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Scripture Reading: 2 Cor. 3:13-18; 4:3-11, 16-18
We have seen that a person who is living in the presence of the Lord, that is, in the spirit, in the Holy of Holies, is likened to a captive in a celebrating procession and to a letter. If we mean business with the Lord and desire to follow Him in the spirit, we have to be captives, and we have to be inscribed with the Spirit of the living God to be the letters of Christ to express Him. In this chapter we want to see two more aspects of a person who is living in the Holy of Holies.
Second Corinthians 3:18 tells us that we need to be mirrors beholding and reflecting the glory of the Lord. A mirror reflects whatever it beholds. When we are beholding the Lord, we reflect the Lord. However, if a veil is placed over the mirror, nothing is reflected. Paul tells us that we need to behold the Lord with an unveiled face. We need to ask what the veil is that Paul is talking about. Some may feel that the veil here is the flesh referred to in Hebrews 10:20, but the veil in Hebrews 10 is not the veil in 2 Corinthians 3. These are two kinds of veils. The veil in Hebrews 10 is the veil within the tabernacle (9:3), but the veil in 2 Corinthians 3 is the veil upon Moses’ face (v. 13). In type it was the veil upon Moses’ face, but spiritually what is it? Probably very few have ever considered in a proper way what the veil is in this chapter. We need to be impressed that the veil is the religious traditions or the traditional religion. Why was there a veil covering the heart of the sons of Israel when they read the Old Testament? The veil on their heart was the old, traditional religion.
We need to apply this understanding to ourselves. We always have a tendency to apply what we read in the Scriptures to others and not to ourselves. We may think that the Israelites in the Old Testament were foolish in many ways and yet not realize that we are no different from them. We may have read the New Testament many times without seeing much light because we are veiled. We are covered with religious traditions, with Christian traditions. We are covered with traditional religion, with traditional Christianity. The background of Christianity may be a veil covering us. We have to realize that if we are going to live in the spirit, we have to be outside of religion, and we have to be delivered from all kinds of religious traditions. We need to go to the Lord in order to see our real situation. We may still be under the covering of the religious, traditional veil of Christianity. We may still be under the covering of the traditional teachings we received in the past. These all may have become a veil covering us from the real seeing of the Lord Himself.
The matter of religion is a real problem for those people who are seeking God. All day long many of the Lord’s seekers are hindered and veiled by religion, which keeps them from seeing something of the Lord Himself. Judaism and Christianity with Catholicism and Protestantism have become great religious systems hindering the Lord’s seekers from the experience and enjoyment of Christ as their life and everything. Religion is a device of the enemy. Who condemned the Lord Jesus to death? The Jewish religionists with the Old Testament in their hands. The religious people condemned and sentenced the Lord Jesus to death according to their understanding of the Old Testament. Who has persecuted the Lord’s seekers throughout the history of the church? The religious people. Who persecuted the apostles? The Jewish religionists. Who persecuted Martin Luther? The Roman Catholics. Sometimes you may be your own persecutor because you are so religious. You have to be released and delivered from all traditional religion.
With a mirror there is the need of an unveiled face. There is also the need for the mirror to be turned in the right direction. This is why 2 Corinthians 3:16 tells us that whenever the heart “turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.” Our heart needs to be turned to the Lord so that we can behold Him with an unveiled face. You may feel that you have given up religion with all its traditions many years ago. You may have even left the denominations, but after that to whom did you turn? You may have turned in the wrong direction. A mirror has to be turned in the direction of your face to behold and reflect you. When the mirror turns to you, it reflects you. You may have given up traditional religion, but where is your direction? What are you after now? Are you directing yourself to the Lord Himself? Have you turned yourself to the Lord? You need to be unveiled, and you need to be directed to the Lord Himself.
These verses in 2 Corinthians 3 should not merely be a doctrine to you. The real deliverance from traditional religion is not something merely outward, but it is something in the spirit. When you are really walking, working, acting, and behaving yourself in the spirit, you are out of religion and traditions. I doubt that many of you who have given up the way of denominations have been walking and living in the spirit since that time. If you have not been walking, living, acting, and behaving yourself in the spirit, you may have given up some traditions, but you are still living in your own traditions. You may have given up one religion only to form another one. Apart from the spirit, even you yourself become a religion.
To be delivered out of religion and out of tradition is to live, walk, act, and behave in the spirit. This is a matter that is very strict. If you are in the spirit, you are out of the denominations, out of the traditions, and out of any kind of religion. If you are not in the spirit, you may apparently be outside of religion, but you are actually still in your own religion. That religion is a veil covering you, so the Bible is not an open book to you. Your religion is a veil covering your eyes from seeing the light, the revelation, the visions, in the New Testament. You have to turn yourself from any kind of religion, even from the self-made religion. You have to turn yourself to the spirit.
Many dear saints have a self-made religion. A brother once came to tell us that he felt pray-reading the Word was not so right. He felt that we needed to worship the Lord in the way of everyone being quiet and praying slowly. This is a self-made religion. Another brother may feel that he must go out to the foreign field to be a missionary. This also may be a self-made religion. In the Far East, a British brother once asked me why the men sit together among themselves and the women sit together among themselves in our church meetings. He said that this was not the right way to meet. This is also a self-made religion. This religion immediately becomes a veil, veiling him from seeing Christ, veiling him from the real life in the Holy of Holies. Many of us may be unaware of the fact that we have our own self-made religion.
