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Scripture Reading: 2 Cor. 1:21-22; 3:3, 6, 8, 17-18; 5:5; 13:14
We have seen that there are four lines in 1 Corinthians: the line of Christ, the line of the gifts, the line of the spirit (including the Holy Spirit), and the line of the church. All except one of these lines, the line of the gifts, is continued in 2 Corinthians. This line is replaced with the line of the ministry, which is formed and produced by the experience of Christ through much suffering. In 2 Corinthians 3 there is the ministry of the Spirit (v. 8), not the gifts of the Spirit. The ministry is not produced overnight. It is produced over time through suffering. If you know the Lord’s gracious dealing, you will kiss all the sufferings. Sufferings work out something which is much better than the gifts, that is, the ministry.
We have seen that 1 Corinthians reveals many aspects of Christ more or less in a doctrinal way. Chapter 1 says that the Jews require signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but Paul preached Christ crucified, and Christ is the power and wisdom of God (vv. 22-24). In chapter 2 Paul said that he made the decision not to know anything except Christ and Christ crucified (v. 2). Then in the following chapters, he went on to reveal more aspects of Christ in a doctrinal way. But when Paul spoke of Christ in 2 Corinthians, he spoke in the way of experience.
First Corinthians, in a sense, is for doctrine. Second Corinthians is for experience. We can see this when we consider the line of the spirit in these two books. In 1 Corinthians 2 Paul told us that the Spirit reveals the deep things of God to us (v. 10). Then chapter 3 says that the Spirit dwells within us (v. 16). Chapter 12 speaks of the gifts of the Spirit (vv. 4-11) and says that we have been baptized in the Spirit and are drinking of the one Spirit (v. 13). Chapter 15 reveals that Christ, as the last Adam, became a life-giving Spirit (v. 45b).
When we consider all these aspects of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians, we can realize that they are mentioned with a lack of experience. Paul’s mentioning of the Spirit in 2 Corinthians is more experiential. In chapter 1 he says that the Spirit is the anointing Spirit and the sealing Spirit. This Spirit is also in our hearts as a pledge, a foretaste (vv. 21-22).
In chapter 3 there are five aspects of this subjective Spirit. First, He is the writing Spirit (v. 3); then He is the life-giving Spirit (v. 6). He is also the ministering Spirit, who always ministers something of Christ into us (v. 8). He is the liberating Spirit (v. 17) to liberate us from all the things that bind us. He liberates us from the bondage of doctrines, the letter, the written codes and regulations. He delivers us by taking away all the veils so that we can behold and reflect Christ with an unveiled face. Then He is the transforming Spirit. We are being transformed into the glorious image of the Lord from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit (v. 18).
The last verse of 2 Corinthians speaks of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit (13:14). The fellowship here is the transmission. The love of the Father is the source, the grace of the Son is the course, and the fellowship of the Spirit is the transmission that transmits all that Christ is as grace to us with God the Father as love.
Second Corinthians is a book of transmission, not a book of doctrine. The nine aspects of the Spirit we have mentioned above are altogether in the realm of experience. These nine aspects once again are: the anointing Spirit, the sealing Spirit, the pledging Spirit, the writing Spirit, the life-giving Spirit, the ministering Spirit, the liberating Spirit, the transforming Spirit, and the transmitting Spirit. This wonderful Spirit transmits all the riches of Christ with the fullness of the Father into us.
Second Corinthians 1:21 says, “The One who firmly attaches us with you unto Christ and has anointed us is God.” Christ in Greek means “the anointed One.” Since we have been attached by God to Christ, the anointed One, we are spontaneously anointed with Him by God. In the previous verses Paul said that the very Christ whom he ministered to the saints is not yes and no. The Christ he ministered is always yes. He is the Amen in the whole universe (vv. 19-20). Then Paul said that God attaches us firmly unto such a Christ, who is the great Yes and the universal Amen.
God has anointed Him with the oil of exultant joy above His partners (Psa. 45:7; Heb. 1:9). The ointment with which Christ and we are anointed is God Himself. God has painted us, anointed us, with Himself as the divine paint, the divine ointment. The more we are anointed by God, the more of the element of God’s divine nature we receive. The anointing is for the imparting of the divine element into us. God imparts all His divine ingredients and constituents into us by His anointing.
How could we people of flesh be attached to Christ, who is full of the divine nature? The only way is by being anointed. In one sense, all of us who have been regenerated have been attached to Christ. But in our experience, how much we have been attached to Christ depends on the amount of anointing we have received. The more anointing we have, the more we are attached to Christ. Even in our daily walk we can testify of this. If we are living and doing things under the anointing, this anointing teaches us in everything (1 John 2:27). When we walk according to this anointing, we have the sense that at that time we are attached to Christ.
Let us use the example of shopping. If you do not take care of the inner anointing when you go to the department store, and you shop merely according to your likes and dislikes, at that time you are far away from Christ. You are separated from Christ. Instead, you should say, “O Lord, deliver me from the satanic system in this department store. If You say no, I say no. If You say yes, I say yes.” When you walk in this spirit of prayer, you are behaving and acting according to the inner anointing. At that time you are attached to the anointed One.
