Published as an E-book

by

Austin-Sparks.Net

Email: info@austin-sparks.net

In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks' wishes that what was freely received should be freely given and not sold for profit, and that his messages should be reproduced word for word, we ask if you choose to share these messages with others, to please respect his wishes and offer them freely - free of any changes, free of any charge (except any necessary distribution costs) and with this statement included.

T. Austin-Sparks - on Cross

Contents

The Altar (The Cross) Governs Everything

An Appeal

The Cross and the Deliverance of the Mind

The Cross and the God of Hope

The Cross of Christ

Crucified to the Religious World

The Deliverance of Souls

Dying to Ambition

The Fulfilled Law

The Great Divide and the Great Transition

The Holy Spirit and the Cross, the Church, and the Coming Again of the Lord Jesus

How It Should Be And The Way To It

"In the Likeness of His Resurrection"

The Inner Man of the Heart

Let Us Run

The Offence of the Cross (1932)

The Offence of the Cross

Parenthetical Christians

Pride and Its Undoing

Resurrection, the Hallmark of Sonship

Resurrection, the Hallmark of Sonship - 2

The Sentence of Death

Taking Heavenly Ground

The Testimony of the Blood

What is True Unity of the Spirit?

The Altar (The Cross) Governs Everything

Ezekiel forty-three, in verses thirteen to twenty-seven, we have the great altar and its service. We will not read the whole section, but just the first verse of that section: "And these are the measurements of the altar by cubits (the cubit being a cubit and a handbreadth): the base shall be a cubit, and the width a cubit, and its border on its edge round about one span; and this shall be the height of the base of the altar." Then we are given more particulars about the measurement and the ministry. We all understand that the altar in the Old Testament is always a type of the Cross. This altar is the place of the WHOLE burnt offering, and this corresponds to Hebrews, chapter ten, where the Lord Jesus is likened to the WHOLE burnt offering. So we are going this morning to think about the centrality and the universality of the Cross.

Now we have seen that the whole area of the temple was square. If we draw diagonal lines from each corner, those lines meet at the place where the great altar was. The central place in the whole area was the altar. You will recognize that this is different from the tabernacle in the wilderness. The court of the tabernacle was not square, and the altar of burnt offering was right at the gate; but in this temple, the altar is right in the center of a square. It is important to realize that. All the lines meet in the altar, and all the lines go out from the altar. The central place of everything is the altar.

The altar governed everything. It governed everything as to the house; that is, all that was actually in the temple was governed by the altar. It governed all that was immediately around the house. If you had a plan of this whole house, with the different course and the whole area, you would see that all the chambers of the priests were round about; and the places where the offerings were prepared were all around. Everything was gathered round the house, but everything in the house and in the whole area was governed by the altar.

And then, all the ministry of the house was governed by the altar. We could say that there was no ministry that was not related to the altar; and then beyond the house, and beyond the immediate area, right out to the whole land, everything was governed by the altar.

We shall see this when we see that the river, which came down through the whole land, came by way of the altar; but we turn inside the house first.

The Cross In Its Place

Here we have a very important and vital truth. When the Cross is in its place with its full measure, everything else will be in order, and everything else will be given its meaning, and its value. I feel that I cannot say this too strongly. We are so often concerned about the outside of things, about the order of the House of the Lord, about the ministry of the House of the Lord, about the people who are related to the House of the Lord. We are always beginning on the outside. We are trying to set up an order of the House of God. We are trying to put the people of the House right. We are very much concerned about the ministers, and the ministries. But if the Cross was really in its place with its full dimensions, all those things would see to themselves. The people would be right if the Cross was in its place. The ministries would be living if the Cross was in its place. The order of the House would be right if the Cross was in its place. It just does work that way. IF THE CROSS IS RIGHT AT THE CENTER, in full measure, and note that it is a large altar, THEN EVERYTHING ELSE WILL COME INTO ITS RIGHT PLACE, AND INTO A LIVING RELATIONSHIP.

Although it is not said so here, I think we are right in concluding that this altar was of brass. The altar in the tabernacle was of brass, the altar in Solomon's temple was of brass, and I think that we can assume that this altar was of brass. We have already met brass. We have met brass in the Man in the gate, and we have said that with His reed He measured everything according to what He was. Brass is the type of the righteous judgments of God. This great altar represents the fullness of the righteous judgments of God. This altar of brass is measured by the Man of brass, so that this altar represents God's thoughts in judgment.

In this altar of whole burnt offering, the one unrighteous man is completely removed. That altar of brass sees one man brought to ashes. The ashes were taken from this altar and emptied onto the ground at the side of the altar. That is a picture of God's Mind about the unrighteous man, or the natural man. He is consumed in the fire of God's judgment, he is reduced to ashes, and he is poured out on the ground. THAT IS GOD'S MIND ABOUT THE NATURAL MAN. On the other side, it is only THE RIGHTEOUS MAN that can stand here in the presence of this altar. Of course, those are the two sides of THE PERSON AND WORK OF THE LORD JESUS. On the one side HE was made sin for us, and in that capacity He was wholly consumed and brought to ashes. When He cried, "My God, My God, why has Thou forsaken Me" - it was the cry of the ashes! He had been brought to ashes, and poured out on the ground.

But then there was the other side of the Cross - "He knew no sin." In Himself, there was no unrighteousness, and, therefore, He can go through the altar, He can live after the fire! "Thou wilt not suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption." Because in Himself there was no sin, He could not be holden of death. His Holy Nature could overcome all the righteous judgments of God! This is the meaning of the great altar: one man is brought to an end, and Another Man stands in his place. Everything had been judged at the altar. Everything IS judged in the Cross.

We have been judged in the Cross of the Lord Jesus, and in our own selves we have been brought to an end. Everything of the natural has been judged and brought to an end in the Cross of the Lord Jesus. It is a very important thing to recognize that. You see, that makes anything possible. That is why I have said that if the Cross is in its place, everything else would be right. The House will be right; that is, the Church will be right. The ministry will be right. The order will be right. You will not have to go to work to try and bring about a right order. It spontaneously comes out of the work of the Cross.

I do hope that you are writing that in your minds. You may meet disorders in the House of God. You may meet the natural man in the House of God. You may meet conditions which are all wrong in the House of God. How are you going to deal with them? You can only deal with them by the principle of the Cross. You cannot deal with the people themselves, you cannot deal with the things themselves; but if only you can bring the Cross into that situation, you have solved the whole problem. It is like that. We do not start from the outside. We do not start with the people, we do not start with the order of the Lord's House, we do not start with the ministry - WE START WITH THE CROSS. And if only people see the Cross, everything else would put itself right. Everything is judged by the Cross.

The Letter to the Romans is the message of the Cross in its full measure. In that letter to the Romans, you see the great measurement of the Cross. There the Cross comprehends all things. It brings the whole race in Adam to an end, and it begins an entirely new race in Christ risen! It is very impressive that the first of the New Testament Letters should put the Cross there in its full measurement. You all know that the Letter to the Romans was not the first letter written by Paul, but the Holy Spirit has put it first in the arrangement. I think the Holy Spirit had something to do with the arrangement of the books in the New Testament, and in His sovereign arrangement of this book, He has put the altar in its fullness right at the beginning. Well, of course, you have to recall all that you know about the Letter to the Romans to see that.

In the First Letter to the Corinthians, the Cross is applied to the natural and the carnal man inside the Church. The natural and the carnal man has come in where he has no right to be. This unrighteous man has slipped in through the gate, and so the apostle BRINGS CHRIST CRUCIFIED OVER AGAINST THE NATURAL AND THE CARNAL MAN. The Cross in I Corinthians had to do with that man, not outside the Church as in Romans, but inside the Church.

The Second Letter to the Corinthians sets the Cross in relation to ministry. That letter shows us that ministry flows out of a broken and humbled vessel. I can only say these things and leave the full explanation of it.

In the Letter to the Galatians, the Cross is brought down upon making Christianity into another legal system, and bringing Christians into bondage. How strong the apostle is in that letter, but see how he uses the Cross. He uses the Cross tremendously against that effort to make Christianity into a legal system, and to bring believers into bondage again.

In the Letter to the Ephesians, the work of the Cross is to put the Church on heavenly ground. The Cross in Ephesians completely cuts the Church off from all earthly ground. It puts the Church outside of time. It puts the Church outside of the world.

In the Letter to the Philippians, the Cross is applied to that which is spoiling the harmony of the Lord's people. There is a painful dislocation inside the Church. There is a spot where things are unhappy, and that is because of personal interest and pride. Some people will not let go their personal interest. Some people will not let go their pride. They have been offended, and they are not going to forgive. So the apostle brings the Cross in there over against this discord, and dislocation; and he points out that if only the Cross were in those lives, everything would be put right.

The Letter to the Colossians - this letter shows that the Cross delivers from all false spirituality. The Cross sets aside all that is mere mysticism, and everything that would make Christ less than He is.

Then we have the Letters to the Thessalonians. Here the Cross is the strength for suffering - an inspiration unto the coming of the Lord. There may not be much said about the Cross actually, but the principle of these letters is the principle of the Cross. The people were suffering for Christ's sake. They were suffering the loss of all things, and they had thought that the Lord would have come to deliver them, and the Lord is delaying His coming. So the apostle tells them that their sufferings will issue in the coming of the Lord and glory. The sufferings of suffering with Christ. They are suffering for Christ's sake: it is fellowship in the Cross, but the sufferings issued in the glory. The Lord is coming, and then it will be all right. The Cross has a very real message for suffering believers. And then we just conclude with the Letter to the Hebrews.

In the Letter to the Hebrews, the Cross shows how everything is brought to fullness and to finality. Now all of this relates to the House on its inside. It touches conduct. It touches character. It touches order. It touches ministry. If the Cross is in its place, everything will be effective.

Now I have not just given you some Bible teaching. The Cross is the key to everything. Then what is true on the inside is also true on the outside. It is the Cross which effects the whole range of the Church's influence. The river comes by way of the Cross, that is, the influence that goes out from the sanctuary to the whole land. It is the Cross which gives effectiveness to the ministry to the whole world. So the apostles preached everywhere Christ crucified.

The Cross Is The Defense Against The World

And then we note another thing, the altar was the great defensive against the enemy. If you look in the Book of Ezra in chapter three, at verse three, you have this: "so they set up the altar on its foundation, for they were terrified because of the peoples of the lands..." Because fear of the peoples of the lands was upon them, they put the altar in its place. The Cross is a great defensive - the Cross defends us from the world. The world is the great enemy of the Church. The spirit of the world has always been the Church's great enemy. Satan has always tried to get the world into the Church and so wreck the Church and its ministry, to destroy the influence of the Church in the world. It is a very clever and subtle move of the enemy to destroy the influence of the Church in the world by bringing the world into the Church. For Paul said, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Gal 6:14).

A truly crucified people are never in danger of the world. It is only when the Cross has not done its work that the world has a place. The world has no place with a crucified man or woman, or a crucified company of believers. The Cross is a great defensive against the world. IF YOU WANT TO KEEP THE WORLD OUT, PUT THE CROSS IN ITS PLACE. If the Cross is truly in its place in fullness, then everything else will come into order. THE CROSS is the great defensive against the world. THE CROSS is the great defensive against evil powers. THE CROSS makes everything safe; it makes everything safe for the Lord.

You see, the Lord wants to commit Himself. He wants to trust Himself to His people, but if the Cross is not there at work, the Lord cannot trust Himself to them. The Lord says, "It is not safe for Me to give Myself there, or I should be involved in their un-crucified condition." The Cross makes everything safe for the Lord, and the Cross makes everything safe for the Church. If the Cross is really at work in all of us, we can trust one another. It is quite safe to trust yourself to a crucified man or woman.

Now I close this morning by emphasizing that the Cross is not a doctrine to be taught. It is not a subject to be preached. Of course, it will be taught, and it will be preached. But in the first place, it is not a subject to be taught. It is not just a doctrine. The Cross is power. The Cross is an experience. The Cross is an event in our lives. The Cross is a crisis. The Cross is a revolution. The Cross is an earthquake. There was an earthquake when Jesus was crucified. If the Cross comes into our life, there will be an earthquake. Everything will be shaken, everything will be overturned. The Cross is an earthquake. It is something tremendous. The Cross is not just a theory, not just a doctrine: THE CROSS GOVERNS EVERYTHING. Well, that is our message about the centrality and universality of the Cross.

The Lord grant that we shall all be crucified men and women. The assemblies to which we belong - may they be crucified assemblies. The Lord grant that His whole Church may see and view the meaning of the Cross.

(Taken from the book: "The Persistent Purpose of God")

An Appeal

In our Editorials we have referred much to the tragedy of spiritual conditions, particularly to the divided state of Christians. It is a matter which no one really concerned for God's glory can easily set aside, or fail to have as a constant burden. Reflection upon this whole matter leads to the prayerful desire to be able to do something toward what the Bible calls 'healing the hurt of My people'. This can be carried little or no further than an appeal, but in so far as this small instrumentality can affect the Lord's people, we venture to make such an appeal. As we see it, there are only two grounds of hope in this direction, but if they were taken we are certain that a wholly new and fruitful situation would arise.

The first part of the appeal, therefore, is that the people of God, and particularly those in responsibility among them, shall -

Take Heavenly Ground

The best illustration of what this means is presented to us in considerable fulness in the New Testament, and particularly in Paul's letters. We can narrow these down to two - 'Corinthians' and 'Ephesians'. One is the earthly; the other is the heavenly.

What is meant by the earthly is clear in 1 Corinthians, especially - for our present point - in the early part. Implying that it is wrong for supposedly spiritual people to be or to act so, the Apostle uses the words: "Are ye not men?" (3:4). This clearly means, as the context shows, that spiritual and heavenly people are not allowed to proceed as the rest of men do. The immediate connection (although it applies to all the other things) is that of "divisions", and circles, bearing particular names and taking the character of natural preferences. This might be temperamental, doctrinal, emotional, intellectual, or 'spiritual' (?). Whatever the causes or occasions, Paul says this behaviour is "natural" and "carnal" - it is acting as "men". In a word, it is earthly. At best, he says, it is childish, or 'babyish'; it does not signify any spiritual stature. Looking at Christianity today by this standard, we cannot fail to be painfully impressed with how little the Church has grown up.

But that is the negative side. When we turn to 'Ephesians', we find ourselves in the presence, not only of the oft-repeated words, "the heavenlies", but of the realities and characteristics of that realm. Here is the "one body". Here is the "unity of the Spirit". Here is heavenly wealth, walk, warfare. Here is relatedness and inter-relatedness. The Apostle - nay, the Holy Spirit - has no restraint in giving out of the fulness, that it may lead again to the fulness of Christ. Here are the measureless dimensions of eternal thoughts, counsels, purpose, and love. Here is ascendency over disappointment, frustration, discouragement, and earthly limitations. Here is grace transcendent and triumphant. Yes, truly we are on heavenly ground here, while all those things are bitterly true down below. To be "seated together with him (Christ) in the heavenlies" is no mere ideal, fantasy, illusion, beautiful concept, or sublime teaching; it is real because of the literal counter-realities to which it is set in contrast.

This is as much the work of grace, to be apprehended by faith, as is our initial justification.

Would that the Church - believers, and their leaders - could first see it, in the way in which the prayers in this letter show that it should be seen: could then, by faith, take it: and henceforth positively and resolutely refuse to come down on to the earthly ground of Corinthian divisions, strife, pettiness, and nature!

But what is the way thither? How can it be?

This leads to the second part of our appeal: it is to -

Take the Ground of the Cross

The Corinthians knew about the Cross. They were "in Christ", and there is no way into Christ but that of the Cross. Yes, but even so, the Apostle said that in visiting them it was his considered, resolute, and premeditated determination that he would 'know nothing among them, save Christ, and him crucified' (2:2). There was a knowledge of the Cross which either they did not possess, or else they were violating. In 'Ephesians', the death and resurrection 'togetherness' with Christ is foundational to all that fulness of heavenly position. In Corinth, the value of the Cross was in what it meant for them, rather than what it meant in them. There is undoubtedly a difference in these aspects, both as to position and as to results. The fuller aspect may have a deeper application to the natural life - but, again, both in one are presented to us for our apprehending by faith.

The Cross not only deals with our sins and our condemnation: it deals with all our earthliness, our natural ground, which is so fruitful in those works which bring dishonour to our Lord. We are especially thinking of this spirit which produces or ferments jealousies, rivalries, contentions, criticisms, and all that is not love.

If we would take heavenly ground and the ground of the Cross, the Holy Spirit would be able to cause the things which really do not matter to fade from their importance, and to give the Lord's people a loving concern for all who are His, just because they are His, and not 'ours' in any earthly way.

First published as an Editorial in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Nov-Dec 1956, Vol 34-6

The Cross and the Deliverance of the Mind

There are few, if any, more malignant causes of spiritual paralysis than a mind unrenewed or unguarded. We learn by bitter experience that the main objective of the adversary as the most important means to his ends is the mind. Nine-tenths of the trouble with both the individual child of God and the fellowship (or arrested fellowship) of the Lord's people is traceable to the workings of the unrenewed mind in which there is carnality still or the mind unguarded becoming the playground of "The prince of the power of the air." There are three aspects or directions of this morbid activity - Godward, manward, and selfward; or upward, outward and inward.

We take the second first: THE PARALYSIS OF A DOUBTFUL MENTAL CONCEPT MANWARD.

In this realm we have a whole catalogue of unhappy symptoms. Christians with a true knowledge of God and otherwise a real walk with God becoming the prey of all kinds of thoughts about others; misjudgments, prejudices, criticisms, imaginations, & c. Plutarch spoke of great public conflagrations which were resultant from a smoking lamp of gossip in an attic. How true it is that a smouldering suggestion made to the mind and unquenched at once involves that one and many others in a fire of far-reaching spiritual devastation. The activity of our own natural mind apart from the true revelation of the Holy Spirit; the observation, suggestion, interpretation, report, description, information of others; the insinuation, complexion, perspective, presentation of the wicked spirits in, through, or apart from the above; the "judging after the sight of the eyes and the hearing of the ears" (a thing which it is said the Lord Jesus would never do), the reasoning of the reason; how these lead to arrest, inflamation, disaffection, not only in the member concerned, but - if we knew the laws of spiritual relationship - in the whole spiritual organism.

A germ of this kind may be a lie in substance, or, being truth in substance, nevertheless sets up a wrong basis of relationships, i.e., human instead of Divine; "Knowing after the flesh instead of after the spirit." Oh, if only the Lord's people would obey the profoundly wise injunction "Prove all things"! Such a concept as we have mentioned will soon be fed by the enemy, and seeming evidence will accumulate from all quarters to justify (?) it. When relationships are so infected co-ordinated action and corporate functioning is impossible and the devil's end is achieved.

Then as to the Godward direction: THE PARALYSIS OF A QUESTIONING MIND. This is peculiarly the peril of the severely tried children of God, or the lurking danger in times and places of adversity. A doubt as to the love, the wisdom, the power, the faithfulness of God. Few there be that pass through without at least the consciousness of this spectre, and not many have passed through deep waters and intense fires without a Godward "Why?" at least in their thought. "Why should it be ME?" "Why should it ALWAYS be ME?" The ruin of the race was resultant from the acceptance of an insinuation from Satan that God was after all not really favourable to the highest well-being of man; that there was something He was keeping back, and suspicion of God has always been a master-stroke against the primary law of union with God - faith.

When this seed of doubt has been sown in the mind and allowed to remain it is not long before every phase of spiritual vitality is paralysed; prayer, fellowship, the Word, ministry, service, testimony; and God can do nothing with a doubter.

Then again, the PARALYSIS OF AN INTROSPECTIVE GAZE. There are so many whose eyes are always turning inward; self-scrutinising, self-analysing, self-judging. They are always looking at their own spiritual tongue and taking their own spiritual pulse; comparing themselves unfavourably with others of their knowledge, and projecting their own spiritual sensibilities to be hurt. What accusations and condemnations the enemy is able to level at and put upon such! It is no wonder that before long they entertain doubts as to the truth of their own salvation and of God's acceptance of them. This leads to the bogey of having committed the unpardonable sin. Oh, the perils of a too strict an individualism in salvation!

It is clear that this introspective morbidity issues very quickly in paralysis, and joy and peace are "Dead-sea fruit" here.

The Way of Deliverance

Well, having diagnosed the case, it remains to point the remedy.

1. A basic recognition

Before there can be any hope of a cure there must be the clear, definite, deliberate, and conclusive recognition of the FACT that this whole trouble originates with and is perpetuated by the "hosts of wicked spirits in the (lower) heavenlies," "The prince of the power of the air," "The God of this age" (Ephes. 6:12, 2:2; 2 Cor. 4:4).

These powers of darkness are always trying to get a lodgment and obsession in the mind by a thought or idea, and so colour or fill the entire horizon therewith. They will hammer and hammer away with a suggestion to get it entertained.

No wonder that military terms are used by the Holy Spirit in this connection. "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God unto the casting down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing... and brining into CAPTIVITY EVERY THOUGHT," 2 Cor. 10:4. "The Word of God is... sharper than any two edged sword piercing even to a dividing asunder of soul and spirit... and is a discerner of THOUGHTS..." Heb 4:12. "The peace of God shall GARRISON your... mind."

Thus, in the matter of the mind an intense warfare is clearly revealed as going on, and cleaving, captivating and defensive forces are needed. God's provision is not for our protection from our own flesh, that He requires us to reckon ourselves as dead to, but against the adversary. It will be as well for us to bear in mind that the powers of evil interpose between ourselves and others, and others and ourselves, and set up false situations, distort things said, misinterpret anything capable of being misinterpreted, and even creating or suggesting a sense of strain and disaffection when in fact there is none. The recognition of this as being so, and the more so as the spiritual life and work intensifies (explaining why the most spiritual often become the most deeply involved), is basic to any deliverance.

2. The location of the trouble

A further step toward victory is a tracking down of the location of the trouble. We shall have to secure the basic reason and cause of the evil. After all, is that reason in ourselves? Is there not really and truly a revolt in US against it? Is it because we have personal interests to look after? Are there secret personal ambitions, concerns, rights (?) provinces? Does it really matter to us whether we lose all if only Christ comes into His own? Have we "learned how to be abased as well as how to abound"?

If we can give a clear answer to God in such matters may we not conclude that these thoughts and feelings which constantly worry us are not of our choosing or consent? Would we be gratified or grieved if our thoughts about others proved true? This is a good test.

3. A vital necessity

Now whether it be from without or from within there must be an instrument and ground IN us as well as outside of us for victory. This is the renewed spirit and renewed mind. The natural mind and the carnal mind are Satan's ground. We need not here refer to the Scriptures which refer to this; it is enough to say that the Holy Spirit resides within the renewed spirit of every one "born of the Spirit." His work it is to make the Cross of Christ real and effectual in the believer's life. But He does this co-operatively. That is, He bears witness TO the truth and AGAINST the lie. He judges things for us and in so far as we walk after the spirit and not after the flesh we are swift to discern what the Spirit saith. When thus He bears witness and registers His judgment, He calls upon us in our renewed spirit to take His enablement and positively and deliberately take the judged thing to the Cross and on the ground of Calvary's victory to refuse and repudiate that thing. Thus we learn to be strong in spirit as we act in faith upon the energising of His might, but it all remains His strength and never becomes ours independently. We shall find that such a course brings deliverance, but it may be that the enemy will return again and again with the old thing until He finds that we have learned how to "resist" effectually, and thus He will change His method. It is the Body of Christ and its corporate witness which is involved, and a due recognition of this will be a more adequate dynamic and motive for resistance than a merely personal concern.

The two diagrams herewith illustrate the principle herein enunciated, and it can be extended to everything that makes for spiritual paralysis and death.

The Cross and the God of Hope

"Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Spirit" (Romans 15:13).

'The God of hope fill you... that ye may abound in hope!'

As you know, the apostle has worked his way up to this point through a long and detailed argument. He has covered the whole course of things from Adam's first sin, tracing all its consequences and its outworkings, through all the generations up to Christ; then placing at the end of all that, the Cross of the Lord Jesus; and then, from that point, opening up an entirely new prospect and future. The Cross is the terminal point up to which everything led, and from which everything takes a new rise. Following all that history, explanation and teaching, the apostle comes at length to this all-embracing title: 'The God of Hope'.

As we view the great situation that is presented in this book and in the New Testament, we find ourselves faced with a strange thing, which looks like a paradox. It is this. God has written over the whole course of history the meaning of the Cross in this way, that the only answer that He can give to sin, to evil, to disobedience, and to all the fruit and results thereof, is travail, despair and death. And yet, withal, He is the God of Hope. He is saying that travail, passion, despair and death are the only way of hope. That is written in the whole history of God's dealings with men. Ever since Adam's sin, and (in him) the race's fall, God has had to work on the basis of the Cross of Christ. The Cross has been implicit in all God's dealings with men, and not only in general, but with His own people in particular.

The Cross means suffering; it is the very symbol of suffering - we know that. The Cross means travail and anguish - we know that. The Cross means despair. The great cry at the end of that ordeal was the cry of despair: 'My God, My God, Thou hast forsaken Me - why?' And the Cross is death. But, with all that, in God's desire and God's intention it is unto joy; it is unto sheer thankfulness; it is unto hope, a new hope; it is unto life - all the things which are exactly the opposite to what the Cross seems to say.

God is the God of Hope, even when you look at Calvary, and all that is going on there, and see the One there, and hear His bitter cry. If you understand it, and if you look at history - Adam's sin, and fall, and all that in which the race was involved thereby, all the tragedy and the anguish and the passion and the evil of the generations - and see why God, not only allowed it, but had to establish that regime, issuing in despair - the answer, strange to say, is: He is the God of Hope. That is His way of hope, and His only way of hope.

The Cross has always been God's way of salvation, God's remedy. It is a very drastic, a very terrible remedy, but it is God's remedy. And if it is an effective remedy, then it produces hope; it is something with hope - new hope - as its issue. The Cross is not a symbol; the Cross is not an object. The Cross is a mighty power, a perpetual power; an enaction once in history, but a power running through all the ages - we have said implicit in the old dispensation, explicit in this dispensation. From the first sin to the last, the Cross is a power at work.

Now there is one thing against which the Cross stands: namely, a state that is other than that which God intended. That has, of course, many aspects. We are going to look at just one or two of them, they are perfectly apparent in the Bible.

The Cross Against a Changed State

Firstly, the Cross stands over the nature of things when that nature has become different. Whenever the nature of things has changed from what God either made it at the beginning, or intended it to be, God has brought in the Cross in some way or another; at once He has introduced the Cross. The nature of man was changed at the beginning; he became something different in nature from what God intended. We all know that by our inheritance. And immediately the Lord introduced the Cross in the law of travail, of passion, of adversity; He wrote immediately over that state, Despair and Death. The Cross stood over against that changed state. The only hope for recovering the divinely intended state, condition, nature of things, lay in the Cross.

The Cross is the great purifying agent - and purifying simply means getting rid of mixture. When there are things which do not correspond or tally; they are of two natures, two realms - two opposing elements; - when there is impurity, adulteration, the Cross stands four-square against it, in order to purify. The very first thing with God - whether in the individual, or in any company of His people locally, or in the Church universal - is its purity, its cleanness, its separation from all iniquity and all mixture. Our Christian life is based upon the Cross, individually, locally, and universally. The Cross sees God's mighty, terrible, eternal declaration against impurity - the contamination and corruption that has come in to make a state, in man and in the world, which He never intended to be.

The only way of purification is by bringing home, in grim reality, the hopelessness, from God's standpoint, of that which is not pure. How true that is, in a general way, as we look out on the world - the hopelessness of an impure, unclean, mixed state of things. The God of Hope demands, therefore, complete cleansing in that realm, and the constituting of something pure, something clean, something unmixed, untainted. If you look into the Bible, with all its wonderful symbolism of what God's thought is, you will find that His thought is transparency, crystal-clearness. The end of God's work in this creation, as we see it at last in the book of the Revelation, is a jasper stone - something pure, clear as crystal. And it is the Cross and the Blood of the Lamb that leads to that.

If, therefore, the Lord sees any state that He never intended to be, that contradicts His mind in this matter, He will bring in the Cross as a working power; and, where that is found, there will begin to arise a situation. We find we have come to a standstill, God is not going on; we are in distress; we are in travail; we are in anguish; we are in despair; we are coming to death. The Cross is working in that way in order to produce a situation full of hope, full of prospect. The law is very clear.

The first thing we see, then, is that any state that is not according to God's intention has to be cleared up by the application of the great principle of the Cross. There is no hope for anything that is not pure in His eyes.

The Cross Against Reduction in Divine Things

Next, suppose that things have become less than God intended they should be. God intended something full, great, and things have become smaller than He intended. And the history of Christianity is the history of that tendency - it is more than a tendency, a real working - in man's reducing both God and God's things to his own human measure; bringing everything of God, and God Himself, within the compass of man; man reducing God to himself in measure; making God less than He is, and the things of God less than they really are. We can see how that has gone on and is all the time going on, as a trend, as a tendency, as some working. And we are always near that peril of things becoming less than God meant them to be. God intended something very great; and here is loss, or the peril of loss, reduction; things becoming smaller, losing something.

Whenever the Lord sees that working, or that peril, becoming very real, He introduces the Cross, and travail begins, and distress, and suffering; everything comes into a realm of uncertainty and weakness and question. A sense of failure and despair is written - We are not going on, we are not going through. God intended something great, and it has lost something of that greatness, or failed to go through to that greatness; it has become something smaller than He intended. He is not going to allow that; He reacts. And oh, what tremendous reactions history shows in this very connection.

Take just the illustrative case of Israel. While Israel was a chosen people, taken out of the nations for God, God never, never intended Israel to become something in themselves. He never intended that Israel should be the beginning and the end of all His work. He intended Israel to be a 'light to the Gentiles'; to be a testimony to God to all the nations; to be a ministry, a missionary instrument, to all peoples, that all nations should walk in their light, or come into the light of God as amongst them. They were raised up, not for themselves as an end, but for the whole world, as God's apostolic nation, to evangelize the nations with the knowledge of God.

What did Israel come to? To despise the nations; to call them 'dogs', to shut them out, and shut themselves in from the nations, and have nothing whatever to do with them; to look upon them as something to be despised, to be rejected, to be cut off. 'We are the people; everything begins and ends with us.' The nation became something smaller than God intended, and there is no hope in that direction. The end of the story is that Israel, while of that mind, must be put aside, be broken, smashed, brought to despair, to hopelessness.

There is a large lesson for us to learn, and ever bear in mind, that, with all that God gave to Israel, and all that God is willing to lavish upon us, it is not for ourselves, it is not to end in ourselves. Nor is it to be allowed to make us just something in ourselves, that 'We are the people'. It is a trust - a trust for all men. The apostle Paul recognised that; and what a tremendous thing his recognition of it meant in his own case, when you think of him as a typical Israelite. His vision and ministry embraced 'all men' - "that we may present every man" - not, every Jew! - but "every man perfect in Christ" (Col. 1:28). He is the man who brings in the immensity of things, is he not? - the immensity of Christ; the immensity of the Church. If there is one thing about the Church that is so evident in the New Testament, it is its greatness. How great it is! It takes its character and its dimensions from the Lord Jesus. Any who have seen the greatness of Christ can never tolerate a 'little' church, a 'little' fellowship, - a little exclusive thing that is an end in itself. It must have a universal vision and a universal heart. To get that, any tendency to become something less will be met by the Cross, and there will come in hopelessness, despair, arrest, a sense of no way through, and a great deal of inward suffering and trouble and perplexity.

