The Secret of Power

What is now, and what has always been, the secret of spiritual power in any? This is a question of grave importance for us; but the answer is one we as Christians ought to know something at least about. Such a question is seriously necessary to be both asked and answered today; and little able as we may be to reply to it fully, our lack may help us to seek the divine answer. One thing at least is clear, that where power has been known, either individual or collective, two things (among others perhaps) have been realized by the saints who have known it. First, God’s own immediate presence with His people; and secondly, man’s (that is, their own) utter impotency.
It is to be regretted that with certain Christians there should be such an appearance of satisfaction in speaking of that power which they knew in early years long past, and which they gravely tell us has now passed away. They are fain to cry out with Job, “Oh that it were with me as in months past, as in the day when God preserved me; when His candle shined upon my head, and when by His light I walked through darkness; as I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle” (Job 29:2-4). All this is sorrowful, inasmuch as it neither helps themselves nor any who hear them. Very different is such a state of soul from that of Paul, who says, “But one thing... forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13,14). Very different too was this experience of Job from that of the wise man in an earlier day than that of Paul, who declares that “the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (Prov. 4:18). And surely this is as it should be. Nearing the object of desire, the way becomes brighter and brighter. Brightened as the past may have been by His presence, I am nearer to Him now; how can I therefore regret and long for those days of shadow and darkness to come again through which in the past He led me? “Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed” (Rom. 13:11,12), and we are journeying from the night of Shadows (illumined notwithstanding by His love) to the day of His manifested glory; and if glimpses of His power and presence have cheered us here, what will it be to abide with Him?
But as to power, I turn now to a passage in the Old Testament to see how in the past His presence was manifested, the power of which wrought in a twofold way; and then I desire to note for myself this twofold effect: first, on His own people; and secondly, on all that raised opposition thereto. “When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language; Judah was His sanctuary, and Israel His dominion. (Consequence) The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back. The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs. What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thin wast driven back? Ye mountains, that ye skipped like rams; and ye little hills, like lambs? (Answer) Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob; which turned the rock into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters” (Psa. 114:1-7).
What a picture we have here drawn by the Spirit for our contemplation! As the morning light dawns on Rameses we see, not a well-disciplined army with ability to meet its enemies, but six hundred thousand footmen going forth apparently without resources, and encumbered with the care of wives and little ones. May we not say, What a powerless, defenseless, and easy prey they are to the wandering hordes of the desert? But no, beloved reader; a blood-bought people, and powerless in themselves truly, is going forth; but not alone. At that time “Judah was His sanctuary, and Israel His dominion.” Jehovah was in the midst of His people, and what was the result? “The sea saw it, and fled: Jordan was driven back. The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.” Now nothing in nature is more restless than the sea, (Isa. 57:20), and nothing in nature so apparently immovable and unbending as the mountain (Psa. 46:2-3; Matt. 17:20); but both confess to a power sovereign and supreme; both bow to its presence, and own it. Nature’s might must flee and tremble in His presence; and this is man, who hath power as lord over all His creation—man in his restlessness, man in his pride!
And while they marched on in obedience and dependence on it (the power of His presence with them), all was well. It scattered all the opposers; it prepared for them fountains in the desert. But they must remember that He is with them; they must not be inconsistent therewith. Truly He is for them, and against all who are against them; as He says, “Blessed is he that blesseth thee, and cursed is he that curseth thee” (Num. 24); but He cannot overlook inconsistency in any of His people with the fact that He is there. If they practically ignore Him, it is but that independent restlessness and pride of man which ever opposes Him; and if it work in them, then because they are His people He must deal with it. So again and again He had to remind them of Himself, there in their midst, as they murmur and wander forty years in the wilderness to humble them (Deut. 8: 2, 3). If they desire to have Hobab for eyes (Num. 10:31-33), He (the ark) immediately goes before them to find out their resting-places. If they faint, feeling but as grasshoppers before the giants of Anak, and the “cities great and walled up to heaven,” they faint because they have left the Lord out. But Caleb, the man of faith, cannot do this. He brings Him before the rebellious company, saying, “If the Lord delight in us, then He will bring us into this land.” Yet the people must bear their iniquities for this their unbelief forty years, “each day for a year,” from twenty years old and upward; “in this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there shall they die” (Num. 14).
