By J.B. Stoney
In the believer there is the natural mind, and there is the spiritual, or "the mind of Christ". Now it is as each is addressed that the ministry is spiritual or carnal.
When the theme in the mind of the speaker is simply Christ in His divine reality, the ministry is spiritual; but when man, or his acceptance of the subject, is the attempt or desire before the mind, it is not so. My speaking, says the apostle, was not in the persuasive words of man's wisdom, but "in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God". It is not here a question of having the truth but of how it is presented. The same truth might be held by two men, and one would press it in the wisdom of man, and the other in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power.
The true servant, the more active his own mind, and the more he naturally values mind in itself, will seek the more sedulously to keep it under the control of the Spirit of God. This is in character the exercise which occurs in every godly soul daily, I might say hourly, whether I am led by the Spirit of God or by my own inclinations. We are set by grace with a divine nature, the nature of a Man new to us; and in His Spirit we are to act and behave ourselves, in the scene of our former self, as it were, in the way and manner of Christ. It is not that the old is annihilated, but while it still exists, and where it has existed without interference, there it is to be superseded by and contrasted with the life of the One who has pleased God in every path and line of life down here. This is the daily exercise of every true christian. "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit". "Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh", Galatians 5: 25, 16. Now this true daily exercise, common to and incumbent on every saint, is par excellence to be observed by the minister.
If I minister to that which should be repressed and supplanted, I am defeating the very object of ministry; for instead of really helping souls, I am, by the wisdom of men, in some form ministering to the flesh. In every case, whether in myself, or in ministering to others, the one great thing is that the Spirit should be heard. Hence, if I were speaking to the unconverted, the one great thing I should seek would be that he should hear the voice of the Lord. I do not seek so much to convince him of anything as to bring his conscience under the eye of God. It is God I seek to present. It is His coming near in grace, detecting man's distance in the words, "Where art thou?" that I insist on as led by the Spirit of God. It is how God would speak, and not how man might be convinced. It is evident that it must be in intelligible language, for the conscience cannot be addressed if the words used are not comprehended. But as I carefully avoid, in my own private walk and course, the counsel or dictation of my natural mind, so do I refuse and avoid every mere natural means, in language or manner, which would recognize and minister to the natural mind which is enmity to God. The one aim is to bring God's voice close to man's conscience. It is not man's voice, nor man's arguments, for then it is all man; but it is to be the messenger of God, and that man's conscience may own it. As Manoah said, "we have seen God". It is more difficult, though not less necessary, in speaking to the unconverted, to avoid and refuse the wisdom of men, because they have no spiritual mind to reach, and, therefore, if I am not very truly and simply in the Spirit, I am not really coming from God to this dark soul. In speaking to quickened souls, one thing must be borne in mind, that anything that is not of the Spirit of God will not really cleave to the new man in the believer; hence there is loss of time on both sides when the wisdom of men is resorted to, instead of the demonstration of the Spirit and power, and it is here that bad building occurs. 1 Cor. 3: 10-15. Once the servant of God enters into the impossibility of the flesh and the Spirit being in any concert, he is on his guard, fearing the intrusion of the flesh, for the latter is not only labour in vain, but it damages souls. A tower begun in that crumbling material will not stand, like the house built on the sand. The more I am in the Spirit, the more closely do I adhere to the pure mind or revelation of God in His word; and the more this is insisted on, the more the flesh is repelled and subdued by it.
The wisdom of men excites and arouses the natural mind, and countenances the flesh, even though it provokes controversy and opposition. If the flesh, in its mind, is absolutely and continuously refused in ministry, there will be deepening in the soul as it is conscious of the incongruity of its being acknowledged and indulged in one's course and manner of life. But if in the ministry the flesh in any way gets a place, it will surely follow that in practical life there is a manifest admission of the tastes and ruling of the flesh. Whenever you see forwardness or timidity in one in natural life, there is surely an element of the flesh answering to it in that man's ministry, and if it had been refused in the ministry, it would have been rebuked in daily life. If not excluded from the pulpit, so to speak, it will be sure to be very prominent at one's fireside. If permitted and sanctioned in the house of God, it will almost reign in my own.
The failure from the first has been that the Spirit of God has not been maintained in His proper place. He is here to testify of Christ, and to maintain Him in vigor and power in the believer's soul.
When the servant loses sight of the Spirit as the sole power and aid in ministry, he is sure to enfeeble His activity or rule in his own heart, and thus a place is given to worldliness and the desires of the flesh. Surely if a place or recognition be given it in our services for God, there can be no escape from it in our own things; and it is here that the chief damage has resulted from carnal ministry. "They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them", 1 John 4: 5.
