Chapter 4: In the Spirit’s Power
Chapter 4
In the Spirit’s Power
In this chapter we turn our attention again to the Mount of Transfiguration and think not only of Christ’s resurrection, but also of the Christian’s resurrection. Of course, the liberal theologians would tell us that the notion of a physical resurrection is a late idea, but I don’t think this will stand at all. The physical resurrection appears very early in God’s revelation of hope to man.
So man lieth down, and riseth not: till [there is a very definite note of the until-ness here] the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave [sheol, and it is definitely sheol], that thou wouldest keep me secret, until [here we come to that intriguing word until again] thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me! If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till [this intriguing word again] my change come. (Job 14:12-14, emphasis added)
The thrust here is all until: until my release comes.
It seems to me that Job 14 is absolute, that Job, somewhere around 2000 B.C. or earlier, understood the reality of a physical resurrection. I think the nineteenth chapter teaches the same thing, but in the Hebrew it is not as clear as it is in chapter 14.
In Hebrews 11:17-19 it says that Abraham (at 2000 B.C.) understood the truth of the resurrection: “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son. Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead.”
So Abraham, who lived in the same general time as Job, did understand the fact of resurrection. Therefore, it is not surprising to find it in the book of Job. So there is no reason to think, as the liberals would have us think, that every time we find an emphasis on resurrection, it must be put late in biblical history.
In Daniel, which of course is not anywhere near so early, there is also an emphasis on physical resurrection not of Christ, but of man: “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2). There is here an emphasis of double resurrection, the lost as well as the saved: “They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever” (12:3). These things are surely related. But the most exciting, I guess, is verse 13, where Daniel himself is told by God, “But go thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.” What we are told here is that at the end of the days, Daniel himself will share in the events which he has just seen in prophecy. So the physical resurrection of the believer is clearly taught in Scripture early in biblical history.
When we come to 1 Corinthians 15, in the New Testament, there is no debate that this is exactly what Paul is teaching. He is hanging everything on this:
Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. (15:12-15)
The argument is very simple. If the Christian dead are not raised up, then Christ was not raised up; and if Christ is not raised up, everything falls to the ground.
For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming. Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” (15:16-26)
Now as we turn to the Mount of Transfiguration, it would seem to me that we have a clear preview of this. One would not wish to be dogmatic, but it would seem that we have representedor—or at least illustrated, depending on how strongly one feels about it—that which will happen on Resurrection Day. We have here Moses, who represents the Old Testament dead, and we have the apostles, who represent the New Testament dead. But we also have Elijah, who, of course, is one of the two men of the Old Testament who are spoken of as “the translated ones.” And the Pauline Epistles make it very plain that at the coming of Jesus Christ for his people, there will be translated ones.
Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 15:51-58)
So here we have translation as well as resurrection. This is a historic situation; it is not in the never-never land of mere religious psychology or religious philosophy. At some moment—and there will be believers on the earth until the last moment—Christ will come and the dead will be raised. But the Christians who will be living then will be changed in the twinkling of an eye, in space and in time. Interestingly, verse 58 sets the resurrection and then the translation together in relation to our present life, calling for a response in the present situation. On the basis of these things, be in the present life steadfast, and so on.
In the First Epistle to the Thessalonians we have exactly the same thing: the same note of translation as well as resurrection.
But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we [the Christians of that time] which are alive [in that historic moment] and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17)
And then, interestingly enough, Paul makes this a reason for a call at this present moment: “Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (4:18).
However, this brings us to another question: It is very fine that I am going to be raised from the dead, but what happens between the Christian’s death and his resurrection? Am I going to be out of contact with history? Am I going to be out of contact with sequence? Is the Christian, between his death and his resurrection, nowhere? Does he just disappear into a void?
The answer is no, and the Scripture is very plain. In Luke 23:43, for example, where Jesus is speaking to the dying thief on the cross, he promises him that “today [that day, in that area of sequence, before sundown, because this would be the end of the Jewish day] “shalt thou be with me in paradise.” Instead of being nowhere, in a philosophic “other,” he will be with Christ in paradise.
