The Bible and the Revelation of God in Christ

by T. Austin-Sparks

From unpublished manuscripts supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.

Contents

Chapter 1 - "The True God and Eternal Life"

Chapter 2 - Christ Our Life

Chapter 3 - Christ and the Issue of Life and Death

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Chapter 1 - "The True God and Eternal Life"

"Life Because of Righteousness"

"And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that has the Son has the life; he that has not the Son of God has not the life. These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God" (1 John 5:11-13).

"And we know that the Son of God is come, and has given us an understanding, that we know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life" (1 John 5:20).

"For if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; much more shall they that receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, even Jesus Christ. So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life" (Rom. 5:17-18).

"That, as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 5:21).

"And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness" (Rom. 8:10).

If we are seeking for a master key with which to unlock the Bible, we can find it in one word - Life, the great issue of all the ages; and we can say that the Bible is altogether occupied with this. The Bible, from beginning to end, is concerned with this matter of Life as over against death. These two things, Life and death, are set forth, as we know, in relation to two persons: Christ the Life, and Satan and death.

We have said that the Bible from beginning to end is occupied with this question of Life, and you will immediately call to mind that the Bible opens and closes with the Tree of Life. You know that in Gen. 2:8-9 the statement is made - "God planted a garden... the tree of life also in the midst of the garden". And you know that the second verse of the last chapter of the book of the Revelation says, "In the midst of the street thereof" (that is, of the city), "and on this side of the river and on that was the tree of life".

But what we want to recognize and fully understand is that this tree represents a Life of a peculiar and unique kind. In Genesis 3 man was already alive, but there is represented a Life available to him which he did not possess. That Life, as symbolised by the tree, was eventually shut off from him, or he was shut off from it, showing that there was a Life which a man who was in a sense alive, did not possess. That unique and peculiar Life is known to us in the Scriptures as "eternal life".

But again let us be quite clear that it does not mean just duration of life. It is a kind of life. I think many Christians have failed to discriminate between duration, extent of life, and immortality. Immortality is a kind of life that goes on and it is that immortal life, not just the continuation of life, not just an interminable life, but that peculiar specific immortal life which is the great subject of the Bible, the great quest of man, and the great purpose of God. So it is in relation to this Divine Life and God's purpose for man to have it that the whole battle of the ages is waged between heaven and hell; and man is at the centre - the object and the occasion of it all.

Having said that, we can come now to the Scriptures and to this incomplete and imperfect summary and outline which is before you. Again may I say that a great mass of detail will have to be ignored and left out.

This is the second message [first message is missing] and what is before you is only a part of the Pentateuch. There is all the rest of the Bible! So it is quite clear that we have to do our best to say all that we can say, and leave the rest.

(1) The Probation of Life

Well now, coming to this outline; it is not my intention to stay to say anything about a number of initial points. We begin with the probation of life under which we see man: Man conceived, Man created, Man conditioned, Man corrupted.

1. Man Conceived

Just a word about the first of those four things. There are several Scriptures which take us back to God's thoughts before ever He engaged in creation. For instance we have this:-

"Whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son" (Rom. 8:29).

"Having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself" (Eph.1:5).

"Having been foreordained according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His will" (Eph. 1:11).

"Who called us with a holy calling... according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal" (2 Tim. 1:9).

Such passages take us back into the thoughts and counsels of God before the world was, and there in those thoughts and counsels we find man conceived.

2. Man Created

And out of the conception of man came the creation, and just as the conceiving, according to those Scriptures, was all in Christ - for everyone states emphatically that it was all in Christ, this foreordaining, this calling - in the same way the creating was in Christ.

"Who created all things by Christ Jesus" (Eph. 3:9).

"For in Him were all things created... all things have been created through Him, and unto Him" (Col. 1:16).

3. Man Conditioned

Conditioned, placed on probation, put into a conditional position with a great 'if' governing that position. If, on the one hand, you take a certain course, the result will be such and such. If you take the other course, the consequences will be such and such. Man conditioned - and the thing which was governing was this whole question of Divine Life. Along one line that Divine Life would be inherited; along the opposite line it would be missed and forfeited.

4. Man Corrupted

Then, finally, man corrupted. How much there is there which ought to hold us for a while as to the nature, the method of the corrupting. But not one of us needs to stay for any argument as to whether man has been corrupted. Some people do argue to the contrary - his fall was a fall upward! But need we stay to discuss it? The horror of that fall, of that corrupting, is more glaring today than ever it has been. Ask any medical man whether he is giving his life to correcting something that has gone wrong or to building up something that is basically right. The answer must be that it is repairing a breakdown which is coming in because things have gone wrong, and what is true physically, is true morally and spiritually.

(2) The Life Missed

1. Unbelief

Man corrupted - and because man chose, exercised his own power of choice in the wrong direction against God, that Life which was God's intention for him was missed and forfeited. Missed firstly because of unbelief, and that was a heart matter, not just a head matter. Many people say they cannot believe because of certain arguments and reasonings. The trouble is much deeper than that. You know that whenever in the Word of God belief is under consideration, it is never related to the head. It is always related to the heart. "If thou... shalt believe in thine heart" (Rom. 10:9) - that is the Word of God, and we get over a very great deal of our difficulty when our heart is in the right direction - that is, if we want to. And that goes right to the very centre of this trouble with Adam. It was not just that Satan propounded a theory which upset the balance of his mind, but it presented something that appealed to his heart and he allowed his heart to go after that. God's trouble all the way through with man has been that his heart went astray, his heart went wrong, and unbelief is a matter of heart desire, heart disposition, heart direction. It is strange how people can believe anything that they want to believe. Is that not true? If they want to believe it, they will believe, it does not matter what it is. It may be the greatest absurdity and the darkest untruth, but if they want to believe it, they will believe it. If you do not want to believe a thing, no one will make you believe. It was man's heart that went wrong and unbelief is always there.

Now, every point that we are making is of greater consequence than itself as being something in itself. You will see that there is a correspondence between the one side and the other in this outline. It was not my intention to pass over to the other side yet, but just by way of illustration and to help you to get further with these things than just as something in themselves. When you come to the matter of the Lord Jesus Himself, the last Adam triumphing where the first Adam failed, then you find that His faith was triumphant, mighty, death-conquering, Satan-conquering faith. It was that faith because His heart was in the right direction. Look at the state of His heart through His life; His heart God-ward. He wanted, He desired, He loved, He delighted... His whole heart was towards His Father, towards God, and that was more than nine-tenths of the battle. And Satan's point of attack upon Christ was always to try and present something that appealed to His desire, His feelings: "Make these stones bread" (Matt. 4:3). "Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall never be unto thee" (Matt. 16:22), this going to the cross and dying. "Come down from the cross, and we will believe" (Matt. 27:42). All these things are something to be desired, but His desire was more mighty towards God and God's will than towards any personal interest and gratification and that saved Him from unbelief. Love for God will get us out of many of our problems.

2. Disobedience, Unrighteousness, Death

Unbelief, of course, leads at once to disobedience, and the two are always kept together in the Word of God, it is the disobedience of unbelief just as it is the obedience of faith; but from the heart the movement is immediately to the will. Disobedience is a matter of the will as unbelief is a matter of the heart, resulting in a state of unrighteousness, and we want to be very clear about this, that the Word of God does not teach that there is unrighteousness in us; what the Word of God teaches is that we are unrighteousness. The utter position is this to which the New Testament brings us, that Christ was made sin in our stead, in our place, made sin that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21). It does not say that Christ took our sin as something apart from ourselves. It says He took us as sin and included us in Himself at that moment as our sin; we are made His righteousness. Let us get right hold of this. It is one of the most helpful saving realities if it comes to our hearts with sufficient force. Martin Luther had an utter way of putting this and he had reason for doing so. He said, "Oh Christ, Thou art my sin and I am Thy righteousness; I am Thy curse, and Thou art my blessing; I am Thy death, and Thou art my life." See how utter that is, and it is true. We are all unrighteousness. It is not just something unrighteous in us or about us. We are that. That is our condition, position, and state, and the resultant penalty is death through sin because of unrighteousness.