The Cross is the way of salvation: it is the way of salvation from something being smaller than God intended; but it is a painful way; it is the way of travail. The Cross releases from all smallness. The Lord Jesus made that clear in His own words: "I came to cast fire upon the earth... I have a baptism to be baptized with and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" (Luke 12:49,50). 'How am I straitened!' But the baptism of the Cross, of the passion, being accomplished, He is released from all His straitness. This is no national movement now; this is not limited to Palestine, or to any other spot. He is released by the Cross from the smallness of Judaism, Israelitishism, Palestinianism! He is released into the universal. But it is a painful way, that release; it is a breaking and a rending. So the Lord would have us ever remember that He does react, and react very painfully for us, if anything that He intended to represent His greatness and His fulness becomes less than that.

The Cross Against Human Wisdom

Once more, when anything becomes governed by human wisdom, by the mind of men, when it becomes brought into bondage of the 'scribes', the Lord has always brought in the Cross against that. You see it again in Israel. The Cross has been introduced over against that situation where the scribes and the rulers of Israel gave to Divine things their own human interpretation, imposed upon the things of God their own mind; created this great and intolerable burden to which Christ referred - simply the mind of man imposed upon Divine things. And it always means bondage. The Lord is not going to allow that. And so He reacts again, and there comes an impasse. And what is the nature of this new crisis? Absolute bewilderment; a situation where you do not know what to do, where to look, in what direction to move; how the situation can be resolved. It is altogether beyond human wisdom. It is an impasse of confounding, confusion, and despair. What can we do? what shall we do? how is this situation to be met? At every effort you are defeated.

The Lord has got to rescue us out into the realm of Divine revelation from any merely human or mental holding of Divine things. It is a tremendous thing that the Lord must have - this realm where He is perfectly free, if He wants to, to give new light that may seem to upset all our interpretations - all the mental power of the scribes and the Pharisees - to upset the whole thing.

That is what you find in the New Testament, in the book of the Acts. Here is Peter, a representative of Israel; here is Paul, one of those interpreters of the law, who held everything within the limit of their own minds, and said, Our word is final! Our interpretation is the authority! You have to bow to it! What is the Lord doing with men like Peter and Paul, and others in that book? He is bringing them up against situations where, if God does not now come in with some new light and some new revelation, they are at a standstill. He was taking them altogether beyond their best traditions, their strongest convictions, and their settled interpretations, and was making them see that the Bible meant more than they, with all their learning and knowledge, had realised it meant.

Yes, Leviticus 11 stands true about unclean creatures and reptiles not to be eaten. Does the Holy Spirit contradict that when He tells Peter to 'Arise, kill and eat'? Not at all. Leviticus 11 had a meaning that Peter had never seen. He is up against something now that seems to contradict his knowledge of the Scripture; but in principle it does not - it just does not. One can only hint at that. You see, we bind the Word of God, and do not leave God free to enlarge the revelation, that He is meaning to give new light. And if that is a peril, or if we come to the place where our interpretations are made binding and limiting, He will bring in the Cross, and bring us to a place of utter confusion, where, if God does not now give us some new light, we are finished; we have not got the wisdom for the situation. What is He doing? The God of Hope is getting rid of a hopeless situation. And it is always hopeless when man is the last word in anything!

The Cross Against Legalism

Finally, when things have become a legal system, bringing anything of God into bondage, God has reacted with the Cross, and it has been a terrible, devastating reaction. The breaking of legalism, of bondage to the Law, was a terrible business, and it always is. The Lord is not going to tolerate anything like that - making His things of the Spirit a tyranny of law. He will react for the Spirit's complete liberty in all things.

So we see that the Cross stands between a pure, unadulterated state, and a mixed, and therefore impure, condition. The Cross stands between the full intention of God and something less than He intended. Yes, the Cross demands fulness, not imperfection, not something less even in degree. If the Cross really is a working power anywhere, it will never allow a standstill. It will always demand a going on, and ever on, because it opens the way for that.

The Cross stands between a knowledge or a wisdom that is without life, and spiritual knowledge which is life. Adam made his choice, his bid for knowledge, and he got it without life. The "tree of life" was shut up - he had knowledge without life. God does not stand for that. We know how even religious knowledge can be lifeless and dead! It may be true of us, that we have a lot of knowledge - but where is the commensurate life? The Lord is against that, and He says: I cannot go on; we must have some trouble about this; we must have some pain, some anguish about this - all the knowledge must have a corresponding life. The knowledge must be living, must be linked with life. You can eat of the 'tree of knowledge' - I mean that other tree of knowledge, the knowledge of the Lord, of heavenly things - but even so, you must have the "tree of life" to keep the balance. Knowledge and life correspond, go together. The Lord is against any state other than that.

Again, form, exact form, perfect form, in teaching and in practice, without power, is something that God will not allow. Teaching and practice may be perfectly right: yes, but what about the power? Israel had the oracles, had the Law, had all the truth, but where was the spiritual power? None at all. The Cross will act to put that right. There is nothing to be said against 'correct' procedure and accurate and sound teaching; they must be; but the Lord will see to it that by keeping things on the move, in exercise, in travail, in trouble, the whole question of power becomes a very real one. We have got so much teaching, but we have so little power - it must become an anguish, a real anguish. All that we have, and all our way of doing things which we think to be so right, of New Testament order, must have a corresponding power and impact. And so the Lord will not allow rest in that.

In all these ways, He is the God of Hope: by travail there is hope, by despair there is hope. It is His way. May He give us understanding.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, July-August 1959, Vol 37-4

The Cross of Christ

[Click here to view the diagram that goes with this article]

Zero. The dictionary tells us that

(a) Zero is the point in the scale of the thermometer from which positive and negative quantity is reckoned.

(b) In military operations, the point of time from which the start of each movement in a timed programme is at a specified interval.

The combination of these two definitions is exactly what we mean when we speak of the Cross of Christ as the zero hour of the Creation. From that point all positive and negative values are determined, and all movements are fixed.

Through the ages preceding the Cross of Christ there had been a double movement. One of expansion and enlargement; the other of contraction.

The one of development was on the side of man, and it related to three things in the main,

1 Man himself.

2 Sin.

3 The devil's kingdom.

The movement of contraction was from God's side, and represented His attitude toward the three.

Let us look at these points more fully.

1. Man himself.

Man was made on a very high level and was endowed with great capacities. The destiny fixed for him was nothing short of world-dominion. But he was placed on probation, the nature of which was that of utter confidence and obedience to God. To make this confidence and obedience something practical and not merely theoretical, he was bound to God by a law of dependence. The temptation which came to him was that he could - if he chose - realize his destiny apart from the dependence; he could be independent of God, and rather than lose, he could gain. It was a matter of self-realization without being bound to God. He fell to the temptation and started on the career of independence to realize his own destiny. Well, he has certainly developed a great deal; he has invented, discovered, adapted, expanded, explored, and exploited on an immense scale. God has let him go on his self-chosen way, but there is a snag in it all. All his development is carrying him nearer and nearer to his doom rather than to his Divinely intended destiny. He invents, and his inventions are employed for the greatest amount of human destruction. His machinery has resulted in unemployment which leads to moral decline, revolution, and many other troubles. It has also resulted in the strange contradiction of there being over-production of the necessities of life and terrible shortage in the actual supplies to the people. All this could be shown to be the case in numerous directions, but it is enough to point out that at this time in the world's history all the immense developments of man are being directed, as never before, to the destruction of all that he has built and cherished. At the moment, the greatest brains are occupied with the question of how - by means of a ray - by the pressing of a button, the greatest number of men and their equipment can be paralyzed and put out of existence. Should such a ray be discovered or invented man will have made this world a place impossible to live in. This is no fiction. There are many things in use now which would have been unbelievable only a short time ago. That has been man's course in breaking away from God, and that is the price he is paying.

But God knew all this from the beginning, and He has never accepted that situation, really.

From the outset God said No, and He fixed a point at which He would register that No fully and finally. The Cross of Christ was God's way of saying to the universe - I do not accept that Adam-race man, I forever turn my back to him. When Jesus cried "My God, My God, why has Thou forsaken Me?" it was because He had voluntarily accepted the place of a judged and condemned race, and in a representative capacity had stood in man's place before God.

One of the great meanings of the Cross, as shown by the New Testament, is that there in the representative person of God's Son, man by nature was set aside. A whole order of creation was cut off, so far as God's mind is concerned. In His resurrection Christ represents a new order, and "If any man be in Christ there is a new creation." In that union with Christ by faith, when we have accepted His death as our death, there is something imparted which is the life of a new nature, a different species. The development of that will see, not the doom, but the originally intended destiny realized.

2. Sin.

What is true of man is also true of sin. We cannot say that man has really morally gone up and up. While we admire courage, heroism, endurance, and self-sacrifice, we are horrified at the awful filth and vileness that is in human nature. The standard is such that the one who protests against its looseness and lowness is regarded as being behind the times, or an offense. Sin has not changed nor diminished through the ages, and the present colossal sufferings and miseries of the world are a terrible disclosure of the hatred, murder, pride, greed, selfishness, passion, lust, cruelty, callousness, etc., which are still here. But God has never accepted this, and in the Cross of Christ His zero has been registered.

"He who knew no sin was made sin for us" (in our stead) - so runs the Divine word.

The sin of the whole world was laid on Him and He suffered its judgment. From that zero point God regards sin as having been put away. The acceptance of Christ as the sin-bearer determines our acceptance with God. It is not now a question as to whether we are sinners more or less, greater or smaller, but whether "The Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world" has been appropriated by us in faith, and brought to God as our offering for sin.

In the resurrection of Christ the new order is that in which sin has been set aside, and righteousness made to prevail. Our union with Christ by faith means a new life within which is Christ's own life of victory over, and separation from, sin.

3. Satan's Kingdom.

Behind the temptation to break away from God, behind the course of independence and self-realization with all its tragic issues, behind the sin and all its miseries, stands Satan. Man is not just taking his own free way in self and sin. From dependence upon God and the tie of love and goodness man has become the victim of a bondage terrible and mighty. The fact is that man cannot change his course or his life even if he would. Not until he tries to do so does he realize that he is a prisoner. Satan's object in the temptation was not to secure man's freedom for him, though this is what he sought to let man think. Jesus said of Satan that "He was a liar from the beginning," and this poor world and race in Adam is duped and tricked. The object of Satan was to get the dominion into his own power and to supplant man - for whom the dominion was purposed. Thus, oh, thou poor world and all men thereon, thou hast been tricked, ensnared, robbed, spoiled, and made captive!

But God had His zero hour for Satan also. The Cross of Christ saw the kingdom wrenched from the devil's hands and taken into the hands of God's Son. Of that hour the Son of God said, "Now shall the prince of this world be cast out."

In our faith union with Christ risen and exalted we are delivered from the bondage of Satan; "Translated out of the authority of darkness, into the Kingdom of the Son of His (God's) love." That is why Christians are so hated and persecuted by all who are still under Satan's influence. But Christ is making even the devil's work to serve His ends, thus expressing His sovereignty. It is a part of the spiritual experience of the Christian to learn through faith that Jesus Christ is Lord.

So Calvary was the determining point as to all positive and negative values, and the crisis of all movements. Have you come by acceptance and consent to God's zero, and found that it is a new point for all things?

Crucified to the Religious World

"But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Galatians 6:14).

It is interesting to notice the particular way in which the Apostle speaks of the world here. That term is a very comprehensive term and includes a very great deal. Here Paul gets right down to the spirit of the thing. You notice the context; it is well for us to take account of it:

"For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh" (Galatians 6:13).

What does the Apostle mean? They want to say, "See how many proselytes we are making! See how many followers and disciples we are getting! See how successful our movement is! See what a power we are becoming in the world! See all the marks of Divine blessing resting upon us!" The Apostle says that is worldliness in principle and spirit; that is the world. He sets over against this his own clear spiritual position. Do I seek glory of men? Do I seek to be well-pleasing to men? No! The world is crucified to me, and I to the world.

All that sort of thing does not weigh with me. What weighs with me is not whether my movement is successful, whether I am getting a lot of followers, whether there are all the manifestations outwardly of success; what weighs with me is the measure of Christ in those with whom I have to do: "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you" (Galatians 4:19). Christ formed in you — that is my concern, he says that is what weighs with me... not extensiveness, not bigness, not popularity, not keeping in with the world, so that it is said that this is a successful ministry and a successful movement. That is worldliness. I am dead to all that; I am crucified with Christ to all that. The thing that matters is Christ — the measure of Christ in you.

You see how the world can creep in... and how worldly we can become almost imperceptibly by taking account of things outwardly — of how men will think and talk, what they will say, the attitude they will take; of the measure of our popularity, the talk of our success. That is all the world, says the Apostle, the spirit of the world; that is how the world talks. Those are the values in the eyes of the world, but not in the eyes of the risen Christ. In the new creation, on the resurrection side of the Cross, one thing alone determines value... and that is the measure of Christ in everything. Nothing else is of value at all, however big the thing may be, however popular it may be, however men talk favorably of it; on the resurrection side that does not count a little bit. What counts is how much of Christ there is.

You and I in the Cross of the Lord Jesus must come to the place where we are crucified to all those other elements. Ah, you may be unpopular, and the work be very small; there may be no applause, and the world may despise; but in it all there may be something which is of Christ, and that is the thing upon which our hearts must be set. The Lord gives us grace for that crucifixion. There are few things more difficult to bear than being despised; but He was despised and rejected of men. What a thing is in God’s sight must be our standard. That is a resurrection standard. Now that is the victory of the Cross: "But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world".

The Deliverance of Souls

An Exodus Accomplished

Reading: Luke 9:27-36; 2 Pet. 1:16-18; John 18:33-37; Col. 1:13.

"There are some of them that stand here, who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God."

"My kingdom is not of this world."

"...who delivered us out of the authority of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love."

"Behold, there talked with him two men, who were Moses and Elijah; who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem."

It is not fresh knowledge to you that that word translated 'decease' in the Revised Version, elsewhere 'departure ' or' death', is really the word 'exodus' - "spake of his exodus which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem". So the Cross is spoken of here as an exodus, which is simply a way or a going out, and the word itself, of course, immediately carries us back to a book which goes by that name, and records the going out of the people of Israel from Egypt. What the exodus was to Israel, the Cross was to the Lord Jesus and is for us - a way and a going out, but a going out through a definitely prescribed door, and that door the door of death. That was the only way out for Israel - through the door of death. It was the only way out for the Lord Jesus, and it is the only way out for us.

But that can be put in another way. The door of death was and is the way out! The Apostle, in the passage in Col. 1:13 completes it and says it is also the way in. "...who delivered us out of the authority of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love". And in that connection, the presence of Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration is particularly significant, for Moses and Elijah were two men in the Old Testament who knew, one, the way out and the other, the way in; the exodus and the translation, and they were there to speak with Him about this; that His death was the way out, but it was also the way in. It was an escape from one scene and condition, and a translation into another.

But we must give due heed to another word here - "the exodus that he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem". Another word for that is 'achieve'. It was not just a going out, that the door was opened and He went through; not at all. It was an achievement, an accomplishment; and, if we want some little idea of what that meant, look at the exodus of Israel again and see whether it was an accomplishment. Did they just walk out through a door that was opened? Not at all. There was an immense amount to be accomplished achieved, to get them out through that door.

And the type is only a very faint shadow of what the Cross of the Lord Jesus meant in the matter of something to be accomplished, a way out to be accomplished, achieved, a mighty work to be done. "Who delivered..." - it is upon the meaning of that word that we are going to dwell, I think, quite a lot. The deliverance of souls. "...who delivered us out of the authority of darkness". That is the one side. The other side - "and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love", - but that will await some further consideration.

Satan's Rights Destroyed

"Who delivered". What a tremendous amount there is in that word, what a history! We shall see that eighty years of the life of Moses were taken up by God with the formation of one who could deliver; deliverance is such a tremendous thing. "Who delivered us out of the authority" - the word 'power' is in our version, but it is that word which means authority or right, and here it has a double meaning. It refers to the person. You notice that it is translated in the plural in Eph. 6:12 - "Our wrestling is... against the principalities, against the powers..." - the same word, 'authorities'. These are personal things. They are entities in a certain position. The authority of darkness is firstly a person, of whom Pharaoh is but a faint type.

And then the authority is that power which is wielded and exercised by one in a position to exercise it, who has the right to exercise it in his own realm, and whose very strength is in his right; from whom you cannot be delivered just in the direct way of snatching from his grasp, but you have to undo his right to hold, you have to take from him all ground of jurisdiction, to bring him to judgment and judge him clean out of court, so that he has not any more ground to stand upon, he has no case left. 'Hath delivered us from the very case that the devil has against us' - that is a tremendous thing, that he has no more case against us. He will forever be seeking to have a case against us, to find some ground on which he can bring up a case against us. Hence he is called "the accuser of the brethren" (Rev. 12:10), but he has had his case spoiled, his ground destroyed, his rights nullified, and in this way we are delivered out of the authority of darkness. The Cross of the Lord Jesus is that kind of exodus, that escape, that way out, that glorious achievement.

You see, this word 'authority' carries with it the idea of rights, and that great battle in Egypt, headed up to the Passover and consummated at the Red Sea, was all a question of rights. In the Passover, the rights of Pharaoh were wound up. If we understand the meaning of the virtue of the blood of the lamb, the dying of that lamb, the identification by faith of every believer with that lamb in death, and the appropriation by faith of the blood of the lamb, then we understand the meaning of Pharaoh's rights being wound up. From that moment, he had no rights over them, and they began their exodus. He sought to re-assert his rights and he met the authority of superior rights and his hosts were destroyed in the Red Sea. He had no ground to stand upon, morally, spiritually and literally; his ground was gone.

All that is gathered into the Cross of the Lord Jesus. The work of the Lord Jesus in His Cross is all gathered into the Passover; and then, as He leads His people out through the offering of Himself, the shedding of His Blood, Satan's rights over them have been destroyed and they have a position which means that while Satan will be active afterward, he is only active against himself while they maintain their position in faith; he is only bringing upon himself his own destruction while we hold to the ground that the Blood of the Lord Jesus has provided. That mighty Passover can turn back upon Satan for his own undoing.

Deliverance from the Authority of Darkness

You notice that the book which goes by this name - Exodus - begins with the names of the sons of Israel, the names of the elect race, and then out of Egypt God calls His son collectively as one son, the sons in the son. He leads them out - and what a rich fulness of meaning that gives to a little statement with which we are so familiar in John's Gospel - "He calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out" (John 10:3). The names all mentioned, the chosen ones; He leadeth them out, He makes the exodus for His own sheep.

It says this, that those who were in Judaism, as it was in the days when our Lord was here on earth, were in something which had become bound up with the kingdoms of this world from which they had to be delivered by the death of the Lord Jesus - and it was a very religious thing. We are getting very near to the heart of things. Our deliverance from the authority of darkness may have to be wrought, not only in our separation from this world as we think of it, it may have to be wrought in a religious sense to get a people out into a heavenly place, even from Christianity, as a religion of this world, something which has become bound up with this world and its kingdom. This deliverance of the Cross is an utter thing - that is what we are getting at.

Complete Separation from Satan's Kingdom

The Lord was very explicit about Israel's exodus. He wrought and wrought for His rights, so completely, that He would not compromise to the degree of a hoof. "There shall not a hoof be left behind" (Ex. 10:26). He was working for His rights over other rights, His authority, and He would not allow a fragment to remain outside of His own realm. That means that the Kingdom of the Son of His love is a Kingdom which claims all, which represents all, which means the most perfect separation from the kingdom, whatever its form and nature, over which Satan has rights and therefore power. God is not going to give His power, His glory, to any little fragment which lies within the domain of the prince of this world. The secret of spiritual power, of spiritual life, of spiritual fulness, of spiritual effectiveness, the secret of reaching God's full end, is found in the utterness of the dominion of the Lord Jesus, in His having His rights in the life. Until, in type, that was established in the case of Israel, they were a floundering people. They, although out literally from Egypt, were not out spiritually, and were weak, impersistent, unreliable, ineffective, inwardly divided. They were not really out in an inward way. God could not commit Himself to them until they were established on the other side of Jordan. Then He could; He commenced to commit Himself at Jericho, and went on.

Israel was chosen, in the sovereignty of God, to be the instrument and vessel of blessing to all nations of the earth. God intended to reach all through Israel. In them, Abraham's seed, all nations of the earth were intended to be blessed. There is a sense, of course, in which that has been fulfilled, inasmuch as Jesus Christ of the seed of Abraham has been the blessing to all nations, but Israel as a nation was called to be a blessing and a channel of Divine blessing to all peoples, and Israel failed. The Church has come in according to the word of the Lord Jesus - "The kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (Matt. 21:43). And Peter says about the Church - "an elect race... a holy nation" (1 Pet. 2:9), to take the place of Israel with the same object - that the Church might be the channel of Divine blessing to all peoples.

Now, why is it that there is so much ineffectiveness, so much lack of power, so much defeat - that is, absence of victory; so much that does not count for God about us. Let us ask ourselves in all honesty whether it may not be that, as yet, we do not know in a living way, the meaning of the Cross as it is here set forth. The Cross represents that accomplishment of an utter going out from a realm where Satan has rights and therefore has power to spoil. In Egypt, Pharaoh had rights. He was king of Egypt, that was his domain, he had a right to do what he would. These people are in my domain, then they come under my rule and I can do as I like, as I will! So he oppressed, he weakened, he limited, he afflicted. And yet they are the elect, called sons of God, called sons of God even when they are there. We are sons of God by calling. But what a terrible thing to think of sons of God in a state of defeat like this, all because they are in a realm where there are rights by which they are bound. While they stay in that realm, and, mark you again, while there remains one hoof in that realm - they might have all gone out, flocks and herds and everything of their possessions might have gone out, and then just one hoof of one bullock left in Egypt - the whole thing would have been under arrest. The Lord's attitude was, I want that last hoof before I move! That is a very literal interpretation, but that is the Lord's attitude.

It means this, that our vocation cannot be fulfilled, the calling with which we are called, the power of God, cannot be realised while one fragment remains in the territory where Satan has rights. We must get on to the ground, into the realm, where all those rights are destroyed and he has no authority at all; and God has secured that realm, that position, by the Cross of the Lord Jesus, and if you and I will only come into line with the meaning of the Cross in its fullness, we have come into the way of power, fruitfulness, effectiveness.

I was asking the question, why it is that the Church is so ineffective? which is only saying, why is it that so many Christians are so spiritually weak and unfruitful and ineffective? Somewhere there is a link with the world; outwardly or inwardly, there is a link with the world - that is, the kingdom of darkness, the authority of darkness. I am not talking about our being here on the earth and having to work here in this world. You know the difference between being in it and of it, between being here and having heart relationships, voluntary relationships, choices, interests, desires, ambitions and so on; to be a part of this world in its acceptance, its recognition, and many other things. The way out and the way in is the way of death and that death, while it is all-inclusive in His own - for He has comprehended all that it means - He says for us it is a crisis and then a daily thing. "Take up his cross daily" (Luke 9:23), which means, I die daily to the call of this world, to the call of that kingdom where Satan has rights and authority, a call to my heart to be something here in this world as in itself. Oh, how subtly Satan uses that with many, seeking to argue that the realisation of an ambition would give even greater opportunity for the Lord. That is very nice to the flesh. The Cross has to be brought to all those subtle arguments of the angel of light; and while I would not say to anybody, Be careless, be slipshod, be second-rate in what you are and what you are doing on this earth, never let your Christianity make you less than the best amongst men and women and the most efficient in your job: at the same time, examine your motive, your object, your ambition. Examine your hearts in the light of the Cross, and see whether it is self-gratification, self-glory, or any form of self as the goal that is influencing the argument. It is a deep heart matter, this matter of the Cross daily, dying to much, perhaps, that the flesh would like, dying to the cravings of this natural life, and oh, they are so strong! It is so difficult to let this self go altogether and be nothing as amongst men.

When we come to think of the deliverer of souls, we shall find that Moses and Christ started in this world with no place of acceptance. Moses came into the world and found that the door was shut to him in this world and he had to be hidden three months. His life was a prey from his birth. And Christ came into this world on exactly the same conditions. Herod's edict was at work and there was no place for Him, and it is very difficult to take up a life which is like that from the very inception. What you are as the Lord's, what you represent, you as a child of God, as a Christian man or woman, you are not wanted. If you will only just compromise a bit, you will be accepted. If only you will hide it a bit, nothing will be said, the way will be open for you. But if you are going to stand on that ground of Christ, then the door is shut to you, you are not wanted. This is what it means that the Cross stands there right at the beginning of this life. You remember Exodus 12 - "This month shall be unto you the beginning of months... they shall take to them every man a lamb". The beginning was with death, death to self, as to this kingdom.

Well now, we know that this is very practical in its application, and it does work out like this, that, inasmuch as there is anything that belongs to that realm in ourselves, inasmuch as it is here and we are actuated by it, influenced by it, governed in any way by it, spiritual weakness, spiritual defeat, spiritual paralysis, unfruitfulness is the result. Somewhere there is a bridge, a link, a connection with the realm the Lord cannot have, His rights are not ceded. Out of the authority, not only the realm, but the right of Satan, into the Kingdom of the Son of His love.

You notice the Mount of Transfiguration. "There are some of them that stand here, who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:27). Then eight days afterward - a, significant number, resurrection, new ground, the old world gone, the Son of Man glorified - eight days afterward He taketh Peter, John and James up into the mountain, a heavenly position, and prayed. There came a voice out of the cloud, "This is my beloved Son; hear ye him". Peter, recounting it in his letter, says, "He received from the Father honour and glory, when there was borne such a voice to him by the Majestic Glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: and this voice we ourselves heard borne out of heaven, when we were with him in the holy mount" (2 Pet. 1:17-18). "Into the kingdom of the son of his love". "In whom I am well pleased". That very Kingdom of the Lord's pleasure, the Lord's delight, lies on the other side of the exodus.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jul-Aug 1945, Vol 23-4

Dying to Ambition

What do we expect when we go on with God, when we come right out for God? What have we in view?

Well, the answer to that question will decide whether, in relation to God, we have ambitions for something on the earth. Do you get the point? You see, it is so possible to swing over your natural ambitions to spiritual aims. It is the same thing still at work, and the only difference is the direction or sphere. You can be as ambitious in the work of God as you can be in the world, and it is the same natural ambition. It is the ambitiousness of nature.

You desire - what do you desire? To see something, to have something, to be in something? Ambition for success... yes, once it was in the world - now the same ambition transferred to other things.

You see, it is very often to the children - the kindergarten - the elementary stages of faith, where there is not the capacity to take very much strain, that God has to give quick results and manifest signs. The marks of maturity are equally the withdrawing of outward manifestations and signs - the demand to walk with God alone for God's own sake. It is a mark of graduation in the school of God that He can withdraw outward things. It shows that we have passed the test as to whether we are ambitious in this life.

It is a mark of going on when we can come to the place where it is true before God that we have let go all the prosperity and success even of Christian work and Christian ministry (as men would count). It is a sure sign of growth to be able to let go the great opportunities and the great advantages that may be had amongst Christian people... and the prizes that can be grasped... and to say: "It is all right, the Lord knows; it is for Him to give or withhold. I am not going to make a line for those prizes. I am not going to allow those things to influence my walk with God. Ambition is not going to dictate my course."

It may not seem here on earth to mean very big things - wide open doors and all that, but somehow you may take it that there is Life there - spiritual influence there - something that is counting there. In the end it will have counted. But this does sometimes first of all necessitate that conflict with ambition where all those suggestions and influences have to be laid low and we come to the place where we see that the way of Life is to go on with God though it costs us everything. The law of the Spirit of Life works in that way.

The way of Life demands that we shall get before the Lord and say, "Lord, though all my earthly prospects fade, though all my ambitions are disappointed, it is You I want. You are my ambition - my goal. If I have You, these other things will count for much less."

I believe that as we can get there... and not many of us have gotten a long way on that road... but as we can get there, we find the secret of Life, of joy, of release. I am not so sure that we shall not find that God is able to give back the prizes here. He withdraws them that we may turn from them to Himself. And when He has us for Himself, He may give something here; He may give blessing here on this earth.

But let us remember that His desire is to have us for Himself for His own sake; and as we fall into line, Life is found there. It is the way of Life. The law of Life demands that everything should be for the Lord... without any other influence or consideration... the Lord Himself.

The Fulfilled Law

Reading: 1 Kings 8:5-11

At last the ark of the covenant had arrived at its destination. Amid scenes of great rejoicing it had been brought "to its place" and left there under the wings of the cherubim and surrounded by clouds of divine glory. "There was nothing in the ark save the two tables". God's holy law had been perfectly preserved, and there it reposed in the inmost oracle of God. Originally, of course, there had also been the golden pot of manna and Aaron's rod which budded. Their absence at this later date does not imply that their significance was any less, but rather indicates that the tables of the law included them in its own divine sufficiency. The wilderness journeys of God's people had ended and the ark was now at rest in the house of God. In that temple which symbolised the heavenly reality which marks the end of earthly pilgrimage, there was no longer any need to perpetuate reminders of the wilderness way: the abiding truths which they typified were all included in the tables of the law. These tablets set forth God's mind, His will for man; they were an expression of how life would be lived in accordance with His unchanging desires.

There can be no question about the perfection and finality of God's will. The letter to the Ephesians lays great stress on this matter, making use of such phrases as: "the good pleasure of his will", "the mystery of his will" and "the counsel of his will". It takes us backwards and forwards in thought, pointing back to God's will as predetermined before time was, speaking of that will as now operating through the years of time, and looking forward to the will of God overstepping time in eternal fulfilment. The passage shows that God's will is centred in one glorious intention of love: "he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love...". God's will from all eternity is to have a great family whom He can love and who love Him in return.

Love is the fulfilling of the law, a fact symbolised in the ark, which was the receptacle in which the unbroken law was preserved. This ark was a chest made of acacia wood overlaid with gold within and without. The gold speaks of divine love, so that the fact that the tablets were hidden in the ark typified the fact that the mind of God dwells within a heart of love. Since Christ is the true expression of God's love, He is the only one qualified to be the fulfiller of His law. We know that the Lord Jesus always made love the principle of fulfilling the law. He made it clear that in His own case love for the Father governed everything. As the ark was at last placed before God in the holiest of all, so Christ is now in the presence of God, and He is there as a testimony that the will of the Father has been perfectly fulfilled, and that this has been done not through compulsion or legal obligation but by love alone. Love is the fulfilment of the law or, in other words, love consists in doing the full will of God.

As Christians we hear much about the will of God, and we often find it to be one of our greatest problems. We can only find the answer to these problems in the Lord Jesus who has perfectly fulfilled that will for us. "There was nothing in the ark save the two tables...". Nothing more is needed, for Christ's fulfilment of God's law includes everything else. It includes the manna, for we find heavenly nourishment as we feed on His perfect life of love. All hunger of the soul is met when we realise how in love Christ has fully satisfied the Father's every wish for us. To the last degree He has fulfilled God's eternal desires for our lives; no more needs to be done; no more can be done for love's fullness is revealed in the perfection of the Son's obedience to the Father's will. When we get this clear we can feed on His faithfulness, and it will prove to be sweet heavenly food. If, however, we admit any doubts or questions about this, if we have any reservations or uncertainty as to whether the unbroken law is preserved in love on our behalf, then we become lean and starving believers, hungering for rest and comfort and failing to find them. This is quite unnecessary. We may feast continually on the glorious perfection of God's Son. The manna has not been lost or left behind; it is all included in those two witnesses to love's fulfilment of the law. There, in the holy presence of God, the living Ark has come to rest and, as in Solomon's day the staves were removed to signify the reaching of journey's end, so Christ has perfected for ever those whom He has sanctified unto the will of God. There is nothing more to be done. There is not another inch to go, for the goal of God's will has been gloriously attained. "Lo, I am come to do thy will," Jesus affirmed as He entered this world for us, and when He returned to the Father's presence He was able to say: "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do." To grasp this is to find the end of all soul hunger, to enter on a spiritual banquet, to feast on love - His love for the Father as proved by His total obedience to the divine will.

