“Take heed to Me, My people; and give ear to Me, O My church: for law will proceed from Me, and I will make My justice rest as a light of the peoples.” Is. 51:4. (Norw. trans.). The Lord’s people must heed Him, but the church must give ear to Him. Notice the difference. Law will go out from Him, out to His people, but in the church He will manifest His justice, and this will be a light for the peoples. The church is His body, a part of Himself, while the Lord’s people who live by the law that goes out from Him are not members of His body, but they are His possession. “You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” “For this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins.” Rom. 11:27. The church has not been given a covenant merely for the removal of the sin that is outside the body—a covenant for the purifying of the flesh. She has also been given a covenant for the removal of sin in the flesh—a covenant for the removal of, and salvation from, the body of sin; i.e., the root of sin. Rom. 6:6. The Lord’s people are saved from the defilement and impurity of the flesh, while the church is saved even from the defilement and impurity of the spirit. The Lord’s people are saved by the death of Jesus; the church is saved by His life. Rom. 5:10. The Lord’s people have received forgiveness of sins; the church is baptized by one Spirit into one body. The Lord’s people are saved from Egypt and Pharaoh; the church is saved from the desert and bondage. She has crossed the Jordan and entered the land. The Lord’s people look up to Jesus on the cross as Israel looked up to the bronze serpent; the church is crucified with Him. The church is able to hear, and is led by what she hears; the Lord’s people are led by external laws. The church has the law within; she is flesh of His flesh and bone of His bones. This is the bride. Eph. 5:30. Each one of us chooses the relationship we have with Christ. We determine whether we belong to His people or to the church. Just as a man can be the father of one, the brother of many, the friend of a third, the master of a fourth and so on, this is also true of Christ. Is He your husband, or is He your friend? Is He your Lord, and are you His law-abiding slave or are you His freedman, so that His law is your delight? It is difficult to speak and write clearly about this relationship; consequently, there are countless opportunities to twist what is written about these things. There is definitely a difference—if only the difference could be made clear. The church has before her a way—a new and living way through the veil, which is His flesh. The Lord’s people have Jesus as a sin offering before them. The church has had her body washed with pure water and continues to be cleansed on the inner ways—within the body—from inherited sin in the flesh. The Lord’s people serve the tabernacle and are cleansed from the fruits of indwelling sin, but that does not destroy the body of sin. To assume that you will be in the bride is one thing, but actually to be of the bride is something totally different. The bride follows the Lamb wherever He goes—through fire and water, through sufferings and tribulations. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is a true joy, but who and how many can bear the baptism of fire? The Spirit gives grace to bear the fire. The baptism of fire is the baptism of righteousness, whereas the baptism of the Spirit can be called a baptism of grace. That is why a person can experience the baptism of the Spirit in a moment, whereas the fire is a process. The fire produces fellowship in His sufferings and consumes the body of sin—the sin in the flesh that we have inherited. The bride’s preparation takes place within the body, and thus is hidden. No one can point her out and say, “Look here,” or “Look there.” It is a matter of personal obedience and hidden sacrifices. It is impossible to fashion the bride into a visible church so that people can say, “Look, here it is!” You can find people in many places who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. If you tried to gather them around the right form of doctrine, it would become apparent that even then you would have all types of people. Only a very few follow their Bridegroom. It will be evident on that Day that many will have deceived themselves by believing they had the right doctrine and were members of the right church. The only thing that will matter on that Day will be life—how you and I have lived. Life is the light of men, not the doctrines we have been taught. The form of doctrine can give us valuable guidelines, but the value of the life that fills the form is something else entirely. The form will not matter on that Day, but rather the life within the form. “Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.” 1 Pet. 1:10-11. Note that it says, “of this salvation.” This was not the forgiveness of sins, because that was available in the old covenant. It was a salvation that required grace, a salvation that had not yet been revealed. Grace reigns through righteousness. Rom. 5:21. Christ had not yet consecrated a way through His flesh. He could not send grace for others to walk on a way on which He Himself had not yet walked. However, as soon as Christ had gone the way, the Father sent the promised Holy Spirit. Then we received grace and power to follow the Lamb on the inner ways, grace to endure the fellowship with Him in His sufferings and grace to endure the fellowship with Him through the death of the body of His flesh. Col. 1:22. The goal of all this is that we can be presented holy, blameless and irreproachable in His sight. The church is saved by His life after a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant. Jesus has become the Mediator and High Priest of this new covenant. Our inheritance—the inheritance of the saints in the light—is behind this veil. The bride is behind the veil, which is why she is hidden. If you look for her, all you will see is a veil.Johan O. Smith

Mrs. Penn-Lewis If then, we are led by the Spirit of God into the death of Christ, He will allow us to partake of the life power of His resurrection. He begins at the centre of our being. We realize the liberation of the spirit, and how we are more and more freed from the law of sin and death, which enables us to be fruitful for God. In John 12:24 we read, “Most certainly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Therefore, He tells them what He means; He translates it from the natural to the spiritual and lets them understand that the same law also applies here. The passage could be read thus: “He who loves his life will lose it. He who hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life.” “If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me.” It is then a question not of sin, Jesus speaks of us counting ourselves as dead to sin, but of the life by which they live and act. Not of parting with that which is wrong, but that which is lawful, that which we have by the natural man. “Skin for skin. Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life.” It is this ‘life’ which the Lord calls those who follow Him to lay down for His sake, and in fulfilment of the law of death for fruitfulness, i.e., the ‘life’ we have by nature has to go into ‘death’, to enable the ‘life’ of Christ in us to bring forth fruit. The Lord’s children are, to a great extent, mostly concerned with the question of victory over sin, and it is necessary that they should be; but when they know the way of victory over sin, they forget that there is another and deeper phase of the Cross beyond that. It is then a question not of sin, but of the life by which they live and act. As one has said, the life of the natural man has no power to carry out anything in the spiritual sphere for God. That is why some believers toil so much and get so little fruit. They know victory over sin, but the life of the natural man is their animating power in service and in the ordinary use of their faculties, e.g., the intellect is animated by the life of the natural man, as well as by the affections and the emotions! For Satan cannot be fought by the ‘natural’ man, with natural weapons. Therefore, in so far as we walk in the life of the natural man, to that extent we are powerless in spiritual warfare against the powers of darkness. Even though we may, up to the extent of our consciousness, have victory over known sin, we deeply need to learn the way to ‘hate’, or reject the life of the natural man, as the Lord Christ Himself poured out His soul. “If any man serves Me, let him follow Me,” said the Lord. He committed His spirit to God but poured out His soul unto death even the death of the Cross. So, the Spirit of God leads us in a path where we, too, pour out our soul life unto death. This is the meaning of God taking you in hand and leading you through experiences where you lose all conscious life in the senses; for example, all ‘conscious’ presence of God in the sense realm. In such a path it appears at times as if you had lost all your ‘spiritual’ life, and yet you are able to say, “I am trusting God absolutely, without any emotion, without any consciousness. I am walking in bare faith.” “I have chosen you that you should bring forth fruit,” said the Lord. So in due time, when victory over sin is known, the Holy Spirit leads the soul on into a path where the natural, emotional life subsides, and, in some measure, the active, troublesome, intellectual life, loses its power of wasteful activity. He does all this, in many different ways, with the one who wants to know the fullest life of fruitfulness and who is willing to follow his Lord as a grain of wheat falling into the ground to die! Let us think for a moment about that picture of the grain, as applied to the believer. The grain may have a beautiful coat, but it is hard. The germ of life is locked up in it. It cannot get out. Locked up in the grain, it produces nothing. The only way to make it fruitful in the production of other grains is to drop it into the dark earth, where it loses its outer shell, its beauty, and even the sunshine, and all that made ‘life’ beautiful, as it nestled in its place with its companions in the ear of wheat. It loses all as it becomes detached and drops down into the earth and is forgotten. After a time, if you take it up, you will find nothing of its polished shell, but there will be a tiny bit of life breaking out. If it is left in the ground to give its life entirely, a new life will, later on, press through the dark earth back into the sunlight and become an ear of wheat that will ultimately produce fruit, thirty or sixty-fold. It was the single grain of wheat falling into the ground that brought this about. The children of God so often shrink from this truth of the Gospel. They want to be ‘fruitful’, but they are not willing to die in order to be made fruitful. They are unwilling to part with these soulish experiences with God. Therefore, their lives are up and down. Let me say, however, that there is a consciousness in the spirit which is permanent. Walking in the spirit has no variations, but feelings in the soul are affected by circumstances, and by all kinds of external things. But as the ‘grain of wheat’ falls into the ground to die to all external things, it not only becomes fruitful, but in the believer the spirit rises into fuller union with God. Then when the inner spirit life has become steadfast in God, it moves according to the laws and orbit of its path with God, like the planets moving in their orbit in the heavens. This changeless life in God is never fully known until the believer parts ways with the activities of the soulish life of the natural man. When the life of Christ is the driving force within us, when we let Him reign so that we no longer stand in the way with our big ‘I’, then there will be life wherever we go. Even if you only say a few words, they will quicken everyone they touch. With all the activities being a pleasing aroma. That is infinitely more valuable to God than the most wonderful ‘sense’ experience, which ends in nothing of value, except the believer’s own joy. It takes the ‘ordinary’ everyday life full of God and makes it a celebration. It is so simple that the one who knows it is so occupied with being “faithful in that which is least,” that he does not think whether he is ‘used’ or not. Such a one cries for ‘power’ and ‘more power’, for he is continually preoccupied with ‘dying’, i.e., abiding in the death of Christ. Freely and naturally, the life of Jesus emerges and, without realising it, he bears much fruit. Silently, unobtrusively, the grain of wheat dies! This is the way that God always works. He does not make any noise over what He does and does not blow a trumpet telling of what He has done or will do. We should also walk with God, affecting the whole world without a noise, with no glory ever being attached to us or our personality being called ‘wonderful! But Christ glorified in us. We are to be grafted into the death of Christ. What does the gardener do in his work of grafting? He cuts the bark of the stock and slips the graft into its place in the cut bark, binds it up, and leaves the bands there for some time. When he removes them, what has happened? Tree and graft have become united into one life. That is exactly what the Holy Spirit has to do for us. See how Paul laboured, with an utter recklessness of life. ‘Grafted’ into the death of Christ, in very truth, he laid down his life for the brethren that the life of Christ might be manifest. One of the effects of this ‘death’ is that we lose a certain exterior ‘hardness’ which most of us have by nature. The clay of the earthen vessel acted as a veil of the true life within. Too often others meet the “hard” clay exterior, and not the life of Jesus within. But as the ‘grain of wheat’ shell is broken away, there comes about a simplicity of manner and absence of reserve, which enables the inner life to shine forth and draws others to come to you without fear. Who, existing in the form of God, didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. He says to us: “Follow me.”