Paul says the same thing, it seems to me, with great finality, in 2 Corinthians 5:4-8:
For we that are in this tabernacle [that is, we who are in this body, who are alive] do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
The Bible presents only two states for the Christian: to be here in the flesh or, having died, to be with the Lord. It is exactly the same thing as Jesus presents on the cross. The Christian is not presented, at the time of death, as being out of contact with sequence, as being nowhere, any more than Jesus is out of contact with sequence or is nowhere between his resurrection and his second coming.
There are a great number of dead who crowd into our thinking, of course, at this point. This is not just a theological question; it is a very practical one. We think of the masses of the Old Testament believing dead and the masses of the New Testament believing dead. We think of our loved ones who are involved in this. Where are they? And we have ourselves, too, to think about. We may die before Jesus comes back, though each of us should have the hope that he will be here when Jesus comes back. And if we die, where will we be an hour after death and until Jesus comes?
The world’s view, of course, immediately places the afterlife as either a nothing or as being in a shrouded area: a place of sheets and formlessness, something that comes in under the door or through the keyhole as a gray mist. The new liberal theology would take the afterlife and either deny it or make it such an uncertain quality that it has no meaning to us. But this is not true of the Bible. Standing on the Mount of Transfiguration, we see Elijah, who was translated yet has a body. There is no reason to think it is otherwise. He is holding a conversation with Moses and Christ. But here is Moses as well—Moses who died and was buried. And yet he can share in the conversation and he can be seen. He can be recognized and there can be communication.
We have the same sort of situation with Samuel and Saul. There is no reason to think of this as being anything other than Samuel’s spirit, and yet there is communication, there is recognition.
But even stronger than that is Jesus’ own word when he had been raised from the dead. When Jesus was raised from the dead, the disciples thought he was a spirit. They were not naturalists, but supernaturalists. They would not really have been surprised at having seen a spirit. What they were not prepared for was the physical resurrection. So Jesus says to them—very sharply, really—in love, but sharply: “A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39). And then, in contrast, the statement that follows this in Luke is “Give me something to eat.” His saying was, Give me something to eat, and I will show you that I am not just a spirit. It was not, How can you be so stupid as to think you could see me if I were a spirit? How could you be so stupid as to think that you could converse with me if I were a spirit? He did not say this. He immediately opened the door to the fact that it was not to be regarded as surprising that they could see him. They were not stupid in thinking they could converse with him if he was only a spirit. The proof was not in seeing him, nor in conversation with him. The proof concerning the physical resurrection was the eating of food before them.
So Moses, who was dead, stood on the mountain. And we are faced with a continuing stream of redeemed, conscious individuals who have died. We have no reason to feel they are anything but recognizable. We have no reason to think of them as lonely spirits, shut off from communication with Christ, with each other. The call to the Christian, as he looks forward to possible death, is not to be afraid, but to realize that, at the moment of death, if he has accepted Christ as Savior, he can pass into that moment, “today,” whatever our today is. We do not need to be afraid to die. No doubt the central thing given is that the Christian dead are with Christ. There is no reason to think that they are out of communication with Christ as soon as they die. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord—not merely conscious, but with the Lord.
Now, however, I would want to emphasize something more, in the sense of giving it additional force. From the scriptural viewpoint this is not given just as a psychological hope. The dead are really there in this conscious and real state with Christ. They are there. This is a part of the total universe. It is as much a part of the total universe as you are as you are sitting reading this. Not in a philosophic “other” again, but in reality, they are really there. Time is important. The thief was not there till he got there.
Sequence is meaningful. Sequence is meaningful to the thief on the cross, as time moves on to that glad moment when the clock strikes, and he comes back with Jesus Christ. Time moves on. To the thief on the cross, though he does not have his body yet, there is a sequence.