And what shall we say of Aaron's rod which budded? Life in its fullness, beautiful and fruitful life, is ours as we rely entirely on the utter sufficiency of Christ. "There was nothing in the ark save the two tables...". Nothing more is needed; nothing more is possible; this is enough for God, as the clouds of glory testified, and so it is surely enough for us. In Aaron's case the budding rod represented God's answer to men's criticisms and Satan's accusations. So it is in our case, for we can rightly claim that for us the law has been fully satisfied. The will of God in perfection is just as truly sustained in Christ Jesus our heavenly Ark as ever the tables given to Moses were permanently deposited in the gold-covered chest which came to rest in the holy of holies. The ark of the testimony had been specially constructed to hold the tablets: they belonged there and no one could ever remove them. And all the good of Aaron's rod was made available because of them. We pine for life, we bewail our lack of beauty and fruitfulness whenever we take our eyes away from Christ's perfection; but conversely we enjoy life in its fullness as we concentrate our faith and hope on His finished work on our behalf.

The will of God has so many aspects that we get into all sorts of difficulties about it, wondering what the will of God is about this matter and that. There is only one way to resolve our difficulties and that is by accepting Christ as the fulfiller of the law in everything, and yielding ourselves completely to His headship. The will of God is not sectional or divided up into compartments; we cannot submit to it in piecemeal ways. We must know that will in all its comprehensiveness, for when Christ is altogether given His place of absolute headship as the perfecter of the will of God for us, then we find the key to a life in which the many details of that will are all included. It is no longer a matter of applying the law to different aspects of our life, but a question of a wholehearted subjection to Him as Lord. This reduces every problem to the simple issue of what He wishes, with the one question: 'Lord, what do You want me to do?'

In some way or other this inevitably means that we are led back to the cross, for the tables of the law were covered by the blood-stained mercy seat. The cross was the answer to all sin. Surely the very essence of sin is failure to love God. If Adam had truly loved God the whole tragedy of man's fall would never have occurred, for love is the fulfilment of the law. Man's sin made Christ's sacrifice necessary; His cross was the only way by which atonement could be made for our shortcomings. But it was also the supreme expression of His love for the Father. In the case of the Lord Jesus His love to the Father was so complete that it enabled Him to face even the death of the cross.

If we consider what were some of the practical factors in Christ's crucifixion we realise that His sufferings were caused by men's fickleness, bigotry, fearfulness, jealousy and treachery. In love He bore all these for us. And these may well be the factors which challenge the reality of our love to God. The fickle crowds so soon forgot the kindness and goodness of the Lord Jesus, allowing themselves to be carried away by base and false accusations, so that they cried out against the one whom they had formerly extolled and praised. The Pharisees were so dominated by a religious bigotry which was cruel in its intolerance and harsh in its legalistic denunciations that they took the lead in causing His sufferings. The disciples, as well as Pilate, were fearful; Judas was treacherous; and Satan was jealous himself and inspired jealousy in the Sadducees and others. But all this concentration of attacks upon love did not turn the Lord away from remaining faithful to the Father's will in every detail. God's love meant more to Him than the bitterness of enemies, the failure of friends, the strength of popular opinion or the matter of His own rights. When He came to rest in the glory of the Father's presence, love had conquered every temptation. Just as the tables of the law had been preserved inviolate - not only unbroken but not even scratched - so the will of God was preserved in perfection by the Lord Jesus, whose love for the Father was so great that it enabled Him to drink even the bitter cup of Calvary.

We, too, are confronted by some of the foes which He had to face, for we have been called to bear the cross after Him. The fickleness of friends and fellow-workers, the bigoted criticism of those who claim to be God's servants, the fear-inspiring pressure of popular opinion, the misunderstanding and jealousy which Satan himself inspires - these are some of the tests put to our love. We can never hope to overcome them unless we remember that there is in the presence of God for us a Saviour who suffered the full agony of these things, but accepted them as part of the cup which the Father had given Him to drink. It was love for the Father which enabled Him always to choose the Father's will, and the outcome of His triumph is that "we should be holy and without blemish before him in love". There is a sense in which God is seeking to undo in us all that failure of love which we inherit from Adam. He exposes us to the painfulness of the cross, not in some capricious or unsympathetic way, but because He aims to reproduce in us that love fulfilment of His will which Christ already presents to Him on our behalf.

One day our wilderness journeys will be over. The staves will be removed and we will find ourselves in the full realisation of that eternal purpose that we should be perfect before Him in love. The house, then, will indeed be filled with the glory of God to the exclusion of all else. In that day it will be seen that the only thing which really mattered was love's fulfilment of the will of God. In fact that is all which matters now. There is nothing in the ark save the two tables! What is now true in Him is to be made wonderfully true for us also. And all the glory will be His.

The Great Divide and the Great Transition

Among the games that used to be played at parties there was one like this. A large circle was formed by the company present, and then someone began by whispering something to the next person. This was passed on right round the circle. The last person of the ring then had to say aloud what he or she had received, or thought they had received. It was then compared with the original statement, and it was both amusing and amazing how the thing had developed, lost its character, both by addition, subtraction, or distortion. Often the original could only with difficulty be recognised.

While Christianity is not a game, it has greatly suffered in this way as it has passed down the generations through the minds and lips of its vast circle of sponsors and adherents. So much so that it is very difficult to recognise the origin in what has emerged in course of time. It therefore becomes necessary and of very great importance to both ask and seek to answer the question: What is it that we have come into in Christianity? The object of these messages will be just to do that as ability may be given by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of TRUTH.

We shall begin on a wide basis and work from the circumference to the centre. We know that the Bible is divided into two main parts, or sections, the Old and the New Testaments. That is not just a literary division. It is truly a historical division, but it is much - very much - more than that. Upon the difference represented by that division hangs everything that God has said, and wants us to know as to His eternal intention. It is just there between the two Testaments, or halves, of the Bible that the immense significance of our above title stands - the Great Divide and the Great Transition. As we proceed, we shall shortly come to point out that in that gap between the Testaments stands nothing less than the Cross of Jesus Christ.

The first section of the New Testament is that which comprises the four "Gospels". Whatever differences in likeness, context, presence and absences there may be in the four, they all certainly have this in common: they all lead up to the one climax, the Cross of Christ. All that each has contained is shown to be steadily and inexorably moving toward the Cross. From what we learn later we understand that the Cross was fixed in the counsels of God according to His foreknowledge from the foundation of the world. What, then, do we conclude from this climax of the Gospels, the very first section of the New Testament? The Gospels introduce the great Person of Jesus Christ. They proceed with His works and His teaching, substantiated by His life or character. All this comprises His mission, which mission is to reveal God and God's purpose for man. The place of the Cross as the inevitable and fixed climax to the Gospels says one tremendous thing: it is that all that revelation of God, in life, work, and teaching, can only be made good for, and be entered into by man through, the Cross of Jesus Christ, God's beloved Son. We ought to place many marks of emphasis and exclamation at the end of that statement. Read it again!

That, then, clearly and surely says that the Cross stands right at the beginning of the New Testament, and that again means that it stands between the two. If we just put the figure of a cross there we shall see that its arms stretch backward and forward. Then we should draw a strong line right down the centre of the Cross. By this figure we are enabled to understand the whole teaching of the New Testament, or, in other words,

THE TRUE MEANING AND NATURE OF CHRISTIANITY

That arm with the backward aspect - up to the central line - says FINISH, AN END. The arm with the forward aspect says ALL THINGS NEW (i.e. different). On one side the Cross is the closing of a door upon one whole historic system RELATED TO GOD. On the other side the Cross - in the resurrection of Christ - proclaims an open door to an entirely new Divine economy. One side says 'No! positively No!' The other side says 'Yes! definitely Yes!'

Of course, what remains is for us to understand what it is to which the No and the Yes apply. That will follow. For the present we have to come to realise the inclusive and emphatic FACT that there is a point in the history of God's order at which there is an immense dispensational divide and transition. We do not hesitate to say that the confusion, weakness, frustration, and failure which so much characterises Christendom is very largely due to failure to realise, be really alive and understanding as to this divide and transition! There is a very real and true sense in which the New Testament is entirely occupied with the business of making this divide and transition clear. This will become evident as we proceed. It can be rightly said that the New Testament is built on two aspects expressed in two words, the occurrence of which demands a lot of close study or tracing. Both by actual use and by clear implication these two words and aspects are numerous. These two words - set over against each other - are "Not" and "But". They respectively cover and embody two comprehensive and entirely different systems in the Divine economy, that is, in God's methods with man, and the means employed by Him. They divide the two main dispensations. All the main works of God are included in those affords. As to his works and ways up to the Cross the great "Not" applies. It says: 'Not SO any longer.'

We shall at once proceed to note some of the main points upon which the great divide and the great transition rest. The first of these is:

THE NO AND THE YES OF HUMANITY

The fundamental statement is in John 1:12-13: "Children of God... born, Not... but of God." This is enlarged upon in chapter 3:3-12, and it runs in close connection with all that is in this Gospel. It is pursued along many lines, as we shall see. But before we follow this, may we be reminded of one helpful matter. When John wrote this Gospel he was an old man, probably very old. At the end - or near the end - of his life he had been exiled and imprisoned on the Isle of Patmos; for exactly how long we do not know, but the point is that, with all of his personal, intimate knowledge of the Lord Jesus, His teaching, works, character, death, resurrection, ascension, and the advent of the Holy Spirit, he had much time for quiet detached meditation and thought. His Gospel is the product of this, therefore every word and statement is heavily loaded with much consideration and communion with the Lord. We take it all as just written statements, but we really should give something of the same meditation to even the words employed by John; for, as we have said, they are laden with eternal meaning.

Having said that, we return to the point at which we put in that parenthesis. The "not" and the "but" in its first application to mankind is pursued along various lines. Those lines are:

(a) The title of the Son of God which is FOUNDATIONAL to all that follows in this connection.

(b) The words which most conspicuously characterise this Gospel.

(c) The "SIGNS" which John selected, or was led to select, to illustrate and demonstrate the particular object in view.

We begin with

THE TITLE OF THE SON OF GOD

"In the beginning was the WORD."

"The WORD was with God."

"The WORD was God."

"The WORD became flesh." (John 1:1,14)

It is not at all necessary to enter the tortuous jungle of Greek philosophical and mystical thought which is associated with this word "Logos". Whatever help there may be in its elucidation, let the scholars dig that out. The simple facts are that it just means this IN THE BIBLE. A word is the means of expressing something that is in the mind, a thought expressed. Then (in this connection) it is the mind or thought of God. The next element in the word is that it is not abstract, but an act. God's word in the Old Testament is God's act, it is a fiat. "In the beginning God said... and it WAS." "He spake, and it was DONE", etc., etc.

The next thing here is that the mind, the thought, the expression thereof took PERSONAL form: "Became flesh." The result - and note how this connects with our present application of the divide and transition - is that we have in Christ the personal expression of the mind of God as to humanity; a kind of manhood! A NEW kind of humanity; not only a better, but a different from all other. This is THE great significance of the Incarnation, a FUNDAMENTAL difference. Humanity, yes; but different. Not in bodily or physical appearance. Not in all human SOUL-sensibilities and endowments; but deeper than body and soul, a spirit begotten of God. "The (or an) ONLY begotten of the Father" (John 1:14). The "only" is unique. This is an unique humanity, not only an improved specimen. The difference is in what follows, as we shall see.

So, the first meaning of the "Not" and the "But" relates to the title given to the Son of God who became "Son of Man"; that is, a different and unique human emanation and expression of God's mind; an act of God. From there we proceed along the line of

THE DOMINANT WORDS USED BY JOHN

They are quite a cluster, but for our immediate purpose we note these: "Father", "Son", "Life", "Light", "Truth", "To know", "Believe", "Love".

"Father" occurs 116 times in this Gospel, MORE THAN ANY OTHER WORD. It is therefore the background of all that is here. The very term implies begetting; emanation of those of like nature.

John was particularly dominated by this conception of God. In his Letters as well as here he says much about being begotten of God. The children of God are God's act and their existence is the projecting of His WILL! While they are the children of His love, they are not of impulse, but calculated and preconsidered. The whole conception of humanity was in the mind of God before creation, humanity that now is. The Word - "God manifest in the flesh" is the "But" over against the "Not" in this respect. If Christ's mission was - in the first place - to reveal the Father, as it certainly was, then the Father is revealed in human form in His children; initially, progressively, and ultimately in all likeness, as John says in his Letter. It is a NATURE that we refer to, not His deity. We do not partake of THAT! It will be of great value to the reader if he will trace this word "Father" through John, AND STOP TO THINK in each case.

From the "Father" we proceed to the "Children" (John 1:12).

First, the fact is stated that Jesus gave it to some to be children of God, and that He did this precisely on the basis of receiving Him. Weigh that carefully!

Then it says that this relationship to God is a given "right", prerogative, authority: "He gave (them) the authority to become the children of God." The word is 'exousia' and it has a legal meaning. It is the rightful, legal, legitimate, authoritative status of true children. These children inherit rights and claims by their birth. (See all the New Testament teaching on "heirs of God, joint-heirs with Jesus Christ"; the "Inheritance", etc.)

From there we are led on to the nature of this humanity, these "children". It is here that the first categorical "Not" "But" connects. The great divide, the great contrast is so emphasised. "Which were born (begotten)": Not -

(a) "Of bloods" (plural),

(b) "The will of the flesh,"

(c) "The will of man."

"Bloods" in the plural seems to mean the mingling of sexes, and there may very well be a hidden reference to the birth of Jesus which was not the mingling of the blood of Joseph and Mary, but "of God". "The will of the flesh", according to later New Testament teaching (e.g. Romans 8:4-8, etc.) is the choice, the decision, the energy of the natural man. So, "not of the will [volition] of man".

This is a tremendous and categorical sweeping away of everything but God's act in new birth. What an 'everything' that is in Christianity! "But of [out from] God." Every TRUE child of God can say: 'I am God's act in the deepest reality of my being.' Not by natural birth from earthly (even Christian) parents. Not by the force or strength of any man's will, but God did it! "Not" "But". There is a divide in the race, a difference in the humanities.

From "A Witness and a Testimony" July-August 1969.

The Holy Spirit and the Cross, the Church, and the Coming Again of the Lord Jesus

A Message as Spoken

The Theme is "The Holy Spirit and the Cross, the Church, and the Coming Again of the Lord." As to the first part, the Holy Spirit and the Cross, we can see that the one great and inclusive question in view was, and is, the securing of God's rights in the universe for Him. God, as the Supreme and Sole Object of all worship or worth-ship; the breaking in before this world was created of another will and thought, to divide that worship, to rob God of it, a disputing of God's sole right in the universe; an uprising to ascend into the heavens above the clouds to be equal with the Most High on the part of one, Lucifer; bringing about his downfall and the casting out of heaven of a company of "angels which kept not, their first estate," and who are now, we are told, "reserved in everlasting chains," in chains unto everlasting perdition and darkness: the reappearing of that one upon this earth, and assailing the citadel of God in the soul of man, and therefore dividing the rights of God, the worship of God, and securing recognition, acknowledgment, obedience, thus worship. Then right down through the ages, the two Gods, the true God and the god of this world - the false god; the two worships; the worship of God and the worship of this other, in many forms, by many systems, in divers manners, but always the one thing behind to take away from God, to divide the rights with God. It does not matter how it is done, it will be done always in the way which is most calculated to succeed.

At one time, it will appeal to the dominant faculties of that time, which may be psychical along the line of superstition, fear, dread, especially in the realms of little enlightenment, great darkness; and in another time, in another realm, perhaps along the line of intellect and reason and considerable enlightenment. Anyhow; it does not matter so long as the end is attained, that God has not His place, and is not allowed to be supreme in His universe, having undivided and unrivalled sway. The persistence of this other thing at times is manifested in - one was going to say, - an impertinence, the impertinence that it will even assail the Son of God, and say "if only THOU wilt worship me" - Thou wilt worship me! It stands at nothing, pays a great price for that recognition. All this we have seen, or gathered up in the Cross of the Lord Jesus, and we no longer look upon Calvary as merely the crucifixion of the Jewish Messiah, we no longer talk about the crucifixion of Christ, we no longer talk about this Calvary scene as an historic human tragedy, we look back on it and see this whole realm and range of contrary worship, the thing which had its own strategy against the Throne of God. That was involved, and it was there that Calvary's meaning had its full significance, and in that Cross the Lord Jesus met the whole of that thing, gathered it up in His Own Person by one all-inclusive sacrifice, whole-burnt-offering, because He, He alone could do it - God and man united in sinlessness. Such a One was required, such a One alone could do it. He did it in this whole-burnt-offering.

He Secured in His Person the Entire Universal Rights of God

for Him, and in that typical offering and that literal offering of Himself He offered Himself to God, as representing many sons whom He would bring to Glory - a new creation which He would bring into being, and in that Person there is previsioned and secured a sacrifice out of which shall be ultimately plucked the last remnant of that false thing, and in which God shall be All and in all, worshipped without a rival. He secured that in the Cross. The Cross, therefore, represents God's rights secured in Christ, and when we speak about the Cross let us always have a large enough vision and background to see why the Lord calls us into fellowship with Himself in death, burial, and resurrection.

It is of such a range that Satan should never again, so far as we are concerned, have a vestige of ground upon which to work against God. That is the meaning of it, and when we are called into the fellowship of His Cross it is to wipe out the ground of Satan's rights and claims and activities, and Satan's hand against the Throne of God. Oh that men saw that every bit of flesh uncrucified is the hand of the Devil against the Throne of God! It is that, beloved, when we choose our will against the Will of God, it is a hand against the Throne; it is an expression of the enemy's attitude, who said "I will be equal with the Most High." When He calls us into fellowship with Himself in the Cross it is not only to remove the ground of the enemy's operation and activity, but it is a declaration that in our risen union with the Lord Jesus we are wholly unto the Lord. Calvary represents utter consuming unto the Lord. No one dare talk about the Cross, sing about the Cross, no one has a right to speak of the Cross of the Lord Jesus as being anything to them who will not go the whole way. That Cross is the brasen altar upon which utterly, without a vestige left, they are consumed unto God, that, in the intention of God, there should not be one fragment or atom upon which the enemy should have a claim. As a whole that is the Cross, that is what it meant in the Person of Christ representatively, and that is what it meant for us as included therein, so that in that Person, that Ascended, Exalted, Glorified Person of the Lord Jesus everything is secured unto God. Oh do get the sufficient emphasis upon that; everything is secured unto God. Take the little phrase itself "unto God," or "unto the Lord," and trace it through the Word and see.

All that which is redeemed by His Precious Blood is redeemed unto God. It is for the Lord. Do we hold everything unto the Lord? Hold our business unto the Lord? hold our home unto the Lord? hold all our money unto the Lord? hold our children unto the Lord? hold our friendships unto the Lord? hold our bodies unto the Lord? hold all our opportunities unto the Lord? Everything unto the Lord, and everything that we cannot hold unto the Lord let go! No longer a question, "is there any harm in it?" that is negative. There is nothing negative in this life, the question is, is it unto the Lord positively. That is the meaning of Calvary - "unto the Lord," the whole burnt-offering unto the Lord. That is what it means to be in Christ. He is the whole burnt-offering. To be in Him is to be offered wholly unto God. "Henceforth," says the Word of the Spirit, "henceforth not unto ourselves but unto Him." He secured it all. He secured the earth in His Own Person for the Lord. He settled the dispute as to who should be the prince of this world, who should be the God of this world, who should hold sway of this world, who should sit upon the throne of this world? That is the dispute of the ages. He secured the world unto God in His Own Person. Beloved, this world by right of Christ's Victory belongs to God. Therein is our vocation found, to take it for God, to stand on it, put our feet down and say "we stand here for God." He secured the world, "all authority has been given unto Me in heaven and in earth." He secured man. Man, that disputed thing, made for the glory of God, but meddled with by Satan, so that even man gave his consent to Satan's will and authority and right. But in His Own Divine Person as Man (oh the wonder of the incarnation), as Man God and man joined in one Person. As Man He secured man representatively for God, for "as by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead" - the God-Man. He secured man in that Cross as free, utterly free from the power of Satan. It is in that sense that God has secured man in Christ. He has secured the world, He has secured man, He has dealt with Satan and He has dealt with death, all in this Cross of Christ.

The issue now for the world is to recognise the rights of God, to recognise the rights of God as secured in Christ, to take sides, to acknowledge that. Now that sets up a testimony, that is the testimony of God in Christ, which becomes the testimony of Jesus. That is the testimony, all this secured in the glorified Person of the Lord Jesus by means of the precious Blood. That is the Testimony of Jesus. That testimony has been taken and settled in the heavens. The Holy Spirit thereupon is sent forth to find some place on this earth in which to establish that testimony, and thus you come to

The Holy Spirit and the Church.

The Spirit constitutes the Church, which is the true Church according to the mind of God. Not what we call the Church, but what God calls the Church. He constitutes that and He constitutes it - as we have seen - a thing in which that testimony is placed in trust. The Church is here left on the earth but having a heavenly Life, in order that that Testimony may be here borne and upheld on the earth, that God has universal rights, these rights are secured in the Person of Jesus Christ, and that the Cross of Calvary was the scene and is the power of the establishment of that Testimony; the message of the Cross, Christ crucified, the power of God, the wisdom of God. The Church is here in trust for that purpose. The Testimony of all that Calvary secures in Christ is deposited in the Church, and in as much as God has not wiped the adversary out of the universe yet, but let him remain and given him so much liberty, is explained along this line that God is going to work out all the content of that Testimony in and through the Church. That explains why immediately there is an entering into the Testimony of Jesus in the power of the Holy Ghost, not in mind, thought, doctrine, teaching, human association, but in the power of the Holy Ghost, the enemy at once begins his terrific onslaughts and goes over the ground again to, by any means, device or scheme, wipe that Testimony out of the earth by wiping the Church out - if he can. Immediately God brings the Church to light other things are brought to light. The dark things are brought to light, the enemy is brought to light, the devices of the enemy are brought to light, and it is in the face of that the Church stands. Oh, beloved, we are here, if we are really members of His Body, not merely to present to men the gospel, that is a part, a great vital part of this whole, but we are here that "Now unto the principalities and powers in the Heavenlies might be made manifest the manifold wisdom of God by the Church," "NOW"! We have heard that many times that the vocation of the Church is not limited to flesh and blood, it reaches far beyond to other spheres. The testimony is universal, not local, even as to the earth, but beyond the earth. Otherwise, how are we to explain things? I think I can safely say that nine-tenths of the terrific spiritual conflicts through which we pass have no direct effect upon men and women. They seem to be without any virtue so far as people are concerned. It seems that men and women are only touched in a manner far short of commensurate with the terrific conflicts that go on. There is something more involved. Surely the nine-tenths are counting somewhere! Yes,

God is Doing a Thing Out of the Sight of Men

in this matter and displaying His manifold wisdom. One has to conclude that upon the mere ground of logic or righteousness, but one comes to see that it is definitely stated to be so in the Word of God. We might refer to the Book of Job. Where is the drama of the Book of Job set? Oh, in the realm where Satan appears before God and challenges Him concerning the faith and the faithfulness of one of His servants, and God says I will prove to you by that very man that he does not serve Me for what he can get out of Me, I will prove to you that there is such a thing as a faith in the universe which believes in Me for what I am. And Job is a type of the Church, stripped and led into affliction and adversity, and the hand of the devil is allowed to be against him as against it. It might seem that Job's faith is shaken, but the strength of God comes in at a critical moment and triumphs, and the issue, the ultimate issue, is that God has exhibited to principalities and powers His grace, His glory, and the thing which speaks of Himself, His testimony.

That is the story of the Church, but God is not only doing that on the dark side, He is doing it on the light side, and angels desire to look into these things; angels and archangels are being instructed by the Church, the testimony is a very wide testimony. The explanation, beloved, of our spiritual conflicts is far-reaching, it goes a long way, you will see it in that day. That is the Church. The Holy Spirit constituted the Church for that. Is that the Church we know? Is that the Church to which we belong? Is that the nature of the vocation which we are fulfilling? Are we in that or are we engaged in trying to hold people together into some human association, an organised thing on this earth that we call the Church, and trying to get them to live more decent lives, and to give some recognition to God one day in the week, and get them how we will? An entertainment, a bridge party, a dance? Is that the worship of God? Nay! but that, of course, is a long way off from this. There are many grades, but oh, God wants the true thing where Calvary means for every member of Christ's Body that there is only one thing to live for, and that is the glory of God. So the Church is set up as an earthen vessel to enshrine the Heavenly treasure, the testimony, and the Church is set up to minister to the glory of God, to His pleasure. There to be displayed the riches of His grace, the manifold wisdom. But there is the myrrh, the myrrh with which Esther was prepared for the intercessory work before the throne - six months of myrrh; but it is there that the beauty of the Lord comes in. You know what I mean. The Lord leads us into suffering, into trial, into heart-break, into the place where humanly there is nothing to get us through, and then His grace comes in. Thus after the myrrh the frankincense, the beauty of the Lord. And so He displays the riches of His grace through the Church in the fire. Shall we not make it personal, and say when the Church is in the fire, the one thing that attracts attention is that there is Another in the fire, and that One like unto the Son of Man. That is it. That is our calling, beloved, a holy calling, a sacred calling, if you like, a costly calling, but a worthwhile calling. It is bringing God into His place; it is unveiling His glory. The Church is here for the glorifying of God. "He that overcometh shall sit with Me on My Throne as I have overcome and sit with My Father in His throne." "If we suffer we shall reign with Him."

The Church an Intercessory Instrument.

Now we must also see that the Church is here to be an intercessory instrument for the Holy Ghost for two purposes. Here we have got the Book of Esther very much in mind. And just to mention that will explain to you what we mean. In the first place we have the intercessory instrument as represented by Esther for the purpose of preserving the Life of God's people; preserving the testimony to that Life of the Lord's people. Oh, that is a big calling and vocation. Here is this satanic scheme as illustrated in Haman who is out to blot out the people of God as the instrument of the testimony of God in the earth, though at the time a poor, decadent instrument, nevertheless the people of God; and Esther comes into relation to the throne in order to have that foul plan of the enemy reversed, destroyed, and the testimony of life maintained. That is the Church's vocation, that is what God is after securing, a company who will be to Him an instrument in this day to save the testimony of God in a decadent spiritual age and day; and many of the Lord's people are failing, are in captivity, weakened, robbed of their place, robbed of their witness, robbed of their power by the evil one because of their own idolatry, because they have been guilty of dividing God's rights and not giving Him His whole place. Idolatry is not merely the falling down and worshipping of gods of wood and stone. Idolatry is anything, beloved, anything in all the universe which detracts from God. If a young man takes to the smallest degree the place of God in a young woman's life, and the other way round as well; husband and wife, parent and children, business, home, anything that comes in to take God's place. We can be idolators with our time, with our money, with our affections. If God's place is interfered with by another consideration, that is idolatry, and it was idolatry which brought about this spiritual condition amongst the people of God, and it always does. Oh, God would bring back His people, bring back His people into a relationship with Himself that they shall truly be His right representative on the earth. To do that, He must get those into relationship with Himself Who will become an intercessory instrument like Esther to save the testimony of the Life of the Lord's people. For that, He calls us, and such must take this thing upon their hearts as a tremendous burden; that is, the state of the Lord's people must become a heart-ache, a heart-break. The spiritual condition of those who are the Lord's must ever be a tremendous burden upon the heart of the instrument that God would have for saving the situation, and in order to save that situation He must put that burden upon some hearts. Esther took it on her heart, she took her people before the Throne, and to such an extent, that she took her life in her hands, saying "If I perish, I perish," "but I give myself to this business without any personal interest or consideration whatever; in this matter, I live or die." Oh that God would find a company of men and women today like that, so burdened, so weighed down, so distressed by the spiritual condition of His own people, by the fact that the world is not having registered upon it the testimony of God through His own people. Oh for such an instrument. Would that the Holy Ghost would light upon us and turn us into at least a part of that instrument for today. This instrument is to be God's instrument, by the Holy Ghost, of bringing about the overthrow of Satan. Oh, wonderful work, oh, wonderful work, "God shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly." Within the decadent Church, Laodicea today - overcomers, through whom the Lord will bring about the undoing and the overthrow of Satan. Solemn business, terrific business, but it is the Lord's decision, not ours. He has chosen to do it, and if He has chosen to do it, He is well able to do it, and if the Holy Ghost constitutes the instrument, it will be done.

The Exaltation of the Lord Jesus.

Now, beloved, I would very much like to put in here a little about the Church's appreciation of the exaltation of Christ as we have it in the Book of Esther. Mordecai, who was there, sitting in the background, at the gate, unrecognised, unacknowledged, despised, nevertheless, watching, bringing to Esther the information, giving her the urge, telling her how to do things and laying the great responsibility upon her, and then as, inspired by Mordecai, she goes into this solemn and tremendous business through deep preparation, and the thing is done. But what is the issue? The greatest issue of all is, not that the Lord's people are saved, not only that Haman is overthrown, but Mordecai is exalted to the throne. That in type is the greatest thing, and, beloved, the greatest thing that will ever happen in this universe will not merely be the salvation of the Lord's people, it will be that as an inseparable part of the rest, and it will not only be the overthrow of Satan, but it will be the exalting of Jesus Christ to the Throne. The whole Church rejoices in the appreciation of that. You notice how all the land rejoices in the appreciation of Mordecai's exaltation to the Throne. Oh, they had a special feast, the feast of Purim. You might look at that feast of Purim, in which we find that the people of God are called together to rejoice in the wonderful character of the work of God by Christ, in virtue of which they, the Lord's people themselves, are set free from the power of the enemy, from the presence of evil, and they walk in the fulness and in the joy of the Lord Jesus Himself. That is Mordecai translated into the realm of Jesus Christ - the feast of Purim, the Church coming into its rejoicing in the exaltation of Christ. That is the main end in view. Oh, but does it appeal to our hearts? Does it so appeal to our hearts that we say yes, that is more than my salvation, more than my glorifying, or having riches of the Kingdom. It is more than the overthrow of the devil. That Jesus Christ shall be exalted high over all! Is that the thing that stirs and warms our hearts? Do we walk in the light of that prospect, that great anticipation? Oh it is a blessed thing to hear those "Amens," I am sure they are recorded in Heaven. There is nothing that Heaven delights in more than that it should be true, that when a proposal of this kind is made that the greatest thing that should be in the universe is the exaltation of Jesus Christ in the Throne, His people say "Amen." Beloved, it brings us back to the practical out-working; what about the instrument which is going to bring that about? It comes back to the practical. If He is to be exalted, then, beloved, we have got to enter into this thing, a matter which, in a sense, seems a matter of life and death, but I dare not stay with that longer, nor for the other thing in this Book (Esther) which is a very blessed thing, namely, the anticipating of the full display of the glory of God in Christ. There is a prophecy in this Book, the full display of the glory of God in Christ is here seen and there is an anticipation of it, but I must leave that at present. But I do want to touch in closing

the Holy Spirit and the Coming Again of the Lord Jesus.

