"Sovereign Head" - The Unveiling of Jesus Christ
by
T. Austin-Sparks
Chapter 3 - Sovereignty and Grace
Having seen Jesus in the counsels of God "before times
eternal," and then in His creative activity and purpose, as the
explanation of the universe in general and man in particular, we
proceed to consider two other phases of this unveiling and
testimony.
These will have to do with history in general on the one hand, and
spiritual experience on the other. Two words will gather up all that
can be said in these realms, namely
Sovereignty and Grace.
Sovereignty governs and controls history and forces it to serve a
specific end. Grace operates in history to secure out of it that
upon which the Divine Heart is set.
Firstly, then, we see Jesus as the "I am" in history, and the
testimony concerning Jesus persisting through the course of the
ages, and like a steady, strong, unwavering line running through all
events, laying hold of world movements and making them bend to that
inner thing. We see the rise and fall of Empires, Dominions,
Thrones, Nations; the pageant of world-powers; the glamour and
glory, the pathos and tragedy of historic epochs. If our inner eye
is open we can see that all this is related to one thing - "The
Testimony of Jesus," that He is imminent in all, though by the world
unrecognised, and often unseen by the very people with whose affairs
He is most intimately associated.
Someone has aptly said "History is His story." Paul undoubtedly saw
this to be so. Oh, what a different conception from that which "Saul
of Tarsus" had of Jesus. Why, now he saw that that "Galilean
upstart, a mere flash in the pan, who carried away a lot of poor
ignorant folk and deluded them, and then was put an end to," this
same Jesus goes back to eternity and then travels down the ages with
His hand upon the ages and history, "upholding all things by the
word of His power," and that the deepest thing in all is that
testimony concerning Him.
Now there are many phases of this great fact, and a whole and large
library would be required to embody them, so that we are compelled
but to indicate it along one or two lines only.
You begin to read the Roman letter, and by the time one has got to
the end of the third chapter (and there were no chapters in his
letter) he has swept the world. He has dealt with the whole race,
Jew and Gentile, every department of the race, all nations, and he
has shown to you that there is an abiding testimony to great
spiritual facts related to God in every part of the creation. "The
invisible things of Him are made manifest by the things which are
seen." There is a witness. From that great general witness in the
creation, the witness to the fact, and the power, and the wisdom,
and the glory of God, he brings the thing down steadily, like the
mills of God grinding exceeding small, and he tells you that you
cannot put your hand upon a being in the whole race of humanity who
has not at the very centre of his being a consciousness, however dim
and darkened and covered by rubbish, nevertheless, a consciousness
of himself as standing in vital relationship to a supreme object of
worship and reverence whom he calls God, and that he goes to work to
give expression to that consciousness, hewing out idols of wood and
stone, but he is giving expression to a fact that somewhere deep
down in the very centre of his being he is conscious of standing in
that relationship to some supreme object which claims his worship
and that consciousness gives rise to three elements: the fact of
sin, the fact of righteousness, and the fact of judgment.
It may be imperfectly understood, and apprehended, vague, remote,
but there in the whole creation there is a testimony, and then you
sweep in all the systems of expressing that fact and that
consciousness, all the heathen modes and methods, and you find that
one thing is common, that in relation to that consciousness and that
demand, propitiation is seen, a life for a life, a getting even
somehow, and that on a basis of sacrifice. That is there. Paul goes
to Athens, and he sees the altars, "I saw on an altar an inscription
TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship Him declare
I unto you." Here is the underlying consciousness, the fact, the
nature of which they are altogether ignorant, but the fact is there
demonstrating itself in these expressions, and here is the Testimony
of Jesus. Beloved, however false, wrong and distorted and wicked and
devilish may be the nature and form of the expression in the race,
it had its roots in God. You trace it right back to the very first
fact that before the foundation of the world a Lamb was slain. Oh
yes, distorted, taken hold of by the devil and used to sensual ends,
made the very basis of devil worship - yes, that is the devil's way,
to take hold of the things of God and turn them to account for
himself - yet however poor and awful the form of expression, trace
it back, and you get back there where God with a pure and true and
clear and high and right meaning and significance laid down the
foundation of a right relation to Himself in the Blood of a Lamb.
