The Power of the Name

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 4 - Into the Name

We are going to be occupied in this meditation with a little phrase which occurs several times in the Authorised Version as, "in the name". In the Revised Version it is "into the name". We are familiar with the phrase in both these forms, and it is that which is connected with it as the meaning, that is to concern us just now.

Once more we stand back and get the large view of things from the divine standpoint. We stand with God before He moved out to create man, and in the light of the subsequent revelation in His Word, we are able to some extent to get into the mind of God as He contemplated man's creation. In that mind we see the thought and the intention of a corporate man to fill His earth, and probably to be central to His whole creation.

The creation of the first man was but God's way of moving on to a race which was to be vitally, organically, one with that first man, as a living part of him. So that by the sharing of one life, being made of one substance, it should not be so many units unrelated in any inward way, not so many parts detached, living in isolation so far as their own persons were concerned, but all of a piece, forming one corporate man.

So that "man" became the title, the name, the designation, not of an individual but of a race, of an order. The whole race, the whole type, the whole order embodying the ever-growing multitude that should have a singular title, a title in the singular: "man". It is a singular and a plural title in one. So that Adam was created with the intent that he should be an inclusive man, and that God should have a corporate man.

As we look with the eyes of God as the creation of man is about to take place, we can see that God sees one vast man; through Adam one great collective man, all with the same mind, with the same will, with the same purpose, with the same life, with the same divine relationship, moving as one man toward a divine object and goal. That is what God saw and that is what God intended. In that man, through the racial head (Adam), in that man of God's thought was to be placed the fulness of the creation, the fulness of the earth. He was to be an inheritor of the earth, of the creation, he was to be an heir in God. We use that phrase "an heir in God" very carefully. He was to inherit and possess everything in God, not in himself, and not apart from God; not for himself, but for God, to have it all in God by reason of his living union with God.

So far as that man (Adam) was concerned, and the intention of God as to the race in Adam in the first instance, it would be entirely earthly: an earthly inheritance, of this creation. That was God's thought as it is shown to us in His Word. Then we see the failure of that man. He failed, and he lost the inheritance, he lost the fulness which he was to have in God, and is no longer by nature an inheritor of that fulness, it has been lost to him. To that man it is irreparably and irrecoverably lost. That man will never possess it.

Then, as we were saying in our last meditation, God brings in His new Man, and designates Him, and destines Him to inherit all things.

Now notice that we have passed from God to man in Christ. We said that Adam of the first race was to inherit and possess all things in God. With God is Christ at the beginning, for all things were created by Him and unto Him. Adam was to possess all things in God, not yet in the form of Christ, but Christ the Son there as utterly, and all things to be possessed in Him. Now we have passed from Christ as God, to Christ as Man. God becomes Man now, "God was manifest in the flesh" (1 Tim. 3:16). Now God brings in Himself, the New Man, the Man Christ Jesus, very God, very Man, and determines that in this Man of His own producing, this Man of His own creation, all the inheritance, all the fulness - not only earthly but heavenly - shall be bound up. In Him it shall be possessed.

When you bring Man and God together in one Person, the Man is possessing all things in God in that close way. You see that even Christ did not possess things in Himself. The inheritance He does not get in Himself merely as man; He gets it in God and holds it in God; and His earthly life is a marvellous revelation of a man having everything in God. The mystery of the revelation is always beyond us, and always will be, but these are the facts. So God brings in His new Man, and in Him both the heavenly and the earthly inheritance is secured.

Now we are able to come to the tremendous meaning of one of the commonest phrases upon our lips, "in the name of Jesus". I suppose there is no phrase which we use more often in our religious lives, but there is a tremendous meaning in that little phrase, "In the name of Jesus", or, as the Revised Version puts it, "into the name of Jesus".

The question is raised as to whether either of them is right, because the phrase is 'eis to onoma". That is the most exact translation; "unto the name". We therefore see that "unto the name of Jesus" means 'coming unto'. It is what the Name is, or what the Man is who possesses that Name.