I am not going to speak along the line of prophecy or the signs of the times so much, but I want you to see the connection of all these things. I want you to recognise that when we speak of the Holy Spirit and the Coming again of Christ, the Holy Spirit's work is one work, whether it be by the Cross in that Christ "through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself to God," or whether it be in constituting the Church for the Testimony of God, the instrument for the overthrow of Satan, or whether it be the Holy Spirit and the Coming again of the Lord, it is one work. It is not three works, they are all one work.

The Cross is always related to the Coming again: the Church is always related to the Coming again. When the Lord Jesus sits down and takes the Jewish Passover and translates it into the "Lord's Table" what is He doing? Why, He speaks of His Blood shed, His Body given, and says "As oft as ye eat this Loaf and drink this Cup you do proclaim the Lord's death till He come." He is saying, in effect, that that Passover is eaten with loins girded and sandals on the feet and the staff in the hand, ready to take a journey, the end of which was the Glory. The Cross, beloved, is the beginning of a journey, and it is the beginning of a journey which is conducted by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit begins at the Cross, and His eye is on the goal, the Glory, the divine Glory, the Coming of the Lord all the time. This gets over all the problems of the questioners which even existed in the days of the apostles, for we read that some men were saying then "where is the promise of His coming, for since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning," and how much more ground in that realm, on that plain have men for talking in that way today. Two thousand years, and it seemed that even Paul was expecting the Lord in his lifetime. What is the explanation? Oh, this, beloved, there is no time with the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit lives in eternity, the Holy Spirit has brought the two ends together in His work, and whenever you come on the Cross you have the witness of the Spirit, and whenever you come on the Advent, whether 2,000 years ago or today, the thing is still alive, and it is the very life of the thing by the Holy Spirit that is here in the Book. It is just as much alive after 2,000 years as it was then. The explanation is this, the Holy Spirit has this thing as an abidingly living thing in His Mind and intention, it is never dead with Him. Is it not remarkable? Argue as you like, question as you like, and we have all done it. I turned right away from the "Second Coming" because in my infancy I heard people say day after day "the Lord may come tonight," and at last I got so scared, and He never came. I said, "well, now, they have been talking about this for centuries, and here are people living in this thing, and it has made them very happy, and they rejoice in it, and they die, and they said they would live to see the Lord come." And so I turned away from the whole thing, but I missed the secret of it. Why is it that you cannot sing a hymn about the Lord's Coming, amongst the Lord's people, without the Holy Spirit making the thing become marvellously alive? Why is it? In spite of their reasoning, arguments, in spite of the mystery of the postponement, sing the hymn, and if the Holy Ghost is in them they are all alive. It is the Spirit's witness to the thing which is always in His Mind. The end of the Cross is the Advent. Let no one ever say you are always strumming on one string, you are always on the Cross. Beloved, you cannot isolate the Cross. Get the Cross, and you get everything that is involved in it. The Coming is on the ground of the Cross, the Cross demands the Coming, for it is the consummation of all its content, and so at the Cross the Church has its birth, its beginning of its pilgrimage, the end of which looms immediately upon the horizon - the Rapture!

A Hebrew Idyll.

You remember that beautiful romance of the Old Testament (pardon me for referring to it, it is so well known now, but it is a perfect illustration of this thing). Abraham and his servant, and the vow of the servant, going to a far country, another country, to find a bride for Isaac. The servant setting out, taking with him the treasures of Abraham's house, arriving at his destination and putting God to the test, and the seal of God coming upon his quest, and there he discovers the bride, and then all kinds of things set to work to try and cause delay, to keep the bride back. They want to detain, or entertain, the servant rather than respond to what he is after. So today, we want to keep, to entertain, to have the Spirit, and the Spirit is here for a purpose. They tried to entertain him, to hold back the thing for which he had come, to be nice to him. But the Holy Spirit has none of it, Eliezer has none of it, he says "Look here, I am not going to stay here, I want to know if you are going to accede to the thing for which I have come," and in spite of all the manoeuvring, he comes to the point, and says "now about the business," and they have to put the question straight to Rebecca, "wilt thou go with this man?" and, without any hesitation, she said "I will go"; and he brought out the treasures of his master's house, and adorned her and led her away. Now, beloved, the Spirit has come on behalf of the Lord, He has come here to get the Bride for Christ. He has come with the riches of His grace to adorn that Bride, to speak of the glories of the Bridegroom and His inheritance: but the Holy Spirit is not going to be entertained or detained, He is come on business, and He is saying "Are you coming, are you coming with Me?" His business by a covenant with God is that He will do His work thoroughly, present the issue clearly. And so, the Holy Spirit is here to get us on a journey, the end of which is to find the Lord Jesus coming out to meet us as Isaac went out from the house; out on the way, doubtless anticipating, expecting, scanning the horizon, waiting, eagerly waiting.

The rapture! That is the issue of the Cross in the Church, for all these things are one. Oh, it is not possible to accept the Lord Jesus in relation to the Cross without seeing that it is going to issue in the rapture and the Coming again. The things are one, they are all one, and so the Spirit brings them all to birth. I want you to notice this as we close.

Primarily, the Glory of God.

It is the testimony of God in the earth. This involves the very life, the spiritual life of God's people: and then back of that the overthrow of Satan: and then as through all that the exaltation of Jesus Christ. These are the things which are all at stake, so to speak, the things which are in view. Are they not immense things, tremendous things? The Glory of God in the universe, the exaltation of Jesus Christ, the testimony of God on the earth, the spiritual life of God's people, the overthrow of Satan. Why, what more tremendous things could you think of? These are the things which are before us, in a sense, committed to us, entrusted to us, to which we are called. Now then, beloved, do they not give an adequate motive for the Cross? Do they not make the Cross worth while? Do they not constitute a sufficient basis of appeal for identification with Christ? Surely they do. Surely, beloved, this is a ground good enough for our presenting our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God! Surely that is ground enough. What greater appeal to your or to my heart for letting God have us altogether. Well then, that gives the strength of the motive for an uttermost surrender, but that also presents to us

the Urgency and Necessity for a Life in the Fulness of the Spirit.

All that is only going to be realised by the energy and power of the Holy Ghost. Oh, then we must seek that, being emptied by the Cross of all else, we shall be filled with the Holy Ghost. The fulness of the Spirit - the Church must begin to pray for that incoming fulness of the Spirit to restore its testimony, to save its life, to constitute it God's instrument for His glory and the exaltation of Christ. It requires the Holy Ghost to do that, but He is not going to do it apart, He is going to do it by the Church, that is His instrument. Oh, we must pray, pray that in this day of decadence, God will yet again fill an instrument with His Spirit and make it His effective instrument at this time. It is true, we are in the last of those Church ages, the Laodicean age. What are the characteristics of the Laodicean age? Well, mediocrity - neither one thing nor the other, neither hot nor cold, nothing outstanding, nothing conspicuous on the spiritual side. It is a very ordinary level, a compromise, yes, that, but oh, worse than that - self-satisfaction, complacency, lack of vision, a feeling that it is alright, "I am enriched and increased in goods, and have need of nothing," it is alright. Plenty of good work being done, plenty of enterprise, plenty of organisation, plenty of machinery, yes, plenty of people busy. What have you got to grumble at? Oh, but there are other eyes, and you note what it says "Saith the Amen." It is a significant introduction. What is the meaning of that "Amen"? "Saith the Verily," which means "Saith the One who is positive," and you are negative, and you are not in oneness with Me in spirit in this age of complacency and contentment amongst those who call themselves the Lord's people. I am speaking in a very broad way about this. It is true, and worse still, the awful blindness to the condition by reason of this compromise "Knowest not that thou art blind?" You talk to many Christian people about spiritual matters, and they do not know what you are talking about. Talk about spiritual needs, and they gape at you, and really do not know what it is you are getting at. I have talked to ministers, many of them, and multitudes of Christian workers, and when I have used the phrase "spiritual things," I have discovered that they thought I was talking about mysticism or metaphysics. They may be extreme cases, and there are different levels of that, but we do not have to come out to a very wide circle to discover that there is an awful blindness to spiritual matters, and to spiritual needs amongst the people of God, and the tragedy is that they do not know that they are "blind and naked and poor," and that is the trouble. It is the age, the condition of the age. You see one characteristic of the whole thing, and the explanation is that things have got big. When they had to fight for their very existence their spiritual condition was different, but when they became successful and big, they lost their spiritual power; and that is the position of many, and many a thing which once had a testimony for God. When it succeeded on an extensive scale it discovered or recognised that no longer had it to fight for its life, and losing its fighting force, it lost its vision and its testimony. It is a good thing to be kept in a place where you have to fight for your life if it means spiritual power, drawing upon God. God save us from ever getting to the place where we feel it is no longer necessary to fight: but it is the spirit of the age, the Laodicean age. There is an appeal made. What is the appeal? "What the Spirit saith." Oh, the Spirit is saying something. What is the Spirit saying in the midst? "Him that overcometh," overcometh what? This state of things, this awful state of things, this tragic spiritual weakness, this decline, this blindness, this indifference! "To him that overcometh," the Spirit says in effect, "I want, in the midst of this, some to rise up to throw this thing off, to get to God in desperation to save the situation." Oh, will it have our response? The Spirit saith "To him that overcometh," the Spirit saith - do we respond? Have we an ear to hear what the Spirit saith? Is all this falling merely upon our brains as special teaching, doctrine, idea?

Oh, GOD FORBID! Beloved, believe me, this is not something got up for an article. This thing has been wrung out almost like blood. The assaults of the enemy in relation to this, have been almost unspeakable. Oh, this thing has been withstood up to the last moment. The enemy has tried to stop this, to hinder these words, to get us right out of this thing altogether. There has been an awful conflict, day and night. Now, if that is true, surely you are not going to regard it as a mere discourse; surely the Spirit is saying something. What is He saying? God wants that Company who may be called overcomers, who, in the power of the Holy Ghost take upon them the burden of the Lord's interest in the universe, to see that He gets His rights, to bring about the overthrow of the enemy, to save the spiritual life of many of His people, to maintain His testimony in the earth. Shall we consecrate ourselves to that? May the Holy Spirit aid us.

How It Should Be And The Way To It

These two things are the supreme and all-inclusive concern of the New Testament. Ponder that statement carefully. The whole New Testament (Bible, if you like) is concerned with how things ought to be. This is applied to the individual Christian, the local church and the Church universal. There is a state, a condition, a position which God both desires and has provided for. Upon the degree to which this state is approximated everything that is of God depends. There is nothing willynilly, casual, mechanical, and matter-of-course with God. Throughout the Bible all that God most earnestly desires for His people is governed by an "If ye". Jesus very definitely affirmed this law "If ye", and it is implicit in every transition from potentiality to experience. What it amounts to is that a position is essential to inheritance. A position is essential to everything that God wants us to know and have.

There is one fundamental law which decides whether things are as they should be, could be, and as God's most gracious will would have them to be. If this is true, then we shall realize that some things will surely arise to neutralize that one thing. That basic reality, because of the immense and numerous issues resting upon it, will be the object of every possible kind of opposition. We ask the Lord why any one of a thousand wrong things exists to such harmful effect in Christianity, and the answer, in practically every case, can be traced to one thing. That one thing is so universal in its range and contact that it touches everything outside of heaven. We shall come to that one thing later. Here we are going to confine ourselves to its application to

The Local Church

and how things ought to be in any such.

We are not going to flit over the surface in this matter, but be analytical and meticulous.

1. A local church should be throbbing with life.

The impression given and received should be one of livingness. The testimony should be that, although you may go jaded, weary, too tired, almost, to make the journey; disheartened and despondent; physically, mentally, and spiritually drained, you come away renewed, refreshed, reinvigorated, and lifted up. The activity of Divine life, whether by or without the teaching given, has just resulted in a spiritual uplift.

Now, note the way in which that has been said. "The activity of Divine life." We have not said: 'the life of human activity'. There is an illusion or delusion in much Christianity and in many churches that activity is essentially spiritual life. Hence stunts, programmes, attractions, 'special efforts', campaigns, and an endless list of 'specials' and events. All this is so often with a view to giving an impression of life, or even creating or stimulating 'life'. It may be the 'life' of works, and not the works of life. Life will work, but works are not always life. That was the indictment of the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2:2: "I know thy works...". Divine life in release will show itself, not necessarily in the bigness of numbers (although Divine life will attract) but in the genuine spiritual fruits, beginning with new births. Are the dead really raised? Does the power of life present result in conviction of sin, and a crisis of 'turning from death unto life' (or positive refusal to do so) without artificial apparatus? Life is spontaneous. As the Lord of the Church is the risen Lord, and His attestation is resurrection life, His presence in the local church should be attested by the power of life. So often we quote His own words when we come together, almost as a formula: "Wheresoever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I". At the same time, the atmosphere may be heavy, uninspiring, and devoid of a ministration of Divine life. Is this really consistent with His presence in the midst?

2. A local church should be a place where, and through which, those meeting should be individually and together increasing in the measure of Christ.

Let us hasten to say that we do not mean increasing in knowledge of doctrine, the teaching of the Bible, the things of Christianity, its work, methods, interests, and so on. It is something so common amongst Christians that, when they meet anywhere, at any time, they can use all the time in talking about their 'church', their minister or those who minister, the different branches of the work, the people, the happenings, but little or nothing about the Lord Himself and spiritual life. It is often the most difficult thing to turn the conversation into spiritual channels and feed upon what He is.

The criterion of a church's real value is the measure of Christ Himself in its members which registers itself in contacts. The testimony of a church as it should be is that it is possible for people who come into contact with its members to say: 'My word, that person (or those people) really have something of the Lord. You know it when you meet them. It is just what the Lord is to them.'

3. The local church should be a place of living and abundant light.

This means that it should be a real house of bread. If it is as it should be there will ever be food for spiritual satisfaction. Because of spiritual anointing the ministry will be as from an open heaven. Not studied and 'got up' addresses, but a message from God, and if people are hungry they should never go away unsatisfied. It should be possible for people to say: "We have been truly fed today, and strengthened for the journey."

4. All this means that a local church is a place of warm fellowship.

Not even just social interchange. It is a family atmosphere in which people who are disposed to fellowship find themselves 'at home'. This atmosphere is created by a deeper reality than just 'friendliness'. This deep reality is that - more than belonging to a community, a society, a 'group' - they are sharing one life, and one Lord is the living supreme concern of their very existence.

What we have said regarding these four characteristics of a local church as it should be, could be extended to other matters. We could speak of finance. In a local church as it should be, there ought never to be the necessity to appeal for funds. Not even that abomination, hand-to-hand collections, should exist. We say nothing of special money-raising efforts. All such things are a betrayal of a low and defective spiritual life.

By these five things alone it can be determined whether a local church is upon a right foundation.

Having said all that, it is incumbent upon us to come as quickly as possible to show what the foundation is that will produce such conditions.

You may be expecting something new, something extraordinary, something surprising. If so, you may be disappointed. Much will depend upon how seriously concerned you are, and therefore, how ready you are to brush aside prejudice, or familiarity, or superficiality, or even scepticism.

It is the old resort and recourse of the Apostles. Were things not as they should be in their days? Was there a condition in the church in Rome that demanded such a tremendous Letter as that written to them by Paul? Not only the great doctrinal correction, but the many practical matters.

Was there a state of things in Corinth - divisions, carnalities, disorders, rivalries, dissensions, and much more; all of which cried aloud: 'This is not as it should be!'? Was there an incipient movement away from grace, back to legalism, with all its loss of glory, in Galatia? Was there a 'fly in the beautiful ointment' to spoil its sweet fragrance at Philippi? Was there threatening the exalted level of spiritual knowledge at Colossae an insinuation of spurious spirituality, a false spirituality in the form of mysticism?

Yes, all this, and more, was making for a loss of real testimony, power, influence, and effectiveness in the local church of those times. But the Apostles did not condone, excuse, or accept it. Their whole attitude was: "These things ought not to be." How did they approach these situations? Had they one common basis and means of approach and attack? Yes, they had. In every case it was the same.

To Rome: Romans 6:3-10.

To Corinth: 1 Corinthians 2:2.

To Galatia: Galatians 2:20; 5:24; 6:14.

To Philippi: Philippians 2:5-8.

To Colossae: Colossians 2:11-12; 3:3.

Well, there it is; plain, clear, and positive: the Cross of Jesus Christ brought by the Holy Spirit right to the root and foundation of the life of every believer. A fundamental - foundational - crisis, and thereafter an inworking and an outworking. "We", "Ye", "I" - all the pronouns of direct application. Christians believe in the Holy Spirit. Very many desire to know the Holy Spirit as a reality and power in their lives. But it should really be understood and recognized that the Holy Spirit is committed and wedded to the Cross. His coming awaited the work of the Cross. Only after the symbolic representation of the Cross in death, burial and resurrection with Christ by baptism did the Holy Spirit take His place in power in the lives of the first believers. Because the taproot of everything that the Cross was meant to deal with is the self-life, the self-principle, the New Testament word for which is "the Flesh", the Holy Spirit leads those under His government into the experiences which are calculated to expose and bring to the Cross the self-life of the child of God. It is a primary and inseparable part of the Holy Spirit's business to make good and real the meaning of the Cross.

This is not popular truth, but the Cross is the gateway to fullness, and the deeper the Cross the greater the measure of Divine life, power and light. This is the only way for things to be as they should be, and as God wishes them to be. Life, food, light, fellowship, and much more depend upon the degree in which the Cross is a reality in the individual and in the company. This touches the whole realm and range of Satan's power and work. Power, authority, over him is inseparable from the Cross. Therefore he will do everything to undercut, to set aside, to belittle, and discredit the Cross. The Person of Christ and the Cross of Christ have been the two grounds of the most bitter controversy in the history of Christianity. Of course, they are really one thing. It is the Person Who gives the Cross its real meaning, and it is the Cross that vindicates the Person, provided that by the Cross is meant the death, burial, and resurrection.

What we have said about the Cross and fullness in its several aspects - that is, abundance of life, food, light, fellowship, finance and victory over Satan - is not just theory or idealism. We have written history and experience in our own time. We have seen this in reality, and have also closely studied the course of things in many Christian communities.

This calls for a further very important word of reminder. It has to do with what we may call the 'spread-over' of the Cross. The Scriptures cited earlier, and many others, make it quite clear that the Cross of Christ is something that has to become very real in the experience, and not only in the doctrine, of the Christian. But who could survive the Cross in what it meant in the case of Jesus Christ? It rent, devastated, and desolated Him, soul and body, heart and mind. For Him it was a going out into outer darkness and forsakenness. All the eternal agony was concentrated in a few hours and a last terrible moment. There is no other creature in God's universe who could go through that and survive. Thank God, no other creature is ever required to go all that way. He went it for us. And yet, that does not mean that the whole teaching concerning our being "united with him in the likeness of his death" (Romans 6:5) is a contradiction. Nor does it mean that the Cross is only an objective historical doctrinal matter. Paul spoke of "always bearing about in the body the putting to death of Jesus" (2 Corinthians 4:10). This working of His death in the history of a believer, and in a local church (if it is on a right foundation) will be progressive and periodic. The law of nature is more life, more fruit, more growth, by recurrent winter, alternating experiences of death and life, and every cycle unto increase. This is the law of the Cross. God is not a God who believes in theories; He is immensely practical. The theory of the Cross is universally held. We sing about it.

"`Tis the way of the Cross",

and

"`Tis the way the Master went;

Should not the servant tread it still?"

But the meaning of the Cross is to displace one entire kind, in order to make room for Another - capital A.

One of the greatest enemies to things being as they should - and could - be is our superficiality. This is an age of 'quick returns', easy gains, least trouble, everything with as little effort and cost as possible. Depth is a lost dimension. Stamina is a minus quality. Who today would take the pains to read such classics on the Cross as Dr. Mabie's The Divine Reason of the Cross and The Meaning and Message of the Cross? This superficiality is costing the Church and Christians very dearly, and so there is artificial life, artificial food, artificial fellowship which will not go through in the time of testing.

There is such a depth, power, fullness, in the Cross of Christ as to spread over all time and all eternity. So saw the Apostle when, at the end of the fullest life, he still cried: "That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings; being made conformable unto his death" (Philippians 3:10).

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Mar-Apr 1966, Vol 44-2

"In the Likeness of His Resurrection"

It is important that we should recognise what a great scope and tremendous emphasis the subject of resurrection has in the Word of God. As a principle it is patent or latent, according to the measure of our discernment, from the beginning to the end of the divine revelation of Scripture. Since the fall, all things which are of God have their new beginning and vital value in and by the representative and inclusive resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Note how much is wrapped up with the divine attestation of Sonship at the resurrection. Not at His birth nor at His death, not at Bethlehem nor at Calvary, was such a specific attestation made, but it was reserved for resurrection. "Declared to be (marked out as) the Son of God with (in) power... by the resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4). Psalm 2 prefigures the counsel of malignity against the Lord's Anointed. This counsel is put into action to its utmost limit; He is slain. The ultimate issue is the heritage of the nations; the immediate issue in resurrection is a decree (v.7) "Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee." He is the representative "first born from the dead" of a specific and peculiar kind of sonship.

To this very passage the company of believers in the presence of a further counsel of malignity made their appeal (Acts 4:25) and received at once a further divine acknowledgment; the place was shaken, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and there were other triumphant issues. Similarly an effectual testimony was borne at Antioch of Pisidia with this very passage at the centre of the message (Acts 13:33), clearly relating the divine pronouncement to the resurrection. Then again, this particular transcendence of Christ's Sonship above angels and all else has this very passage quoted as its basis in Hebrews 1:5. This is related to the inclusive dominion in the universe of the race in Christ, and also to the dethronement of "the lord of death" (Hebrews 2:5-15).

This signifies where the finger of God makes its emphatic seal, and how God is jealous for a testimony to the resurrection of Christ. So we are able to draw attention to a very vital principle in Christian experience as coming out of the divine truth. Have you ever noticed that even that which has its origin in God, which comes forth from God, which is brought about by a supernatural act of God, has to pass into death in order that by resurrection it may have its supreme divine seal and attestation?

The Old Testament is full of types of this truth. Reflect upon Isaac alone. He was brought into this world by a miracle. There was no natural ground upon which to account for him (see Romans 4:19). Yet he must die and (as it is said of Abraham's body) he was "as good as dead" when the knife was lifted; but for all time, resurrection is the point of divine emphasis in this story, especially in the vindication of Abraham's faith. Isaac was a type of Christ and, as we have said, although Christ was a miracle in His birth and truly the Son of God incarnate, yet the death prepares the way for a superlative testimony from heaven.

Without tracing this principle, so far as the Word is concerned let us note its application in experience as to ourselves. We are born of God, and are sons in the Son by right of our birth from above; but how true it is that the course of our spiritual life seems to consist of deeper and ever deeper baptisms in death - His death - in order that more and more of the power of His resurrection may be known by us and manifested in us. There seem to be cycles or tides of death and life, and while each cycle or tide appears to compass our end more completely or to leave us at a lower ebb than ever, there comes with ever-increasing fullness an uprising of spiritual life and knowledge and power. Thus while death destroys "the old man", we live increasingly by that life, "the new man", which is not human but divine, and upon which - and upon which alone - the seal of God rests. This is a deliberate course which God takes with us.

See it further in service and work. Is it not true that most, if not all, of the pieces of work raised up by God to fulfil some ministry in His eternal purpose have firstly had every evidence of being God-born, but later have gone down into a time of deep and awful death, seeming disintegration, break-up, loss, until it seemed that nothing would remain? Sometimes this has been by persecution or massacre; sometimes by a series of what we humanly call catastrophies, tragedies, misfortunes. Sometimes the causes are not apparent; they are inside, like some evil thing sapping the very vitals. Sometimes, again, it is an inexplicable arrest and pressure, a paralysis and a deadlock, and it is difficult to know whether it is from within or from without. All we know is that death reigns, or appears so to do. Place this rule alongside of some of the great missions for work abroad or at home, and see how it applies. What is true in the greater is also true in the smaller - a local fellowship, a Sunday-school class, or some other piece of work. Provided always that the initiation of the work was of Him, that we were put into it by Him and that it has been kept on such lines as are consistent with His mind and purpose, such an experience of death is not an argument that the Lord is not in it, but may be regarded as evidence of His concern to put the work ever more fully where His highest attestation can be given.

The principle holds good in the matter of received truth. The Lord may reveal to us truth which is of great importance and which is intended to be tremendously fruitful in life and ministry. It comes with the power of a revelation, and for a while we rejoice in its light, talk about nothing else, and find that it works. Then something happens. Whatever that may be, the result is that we go down into death with and because of that truth. For the time it seems to have lost its potency, and all hope that we shall be saved is abandoned. We wonder if we shall ever be able honestly to believe that truth again, let alone preach it. But at length, by a touch of life which leaves us as those who dream (Psalm 126:1) and in spite of all our past fears, that very truth now becomes our chief emphasis, but now with a solemnity and reality not known before. Moreover the Lord is making its ministry a power to others which is quite new and previously unknown. So in all this He seems to get more for Himself by resurrection than He did by birth. This may seem largely a mystery, but it is evident and true to experience.

There are other directions in which this applies, one of which we might mention. It is that of relationships. How frequently have we come up against this perplexing experience. Between those related - sometimes in the deepest bonds - for some reason, often quite without any natural ground, there has come the severest strain. It appears that the old ground of fellowship is entirely breaking down and being lost. It may be by reason of some spiritual crisis in the life of one of those affected, some call to service or to go a little further with the Lord, or some test of faith or loyalty to God. Whatever may be the cause, seen or unseen, such an experience is not uncommon. The first issue is an end of the kind or level of fellowship that has been. It would sometimes appear that the whole thing has broken down and gone for ever. At such a time serious questionings arise as to the apparent antagonism between a conceived idea of what God requires and what looks manifestly to be plain duty to others. This is a bitter and harrowing time to the soul-life. The ultimate issue - if there has been a definite willingness to suffer the loss of all for His sake and a holding on to God, though blindly and with much weakness - is that the whole thing is brought back again, but yet not the same. "That which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be" (1 Corinthians 15:37); it is the same, yet different. It is on a higher plane; a purer, holier, stronger, deeper thing, and capable of much greater spiritual fruitfulness. In a word, in the grave it has shed much of the human, and in the resurrection it has become more divine. The elements which are temporal and natural have been supplanted by more of the spiritual and eternal.

Having given this space to stating and illustrating a fact and an abiding law, we must now say something about the nature of resurrection. What is resurrection? It is the power of ascendancy over death. What is the central factor in resurrection? It is a life which cannot know death, a life which is indestructible. Such is the nature of the resurrection to which we are giving our attention. There is a resurrection which is but the re-animation of the body for a time or for judgment. That is not our subject. We are speaking of the resurrection of Christ and our incorporation thereinto.

By our new birth from above we become partakers of the life of God. That which the Scripture calls "eternal life" is the unique possession of the born-again; no man has it by nature. The whole course of true spiritual experience is for the increase and development of that life, and this particularly takes place, as we have seen, through crises and cycles of death and resurrection. What is the Lord's supreme aim with His children? It is undoubtedly to get them to live by His life only. To this end He will more and more take away their own life.

As the time of the Church's translation becomes more imminent, this truth will have an increasing emphasis, so that to live victoriously at all, or to work effectively, there will need to be a greater drawing upon the Lord for His life. When the saints are translated that they shall not see death, and when that great shout of victory over death and the grave goes up (1 Corinthians 15:54-55) it will not be by some outside, external operation of divine power alone, but it will be the triumph of the resurrection life of Christ within the Body of Christ, expressing itself in that final glorious consummation of a process of ascendancy which has been going on since the time when that life was received at new birth by faith in the risen Lord. This is a most important truth to recognise, for it explains everything. Why must we know weakness, impotence, worthlessness, nothingness, on the side of our natural life? Emphatically, that His strength may be "made perfect (or be perfected) in weakness". And what is His strength? "The exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead" (Ephesians 1:19-20). It is resurrection might and life. The more spiritual a believer becomes, the more he will realise his dependence upon the life of God for all things. This will be true physically as in every other way.

The central truth of a "divine healing" which is in truth of God and to spiritual purpose is described in Romans 8:11. It is an energising of the mortal body with resurrection life. This does not of necessity, inevitably or invariably carry with it complete physical healing, but it does mean such a quickening as to make for a transcendence of the weakness or infirmity which prevents a fulfilment of the will of God in life or service. It means an accession of divine life in our spirit so that we are enabled to do much more than is humanly or naturally possible. This life cannot be taken hold of and used by the flesh. Immediately there is a dropping down on to a natural level by one who has been led into a life of faith, there will be a recrudescence of death. An atmosphere charged with the life of God is always a place of renewal, refreshing and strengthening to him that is spiritual.

If Enoch was a type of the believers who will be translated that they shall not see death, then we must remember that it was "by faith" that Enoch was translated. What is the nature of this faith? It is the faith which depends upon divine life for all things, and is therefore an abiding witness and testimony to the resurrection of Christ. Hence, as the Lord's coming draws near, we shall be forced to live exclusively by His life - "the life whereby Jesus conquered death". This is the life which has brought triumph to God's people through the ages. A close study of the Old Testament will reveal that it was faith in resurrection life which brought the divine vindication. "That they might obtain a better resurrection" was the motive which made them victorious in death and therefore over the authority of death. The ascendancy of spirit so markedly characteristic of New Testament believers is to be accounted for on the ground of a life within their spirit which could not see death, the life of Him who "dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over him", for "it was impossible that he should be holden of death".

Now it is important to remember that death is not only a law or a principle. It is that; but the Scriptures constantly make clear that behind the thing there is a person. Back of death is he "that had the power of death, that is, the devil". Conybeare translates that: "the lord of death". The great battle which took place at the exodus of Israel from Egypt was really a battle between Jehovah and "all the gods of Egypt" (Exodus 12:12), which gods were but the spiritual hierarchy of him who had ever made it his aim to be "like the Most High", and had assumed the role of "the god of this world". A right understanding of that story would make very clear that it was a conflict between the Lord of life and the lord of death, and that the Hebrews were only translated out of the kingdom of darkness and the authority of death because a lamb had shed its blood, and through death had figuratively destroyed him that had the power of death.

This was fulfilled at Calvary, for on the Cross Christ drew on Himself the whole hierarchy of evil, and went down under it to the bottommost reach of its domain, and then, by reason of the life which could not be holden of death, He stripped off principalities and powers, broke through, and rose their Conqueror. It was in resurrection far above all rule and authority that He became the Firstborn from the dead - the first and inclusive One of all who should be identified with Him. So far as we are concerned, the power of Satan can only be so destroyed as we, through death, know Christ in the power of His resurrection, receiving His risen life more and more.

In conclusion, let us point out that after His resurrection our Lord was, because of the peculiar nature of His resurrection state, no longer subject to natural limitations. Time and space now had no control of Him. This principle abides, and it applies now. When there is a living in the values and energy of resurrection life we are children of eternity and of the universe. Prayer touches the ends of the earth, and the significance of our being and doing is of universal and eternal dimensions: there are no limitations. So then, beloved of God, the natural life is no longer a criterion; whether it be strong or weak matters not. Its strength does not mean effectiveness in spiritual things, whether that strength be intellectual, moral, social or physical. Its weakness does not carry a handicap. We are called to live and serve only in His life, which is the only efficient and sure one. 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. "Planted together in the likeness of his resurrection" said the apostle (Romans 6:5), and he prayed that it might be more and more experiential - "that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection" (Philippians 3:10). That should be the prayer of every true Spirit-led servant of Christ.