However, the point I would establish at this stage in our study of spirituality is the fact that there are two equal lines of reality presented to us in the universe. We are in the seen world and there are also the Christians who have died, who are with Christ now. It is not a primitive view, a kind of three-story concept of the universe. This is the biblical view of truth: there are two streams, two strands, a space-time reality—one in the seen, and one in the unseen.
With these two lines before us, two equal lines of reality, I would return to the conclusion of our previous chapter. When God tells us to live as though we had died, gone to heaven, seen the truth there, and come back to this world, he is not asking us merely to act on some psychological motivation, but on what really is. That is the second line, the second strand, of reality, that of the unseen, in which we personally will share between the moment of death and our return with resurrected bodies to the seen world at the Second Coming. Thus I am to live now by faith, rooted in the things which have been, such as Christ’s death and resurrection; what is, such as the second stream of reality in the unseen now; and what will be, such as my coming bodily resurrection and return with Christ. And this is not sheer passivity, as we have seen. God will deal with me in the circle in which he made me; that is, in his image—as a man, not as a stick or a stone. There are unbiblical forms of “spirituality” that put their emphasis almost entirely upon some sort of resignation. The Bible rejects this. You are not just a beast in the field. It is not just a case of accepting, there is to be an activeness in our passivity. We have to be creatures because that is what we are—creatures. But in Christ we are presented with an opportunity, a calling, to be a creature by choice, to be creatures glorified. Through an active passivity, we are creatures, not of necessity but by choice, here in this present, space-time, historic world. When I come to this point, no matter how many times I preach or teach it, it still takes my breath away.
Yet to be practical I must ask, How is it possible to live so? What is the answer to the how? How are we going to live this way, if we are to think of this not merely as some sort of abstract “religious” experience, a combination of mood and moment, a vague, contentless, meaningless existential experience? If I am not to think of it in this way, I must face the question of the how. What do I begin to do? Do I begin to whip myself in order to get it accomplished? Do I begin to seek some sort of ecstasy or exotic experience? The answer to all these is no. Happily, this is not given to us merely as some kind of twentieth-century religious idea. It is an intensely practical one.
For we that are in this tabernacle do groan [you recognize this as the passage we have already studied], being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 5:4, 5)
In other words, God draws two factors of reality together here: the factor of our being with Christ when we die, and the factor that at the present time, with equal certainty, if we have accepted Christ as Savior, we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. It is intriguing that God brings these two factors together. He does not expect us to think of them separately. When I die, it is certain that I will be with the Lord. The Christian dead, including my loved ones, are there with him now. But at the same time, at the present moment, I have the Holy Spirit.
And the same thing is presented, it seems to me, in Hebrews 12:22-24, where these two concepts are united: “But ye are come unto mount Sion [Who is come? Those who have accepted Christ as Savior and are still in this life], and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.”
Here we are told that we are now united with these people, and this, of course, leads us to the doctrine of the mystical union of the church (those living now and those who have died) but I am not here thinking of it as a doctrine. I am thinking of the reality: that God ties us in at the present time to the reality of those who are already in this other situation. They are there, they see Christ face-to-face, they are dead, and we have the earnest of the Holy Spirit.
With this in mind let us think of Galatians 2:20, which we have already looked at several times in this study: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh [that is, before I have died] I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
This verse falls into three different portions: “I am crucified with Christ: [a break] “nevertheless I live; [a break] yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
Here we are told that Christ really lives in me if I have accepted Christ as my Savior. In other words, we have the words of Jesus to the thief on the cross, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Christ can say, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” and mean it. To die is to be with the Lord. It is not just an idea; it is a reality. But at the same time, Christ, the same Christ, gives the promise just as definitely that when I have accepted Christ as my Savior, he lives in me. They are equal reality. They are two streams of present reality, both equally promised. The Christian dead are already with Christ now, and Christ really lives in the Christian. Christ lives in me. The Christ who was crucified—the Christ whose work is finished, the Christ who is glorified now—has promised (John 15) to bring forth fruit in the Christian, just as the sap of the vine brings forth the fruit in the branch.
