The Opened Heaven

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 4 - The Awful Terror of Death

Romans 8:10: "the spirit is life". It is set over against the body. The body is dead. But I think you ought to recognise that that does not just refer to our own personal individual body. That comes in later. Here the whole body of the old creation is referred to. The word means the whole body of the old creation of which we are individually a part. The whole body of the old creation is dead, of which we are a part. Because of sin that is what we reckon, but righteousness comes in for the child of God and the spirit of the child of God who is in view in Romans 8, is life over against that which is the whole body of the old creation. The spirit is Life, so that while there is a whole creation which is dead because of sin, we in the midst of that are Life. Our spirit is Life because of righteousness. Righteousness makes for Life and righteousness is now in our spirit by the Holy Spirit, by Christ dwelling within.

There are such implications here. There is this: "Now if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. And if Christ be in you..." (Rom. 8:9b,10, AV). The two clauses simply are one in effect. If you have the Spirit of Christ, Christ is in you. If Christ is in you, there is righteousness, and the whole body of the old creation in unrighteousness is dead. If Christ is in you there is righteousness, and the spirit is Life.

And then the individual physical body is another thing. That mentioned in verse eleven is brought in. "But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in you" (Rom. 8:11). The mortal body there is not the same as the body which is dead. That is where the confusion comes in. The body which is dead in verse ten is not the same as the mortal body in verse thirteen. People say: "My mortal body is dead." No, it is a dying body, but it is not the same as the body of the old creation which is dead, and the Lord is not quickening by His indwelling the old creation at all, but He is quickening these dying bodies. There is the whole body of the old creation and the mortal body. The one is dead, and the other is dying because this mortal body will die. The spirit is Life and out from the spirit, the most holy place, there goes forth Life into the outer court, the body.

There are three departments. The outer court is the place which is, shall I say infected by what is in the most holy place. Take such verses as: "Having our... bodies washed with pure water" (Heb. 10:22, AV). Well, there you have the outer court and the laver. In the most holy place you have the Lord as the Life; everything is the Lord as the Life in the most holy place. Then in the outer court, the body, you have the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead quickening your mortal body. That corresponds to the blood of the everlasting covenant by which He brought from the dead our Lord Jesus. The blood of the everlasting covenant is within the most holy place in its virtue. It is the blood of resurrection. Go out into the outer court and there is an infecting even of a dying body with resurrection Life for the time being, as it is necessary, to serve in the outer court and derived from the innermost place where the Lord of Life is.

So here you must not confuse. The body is dead because of sin - that is the collective body of the old creation, that is dead; but then there is this dying body, this mortal body in which the Holy Spirit dwells. "Know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God?" (1 Cor. 3:16,17). And that is quickened by the indwelling Spirit of Life and righteousness.

There is still a door. While there is no veil between the holy and the most holy, there is still a door between the court and the inner chamber. I mean that there is the necessity for withdrawing distinctly from outward activities into secret fellowship with the Lord. "Enter into your closed place and shut the door." There is still a door between the outward activities of our ministry and that door has to be observed, but never destroyed. And very often, it is because we do not get behind that door enough that we lose the life for the mortal body, for the outer court ministry. There is a necessity for the body being recognised as a part of the redeemed man and that the body has to be consecrated to the Lord just as much as the spirit and the soul, and has to be held as a holy thing, a consecrated thing. "Having our... bodies washed with pure water." "Spirit, soul and body preserved without blame" (1 Thess. 5:23). The body has to be recognised as something holy unto the Lord. "Know ye not that ye are a temple of God ... if any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are" (1 Cor. 3:17). So that we must recognise that everything for the outer part of our life must derive its strength, life and resource from the Lord Himself as within, the Spirit of Life.

So, coming back to Romans 8, you have the Spirit that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelling within you in the most holy place, but moving out in effect to soul and body in quickening power as the Lord requires. It is important for us to recognise that we cannot count upon the Lord as the Spirit of resurrection for our bodies beyond the measure in which the Lord wants us to work. If we are always busy with activities, we shall miss the Lord's Life and He will not come to our rescue. This is a most difficult thing for many of us to learn.

It leads of course to the other side of the thing which we started on in the previous chapter, but which we did not touch, as to the Lord's protective provision for us here in this world. I see those outer skins of the tabernacle, sometimes called badger skins, sometimes called porpoise skins, whatever they were actually, they were something very hard, to resist the elements, and there is a shielding for us of which we must have knowledge and which we must appropriate as we are here of heaven, moving in the elements of the satanic encompassed governed world.

Ephesians 6 presents that position and it is important for the children of God to know their position is not one of struggling towards the heavens. We get such mental ideas about Ephesians 6 that we have to struggle to get our place. We have to do nothing of the kind. The whole drive of the enemy is to get us to forsake our place in the heavenlies and to come down, and all this drive is simply to get us to surrender our position. Immediately you surrender your position you know that death has fallen on you; instinctively you know it at once. The only thing that can ever mean deliverance for you is not crying to the Lord - you may cry to the Lord and nothing will happen. The only thing is for you in spirit to get up and retake your position, reclaim the ground you have given and assert yourself as there again. So that the "evil day" of Ephesians 6 is a day of an attack to get you out of your position, and then you are to stand, and withstand.

