Author's Rights

Published as an E-book

by

Austin-Sparks.Net

Email: info@austin-sparks.net

ISBN: 978-1-927326-51-0

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 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 necessary distribution costs) and with this statement included.

The Christian Life

by T. Austin-Sparks

Transcribed from messages given in January, 1955, the spoken messages can be found on the Audio page of this website. The first four messages were published in a book by Witness and Testimony Publishers entitled What it Means to be a Christian. The last two messages were also given in January 1955 but may not have been part of the same conference.

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Immense Significance of the Christian Life

Chapter 2 - What Happens When We Become Christians

Chapter 3 - The Divine Purpose and Principles Governing the Christian Life

Chapter 4 - The Eternal Prospect of the Christian

Chapter 5 - Principles of Divine Guidance

Chapter 6 - The Coming of the Kingdom in Power

Chapter 1 - The Immense Significance of the Christian Life

The general subject then, is what it means to be a Christian. I think we might be quite safe in dividing this company into three categories generally. One, those who would not claim to have had a definite experience in relation to Christ of what the New Testament calls the new birth, or being born anew. Another group are those who have perhaps more recently had such an experience and are what might be called "young Christians"; not necessarily young in years, but young in Christian life. And the third group: the people who know all about it. Now, it will be necessary for there to be quite a bit of give and take in what is being said. That is, that if there is that being said that does not fit your group, your category, you must remember that it may just be what someone else needs, and in that way be co-operative so that we are working together. And the mature experienced people who know all about it, must realise that I am also speaking to those who have no experience at all in this matter, or whose experience is very immature. Having said that, we can come to our subject: what it means to be a Christian.

There are many misconceptions as to what the Christian life really is. There's quite a bit of confusion, quite a lot of mistaken ideas, and certainly there is a great deal of limited apprehension of what a Christian really is. I am not going to speak about the negative side very much - that is, as to what it is that is either mistaken, confused or inadequate. I think the best way of dealing with all such difficulties is to get right on to the positive line, and seek to state the thing in its fullness, as we are able, and so leave the comparisons to be made by those who hear. The corrective for wrongs or mistakenness is always get on positive lines and not trying to deal with the faults and the weaknesses and imperfections. So we are going to get right away onto the positive side of what it means to be a Christian.

And our first phase of this matter is, as you see:

The Immense Significance of the Christian Life.

When we put it into such a phrase we are saying something of very great importance. It is this: that we shall never really appreciate anything until we see it in its full setting. If it is just something in itself, we miss a great deal. We've got to get its great background and its great setting in order to feel the full impact of its significance. And that is what we are going to seek to do, as we are Divinely enabled - to see something at least, of the immense significance of the Christian life.

I think we shall all be on the ground of common agreement when I say that the Christian life begins with Christ. But that means a great deal more than it sounds. To say that Christianity began with Jesus is true if you put Jesus in His right setting. And it is just at that point that an adjustment may be necessary in order to grasp the immensity of this matter. You see, neither the Christian life nor Christianity did begin with the historic Jesus. They did not begin when Jesus was born, when Jesus lived here, when Jesus died and rose again. It is just there, I say, that we need to make an adjustment. We must know what it is that the Bible shows as to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now you take up your New Testament, and open with the gospels. You find that Matthew traces the genealogy of Jesus back to Abraham. Luke takes Him back still further, to Adam. Mark begins his life of Jesus with Jesus at thirty years of age, at the time of His baptism. But John overreaches them all; back through the thirty years, beyond Bethlehem, back, ever back to Abraham and beyond Abraham, to Adam; and he doesn't stop there, he still goes further back: "In the beginning". Whenever, wherever, that dateless time - "in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God." That is a statement - and it is only a statement, a statement of truth, of fact as to the Person of the Lord Jesus; but that, with one or two other sentences, is all that John gives us.

