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The Pattern is the Son
The pattern of the training of sons is the Son. Conformed to
the image of His Son! Christ fully formed in you! Foreordained
unto adoption as sons! And adoption is at the end not at the
beginning; adoption still waits; the day of our adoption has not
arrived. You know the New Testament teaching on this matter is
altogether different from modern English practice; and so,
although Paul does not use that actual word in that connection,
he puts the same truth into other words when he says, “Waiting
for the manifestation of the sons of God”. The
manifestation of the sons is only another way of saying the day
of adoption: that is, when the sons are brought forth and
presented as sons, no longer children but mature, now to take
responsibility.What is God doing with us? His work with us is to reproduce in us the constituents of sonship as represented by the Lord Jesus. The battle that rages and rises between our thought and the Lord’s thought, between our will and the Lord’s will, between our way and the Lord’s way, between our desiring and the Lord’s desire, has this one issue at stake, whether something more of His Son is to become a part of our very constitution, or whether we are going to put that back and remain just the same old creation. There is a big thing hanging upon that battle. In our last meditation we were speaking about adjustability. What is it that we are to be adjusted to? It is simply putting Christ in the place which we ourselves in some way have occupied, giving place to the Lord. That is Christ being fully formed. He is in us, but He is to be fully formed in us.
I am sorry the translators left out the value of the Greek in that passage. The Greek word is perfectly clear: “Till Christ be fully formed in you”. He is there, but there is formation, and this formation is through conflict, and Paul says that he is undergoing the suffering: “For whom I am in travail till Christ be fully formed in you”. There is something going on that is costly. It is marked by a painful process.
The Sphere is our Spirit
I want to come to the sphere of the training of sons, the
spirit; of course, now not the Holy Spirit but our spirit:
“the Father of our spirits”. You notice the word
“father” in this twelfth chapter is implied, suggested
by son; “fathers of our flesh” — “Father of
our spirits”. So that it is in the realm of our spirit that
all this is going on. God is concentrating upon our spirit, and I
want to define that. The teaching of the Word of God about the
spirit is not just what we mean when we say, He has a nice
spirit! That means that what you meet is something very pleasant,
it is a kind of outgoing influence to you. Or we may say, He has
a nasty spirit! You mean he is a cantankerous person. That is not
the meaning of the Father of our spirits. Our spirits are
represented in the Word of God as the essential man: that is, the
innermost part of our being, and if you like to sit down with a
concordance and go through this matter of spirit you will be
surprised.I am impressed with some of the things that are said about spirit. I will give you two or three references.
Take 1 Corinthians 2:11, “For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God.” That is not just breath, that is an intelligent organ, and that is clearly something deeper than reason. It is not that I meet a certain man, and I look him up and down; I look at the size of his nose, and the shape of his chin, and just how his head is formed, and various other things, and I come to the conclusion that he is a certain type of man; that kind of man will behave in a certain way. I know what I may expect by having taken the measure of that man, and so I know that man. No, it is not that. This passage is deeper than the reasoned thing, the thought-out thing, the sized-up thing, it is intuitive knowledge, and that is spiritual knowledge. Spiritual knowledge is intuitive knowledge, and the spirit is the intuitive organ. That is exactly how angels move; they are spirits. God and angels never have to reason out anything. They never have to calculate. Angels do not move at the behest of the Lord by being told in words and given an explanation. They move intuitively. It is intuitive knowledge of the Lord. If another brother and I are one in spirit we intuitively know what we will do, and what we would like each other to do. We do not have to be told, we do not have to be argued with, we know intuitively and we can anticipate one another’s wishes intuitively. It is an organ of knowledge.
Or take another passage in the same letter, 1 Corinthians 5:3: “For I verily, being absent in Body but present in spirit, have already, as though I were present, judged him that hath so wrought this thing”; “...absent in Body... present in spirit, have... judged”. In spirit judged. I have weighed this thing up in spirit, my spirit has come to the conclusion that such-and-such is the case; my spirit has decided this thing. It is an intelligent organ.
Or pass to 1 Corinthians 14:14-15: “For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.” There you have spirit and soul. The understanding heart is the intelligent, the rational soul, but that is not the point. The apostle is saying that it is possible for the spirit to pray. It is an organ that can pray and that can sing. You can sing in spirit, and you can pray in spirit. If it comes to the matter of an unknown tongue that is another thing, and it is not our point. We are detaching it from the matter of tongues at the moment. Here is an organ that it is said can pray and sing. I suppose you know something about the singing inside; your understanding is not at work, but it goes on. I know what it means. I remember an experience I had myself, and just recount it to convey to you what I mean by this. When undergoing a somewhat serious operation I experienced that in coming back to consciousness. Not knowing anything or anyone, being altogether dead so far as soul activity was concerned — that is, reason, and feeling, and all the rest — there was going on in me a hymn all the way through. I might have been in another world; it was going on all the time:
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