It may be a very fine point where we move from hope to despair, where we move over on to the side where we accept death; and then we also should remember that we can never standardise our help because almost every case differs. Some reach a place of despair because of certain things and others reach that same position because of other things, and every case has to be dealt with as something apart. You cannot find a prescription that can be given out wholesale to this particular malady because every case is one by itself and the Lord is dealing with everyone because of certain things, and those things have to be understood. In some cases, a position may have been shown and never been adjusted and thus trouble follows. Some people may have held positions and then let something come in and trouble follows. So you have to get to the background of each case to deal with it. But one thing is universal, that immediately you accept a situation as hopeless, you close the door to the Lord and open it wide to the enemy, and you have accepted something out of the will of God because God does not will the death of any. God has never said "impossible" to any case. The Lord does not close the door on His side. There is always the sovereignty of the Lord. After all, the very drive of the enemy towards the edge can be marvellously overruled of the Lord to make that something other than we think it would be. Sometimes we discover the House of God after that; it is a great discovery to discover the encompassing of the saints. Believe in the sovereignty of God even though it may seem that the drive is towards destruction.

One further word by way of definition in a certain connection. It is important for us to recognise that death is a universal thing outside of the Lord Jesus, and when it speaks of: "The Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead" (Rom. 8:11), such passages which occur quite frequently, we should remember that the more accurate translation would almost invariably be: "...who raised up Jesus from among the dead", and not "from the dead" . "From the dead" is quite true but it has a limited sense. "From among the dead" is a far bigger thing than from the dead.

In Revelation 1, of course it is: "I am the first and the last, and the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive unto the ages of the ages" (v.17b,18). There the reference is to the Lord having died, but in these passages where Christ has been raised from the dead, it is "raised from among the dead". "The God of peace who brought again from among the dead..." (Heb. 13:20). And what is there in view is not just those who have deceased, a state of decease, those who have departed from this life. The Lord was brought back from among those who had departed from this life. He was brought back from the universal realm of death in which we are animated here now by nature.

Death is a spiritual thing and not merely a physical thing. He entered into the physical aspect of it, but something infinitely more. Death is a universal spiritual thing outside of Christ, and you and I are by nature as spiritually dead as ever we shall be this side of the judgment. Now the exceeding greatness of God's power which was exercised in bringing the Lord Jesus from among the dead, was not only from a state of physical death, but from a terrible thing, to touch which is to meet some awful horror if you touch it with your spirit sensitive and alive. I am saying a thing which perhaps very few of you will be able to understand, but I have known some (and I think I had better be quite honest and put myself in the category) who have accepted death out of the will of God, surrendered to death out of the will of God, and anyone who has ever done that can understand what an awful thing death is out of fellowship with God. It is a horror of great darkness beyond all explanation, which has the result that you never do that again. You will never let yourself go that way again. And you discover that to touch death without God is to touch a most awful thing, the most awful thing, I think, in this universe.

I was speaking to a brother the other day and we came onto this very matter. He said: "You know, I got, on one occasion, to such an awful state. I got so worried and troubled about my own spiritual life and in such awful confusion that I went out from my home determined to finish everything and to meet with an accident. I got it all planned so that it would be as obvious as anything that it was an accident, but I had planned it." He said: "The Lord arrested me and stopped me at the last minute, but I had met some terrible thing and it took me months to recover from it. I wondered whether I would recover from that awful thing which had touched me."

That is just what I am talking about. It is accepting death without the Lord. If the Lord wants you to accept death, if you go into death with the Lord, it is alright, but to go into death without the Lord is a terrible thing beyond all description and it takes you a long time to recover from that. The Lord Jesus tasted death in that sense when the Father withdrew. He tasted spiritual death without the Father, and it was the most awful thing of which anyone is capable, the most terrible experience that could be entered into.

Death is a terrible thing. It is a spiritual thing. It is not just leaving this world. You might pass from this life, become deceased in the ordinary way and not know anything of that, but if you see death without God, conscious of being without God and see death, it is an awful thing. Now, it was from that, that awfulness of death, that terror of death without God, that He brought back the Lord Jesus from among the dead. That is a universal thing outside of Christ. It is that that the Lord Jesus has destroyed and it is concerning that that we rejoice that death no longer tyrannises or terrorizes the saint.

Oh, we do not know what we are saved from by the Lord Jesus by His resurrection. We do not know what we have been saved from; therefore we do not know what hell is. There is nothing more indescribably awful than to be fully conscious of entering into death without God, He brought Him back again from among the dead, but He entered consciously into what that means, to be among the dead without God. Any sinner who is truly dead by nature, really awakened by the Holy Spirit to his or her state without God, finds life an intolerable thing until deliverance and rest comes. Salvation is a great thing, a "so great salvation" (Heb. 2:3) that He has wrought for us. I trust you will never know what it is to taste death in that way. And do not forget that one of the things that the enemy tries on with many of the Lord's children is to get them to accept death outside of the will of God. That is, frankly, to commit suicide. You would hardly believe how many children of God have been pressed in that direction.

That gets us a long way from glorying in the Cross, but that opened up the way for this word about shielding. To really enter into a dark experience where the devil gets a drive on you towards death and makes you contemplate anything like that, as many of the Lord's children have done, is his master-stroke against the Cross of the Lord Jesus, his master-stroke against the testimony of the blood of the Lamb. His point of greatest triumph is death.

Death is the mark of satan's highest power; he is the lord of death: "him that had the power of death" (Heb. 2:14), and death is the weapon of his conquest. Now the Lord has conquered death and destroyed him that had the power of death, but if the enemy can get any child of God to accept death apart from the Lord, out of the will of the Lord, he has done a terrible thing. That is why we, being alive, going into the world are so sensitive and suffer from the impact of the world spirit. It is an agony for a really alive child of God to go into the world. The more we have of the Lord's life, the more impossible do we find it to move happily in the spirit of this world.

I just wanted to emphasise the universality of death apart from Christ, and the greatness of His resurrection and what He has done for us, delivering us not only from eternal death and going to hell, but the result of that. If you have ever seen a soul awakened to its lost condition too late, you have seen just a little bit of the awful terror of death. There is no moral courage that can stand up to that. That is the second death.