And we don't talk about the religious system of Israel and the
primitive ideas in Israel of sacrifice and so on as being derived
from the heathen. We say that this distorted thing amongst the
heathen was derived from the pure; it is the other way round, the
right thing gone wrong.
Now, here, you see, is the Testimony, and Paul sees this, that the
Lord Jesus has persisted in the deepest consciousness of the race,
demanding rectification, laying the sense of sin, of judgment, and
the demand for righteousness in every being.
When the Lord Jesus said that "When He the Holy Spirit was come, He
would convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and
judgment," He was not announcing a new fact in the matter of the
convicting, although there would be a new emphasis of this through
the gospel, but He was particularly declaring the basis of that new
emphasis - even His work at Calvary. It was to be related to Himself
in a new way and the preaching of "Christ crucified" would be the
occasion of the convicting. "Of sin - because they believe not on
ME; of righteousness because I go unto my Father; of Judgment,
because the prince of this world hath been judged."
Another phase of this very broad outlook is the fact that the whole
creation groans for incorruption and "eternal life." Why is it that
the secular press finds that the most popular and attractive stunt
that it can introduce is to open up the subject of the continuity of
life; existence after physical dissolution, immortality? The thing
is pathetic, tragic, and often ridiculous, in as much as those who
write on it have no authority whatever, and that it is only possible
of conviction in the spirit and not demonstration to the intellect.
Does not 1 Cor. 2:14 settle this finally? Nevertheless the fact
remains that the vogue is successful as an advertisement because of
the universal consciousness of man that he was made for something
more; that there is something more; and that if this is all then
life is a mockery; there is no justice in the universe;
righteousness is not to be found; judgment is non-existent; sin goes
eternally winked at.
But it is a constituent of man that it is not so, and that -
whatever may be his false, mistaken, unenlightened, apprehension,
his wilful and persistent refusal in days of health and prosperity
to measure up and take account, his preparedness to take his chance;
or his closing of his eyes tightly to the fact - he knows within
himself that there is something beyond. This, also, is the Testimony
concerning Jesus, and it declares first, the fact of an eternal
purpose, the principle of which is the basis and constituent of
man's very nature and being; but also that that purpose can only be
known or realised and that nature satisfied - as experience proves -
in Jesus Christ.
These are great generalities in human life and history, but we must
narrow down to the more particular.
Paul saw - not only this broad sweep of the Testimony of Jesus - but
that that testimony was being in a specific way established by a
chain of elect links through the ages. I am not going to discuss
again the question as to whether Paul wrote the letter to the
Hebrews, but believing that he had a hand in it in some way, read
again the eleventh chapter. Here the line is traced from Abel
through Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Israel,
&c. We leave these links for consideration later on, but here
consider Israel; Israel among the nations, with the eyes of all the
nations upon that elect nation.
Now in numerous ways Jesus is imminent and pre-eminent in the
testimony of Israel. Take it from this standpoint alone; the
unifying factor in the entire national life of Israel was the
Tabernacle. The Tabernacle was that which held Israel together as a
spiritual whole, and made of them a spiritual nation with a
spiritual mission. Now we know, do we not, that there is not a
single thread in any one of all the curtains of the tabernacle that
does not declare Jesus. You cannot find a bolt or a bar, a hook or a
pin, a strip of ribbon, a tag, from the remotest point right through
and through and right up to the very Mercy Seat that does not
declare Jesus. It is called the "Tabernacle of the Testimony." And
what Testimony? The Testimony concerning Jesus. The Testimony which
in spiritual reality is that which is mentioned at the other end of
the Book in Revelation - the same Testimony. Note now, Jesus then
being at the centre, the unifying fact in this nation as a spiritual
force right in the centre of the nations, upon which the eyes of all
the nations rest, was the great object-lesson through those ages. It
was perfectly impossible, so long as Israel was faithful to that
Testimony, for any one of those nations, or for all of them combined,
to crush Israel. So long as they stood faithful to that central
testimony, be they in themselves a weak, comparatively insignificant
people, without military caste, or history, or training, be they the
most helpless among the nations from any natural standpoint, they
are more than a match for all the nations.