There is the new Man. That Man represents God's true thought for man. The other man has failed. The other man has become a disordered creature and a false expression of God's mind. Now God has brought in His new Man, and this new Man is a true expression of God's thought. He is the express image, the exact reproduction of the mind of God. The Name is that Man, and implies what that Man is. The Name is the nature, the Name is the constitution, the Name is the Man in what He is, all that He means, all that He represents and expresses and embodies of God's thought. And when we use the phrase "in the Name", or "unto the Name", God's meaning and the Holy Spirit's meaning of that, and the meaning of the Word of God, is the coming on to the ground of what Christ is, coming on to the ground of what the new Man is.

So you find that this phrase is used in various connections. Let us look at one or two. In the first place let us look at the book of the Acts: "Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost; for as yet he was fallen upon none of them; only they were baptized in (unto) the name of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 8:15-16). "And he commanded them to be baptized in (unto) the name of the Lord" (Acts 10:48). "And he said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John's baptism. Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 19:3-5). "Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea" (1 Cor. 10:1-2). That latter reference is an illustration.

Now here we have the same word variously translated, We need not be worried about the exact translation at the moment. Let us get the meaning, for the meaning puts everything clear. "Baptized into (or unto) the name of Jesus". What are we taught by the Word about baptism? We are taught three things in the man.

Firstly, that it is a representation of death with Christ to the former man (Rom. 6; Col. 2). The Word clearly states that baptism is a figure of, and a representation, a testimony, to a spiritual fact of death to the former man, the putting away of the whole body of the flesh. Now the apostle has linked that with the putting on of the new man, "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God" (Col. 3:1). It is perfectly clear that baptism speaks of the end of the old man; that is, the death, the finishing up of our relationship with the old man, with the former man. That hardly needs further stressing or argument.

Secondly, this is also set forth as life into the new man: "like as Christ was raised from the dead... even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4). One man who has broken down, who has failed, and who is a disordered and disrupted man and a false man, now has been put away. We are in that man organically, not just historically, not just in association. To judge one man is to judge all, to condemn one is to condemn all, to bury one is to bury all. The great truth is this, that in the sight of God this whole race has been put away. That does not take place when we are saved, or when we are baptised; that has been done at Calvary. In our confession we are taking our place deliberately in that which God did in the cross of the Lord Jesus. It was an organic whole that was taken into death. That man is put away, and a new man is brought in in resurrection. Baptism is a representation of our coming to life in the new Man, so that henceforth we have put on Christ, henceforth it is no longer I, but Christ, henceforth it is the new Man, it is Christ.

Thirdly, the inheritance and the fulness come into view. It is always like that. That was God's thought for Israel in the beginning. It was never His thought that they should abide in the wilderness for forty years. His thought was that they should pass right on into the inheritance. The Red Sea is only one aspect. It speaks of death to Egypt. It is the negative side. They could have been at Jordan very rapidly. Very rapidly they could have moved from the Red Sea to Jordan, into the inheritance. The Red Sea and Jordan are only two sides of one thing; death to one thing, and life to the other; death to the inheritance which has been lost, represented by Egypt, a ruined world in which the people of God have no inheritance. They had no inheritance in Egypt, because Egypt represented a world now not to be inherited by man. Inheritance lay yonder, and they could have moved from the realm in which they had no inheritance into the realm where they had an inheritance, from the death side to the life side. The forty years had to do with them, not with God.

So you see that in type we have the principle laid down that baptism, while it is death on one side to a former man and life, on the other side it is life to a new Man, and brings to the inheritance. Risen union with Christ, as represented in our being raised from the waters of baptism, means that the fulness that is in this new Man, this tremendous inheritance, is open before us.

Let us pause for a moment, lest we go on in thought, in mind, in mental assent, without recognising that this is very practical, for until this threefold meaning of baptism is recognised, there will be limitation in the spiritual life. The Lord's people have got to come to the place where they recognise quite definitely that they are finished with Adam, to whom they belong by nature. That can be put in many different ways. They have finished with the life of nature, they have finished with the old creation order of things, they have done with self, done with the flesh, done with the world, done with all that Adam means as we saw him to mean in our last meditation. That is what we declare, that is what the Word means: "The love of Christ constrains us; because we thus judge that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again" (2 Cor. 5:14-15). Until we recognise the end of that life, not only as sinners apart from God, not only as sinful men living without God, but now as believers living not on a natural ground at all; we have got to come into death as men, not only as sinners, but as related to that old order; and then we have to begin to know and go on in an entirely different order of mind, of desire, of will, of consciousness of capacity.