(3) The Life Reserved

1. The Living Ones

Thirdly, the Life reserved. Here we again bring in the cherubim of which we were speaking at some considerable length last week, known to us in the Scriptures as the living ones; not the living beasts, the living creatures, but correctly, the 'living ones'. I underscore that first word - the living ones. In the original language it is the one little plural word zoa. Zoe is that particular peculiar Life called 'eternal life'. Zoa is just the plural - livings; but as that does not convey very much to us, you have to add another word to define it - living ones, the ones that live, and that brings us right into touch with this whole matter of Life.

The cherubim are mentioned some hundred times in the Bible. It may surprise you. I mention that because they have such a large place and therefore they must carry some very great significance. But note their connection. They first appear at the Fall. It is when man has sinned and become unrighteousness that the cherubim appear for the first time unannounced, unexplained. The simple statement is made that they are made to dwell at the gate to guard the way of the Tree of Life (Gen. 3:24). That is the first mention.

Where is the last? Where do they disappear? Where do we lose track of them? You open the book of the Revelation, and they disappear from view with the marriage supper of the Lamb. They are at the marriage supper of the Lamb and they are joining in the song, the song of creation, the song of redemption. With the Fall, sin coming in and its consequences, they appear. With the consummation, the marriage of the Lamb, the redemptive work is finished. What does it signify? Well, look at every connection between the two.

You will find them coming in in the book of Exodus in connection with the tabernacle. You will find them in two places there. You will find them at the mercy seat where the blood is sprinkled for atonement, and you will find them wrought upon the veil between the holy place and the most holy place, that sacred veil through which even the High Priest Himself can only pass once a year and then with the strictest provision to safeguard him from death, always governed by this fragment - "lest he die". You see the relationship. There is the blood upon the mercy seat right inside the presence of God, and it is a question of coming into the presence of God without dying; living! Come through that veil in virtue of the blood, the shed blood, and you live.

Now all I am going to say about that for the moment is this point, that the cherubim in both those connections have to do with Life conquering death, Life dealing with all the cause of death and overcoming death and bringing Life and immortality to light, dwelling amidst everlasting burnings without hurt. They are the custodians of Life.

You pass to the historical books and you find them everywhere in Solomon's temple, two great cherubim over the mercy seat, immense, fourteen feet high and with wings fourteen feet in length, so great that they could not build the wall of partition until they had been put inside. No opening would have been big enough, they are so dominating, and you find them everywhere in that temple. It is another aspect of things. We are in the Pentateuch. We have not got to the historical books and the specific significance of that part of Scripture, but there again it is all a question of life. Solomon's temple is a scene of Life. It is the great matter of reigning in Life because you have now come to the kingly section of the Bible. They govern the whole matter of reigning in Life.

You pass on to the prophetical section, and you know how much they are in view with Ezekiel. In the first chapter and in the tenth they are very much in evidence, and again it is all in view of life. It is a scene of death, the glory has removed from Jerusalem and gone away. Everything around and among the Lord's people is in a state of death, and in the midst of that scene of death the cherubim are introduced again, and are given a large place. So Ezekiel is called the prophet of hope. Life is going to triumph over death. You will not get through Ezekiel's prophecies before you come upon that great vision of the valley of dry bones; the resurrection, the Life. That is the hope, but the cherubim govern this whole question again.

Well, we see that they are there in connection with redemption in all its aspects, from judgment to glory. They are connected with the Tree of Life, with the fire of the Shekinah glory in the sanctuary, with the throne in Isaiah 6, with the mercy seat and the veil in the tabernacle, with the brass on the laver, with the fire of judgment, with the song of redemption and with the judgment of the earth. Their appearances are varied, it is true, but their form is one, and the predominating feature in their form is man. They all have the likeness of a man predominantly, and then three other likenesses in association: the lion, the ox, and the eagle.

2. Representation and Dominion

I want to emphasize this matter of the predominating feature of a man, because that is the key to the cherubim. What do they really represent and stand for? They speak of a humanity as God conceives it, God's idea for man as possessing His own Divine Life. And when man possesses Life according to God's mind, he will be a peculiar kind of man, a different kind of humanity altogether from what he is in Adam, and the Life in him will be a regnant, kingly life. It will bring him into a place of dominion - there is the lion feature. It is a Life which reigns, which has dominion. "The power of an endless life" (Heb. 7:16). This Life of God is a tremendously potent thing.

Oh, the life in nature is a mighty thing. Just find something that has got life and see what that life will do. See it in a plant, see it in a tree. It will slowly, with persistence and tremendous force, work its way up and force its way through the greatest obstruction. A mighty rock can be cleft asunder by the force of life in a simple twig which grows underneath it, heaves it, gets into its crevice, and bursts it open.

But if that is true of the life which is in nature, what about the Life which is in God, this other Life? The ultimate consequence of this Life is that all the power of death in all its forms and relationships, is going to be destroyed by it; the power of death working in the whole physical realm, the whole moral realm and the whole spiritual realm. Satan and his whole kingdom of death will be utterly destroyed by the power of this Life in Christ and in His members. It is a mighty Life. That is the lion aspect of the cherubim, the living ones. It is reigning, it is dominion. No wonder Satan will do anything to keep men from having that Life, or, when they have it, to quench it by any means.

3. Service and Sacrifice

It is a Life, the very nature and essence of which is a giving of itself, the opposite and reverse of what Adam did - to draw to himself, to serve himself, to possess in himself, to have and to be himself. That was the heart of things with Adam. Satan said, "If you take that, you may be as God. Why not have the root of the matter in yourself, the seat of everything in yourself? Why not be equal with God?" And Adam yielded to that, and desired and drew to himself and lost the Life.

The last Adam gives, God gives; He so loved that He gave. The essence of Divine Life is giving, giving unto the last, to death. That is the ox aspect of the cherubim, for the ox is always the symbol of service and sacrifice. If you and I really possess this Life, this Life of God, the one thing that will characterise us will be a continual desire to give, to pour out, to yield, that others may get the good. Service unto sacrifice and to death.

4. Heavenly Glory and Mystery

But it is a mystery, it is not of this creation. This Life is a strange thing. No one can understand it. If the life of nature has never yet been defined or understood and no one knows what it is, it is infinitely more true of the Life of God. It is a mystery, it will make us do things which we would never do. It will hold us from doing many things that we would do. It will very often contradict what we think is the highest wisdom and cause us to do what we would judge to be the great folly. People have been so actuated by the Divine Life that they have done what the world calls very foolish things and they have not done many things that the world would judge to be the wise things. But the people of God are an enigma to the world because they are actuated by another Life which is not of this world. And what is true of Him Who is the Life, is true of all those who are one with Him as the Life, and that is the eagle aspect of the cherubim - mystery, heavenly glory, something outside of this creation. That is the Life, that is why they are called "living ones".

This Life, we are seeing, was reserved. It was taken up by the cherubim, and man in his fallen condition was not allowed to approach, he was not allowed to have any association with this Life. The cherubim really said to a certain kind of humanity, "No, never! It can never be for you, you are shut out, your kind can never inherit, you are excluded; this is for a creation which is according to God's mind, a humanity which is after the heart of God; it is reserved for them. Yes to them, but no to this." That is what the cherubim said at the beginning, and we see that other humanity, coming in in the great all-inclusive representation of the last Adam, the second Man, and "in Him was life, and the life was the light of men" (John 1:4). "The witness that God has borne concerning His Son... that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that has the Son has the life; he that has not the Son of God has not the life" (1 John 5:10-12).

The cherubim, then, say, "This is a new creation in Christ!" They are in representation the new creation, and we pointed out in our last meditation that they are fourfold in their representation, four is the number of creation always, and it is a new creation in Christ where the Life is.

God has given to us that which Adam missed and his race has never possessed, because by nature we have become members of another race, joined to another humanity. That is why some of us, at least, sit down to the Lord's Table and take the loaf. It is His Body, it is our testimony to a union with another humanity, another kind of man in Whom is Life, and "we who are many are one loaf, one body" (1 Cor. 10:17), sharing that Life which makes us a different kind of creation in the innermost reality of our being from all the rest of men in Adam. May the marks of that difference be more and more pronounced!

