way back over our spiritual history, for we pick up divine things in such a disorderly fashion, that it takes a long time for the Spirit of God to put them in their proper place in our souls. We get a little bit here and a little bit there, and a great many things which we do not understand at the time. But if we speak of the orderly work of the Spirit of God, I have no doubt it is according to what I have said.
May God give us to have our hearts full of heavenly light. That is the province of faith, faith brings light into the heart, and in proportion as faith is in exercise, the heart is full of light. May God grant that we may have in our hearts the light of the glory of the Lord, not only to see the authority with which He is invested — though that is a very important thing — and “whatever we do in word or deed, to do all in the name of the Lord Jesus”, but also to see the glory of His Person, the heavenly effulgence which shines there. For then we are changed into the same image, we become more familiar with the scene in which He is, and we get a proper understanding of the love of God resting on an adequate and worthy Object; and learn that nothing can “separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”.
[p. 62] It is a mighty thing, and one great effect of it on us is that we begin to think much less of everything down here; it is practically eclipsed in our souls, and we shall be content to go through this scene according to the will of God, and seeking to please Him. And then we become more at home with heaven and the scene where Christ is, and when the Lord comes and we enter the Father’s house, we shall not enter as strangers, but as having already become familiar with what is there. For when I speak of Christ, and the glory of His Person, and the affections of which He is the Object, I speak of the Father’s house, and it is a place in the Father’s house that He has gone to prepare for us, and into which He will bring us. May God give us to see the glory of the Lord, and to look at it stedfastly.