But we have in the New Testament, through another apostle, a very great deal more concerning Jesus right back there in that dateless time. Through the apostle Paul we are taken back there and we are shown a very great deal about God's Son "before times eternal", not only before He came into this world, but before this present world order came into being.

It is the universal custom to begin a biography with the ancestry of the person in view, leading up to his or her birth, and the whole thing is but an account of the human and earthly history of this person. But the biography of Jesus Christ goes right back not only long before His own birth in this world, into this world, and beyond His human parentage or ancestry. A large section of the biography of Jesus Christ in the Word of God relates to that which is called "the before times eternal". Here are some fragments of Scripture. We hear Him praying. He is praying to His Father, and He is saying: "Father, glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was". That's a bit of His biography, or autobiography - "the glory which I had with Thee before the world was." And then the apostle Paul, in that matchless description of Him, just has this one clause, this one mighty clause of only five words: "He is before all things". "The glory which I had with Thee before the world was" - "He is before all things."

So, it's right back there that we travel to find the meaning of a Christian, the Christian life, and Christianity. Let us contemplate Him back there, from the standpoint of definite statements in the Scriptures as to His Person - what He was like, then. Here it is: "God hath... spoken unto us in His Son... who being the effulgence of His glory, and the very image of His substance..." that certainly does not belong to the days of His humiliation. That goes right back, as we shall see in a moment, in the very connection or context of those words - "the express image of His substance", "the effulgence of His glory". That's what He was like before the world was.

What was His position then? Here it is: "Though He was equal with God, He counted it not as something to be grasped at" to be on an equality with God, equal with God, on equality with God - that was His position then.

Then as to His appointment. Here again is the Scripture and the context of the words we quoted just now, "hath... spoken unto us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things". "Appointed heir of all things". When did that happen? That was not done in time, that was not at the time of His birth or subsequently. That was right away back there in the eternity past. There was something done in the counsels of the Godhead, whereby the Son of God was appointed Heir of all things, when it was determined that all things should be the heritage of God's Son, His rightful inheritance as God's Heir. Not to come into it, of course, on the demise of God, but God bound up all things with His Son, and made Him their Inheritor. These are things that we know through the Scriptures. How the men who stated them come to know? Well, they tell us. Paul, who says most about this, tells us quite definitely that it was given to him by revelation: God made it known to him. Well, there it is.

That, then, as to the "before times eternal". And out of that relationship with God, out of that fellowship with God, and out of that appointment of God, came the next move: the creation of the present world, not the creation of the present world condition, but the present cosmic order; and again we are given a lot of information and light as to the relationship of Christ with the creation of this present world order.

We are told in the first place that He was the Agent of it, God's Agent in the creation. Here is the statement: "All things were made through Him; and without Him was not anything made that hath been made". Or again another statement: "For in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and unto Him" - the Agent. And if it needs another word to bear that out, here it is: "There is... one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things". Through whom are all things - the Agent in creation.

The Object of Creation

"In Him were all things created". He is before all things. "All things were created through Him, and unto Him". All things created unto Him, and another statement: "For of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things". And then a further movement is indicated, or a further constituent of this creative activity and purpose and it is found in the little clause which completes what we have just read: "He is before all things, and in Him all things consist". The Agent, the Object, the Integrator. "In Him all things hold together" - integrated. He is therefore the very reason for the creation. And remove Him, and the creation will disintegrate. When they crucified Him and He committed His Spirit to God, "Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit", there was a great earthquake, and the sun was hidden, and darkness over the face of the earth. The very Object of the creation has been put out of His place by man. The creation knows that its very Integrator has been rejected. These are but tokens of a great fact. Jesus Christ is the meaning of this creation: and without Him the creation has no meaning.

