T. Austin-Sparks · 1 of 6
Chapter 1
Romans 1:4 (1 Corinthians 15:1,12-22,45; 2 Corinthians 5:14-18).
"Declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead."
The word 'declared' or 'designated' there is the verb horizo, i.e., "horizoned the Son by resurrection".
In resurrection Christ is declared or made the horizon or frontier of a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). This is positively stated in 1 Corinthians 15:12-30, and that chapter or part of the letter should be read in that light.
When we refer - as we so often do - to resurrection, we usually and almost entirely have in mind the idea of power, i.e., "the power of his resurrection". It is in this connection that the matter is mainly referred to in the Bible, and essentially so, for it is here that the uniqueness and exceedingness of Divine power is displayed. But there is another aspect which governs the power-factor, it is the character-aspect. Resurrection means a kind of person who comes into being thereby. For the power and life of resurrection to be continually effective the risen ones must correspond to the Risen One in the deepest reality of their being. There is a "like as" in this matter, and a "so also" (Romans 6).
This brings us to the particular significance of the two Corinthians letters.
The first reveals a painfully disgraceful state of things amongst the Christians there. The word which could rightly cover so much of the first letter is the word 'shame'. The word which is so much in evidence in the second letter is 'glory'. The turning-point is Christ in resurrection. This is the inclusive and predominant thing. Indeed, it would appear that the Apostle brought this very matter forward as the answer and solution to the problem of that shameful state. Note the approach by the Apostle to this situation. It was by nailing the Corinthian Christians down to the name of Christ.
Christ in Resurrection the Great Corrective
In no letter is the name of Christ so continuously introduced and reiterated as it is in First Corinthians. It occurs no fewer than nine times in the first nine verses.
This gives the name a comprehensive application to all that needs dealing with, but it can be instanced in a particular way in relation to the making of names into rallying points, e.g. "I am of Paul", "I am of Apollos", "I am of Peter", "I am of Christ" (in a partisan and wrong sense).
Paul will have none of it as to his own name, and, while not being rude and discourteous to his brother apostles, he equally rejects their names as focal points of partisanship. It is important to note that Paul designates the Gospel as the Gospel of the Resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1).
To understand the Gospel is to understand the meaning of resurrection as that of "a new creation". The great basic statement is: "If any man be in Christ, there is a new creation", but being "in Christ" means being in Christ risen, in resurrection, and Christ in resurrection implies or postulates a new order of man - "not after the flesh, but after the spirit" (2 Corinthians 5:14).
This is why the Bible is a book of people.
The Bible a Book of People
The people imply living experience; not doctrines, forms, orders, systems, techniques, things. All these can be found in the Bible, but there they have to do with living people. God is not interested in things in themselves; e.g., places, names, systems, etc. He may use them as instruments, and then - as history overwhelmingly shows - He may discard them: "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living".
If God raises up something to serve a special purpose, and that purpose is discarded, lost, or abandoned, the instrument may have a measure of life for a time, like the branch severed from the tree, but its days are numbered, its continuance is in increasing limitation; man will be put to it to keep it going. Its remaining tenure will be the history of human effort to maintain it. The world has very many examples of such things, places, and names, which once had a name rightly and truly for life, power, faithfulness, but today are either merely shells or organizations. Like the churches in Asia their great former testimony has gone. The Lord leaves to its own resources that which ceases to fulfil the purpose for which He exercised His power of resurrection. God has but one interest, it is His Son in resurrection: its meaning, and then its power.
The Two Racial Men
The two Corinthian Letters circle around two representative men, or two types of men.
1. The Natural Man.
This is the man on the pre-Calvary side, conditionally. This man - as Paul shows - may be positionally in Christ, but conditionally he is not living according to his position. He is a contradiction to the meaning of resurrection in Christ.
This failure to understand the meaning of resurrection-ground is drawn in dark lines in First Corinthians. The word 'natural' is 'soulical' - the man of soul. The soul is the human ego, or selfhood. This man is ego-centric, or self-centred.
Paul focuses this condition very largely upon the 'mind' or 'judgment' (1 Cor. 1:10; 2:16).
This is connected with:
(a) "The things of the Spirit of God", and it is categorically stated that this man, not living in the meaning of resurrection, is totally incapacitated as to understanding or 'judging' those things.
(b) Fellow believers.
This man only judges others after the flesh. His estimate of them and his conduct toward them is a wholly uncrucified one: he judges as other men do.
(c) The World.
The standards of the natural man are those of -wisdom, the wisdom of the world, and it can be so false as to have dictated the crucifying of the Son of God.