From "Toward The Mark" Nov-Dec, 1977

The Inner Man of the Heart

THE INNER MAN OF THE HEART

Or, The Believer's Sphere of Life and Base of Operations

There is no subject more vital in relation to fulness of life and effectiveness of service in Christ than this that we are now to consider. It embraces all the practical meanings and outworkings of the redemptive purposes of God in and through the Cross of Christ.

The phrase "The inner man" is not infrequently used in the Word of God, and, as we shall see, is but one expression used in connection with a theme of extensive range. But here at once let it be seen as that which first of all discriminates between the "inner" and the "outward" man. This discrimination in the scriptures, however, is not that made by the psychologists or philosophers as such, whether they be ancient or modern, pagan or "Christian." These recognise but mind and matter: for them the "inner man" is the soul, and the "outward man" the body. Not so in the Word of God. There the "inner man" is the spirit, and the "outward man" the soul and the body, either or both. These two terms or designations are respectively synonymous with "natural man" and "spiritual man," and these two are put asunder by the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God (Hebrews 4:12). It is just as dangerous to yoke together what God puts asunder as it is to put asunder "what God hath joined together," and in this particular matter more chaos, paralysis, and defeat are due to the confusing of these two than ever we shall be able to measure in this life.

The only oneness of the three, spirit, soul, and body, is in that they compose or comprise one man. The literal translation of 1 Thessalonians 5:23, is "Your whole person," or "Your whole man," or "The whole of you, spirit, soul, and body"; and three distinct Greek words are used, as elsewhere. The Word of God does not use words at random, just for variety's sake. Basic spiritual laws are involved in its words. The very word "natural" as applied to man, as we know, is the Greek word psuckekos, the Anglicised form of which is psychical. "Spiritual" is the adjective of "spirit," and "soulish" is the adjective of "soul." In James 3:15, "sensual" is used, but "soulish" is more accurate, and it is interesting and significant to note in passing that these two descriptions are given to wisdom.

That which makes man unique in the whole realm of creation is not that he is or has a soul, but that he has a spirit, and it may be that the union in one personality of soul and spirit makes him unique beyond this creation, in the whole universe. Soul is never spoken of in relation to God as God. Angels are spirits. Christ did not pour out His spirit, but His soul unto death; His Spirit He handed back to the Father of spirits. It is hardly necessary to describe the soul here, although we want to help from the very foundations.

What a great - and in most people - almost complete place and dominance is held by feelings and emotions. On the one hand, fear, grief, pity, curiosity, pleasure, pride, admiration, shame, surprise, love, regret, remorse, excitement, etc. Or in another direction; imagination, apprehensiveness, fancy, doubt, introspection, superstition, analysis, reasonings, investigation, etc. Or in a third direction, desires; for possession, knowledge, power, influence, position, praise, society, liberty, etc. And still in another direction; determination, reliance, courage, independence, endurance, impulse, caprice, indecision, obstinacy etc. These all in their respective directions representing the emotional, the intellectual, the volitional, are the components of the soul. Now consider how much of this has its place in Christian life and service, from the first step in relation to the gospel through all the course of Christian activity. It is here that we ask for patience in pursuing the subject when we make the tremendous affirmation that all this - the sum total of human feeling, reasoning, and willing may be placed to the account of the matter of salvation, either for ourselves or for others, and yet be utterly unprofitable and of NO account.

We recognise that if the full impact of this declaration, with all its implications, was to come by revelation to the "inner man" of Christian people and workers, it would be nothing short of revolutionary in all methods, means, and motives. Surely, for instance, we know by now that remorse and regret for sin, leading to tears and resolutions, does not mean salvation. Decisions, confessions, and religious feelings, are no criteria, any more than are reasoned conclusions, intellectual convictions, mental acceptances, aspirations after the sublime, the beautiful, the "good." Does someone enquire then "do you rule out the intellect, the reason, the emotions, the human will or resolution?" and our answer is emphatically, we do rule all this out as an initial and basic factor in the matter of salvation; it is secondary, later, and even then only a bond-slave and not a master.

Let us ask some questions which will clarify the matter. What was it or where was it that death took place when "death passed upon all," and it came true that was said, "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die"? Was it the body? Obviously not. Was it the soul? If our foregoing description truly represents the soul, then, again, obviously not. Repudiating the suggestion that the words were but a sentence of death to be carried out at some future time, there remains but the third part of man's "whole," namely his spirit. That was the topstone of God's creative work. The organ in man of all the Divine activity; the sphere and instrument of all the operations of God. God is a spirit, and only spirit can have access to or fellowship with spirit.

Only spirit can know spirit. 1 Corinthians 2:9-11.

Only spirit can serve spirit. Romans 1:9, 7:6, 12:11.

Only spirit can worship God Who is Spirit. John 4:23,24. Philippians 3:3.

Only spirit can receive revelation from God Who is spirit. Revelation 1:10, 1 Corinthians 2:10. We shall return to this later.

Let it be clearly recognised that God determined to have all His dealings with man and to fulfil all His purposes through man by means of that in man which was "after His own likeness," that is, his spirit; but this spirit of man for all such Divine intentions must be kept in living union with Himself, and never for one instant infringe the laws of its Divine union by crossing over to the outer circle of the soul at the call of any emotion, suggestion, argument or desire coming from without. When this took place death entered, and the nature of death, as the word is used in the scriptures, is severance in the Divine union of spirit. This does not mean that man no longer had a spirit, but that the ascendancy of the spirit was surrendered to the soul, and this at a time when the soul had accepted from without by desire, and reason, that which was intended to draw away from fellowship with God.

"Drawn away by his own lusts (desires)."

This is where the "fall" begins, all else follows. From that time the inclusive designation of man in a state of separation from spirit union and life with God is "flesh."

When Paul speaks of the "flesh" he does not refer to flesh and blood in the natural body, but thus denotes the principle of human life which takes the place of the spirit in its primary state and purpose; and this "flesh" principle or state - variably called "the old man," "the body of sin," "the body of flesh," "the body of death," "the natural man," is the centre of the residence of the enmity against God. This enmity is there, even in such as sing hymns, say prayers, delight in God after an outward manner, go to church, have a passion or genius for religion, and it only requires the true spiritual meaning of the cross of Christ to be applied in order to make it manifest. Death then, in scriptural meaning, is loss of correspondence with God in spirit, and the spirit of man falling out of that union ceases to be for man the vehicle of God's revelation, the sphere of God's life in man, and the instrument of God's activities through man: and there is no other. This leads to another question: What is the nature of the spirit? There are three main departments or faculties of the spirit: conscience, intuition, communion; but there are numerous other capacities, as we may see later.

It is here that we find the scriptural description of man runs entirely counter to the conclusions of "scientific" psychology. We have observed that the psychologist will not allow the threefold description of man as spirit, soul and body, but only soul - or mind - and body. And yet now he has to confess to the existence of a third element. He recognises it, finds his chief fascination and interest in it, builds up a whole system of philosophy around it, and often borders on calling it by its right name. He, however, recoils and calls it "the subconcious mind," "the subjective mind," "the subliminal self," "the secondary personality," etc. Listen to some of the things which indicate the length to which such teachers go: "The soul consists of two parts, the one being addicted to the truth, and loving honesty and reason, the other brutish, deceitful, sensuous."

"There is a schism in the soul." "The existence of a schism in the soul is not a mere dogma of theology, but a fact of science." "Man is endowed with two minds, each of which is capable of independent action, and they are also capable of simultaneous action; but, in the main, they possess independent powers and perform independent functions. The distinctive faculties of one pertain to this life, those of the other are specially adapted to a higher plane of existence. I distinguish them by designating one as the Objective Mind, and the other as the Subjective Mind."

"Whatever faculties are found to exist in the subjective mind of any sentient being, necessarily existed potentially in the ancestry of that being, near or remote. It is a corollary of this proposition that whatever faculties we may find to exist in the SUBJECTIVE MIND of man must necessarily exist, in its possibility, potentially, in the mind of God the Father Almighty."

When one reads things like this, two things press for expression: first the exclamation "O why don't you name it aright and call it 'the spirit'?" The other, "What a tragedy that such men should have gone to pagan philosophers such as Plato, who never heard the men of the Bible or read them, for the basis of their system, instead of going to the Bible itself." What a peril it is for "Christian" men to preach the results of human research and learning and bring the Bible to these instead of bringing them to the Bible!

For us here the Bible name and nature of this third reality is held to. It may be thought to be immaterial what it is called if the result is the same, but we hold that it is vital to recognise that we are dealing with two things absolutely distinct and separate and not with two sides of one thing. This will be seen as we go on.

There is a peril in speaking of "Divine union in the upper reaches of the soul," for there is no such thing. Divine union is with spirit, "He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit," and however highly developed soul life is, there is no "Divine union" until the spirit has been brought back to life.

This then opens a further question: "What is it that is 'born again'": when that essential and indispensable experience takes place? (John 3:3,5, etc.).

Nicodemus stumbles on the physical question but is soon told that "that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is SPIRIT."

It is not the body then, neither is it the soul. "The sinful body of the old man was destroyed" Romans 6:6, and "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh, with the affections thereof." The passages on this are too many to quote, but look up "Flesh," "Old man," "Natural man," etc.

The answer to the question is emphatically that new birth is the impartation of Divine life to the spirit of man. That spirit, because of atonement made for the sin of the soul, and the carrying away of the dominant flesh principle by Christ into His death, is begotten again of God in the resurrection of Christ from the dead to share His resurrection - deathless-life. Only on the ground of Christ's resurrection and our incorporation into it as the superlative act of Almighty power is there union with God, and this act initially takes place in our spirit. From that time it is "in the newness of the spirit," "walking in the spirit"; in fact, as the Word makes clear, everything is to be in the spirit for those that are now "spiritual."

So far we have done little more than emphasise the fact that the supreme concern of the Lord is with the spirit of His children, for it is there that the fact and nature of sonship has its beginning, its growth, and its expression. We shall see more about this later, but for the moment it will be as well if we dwell a little longer upon the nature of the spirit. The body, we know, has its own threefold components. The soul also is a trinity, i.e., reason, emotion, and volition. We have also shown that the spirit is tripartite. Its main departments or faculties being conscience, worship (or communion with that which is Spirit) and intuition.

Let us re-emphasise that while all men have these in a greater or less degree of consciousness, this does not set aside the fact that all are "dead" in trespasses and sins apart from the new birth. There is no salvation in the New Testament sense of the word in having a conscience very much alive, or in being keenly attuned to the spiritual; and it is no argument that Divine revelation has been imparted because intuitions have eventually proved true. All this only shows that all men have a spirit which acts independently of the rest of their being. For the spirit in its different faculties to be the instrument of Divine purposes it has, as we have said, to be joined to the Lord, and the uniting factors are

1. The indwelling life of God as a gift at new birth.

2. The indwelling Spirit of God as the intelligent, executive member of the Godhead.

There are many passages in the scriptures which indicate the difference between the outer "I" of the soul and the inner "I" of the spirit. For instance Paul says "my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful." 1 Corinthians 14:14.

Then in 1 Corinthians 2 the Apostle says that "The psychical (soul) man receiveth not, neither can he know the things of the Spirit of God, but God reveals them to the spiritual (or spirit) ones, and only the spirit ones discern them!"

This distinction is very marked in Paul's recounting of the reception of his special revelation. "I will come to revelations of the Lord. I (the outer man) knew a man (the inner man) in Christ above fourteen years ago; whether in the body I (the outer man) cannot tell; or whether out of the body I (the outer man) cannot tell; God knoweth; such an one (the inner man) caught up to the third heaven. And I (the outer man) knew such a man (the inner man) whether in the body or out of the body, I (the outer man) cannot tell: God knoweth. How that he (the inner man) was caught up to Paradise, and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man (the outer man) to utter. Of such an one (the inner man) I (the outer man) will glory; yet of myself (the outer man) I (the outer man) will not glory."

Here we see, amongst other things, that, unless the Lord gives the gift of utterance the things revealed to the spirit cannot be expressed by the outer man. In another place the Apostle asked the prayers of the Lord's people that he might have "utterance."

Many other instances might be given, such as "I delight in the law of God after the inward man," and Romans 7 as a whole, but this is sufficient to lead such as desire to do so to follow this truth through. Here are one or two references: 1 Cor. 16:17,18; 1 Cor. 6:20; Rom. 8:16; 1 Cor. 5:5; 1 Cor. 7:34; Heb. 12:23.

Now we proceed to speak of the Lord's special concern with the inner man. Firstly we must realise that His supreme quest is for sons of His Spirit. The underlying and all inclusive truth of what has come to be called the "parable of the Prodigal Son," is the transition from one kind of sonship, e.g., on the ground of law, to another, e.g., that on the ground of grace. From the flesh to the Spirit. There is a sonship of God by creation on the basis of law. In this sense "we are all the offspring of God." But by "the fall," the "going astray" or "deviating" (Genesis 6:3), all the Divine purposes and possibilities of that relationship have broken down, and that relationship is no longer of value. "He has become flesh," hence is separated "from God," in "a far country," and "dead," as well as "lost." Here grace enters and the Spirit through grace. The Spirit begins operations in that realm of death and distance, convicting of sin "against heaven" (the only adequate conviction), compassing the end of the works of the flesh in despair and destruction, constraining, assuring, producing penitence and confession, and at length bringing to the place of forgiveness and acceptance. From death unto life, but not the same life as before; there is no "again" in the original of the last clause of Luke 15, it is a life which never was before. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."

This man is the product of the travail and energising of the Spirit, and everything in the relationship afterward is new. A "new robe," the robe of Divine righteousness. "New Shoes," a walk and a way in the Spirit. Rom. 8:2,4. A ring, the symbol of authority, the jurisdiction of sons, John 1:12,13. The fatted calf; food such as never was before, the best of the Father's house. Each of these points has in the scriptures a whole system of teaching.

The spirit of man being then the place of the new birth and the seat of this only true sonship (Galatians 4:5,6), it also therefore being "The new man" - for it is "in the newness of the Spirit" that we are to live (Romans 7:6, etc.) - here it is that all the operations of God in our education, fellowship, and co-operation have their base.

The only knowledge of God which is of spiritual value for ourselves or for others is that which we have by revelation of the Holy Spirit within our own spirit. God never explains Himself in the first instance to man's reason. Man can never know God in the first instance by his reason. Christianity is a revelation or it is nothing, and it has to come by revelation to every new child of God, or their faith rests upon a foundation which will not stand in the day of the ordeal.

"The Christian Faith" embraced as a philosophy or a system of truth, or as a system of moral or ethical doctrine may carry the stimulus of a great ideal, but it will not result in the regeneration of the life, and the new birth of the spirit. There are multitudes of such "Christians" (?) in the world today, but their spiritual effectiveness is nil.

The apostle Paul makes it very clear that the secret of everything in his life and service was the fact that he received his Gospel "by revelation." We may even know the Bible most perfectly as a book, and be spiritually dead and ineffective. When the scriptures say so much about the knowledge of God and the Truth as the basis of Eternal life, being set free, doing exploits, etc., they also affirm that "man cannot by searching find out God," and they make it abundantly clear that it is knowledge in the spirit, not in the natural mind.

Now it is just here that we come to recognise the nature of spiritual knowledge. How does God know things, by what means does He come to His decisions, on what basis of knowledge does He run the universe? Is it by reasoning inductively, deductively, philosophically, logically, comparatively? Does He think things out? Has Omniscience a brain? Surely not! All this laboriousness is unknown to God. His knowledge and conclusions are intuitive. Intuition is that faculty of spiritual intelligence by which all spiritual beings work. Angels serve the will of God by intuitive discernment of that will, not by argued and reasoned conviction. The difference between these two is witnessed to by the whole monument of spiritual achievement. If human reason, the natural judgment, and "common sense" had been the ruling law, most, if not all, of the great pieces of work inspired of God would never have been undertaken. Men who had a close walk with God and a keen spirit union with Him received intuitively a revelation or leading to such purposes, and their vindication came, not by the approval of worldly human reason, but usually with all such positively opposed. "Madness" was usually the verdict of the wise. Whenever, like Abraham, they allowed themselves to drop out of the spirit into their own natural mind and reasoning, they became bewildered, paralysed, and looked round for some Egypt of the senses to which to go down for help. In all this we are "justified in the spirit" not in the flesh. The spirit and the soul act independently and, until the spiritual mind has established the ascendancy and absolute dominion, they are constantly in conflict and contradiction.

In all the things which are out from God and therefore spiritual "the mind of the flesh is death," "but the mind of the spirit is life, and PEACE." This then is the nature of spiritual knowledge, which is the only saving knowledge. We said at the commencement that this recognition of the difference between the "inner man" and the "outward man" would be absolutely revolutionary. Perhaps we can see this a little more clearly now. A rich knowledge of the scriptures, an accurate technical grasp of Christian doctrine, a doing of Christian work by all the resources of "worldly wisdom" or natural ability, a clever manipulation and interesting presentation of Bible content and themes, may get not one whit beyond the natural life of men and still remain within the realm of spiritual death. Men cannot be argued, reasoned, fascinated, interested, 'emotioned,' willed, enthused, impassioned, into the Kingdom of the heavens; they can only be born, and that is by spiritual quickening. This new birth brings with it new capacities of every kind, and amongst the most vital is a new and different faculty of Divine knowledge, understanding, and apprehension. But some may ask, where does our brain come in? Do we understand you to mean that our human intellectual faculties are ruled out? No, not at all! But we do affirm again that this is not primary but secondary. The human intellect is not the first instrument of our apprehension of spiritual things, the things of God, but its function is that of giving them intelligent form to ourselves and to others.

Paul's intellectual power was not that which gave him his knowledge of truth, but it was joined to the spirit for passing that truth on to others. Someone has said that the brain may act as a prism and give a spectrum of the Eternal light, but it is not the first organ of spiritual knowledge.

The spirit of man is that by which he reaches out into the Eternal and unseen. Intuition, then, is the mental organ of the spirit. It is in this sense, that is, the deadness of the spirit Godward, and the going on with religion in its manifold forms of expression merely from the human mind, that God says, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," and the measure of the difference is the heaven from the earth; the heavenly and the earthly. One of the chief lessons that we have to learn, and which God takes pains to teach us is that spiritual ends demand spiritual means. The breaking down of our natural life, its mind, its resources, its energies, in the bitterness of disappointment through futility, failure, ineffectiveness, and deadlock in real spiritual achievement, is a life work; but the truth mentioned above is the explanation and key to the whole thing. What is true of spiritual knowledge is true in every other connection and direction as we shall see.

Reverting to our illustration in that transition which is the underlying truth of the parable of 'The Prodigal Son,' namely the transition from a relationship on the ground of law, in the flesh, to that on the ground of grace, in the spirit, we have come to see that his knowledge of the Father in the spirit was such as he had never possessed before. He never knew his Father before grace was revealed and the gift and operation of the Father's Spirit was manifested as he knew Him afterward. His spirit had been brought from death, darkness, distance, desolation, and now he had not merely an objective knowledge of one whom he had termed Father, but a subjective understanding and appreciation of the Father because the spirit of sonship had now been put within him whereby he cried "Father." There is no saving relationship to, or knowledge of God, only through grace and by new birth. Such knowledge is spiritual not "natural."

So, then, those who by being born again have become "little children," Matthew 18:3, or "babes" in spiritual things, 1 Corinthians 3:1 (not wrong if we do not unduly remain so) have to learn everything afresh because "all things are new," and - now - "all things are of God," 2 Corinthians 5:17-18. Such have to learn a new kind of knowledge, as we have shown. But before this, and ever and always, such have to learn to live by a new life - "to walk in newness of life." This life is always related to the resurrection of Christ, and is "the life whereby Jesus conquered death." This subject is treated more fully elsewhere, especially in booklet No. 2 of 'Incorporation into Christ,'* and we shall do no more than mention it here. The Apostle Paul says that our conduct is to be "as those who are alive from the dead," and so saying he means that the manifestation in and by us is to be that of the shared power and triumph of the mighty resurrection life of Christ. Again, in order that we may learn how to live by this life, which is a superlative purpose of God concerning us, He is bound to bring our natural life to an end in all its effectiveness and value in the sphere of spiritual achievement, both in life and service. WE cannot be or do what God requires: His life alone can produce after its kind. But while this is a law and a test, it is also a blessed truth that Christ came that we might have this life and have it abundantly. Read through your New Testament with the object of seeing how the Divine life is manifested by and in the enforced insufficiency of natural life, and you will see it to be the secret of the romance of New Testament accomplishments.

An element of offence in this teaching is that it demands a recognised and acknowledged weakness; it requires that we have to confess that in ourselves, for all Divine purposes, we are powerless and worthless, and of ourselves we can do nothing. The natural man's worship of strength, efficiency, fitness, ability, meets with a terrible rebuff when it is confronted with the declaration that the universal triumph of Christ over hierarchies more mighty than those of flesh and blood was because "He was crucified through weakness" - God reduced to a certain impotence! - and "God hath chosen the weak things to confound the mighty," 2 Corinthians 13:4; 1 Corinthians 1:25-27.

To "glory in infirmity that His power may be the more manifest" is a far cry from the original Saul of Tarsus, but what an extraordinary change in mentality. God has, however, always drawn a very broad line between natural "might and power" on the one hand, and "My Spirit" on the other, and for evermore the law abides that He that hateth his life (psuche, natural life) shall find it unto life eternal (aionian-zoe, Divine life of the ages), John 12:25. This is said, of course, in relation to the interests of Christ.

There are two other lessons that we might mention as being set the "new man," which are a part of the education and training of the spirit or "inner man of the heart." He has to learn a new walk. Many slips and, perhaps, tumbles may be his experience here, but such are honourable if they are marks of a stepping out at the behest of God, rather than to sit still in fleshly disobedience or fear. The "Prodigal's" new relationship meant new shoes, and in later significance this meant "walking after the spirit and not after the flesh," Romans 8:4. We have shown that the nature of this walk is that reason, feeling, and natural choice are no longer the directive laws or criteria of the spiritual man. For, such an one there are frequent experiences of a collision and contradiction between soul and spirit. The reason would dictate a certain course, the affections would urge in a certain direction, the will would seek to fulfil these judgments and desires, but there is a catch somewhere within, a dull, leaden, lifeless, numbed something at the centre of us which spoils everything, contradicts us, and all the time in effect, says no! Or it may be the other way round. An inward urge and constraint, finds no encouragement from our natural judgment or reason, and is flatly contrary to our natural desires, likings, inclinations, preferences, or affections; while in that same natural realm we are not at all willing for such a course. In this case it is not the judgment against the desire as is frequently the case in everybody's life, but judgment, desire, and volition all joined against intuition. Now is the crisis. Now is to be seen who is to rule the life, or which road is to be chosen. Now the natural man or the outer man of sense and the spiritual or inner man have to settle affairs. To learn to walk after the spirit is a life lesson of the new man, and as he is vindicated - as he always will be in the long run - he will come to take the absolute ascendancy over the "natural" man and his mind, and so by the energising of the Holy Spirit in the spirit of the new man the Cross will be wrought out to the nullifying of the mind of the flesh - which in spiritual things always ends in death, and in the enthroning of the spiritual mind which is life and peace, Romans 8:6.

This, then, is the nature of the walk after the spirit, and its application is many-sided. But we must remember the law of this walk, which is faith. We "walk in the spirit," but "we walk by faith."

To walk by faith there must, in the very nature of the case, be a stripping off of all that the outer man of the senses clings to, demands, craves for, as a security and an assurance. When the spiritual life of God's people is in the ascendant, they are not troubled by either the absence of human resources on the one hand, or by the presence of humanly overwhelming odds against them on the other.

This is patent in their history as recorded in the Scriptures. But it is also true that when the spiritual life is weak, undeveloped, or at the ebb, they look round for some tangible, seen resource, upon which to fasten. Egypt is the alternative to God whenever and wherever spiritual life is low. To believe in and trust to the intuitive leadings of the Holy Spirit in our spirit, even though all is so different from the ways of men, and even though such bring us to a Canaan which for the time being is full of idolatry and where a mighty famine reigns; where Satan seems to be lord, and no fruit is found; where all is so contrary to what our outer man had decided must be in keeping with a leading and a promise of God; to leave our old sphere of life in the "world," to break with our kindred, our father's house, for this - this! and then have to wait through much continuous stripping off of those means, and methods, and habits, and judgments, which are the very constitution of the natural man - this is the law of the spiritual walk, but this is God's chosen and appointed way of the mightiest vindication. Spiritual children and riches, and fruitfulness, and service, permanence, and the friendship of God are for such Abrahams of faith or such children of Abraham in the spirit. God has laid a faith basis for His superstructure of spiritual glory, and only that which is built upon such a foundation can serve spiritual ends. Let this be the test of our walk in all personal, domestic, business, and church affairs. Here, again, we have a principle which if applied would be revolutionary, and would call for the abandonment of a tremendous amount of carnal "natural," worldly stuff in our resources and methods. "Faith without works is dead," true, but the works of faith - of the spirit - are not those of the flesh, the difference is incomparable. The walk of the flesh is one thing but the walk in the spirit is quite another. The things of the Spirit are foolishness to the flesh. Men of faith see what others do not and act accordingly. This also being true of men who have lost their reason, the two are often confused and the children of the flesh think the children of the spirit mad or insane. They are unable to discriminate between even the insanity of men and "the foolishness of God which is wiser than men."

Abraham was fortified by his faith, but his walk in faith was intensely practical, though so different from the walk in the flesh. A writer has said that faith brings us into difficulties which are unknown to men who walk in the flesh, or who never go out in faith, but such difficulties, placing us beyond the power of the flesh to help make special Divine revelations necessary, and God always takes advantage of such times to give such needed education of the spirit. It is thus that the men of the spirit are taught and come to know God as no others know Him. Thus faith is the law of the walk of the new man - the inner man - which brings him by successive stages into the very heart of God, Who crowns this progress with the matchless designation "My friend!" One other thing in general has to be mentioned. The new man of the spirit has to learn a new speech. There is the language of the spirit, and he will have to realise increasingly that "speech in the enticing words of man's wisdom," or what man calls "excellency of speech" (1 Cor. 2:1) will avail nothing in spiritual service. If all the religious speech and preaching and talking about the Gospel which goes on in one week was the utterance of the Holy Spirit, what tremendous impact of God upon the world would be registered. But it is obviously not so and this impact is not felt. It is impossible to speak in and by the Holy Spirit without something happening which is related to Eternity. But this capacity belongs only to the "born of the Spirit" ones, whose spirit has been joined to the Lord, and even they have to learn how to cease from their own words and "speak as they are moved by the Spirit." It is a part of the education of the inner man to have his outer man slain in the matter of speech, and to be brought to the state to which Jeremiah was brought, "I am but a child, I cannot speak." Not only as sinners have we to be crucified with Christ, but as preachers, or speakers, or talkers. The circumcision of Christ, which Paul says is the cutting off of the whole body of the flesh, has to be applied to our lips, and our spirit has to be so much in dominion that on all matters where God cannot be glorified we "cannot speak." A natural facility of speech is no strength in itself to spiritual ministry, it may be a positive menace. It is a stage of real spiritual development when there is a genuine fear of speaking unless it is in "words which the Holy Ghost teacheth." On the other hand a natural inability to speak need be no handicap. To be present "in weakness and in fear, and in much trembling" (1 Cor. 1:3) may be a mood which becomes an apostolic, nay rather, a Holy Spirit ministry. The utterance of God is a very different thing in every way from that of men. How much is said in the Scriptures about "conversation," "the tongue," "words," &c., and ever with the emphasis that these are to be in charge of the spirit and not merely expressions of the soul in any of its departments.

If it is true that only the quickened spirit can receive Divine revelation, it is equally true that such revelation requires a Divine gift of utterance in order to realise its spiritual end.

Many there are who preach or teach the truth as out from a mental apprehension with the natural ability, but the vital potentialities of that truth are not being manifest either in their own lives or in the lives of those who hear. The spiritual results are hardly worth the effort and expenditure. The virtue of speech resulting in abiding fruit to the glory of God, whether that speech be preaching, teaching, conversation, prayer, is not in its lucidity, eloquence, subtlety, cleverness, wit, thoughtfulness, passion, earnestness, forcefulness, pathos, &c., but only in that it is an utterance of the Holy Ghost.

"Thy speech betrayeth thee" may be applied in many ways, for whether one lives in the flesh or in the spirit, in the natural man or in the spiritual man, will always be made manifest by how we speak and the spiritual effect of the fruit of our lips.

O, for crucified lips amongst God's people, and O for lips among God's prophets touched with the blood-soaked fire-charged coal from that one great altar of Calvary.

Having at some length dealt with the difference, nature, and characteristics of the inner and the outer man, we must now come to some specific emphases. The first of these is all inclusive, and relates to

The Ascendancy of the Spiritual Man Over the Natural Man

This is illustrated by the simple diagram herewith. [Click here to view the diagram]. There is marked the creation of man in his tripartite being, with his spirit as the sphere of his union with God for all Divine purposes. The nature of this union is set forth below, and is fivefold. In the fall the soul was allowed to take the ascendancy over the spirit; the spirit with conscience, communion, and intuition being subjected to the soul with its reason, desire, and volition. This ascendancy of the soul made man what he is afterward called; the "natural" i.e., soulish (Gk. psukikos) man, and inasmuch as it was the reasoning and desiring and choosing that were inspired and prompted by the devil, and the capitulation was to him, and the spirit union with God was rejected and violated in all its claims, the result is that man is not only separated from God but in his natural state is horizoned by a lower life than was intended. But more, he is then called "flesh"; this is the active law of his fallen condition. It is not something in him, it is himself, the real principle of his being, and it is always set over against "spirit" which is the real principle of life re-united with God by re-generation.

Further, as he capitulated, not only to the soul life, but to the devil, he is ever after, until delivered by Christ, actuated and influenced by "the god of this age," whose methods are not always manifestly against God, but are always in the place of God, even to the extent of projecting a counterfeit religion, with similar phraseology and means. The result of all this, as we have seen, is spirit, or spiritual, death; and the nature of death in the Bible is primarily the separation of the spirit from God. All else that is called death results from this. Lost likeness, fellowship, knowledge, co-operation, dominion, with all that God meant and intended by them - this is the foundation of death. So thus "in Adam all died" "death passed upon all." This may be represented by lines which narrow down as they move towards the Cross. This movement indicates how through the Old Testament age God by types and figures is ever preaching the fact that death is His sentence and must be carried out. There may be seen also lines which widen out from the point of the fall and death. These represent the natural man's mind about himself. He refuses the Divine verdict, and believing and preaching a gospel of the inherent goodness of human nature, seeks to develop a system of improvement by all manner of means. For him, salvation is in himself, and civilisation, education, social reconstruction, mutual improvement, &c., will at length bring in a golden age. He refutes the word of God which demands new birth. He makes sin and evil a negative thing, and so on. Thus man's estimate of himself is ever growing, and the opposite of the mind of God.