Here is true Christian mysticism. Christian mysticism is not the same as non-Christian mysticism, but I would insist that it is not a lesser mysticism. Indeed, eventually it is a deeper mysticism, for it is not based merely on contentless experience, but on historic, space-time reality—on propositional truth. One is not asked to deny the reason, the intellect, in true Christian mysticism. And there is to be no loss of personality, no loss of the individual man. In Eastern mysticism—for which the West is searching so madly now that it has lost the sense of history, of content, and the truth of biblical facts—there is always finally a loss of the personality. It cannot be otherwise in their framework. You will remember the story of Shiva, who is one of the Hindu manifestations of the Everything. He came and loved a mortal woman. Shiva put his arms around the woman in his love, and immediately she disappeared, and he became neuter. This is Eastern mysticism. It is grounded in the loss of personality of the individual. Not so in Christian mysticism. Christian mysticism is communion with Christ. It is Christ bringing forth fruit through me, the Christian, with no loss of personality and without my being used as a stick or a stone, either.
In many passages in the Bible, the relationship of Christians to Jesus Christ is described in terms of the bride and the bridegroom. Who is this “bridegroom”—my bridegroom? He is the Christ who has died, whose work is finished, who is raised, who is ascended, who is glorified. It is this Christ. It is not simply an idea. It is the Christ who was seen after the Resurrection, the Christ who was seen by Stephen, by Paul, the Christ who was seen by John; it is this Christ who is my bridegroom. It can be properly said that in this sense we are all female. Christ is the bridegroom; we—that is, Christians—are the bride.
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:11)
In this section dealing with sanctification, beginning with Romans 5, these words “through Christ” run throughout like the string on which all the beads are to be placed.
Therefore being justified [in the past] by faith we have peace with God [in the present] through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:1)
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 7:24-25)
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. (Romans 8:37)
Christ is with those in paradise now. But Christ—the same Christ, with the same reality—promises the Christian that he will bring forth fruit through us in this life now. The power of the crucified, risen, and glorified Christ will bring forth this fruit through us now.
Now, as we come to the end of our study of the basic considerations of the Christian life and the true spirituality, and before we proceed into further considerations, let us finish with three points in mind.
First, the answers of the how: It is not to be done simply in our own strength. Neither is it only acting in practice upon the reality that in God’s sight, as we are in Christ, judicially we are already dead and raised, as wonderful as that is. That must never be minimized. It is a real thing that must be comprehended. Judicially, this is a reality, because Christ has died, and Christ has paid. We are not trying to make something that does not have a reality. But it is more than just acting upon this fact, even though it is so wonderful and should fill us with adoration. It is much more. The how is that the glorified Christ will do it through us. There is an active ingredient: He will be the doer.
Second, though we will enlarge on this point later, there is the agency of the Holy Spirit: “And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost [Spirit] which is given unto us” (Romans 5:5).
What he is saying here is that you will not be ashamed experientially when you begin to act upon the reality, upon the teaching, as it has been presented. Why? “Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us.”
Paul writes further, “But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter” (Romans 7:6).
What makes the difference? This is the Holy Spirit, not just a “new idea.” It is not to be in our own strength. There is a Holy Spirit who has been given to us to make this service possible.
In Romans 1–8, at the end of the section on the development of the Christian’s sanctification, the work of the Holy Spirit, the agent of the whole Trinity, is brought into full force in the eighth chapter.
In Romans 8:13 this is drawn together in this great central chapter of the work of the Holy Spirit for and to the Christian: “For [because] if you live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” The Holy Spirit is specifically introduced to us here as the agent of the power and the person of the glorified Christ. There is not enough strength in ourselves, but placed before us is the power and the work of the glorified Christ through the agency of the Holy Spirit. Surely this is exactly what Christ meant when he said: ‘I will not leave you comfortless [as orphans]. I will come to you” (John 14:18).