We all have to be delivered from the veil of religion. “The Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17). The Spirit frees us from any kind of religion. Worshipping the Lord is not a matter of separating the men from the women nor of mixing them together. John 4:24 tells us that we must worship God in spirit. We have to live in the spirit and meet the Lord in the spirit. I do not care how the saints sit in the meeting. I only care for one thing — whether or not I am in the spirit. The Lord is the Spirit in our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22; Rom. 8:16). If we keep ourselves in the spirit, the veil is gone immediately. We will have an unveiled face, not the outward physical face but the inward spiritual face. We will be able to see the Lord, and others will see Him in us through our reflection of Him. We will become a beholding and reflecting mirror of Christ.
A man living in the spirit must be a captive of Christ, a letter of Christ, and a mirror turned to the Lord with an unveiled face. Then this man will behold and reflect the glory of the Lord, and he will be transformed dispositionally in his very being into the image of Christ from one degree of glory to another degree. This transformation proceeds from the Lord Spirit and has nothing to do with any religion, with any forms, with any regulations, with any different teachings, or with any dead knowledge. We have to turn ourselves to the spirit to contact the Lord Spirit with an unveiled face. To behold the Lord with an unveiled face is to be freed from all religion. As we solely take care of the Spirit living within us, day by day and hour after hour, we will be transformed into the same image of Christ.
Second Corinthians 4:7 says, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.” We are the vessels to Christ. As vessels we contain a wonderful treasure, the Christ of glory, who is the embodiment of God to be our life and our everything. If we read the first ten verses of chapter 4 carefully, we will realize that this vessel is exactly the same as a camera. Four main items needed for a camera to take a picture are the lens, the film, the shutter to open the camera, and the light. Through the light the scenery is brought into the camera and impressed on the film, producing a picture. Without the light the scenery could never get into the camera. I once took a camera with me on a trip, and I took many pictures. When I had the film developed, the pictures were all blank. I wondered what happened. Eventually, I realized that I did not take away the lens cover.
In the spiritual realm, the mind with all the thoughts is the lens, and a right spirit in a right heart is the film within. You need to have an open mind with a right spirit in a right heart. Then you need the shutter, which means you need to open yourself to the Lord. The divine light is waiting for this. When you open yourself to the Lord, when your mind with the thoughts is open, and you have a right spirit in a right heart, the divine light brings Christ into your spirit and impresses Christ into your spirit. Now within you there is a picture, an image, and this image is the very treasure contained in these earthen vessels.
Your mind with your thoughts needs to be so open, and your heart needs to be right with a pure and proper spirit. Day and night you need to open yourself to the Lord; then Christ, the heavenly, divine scenery, will be impressed into you again and again. Do not say that you have already been saved and that Christ is in you already. Christ is in you, in your spirit, but He is not in your heart so much. You need again and again to have an open mind with all your thoughts regulated by Him, and you need a proper heart with a pure and open spirit. All day long you need to use the shutter, which means that you need to open yourself to the Lord. Then Christ as the heavenly treasure will be impressed into you.
After we allow Christ to come into us, we need to be broken. The vessel needs to be broken so that the treasure might be expressed. The first part of chapter 4 tells us how Christ as the treasure can come into us. Then the last part tells us how this treasure can be expressed by the vessel being broken. Verse 7 says that “we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not out of us.” Then in verses 8 through 10 are words such as pressed, unable to find a way out, persecuted, cast down, and always bearing about in the body the putting to death of Jesus. In verse 16 Paul tells us that the outer man is decaying. This is not only the reducing of our outer man but also the breaking of the vessel.
God is doing a work not only to reduce us but also to crush us, to break us. We should not try to keep ourselves so complete, so whole. We have to be broken. The Lord wants to break our outer man, the natural man, including the soul and the flesh. Our human element, the soulish life, the fleshly element, all have to be broken. In a positive sense we are a camera with a lens, with the proper film, and with a shutter allowing the light to come in and bring the divine scenery, the divine image, into us. After this, however, we have to be prepared to be broken, to be crushed, to be destroyed. In the third chapter the problem is the veil. In the fourth chapter the problem is the outer man. The veil as we have seen is religion. The outer man is the self with the natural life, with the soulish life, and with the flesh. To know what the natural man, the flesh, and the soul are is one thing, but to experience the breaking of the outer man, the holy brokenness, is another thing.
In following the Lord, we should not expect that all the time we will have a “safe journey.” In taking the way that leads to life, the narrow and constricted way to follow the Lord (Matt. 7:14), we will be pressed, unable to find a way out, persecuted, and cast down. We will be put to death, destroyed, crushed, broken. We may ask how this will happen. I do not know the way that this will take place. Only He knows. The Lord has myriads of ways to crush you and to crush me. One may say that it is awful to get married. Then I would say that it is pitiful not to marry. Someone may ask whether it is better to marry or not to marry. I do not know. But I can tell you not to try to escape the Lord. The more you try to escape, the more you will be involved. If you escape from being pressed, you will fall into being unable to find a way out. If you escape from being persecuted, you will be cast down. We need to realize that we are not in our own hands. We are in His hands. No one knows what tomorrow may bring. Even David said in Psalm 31:15, “My times are in Your hand.” We need to praise Him, however, that His hand is the sovereign hand, the gracious hand, and the merciful hand. We should not be afraid. We need to be at peace to take whatever He measures to us, to take whatever He assigns to us. Because we have the treasure within this vessel, the destiny for this vessel is to be broken.
To be a person in the spirit, in the Holy of Holies, we need to be captives, letters, mirrors, and vessels to be broken. We need to bring all of these points to the Lord and pray thoroughly. We need to pray ourselves into these points so that we realize subjectively that we are rebellious captives, letters under the inscribing of the Spirit of the living God, mirrors with unveiled faces turned to Him, and vessels who are always under His dealing, under His breaking, to fulfill His burden to express the treasure within. All of these items are glorious. As a conclusion to the fellowship in this chapter, it would be helpful to sing and to pray Hymns, #403.