Chapter 2 - Christ Our Life

In the previous message we were engaged with the first three of these phases; on the one side: The Probation of Life, The Life Missed, and The Life Reserved. We are seeking to bring the whole Bible under review by means of its keywords, and just now the master-key to the Scriptures which we are using is the word 'Life', for Life is a master-key to the whole Bible. We have said that the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is occupied with this great matter of Life and death, Life as centred in Christ and death as in the hand of Satan, so that the whole Bible is unified in Christ as the Life.

The Probation of Life

We pass immediately over to the other side with those three phases and in very few words note how Christ comes in and meets the situation as created by Adam's failure. Whereas Adam was conceived of God in those eternal counsels to which we have made reference, Christ also was predestined by God to occupy the place of pre-eminence in His universe. And, in connection with Christ, we shall do little more in this chapter than quote fragments of Scripture which bear out these points.

Christ, the last Adam, firstly in the probation of Life, predestined. We have such words as the following:

"Who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation... and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist... For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell" (Col. 1:15,17,19).

"Making known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth; in Him, I say" (Eph. 1:9-10).

Then, begotten; not created as the first Adam, but begotten. And a selection from Scriptures which answer to that are:

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father), full of grace and truth. No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him" (John 1:14,18).

"Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him" (1 John 4:9).

(The begetting is that we might live).

Then, tested. Adam the first was conditioned, that is, placed under conditions or on conditions; life was a matter of fulfilling certain conditions and he was tested by those conditions. The last Adam took up the position of probation and testing where the first failed, and we have again here what the Scriptures tell us:

"And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led in the Spirit in the wilderness during forty days, being tempted of the devil" (Luke 4:1-2).

"For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that has been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. 4:15).

The first Adam was corrupted; the last Adam was crowned:

"But we behold Him who has been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour, that by the grace of God He should taste death for every man" (Heb. 2:9).

"Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name" (Phil. 2:9).

"Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this, which ye see and hear" (Acts 2:33).

"...which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church" (Eph. 1:20-22).

The Life Secured

That is the grand counterpart of the first Adam. The Life missed through unbelief, disobedience, unrighteousness and death; the Life secured in the last Adam through faith, and in these matters now before us there is far too much Scripture for us to quote. We only have to remember the contest in the wilderness under severe pressure. The temptation was real temptation; the conditions in which He was placed at that time made the temptation very acute. It was not just something staged. It was meeting the enemy at a physical disadvantage, and with what He knew to be a life of suffering before Him with the cross at the end. The enemy was offering Him an easy way out, and it only wanted Him to do something which, while not affirming or declaring in word unbelief, would be an act of unbelief. His response every time was, "It is written..." - that is faith. And so, throughout His life, He kept that ground of faith in His Father and so Life was secured through His faith.

And His faith, of course, worked out in obedience. He became "obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross" (Phil. 2:8).

His faith and obedience, as the whole of the Roman letter makes clear, resulted in His being the righteousness of God for us. The unrighteousness into which the first Adam fell and thereby became unrighteousness (not only unrighteous, but unrighteousness) found, in the case of the last Adam, an obedience of faith, which meant that as our representative He was the righteousness of God, and Life is always because of righteousness. That is what the Scriptures say; death with unrighteousness.

So that the last thing in the case of the last Adam is Life because of righteousness, and righteousness because of the obedience of faith.

The Life Reserved

Thirdly, the life reserved and we see in Him the features of that Life which are set forth in symbolic form in the cherubim: the lion of dominion, the ox of service and sacrifice, the man of representation, the eagle of heavenly glory and mystery. And this Life in Christ and which Christ is, carries those features, has those characteristics.

Dominion, the power of Life, triumphant Life, mighty Life, Life which is greater than every other power.

"The exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to that working of the strength of His might which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead" (Eph. 1:19-20).

"It was not possible that He should be holden of death" (Acts 2:24). Why? Because there was a Life in Him which was mightier than all the power of death. It is the lion aspect of the Life.

Its basis - "Because of the suffering of death... that... He should taste death for every man" (Heb. 2:9). Therefore He is "crowned with glory and honour". The basis of His life is His sacrifice, His service of sacrifice.

The nature of that Life, as we know, is a heavenly Life. It is a spiritual Life, it is something not of this creation at all. It is Life from above.

The Way of Life

Coming over to the type and taking each fragment with its counterpart in Christ - we are dealing with the Pentateuch, as you know, that is, the first five books of the Bible - the whole matter of Life in the Pentateuch is summed up in seven typical persons. The way of Life is compassed in seven representative men. 'Seven' through the Bible is very interesting. It is not fanciful, imaginary, it is not straining interpretation, you cannot get away from it, you come up against it all the time, and you say, "Well, there must be something in this, this is not just accidental". We know 'seven' to mean spiritual perfection. What we are dealing with, then, here with the sevens, is the spiritual perfection of Life in Christ, and that perfection has its sevenfold aspects. The rainbow, as you know, has its seven colours - the eighth is only a repetition of the first. It is complete. And Life in Christ is sevenfold. It is spiritually perfect.

Now, that alone could detain for a long time. Let us take a very comprehensive example of this. The book of the Revelation we well know to be a book of consummation, completion, finality. Things are being brought to a perfect end in the book of the Revelation. There is nothing after that, it is completeness. Well, it is a book just packed full of sevens all the way through. Seven lampstands, seven churches, seven Spirits of God, seven seals, seven vials, seven trumpets, seven angels, seven plagues, seven lamps. I say, that is not accidental, that is not just put in for fun. There is something in it. It is the book of completeness.

And you know that it is the book of Life. It opens with, "I am He that lives". It closes with, "I saw a river of water of life clear as crystal". If you care to take the trouble, you will find it well worth tracing 'life' through the book of the Revelation.

So here 'seven' represents the perfection of Life in Christ, and, as we have said, Genesis comprehends this whole ground of Life as over against death in seven representative or typical persons, and each one of them brings Christ into view in some specific aspect of Life. It is an interesting study but it is very important for our spiritual good.

We are more interested in the matter of Life itself than we are in knowing our Bibles. Our Bibles will help us to understand Life, but I am most anxious that the thing should come home to our own experience and hearts and not just as information to our heads. If we are just better students of the Bible and not better Christians, we shall have missed the way altogether. So, while we speak of those things and they may be more or less interesting and enlightening, let us note their application to our own spiritual life.

1. Headship

Beginning, then, on the side of the old, Adam comes into view again as the first of these seven, and the Divine idea and thought that is bound up with Adam is that of Headship. He is the head of the creation.

Paul says that the man is the head of the woman as Christ is the Head of the church (Eph. 5:23). Headship was the first Divine thought in Adam, that all things should be brought under. You know that the Psalmist, quoted by the apostle in his letter to the Hebrews, applies this to Adam in the first instance.

"What is man, that thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; Thou crownedest him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: Thou didst put all things in subjection under his feet" (Psa. 8:4-6; Heb. 2:6-8).

His headship was the Divine intention.

Now let us remember that this was the occasion of the whole battle. Everything in God's creation for the time being was gathered up under Adam as its head. He was placed over it to govern it, to order it, to develop it, to perfect it for God. It was under him, committed to him, and the assault and onslaught of Satan upon Adam was with that headship in view.

In a very real sense, Adam was the prince of this world at that time. It is probable - but this is only conjecture, there is no positive statement of Scripture although there are Scriptures which seem to suggest this - it is probable that in an earlier creation Satan was the prince of this world, and by his revolt against God he lost his kingdom and his place, his throne, and Adam was created and given that place in this world, and the exile, the expelled prince, came back and sought to recover his kingdom and assailed this head and gained the day, and was thenceforth known as 'the prince of this world'. Even Christ called him that (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11). It was the headship which was in view, because Life was bound up with that headship.

Well, as everything was vested in the head and therefore when the head was overthrown, the kingdom was possessed by the adversary, to realise God's ultimate purpose another Adam must come. And the last Adam came, and God had predestined Him to be supreme Head in all realms in heaven and in earth. It says nothing about Adam being head in heaven, in the universe; this world was his kingdom, but Christ is a greater Head than Adam, Head in every realm, Head of all creation, Head of all principalities and powers, Head of every man and Head over all things to the church which is His Body, the fulness of Him; universal Headship vested in Christ. And, as this Head has triumphed where the former head failed, Life is secured in that Head. So that Headship is the key to Life, and with one further observation, we will pass on to the next thing.