In the centre of history God places the Cross and in the representative Person of Christ gathers the whole race under His own sentence and takes it into the full outworking thereof in death. Down through the centre of the Cross is a black zero line. This marks in God's settled judgment the end of the natural man. From that point God has nothing to do with man only on the ground of that life which is begotten from the dead (Rev. 1:5). He demands that there shall be both an acceptance of and a witness born to the fact that when Christ died we died, that we were "crucified with Christ," (Rom. 6:3-6; Col. 2:12, &c.). This has been dealt with at length in "Incorporation into Christ," No. 1*. Then we come to this side of the Cross and the lines cross once again. First there is the beginning of the new man - the inner man - the spiritual man. He is "begotten again by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead," 1 Peter 1:3. Here begins that spiritual life, walk, knowledge, &c., of which we have spoken, and here therefore begins that life process by which the new or spiritual man takes the ascendancy over the old or natural man by the power of the Cross.

As we "walk in the spirit" we cease to "fulfil the lusts of the flesh." Thus in the spirit by the indwelling of God's Spirit there is, through Calvary, a restoration, and more than a restoration, of the lost likeness, fellowship, knowledge, co-operation, and spiritual dominion.

As the spiritual and inner man is renewed, strengthened, educated, the natural and outer man is brought into subjection and robbed of his dominance, until slowly the soul is made the servant of the renewed spirit, and the body is harnessed as the instrument for doing what the soul has come to understand as the will of the spirit, which in its turn has been "joined to the Lord One Spirit."

There is no time limit to this process or progress. Some have more to unlearn than others. The spirits of many are not as pure as some because they have been muffled and beclouded by much mental and emotional apprehension. One often sees people in a meeting to whose spirit very little gets through because they are judging with their heads according to some accepted tenets, or they are prejudiced, suspicious, biased, or the slaves of a system and not at liberty in the spirit. It is a joy to meet a pure and open spirit. In this sense we have to "turn and become as little children." How pure the spirit of a child is! Therefore how true its intuitions or discernment. Some of us remember now the judgment we passed upon certain people when we were quite young. Our conclusions were quite clear and definite, although we could never have stated them, but looking back with the larger understanding, how perfectly right we were, and time has only corroborated our "feelings." We did not arrive at these by reasoning, or knowledge, or even studied observation, we could never have given our reasons or explained ourselves in the matter. These were the pure intuitions of an unbeclouded spirit. Such is to be our state, not in the natural but in the Divine realm. Lord, make us in this matter to have the spirit of a child, for of such is the realm of the heavenlies!

We now see why it is that the Lord is primarily concerned with our spirit. It is here that the new life resides; it is here that the Holy Spirit operates: it is here that our true education takes place: it is here that we have fellowship with God: it is here that we are to be made strong: it is here that resistance of the enemy is to be established: it is here that authority over malignant spiritual forces is to function. It is this spirit possessed of the resurrection life of Christ which is the germ of the resurrection body; it is here that we are saved in trial: it is here that that sinless, inviolate, life of God is (1 John 3:9, 5:18) not in our "outer" or "old man." It is only as we come to the outer man that the enemy has power over us.

May we just strike a note of warning here. There is a peril that we might live too much in our own human spirit as a thing by itself. For the born again child of God, the Holy Spirit is the Divine indweller of the human spirit, and it is not our spirit but His presence in our spirit that has to be our direction and government. A larger reason for this warning will be mentioned later, but as one very vital principle for safety in this matter let us here emphasise the corporate nature of the Holy Spirit's work. He is essentially the gift to the Body of Christ as a whole, and only indwells individual members relatively. It is Christ corporate Who is anointed in this age to fulfil the eternal purpose, and the Holy Spirit resting in and upon the "Body" (1 Cor. 12:12) energises and endows each member in relation to the whole and to the "Head" (Eph. 1:22). Hence spiritual guidance should be corporate, and the complement, corroboration, and confirmation should be sought in the spirits of "two or three" members. This "discerning of the Body" (1 Cor. 10:16,17; 11:29) is important in the matter of service as in fellowship. God is jealous of proper order in the Body of Christ, and failure to note this is the traceable cause of very much error, chaos, and disruption; as also of failure, suffering, and shame. There are also "joints of supply" in the "Body," and while they do not compose a priestly or ecclesiastical class or order, they are in - by the appointment of God and the seal of the Spirit - a representative position and capacity. God will not have these set aside, but requires that those who are within the sphere of their oversight (1 Peter 5:2, &c.) shall consult with them, "comparing spiritual things with spiritual" in the matter of service and conduct, as in matters of truth and doctrine. Where this is possible God locks up His direction to this law, and only trouble can follow sooner or later if the law is ignored. We must not overlook the Divine appointments within the "Body" (Eph. 4:11-14). These appointments were made and these personal gifts were given for the "perfecting of the saints unto the work of ministry, for the building up of the Body of Christ till" - till when, the end of the Apostolic age? - "till we attain... unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," and that has not taken place yet.

HAVING been so definite in pointing out that all the Divine operations in the "New Man" are directed toward the complete ascendancy of the spirit over the soul and body, and that the anointing of God rests within and upon the "Inner Man," we can only stress two things. One is that whatever may appear to the contrary in emotion, pleasure, gratification, enjoyment, activity, resolve, etc., only that which comes out from the Holy-Spirit-indwelt-spirit is spiritual and effects spiritual ends. The natural - soulish-man can make an oil which is an imitation of "The Holy Anointing Oil," or fire which is "False Fire," which seems to serve the same purpose and produce similar results. Thus in the same meeting one may speak by revelation under the anointing of the Spirit of God, bringing those present face to face with issues of tremendous significance, and another may launch out on to a churning sea of beautiful ideas and strong emotional currents, and capture the meeting, but for any spiritually discerning people present. The pressure and strenuousness of life lay many open to the peril of such emotional, mental, and volitional stimulants, but it may only be in the religious realm what alcohol or drugs are in the physical realm. The pernicious results are that people must have more and more, and they select such as can produce them, and gather round a man. This is clearly shown by Paul to be "carnal." It is the opposite of "The anointing which ye have received abiding within you, and ye have no need that any should teach you." This makes necessary the second thing, namely, spiritual discernment. We must seek more and more from the Lord a quickening and purifying of spirit, and we must walk after the spirit in whatever discernment we have so that we are saved from the imitation "oil" which deceives and at length lands us either into error or gets us into a spiritual cul-de-sac. Such are they that are "carried about by every wind of teaching." Spiritual discernment is one of the most vital needs of God's people today. Nothing can take its place, not even the wisest and best teaching or counsel. Only those who have it will be saved from the distraction and despair of the bewildering mass of conflicting teaching, "manifestations," and movements of these and the coming days.

There is another thing that Christian workers should remember. It is always a dangerous and paralysing thing to allow soulish human feelings to come in and take precedence over the spirit in relationships, where spiritual help is needed. Compassion, love, sympathy, concern, interest, desire to help, etc., must be absolutely under the control and direction of the spirit. Failure to observe this law has resulted in some of the most ghastly moral and spiritual tragedies in the lives of Christian workers. If we allow either natural attraction or human desire on the one hand, or natural repulsion and human distaste on the other to have any ruling place the consequences may be disastrous, and the result will certainly be spiritual failure. Very often even in the case of a loved relative the human interest has to be made quite secondary - sometimes ruled out altogether - before a spiritual issue can be effected. OUR will and wish has to be surrendered to God's.

Before closing there are just two things which one feels should be mentioned. Having seen that the basis of all fellowship and co-operation with God is spiritual, in and through the born-again spirit, we must realise that this at once defines the real nature of our service. The background of all cosmic conditions is spiritual. Behind the things seen are the things unseen. The things which do appeal are not the ultimate things.

"The whole world lieth in the wicked one." There is a spiritual hierarchy which, before this world was, revolted against the equality of the Son with the Father in the Throne, and in spite of the hurling out of heaven and the eternal doom which followed, has been in active revolt and antagonism to that "eternal purpose" right through the ages. A certain judicial hold upon this earth and the race in Adam was gained by Satan through the consent of that first Adam, through whom the purpose of God should have been realised on this earth.

Thus we have Paul telling the members of the Body of Christ - The Last Adam - that their "warfare is not with mere flesh and blood, but with principalities, and powers, the world-rulers of this darkness, and spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies."

What a lot is gathered up into that inclusive phrase "This darkness." How much is said about it in the scriptures. The need for having eyes opened is ever basic to emancipation (see Acts 26:18). The cause of all "this darkness" is said to be "Spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies." Literally translated the words are "the spiritualities" or "the spirituals," meaning, spiritual beings. "Wickedness" here does not just mean merely inherent wickedness or evil, but malignance; destructive, harmful.

"In the heavenlies" simply means inhabiting a realm beyond the earthly, not limited to earthly geographical localities; moving in the realm surrounding the earth and human habitation.

"World rulers" means that these malignant spiritual hosts are directing and governing the world wherever the government of Christ has not been superimposed through His Body - the spiritual Church.

"Principalities and Powers" (authorities) represent order, rank, method, system. Satan is not omnipresent, hence he must work through an organised dividing of the world under these principalities and authorities, and he himself "goes to and fro in the earth," and has seats here and there (Job 2:2, Rev. 2:13, etc.).

The Apostle declares that the explanation of situations is to be looked for in the unseen, behind the actual appearance.

What looks like the natural has its rise too often in the supernatural. Man is always trying to give a natural explanation and therefore to put things right by natural means. But when he comes up against a situation in which interests of the Christ of God are involved, he is floored and beaten. Such situations are become the commonplaces - nay more - the overwhelming order of the day amongst "Christian workers" in these days, both abroad and at home. We have no intention of dealing with the subject at length here, but state the fact, and remind the Lord's people especially that in more realms than that of Divine activity, "What is seen hath not been made out of the things which do appear," but that multitudes of the things in daily life which are inimical to spiritual interests must have their explanation from behind. Let us emphasise that this spiritual union with God in the super Cosmic significance of the Cross of Christ means that our supreme effectiveness is in the spiritual realm. We who are the Divine "spirituals" are to be energised by the Holy Spirit to take ascendancy in Christ over the Satanic "spirituals," and thus know something more than mere earthly dominion but seated together with Him in the heavenlies (as to our spirit) we are to learn to reign in that greater kingdom of the heavens of which the earthly millennial kingdom is only an earthly counterpart.

Again, let us affirm, that all the energies of God in our spirit are toward a corporate spiritual union with Christ whereby the impact of His victory and sovereignty shall be registered among and upon the principalities and powers, etc., and their domination paralysed, and ultimately destroyed.

The last word is to point out that it is because man has, and centrally is, a spirit that he can have intercourse with fallen spirits, We believe that this explains the whole system of spiritism (spiritualism) and that the supposed departed with whom spiritualists communicate are none other than these spiritual hosts impersonating the departed, whom they knew in lifetime. Leaving the many phases of this thing in its outworkings and issues at the end of the age, let us note the terrible nemesis in wrecked minds and bodies; haunted, driven, distraught, reason-bereft souls; crowded asylums, prisons; suicides, moral and spiritual wrecks, etc., is because that which was given to man specifically for union, communion and co-operation with God, namely the spirit of man, has been used as the medium and instrument for this demon invasion and control of his life. The tremendous warnings and terrible judgments associated with all kinds of spiritism; necromancy, witches, familiar spirits, etc., are because of the spirit complicity, dalliance, consorting, with fallen spirits whose purpose is always to capture men and women through their spirits. This they will do even by adopting the guise of an angel of light, and talking religion. Strange, isn't it, that fifty years ago men threw off the belief in the supernatural in the scriptures, and today they and their school so strongly embrace spiritism? Surely this is "the working of error" sent that they who received not the truth for the love of it "might believe A LIE" "in order that they might be condemned" (2 Thess. 2:11).

It was the spiritual background of their life which led to the destruction of the Egyptians, Canaanites, etc., and this was spiritism in different forms; but it was their being joined to demons that involved them.

The most spiritual people apart from new birth union with God are in the greatest peril here, and even the Lord's own people by reason of their very spirituality need to constantly abide in the Cross of Christ that they shall not become exposed to "The wiles of the devil."

First published in 1927.

* The booklets: "Incorporation into Christ," No. 1 & No. 2 are included in the book "In Christ".

Let Us Run

"Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith" (Hebrews 12:3).

"Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? Even so run, that ye may attain" (1 Corinthians 9:24).

"Ye were running well; who did hinder you...?" (Galatians 5:7).

"Let us run". It is not so much the running or the race that is in view but the goal, the prize. What is the objective of our running? Ideas about this vary greatly, and much evangelism limits it to the fact of being forgiven and going to heaven. When, however, we come to the New Testament, which is our final authority on the matter, we find that although blessings and heaven and glory are included, the real objective is a Person. The prize turns out to be a person, and that person, the Lord Jesus Christ. At this point in the letter to the Hebrews we are faced with a summing up and an exhortation, but it is clear that we must go back to the beginning of this marvellous document if we are to appreciate the force of its appeal.

The beginning of this epistle gives us one of the two or three classical presentations of the person of the Lord Jesus. I feel sure that if Paul did not actually write it, the writer was one of Paul's school, notably so in his apprehension of the matchless greatness of Christ. The first five verses provide us with a superlatively beautiful presentation of God's Son. It is to this Son - Jesus - that we are to look as we run. He is the goal: He is the prize. The letter has as its supreme object the setting forth of Divine fullness and finality in God's Son, presented to faith for faith's apprehension and appropriation. Fullness in Christ - the gathering up of all into Him. Finality in Christ - the completion and realisation of all in Him. It goes on to consider in greater detail what He is and what He has done, His manifold capacity and ministry as God's Son, turning then to an exhortation that we should keep this well in view and pursue our race with fullness and finality in Christ as our objective. Our lifetime will not be sufficient for us to attain to this: eternity will be required for us to discover what fullness really is.

If the goal and prize is Christ then the race will resolve itself into overcoming everything that is not Christ. The Christian life is a course, and a very strenuous course, calling for our utmost concentration, consecration and abandon. After all, progress can never be made unless there is something to work against, and strange as it may seem, friction seems almost essential to progress. One cannot run on ice, and one can only make slow and unsatisfactory progress on deep sand. There must be something against which one can press and push, something that provides resistance and which has to be resisted and overcome. So our race is a matter of overcoming, and supremely of overcoming the natural by the spiritual. Our three texts will give us three areas in which such an overcoming is called for in the Christian life. We find three contrasts.

(1) Natural Intellect or the Mind of the Spirit.

We begin with Paul's allusion to the Christian race in his letter to the Corinthians. He told them to run and later added: "So I run" (1 Corinthians 9:26). We do not have to look far to discover what you had to run against if you lived among those Corinthians. The letter begins with the complete contrast between the spiritual man and the natural man, showing that in this race the spiritual man has to run against the natural, and defeat him. We must be careful to note that it is not a question of overcoming the natural man by the natural man - that is a hopeless endeavour. No, the spiritual man is the new creation man, born of the Spirit and now the deepest inner reality of the Christian. The fact is that within the sphere of a Christian's being there is the natural man, who always hinders God's purposes, and the 'hidden man of the heart' who is governed by the mind of the Spirit. And the attaining of the prize is the result of the progress and growth of what is of Christ in the life and the leaving behind, often by conflict, of that which is not Christ.

Most of this letter is an exhibition of how the natural mind behaves in the things of God. Christian fellowship, even the Lord's Table and many other important features of the spiritual life were confused and muddled because the Corinthians were being governed by their own natural way of thinking. Our natural mind is a great obstacle in the race which we are running, cropping up all the time with its complexes, its arguments, its interests and its methods. When the Corinthians were brought into the Church they left behind their obvious sins but they carried over into their new realm the old, natural ways of thinking and reasoning which belonged to the world and not to the Spirit of God. But the apostle remonstrated with them: "But we have the mind of Christ" (1 Corinthians 2:16), so urging them to allow the cross to be planted between the natural mind and the spiritual. We shall only come to the fullness of Christ as we leave behind the mind of the natural man and move on more and more in the progress of the mind of Christ. On everything; every judgment, every conclusion, every analysis, every appraisal; we must ask the Lord: 'Is that Your mind, Lord, or is it mine? We may sometimes feel that we have the strongest ground for taking up a certain attitude or coming to a certain conclusion; we may feel that we have all the evidence and so are convinced; and yet we may be wrong.

The man who wrote the letter to the Corinthians knew from deep and bitter experience that this was the case. "I verily thought... that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth" he said (Acts 26:9). There was no man who had stronger convictions as to the rightness of his course than Saul of Tarsus. The great revolution which took place in him when he came to Christ was that he had to say: 'I have been all wrong in my fundamental way of thinking'. After that confession he made good headway in the race because he was always ready to subject his thinking to the jurisdiction of his crucified Lord. This is the way of spiritual progress. We shall not get very far while we hold to our own opinions and our own conclusions, even though we may have the support of others; we have to learn to conquer our natural mind by submission to the mind of Christ. This is most important if we are concerned about spiritual progress. And spiritual progress is the increase of Christ - there is no other.

(2) Natural Emotions or the Love of Christ.

Paul wrote to the Galatians: "Ye were running well: what did hinder...?" Something had broken in and interrupted their running in the spiritual race. This was extremely serious and disturbed Paul to the depths of his being. It seems that in the case of the Galatians it was again the natural man, but this time in the realm of natural emotions. They seem to have been of that temperamental constitution which corresponds to Christ's words in the parable about seed falling into shallow soil. The seed was received quickly and earnestly, but did not go on to produce a harvest. There are some people who make an enthusiastic start in this way and make quite a stir about it, but then do not go steadily on. These Galatians were like that; they made a tremendous response; they loudly protested their devotion; and then they were very quick to drop out of the race. Why? Because they lived on their emotions, on their feelings, and these were changeable. This may well be a matter of temperament, but in fact something of such a characteristic can be found in most of us. We respond to an appeal, come under the power of a great emotion, and then slack off. In the words of the Lord Jesus: "When tribulation or persecution ariseth... he is offended" (Matthew 13:21).

Clearly, then, if you and I are going to persevere to the end we must have a greater power than that of our natural emotional life. The only hope is that it may be true of us, as of Paul: "The love of Christ constraineth" (2 Corinthians 5:14). There is all the difference between the natural and the spiritual in this matter of the energy of love. This word translated 'constraineth' is the same one used over the arrest of Jesus when it says: "the men that HELD Jesus" (Luke 22:63). They took a purchase on Him; they were not going to let Him escape; He was a prize, and they expected a reward for arresting Him. So it is that the love of Christ should hold or grip us, conquering our natural emotions by the mighty power of the Spirit. Our feelings come and go. They may be strong at times but they can also grow very weak. If we do not know something of the mighty grip of Christ's love, we will never go right through to the end of this strenuous race. After all it is the love of Christ which makes for the fullness of Christ. If we finally come to that fullness it can only be by the constraint and holding power of His love. "Ye were running well: who did hinder you?" The answer is, You ran in the strength of your own emotions, you ran as your enthusiastic response to God's call because it affected your feelings for the time. The letter to the Galatians is devoted to emphasising the place of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, for He alone can supply the necessary energy of love for us to go on running well.

(3) The Natural Will or the Will of God.

Our third text is taken from the letter to the Hebrews and is in the form of an exhortation: "Let us run...". A comparison is made with Israel in the wilderness, as being an example of those who set out but who never finished the race. What was the matter with them? There is a reference which perhaps touches the secret core of their failure: "A generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God" (Psalm 78:8). This seems to indicate a breakdown in the matter of the will. It is true that the Hebrews to whom the letter was addressed may have been stumbled by the natural mind and natural emotions, but the main point of failure seems to have been - like Israel of old - in the realm of the will. Whether this natural will is regarded as weak or strong, it has a treacherous effect on spiritual life. There can only be real progress as this natural will is set aside in favour of the will of God. It was on this basis that the great Author of our faith set out on His race: "I am come... to do thy will, O God" (Hebrews 10:7). What a battle He had to remain true to the will of God! Even with Him there was that which had to be brought under or set aside, and His was a perfect nature. Our natures are far from perfect, so clearly we shall need to be conquered by the will of God if we are to make progress in the race.

We should remember that the opportunity to know this all-embracing fullness of Christ only comes to us because of His infinite capacity for letting go. But for that He would never have come to us at all. But for that He would never have put up with life here on earth for one single day. The story of the laying aside of His glory, the emptying of Himself, His humiliation, His death on the cross, would never have been written if it had not been that He was able at all points to let go and accept the will of God. "Wherefore... God highly exalted him, and gave unto him..." (Philippians 2:9). God gives when we let go.

From "Toward the Mark" September-October 1973.

The Offence of the Cross (1932)

It is a perfectly obvious fact that wherever the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ has been most faithfully preached and presented - while bringing hope and new life to many - it has almost invariably been the cause of trouble.

Wherever it has gone it has aroused antagonism. As it was a stumbling-block to the Jews and an absurdity to the Greeks in the first days, so, ever since, it has been unacceptable, not only to the men of the world as such, but to the religious communities also. This we unhesitatingly affirm to be as true today as ever, in spite of the fact that it is the most popular symbol in the world. There is hardly a city in Christendom where the architecture, galleries of art, collections of literature and conservatoires of music and religious institutions do not declare to the world a certain regard and honour for this sacred sign.

This may be a tribute to something deeper but it is that deeper thing which is absolutely unacceptable to the greater part of Christendom and the world.

It is found necessary even in certain phases of some missionary enterprise today to eliminate from the text-books and hymn books the mention of the Cross lest it offend.

Much of the preaching and teaching in the Christian Church is either confined to the "Historic Jesus", which presents a Crossless Christ, or gives a very modified meaning to His death. And yet it is surely necessary to get rid of the Bible before we can get rid of the fact that it unites in all its parts to declare that the Cross is God's Way of salvation, God's sufficient and God's only way.

It is, further, surely very clear that the Cross has proved to be the means upon which God has made to rest the full weight of His mighty saving power. It was dominant in New Testament days. The recovery of, or re-emphasis upon some vital and essential phase of that Cross gave rise to such movements as are signified by the names of Luther, Moody, Finney, Jonathan Edwards, Whitfield, the Wesleys, Spurgeon and many other especially God-honoured men.

Now we ask why has the Cross always been such a maker of trouble and such a cause of offence? And why is it that it is today behind much of the upheaval even in many of our professedly evangelical institutions and denominations, Christian homes, local churches and individual Christian lives?

This we will seek to answer, but first let us discriminate. It is not the heroics of the Cross or the aesthetics that cause the trouble. Sacrifice, suffering, unselfish devotion, self-effacing service for the good of others, enduring the penalty of setting oneself against the evil current of the times, etc.; these are romantic elements and are seized upon as the themes by which multitudes are captured and captivated. It is the deeper meaning which the Bible gives to the Cross which causes the aggravation, this can be seen in one or two clearly defined applications.

1. The Cross condemns the world.

In His Cross Christ created a great divide between the old world and the new, a divide which cannot be bridged. Two distinctly different systems, scales of value, standards of judgment, sets of laws, prevail on the two sides of the Cross, the system of each is not only entirely different, but irreconcilable and forever antagonistic to the other.

The Cross demands an absolute distinctiveness of interests and objectives, relationships and resources. It draws the final distinction between the saved and the unsaved, between the living and the dead.

The apostle Paul said that by the Cross he had "been crucified to the world" and the world crucified to him. The Word of God emphatically declares that the age is evil and that "the whole world lieth in the wicked one" and that its ways, motives, purposes, ideas and imaginations are all the opposite of God's and that it is utterly incapacitated from either receiving the revelation of the divine mind, growing of itself into the divine image, enjoying and appreciating real fellowship with God, or being entrusted with the privilege of co-operation with God.

These are alone the consciousness, capacities, relationships of the newly-born or regenerated soul. It is this verdict, condemnation, and demand of the Cross which is unacceptable and irritating to a very great number of professing Christians. Further, it is the presence of much that is called "worldliness" both in the individual Christian life and in the Church which absolutely neutralises their effectiveness in the realisation of the essential purposes of the Cross.

2. The Cross crucifies the flesh.

By it the Word of God declares that "our old man has been crucified with Christ" (Romans 6:6). "One died for all, therefore all died in Him, that they which live should henceforth live no longer unto themselves, but unto him" (2 Corinthians 5:14-15). We have tried to bring some of the old creation life into the new creation and God won't have it. The history of the fallen race was concluded so far as God was concerned at Calvary. From that time onward, God's entire concern was the new creation, but alike our human capabilities as well as our infirmities; what we call our better side as our worse; our goodness and our badness have been included in that death. Henceforth we are called to live not on a human level but on a divine. Humanly we possess nothing which is acceptable to God.

It is always the assertion of some human element, some like or dislike, some fad or fancy, some ambition or some personal interest, which paralyses the real spiritual work of God. To regard not only our sins but ourselves as having been taken to the Cross by Christ is the only way by which those purposes of God can be wrought out through our lives. It is strange that while we ourselves are the bane of our own existence, the trouble of our own lives, we are so slow to accept our crucification with Christ, to have the Cross wrought out to our death in order that the life of Christ might be made manifest in us. Herein lies the offence of the Cross, not only for the worldling but also for the Christian.

3. The Cross casts out the devil.

Here we touch, perhaps, the deepest cause of the offence, for the world and the flesh are only the instruments and weapons by which the great hierarchy of Satan maintains its hold and its existence as the controlling force. Christ said as He approached the Cross, "Now is the prince of this world cast out" (John 12:31). Paul reflecting upon that Cross said that by it: "Christ stripped off principalities and powers, making a show of them openly, and triumphed over them" (Colossians 2:15).

It is perfectly natural, then, that the great hierarchy of evil should by every means and resource seek to make the Cross of none effect. By the "pale cast of thought" it will dilute the message of the Cross; by pushing in the world's methods, its means, its spirit, it will sap the spiritual vitality of the Church; by stirring up the flesh, the self and the old Adam it will cause schism, strain and disintegration; or by making much of the human element in its artistic, aesthetic, heroic, humanitarian side, it will be blind to the need of regeneration. Reputation, popularity, bigness, the world standard of success, are all contrary to the spirit of Christ, but they are the toys with which the enemy engrosses the minds of many, even Christian ministers.

If, therefore, the Cross is preached in the full victory over and emancipation from the world, the flesh and the devil, it is to be expected that by hook or by crook the intelligent forces of evil will leave no stone unturned to stop it, and will stir up every cause of offence to lay to the account of the Cross.

In conclusion let us not forget that the enjoyment of the full life of God, the experience of victory, and executive co-operation with Him that sitteth upon the throne in the sure realisation that His eternal purposes are ours just in so far as we are one with the full and essential meaning of the Cross as set forth in the Word of God. "I have been crucified with Christ, henceforth... no longer I but Christ." "They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they counted not their lives dear unto the death" (Revelation 12:11).

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jan-Feb 1932, Vol 10-1

The Offence of the Cross

"And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has ceased." (Galatians 5:11).

It is a perfectly obvious fact that wherever the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ has been most faithfully preached and presented - while bringing hope and new life to many - it has almost invariably been the cause of trouble.

Wherever it has gone it has aroused antagonism. As it was a stumbling block to the Jews and an absurdity to the Greeks in the first days, so, ever since, it has been unacceptable, not only to the men of the world as such, but to the religious communities also.

This we unhesitatingly affirm to be as true today as ever, in spite of the fact that it is the most popular symbol in the world. There is hardly a city in Christendom where the architecture, galleries of art, collections of literature, conservatoires of music and religious institutions do not declare to the world a certain regard and honour for this sacred sign.

It is found necessary even in certain phases of some missionary enterprise today to eliminate from the text books and hymn books, the mention of the Cross lest it offend.

Much of the preaching and teaching in the Christian Church is either confined to the "Historic Jesus" which presents a Crossless Christ, or gives a very modified meaning to His death.

And yet it is surely necessary to get rid of the Bible before we can get rid of the fact that it unites in all its parts to declare the Cross is God's way of salvation, God's sufficient and God's only way.

It is, further, surely very clear that the Cross has proved to be the means upon which God has made to rest the full weight of His mighty saving power. It was dominant in New Testament days. The recovery of, or re-emphasis upon some vital and essential phase of that Cross gave rise to such movements as are signified by the names of Luther, Moody, Finney, Jonathan Edwards, Whitfield, the Wesleys, Spurgeon, and many other especially God-honoured men.

Now we ask why has the Cross always been such a maker of trouble and such a cause of offence? And why is it that it is today behind much of the upheaval even in many of our professedly evangelical institutions, and denominations, Christian homes, local churches and individual Christian lives?

This we will seek to answer, but first let us discriminate. It is not the heroics of the Cross or the aesthetics which cause the trouble.

Sacrifice, suffering, unselfish devotion, self-effacing service for the good of others, enduring the penalty of setting oneself against the evil current of the times, etc; these are romantic elements and are seized upon as the themes by which multitudes are captured and captivated.

It is the deeper meaning which the Bible gives to the Cross which causes the aggravation, this can be seen in one or two clearly defined applications.

1. The Cross condemns the world.

In His Cross Christ created a great divide between the old world and the new, a divide which cannot be bridged.

Two distinctly different systems, scales of value, standards of judgment, sets of laws, prevail on the two sides of the Cross, the system of each is not only entirely different but irreconcilable and forever antagonistic to the other.

The Cross demands an absolute distinctiveness of interests, and objectives, relationships and resources.

It draws the final distinction between the saved and the unsaved, between the living and the dead.

The Word of God emphatically declares that the age is evil, and that "the whole world lieth in the wicked one," and that its ways, motives, purposes, ideas, imaginations are all the opposite of God's and that it is utterly incapacitated from either receiving the revelation of the divine mind, growing of itself into the divine image, enjoying and appreciating real fellowship with God, or being entrusted with the privilege of co-operation with God.

These are alone the consciousness, capacities, relationships of the newly-born or regenerated soul. It is this verdict, condemnation, and demand of the Cross which is unacceptable and irritating to a very great number of even professing Christians. Further, it is the presence of much that is called "worldliness" both in the individual Christian life and in the Church which absolutely neutralises their effectiveness in the realisation of the essential purposes of the Cross.

2. The Cross condemns the flesh.

By it the Word of God declares that "our old man has been crucified with Christ." "One died for all, therefore all died in Him, that they which live should henceforth live no longer unto themselves but unto Him." We have tried to bring some of the old creation life into the new creation and God won't have it. The history of the fallen race was concluded so far as God was concerned at Calvary. From that time onward, God's entire concern was the new creation, but alike our human capabilities as our infirmities, what we call our better human side, as our worse, our goodness and our badness have been included in that death. Henceforth we are called to live not on a human level but on a divine. Humanly we possess nothing which is acceptable to God. It is always the assertion of some human element, some like or dislike, some fad or fancy, some ambition, some personal interest, which paralyses the real spiritual work of God. To regard not only our sins but ourselves as having been taken to the Cross by Christ is the only way by which the purposes of God can be wrought out through our lives. It is strange that while we ourselves are the bane of our own existence, the trouble of our own lives, we are so slow to accept our crucification with Christ, to have the Cross wrought out to our death in order that the life of Christ might be made manifest in us. Herein lies the offence of the Cross, not only for the worldling but also for the Christian.