Perhaps some of you who are a thinking people are saying, "Well, these are tremendous statements; they are ideas, they may be a wonderful theory, a system of teaching, but are they facts? How can you prove them?" My dear friends, you are all yourselves the proof of them! You see, we are moving toward the meaning of the Christian life. You have no meaning in your own creation until you find Jesus Christ. And the first thing that is livingly true about anybody who finds Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour is that they are conscious of having found the meaning of their very being - why they are alive! Life then takes on its meaning, and these are not just great wonderful truths, suspended in an abstract way for our contemplation, acceptance or rejection. They are borne out in the creation, and you and I are a part of it. There is no unification of our own individual lives until Jesus becomes the centre, there's a marvelous integration when that happens; until then we are divided, scattered people; life is not an order at all - it's a chaos. But as a statement we have, of course, got to come back to that presently, but we are at the moment occupied with Jesus Christ, and away back firstly before the world was, and then as the Agent, Object and Integrator of the creation. "Through Him... all things being created".

Out of this, three wonderful, though simple things quite clearly arise. Firstly, His likeness to God, His likeness to God - the very image, or "impress", as the word is, of His, God's substance; likeness to God, oneness with God, and agency of God. I want you to hold those things, because they are carried over and they come very much into this matter of the Christian life. With all this, we have to recognise a uniqueness and exclusiveness about Him, and I want to underline that as many times as I can, lest presently it might look as though I am on very dangerous ground. But I want you to extract those three things: likeness to God, oneness with God, and agency of God's purposes and God's work - but in His case something unique and absolutely exclusive, gathered into the word Deity, 'very God of very God'. Having said that we can pass on to what the Bible has to say about man. That in brief, but oh, what a comprehensiveness, what a profundity, what a fullness, in brief is what it says about Jesus Christ before He came into this word. We pass to the next phase of things:

What it Says About Man.

What does the Bible say about man as the very first thing that it says? It says a great deal about man, but what is the first thing that the Bible says about man? "And God said, Let us make man in our own image, and after our own likeness". "Let us make man in our own image, and our own likeness..." that's the conception, the Divine conception, that's the Divine idea. And what does that amount to? Surely it amounts to representation of God. Any image of a thing is supposed to be the representation of that thing, and the idea or conception of man in the Divine mind was that man should represent God. Now, not in that exclusive sense of which I've spoken - Deity - that doesn't come into it with man at all; but this matter of being an expression of God, bearing the likeness of God: so that if you should meet a man who answers to the Divine idea you have a very good idea of what God is like. Oh, that that were more true - but in a very limited way we do know, very limited, far too limited, but in a limited way sometimes we meet what we call a 'godly' man (and 'godly' is only 'God-like' abbreviated), and sometimes we are able to say in a little way, "When you meet that man, you seem to meet the Lord, you seem to find something of the Lord - you seem to touch what you think the Lord would be like."

Now, that was the Divine intention, idea, conception, as to man; but it was the intention that it should be in a full way, that man's being and existence should convey the knowledge of what God is like in His moral character, in the beauty of His personality, that you should touch God, and be led back to God by that expression of God. And therein is a principle, mark you, a principle that we ought to take up, and that is to be carried into this matter of what is a Christian, what it means to be a Christian. All our talking about God or Christ is utterly worthless unless we convey God and Christ - unless our Lord is found in us. That's the best thing, and sometimes that does its work without any talking, whereas a vast amount of talking will do nothing unless there is the touch of the Lord there. The conception of man in the heart of God is just that: that He, HE should be found in a creation and in a manhood. That's the conception then, the relation to God in God's intention was just this: likeness in nature. Likeness in nature, not Deity, not Godhead, but God's nature.