What does it mean? It declares this, the sovereignty of Jesus
amongst the nations. So when they come to cast out the nations from
the land which they are going to possess, the very first thing that
is said to them in Jericho is, "We have heard of you and your God,
and we know quite well that the game is up for us." The nations
knew. And what about those Jebusites who came along having obtained
some old bread, and put on old clothes and shoes and said they had
come on a long journey and when they started it was fresh baked
bread and the clothes and the shoes had got worn out (although in
truth they had not come from afar off) "because we have heard of
you!" The nations knew the testimony of the sovereignty in Israel.
Even taking the dark side, when the very Divinely raised up
institutions of God fail Him, He persists; and when Israel failed
through idolatry and went into captivity the Testimony does not
cease, for even in the land of their captivity that Testimony goes
on. He has His red line running along in a Daniel, Shadrach, a
Meshach, an Abednego. The nations passed through their desolated
land. They look at the desolation and say, What is the meaning of
this? And the answer is "because of their unfaithfulness to their
testimony."
You see there are two sides to this testimony, the
testimony which is glorious, and the testimony which proceeds,
nevertheless, and shouts through the wreckage of unfaithfulness. And
you know those words which are so often used in their prophetic
sense and forgotten in their historic sense bear this out - words
that have been prophetically put into the mouth of the Lord Jesus on
His Cross, "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and
see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow." Historically these
words belong to Israel. They were the words which the broken-hearted
prophet put into the mouth, as it were, of the land desolated, and
the travellers of the nations, passing up and down that desolated
land hear the cry of the desolation of Jerusalem and the land, "Is
it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?" Is what nothing to
you? That this speaks of my unfaithfulness to a testimony. This is
because that great thing which was the very constituent element in
my national being was violated. This is the result. What a testimony
to Jesus that when Jesus goes out wreckage and ruin comes in, and
the very wreckage is a testimony to His sovereignty, to His
supremacy!
Now you see the point is this, that He is all the way through
proceeding in His testimony. It is there in history. Babylon the
great, the wonderful - crushed because of the testimony of Jesus. To
save that testimony He has got a remnant, but in order to get that
remnant out Belshazzar must be slain, his throne upset. This law of
the sovereignty goes right the way through. Now, if only we knew it,
it is in the nations; it is making the nations rock; it is the cause
of all the upheaving. It is that testimony - Jesus is there,
imminent. Take the case of His church. He goes out of the objective
in the care of Israel, and comes into the subjective in His church
after His resurrection, and He is again imminent there - Sovereign
Lord in the church and Sovereign Head of the church, which is His
Body. Now touch that church! The mightiest nation that this world
has known with all its force and resource exhausted itself to
destroy the Testimony of Jesus as it was in a company of those whom
the world said were "the weak things, the foolish things and the
things that are not." God in Christ entered into that company and
constituted them His Body in which He was resident, and Rome may
exhaust all its resource to wipe out that Testimony, as represented
by that company, and what is the issue? The issue is that Rome is
torn limb from limb, shattered, and is as a tale that is told. But
where is the church? It has gone on, and the Testimony of Jesus has
proceeded, and the more it has been assailed in the church, the
mightier it has grown. Persecution and adversity has been the very
best thing for its growth.
Beloved, there are many things that ought to come to us out of this
truth for practical use and service in our own lives and in our own
hearts. One simply mentions that, for our own encouragement and
comfort, we who are in Christ Jesus have come into a sovereignty
which all hell cannot overthrow. Jesus shall reign because
He does reign, always has reigned, and so may this
Apostle, either directly, or indirectly, it matters not, by the
inspiration of the Holy Ghost take up the scripture and say of Jesus,
"Thy throne O God is for ever and ever." Here you have the great "I
AM" out from eternity creating the ages and proceeding through the
ages, in spite of everything that sought to rule Him out of the ages
and out of the universe. Oh what a Christ, what a "Head"! And oh,
what a wonderful revelation of Who Jesus is and what Jesus is! Can
you again wonder that Paul said up to his last breath, "THAT I MAY
KNOW HIM"?