“Our God is a consuming fire,” and His saints must not forget it; they must own it first, before (going out in power) it makes itself felt for them. I see this everywhere among the saints who have gone before us in the path of faith. Thus it wrought in Jacob’s case. While he was in servitude in Padan-Aram, and oppressed by Laban (Gen. 31:38-41), far away from the place of testimony, God does not interfere on Jacob’s behalf; but when (himself in obedience, and a crippled man) he is again on the way, though weaker than before as to outward appearance, yet it is then, as he journeyed, that the Spirit writes of him: “The terror of God was upon the cities that were round about them;” and they did not pursue after Jacob (Gen. 35:5). Ah! in that being crippled lies the secret. He has learned that he is in the way with God—it regulated him—and then God makes the power of His presence to be felt on those who would hinder His poor servant. It is the same today. And Paul learned it in his path down here. “Most gladly,” says he, “therefore will I glory in mine infirmities, that the power of Christ may tabernacle (lit. have its dwelling-place) on me” (2 Cor. 12:9). And thus, too, it bowed Job in its presence before it dealt with his three friends, and before it blessed his own family (Job 42:5,6). Similar also was its effect upon the prophets Isaiah (Isa. 6:5) and Elijah (1 Kings 19:11-13). That power which can if it please “rend the mountains, and break in pieces the rocks before the Lord,” makes itself known to Elijah, and to His saints, in a still small voice: “And it was so, that when Elijah heard it he wrapped his face in his mantle.” Blessed Master, and blessed servant, may we now more diligently listen to catch Thy yoke! What have we left, beloved reader, as our resource today? The most blessed revelation that we can have here on earth: “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matt. 18:20) HE IS THERE. (Not He will come there perhaps before our meeting closes; He nowhere says that); He is there when we come. Does the fact of His presence regulate us who are gathered? Does it banish forever all that restlessness and pride of nature which we all more or less possess, so that His people may unhinderedly go up to Him? Do restlessness, natural ability, and the pride of man, ever exalting itself, flee and tremble in His presence? In short, do we really desire spiritual power individually, and in the assembly? Then we must begin with ourselves. Can I expect to know it myself, or to see its action on others (1 Cor. 14:24,25), if it have no power over me then present? Nature, and the carnal mind, can find no quarter in any soul who truly realizes the LORD’S presence, whatever others may allow. But He IS there, even if I do not realize it individually. May it lead us to judge and refuse that in us which we know HE cannot own.
One question more. If I go on, forgetful of what is due to His presence, must He not deal with me, and will He not do so sooner or later, in order to maintain what is due to Him, and to separate me from evil? (1 Cor. 11:30-32)
H. C. A.
The Edification of the Body of Christ
We have seen that office was local in its character, and required the ordination of apostles or apostolic delegates. In both these particulars gift presents an entire contrast. We read of the bishops and deacons of a particular church; but we never read of the evangelist, pastor, or teacher, of any particular church. These were gifts bestowed upon the church as a whole, and a teacher or evangelist in one place was also a teacher or evangelist in every place to which he went. Moreover, they were the gifts of an ascended Christ, and never required, or could have received, any human sanction. This was clearly the case with apostles; for when, as Paul tells the Galatians, “it pleased God to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the heathen, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus” (Gal. 1:15-17). And it was the same with respect to the teacher. As soon as Aquila and Priscilla had taken Apollos, “and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly,” without asking any ordination or authorization he began to proclaim the truth which he had learned. Nor was this deemed irregular; for “when he was disposed to pass into Achaia, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him: who, when he was come, helped them much that had believed through grace” (Acts 18:26,27).
The gifts of an ascended Christ, then, whether apostles, evangelists, or teachers, received their authority from Him alone, and exercised it in responsibility to Him alone. Of course an apostle’s advice as to the place or mode of labor would be received with great respect; but he possessed no authority, nor did his advice take away from the responsibility of the individual workman. Thus when Paul “greatly desired” Apollos to go to Corinth “his will was not at all to come at this time.” And as with the exercise, so with the authorization—it came from Christ only. To accept sanction or ordination from men, or to connect their labors with any local appointment, would have been a departure from God’s order, and would have been a marked affront to Christ’s authority, by declaring it insufficient unless supported by human approval.
These gifts were bestowed “for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of the ministry, unto the edifying of the body of Christ” (vs. 12). As to standing, the saints are perfected already. All the blessings and privileges recorded in the earlier portion of the epistle belong to the weakest believer, who is sealed by the Spirit of God, no less than to the strongest. But the question here is our practical acquaintance with the truth, and the power it gives us both for maintaining sound doctrine and for pursuing a godly walk. The two prayers in the first and third chapters are directed to these ends, and in the things they ask there is unlimited room for growth. Christ, ascended and triumphant, has therefore bestowed the gifts named in this chapter in order that saints may be perfected. This is always His object. We may be content with a low state, a low walk, a low appreciation of our blessings, a low intelligence of the ways and purposes of God; but Christ is not content. From the height of His glory He is still occupied with the wants of His people, and the first purpose to which He turns His triumph is to send down gifts which shall minister to their growth.