You see, the Lord Jesus when He was here was always trying to convey, by different means, sometimes by stories or parables, an impression of what God is like. He was speaking to people of very small spiritual apprehension. He could not go beyond illustrations, pictures and figures such as (was it a parable, or was it a life-story?) known as 'The Prodigal Son', I think a misnomer, it would be far better to call it "The Story of a Father's Love", and you would get to the heart of what the Lord Jesus was after. What He was saying was that when you have contemplated that man, that father, his broken heart and his marvelous forgiveness and restoration, even smothering confession before it's finished, and lavishing upon that renegade son all that he had, you've got a faint idea of what God is like! And man was intended to be endowed and endued with the Divine nature. Peter even uses those words, "There are given to us exceeding great and precious promises whereby we shall become partakers of the divine nature". Leave Deity out of it; you've got enough when you come to the Divine likeness without aspiring to Deity. Likeness in nature... oneness in life; that was God's thought concerning man, that man should become an inheritor of the very uncreated Life of God. He was put on test, on probation, and missed it. It was there in the symbolic form of the Tree of Life, to be had on condition, but he missed it. And so man, by nature - all the children of Adam right up to our own time and ourselves - never have possessed that Divine Life outside of Jesus Christ. But that is the gift. As we shall see later, perhaps next week if God wills, that is one of the great things that happens when we become a Christian: partakers of God's own, Divine, eternal, uncreated Life. I won't dwell upon that at present, but then again, not only likeness and oneness, but:

Fellowship in Purpose.

That was God's idea for man, that he should be brought into a working relationship with God in His great, His vast purposes in this universe. The statement of Scripture is: "Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands" - fellowship with God. And here again we have a vast amount in the New Testament. I think we could say that ninety percent of the New Testament is occupied with this co-operation with God in His great purposes, on the part of Christians. The apostle is so fond of using that very phrase, 'called according to His purpose'. Fellowship in the purpose of God - that was in God's mind in making, in creating man.

But note, all this, all this: likeness in nature, oneness in life, and fellowship in purpose, all this related inseparably with God's Son, Jesus Christ: none of it, apart from the appointed Heir. We are said to be "joint-heirs"; that is, we come into things by union with Christ. So the apostle Paul has as his abundant phrase, found everywhere (two hundred times) in his writings - "in Christ", "in Christ", "in Christ" - nothing apart from Christ, nothing outside of Christ - it is all in Christ, inseparably bound up with God's eternally appointed Heir of all things. Before we can follow that through into the Christian life, we have to look at that, shall we say, this tragic interlude:

The Failure of Man.

We know the story, how it is written and how it is put. I often, at risk of course, at risk of being misinterpreted, feel inclined to say you need not worry so much about the story as to how it is put, what is important is to get hold of the laws and principles and truths lying behind which create the story. I know the difficulty and problems that so many have, Bible students here tonight, you have your difficulties, your intellectual difficulties about the Bible, all this. Well, you know, after all, after all, I'm not saying that it is not true, that it doesn't matter, but I'm saying that after all it's the result, the result and values and implications that matter. If you and I can get hold of what the Bible embodies as a matter of principles, and not allow the framework of those principles to be the primary thing, the all-important thing, we'll get to the message, we'll get to the meaning! Well, we know the story of what is called "the fall", we want to get into that, man's failure.

We are told, the Bible tells us of what the source of that failure was. Here again, marvelously, we are taken right back before the creation. The veil is drawn aside and we are shown something happening outside of this world, somewhere where those counsels of God have become known, His counsels concerning His Son and the appointment of His Son as Lord of creation, as Heir of all things. It's got known amongst the angels, the hierarchy of Heaven, and there is one there, the greatest created being of all, Lucifer, son of the morning, who becomes acquainted with this Divine device and scheme. How? This is the mystery - how into that realm iniquity should enter, we don't know, the origin of sin, but what we are told is that iniquity was found in him. Pride was found in his heart. Pride!

And pride immediately works out in jealousy, does it not? Think of pride again. It always immediately shows itself in jealousy, rivalry. Pride cannot stand either a peer or an equal. Pride will always lead to a trying to go one better in whatever realm it is. And so all the jealousy and all the rivalry sprang into that heart. And we are told in the Scripture that that one said: "I will be equal with the Most High; I will exalt my throne above the clouds..." - jealous of God's Heir, a rival to His appointment; and Heaven was rent. That one was cast out, we are told, he was cast out of his estate with all those who entered into that conspiracy with him against God's Son. The angels, this is a passage of Scripture, "the angels which kept not their first estate" were cast out.

