While the New Testament does acknowledge the church as a spiritual as opposed to a national people, there's no indication that this distinction overturns the clear pattern of family relationships, responsibility, and discipleship.
Chapter 1
In the whole range of Christian dogma there is nothing more expensive, and yet nothing less understood and appreciated [as the phrase "In Him."]
Chapter 1
...no man can live the Christian life; there is only One Who can live that life, and that is Christ Himself.
Chapter 1
The members of His Body stand in relation to Christ just as our physical bodies stand in relation to our own selves - the means of manifestation, expression, and transaction.
Chapter 1
The danger of much evangelistic work, spiritual teaching, and missionary propaganda is in its tendency to stir the emotions and offer spiritual prizes, instead of bringing the imperative note of Christ and the apostles.
Chapter 1
In the long run "the flesh profiteth nothing," though it may seem to get results. It is not what is done for God, but what is done by God that will last.
Chapter 1
Abraham, in order to come within the terms and fruitfulness of an eternal covenant, must be a man of the Spirit, a spiritual man, and this on a basis of faith.
Chapter 2
Forty years earlier, Moses, with a conception of Divine service, had attempted it with carnal means and in his own natural life. This had brought the inevitable failure and arrest. For a further forty years the principle of death had to be applied, until the only honest expression in relation to spiritual service was "I cannot."
Chapter 2
Calvary precedes Pentecost in history and in experience. A true revelation of the worthlessness of the natural man in God's sight has always been a necessary prelude to anointing for service.
Chapter 2
The whole course of true spiritual experience is for the increase and development of that [eternal] life, and this particularly takes place, as we have seen, through crises and cycles of death and resurrection.
Chapter 3
The more spiritual a believer becomes, the more he will realize his dependence upon the life of God for all things. This will be true physically as in every other way.
Chapter 3
The natural life is no longer a criterion; whether it be strong or weak it matters not. Its strength does not mean effectiveness in spiritual things, whether that strength be intellectual, moral, circumstantial, social, physical. Its weakness does not carry a handicap. We are called to live and serve only in His life, and it is the only efficiency, but the sure one.
Chapter 3
What is true of the Head must be true of the members. What is true of the Vine must be true of the branches. What is true of the Last Adam must be true of every member of His race.
Chapter 3
We must come into every Divine thing as out from above, and not from the earth level.
Chapter 4
It is one thing to take even the Bible as a manual or textbook - a system of truth, teaching, practice, and order; it is quite another thing to see the eternal, spiritual principles behind the precepts, practices, and system.
Chapter 3
The Church is a heavenly body, not an earthly society, institution, organization. The ecclesiastical systems of this world which call themselves "the Church" and "the churches" are too often a grotesque caricature. Only one Church exists in the mind and interest of God...
Chapter 4
Faith always brings us into precarious and difficult situations. Faith always demands a letting go of things seen and temporal. Faith threatens, and carries out its threat, to bewilder and confound our natural judgments, wisdom, acumen, hope, confidence, and security. Faith never fails to cut the ties of our natural safety, and dry up the springs of our human resource.