It is just as true of a Christian as it is of anyone else outside of Christ that the natural (which in the Greek is the soulical) man receives not the things of God, neither can he know them. It is just as true of the old creation part of believers that it can never get through unto divine things, and we must not live on that ground at all. Until we recognise that, until that becomes something that we look straight in the face and accept, we shall never get through. Therein is the solemn and tremendously vital nature of baptism. It is something that you look right in the face. When you see that grave open, and you stand by it, you say, "That is my grave, that is the grave of me by nature, not just as a sinning man, but as a man". There is no getting in between our sins and ourselves in Adam. You cannot divide between sin and the man in Adam. He is sin, and that is just the great and terrible mistake of a good deal of our so-called more "spiritual" teaching today. It is bringing that Adam and consecrating him to the Lord. The Lord does not accept the consecration of Adam, or of anything that he has. The Lord does not ask us to consecrate our natural life to Him. Our surrender to the Lord is the surrender of man, as those who have got to surrender to death. The Lord says, "There is an open grave, I call upon you to surrender to the grave. In future, if there is going to be anything where you are concerned, it has got to be all out from Me, not from you".

You say, "I am going to retain my personality and my brain!" Yes, but what is going to use your brain? What is going to energise your brain? What is going to be the life of your brain? Is it to be your soul or God's Spirit? If we are using our brains with our own soul energy we shall get so far and find it is the natural man again and it can go no further. Until the Spirit of God becomes the life of our brain we shall never get through to see anything intelligently that is of God.

The same thing applies in every other part of our being. We shall, if we go on long enough with the Lord and thoroughly with the Lord, come to the place where we shall know this in our very bodies. We shall come to the place where unless the Lord energises us physically, we cannot go on.

We have to surrender to death, and you may take it that any man who serves God in the energy of his mind (that is, his reason, his brain, his will, his zeal, his enthusiasm or his physical strength) will not get through to anything very much of a spiritual character. When it is the Lord alone who is the life, the energy, the strength, the patience, the endurance, that which is of God is brought to pass and established, and life has an eternal significance in its value and outworking. Until we recognise that, we are not in the way of spiritual growth unto the fulness. That is why so many people are retarded in their spiritual growth and remain infants for so long. They long for more, they want enlargement, they want to grow in Christ, and they cannot. They never grow much, they do not grow into what the Lord would have, because they are trying to grow by the old creation, or, to put it the other way, because they have not recognised and accepted the death of nature and the necessity for a life wholly out from Christ. It has got to be recognised.

It has got to be recognised on the positive side, that our life now is in the new Man: "the life which I now live (since I have been crucified with Christ) in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me". That life which I now live in the flesh is out from Christ, is Christ's life, which is mediated to me through faith. I am living the life of faith. This is the life of faith.

The life of faith has been very largely restricted to getting your bread and butter in some other way than earning it. The life of faith is this: that my very going on depends upon the Lord, and I am drawing from Him the resources for my continuance. My drawing is simply faith's hold on Him for today, to be able to go on, and to be able to triumph over death and all forces that are set against this going on in the Lord. It is life in union with the new Man. Come into that and you will grow, you will know something of the enjoyment of the inheritance, you will begin to grow up in Him in all things, coming to the full knowledge of Christ. This is the way of maturity, and until we know this threefold meaning of baptism, which is the way laid down by God of testifying to these facts, we shall be in spiritual limitation.

After that which is union with Christ personally (for this, after all, is union with Christ personally, it is the first step), then there follows the corporate aspect of union with Christ. The new man is not only personal or individual, he is corporate. Read through Ephesians 4 and you will see this. When, as we read in Acts 8 and 19, they were baptized unto (or into) the Name of Jesus, then they laid their hands upon them. These representatives of the Lord, of the church, laid their hands upon them and that brought in the great reality that this is a corporate Man, and this relationship to Christ is not only relationship to Him as an individual but as a corporate Man, that now we are members of a Body, and that Body is the Body of Christ. As the body is one, having many members, and all the members, being many, are one body; so also is the Christ; that is, the Christ as corporately set forth.