Let us remember that it is not until Jesus Christ is Head that we can know anything about Life. Life, this Divine Life, this eternal Life, its possession, its expansion and the realisation of all its possibilities, demands the absolute Headship and Lordship of Jesus Christ in and over our lives on all matters. Just as the Father was His Head and in every detail of His life to the most minute point He deferred and referred to the Father and subjected Himself to the Father's Headship, and therefore the Father vested that eternal Life in Him and gave Him the power of giving eternal Life, so you and I will only have Life and be able to know all the values of that Life as Christ is in the place to us that the Father occupied with Him - absolute Head. That is, we refer everything to Christ, we subject and submit everything to Him as our Head. That is the way of Life. If we have a controversy with Christ, if we withhold anything from Him, if He is not Lord in every matter, there is an arrest of the Life, there is a limitation of the Life. Headship is the first and primary thing to Life, under which everything else is gathered.

2. Redemption

Having said that, we pass on to the next phase of Life as represented by Abel. Adam has failed, surrendered and forfeited His Headship. Abel follows him, and Abel speaks to us of redemption by blood. Abel's position is this - We have nothing, we are nothing, we are in bondage, we are in exile from God, we have been driven out, we are in enmity with God. If we are going to live, we can only live by dying and becoming possessed of a life which is not our own, seeing our own life is death; we have lost Life in Adam, we are dead; another life out of death must be ours. If we are to live, one corrupt life must be surrendered and another life incorruptible must be provided.

Now, Cain was contrary to all that. Cain came saying, We have something, we are something, we can do something; look at all we have done! He offers that to God - and there is no open way. He is still an exile, he is still in enmity with God, spiritually afar off, dead to God. God has no respect unto Cain or his offering.

But Abel takes that which represents another life - a lamb without spot, without blemish. It is an incorruptible life, a life not his own, and he makes it the instrument of fulfilling this twofold thing: first, surrendering one's life, and second, providing another life. In his sacrifice, he does that, providing another incorruptible life not his own, while he has surrendered his own life unto death, and he gets through. That is redemption.

You can see it in the Lord Jesus. He is the Lamb of God. On the one side of His sacrifice, He takes up the Adam man and hands it over to death, parts with it and says, 'That is an end of that!' On the other side, He takes up that Life which is incorruptible and offers it to God and is accepted and by His representative twofold act, the way is opened. His baptism typified that - death to the old self-life typically, rising to the Life of God only - and immediately an open heaven. That pointed on to the work of His Cross. He has placed His Cross at the very threshold and foundation of His work. The Cross governs all, and says, Death! to Adam No. 1, Life to God only. That is Abel - redemption by blood. It is the way of Life.

3. Regeneration

Noah is the third. The third phase of Life, Noah, speaks to us of regeneration, a new creation. This is a phase of Life. Abel, redemption; but there must be regeneration. It is not the redemption of the old, it is the bringing in of the new. These go closely together, hand in hand. Noah? - well, the flood was the universal verdict upon the curse of Cain. That must be brought to a full and perfect end under the judgment of God. Peter says that the flood was a baptism, and that demands in spiritual principle the answer of a good conscience towards God (1 Pet. 3:21). How can we give the answer of a good conscience toward God? Is there a living man in Adam who can do that? That man is not alive, not awake if he thinks he can; he is a slumbering, blind, dead man. Let the man be touched by the quickening Spirit of God and see what happens to his conscience. We call it 'conviction of sin'. It is an evil conscience, conscience awakened.

God demands the answer of a good conscience, not excuses. How can that be? Only by dying to the old man, to the old Adam, to the old creation, and by rising in a new creation. Noah brings that in. The flood sees the end of the old order and that baptism provides a good conscience towards God; as Peter puts it: a new creation. Well, we know there is a new creation in Christ. "Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation" (2 Cor. 5:17). But what leads up to that? "The love of Christ constrains us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died" - that is the death side; now the other side - "and He died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes died and rose again". Those are the two sides, and therefore, if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation. That is, he has died in Christ to self; he has risen in Christ - henceforth not unto himself, but unto Him. That is Noah in a very brief word.

4. Faith

Abraham - the fourth phase of Life. We know quite well that Abraham forever stands to represent faith, but, as Paul makes so fully clear, it is faith unto righteousness - righteousness by faith. That is first of all a state as represented by Abraham, a state of righteousness by faith. He was accounted righteous - that is the statement about Abraham. Because of his faith, he was accounted righteous; not that he just did righteous things, but he was accounted righteous. That was his state.

And then his walk was a walk of faith which brought him into perfect fellowship with God and he was called the 'friend of God' (James 2:23). He walked with God by faith. Does not Abraham live? Everything associated with Abraham speaks of an eternal posterity. As the stars of heaven, as the sand of the shore his seed forever; and they that are of faith are Abraham's seed (Rom. 4:11) - not Jews, but they that are of faith are Abraham's seed. It is those who have this Life through the faith of God's Son. "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me: and that life which I live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God" (Gal. 2:20). As one version puts it, "I live by the faith of the Son of God." It is Life by faith.

And all these things are tests as well as statement of fact. Life is bound up with a new creation on the ground of the old having been put away. If we live, even for one minute, on the ground of the old man, the old creation, Life is injured. If for one moment we lose our walk with God in faith or our standing upon the ground of righteousness by faith and occupy any other ground, the Life comes under arrest. Life demands a position and a walk in faith.

So much for Abraham. But remember, God wrought it in Abraham. He did not just tell him it, He did not just say it to him. He wrought it in him. He took him through that course which meant that faith became an inward thing with Abraham, by testing, by experience, by suffering right up to the hilt. He was brought right into the very heart of God where the only and well-beloved son was given, and faith went through with it, it was wrought in him. That is the way of Life. Sometimes we may think that it is not the way of Life to have such severe testings of faith, but it is God's way of Life. Though for the time being through manifold trials, temptations, we are in heaviness, it is going to issue in Life.

5. Resurrection

We pass on to Isaac, and Isaac, we know, stands always for the resurrection, but a sonship which is by resurrection. Abraham and Sarah are dead so far as any productiveness of life is concerned. They are dead - God has seen to that. Rebekah, Isaac's wife, was dead in the same way. There is no possibility along the natural line of Isaac either existing himself or, through Rebekah, living again. It was impossible naturally, but it came. Isaac was born in spite of Abraham and Sarah being dead, and Isaac did live again through Rebekah in spite of her being dead. Here is Life triumphant over death: sonship, which is something impossible to nature; resurrection.

Well, we hardly need say anything about the Lord Jesus in that connection. Paul says in Romans 1:4: "declared... the Son of God... by the resurrection from the dead"; a peculiar sonship on the ground of resurrection. He was Son by birth, but He is attested (for that is the meaning of the word 'declared') Son by resurrection. The great proof of His Sonship is resurrection, that He conquers death. Life is along that line, that God makes us live where there is no human or earthly possibility of living in that way, living by a Life which is not possible to nature. It is His own Divine resurrection Life, another Life. This cannot be, it is impossible unless God does it. Every Christian is a miracle and a Christian who is not a miracle is no Christian at all. The miracle of resurrection is right at the very heart of every true Christian, that is, he or she is a person who could not be, had not God done it. They stand solely upon the ground that God has done something that could never be done by any other than God Himself. That is resurrection, that is Life, that is sonship in its essence, and that is in Christ first before it is in us.

Lazarus is a great type; he is allowed to get to the state where there is no human hope or possibility whatever, and everybody knows it, and then he is raised. He is used as a type. And, over against that, Christ says, "I am the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25). Something impossible to man is actual in Christ.