These gifts are provided “unto the work of the ministry.” This does not mean, as we have shown, the establishment of any official order of men. It is really Christ’s ministry, the work of service He began on earth, now carried on in another form through these gifts which He has bestowed upon the church. There is another object dear to His heart besides the perfecting of individual saints, and this is “the edifying of His body.” Whether this is carried on through the work of the evangelist in bringing sinners to the knowledge of the truth, or whether through that of the teacher and pastor in establishing and strengthening those who are thus brought in, it is equally precious to Him who “loved the church, and gave Himself for it,” and who recognizes in it, notwithstanding all its failures, His own “body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.” How little do we enter into Christ’s thoughts as to the preciousness either of the individual believer or of the church, the “one pearl of great price,” which He has purchased at such a cost! In verse 14 the apostle shows more fully what is meant by “the perfecting of the saints.” It is, that “we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” Nothing less than this will meet God’s thoughts about us. Here it is not a question of filling up the body of Christ, but of individual growth. The point towards which we are to grow, that which constitutes the perfect man or the full stature, is oneness in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God. This will not indeed be fully reached till we see face to face; but meanwhile there is to be growth—growth in “the faith;” that is, in acquaintance with God’s revealed mind, and growth of heart in knowledge of Jesus the Son of God Himself. These are in accordance with the two prayers of the first and third chapters. In the first the apostle asks for growth in the faith, “that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe.” In the second He asks for growth in knowledge of Christ, that He “may dwell in your hearts by faith;” that ye may be “rooted and grounded in love;” and that ye may “know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.”
It is not only growth in the faith, however, or even in the knowledge of the Son of God, that is here spoken of. Besides this, we find that the “oneness” elsewhere insisted on is again introduced. The goal towards which the gifts should aid us is, “till we all come unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.” In this there should be progress; for thus only do we come “unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” We are to exhibit a perfect man—a man fully grown up in Christ. But where there are sects and divisions, believers, instead of being full-grown men in Christ, are only babes. They are carnal, not spiritual—walking as men instead of showing forth Christ. These divisions came in, as we have seen, through the eye being taken off Christ and occupied with men. If the eye is fixed on Christ, the maturity— “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”—here spoken of will practically display itself in our walk. Thus alone believers, “with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18).
The apostle then shows us the results of this maturity in Christ. The first is, that soundness of judgment in spiritual things which renders even the most unlearned believer proof against the subtleties of the human intellect, drawing away the heart from “the simplicity that is in Christ” into all sorts of false teaching— “that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive” (vs. 14). It is important to observe how this vantage-ground is gained. It is not by human learning, or by skill in controversy. This verse connects itself with the one immediately preceding it, showing that our stability in the midst of the shifting currents of human opinion and speculation is the result of our being full-grown in the faith, and the knowledge of the Son of God; that is, of our possessing an intelligent acquaintance with the Word of God, and a heart acquaintance with the blessed Lord Himself. No safeguards against error and false doctrine are proposed by the Scriptures, or can be of the smallest avail if set up by man, except these two.
But God is never satisfied with negative results, and it is not enough therefore that we should be shielded from error. He desires something more for us, that we, “holding” (not merely “speaking”) “the truth in love, may grow up unto Him in all things, which is the Head, even Christ” (vs. 15). The knowledge of the faith is, as we have seen, the weapon which alone enables us to “hold the truth” amidst the “opposition of science falsely so called.” But there must be a corresponding state of soul, showing that the truth is operative in the heart as well as the mind, that it is forming the affections as well as the intellect. Hence the truth must be held in love; for without both of these there can be no “growing up unto Christ in all things.” Where, on the other hand, the truth of God is really held, not simply as an intellectual creed, but in love, the believer will grow up unto Christ—will become more and more assimilated in his walk and ways to the blessed Lord.
And it is from Him alone, who is “the truth,” and who “is love,” that real growth must come From Him “the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love” (vs. 16). Here then we have important teaching, not only as to the part which the Head, but also as to that which the members play, in this “increase of the body.” Of course all the power for growth, all the supplies, come from the Head. Hence the whole is said to be “from,” or “out of” Him. But the “compacting” of the whole is “through (not from) that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in its measure of each part.” Though all comes from Christ, yet each believer takes his proper place; and thus through him, in his measure, the cementing and filling up of the body is carried on. This is true through grace in spite of man’s failure; but surely it is a deeply humbling fact, that this wondrous unity should have no outward manifestation here on earth. Our failure cannot indeed prevent God’s grace; but should not His grace make us ashamed of our failure?
T. B. B.
(Concluded from page 84)