Today God is doing a work to attach us to Christ, the anointed One, by anointing us continually with Himself. When we enjoy this anointing, we have the deep sense that we are attached to Christ. We can realize that this is much deeper and finer than the gifts. This is the precious experience which we need daily. The experience of Christ for our transformation is not a matter of the miraculous, supernatural gifts but a matter of the deep, hidden, powerful, and fine anointing. The anointing Spirit day by day anoints us with the ingredients and the constituents of God, the divine elements of God Himself. Day by day if we will simply walk and behave according to this anointing, God will be added into us, imparted into us, more and more.
We need to go on from being anointed to being sealed. The Spirit is also the sealing Spirit. The sealing forms the divine elements into an impression to express God’s image. I am encouraged when I see that God is being formed within many of you (Gal. 4:19). When people contact you, they will have the sense that with you there is the image of God and something of God formed within you.
I can illustrate this by the following story. Once in Shanghai a certain sister came to visit us, and none of us had ever seen her. When we went to the pier to meet her, we were wondering how we would recognize her. As we were watching the persons in the boat, we realized who the sister was. There was a certain kind of image or impression with her, testifying that she must be a child of God.
God has not only anointed us but also sealed us. He has not only imparted His elements into us but has also impressed us with His own image with the form of the living Spirit. This is the deeper experience of the indwelling Spirit. It is not the outward manifestation of the Spirit but the inward impression and sealing of the Spirit.
In 2 Corinthians 1:22 Paul said that God has “given the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge.” The pledge is the foretaste. The Spirit is a foretaste, a guarantee, a sample, of the full taste. He is sweet to our spiritual taste. God gives His Spirit to us as a foretaste of what we will inherit of God, affording us a taste beforehand of the full inheritance. When the sisters cook something in the kitchen, they take a foretaste of it. But when they bring it to the table, they take the full taste. Today we are in the kitchen, not at the table. We taste the Spirit as a foretaste, and this is a sample of the full taste of the Spirit to come on a greater scale. We need to enjoy the indwelling Spirit as the foretaste day by day.
This is what we need for the growth in life, for the building up of the Body, and for the real practice of the church life. The more we experience the Spirit in such a hidden, deep, high, rich, and inner way, the more we will be delivered from being divisive. But the more we experience the gifts in an outward way and the more doctrinal teachings we receive, the more puffed up and divisive we will be. This is why division and strife are so prevalent in 1 Corinthians. The Corinthians had knowledge and the gifts, but they were fleshly and divisive, full of strife and envy. A brother who walks under the anointing, who is sealed by the Lord, and who enjoys the foretaste of the Spirit day by day has no possibility of being divisive. The way to build up the Body is not in 1 Corinthians but in 2 Corinthians. The building up of the Body is by the anointing, sealing, and pledging of the Spirit within us.
Second Corinthians 3:3 says, “Since you are being manifested that you are a letter of Christ ministered by us, inscribed not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tablets of stone but in tablets of hearts of flesh.” The Spirit is the writing Spirit, and we are the letters of Christ. The Spirit is the ink for writing Christ into us. As the divine ink, the Spirit is the Spirit of the living God. There should be something living within us all the time as evidence that Christ is being written into every part of our inner being. If we are under the Spirit’s writing, we have the deep sensation of being living within. Christ is being written into us with the spiritual ink, the Spirit of the living God. This makes us a letter of Christ. All of us should be such a living letter of Christ, that others may read and know Christ in our being. We are under the writing of the Spirit of the living God, and He is engraving Christ into us.
In 2 Corinthians 3:6 Paul said that the letter kills but the Spirit gives life. This means that the Spirit inwardly imparts life into us day by day. We need to always return to our spirit because it is in our spirit that we sense and experience the imparting of life. This revives us and makes us living. If we pay attention to the letter of the Bible, we will be killed. We do not need the regulating of the letter, because we have the regulating of the Spirit within us.
Paul, of course, wrote to the church in Corinth with the background of Judaism. Those in Judaism became stuck to the written code of the Old Testament according to the letter. But Paul came and told them something different from this written code. Their eyes were veiled with this written code, so they opposed Paul. They could not see Jesus, the Spirit, or any of the spiritual things, because they were veiled. So the apostle Paul told them that the letter kills. It is the Spirit who gives life, and the Lord is the Spirit (v. 17). They needed to take away all the veils, which means that they had to get rid of their old knowledge of the written code.
In principle it is the same today. Today’s Christianity is like Judaism in the sense that the ones there stick themselves to the written code of the Bible, which kills, and not to the living Spirit, who gives life. It is pitiful to keep ourselves under the dead letter, the written code of outward regulations. All the veils of our old knowledge of old doctrines according to the dead letter need to be taken away. We need an unveiled, open face to look at the Lord directly. We care just for the Spirit, not for any doctrinal teaching.