Though we cannot develop it at length, 2 Corinthians 13:14, which we usually use as a benediction, makes the same point: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God [the Father], and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” The communion, or the communication, of the Holy Spirit speaks of the Holy Spirit as the agent of the Trinity, wherein Christ could promise in John 14 not only that Christ would not leave us as orphans, but that both he and the Father would come to us. Surely, as we look at the book of Acts, we find in the early church not a group of strong men laboring together, but the work of the Holy Spirit bringing to them the power of the crucified and glorified Christ. It must be so for us also.
Third, this is not to be merely passive on our part. As we have seen already, it is not to be on the basis of our own works, or our own energy, any more than our justification is on the basis of our own works and energy. But again, as in the case of justification, I am not a passive stick or stone.
The illustration which brings this to me with force is Mary’s response to the angel (Luke 1:38). The angel has come to Mary, and says, in effect, Mary, you are going to give birth to the long-promised Messiah. This was a unique promise, and unrepeatable. There is something totally unique here: the birth of the eternal second Person of the Trinity into this world. What is her response? The Holy Spirit, we are told, is to cause a conception in her womb. It seems to me that she could have made three responses. She was a Jewish girl, probably seventeen or eighteen years of age, and in love with Joseph. There is no reason to think of him as an old man, as the painters love to paint, no reason whatsoever. They do that because this was a Roman Catholic mentality, as though Joseph and Mary had no children of which they were both the parents, after Christ’s birth.
Here she is, a Jewish girl, seventeen or eighteen years old, in love with Joseph, in a normal historic situation, with normal emotions, and suddenly she is told she is going to give birth to a child. She could have rejected the idea and said, “I do not want it. I want to withdraw; I want to run. What would Joseph say?” And we know what Joseph thought later. Humanly, we could not blame her if she had felt this way. But she did not say this.
Second—and this is our danger at such a point as we now are in the study of the Christian life—she could have said, “I now have the promises, so I will exert my force, my character, and my energy, to bring forth the promised thing. I have the promise. Now I will bring forth a child without a man.” But with this response she never would have had the child. She could not bring forth a child without a man, by her own will, any more than any other girl could do.
But there was a third thing she could say. It is beautiful; it is wonderful. She says, “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.”
There is an active passivity here. She took her own body, by choice, and put it into the hands of God to do the thing that he said he would do, and Jesus was born. She gave herself, with her body, to God. In response to the promise, yes; but not to do it herself. This is a beautiful, exciting, personal expression of a relationship between a finite person and the God she loves. Now this is absolutely unique and must not be confused; there is only one Virgin Birth. Nevertheless, it is an illustration of our being the bride of Christ. We are in the same situation in that we have these great and thrilling promises we have been considering, and we are neither to think of ourselves as totally passive, as though we had no part in this, as though God had stopped dealing with us now as men; nor are we to think we can do it ourselves. If we are to bring forth fruit in the Christian life, or rather, if Christ is to bring forth this fruit through us by the agency of the Holy Spirit, there must be a constant act of faith, of thinking, Upon the basis of your promises I am looking for you to fulfill them, O my Jesus Christ; bring forth your fruit through me into this poor world.
That is what I mean by active passivity, and it is no longer a dead word, I trust; it is beautiful. There should be the sound of trumpets and the clanging of cymbals; there should be the psalm upon the many-stringed instruments. We are not irrevocably caught. We do not have to beat ourselves, or be dejected. “Be it unto me according to thy word.”
So now we stand before two streams of reality: those who have died and are with Christ now; and we, who have the “earnest” of the Holy Spirit now and so, upon the reality of the finished work of Christ, have access—not in theory, but in reality—to the power of the crucified, risen, and glorified Christ, by the agency of the Holy Spirit.
True spirituality is not achieved in our own energy. The “how” of the kind of life we have spoken of, the true Christian life, true spirituality, is Romans 6:11: “Reckon ye also yourselves [there is the faith; then the negative aspect] to be dead indeed unto sin, [but then the positive] but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” This is the “how,” and there is no other. It is the power of the crucified, risen, and glorified Christ, through the agency of the Holy Spirit by faith.