6. Spirituality

Jacob, number 6, speaks to us of spirituality and heavenliness. You say, "How can that be? You can never think of Jacob in such terms. Jacob always seems to be anything but that. There are no sublimer terms than heavenliness and spirituality. Jacob is a very contemptible creature!" Ah yes, but while he was firstly a very carnal and earthly man, God dealt with him on the ground of sonship in such a way as to bring him through to the place where the carnal life was smitten and stricken and he issued 'a prince with God'; Israel. He stands in history as the great change-over from the earthly to the heavenly and that term 'Israel' applied to the nation later always means, from God's standpoint, a spiritual people, a heavenly people. When they were out of touch with God they were called 'the Hebrews'. When they were right, they were 'Israel'; or when God was speaking about them according to His own mind about them they were Israel. That name is the name of what is spiritual and heavenly, a complete subjection of the flesh or the natural strength to what is of the Spirit. That is the meaning of Jabbok and that is the way of Life.

We know from Romans and elsewhere that "they that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh... the mind of the flesh is death". "They that are after the Spirit mind the things of the Spirit... the mind of the Spirit is life and peace" (Rom. 8:5-6). There is Jacob and Israel, and the way of Life is spiritual-mindedness, heavenliness; that is, where the flesh life and the world life, the earth life, has been dealt with and broken in us, like the strength of Jacob in his thigh, and he was a cripple forever on that side of life, but he is a prince with God when he is a cripple in himself. One of the big lessons we have to learn as we go on in the way of Life is that to be a prince with God we have to be crippled in ourselves, in our own flesh, in our own natural strength. This is a very unpleasant thing for nature, but a very profitable thing for God.

Well, the Lord Jesus undoubtedly comes in there as the One Who, in His Jordan, in His own inner life, has said 'No' forever to the self-way, and 'Yes' to God for all things. I would like to quote many Scriptures which bring Him in on heavenly ground. "I am come down from heaven" (John 6:38). "I am from above" (John 8:23), showing how He, the Lord and Prince of Life, was a spiritual Man, not governed by any carnal considerations; a heavenly man not influenced by any earthly interests.

7. Reigning in Life

Seventhly, Joseph - and he comes in as reigning in Life. It is interesting to notice, and very significant, that Joseph gathers up all the other six into himself. Each one of these leads to the next and is a step in advance. Abel must come in where Adam has failed; Noah must be the complement of Abel, regeneration must go with redemption. Faith unto righteousness must be the outcome of regeneration, and new creation, sonship, resurrection Life must be the work of faith; spirituality and heavenliness must be the character of the sons of God.

Now Joseph gathers them all up, you can see them all in him. Headship is recovered in Joseph. Redemption by blood was in his own experience. Stripped, cast into the pit, how he typifies the Lord Jesus; cast out by his brethren, handed over to the Gentiles, as in the grave, dead (that is Abel). A new creation coming back into life from the dead, resurrection, his faith in God unbroken, unshaken, a spiritual man... a heavenly man indeed was Joseph. He came at length to the throne, reigning in Life, gathering everything into the throne, ministering Life, firstly to his own brethren and then to the world - you can see Christ exalted to the right hand of God. But Christ has also been all this way by all these steps, all this meaning of Life is gathered up in Him, and then He ministers Life first to His own, to His church, and ministers beyond, Life to the world, Life to all, reigning in Life. "They that receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, even Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5:17).

The Typical Nation

All we need to point out in the next section is that these very things, these seven aspects of Life, are gathered up now not into individual characters, but into a nation. It is impressive to see that the whole nation of Israel was constituted by those very seven things.

Headship; "The Lord thy God will make thee the head, and not the tail" (Deut. 28:13). That was God's thought for Israel as a nation.

Redemption by blood; you can see it in Exodus 12, the Passover lamb.

A new creation passing out of the old creation, translated out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of God's love typically, a new creation in Christ in type.

Called to walk by faith in the wilderness, to walk by faith, resting upon a basis of faith all the way through; that was the whole life of Israel for the forty years, a Life of faith - or God intended it to be, and when they were on that basis of Life, it was Life indeed.

A heavenly and spiritual people; everything in God's constituting of them meant that. Take one little thing alone. Every man, woman and child throughout all the generations of Israel in the wilderness had a badge and that badge was a bit of blue. The Lord prescribed that everyone throughout all their generations should wear a bit of blue on the border of their garment. That pointed to a great central figure, the high priest, who had a whole robe of blue, and they were all linked with that figure by the blue; a heavenly people joined to a heavenly High Priest.

They were intended by God to reign in Life. When at length they did get over on to full resurrection ground, they did reign in Life in the land.

The nation was constituted a living nation on the basis of this Life in its sevenfold features. That was their Life.

The Seven Feasts

Well then, in closing, all we have to do is to point to another seven in their history, the seven feasts. We cannot stay to speak of these in detail, they are much too full, but simply to say that they are seven. You come to Leviticus 23 and you find seven feasts, and each one of these feasts is some phase of Life. It is perfection of Life as expressed in a sevenfold way.

There is the Passover - redemption by blood. The Feast of Unleavened Bread - an incorruptible life. The Feast of Harvest or First-fruits - the sheaf presented to the Lord in advance, a token of the future and coming fulness of Christ, the First-fruits; Christ our assurance of fulness of Life. Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks, seven again; seven sevens, forty-nine days completed, and on the fiftieth day, "When the day of Pentecost was fully come..." (Acts 2:1) - it means that seven sevens are complete; on the fiftieth day the great ingathering, the great joy, the Spirit in fulness, the church brought in. What Life! Christ our fulness.

The Feast of Trumpets - the first day of the seventh month of the ecclesiastical year, the first month of the civil year, which meant it was a New Year festivity; the sounding of trumpets from dawn to sunset. What does it mean? After Pentecost, what are you going to do? What is the next thing? Proclaim it! Proclaim Christ your fulness. I have no doubt that the Feast of Trumpets means more than that, and perhaps other things. These seven feasts are the chronological order of the spiritual life, and when you have the church brought in in the fulness of the Spirit, the next thing is the proclamation to the world, the Feast of Trumpets. From morning till night proclaim it, proclaim the joyful news.

The next thing, the sixth, the Day of Atonement. The word itself tells us what it means - at one, reconciliation. What are you going to proclaim? The church has come in at Pentecost; it is going to proclaim Christ our Atonement. That is the order of things.

And seventh, the Feast of Tabernacles, most joyous of all the feasts. They left their houses and dwelt in booths for seven days, saying, in effect, "We are pilgrims and strangers". It was commemorating the forty years in the wilderness living in tents, "We are strangers, but we are moving toward a city and a country!" It speaks of that blessed hope when we shall be no longer pilgrims and strangers, but shall have found the city and the country and come to rest. The Feast of Tabernacles ended on the Sabbath - that speaks for itself. We come eventually and finally to God's rest. Christ is God's rest; He is the end of all God's works. God comes to rest in His Son and we are going, one day, to cease from ourselves and our own works completely and come to rest, and we have that in view. Therefore our Feast of Tabernacles is the most joyous of all. We are looking for the day of perfection, of rest in Christ. That which is ours now in a spiritual way by faith, is going to be ours in an actual and absolute way, for while we do enter into His rest now by faith, I do not suppose any of us can say that we have entered fully and finally into that rest. We still have our bad times, times when the rest is disturbed and we are not so sure, but we have before us a day when all that fret will have been ended and we shall fully enter into His rest. "There remains a rest for the people of God" (Heb. 4:9), and the Feast of Tabernacles was just to keep that glorious coming day in view.

I think there are few things that make us rejoice more than the remembrance of the day of His appearing, the coming of the Lord, that blessed hope, that entering upon our heavenly city and house. "We know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens" (2 Cor. 5:1). Christ is our hope, that is the point. The Feast of Tabernacles speaks of the hope set before us. "Christ our hope".

The Typical Times

Then you see there are five typical times in Leviticus chapters 23-25 - the seventh day, the seventh week, the seventh month, the seventh year, and seven weeks of years. They correspond to the feasts of which we have spoken. The seventh day speaks of Christ our rest.

The seventh week speaks of Christ our transcendence. On the feast of Pentecost they were called upon to bring out of their dwellings two loaves baked with leaven; a most extraordinary thing to allow leaven, to give a place to leaven. What is the meaning of it? It was the feast of Pentecost, the church was brought in and God recognized that, on the human side, we are not unleavened. There is still leaven in us. God takes account of that. But how does He meet the situation of the leaven, the corruption, the imperfection that is in the saints, in His people and in His church? On that feast, He provided that seven lambs should be offered without blemish. That is a mighty counter to the other side; a sevenfold spiritual perfection provided in Christ to stand over against the imperfection in the church. That is how God meets the need. Christ our transcendence.