A few years ago it was common practice to place heavy burdens on those who sought God. To be saved was considered a difficult matter. First, you had to make improvements in every area, and then walk around with your head hanging down, looking sad. Precept was added to precept and commandment to commandment, until people finally collapsed under the burden. Now things have gone in the complete opposite direction. Anything that even points in the direction of godliness is called bondage. Now people only talk about liberty. They promise liberty: “Come to us! Here you will find liberty.” In the midst of a wretchedly sinful life, people claim to possess the liberty of Christ. When sin becomes too obvious, people drift into the understanding that everyone is saved. “Others don’t commit any worse sins than I do, and if I am saved, then the others must be saved too, if only they could see it.” This is how people reason and speak. There’s nothing to do salvation to receive; No, just hear the Word, rest in it and believe. The pain of regret that you’re feeling Cannot give your heart healing. But God’s Word says We’re healed by Jesus’ stripes. We can’t do anything to be saved, for salvation is imparted on Calvary. But once we are saved, there is a lot to do; for God works in us both to will and to do. We must walk in the works God has prepared for us. Obviously, we do things all day long, either good things or bad, either walking in the Spirit or in the flesh. To walk in the Spirit means to go in the opposite direction of walking in the flesh. The requirement of the law must be fulfilled. When one of these “liberated” Christians compares his life to a life of walking in the Spirit, then to him a walk in the Spirit seems like bondage, and, without further ado, he calls every person who strives to live a godly life a “slave to the law.” What he regards as liberty is an unlawful liberty in the flesh, a liberty he will have to be saved from on the day he wakes up from his spiritual drunkenness. I know many such “liberated” people who, with all their liberty, have ended up in the flesh. A tree is known by its fruits. Test those who call you “a slave to the law.” I think you will find that almost one hundred percent of them are transgressors of the law, in the midst of boasting of their freedom. No one on earth can liberate his flesh, and thereby gain God’s good pleasure. Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. We must keep our body in bondage if we want to be His freedmen. Every Christian must—if he wants to follow his Master—suffer death according to the flesh so he can be made alive by the Spirit. Unfortunately, not everyone has received this knowledge, and yet this is where you find true, divine liberty.Johan O. Smith

“And the sons of the prophets said to Elisha, ‘See now, the place where we sit with you is too small for us. Please let us go to the Jordan, and let every man take a beam from there, and let us make there a place where we can sit together.’ So he answered, ‘Go.’” 2 Kings 6:1-2 (Norw.). Here in Horten, where we “sit together” has become too small for us. God has blessed the work and added to the church so that in our hall where we “sit together,” we hardly have room to breathe. So now we have bought some property, and we are all on our way to the Jordan in search of beams. May God give grace and success. He has richly blessed us with spiritual goods, so is it such a great thing for us to give of our temporal goods? You won’t find a miserly person by the Jordan (death). The trees there are just perfect for use in the temple. One of the prophets said to Elisha, “Please consent to go with your servants.” And he answered, “I will go.” They felt safe because Elisha himself was going with them. This was their guarantee that God was with them and would bless the work. When the Ark of the Covenant was to be built, the Lord spoke to Moses and said, “Speak to the children of Israel, that they bring Me an offering. From everyone who gives it willingly with his heart you shall take My offering. And this is the offering which you shall take from them: gold, silver, and bronze . . . .” But the gifts were to come only from those whose hearts compelled them to give. In Horten, it seems that everyone, men and women, want to give with all their hearts. They certainly have not been pressured. We don’t support that kind of approach. If anyone’s heart moves him to join us in building the hall, we certainly will not hinder him. The homes where we have had meetings for more than 20 years have become too small, and the use of a hall is an absolute necessity for conferences. Renting a suitable hall is difficult. Building regulations require us to build with bricks here, so we don’t need as many beams for our building as bricks. But at the Jordan, you can find just about anything.Johan O. Smith