3. The Cross casts out the devil.

Here we touch, perhaps, the deepest cause of the offence, for the world and the flesh are only the instruments and weapons by which the great hierarchy of Satan maintains its hold and its existence as the controlling force. Christ said, as He approached the Cross, "Now is the prince of this world cast out," Paul reflecting upon that Cross said that by it "Christ stripped off principalities and powers, making a show of them openly, and triumphed over them." It is perfectly natural, then, that the great hierarchy should by every means and resource seek to make the Cross of none effect. By the "pale cast of thought" it will dilute the message of the Cross; by pushing in the world's methods, its means, its spirit, it will tap the spiritual vitality of the Church; by stirring up the flesh, the self and the old Adam, it will cause schism, strain and disintegration; or by making much of the human element in its artistic, aesthetic, heroic, humanitarian side, it will be blind to the need of regeneration. Reputation, popularity, bigness, the world standard of success, are all contrary to the spirit of Christ, but they are the toys with which the enemy engrosses the minds of many, even Christian ministers. If, therefore, the Cross is preached in its full victory over and emancipation from the world, the flesh and the devil, it is to be expected that by hook or by crook the intelligent forces of evil will leave no stone unturned to stop it, and will stir up every cause of offence to lay to the account of the Cross.

In conclusion let us not forget that the enjoyment of the full life of God, the experience of victory, and executive co-operation with Him that sitteth upon the Throne in the sure realisation that His eternal purposes are ours just in so far as we are one with the full and essential meaning of the Cross as set forth in the word of God. "I have been crucified with Christ, henceforth... no longer I but Christ." "They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they counted not their lives dear unto the death."

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jan-Feb 1932 Vol. 10-1

Parenthetical Christians

"And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper country came to Ephesus, and found certain disciples: and he said unto them, Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed?" (Acts 19:1-2).

A Lack of the Spirit That May Accompany Believing

I want to speak to you for this little while on what I believe to be a fact. I have no theory, no systematized doctrine on 'a second blessing', but I believe that there is something represented by this word - indeed, I know there is something which is a fact. That Paul should ask a question in this form, "Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed?" (for this is the proper translation; not, "Have ye received the Holy Spirit since ye believed?") implies that some kind of relationship with Christ is possible without receiving the Holy Spirit. That seems to me to be implicit in this very question. Paul at once regarded these disciples as believers, but he had a question about them and put his question to them.

There is such a thing as being a 'parenthetical' Christian - one in between two things. Here the parenthesis was between believing in Christ and receiving the Holy Spirit. Those believers were, so to speak, in brackets. But note, this is not the normal New Testament position. Again and again, right at the beginning - at the time of believing - believers received the Holy Spirit in a very definite way. The Apostles' attitude toward this matter is perfectly clear; they held that believing alone was not sufficient. They would make sure that those who had believed received the Holy Spirit. I am not stopping to give you the instances, for you know them. This situation at Ephesus is not the normal in the New Testament. Perhaps we can call it the unusual, but it can exist and I fear very often it does. I am almost inclined to say that to be in brackets, to be in a parenthesis, to be in between believing in Christ and receiving the Holy Spirit, has become the normal.

The Holy Spirit Consummates Relationship to Christ

This means that there is something that consummates relationship to Christ. Apart from that something, Christian life is largely negative or neutral, in a position or state of suspension, indefinite, tentative, as though there is something more yet to happen. Those disciples had believed, but there was something yet that needed to be. That is how it works out, there is no doubt about it. There are multitudes who have believed - believed that Jesus is the Christ, believed in the facts of His birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension, and even of His coming again, and much more of the Christian doctrine - and, having believed, they have come into a certain relationship with Him; and yet there is a pause, there seems to lack something, and as time goes on that lack becomes more accentuated, more apparent, more real to those concerned and to others who know them. In the Church they are either negatives or neutrals, or somehow suspended, tentative. You feel that something has to happen to them, something is needed.

Is that what Paul found? I am very sure that it was, and he could not accept that condition. He at once sought to get to the root of it and to have it put right; and it was found to be that, though they had believed - had accepted certain truths which resulted in their accepting Jesus - they were not right out, liberated, regnant, effective. Something still had to take place. Their relationship with Christ had to be in some way brought to a fulness, a completeness.

This consummation (as we see it in every case in the New Testament, and as I have no doubt many of us know in experience) places life on an altogether new basis. Indeed, it places life upon what we call a supernatural level. There is no doubt about it in the case of those mentioned in the New Testament. Witness was borne that this does bring in supernatural features and factors, and puts life on that level.

The Effects of the Spirit

(a) Transformed People

In the first place, the persons themselves are so different. You may meet them and see them as ordinary people, amongst people, but you meet also an extra factor. You find that in them is another Presence. It is not they only whom you meet. That Other is the Holy Spirit, the Lord Himself, and He is no neutral. If the Holy Spirit is really there, a life is not negative and neutral, suspended, tentative. A certain positiveness is brought into the life itself, into the individual. Such are not just lost in a crowd. Every one of them is vital, every one of them is a life point, every one of them carries something more than himself or herself, and that extra is the Holy Spirit, it is Christ. It makes a tremendous difference to us, and the difference is that we are not just and only ourselves - what we are in ourselves. There is this Other that is met, that is touched, and that touches. So it was, so it is, so it should be. Probably Paul saw this group of believers at Ephesus, and found nothing more in them than what they were in themselves - a lot of people gathered, perhaps, with a common interest, but no registration, no 'salt'. He said - 'What is the matter? Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? It is difficult to believe that you did'. Such a receiving makes a difference to the persons concerned.

(b) Supernatural Resources Available

Then it brings on to a supernatural basis as to resources - that we are not left to our own resources, to draw only upon our own life. No, when we are at an end, that is not the end; when we are spent, that is not exhaustion. Oh, let this come to us as a real challenge! So often we take ourselves as the measure of things. 'Oh, I am so tired, I feel so bad, I do not feel I can go to the meeting' - and so we stay away, taking our own condition as being all that there is to count on. There is another level on which to live, another basis; and if you like to put it to the test, if you really have received the Holy Spirit; you can lay hold of the Holy Spirit in the moment of most utter weakness and find yourself capable of meeting a tremendous demand, of standing up to something for which you are totally unable in yourself. There is no place, and it is altogether wrong, for any Christian to say, 'Well, I cannot, therefore I do not try; I am made like this and I have not got this gift and that, and I have not this qualification and that' - and thus to settle down and become neutral. I am saying to you that if you have received the Holy Spirit such an attitude is wrong and unnecessary. When the Holy Spirit is present, we are put upon a supernatural basis for resources, and we can prove again and again that when we have absolutely nothing, and it would be utter madness and folly for us to essay, we can lay hold of God the Holy Ghost and go through triumphantly and come out at the other end with more life than we had at the beginning - contrary to nature, supernatural.

I said I am talking about a fact, not a theory of 'a second blessing'; and I can speak to you out of personal experience of the fact. I know what I am talking about. It is a fact. The Holy Spirit within does mean another level for resource, which is not just our natural level; we are not left to ourselves; so do not contemplate any proposition from the standpoint of what you are or are not in yourself. That standpoint in itself may be perfectly true; but there can be a laying hold upon the Lord by faith, saying, "I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me" (Phil. 4:13). You are surprised at what you can do if you know this great reality of the indwelling Spirit; you are capable of things you never thought you would ever do. It ought to be like that. That is the romance of a true life in the Spirit.

(c) The Gift of a New Faculty

Then again, there is a new faculty given to us by the receiving of the Holy Spirit. It is here that wonder follows wonder. How can I illustrate that? Will you suffer a personal testimony? For many years I preached, but I had to get my material from books and all sorts of directions, and gather it together and make up something to preach; and although I preached it with all my might as my conviction, I had obtained it in that way, and the one thing I longed for through those years was something direct with and from heaven - an immediate, direct speaking of the Lord in my heart through His Word so that I could speak out what the Lord was saying to me. And there came that great crisis of Romans 6, and that is what issued. From that time to this, by God's grace I have been able to see in the Scriptures much more than could be known by mere intellectual effort. I can take the Word of God and see through the letter of it to meanings, to principles, into the thought of God. In saying a thing like that, I do not presume to suggest that I have ranged it all. We are lost in this boundless ocean; but it is something to have a faculty for perceiving. It gives you another world beyond your own. That is what I mean. The Holy Spirit gives that faculty for seeing the more, seeing the deeper - not for our becoming fantastic, mystical, occult, and that sort of thing, but really giving to us an inner eye. It is a wonderful thing. Do you say that all who have believed have got that? I am far from sure whether these things are true in the case of all believers.

The Spirit Known Only Through the Cross

You notice that there is given to us in this passage the great truth that this receiving of the Spirit, with these wonderful results that I have mentioned and, of course, many more, is the issue of Christ's death and resurrection into which we are placed by faith - what we have called identification with Christ in death burial and resurrection; for that is what Paul here laid down in calling upon them to be baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. All the doctrine of identification with Christ in death and resurrection is gathered up in baptism. Dear believer, even though it be at a late hour in your life, you must get off the old ground of the old natural life. If that is governing, if that is controlling, if that is your main or sole sphere, you must get out of it, and you can only get out of it through death and resurrection.

The death of the Lord Jesus was His exodus. "Moses and Elijah... spake of his decease (his exodus) which he was about to accomplish" (Luke 9:31). What an exodus! Emancipation, release from all the limitations of this life as to time, space, and everything else! All those limitations broken down by His Cross! We are released by the Cross. If we really know the Cross as an experience, as something into which, by faith, we definitely stand for the end of the control, government, and limitation (as well as of all the evil) of the old natural life, and if by faith we lay hold on Christ risen, as being ourselves risen in Him, we are released. Oh, is not that the need of so many Christians to be released, to be loosed, to be set free inside? They are tied up. We have to say of certain people, 'They are all tied up in themselves'. Now do not go and get into tangles and fogs about 'a second blessing'. The heart of the matter is here. The Holy Spirit comes upon the ground of resurrection-union, and all the rest follows. Let us challenge our own hearts. Are we in the realm of those still tentative, still suspended, still tied up, still governed by our natural life and make-up? Then there is something wrong; and it may be in your case, as it was in mine, that after a good many years of believing, of being the Lord's servant, the thing happened. I am always hesitant to say that I received the Holy Spirit then, because that would be to state a kind of doctrine to which everybody else ought to conform; but I know the thing happened. The day I apprehended in a new way the meaning of Christ in death, burial and resurrection, the Holy Spirit followed on that and did something in me. It has been going on increasingly ever since and still has to go a very long way, but that was the turning point. While I would be most sorry to create difficulties for you over this and set you worrying about your own condition, I do say to you that there is something more for a believer who is still in this limited, parenthetical position - a believer still 'in brackets'. The Lord get rid of those iron brackets and make us know what life by the Spirit really is!

There are two safeguarding words necessary in this connection as I close. The sense of this lack has sent many off into an intensive soul-force quest for an experience, and thereby the door has been opened for the most serious counterfeit work of Satan, with direful issues. Remember, it is not our soul-force that is the door, but the Cross, our death with Christ.

Then, it may very well be that many - unlike these disciples at Ephesus - have received the Spirit, but have not walked by the Spirit, and have consequently failed to be led by Him into all the truth.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Jul-Aug 1951, Vol 29-4

Pride and Its Undoing

If I were asked to choose a text for what is on my heart I should have very great difficulty. I can only say to you that the whole Book is the text, so I give you the whole Bible as my text, and what I have on my heart I am going to present, in the first place, in the form of three propositions or questions.

Firstly: If there was one particular thing that was the cause of all the suffering, the misery, the trouble, the distress, the wars, and the necessity for God to stand back in reserve; would we not wish with all our being to be saved and delivered from that thing? There is such a thing, and I am quite sure that, if it really did come home to us that all that I have mentioned, and much more, from the beginning until now and to the end, was related to and bound up with that one thing, your answer to my question would be, 'The Lord save me from that! With all my heart, with all my being, I do seek to be delivered from that!" I am sure you agree.

Secondly: If there was one thing that gave God the ground for being toward us, free from fear and free from reserve on His part, so that His purposes could be realised, His power be released, His wisdom be active, fellowship with Him be unclouded, and His glory be resultant from our having been here on this earth; would we not with all our heart and with all our being say, 'Let that be in me!'? We certainly would be in very earnest and whole-hearted quest for that, would we not?

Thirdly: If that first thing should be in us, that first evil thing, and we could only be delivered from its power and its activity by a deep application of the Cross of the Lord Jesus, and ever deeper application, though it might cost suffering, breaking, emptying, humbling; would we not say that the Lord would be justified in whatever course He took to bring that thing into subjection, making way in so doing for the other thing, really supplanting the evil thing by the other, the good thing; would we not justify God in His methods, in His way? If that were the end in view and He was moving toward that end, would we not say, 'The Lord is right, the Lord is justified'? Do you agree with that? Perhaps it is not so easy to say Yes here - but when we come to think about it, what is the alternative? The alternative is the loss of the one glorious thing, with its far fuller meaning than I have indicated, through the remaining of the other evil thing. These are the alternatives. Then is the Lord justified in what He does to displace the one and implant the other?

What is the one evil thing, the cause of all that we have mentioned, and very much more? It is pride - the root of all the trouble. What is the good thing? Well, just the opposite - humility. I started by saying that I gave you the Bible as my text, for the whole Bible is built upon this issue of pride or humility, with their twofold consequences. That is a big field in which to walk and meditate; but there is no doubt about it - wherever you look, from the day that man sinned to this day and to the end which the Bible gives us, you find it is just that issue which lies behind the whole history of God and man and the evil forces - just that issue. There are many aspects of it, but it comes to one question. In one way or another it can be traced to this question of pride or humility.

Yes, the whole Bible is built upon it. The whole meaning of Christ's coming into this world is bound up with it, His very coming from glory. Somewhere, somehow, before He arrived, He "emptied himself" (Phil. 2:7). He spoke to the Father later of the glory He had with Him before the world was (John 17:5). He had laid aside all that, He had emptied Himself. And then His strange - ah, yes, very strange until we have this key - His strange entry into this world, the circumstances of it all related to His coming and His whole time here. "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests [lit. roosts]; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head" (Matt. 8:20). It is all this one issue. Some tremendous thing is being fought out and dealt with, some immense thing. The whole meaning of His coming - His condescension, self-emptying, birth, life, death - and the whole explanation of the experiences of His people, is all centred in this one matter. The discipline - the chastening, as it is termed - the Lord's dealings with us, are centred in one thing: it is all related to the purpose for which Christ came, and how He came and how He accomplished the purpose.

And, further, the whole nature and vocation of the Church is centred in this one thing. The Church that is going to serve the eternal counsels of God will never be a Church of pride, self-glory, worldly glory, worldly power, worldly praise. It will be, ever and always, what it was at the beginning, something that the world will not look upon with praise, will always look upon with contempt. That is essential to its vocation, for its vocation is positively to displace the world, and its temper and spirit and standards; to do something spiritually in this universe - to rid it of that evil thing which has been its plague and curse from Adam onward.

It does not need any argument to show that the cause of wars, the cause of all the trouble, is pride - somewhere, somehow. No wonder then the phrase occurs - "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Rev. 13:8). This is not something subsequent, taking place late in the history of this world. From the foundation of the world the Lamb was slain. And if a lamb symbolizes anything at all, it symbolizes purity and innocence of motive, dependence, selflessness, weakness - all that from this world's standpoint of glory, greatness, power and wisdom is at a discount - and it is therefore not surprising that the Holy Spirit chooses to use the diminutive in relation even to a lamb. It is not apparent in our translation, but it is there quite clearly in the original - "a little Lamb" - a symbol of that which overcomes, fights out this battle from the foundation of the world. This issue is the cause of all the trouble - the cause of God standing back, God in reserve, God unable to commit Himself, because of this thing here that is always ready to take hold of Him and make Him and His blessings serve its ends and glorify itself; that is always there ready to snap up the slightest goodness of the Lord and turn it to its own glory. It is there. And so the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world.

And it does invest that proclamation of John with such full significance - "The Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). What is the sin of the world? It is pride. You may not think so; you may not see it: but I would ask you to consider again and see if all that is called sin cannot be traced to this, if it is not this in some form of expression. For what is the root of pride? What is pride? It is selfhood come to life, risen up, active - that is the root of pride; and the branches and the fruit - how many they are! - jealousy, covetousness, wrath, and all the rest. How is wrath pride? Well, wrath, if it is not holy, purified, blood-purged wrath like the wrath of the Lamb, if it is wrath which is actuated by ourselves and our interests, is the wrath of selfhood. So often our anger is our self-preservation, our reaction to some threat to our interests or our likes. Rebellion, stubbornness, prejudice, and much of our fear, are all traceable to pride. What are we afraid of? What are we fearing? If we examined our fears, why are we afraid? If we were utterly severed from the personal interest - that is, if we could hand entirely over to the Lord and get out of the picture ourselves - would not a lot of our fear go? And so we might go on: but we do not want to indulge in a wholesale analysis of human nature or of pride. We have mentioned enough to show that pride is the root and that there are countless fruits traceable to that root.

So, on the one side, it is terribly true: "Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord" (Prov. 16:5). "The haughty he knoweth from afar" (Ps. 138:6). It all sprang out of that proud heart that lifted itself up and said, "I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; ...I will be like the Most High" (Isa. 14:13,14). With that I, all the trouble began, and that one bit his poison into the race. The poison of the human race is pride, and it has come all the way down. It is sometimes almost untraceable: we are not able always to trace it out in all its forms, because pride has what we might call negative aspects as well as positive. There are, of course, the obviously, manifestly proud, the ambitious, the assertive, the self-important, the self-sufficient. But there are negative aspects - and I use that word with regard to pride very carefully, because pride is positive whatever form it takes. It is an ugly thing. A lot of our murmuring is pride; a lot of tears are pride - we think they are humility. A lot of our criticism of other people springs from pride: we think we could do better, we could go one better, setting ourselves up as the judge, the critic: pride is at the root. Very much of our poor, miserable tone is, after all, pride. Oh, how subtle and serpentine a thing this is! It is there. So the Lord has to stand back.

On the other hand, look at humility. "To this man will I look" - that is the beginning, the Lord even looking in anyone's direction - "even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit" (Isa. 66:2), and He dwells with them (Isa. 57:15). And "the meek will he guide in judgement: and the meek will he teach his way" (Ps. 25:9). And "the meek shall inherit the earth" (Matt. 5:5). It is like that all the way through; vindication is on that basis. "Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth" (Num. 12:3): and you know when that was said - at the time when his position was disputed, and God appeared at the entrance of the tabernacle and answered the challenge on the ground of the meekness of His servant. God stands by and vindicates the meek.

I say the whole Bible is founded on this issue. What a vital matter this is! Is not the Lord justified in taking any steps to clear up that situation - breaking, emptying, humbling, withholding, deferring, delaying; in any way bringing us to nought, to a place of utter dependence, where there is nothing we can rely upon at all but the Lord Himself? Is He justified? It is a tremendous process. It is a very real, very devastating work: and the very fact that we suffer so much shows how deep and real it is.

Yes, but you see the Lord has such great ends in view. It is not just that the Lord wants people of a certain kind and type; not just that He wants us to be of a certain nature. He created man for a great destiny, and this thing - pride - came in and made it impossible for man to fulfil that destiny. So He has secured it in a Man utterly different from us - the Lamb slain, the Man who emptied Himself, the Man who became obedient unto death, yes, such a death as the Cross, the last word in shame, in despicability and now He says to us, "Have this mind in you" (Phil. 2:5). I think the greatest conjunction in all the Bible is there. "Wherefore... God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name" (Phil. 2:9). "Wherefore" - all that leads up to that and all that issues from that. Two vast realms of meaning and value are linked by that conjunction, "wherefore". But - 'this is the way the Master went'. Well, we cannot do what He did, or fulfil all that He fulfilled, but we are called to drink of the cup which was His cup.

So may this be a word of interpretation as to why the Lord is dealing with us as He has and does - on the one hand, overcoming this evil thing, breaking, emptying, grinding to powder, until there is nothing of us left in the matter of self-sufficiency; on the other hand, giving Himself, increasing Himself.

Now this is not a word, perhaps, of great inspiration, but I feel it to be a word of very great importance. This must be true of us individually. There must also be a corporate humility. This is the way along which the Lord will commit Himself. He will never give us anything to feed our flesh, to enlarge and strengthen our natural life. He will hold us to the way that keeps us safe where that is concerned. How wonderfully the Bible becomes alive when you look at it in this way! It was Adam's sin, Israel's sin, the sin of us all. "By reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations... that I should not be exalted overmuch, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, that I should not be exalted overmuch" (2 Cor. 12:7); that was making a man safe for great revelation, undercutting pride.

Yes, this is an important word; it explains a lot. But let us remember that the Lord always has positive ends in view, not negative. Though His ways may seem to be destructive, even annihilating ways, He has always in view - and not in the far view only, but as quickly as possible, as soon as possible - that position where He can Himself let go, so to speak, His own fears, His own reserves; and say, 'I have found that to which I can give Myself without fear'. May it be like that with us.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Sep-Oct 1952, Vol 30-5

Resurrection, the Hallmark of Sonship

In the terrible darkness of the Cross, Jesus uttered the cry of desertion and forsakenness in which He could only use the term: "My God..." (Matthew 27:46), but before He died He was able to say: "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46). After He had risen from the dead, among the first words that He spoke were these: "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father: but go unto my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father..." (John 20:17). The battle was won. All that the first cry meant of sonship being obscured, had been set aside. In perfect tranquillity the Lord could not only speak of His Father but of our Father too.

Such passages as: "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee", and "declared to be the Son of God... by the resurrection from the dead" can make for intellectual difficulty. What about the eternal Sonship? Was He not God's Son before the resurrection? The words: "This day have I begotten thee" evidently refer to the resurrection, as the first two chapters of the letter to the Hebrews confirm. In what way is the Lord Jesus God's Son by virtue of resurrection?

Let us at once state that this is related to the first and the last Adam. The first Adam was called God's son (Luke 3:38) and in a sense this was true, but that sonship was never fully realised - all its meaning, all its potential, all the divine intention, was never known. It was sonship on probation which never attained to determination. In the case of the Lord Jesus, however, we are told that He was "determined the Son of God..." (Romans 1:4 m.). The first Adam failed, and in him the whole race lost its sonship. That was why the Lord Jesus went to the Cross as representative of the whole race, to meet the final consequences of that lost sonship. Those consequences were known in that eternal period of unspeakable agony, when there was the awful consciousness of what it means to be abandoned by God. By nature we are out of Christ, without God and without hope in this world, but we are not fully aware of it nor of what it involves. In that phase of the Cross, the Lord Jesus was, so to speak, projected into the full realisation of that complete consciousness of what God-forsakenness really means, that which is the very terrible destiny of all deliberate rejectors - to find themselves rejected.

Well, having suffered that judgment, and having carried all the agony of it to the disrupting of His soul and the breaking of His heart (for when the soldiers came to inspect, they found that He was dead already, while those crucified with Him were still alive) - when that was accomplished He came to the moment of consciousness that the judgment was past, and so could return again to use the word, "Father". Now, however, He used it with a meaning that it had never borne for man until that time, so that the last word of the cross is not "forsaken", but "Father". Sonship had now come on to a new ground of resurrection, restoration; the alienation of the race had been overcome. Restoration is made for the race in Christ, and so everything begins with "Father". What a wealth there is in the phrase: "The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" when it is seen in the light of the Cross! It is the ground of our approach, our appeal. It carries with it the full meaning of the triumph of His Cross over all the alienation that had come to the human race with the loss of God's meaning of sonship.

Briefly, then, that is the doctrine and the explanation of "This day have I begotten thee". It speaks of a begetting not of the eternal Son, not of Christ as the Son of God; but the begetting of the Son of man, of the last Adam, and of sonship for man in Him. Sonship is ours in Christ, so Peter cries: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance." (1 Peter 1:3-5).

But while our sonship through the Cross and the risen Christ is to be appropriated and entered into by faith as an act, yet for the purpose of our testimony here, it is something which has to be continuous as a spiritual experience. It is accepted in an act, but it has to be borne out in a continuous process. The New Testament shows that sonship is something which relates to the whole life of the believer in a practical way of expression, so that inasmuch as it is inseparably bound up with resurrection in the case of the Lord Jesus, for us it demands a constant experience of His resurrection power. How do we know sonship? Well, there was a time when we believed, and in believing were made children or sons of God. "Ye are all sons of God, through faith in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:26). Because we believe, we have the sonship. That is very good, and of course we have always to cling tenaciously by faith to the fact that it is so. But that may have been years ago. Did the Lord just mean it to be something in our past history, something which took place years ago? We have always to hold on to that transaction with the Lord and believe, but does it not call for a reinforcement as we go along? Is there no opportunity for it to be more and more confirmed? Surely the Word teaches that there is; and so not only the origin but the experience of the believer should be that of sonship being freshly demonstrated and manifested on the same ground as its origin - that is, resurrection.

What is God's confirmation of our sonship? It is that He gives us continual experiences of being raised from the dead. He has left us here in a setting and a background of death: we are called upon to live and to walk amidst death. This world is a tomb, which sooner or later will engulf all those outside of Christ; but here we are in this very tomb, this scene and realm of death, living. We are not a part of it, we are living, and this is the testimony, this is sonship. Sonship is meant to be manifested. The end of this process is the full manifestation of the sons of God according to Romans 8:19. Here, in a spiritual way, the manifold wisdom of God is shown in the Church, to the glory of His name and to the confounding of principalities and powers.

Our new birth is our first taste of resurrection life. We notice that, after quoting the passage concerning Christ: "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee", the Scriptures present a further quotation: "I and the children whom God hath given me" (Hebrews 2:13). The completion of the original statement is: "Behold I and the children whom God hath given me are for signs and wonders..." (Isaiah 8:18). It is clear that Isaiah's words are put into the mouth of the Lord Jesus who links the announcement of His own Sonship by resurrection to the fact that by that same resurrection He has begotten us again unto a living hope. We are the children given to Him by virtue of His resurrection. And we are for signs and wonders. What does this mean? Well when the evil generation of Jews demanded a sign from the Lord Jesus, He replied: "... there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet" (Matthew 12:39). He went on to point out that this sign of Jonah was connected with death and resurrection. So the signs and wonders associated with Christ and the children whom the Father has given Him are the miracles of resurrection life. This is the experience of the spiritual Christian, he repeatedly knows the impact of death and the glory of Christ's resurrection. So it is that the Church has survived. There is no other way of accounting for the continuance of the Church through the ages than the wonder-working power of Christ's resurrection. The powers of hell and death have come like a deluge upon the Church through the centuries and have sometimes almost seemed to quench it, but it has sprung up again in greater fullness than ever before after every such time.

What is true of the Church as a whole is true in smaller ways in our individual experience. In our own hearts we sometimes become encompassed by death; we almost fear for our own faith at times, wondering if we shall survive; but we have gone on, and we are still going on. This is the marvellous outworking of "the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe" (Ephesians 1:19). It is not our endurance: it is the power of His resurrection. This is the testimony - for signs and wonders. The story is not to be read openly, but one day it will be revealed for His glory. It is now a hidden story. Everyone knows his own dark, deadly hours in the spiritual life, but he also proves the superior power of Christ's resurrection life.

Thank God that since Christ bore the bitter tasting of death for us, there is none left for us to taste. Spiritual death is the complete consciousness of what it means to be finally abandoned by God. There is no more of that for those who are in Christ; that death has been swallowed up in Him. So may the Lord give us faith to stand on that ground in the darkest hour. If we are children by resurrection, then we are for signs and wonders in Israel. However gloomy the prospect, we know that God's answer in His sons is the victory of resurrection life.

From "Toward The Mark" Jul-Aug, 1974

Resurrection, the Hallmark of Sonship - 2

"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46).

"And Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (Luke 23:46).

"God hath fulfilled the same unto our children, in that he raised up Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee" (Acts 13:33).

"Who was declared (to be) the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead; even Jesus Christ our Lord " (Rom. 1:4).

"For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee?" (Heb. 1:5).

The matter which is brought before us by these passages is more for meditation than for speaking about: it is something to dwell upon quietly and thoughtfully. I shall do little more than bring it before you with a few observations for further meditation on your part.

Going back to those passages in the Gospels, we have first of all the cry of desertion and forsakenness and the term used by our Lord at that moment was "My God, my God..." In the next passage, we come to the last cry, the final cry of the Lord on the Cross, and the term used was "Father..." When the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, among the first words that He spoke, as far as we can tell, were these: "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father: but go unto my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God (John 20:17), bringing both of these cries from the Cross together. "My Father... my God"; "your Father... your God." Therein lies a whole wealth of wonderful spiritual truth.

In the first of those two cries - "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" sonship has been suspended, it is not there; the cry is "My God." At the last cry, the battle is won; all that the former cry meant of sonship being obscured has been set aside. In perfect tranquility, peace, rest, it is now "Father"; sonship is back. Now it is "My Father and your Father, My God and your God." Both "God" and "Father" were eclipsed; but later it is "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Sonship in Resurrection in a Representative Man

There must, I think, have occurred to your minds at some time a difficulty over these passages - the passage from the second psalm, quoted in the New Testament: "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee and declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead." Probably the intellectual difficulty is this - was He not always the Son of God? What about the eternal Sonship? Was He not God's Son before the resurrection? If so, in what way is He Son in resurrection? What does it mean, "This day have I begotten thee"? These words quite evidently refer to His resurrection, and that is borne out without any question, I think, by the first and second chapters of the letter to the Hebrews. If you look at the context, there is no room for any doubt about it, that "this day" is the day of His resurrection, and on that day He was begotten and on that day He was called "Son." Where then is the difference? Was He not Son? If so, in what way is He Son in resurrection?

Let us say at once that the matter is altogether related to the first and the last Adam. The first Adam was called God's son in the genealogy - "Adam, the son of God" (Luke 3:38). There is a sense in which the first Adam was the son of God, but there is a sense in which that sonship was never fully realised - all its meaning, all its potentiality, all the Divine intention, was never known. It was sonship on probation before determination. (You notice the marginal word in Rom. 1:4 - "determined the Son of God with power"). Well, the first Adam failed, and in him the whole race lost its sonship. As we so well know, in the Cross the Lord Jesus came into that position as representative of the whole race in Adam, to meet the final consequences of that lost sonship. Those consequences were known in that eternal period of unspeakable agony when there was the awful consciousness of what it means to be abandoned by God. By nature we are out of Christ, without God and without hope in this world, but we are not aware of it fully nor of the full extent of what it involves. In that phase of the Cross, the Lord Jesus was, so to speak, projected into the full realisation of that complete consciousness of what God-forsakenness really means, that which is the terrible, terrible destiny of all deliberate and conscious rejectors - to be rejected. There He stood in a relationship to lost sonship in its full and final meaning, and suffered the consciousness of being abandoned by God.

Well, having suffered that judgment, that consequence, and having carried all the agony of it to the extent that He died not by crucifixion but by the very disrupting of His soul and the breaking of His heart (for when the soldiers came to inspect they found He was dead already, while those crucified with Him were still alive) - when that was accomplished He came to the moment, shall we say the eternal moment, of consciousness that judgment was past, it was all borne, and He could return and use again the word "Father," but now with a meaning which it never bore for man before that time; and the last word of the Cross is not "forsaken" but "Father." Sonship has come now on to a new ground of resurrection, restoration; the alienation of the race has been overcome in Christ, restoration is made for the race in Him, and so it is "Father" with which everything begins; it is "God" and "Father." "The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph. 1:3) - what a wealth that phrase holds when you look at it in the light of the Cross! It is the ground of our approach, our appeal. It is the full meaning of the triumph of His Cross over all the alienation that had come to the race with the loss of God's meaning of sonship.

Briefly then, that is the doctrine and the explanation of "This day have I begotten thee." It is a begetting, not of the eternal Son, not of Christ as God the Son; it is the begetting of the Son of man, of the last Adam, of sonship for man in Him, for us in Him; and so Peter cries, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who by the power of God are guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Pet. 1:3-5).