The seventh month - Christ our occupation; the seventh year - Christ our sufficiency. They were not to do any work in that year at all, but the Lord would meet the need. Christ our sufficiency. It is what Christ is. The Lord is always seeking to keep us on this basis: that it is not what we are or can do, it is what Christ is.

The seven weeks of years - jubilee, when all slaves were set free; people or lands or possessions, anything that had gone into bondage, had to be set free, restored. Emancipation from bondage, the jubilee, Christ our emancipation and our emancipator, and this is the way of Life.

Chapter 3 - Christ and the Issue of Life and Death

We continue under our general title of "The Bible and the Revelation of God in Christ", and now we come to the second section, the historical books, in which, as we have seen, the predominant element is that of kingship.

We have been very much occupied with the fact that this revelation of God in Christ is always in relation to Life. So in this chapter we shall be seeing that Life is by way of His Lordship. The battle of the ages, as we have pointed out, is that between Life and death; not life and death as just a physical matter; neither is it merely a matter of perpetuation or cessation of being. This whole question of Life and death is a spiritual one, and goes far beyond, far deeper, than merely temporal or physical consideration.

What we have been seeing is that the Bible covers the history of man and the world in relation to spiritual issues, or, if you like, to spiritual Life, and that the Bible is a unity by reason of a Person. In the Old Testament, that Person is present in prefiguration, prevision and prediction; in the New Testament in Person, then in corporate expression in His Body, the church; and finally in administration as revealed in the Revelation. That Person, the Lord Jesus, Who unifies the whole in Himself in every one of these connections and phases, governs in terms of Life or death. That is, He is present with that issue always. Wherever you find anything that indicates the Lord Jesus in any part of the Scripture, you will find that it is associated with the question of Life or death; Life, on the one hand, provided there is accord with Him in the specific expression of His presence at that time, or death if there is that which is not in accord with Him. That, of course, covers an immense amount of ground, an enormous number of details, but that is the issue everywhere, from Genesis to Revelation.

Now we come to this second part of the Bible to see Christ as represented in this way in the historical books, that is, from Joshua to Esther, twelve books, and we make a hurried survey of this section and take up a few of the spiritual lessons which we find here in this particular revelation of Christ.

"In the Heavenlies"

We begin with the book of Joshua. Most of us have some idea of the content of the book, that it is the book of the entering in and taking possession of the land, and it is mainly gathered into three sections. Firstly, the conquest of the land, and then the settlement in the land, and finally, the farewell of Joshua.

But what does this represent and set forth as to Christ and the issue of Life and death? Well, Joshua, of course, corresponds to that position in the New Testament in which we find the Lord Jesus and the church which is His Body on the other side of Jordan, that is, "in the heavenlies", to use Paul's phrase; in the heavenlies in Christ. That phrase touches both sides: Christ in the heavenlies and the church as seen there in the heavenlies in Him, and that heavenly position of the Lord Jesus means four things. Firstly, it is His position in type.

You remember at the time of His birth when He was sought by Herod and they went down into Egypt, a fragment of prophecy was cited as being, or about to be, fulfilled in that. "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt did I call My son" (Matt. 2:15).

You will remember that the challenge of the Lord through Moses to Pharaoh was "Let My son go that he may serve Me" (Ex. 4:23). "Israel is My son, even my first-born" (Ex. 4:22). "Thou hast refused to let him go: behold, I will slay thy son, thy first born". Now, you have the two things brought together clearly; Christ, as taken up in the prophecy, and its fulfilment. "Out of Egypt have I called My son"; and Israel in the place of sonship typically being brought out of Egypt. It is a principle that is here in the type, that is, the coming out of Egypt represents the utter separation from the world unto God. That is exactly the place, representatively and in type, that the Lord Jesus took at the Jordan, this same Jordan over which Israel has now passed in the book of Joshua. At the Jordan He typically took the position of an utter separation from the world unto God, and it was because of that position taken that He was assailed immediately in the wilderness by the adversary. First of all, Christ called out of Egypt, that is, separated unto God from the world and this kingdom of the prince of this world. Out of Egypt - that is the first thing in relation to a heavenly position. It is "separation from".

Then, secondly, in the wilderness. The wilderness for forty years was the place of testing as to the position taken. Those years were a searching, a trying, by fiery ordeal as to whether the position taken would be maintained at all costs. It was a heavenly position. Now the probation begins, for forty is always the number of probation. So Israel in the wilderness is, in principle, the same as Christ during forty days, being tempted of the devil in the wilderness, tested as to the position taken. Anyone who really does take a spiritual position with God will not long escape a severe test as to the position taken. We cannot move with God in mere doctrine and theory. If we are moving in a living way with God, we are going to find that every step taken is tested out as to whether it is a thing done inwardly or merely outwardly.

Thirdly, there is the Jordan, and we know that it represents the cross. Out, tested, now the Jordan, the cross, the establishing in an inward way of that which has been taken and tested. It is something more than the Red Sea, which was the objective side of things. This is the subjective, this is something done inwardly as well as outwardly. It is the establishment of the course taken and over which we have been truly tried.

Then, fourthly, the land, in the heavenlies in Christ.

Here is Christ, then, in four phases or features of the heavenly position. Out completely unto God; tested as to that; and, as we indicated or hinted, the testing in the wilderness was, "Will you in any way compromise with this world, can you be got back on to the old ground?" The devil showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and said, "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me" (Matt. 4:9). That is what he was after all the time, to get Him in some way to act apart from that utterness of abandonment to God. "If thou be the Son...". It was the assault upon that relationship in its utterest meaning. Can He be brought back on to the old - Egypt - in principle? If so, He is in the power of the prince of this world. That was the bid that was being made and it was all a question of Life and death.

The Heavenly Lordship

Secondly, the heavenly Lordship. We find in this book of Joshua they are over in the land and one of the first things that arises is the absolute sovereignty of the Lord. You remember the incident when Joshua saw a man standing with his sword drawn and Joshua went up to him and said, "'Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?' And he said, 'Nay; but as prince of the host of Jehovah am I now come.' And Joshua fell on his face and worshipped and said 'What says my lord unto his servant?'" (Joshua 5:13-15). Joshua surrendered the Lordship to this One, and that is the way of Life.

And here is Christ in the heavenlies, in the first place, in the position of absolute Lord. We know that from the New Testament counterpart.

But then, on the other hand, it is the church, the people of God, brought entirely under that Lordship, in subjection, submission, capitulating to His Lordship. That is the way of life in Christ. Life in measure depends entirely upon the degree of the absolute Lordship of Christ. He has been made Lord, but it is not just the despotic, the official position; He is the Prince of Life. What God has done with Christ in exalting Him has been to make Him the Lord of Life, the Mediator of Life, the Prince of Life, vested Him with the power of Life. What He said in the days of His flesh was made true, He was speaking prospectively - "As the Father has life in Himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in Himself" (John 5:26), and that became fully true on His exaltation. That is simple enough and we know it, and Life depends entirely upon the degree in which Christ is Lord, and that means far more than Christians have recognized. They call Him Lord, they sing of Him as Lord, they speak of Him as Lord, but oh, in how many things is His absolute Lordship challenged! There is dispute over His Lordship over many things in the life. The release of Life in greater measure is so often bound up with the winning of some battle where the Lord's Lordship is disputed and challenged.

A Heavenly Power

Thirdly, in this heavenly position, it is a heavenly power. Very often we have heard it said that Joshua is a type of the Holy Spirit. I think that is not quite correct, that is doubtful. I think that Joshua is more a type of the energy of the Holy Spirit. To use Paul's phrase again - "the power that works in us" (Eph. 3:20). We are "in the heavenlies" - that is an Ephesian phrase. "According to the power that works in us" is an Ephesian phrase, and the history of things in the book of Joshua is clearly the history of a Divine energy working through a man. Joshua was filled with the Spirit, for Moses had laid his hands upon him (Deut. 34:9). It is the energy and power of the Spirit here, and that, of course is obviously the next thing in the matter of Life. Life, fulness of Life, depends upon the energy of the Holy Spirit in us, the power of the Holy Spirit, the activity of the Spirit. We must get our position first, and then in that position there must be the absolute Lordship, and then there must be the operation of the Spirit of God within as the Divine energy of everything.