The laying on of hands was a testimony to the fact that we are fellow members of Christ. Having been joined to Him we are joined to one another in Him, one Body. Here you get the beautiful significance of that little word in Hebrews 6 and it is interesting to note that the end of Hebrews 5 and the beginning of Hebrews 6 have to do with going on. In Hebrews 6 foundations are represented as being laid: "Wherefore leaving the doctrine of the first principles of Christ (that is, these things have got to be settled), let us press on unto perfection; not laying again a foundation". Let the foundation be well and truly laid, once and for all, and let us go on.

What is the foundation? It is six things:

1. Repentance from dead works.
2. Faith toward God.
3. The teaching of baptisms.
4. Laying on of hands.
5. Resurrection of the dead.
6. Eternal judgement.

Then, when you pass to verse Hebrews 6:10, you read: "For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and the love which ye showed toward His name, in that ye ministered unto the saints and still do minister". Here we have in the translation the putting in of the word 'toward' when it is still 'unto'. You ministered unto the saints, and in so doing you showed love unto His Name. What is that but the Name resting upon the saints, and when you minister to the saints you are ministering to the Name; that means that you are ministering to Christ.

Is not that the teaching all the way through? "Inasmuch as ye did it (or ye did it not) unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it (or did it not) unto Me". "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest". But it was the believers on earth who were being persecuted! It is the same thing. His Name rests upon the Body, and what is done to the Body is done to Him, because His Name involves the whole. Now see this word again: "the love which ye showed toward His name, in that ye ministered unto the saints, and still do minister". What are we doing? We are ministering unto the new Man; that is, we are in fellowship with the new Man in an active way, we have come on to the ground of the new Man.

See how that worked out in those early days. When the new Man in Christ came into being, there immediately and spontaneously arose an order of fellowship: "they continued steadfastly in... fellowship" (Acts 2:42). What was the fellowship? "And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul; neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common" (Acts 4:32). If any had anything they sold it and brought the proceeds. It was one new Man spontaneously in action.

So that relationship to Christ personally is followed by relationship to Christ corporately. It is the same thing, "unto the name". The same thing is said about Christ personally and our relationship to Him as is said about Christ corporately and our relationship to Him. It is both "unto the name". You are baptized unto the Name, or unto the new Man. You minister unto the Name, or unto the new Man. We cannot minister to Christ personally in heaven now, but we can minister to Christ by ministering to the saints. It is the same thing, because the Name governs both the Person and His members.

We will refer to one other aspect of this in Matthew 18:15-16; 17-20. In verse 20 we read: "For where two or three are gathered together in (unto) My name, there am I in the midst of them". Here you have passed from relationship to Christ personally, to relationship to Christ corporately, into the active corporate functioning of Christ. Now "there am I" in verse 20 is to be related back to verse 17; "...if he refuse to hear the church...". In effect, "he is refusing to hear Me". Is that true? Yes. "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven". The church oh earth and the Lord in heaven are one. "There am I" governs verse 17. It is Christ's authority functioning in the church in executive operation, "There am I" is to relate to "again I say unto you that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven". There you have the new man, the Christ represented, and you are not on your own ground, the ground of your own desire, your own natural feeling, or will, or reason. You are not on the old Adam ground at all but, being on the ground of the new Man you are in agreement, and things happen: "it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven".

That goes to the root of praying effectually or ineffectually. So much of our prayer comes out of ourselves. We pray out of our own feelings, our own desires, our own mind, our own will, and we are unconsciously praying on a ground that is not Christ's ground. That does not represent Christ and therefore there is nothing done. The Father is doing everything for the Son, for the new Man, and we have to get on that ground. "Wheresoever two or three are gathered together in (unto) My name, there am I in the midst of them". Where two or three are gathered together unto His name, unto what He is before God, there He is in the midst. This is the Christ corporately expressed, functioning.

No more need be said at this time. It is enough to show us the meaning of "unto the name". All this is bound up with one thing, that of being on the ground of God's Man, God's true Man, the ground of Jesus Christ, and not on the Adam ground. When we are there, all these things follow.