Sonship a Testimony Continuously Manifested

But then, for our present spiritual benefit there is this other word. While our sonship, standing in all the value of that work of the Cross and in Christ risen, is to be appropriated and entered into by faith as an act, yet for the purpose of testimony here - the testimony of Jesus: that is, the testimony as to that great truth of what He has done - it is something that has to be continuous and of continuous spiritual experience. It is accepted in an act, but it has to be borne out in a continuous process. Sonship, as you will see if you study it in the New Testament, while it relates to a beginning, is something which relates to the whole life of the believer in a practical way of expression, so that, inasmuch as it is inseparably bound up with resurrection in the case of the Lord Jesus, it is always worked out on the basis of resurrection. How is sonship declared as a testimony? How do we know sonship? Well, we say, we believe; there was a time when we believed and in believing we were made children or sons of God. "Ye are all sons of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:26). Because we believe, we have that sonship. That is very good, and of course we have always to cling tenaciously by faith to the fact that it was so, so many years ago. But do you always find that a tremendous present support? Did the Lord just mean it to be something in our past history, something that took place so many years ago? We have always to hold on to that transaction with the Lord and believe, but does it not call for a reinforcement as we go along? Is there not some place for it to be more and more confirmed? Surely that is the teaching of the Word on this matter; and so not only the origin but the experience of the believer should be that of sonship being freshly demonstrated and manifested on the same ground as its origin - that is, resurrection.

Sonship in Believers - The Power of Resurrection

What is God's confirmation of our sonship? It is that He does continually raise us from the dead. He has left us here in a setting and a background of death, we are called upon to live and to walk amidst death. This world is a tomb, which will sooner or later engulf all those outside of Christ; but here we are in this very tomb, this scene and realm of death, living; not a part of it, but living; and that is the testimony, and that is sonship. Sonship is something for manifestation. The end of this process is the full manifestation of the sons of God according to Romans 8:19. Here, in a spiritual way, the manifold wisdom of God is shown in the Church - to ourselves, to one another, and to all who have any perception (either to their salvation or to their condemnation), - and, if Paul's word to the Ephesians means anything at all, to the confounding of principalities and powers.

Now we begin at our new birth. You notice Hebrews 1 and 2 - how rich they are in this connection. "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee." Then those two chapters are set definitely in the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. "Made perfect through sufferings" (2:10); "he should taste death for every man" (2:9). Then various quotations, and amongst them the little fragment from Isaiah, "I and the children whom God hath given me" (2:13). "I will declare thy name unto my brethren" (2:12). You note the completion, of the statement in Isaiah: "Behold, I and the children whom God hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel" (Isa. 8:18). "I and the children" taken over from Isaiah, related supremely to the Lord Jesus. Christ says, "I and the children whom God hath given me." How? - in resurrection; "begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." It is the corn of wheat; "I and the children." In resurrection, we are the children of Christ, given to Him in resurrection. "I and the children whom God hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel." What signs and wonders? "An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet" (Matt. 12:39). What is that? - death and resurrection. "As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Signs and wonders - resurrection every time. What signs and wonders are you wanting to be able to give the world? If you are spiritual, any sign given will be a spiritual one, and it will be this again and again - that God raised you from the dead; and all who have spiritual intelligence are able to see that. And there are those other than men who have very much spiritual intelligence - principalities and powers are seeing signs and wonders in us in this repeated act of resurrection. There is no other way of accounting for the continuance of the Church through the ages; all the powers of hell and death have come like a deluge upon the Church through the centuries, sometimes seeming almost to quench its light, but it has sprung up again, it has broken forth again, it is greater than ever after every such time.

What is true of the Church, as a whole is true in its smaller ways in our own experience. We know in our own hearts how we sometimes become compassed by death, how we almost fear for our own faith at times wondering if we shall spiritually survive; but - marvellous testimony! -we have gone on; we do not know how, but here we are still going on; it is just that working of "the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe" (Eph. 1:19). It is not our endurance, it is the power of His resurrection. That is the testimony - "for signs and for wonders." The story is not to be read openly; it will one day be read to His glory. I mean that what you and I go through in secret in this way is not known generally to others - those dark and terrible hours and days and weeks and sometimes months when we wonder if we shall ever come out of this trough. It is a hidden story. Everyone knows his own dark, deadly hours in the spiritual life, and in other ways too. Well, we begin on resurrection, we go on on resurrection, and we shall end on resurrection - that is the testimony.

Why? Oh, for this reason. When God forsook His Son, that was the final forsaking of man IN CHRIST, - no more forsaking, no more tasting of death for those who are IN CHRIST. Spiritual death is the complete consciousness of what it means to be finally abandoned by God. He tasted that for every man; there is no more of that for those who are in Christ; that death has been swallowed up in Him. So we go on on the ground of that, the ground of tremendous promise. The Lord give us strength to stand on that ground in the darkest and most deadly hour. If we are children of Christ by resurrection, we are for signs and wonders in Israel. Let us believe that for ourselves and for those for whom we have responsibility here. The situation may seem very grim, but it is an opportunity for the signs and wonders of resurrection.

From "This Ministry" Messages given at Honor Oak - Volume 3.

The Sentence of Death

"Yea, we ourselves have had the sentence of death within ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves but in God, which raiseth the dead.... Always bearing about in the body the deadness of Jesus that the Life also of Jesus may be manifest in our mortal body" (2 Corinthians 1:9, 4:10).

"The sentence of death in ourselves" - That is the very basis of everything in real spiritual fruitfulness and effectiveness. Of course, here Paul is undoubtedly speaking in the first place about something very serious which had overtaken him... something which had come in the way of a terrible affliction, and he said he despaired of life and had the very sentence of death in himself so that there was no hope whatever for him from any human standpoint - there was no hope according to all human judgments and verdicts. He ought to have died - the very sentence of death was in him - and I do like the way he puts it, it is so richly significant: he uses just the little word THAT, which gives an entirely different complexion to the whole situation. He might have put it: "We had the sentence of death in ourselves and we cannot trust in ourselves"; but he did not put it like that. Of course, that would be quite logical to say, "We had the sentence of death - it was there; and that being the case, we were no good for anything at all, and there was no hope whatever, and therefore we cannot trust ourselves."

But he did not put it that way. "We had the sentence of death in ourselves THAT...." There is purpose in it - there is an object in it - there is something in it as a basic and fundamental principle. He realized that it was not the end but the beginning, with a design that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raiseth the dead... so that the sentence of death was not the end but the beginning of everything. There was a real purpose in this thing.

If you take up the Holy Spirit's teaching in the New Testament, you will find that this has become the foundational principle of all Divine activities and operations: the sentence of death passed upon us and registered in us and working out in us, and all the time another thing doing the work of God, triumphing over this sentence of death in us - this other thing which is in us, working through us, giving us ascendancy over death in Christ, so that the wonderful things of God are manifest by us when there is no accountableness for them in us. The Lord has swept away with one stroke the whole basis of our trust in ourselves - has wiped out forever any hope in ourselves - not to destroy us, not to make everything impossible - but THAT He who raiseth the dead might show the mighty works by this Resurrection Life which is fruitful in us.

Have you noticed... that even Herod, "that old fox," when it was reported to him that the Lord Jesus was doing His many mighty works, said, "This is John the Baptist, risen from the dead; therefore these mighty works are shown"? Risen from the dead - mighty works! How he got that inkling I don't know, but there is this principle in it, that resurrection from the dead implies mighty works - works mightier than those before death.

This is the principle all the way through the Word, that on the ground of a Life wrought in us through the cross by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God is able to achieve and accomplish His supreme purpose. But in order to do it, the sentence of death must be planted right at the center of our old life to rule it out, so that where we despair of life in ourselves and have no trust in ourselves, we know we cannot of ourselves accomplish anything, there is the mighty Life of God for everything - this that is "Christ in you," the Life of God, the hope of glory.

Now this is only the beginning of things, the basis: if you are going to be effective in the realm where the prince, the Lord of Death holds sway, you cannot be effective by the means and resources in which he has got a stronghold; and he has that in all the resources of our natural life, however fine and splendid they may be from the natural standpoint. The only thing that can be effective in that realm is the Life whereby Jesus conquered death. In order that that Life might have full sway and free course, and the utmost and fullest fruitfulness of that Life as triumphant over death might abound, all that in which the enemy has any hold whatsoever - our natural life - has got to be put out. We must have no trust in ourselves for this work.

Now that immediately defines and delimits the measure of spiritual effectiveness. It is the measure of His Life coming through by the sentence of death being in ourselves.... In all oppositions, adversity, trial, affliction, Paul sees a great advantage for the Life of God - that this "death" is complementary really to the purpose of God - that it is aiding the purpose of God. Paul always looked upon things in that way. He saw that those things which might be reckoned impossible of fruitfulness to God were essential to make that fruitfulness possible. Death itself is not the end of all things, but is the beginning of things where God is concerned.

Now, beloved, we are right up against this whole situation... of dealing with the system of spiritual evil and spiritual death. We have often said of late that we have passed, and are passing more completely, out of the era and time of certain orders of Christian work. I think it is recognized by most spiritually-minded people that the old forms of Christian enterprise - organized religious activity - are breaking down, are failing everywhere. It seems that the thing has been rejected and cannot meet the need.

We have passed into a new time, a new phase which we believe to be that culminating phase in the age when we shall come more directly into conflict with the forces of darkness - with the power of Satan. The Church has been meeting him for a long time through things, and now it is going to meet him face to face; and that is the time and condition into which we are moving now. We are finding that means and old forms and institutions and organizations cannot meet the more direct encounter with the enemy. We are being forced to recognize the need of something more, and that something more is simply the naked Life of God as manifested in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ coming into tremendous contact with the whole system of death and of darkness. That is our position.

Now the movement is to be along this line where the Life of God, unmixed with the resources of men - with human machinery and human drive and human enterprise - the very Life of God has got to be directly, immediately, nakedly manifest in the Church for the last phase of the battle unto the ultimate triumph.

In order that this might be so, there must be this tremendous emphasis of God upon the need for the wiping out of all that which stands in the way of a pure and clear manifestation of His Life, and of the intermingling of those things in which there is death (that is, the natural life of man). All that intermingling has got to be removed, and God is coming to the time - has come to the time - when He is going to have very close accounts with His people, so that you cannot touch the earth, you cannot touch the flesh, you cannot touch the world, you cannot touch anything in which death is, without at once having a check and an arrest put upon your spiritual effectiveness; you have to stand absolutely clear.

Beloved, the principle of Life in your spirit is to be the guiding principle of all your service in the Lord Jesus Christ. I do not mean Life in your surroundings. The Lord may take you to a place where death reigns, but if death reigns in you, you may as well give up the whole thing at once. You may be there, and the Life of God may be in you to meet that situation - to triumph over it; but mark you, if you begin to touch what you call pieces of work for God and there is no Life in your spirit - the thing is dead in your spirit - you have no right there until you get in your spirit the Life of God relative to that thing. Don't touch it, or you will be found in dead works, trying to do something where there is no vital principle at all.

Now note: it is all very well to have a broad view and say, Yes, but the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Life, has come into the world - where death is - in order to save the world; and that Life can be taken as the broad basis upon which we should enter upon any work for the Lord that seems to offer itself or is presented to us.

But that is no criterion. There was a time when the Lord Jesus recognized in His spirit that the living purpose of God was arrested with regard to certain situations, and He had no Life witness there... and He came out.

We believe that that was so in the case of Israel as a nation. He gathered the whole situation up in the incident of the fig tree. Israel was ministered to - witnessed to - for a long time, but the moment came when the curse of God had to fall upon it (what is the curse of God? It is death). From that moment He was cut off from Israel; He had no ministry to Israel as such. He recognized in His spirit that there was death there, and it was no use being sentimental about poor Israel - no use trying to act upon a basis of human sympathy and compassion and having imaginations and mental pictures of what could be done and what might be done; that was an end.

I am only using this by way of illustration, for spiritual effectiveness demands that we should have the witness of LIFE in our spirit. A lot of people hold on and continue in certain realms, certain spheres, certain companies, certain connections; and they are there merely from the standpoint of natural reasoning and argument, sentimentally, traditionally, or somehow thinking that, by staying in, something is going to be done; while in their spirit they know the thing is dead, and they have no Life there.

May that not be the Lord's witness to them that they should serve Him where they have Life - where the witness of Life is in them, and a spirit of promise? If all around is dead but they have Life in themselves, it is all right; but if all around is dead and they have no Life in their ministry, surely something is wrong - the door is closed. It is important that for spiritual effectiveness up to the hilt, the witness of Life in us should be borne.

Of course, we have swept aside in ourselves that which might bring the death - we have stood by the cross and seen that the sentence of death must be in ourselves as such in order to make the Life possible; but if that has been dealt with and we have the sentence of death - we no longer trust in ourselves but put our faith in Him who raiseth the dead, then we have the right to claim and receive the witness of Resurrection Life in ourselves for ministry as the Lord appoints. And the day in which the Lord brings death upon one's spirit in any sphere or kind of ministry, that is the day when one will begin to look to see where the Lord is going to bear the witness of Life for ministry. Now that is important.

I do not know why the Lord should give one such emphasis upon this, but it is no use your going on to do God's work when you have death in your spirit. Nothing will come of it; drop it; and ask the Lord to bring you into a place where you can in your spirit bear witness by Life - the Life whereby Jesus conquered death - to meet the situation as it is around you.

Oh, that God's people had discernment, spiritual discernment! The one cry in our spirit is that His people might be more discerning - be able to discern in their spirit where Life is and where death is. You know how frequently we have tried to do a thing for the Lord - to do a thing with the best motive for the Lord - and inside there has been death. Dead! And yet we have tried to do it - to force it - and there is nothing but waste of energy and waste of time. We have got to get on to the thing that God is doing, for only in this can we have the witness of Life that it is the thing of God and that we shall get through. In order that He might be able to consummate His purpose - gather up His plan and bring it to a mighty, victorious issue in the coming of the Lord, our need is to have Life more abundant... and the spiritual discernment by Life to know where Life is and where death is. You may be doing what you call the work of God and have death in your Spirit; and that very doing of what you call the work of God - because there is death in your spirit - is antagonistic to the purpose of God. You may have Life in your Spirit and death all around, but the fact that you have the witness of Life is both the key and the assurance that something is to be accomplished.

I believe, beloved, that we dare not do a thing unless we have definite witness in our spirit that it is the thing of God to be done through us.... Is God in this; is God in that; has God undertaken it? The answer to that question in your spirit will not be an audible voice; it must ever be the liberty and the freedom and the uprising of His Life in you that gives you a clear way through in your spirit.

The Lord teach us how to be led thus in our spirit by the Holy Spirit that He may bring us to the place where the maximum of spiritual effectiveness is attained. In order that it may be so, we must have "the sentence of death in our selves (our flesh), that we should not trust in ourselves" always bearing "the deadness of the Lord Jesus, that His Life might be manifested."

God only works now on resurrection ground - by Resurrection Life - and this life in us is the basis of the Holy Spirit's operation in revelation and service.

The law of the Spirit is Life (Romans 8:2).

Taking Heavenly Ground

In our Editorials we have referred much to the tragedy of spiritual conditions, particularly to the divided state of Christians. It is a matter which no one really concerned for God's glory can easily set aside, or fail to have as a constant burden. Reflection upon this whole matter leads to the prayerful desire to be able to do something toward what the Bible calls 'healing the hurt of My people'. This can be carried little or no further than an appeal, but in so far as this small instrumentality can affect the Lord's people, we venture to make such an appeal. As we see it, there are only two grounds of hope in this direction, but if they were taken we are certain that a wholly new and fruitful situation would arise.

The first part of the appeal, therefore, is that the people of God, and particularly those in responsibility among them, shall -

Take Heavenly Ground

The best illustration of what this means is presented to us in considerable fulness in the New Testament, and particularly in Paul's letters. We can narrow these down to two - 'Corinthians' and 'Ephesians'. One is the earthly; the other is the heavenly.

What is meant by the earthly is clear in 1 Corinthians, especially - for our present point - in the early part. Implying that it is wrong for supposedly spiritual people to be or to act so, the Apostle uses the words: "Are ye not men?" (3:4). This clearly means, as the context shows, that spiritual and heavenly people are not allowed to proceed as the rest of men do. The immediate connection (although it applies to all the other things) is that of divisions, and circles, bearing particular names and taking the character of natural preferences. This might be temperamental, doctrinal, emotional, intellectual, or 'spiritual'(?). Whatever the causes or occasions, Paul says this behaviour is "natural" and "carnal" - it is acting as "men". In a word, it is earthly. At best, he says, it is childish, or 'babyish'; it does not signify any spiritual stature. Looking at Christianity today by this standard, we cannot fail to be painfully impressed with how little the Church has grown up.

But that is the negative side. When we turn to 'Ephesians', we find ourselves in the presence, not only of the oft-repeated words, "the heavenlies", but of the realities and characteristics of that realm. Here is the "one body". Here is the "unity of the Spirit". Here is heavenly wealth, walk, warfare. Here is relatedness and inter-relatedness. The Apostle - nay, the Holy Spirit - has no restraint in giving out of the fulness, that it may lead again to the fulness of Christ. Here are the measureless dimensions of eternal thoughts, counsels, purpose, and love. Here is ascendency over disappointment, frustration, discouragement, and earthly limitations. Here is grace transcendent and triumphant. Yes, truly we are on heavenly ground here, while all those things are bitterly true down below. To be "seated together with him (Christ) in the heavenlies" is no mere ideal, fantasy, illusion, beautiful concept, or sublime teaching; it is real because of the literal counter-realities to which it is set in contrast.

This is as much the work of grace, to be apprehended by faith, as is our initial justification.

Would that the Church - believers, and their leaders - could first see it, in the way in which the prayers in this letter show that it should be seen: could then, by faith, take it: and henceforth positively and resolutely refuse to come down on to the earthly ground of Corinthian divisions, strife, pettiness, and nature!

But what is the way thither? How can it be?

This leads to the second part of our appeal: it is to -

Take the Ground of the Cross

The Corinthians knew about the Cross. They were "in Christ", and there is no way into Christ but that of the Cross. Yes, but even so, the Apostle said that in visiting them it was his considered, resolute, and premeditated determination that he would 'know nothing among them, save Christ, and him crucified' (2:2). There was a knowledge of the Cross which either they did not possess, or else they were violating. In 'Ephesians', the death and resurrection 'togetherness' with Christ is foundational to all that fulness of heavenly position. In Corinth, the value of the Cross was in what it meant for them, rather than what it meant in them. There is undoubtedly a difference in these aspects, both as to position and as to results. The fuller aspect may have a deeper application to the natural life - but, again, both in one are presented to us for our apprehending by faith.

The Cross not only deals with our sins and our condemnation: it deals with all our earthliness, our natural ground, which is so fruitful in those works which bring dishonour to our Lord. We are especially thinking of this spirit which produces or ferments jealousies, rivalries, contentions, criticisms, and all that is not love.

If we would take heavenly ground and the ground of the Cross, the Holy Spirit would be able to cause the things which really do not matter to fade from their importance, and to give the Lord's people a loving concern for all who are His, just because they are His, and not 'ours' in any earthly way.

First published as an Editorial in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Nov-Dec 1956, Vol 34-6

The Testimony of the Blood

"And the Lord said to the serpent... I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: He shall bruise thy head..." (Genesis 3:15).

"... the old serpent... and they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they loved not their life even unto death" (Revelation 12:9,11).

The Testimony of Jesus is first mentioned in the Scripture by the Lord Himself in the above words (Genesis 3:15). It is all gathered up in that one clause: "He shall bruise thy head". The two things combine in that clause: "He", the Person, and "shall bruise thy head", the work; and that with a certain special significance: "thy head", which is 'thy dominion, thy government, thy sovereignty, thy crown'. Then we have the Cross introduced immediately as the scene and centre of the establishing fully and finally in Him of this Testimony, the central element of the Cross being the Blood of the Lord Jesus. The Blood; that is the central factor in the Testimony of Jesus - the Blood of the Lord Jesus. I want to remind you of the inclusiveness of the Blood of the Lord Jesus, that in the first place it has to do with sin. It is immediately related in that passage in Genesis to what had taken place and to what had entered into the world. Sin, and sin in all its aspects; sin as transgression, overstepping the mark; sin as lawlessness, revolt against God; sin as shortcoming, coming short of the Glory of God; sin in every form in every way. The Blood of the Lord Jesus has to do with sin in the meeting of it, the destroying of it, and ultimately in the wiping of it from the universe. The Blood of Jesus Christ is directed against sin.

Then, in the second place, it is related to all that is meant by that symbolic word: "the flesh". And the flesh here does not mean merely the principle of sin, but it means the kind of person man is when he has fallen into sin. That is, the fallen race, the species which came into existence when sin entered in - an entirely different type of being from that intended by God. "He is become flesh" (Genesis 6:3). The Blood of Jesus Christ has to do, not only with the sin as the principle and the law of the fallen race, but with the race itself; not only to wipe sin from the universe, but to wipe that race from the universe; to put away that kind and type of man and make possible and secure a new creation, a man, not after the flesh type, but the Man after the Spirit type, such as Christ in resurrection.

The Blood, in the third place, is related to the consequences immediately following upon sin and the race becoming what it did when sin entered. That is death. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." "And," says the Spirit through Paul "as by one man's disobedience... death passed upon all for that all have sinned", and death is the universal and immediate consequence upon sin and the sentence concerning the race. Death in all its range and depth; death in every realm, spirit, soul and body. The Blood testifies concerning death and has a work to do in that realm.

Then, in the fourth place, the Blood of Jesus Christ not only deals with the consequence and the fruit, but with the cause and the root, and Satan himself is involved in this mighty issue in the Blood of Jesus Christ. He is taken up in the Testimony of Jesus, and taken up in two capacities:

Firstly, he is taken up as "the prince of this world" - "The prince of this world cometh"; "Now shall the prince of this world be cast out".

Secondly, to Satan as "him that had the power of death, that is the devil". It is not only the death, but him that had the power of death, and the word "power" there is neither the familiar word: "dunamis" - force, nor: "exousia" - authority, but it is the other word: "kratos", which means 'to hold'. It is the grip of death; the one who holds in his hands death, the one who has the hold of death; and in that connection the Blood speaks concerning him, that through death - and the Lord Jesus getting for a moment into the hold, the grip of death - He should destroy him that had the hold of death, that is the devil.

So the Blood deals with him in both those capacities. That is the Testimony of Jesus as in the Blood of the Lord Jesus.

THE ISSUE IS THAT OF LIFE AND DEATH

Now we see that the main issue in the Testimony of Jesus, in and through and by His Blood, is the issue of life and death, or death and life. That is the main issue. Oh, do follow me closely, for you will see in a moment some of the great content of this thing. The main issue in the Testimony of Jesus as by the Blood of Jesus is the issue of LIFE AND DEATH. If the Lord's people recognized that enough, they would have their ground set and fixed, they would know exactly what their business is in the world, and they would have a full explanation of all that which they meet in the spiritual realm when they become related to the Testimony of Jesus. IT IS THE ISSUE OF LIFE AND DEATH. It is not only of sin and sanctification, and it is not only the issue of an old man and a new man, but in all that, and over all that, and around all that is the far bigger issue, the issue of life and death. And until this main issue is recognized the whole question of sin, and of the new man, and the new race, and the bringing in of the new creation, and of the escape of men and women from the power of Satan unto God could never be. You will be held up until you recognize the main issue. Where does the whole question of sanctification begin? Where does the whole question of a new creation begin? Where does the whole question of the emancipation of souls from the grip of Satan begin? It all begins at the place where the power of death is met. It is not sins with which you and I are contending, nor merely with the old creation. We can be locked up and bound and tied by the absorption and obsession with our old man and never get anywhere. We can be locked up and tied hand and foot with all kinds of truth and teaching about sanctification, the question of sins or sin specifically, and get nowhere because we are not recognizing the main issue. The main issue is death, the power of death, and we have got to come to that central issue of the Blood of the Lord Jesus - the question of life and death. That is the Cross at its heart. Unless the Lord had settled that issue once and for all in His Blood in the Cross then all other matters would have failed entirely and there would have been no complete Gospel.

Then, that being the Cross and the content of the Cross, we see what the Testimony of Jesus is in essence. It is the Testimony to life, making possible a new creation. That Testimony, when it really is recognized at its centre, is a Testimony concerning life which is brought into being upon the basis of death being destroyed, death having its power broken, and him that had the power of death being nullified. When that Testimony comes into being, and it is recognized, and anyone enters into that Testimony and makes that their testimony, what happens? Immediately the murderer is brought out.

THE ENEMY OF LIFE COMES OUT

He who, as the Lord Himself said, was a "murderer from the beginning", always has acted in that capacity towards any who were called into the Testimony of Jesus, whether in the Old Testament or in the New.

Abel was the first to take up the Testimony in history. What was Abel's testimony? The Blood! Whether Abel understood all the content of that symbolic thing or not is not our concern for the moment, but God understood what it meant. He had established it, and it was His way through all history. That fragment in the Hebrew Letter has governed all sacrifice in the mind of God: "without shedding of blood there is no remission". The Blood was the key from the first movement of sin in this world in the mind of God, and Abel himself stepped into that Testimony of the Blood with all its significance concerning sin, death, the race, and him that had the power of death - and immediately the murderer came out and Abel was murdered, not by Cain, but through Cain; and so it has always been! When later Abram set up his altar and divided his sacrifice, the conflict commenced. You read about it in Genesis 15. The vultures descending, the beating off until the sun went down, the horror of great darkness - and then the coming through of the Lord. What is it linked with? It is linked with the revelation of the Lamb and the Blood of the Lamb by which his seed, after four hundred years in Egyptian bondage, was going to be emancipated. The Lord gave him the revelation of His method in the earth. What was that for? To get a people who should be in the nations apart from the nations, for the Testimony of Jehovah. Israel was to be God's corporate testimony in the earth, amongst the nations, and be constituted and sustained upon a principle of blood, the shed Blood. And when the Lord would come forth to reveal the nature of the Testimony in the earth as corporate in His people, Abram meets the impact of the horror of great darkness, and there is set up in the very atmosphere a state of conflict. You carry it on in the case of Moses himself: the conflict in Egypt, and the continual conflict through his life.

This is the explanation of the attack upon Elijah, when he had erected his altar and stood for the maintenance of the Testimony of the Lord in Israel. When he stood on Carmel for that Testimony by his altar, and that Testimony had been established and vindicated against the false prophets, nay, against all that produced the false prophets and their system - the power behind - THEN JEZEBEL THREATENS HIS LIFE. Satan anticipated Moses by the slaughter of all the innocents to get one, as he anticipated Calvary in the Lord Jesus by the slaughter of the innocents to get One. And here, in the case of Elijah, because he is standing for the Testimony in Israel, the best and most suited instrument to Satan, Jezebel, is taken up, and Elijah's life is threatened. This is the key to all those murderous attempts in the Old Testament upon individuals and upon companies of the Lord's people. It is the explanation of the Book of Esther, when Haman would have all the Jews massacred. Why? Because they were God's instruments in the earth. The devil is against the Testimony in that people; they are the target because they are the testimony. Stand in this true Testimony of the Lord Jesus, in the power of the Holy Ghost and not in the theory of the thing; stand in it truly, and as sure as anything is certain the enemy of life will come out, and that is the explanation of all your experience in the work of God, and in your own personal life, in body mind and spirit. I am saying one of the most tremendous and solemn, and yet one of the truest things when I say this.

THE TESTIMONY OF LIFE TRIUMPHANT OVER DEATH

Now we take up the whole thing when we take up a part, because there is no part. You are in it or you are out of it, and you cannot have a bit of it. Immediately, by faith and in the Holy Spirit, you become really, vitally related to the Testimony of Jesus, you are in that great issue, that supreme issue of the Blood - the conflict between life and death, death and life. You are in it, and in that realm there is only one thing, and that is

THE WARRING FAITH OF THE SON OF GOD

There can be no passivity nor generalities in that realm. You cannot afford to take recreation in that realm. The praying has to be fighting prayer, and, oh, there is need for a revival of fighting prayer! The ceasing to say prayers, pray prayers, to take these jaunts in prayer all over the place, and come right to the mighty issues and battle through in the Name of the Lord. There needs to come more real fighting prayer into the Lord's people. You ask the Lord to give you the warring faith of the Son of God in prayer! It means that there has to be a very strong stand taken in that warring faith, and a refusal to be diverted by circumstances and appearances. Is the Testimony to you something which, if it were taken away and you have nothing left, you go with it, or is it something you have taken on and that you can change as you change your clothes? Will you be stripped of everything if that Testimony of the Lord Jesus is taken from you? If it is like that, you will say: 'Well, there is one thing which for me is a matter of life or death, and that is the Testimony in which I stand, the Testimony of the Lord Jesus.'

"And they overcame him because of the Blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death." Does that sound like a contradiction? "Unto the death." Abel was killed. But "they" are not dead, and Abel is not dead. Paul, like Jesus, was slain. But they live in "the power of an endless life" because Jesus has conquered death and "him that had the hold on death". By His Cross and by His Blood He conquered!

From "A Witness and a Testimony" May-June, 1969

What is True Unity of the Spirit?

This unity is that which is resultant from the indwelling and dominating control of the Holy Spirit. The illustration is that of the head and the body. Every limb or member or faculty of the body is controlled by the nerve system, and this nerve system works from and to the head, where it has its base.

In the Body of Christ, the Holy Spirit is the great nerve system, and only as there is an immediate response to every intimation of the will of the Head, and the life is unbrokenly in correspondence with His mind, can there be the unity of which the New Testament speaks.

Three things must be clearly noticed. (1) We cannot "keep" what does not exist. The admonition presupposes our having received the Holy Spirit into our lives in a vital way, and having surrendered ourselves entirely to His control and direction. (2) We cannot create this unity. It is essentially spiritual. Creeds, organizations, the social spirit, compromise on matters of interpretation, can never achieve it. (3) There is the paradox of unity. "Peace" in the Scriptures means harmony. But while Christ is called "the Prince of Peace," and while that harmony has been created in many lives and spheres where He has been enthroned, He clearly said that one result of His coming would be, not peace, but the sword.

It is clear that, wherever His Cross has been fully presented, there has been trouble and upheaval. All the things against which His Cross stands have at once created a state of war. The world and the flesh, in all their forms and expressions, make spiritual unity impossible, and to the extent that Christians are influenced in their judgments, their standards of reckoning, their conceptions, as well as their methods and means and motives, by the world spirit or the "Adam" nature, true spiritual unity is so far impossible.

The fuller the presentation of the Cross, the greater the arousing of the fallen nature elements, and therefore, on the one hand the greater the peril and possibility of discord, and on the other hand, the call for a more complete capitulation to the life of the Spirit as against the life in the flesh.

This work of separating will be carried out in ourselves personally, in our homes, in our local churches and in Christendom at large. On the basis of "flesh and spirit," the "house divided against itself" will fall.

True unity has its birth at Calvary, where the world, the flesh - with the devil working through both to maintain his discord in the universe - were dealt with and for ever ruled out of the New Creation.

It is this unity, which Calvary creates, which is the call for our diligence for its maintenance. This diligence must take the form of an earnest watch on the part of every member of Christ's Body against discordant elements, and a stolid refusal to be disaffected towards another member by anything short of a positive and persistent resistance of the purposes of Calvary.

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, March-April 1946, Vol 24-2