A Heavenly Inheritance

Finally, it is a heavenly inheritance. Here we come more into the Colossian letter where "it pleased the Father that in Him should all the fullness dwell" and "in Him ye are made full" (Col. 1:19, 2:10). It is the riches of Christ, the land, the inheritance; God's fulness vested in His Son, and Life is bound up with that. For the people here, it was a matter of progressing in the fulness which was there. That was the way of Life for them, and the way of Life for God's people is always this continuous progress in the way of the fulness of Christ, not just being saved and staying there all your life rejoicing in the fact that you are saved, but going on. There is a boundlessness, a fulness, in Christ, which, however long we might live here, we shall never exhaust, and Christ can be and should be more wonderful, more full, more unspeakable as the years go on. He is all God's fulness, and Life is a matter of progressive development in Christ, ever increasing in the knowledge of Him, knowing what He is.

Well here, you see, we have Christ in the position, in Lordship, in the power of the Spirit, in possession of the fulness, the inheritance, and in those ways He is the Prince of Life. We derive Life from coming into the good of that as the Lord's people.

The Way of Death

We pass on to the book of Judges. The first part is occupied with how things begin to shape with the death and after the death of Joshua, and then the large section from verse 7 of chapter 3 to the end of chapter 16 is occupied with the Judges and all the declensions; a sevenfold declension. It is interesting to note that, while there are twelve Judges over this period, only seven of them are really given any importance. Of five of them you simply know their name and that is all. Seven alone are in relation to the sevenfold declension. You know what we have been saying about the sevens in the Word of God. In the previous chapters we thought of the seven great typical men of the Pentateuch representing seven aspects of Life as set over against the course of death; the seven feasts of the Lord, and so on. Here you have seven declensions and, over against them, seven interventions of God through seven outstanding Judges; they occupy a large section. Then a short closing section has some very unhappy, unpleasant incidents to record.

All we need to say about this book is that it is a tremendous demonstration setting forth an exhibition of the course of death by reason of the opposite to what you have in the book of Joshua. In the book of Joshua you have Life, it is a living book, a living story, and it is by reason of these things that we have mentioned - heavenly position, Lordship, power and inheritance. In the book of Judges you may say that it is more death than Life. It is a terrible story. These bright patches... how short-lived they are! Death seems to be in a place of mastery and it is because things are just exactly the opposite. They have lost the heavenly position, they have lost the heavenly Lordship. "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25). They lost the Kingship, they lost the heavenly power. It is a state of weakness, and, as you notice in Judges, it is a steady decline; the beginnings are higher than the end.

Samson seems to come down to the deepest depths of shame. They have lost the heavenly power. And they have lost the inheritance. The enemy is in the land in possession. They even have to go to the enemy if they want to sharpen an instrument of agriculture because the enemy had taken all their means of sharpening instruments lest they should make weapons of war. It is a lost heavenly position with weakness, defeat and bondage as the pre-eminent condition, and the Lord here is only seen to be acting in a sovereign way. In Joshua, in principle in the type, the Lord is not acting just in a sovereign way. He is acting by an inward energy because the people themselves are in harmony with Him. In Judges He is acting outwardly in a sovereign way, faithful in Himself, but not now as within the people.

What a lot of history there is in that fact. How often it has been like that, I wonder whether it is not very largely like that in our own time. The Lord is doing things, we say He acts sovereignly, we are glad to note sovereign acts of God even for our nation, Dunkirk, and so on. But is it because the Lord is in heart fellowship with people, and people are in heart fellowship with Him? Is it by reason of His inward working? No, it is not; He is a merciful and gracious sovereign and He is acting sovereignly, but He has not got what He really wants - conditions which make it possible for Him to do this thing as in and as through His people. Well, Judges is simply an emphasis upon the fact that if we lose the heavenly position, it is death. The positive is emphasized by the negative.

Life in Relation to Lordship

Then we come to that little book of Ruth, and what a jump it is in the light of this whole history, this whole issue of Life and death. You know the story. There is a man and his wife, Elimelech and Naomi, in the land, proprietors in the land. Famine comes, the land dies, the land falls into this state of death and the man goes and takes his wife into a foreign land, into the land of Moab. There they live; his sons marry women of that land. Then Elimelech dies, the two sons die. Death, you see, has broken right in.

Then Naomi decides, in her sorrow and loss, to return to her own land. The challenge is presented to the two daughters-in-law. One decides to stay in her own country; the other, Ruth, determines not to leave her mother-in-law but to return with her. "Entreat me not to leave thee... whither thou goest, I will go". They return, a sorrowful couple whom death has robbed of everything precious. They wear the veil of death as they return. They come back; then there is romance - Boaz and his field, the inheritance that has gone into death is recovered, resurrection sets in. The recovery from death of the lost inheritance; the recovery from death of the relationship - Ruth and Boaz are married, and then the child is born to them, and one of the last views you get of that beautiful story is the elderly mother-in-law, the old widow, holding a new born baby in her arms, and with that baby is bound up a new history of kingship.

Here is a woman who, in herself and on her side, represents what death does, and in the arms of that very death, that woman, is a new life, the symbol of resurrection, life from the dead... and with that life from the dead the Christ is bound up. Obed, Jesse, David, Jesus Christ of the seed of David, all in that little life from the dead. There is the picture of the widow who has known all about death and in the very arms of that living grave, shall we say, there is the resurrection out from the dead, out from the grave, resurrection Life - and the King is coming. It is a beautiful picture all in this setting, this great issue of Life and death, and for this part of the book, it is Life in relation to Lordship again.

A Spiritual Instrument

We pass on to Samuel. The first part of the book of 1 Samuel, the book of transition, is occupied with Samuel and the spiritual and the soul travail of his mother, his birth, the crisis in the nation, the terrible story of Eli and his sons, then the ark going into captivity and Samuel's judgeship for twenty years. Then in the second section Saul is brought in, and in the third section David is introduced. In the second book of Samuel, David begins to rise on the fall of Saul, comes into the kingship, firstly over Judah and then over the whole nation. The second part of 2 Samuel is occupied with David's fall, his sin, the punishment of his sin in his family and in his throne, and his restoration. The third part of the book brings in the government of God and closing scenes in David's life.

Here, then, we have some more intimations of the way of Life, for we are still concerned with this matter of kingship, and what arises in these books is the question of kingship, and we have a divided dominion. We have Saul - "Make us a king to judge us like all the nations" (1 Sam. 8:5) - man's choice of a king. On the other hand, David, God's choice.

Let us remember that that phrase we know so well - "A man after my heart" (Acts 13:22) and (1 Sam. 13:14) is not literally translated in that book. Infidels have been very pleased to get hold of that and say, "Look at David, a man after God's own heart! - and yet...! That is the kind of God He is!" But literally the words are 'the man of God's choice', not "a man after God's own heart", although in many things he was. This sets him over against Saul as the man of man's choice.

These two represent two spiritual factors; one is the carnal and the other is the spiritual. There is no doubt about that. All that you see and read and observe about Saul is his carnality, and, whatever you have to say about David on certain points and at certain times, this man has his heart set upon God. He is in heart a spiritual man. But here you have the historic conflict between the flesh and the spirit, the carnal and the spiritual, and while this is an undecided issue, everything is in a state of unrest, in a state of defeat, just as things were then in the days of Saul. While Saul was king officially, there was dividedness in Israel, no one was wholly satisfied. When David came on the scene, before ever he was in any way king officially or recognized, there was a going out of heart to him and so at once the nation was divided. It was a terrible time for the nation.

Saul must be put out of the way by God, the flesh cut off. It is interesting, by the way, to note that Saul's downfall was because he spared the Amalekites and God demanded that they should be slain, and that Saul lost his life at the hands of an Amalekite; it is usually like that. We compromise with something and that very thing is our undoing. We have a reservation because of some personal interest, something that we want to preserve, and that thing we do preserve, but it is our undoing. That is always the course of the flesh. Give the flesh one little bit of consideration and that bit of flesh that you consider will be your undoing, rob you of your crown, of your glory. That is Saul. He must go as the carnal life, and the man of God's choice is coming.

It is again the way of Life by reason of the man of God's choice having undivided dominion. We cannot lay too much stress upon this truth, that Life for individuals and Life for the church, for the people of God, is bound up with this whole question of the absolute sovereignty of the Lord Jesus.

But here, in this scene, while this controversy is going on, we have the very beautiful story of Samuel. I think Samuel is one of the finest characters of the Old Testament. But as we look to see what he really signifies, we find a principle of tremendous value. It is something which God always seeks to have in a day when there is dividedness amongst His people in this way, where the flesh is having too much place and His Son is not having His right place, where things are in this state that they were in in the days of Saul and David and Samuel. What does he signify and represent? Do you not think it is very clear that he represents a spiritual vessel in which all the thoughts of God are found holding the situation in an uncertain day? Samuel embodies prophet, priest and king. Those are the three great thoughts of God, the great provisions of God as the way of Life - prophet, priest and king.

We saw in our study of the Pentateuch how the priestly function is the way of Life; redemption and Life, Life because of righteousness. The priest has to do with that, and Samuel functioned in the priestly office. Prophet? - undoubtedly, a seer; and king - in principle, he was the last of the judges. He embodies all the highest thoughts of God, and is a spiritual man, a spiritual vessel who is walking with God, and he is the intermediary in a day like this. It seems to me that that is what God seeks to have for Himself.

Who shall say that we are not very much in a state similar to that which is found here in the days of Saul and David? It is a state before it is all established, in a time when Christ has not an absolute place in His church, amongst His people. Therefore we have a state of weakness, uncertainty; all those unhappy conditions spiritually that exist because of this. In a state like that the Lord needs a company of His people to function in the position that Samuel held, to hold things for God's full thought, to stand in the gap for God. It seems to me, if not always, perhaps always, He has so often had that in a day of declension - a spiritual company embodying His fuller thought to hold the situation during transition. That is Samuel in brief.

The Power of His Resurrection

Let us pass on to Kings. 1 Kings is the book of disruption. We begin with the passing of David, the rebellion of Adonijah, the crowning of Solomon, David's last charge and his death. Solomon then comes in in the second section of 1 Kings. In the first place, Solomon in all his glory, and then the glory faded and gone and Solomon in shame. This is followed by the third section of the book, the division of the nation, ten tribes called Israel henceforth, two tribes called Judah, and their respective kings, beginning with Jeroboam and Rehoboam, and then one king following another in quick succession, usually by the tragic death of his predecessor, often by assassination. Then on to the scene comes that great figure, Elijah. We know how his life heads up in Ahab and Mount Carmel.

We pass over to 2 Kings. Things are going from bad to worse in corruption, and Elisha appears on the scene. Deep corruption follows Israel in this history, broken with some bright spots as in the case of Hezekiah and Josiah, but all too short. At length the nation goes into captivity; first Israel, then, several years after, Judah. It is the way of death. Note the relationship between the Sabbaths and the seventy years. That was the issue God raised. "Because of My Sabbaths".

They went into captivity for seventy years; that is seven multiplied by ten; ten is the number of responsibility. God is exacting His Sabbaths to a full degree, making them know their responsibility for His Sabbaths. The principle of the Sabbath is this, that God has come to the end of all His works in His Son, Jesus Christ, and the Sabbath is no longer a day, but a Person. Christ is God's Sabbath, and in principle God was holding them responsible for His Son Who at every point they had ignored; the seventh day, the seventh week, the seventh month, the seventh year, and the seven weeks of years - God's Sabbaths, in every way violated. Now they go into captivity because of the Sabbaths. The way of death is the way of either the ignoring or the violating of the great truth that Christ has consummated God's work of new creation. Ignore that and there is no way of Life at all.

Well, here arises the big battle for Life again in the midst of this situation. Elijah sets forth the assault of death. Few men in the Bible set forth the assault of death more than does Elijah. You find him all the time pursued by death, assailed by death, dealing with death or death dogging his steps. Sometimes he is fleeing for his life. The king will send three bands of soldiers to take his life.

But then there comes his successor, Elisha, and it is interesting again. Elisha has to do with seven forms of death, and in them all he overcomes and those forms of death are very instructive.

First of all there are the waters of Jericho. The sons of the prophets came to him about the waters of Jericho, and said, "The situation of this city is pleasant... but the water is bad and the land miscarries" ("casts its fruit" A.R.V. margin); nothing comes to maturity - and that is always a mark of the curse. The thing proceeds so far and fades out. The whole creation is subjected to vanity, just going so far and then not being able to go through to perfection. And, as you remember, Elisha cast salt from a new cruse into the waters and they were healed. The curse is dealt with by the power of resurrection Life. It is Life triumphant over death as death is working by the curse. The Lord Jesus was made a curse for us, but by the power of an incorruptible Life - that is the salt - He destroyed the power of death in the curse.

Next, the widow's oil. Remember it is death again. The question was this - "My husband is dead, the creditors are come to take away my son to be their bond slave". And Elisha said, "What hast thou in the house?" And the widow's little oil was multiplied. Bond slaves through death; what is it in principle other than bondage to the law? The law has stretched out to lay its hand on things through death. Death has entered and the law has entered to lay hold and to bring into bondage, and Elisha, in multiplying the oil, exercises the power of Life which destroys bondage to the law and sets it aside, meets the law, fully satisfies it, sets it aside, destroys its claims. It is Life.

That is what the Lord Jesus has done by His resurrection. He has delivered us from bondage to the law by satisfying it wholly and putting it out of the way.

Thirdly, the Shunammite's son who died; given by God, then dying and raised from the dead. Here is Life in terms of sonship in the power of resurrection. Jesus, Paul says, was declared, set forth, attested; the Son of God with power, or in power, by the resurrection of the dead (Rom. 1:4). There is something in the power of resurrection which is the quality of sonship. Sonship is the possession of resurrection Life in Christ.

Then the fourth thing, the pottage; the sons of the prophets gathered together and Elisha with them and they went out to gather for their meal and one gathered something wild and they cried out "O man of God, there is death in the pot" (2 Kings 4:40). And Elisha said, "Bring in meal", and he cast it into the pot. We cannot stay to talk about the meal as a type, but what we have is the principle that my life has got to be pure, that is, it has got to be in the Spirit if it is to be maintained. If you bring in foreign or strange elements, things unknown, poisonous things and introduce them into your life, death ensues. It is a matter here of Life in the Spirit, in the purity of the Spirit, without any admixture of old nature, foreign nature. Those wild gourds are the fruit of the curse. All wild life of that kind is the result of the curse and death. That has got to be overcome. But for the sons of the Lord's prophets, there must be nothing like that, nothing wild, foreign or strange.

The next thing, Naaman, the Syrian, the leper. "Go, wash in Jordan seven times" - and I see in this the utter setting aside of the whole body of the flesh; seven times - a perfect spiritual order, the whole body of the flesh set aside as the only way of Life.

Next, the axe-head which came off, went to the bottom, was raised, made to float, and we are now in service, building the house, doing the work of the Lord. It is a habitation for the people of God, and Elisha brings something in that connection as from the dead, operating again in the power of resurrection, saying to us that the Lord's servants must be on resurrection ground, in the power of His own risen Life and not in the energy of nature, not even to work for God as out from ourselves. As Paul said, whom I... "serve in the newness of spirit" (Rom. 7:6), that is, newness of Life, resurrection Life.

Finally, Elisha dies and his burial takes place nearby. Some men are killed and then the enemy appears and the burying party picks up a corpse and throws it into the sepulchre, the grave of Elisha, and it comes to life. When he touches the bones of the prophet, he comes to life. And here is, not Life as triumphant over death, but Life triumphant in death. The consummation of the saint's life is that in relation to Christ we ought none of us really to die. When we die, it ought not to be a scene of death; even if we die, go by way of the grave, not caught up to meet the Lord in the air, there is the power of His resurrection there to turn the scene of death into Life. Elisha all the way through is setting forth this mighty power of Life triumphant in the presence of death.