Well, the next thing we see is the appearance of this one in beautiful guise - not with horns and tail and pitchfork - but in beautiful guise to deceive; coming into the realm of God's creation, and to man and his partner. You know the story, that's the origin. The motive? Jealousy. Pride. Rivalry. What was the method? We'll never understand the meaning of the Christian life until we get these things. What was the method, what was the focal point, of the great arch-enemy's attack upon the man that God had created to come into fellowship with His Son in the great purpose of the ages?

The focal point was man's self-hood. Man's self-hood. I doubt whether the man had any consciousness of the self-hood until Satan touched him on that point and said, "Hath God said? God is keeping something from you that you might have; He is limiting you. God knows that if you do this thing which He has forbidden, you yourself will have the root of the matter in yourself, you will have the capacity and faculty in yourself for knowing, knowing, knowing. At present, under this embargo of God, you've got to depend entirely upon Him, you've got to consult Him, refer to Him, defer to Him; you have got to get everything from Him! And you can have it in yourself! And God knows that, and you see, you see, God is withholding something from you that you might have, and you are less of a being than you might be - so God is not really favourable to you and your interests."

This maligning of God... but the focal point was this: "You, you, YOU can be something, you can do something, you can be "in the know" about things. You see? Self-centredness, self-interest, self-realisation, and all the other host of 'self' aspects. The 'I' awoke, that 'I' which had brought the enemy out of his first estate: 'I will be exalted above the clouds, I will be equal with the Most High'. Now to awaken the 'I' in man... instead of man having his centre in God, deriving everything from God, aspiring to have the centre in himself; instead of being God-centred, to be self-centred - that was the focal point. And man was led into the same pride, leading to the same act of independence - making a bid for personal freedom from God.

The results? Well, we know them. The older this world becomes, and the greater the development of this race, the more and more terrible is the manifestation of this original thing: man trying to get on without God, man saying that he CAN get on without God; man seeking to realise himself, fulfil himself, and to draw everything to himself and himself to be the centre of everything, not only individually, but collectively. That's the story, isn't it? That's history. The results? Well, it's a terrible thing, you look at the world and all this terrible, terrible suffering, all the misery, all the horror. And we would never have believed, had it not become an actuality in recent years, what man is capable of doing - because, because of his break with God. We won't dwell upon that; it's too awful. The point is: why? Why should all this suffering and misery and wretchedness go on in the world? Surely the answer is this: God can never remove from man the consequences of this act of pride and disobedience, independence and complicity with His arch-enemy; could not remove the consequences without letting man go on in his independence. All this is God's way, the way in which God is compelled to say - "It's an awful thing, an awful thing, to be without God, to be in a state of breach with God". It's an awful thing!

Now you come into the Christian life, you see, you don't remove all the misery and suffering in the creation, and you don't remove the suffering from yourself, but there's a difference. The mighty difference between those who are outside of Christ and those who are in Christ is this: all suffer, but the one suffers unto despair and hopelessness, and in the sufferings of the other there is the grace of God turning it all to account to make them Godlike again. The sufferings of a Christian make that one like their Lord. It's just marvelous to see the likeness of Christ coming out in His own through their sufferings. While the others suffer without hope; die without hope. That, by the way, the results.

Now, just for a few minutes let's get to this next phase of things:

The Incarnation of our Lord Jesus.

For it is just at that point that all that was appointed for Him, all the Divine design and conception of God's Son in this universe, all the creative activity through Him and by Him and unto Him, and just at that point all the meaning of man's creation, as we have been showing or trying to show, at the point of incarnation all that is taken up in a definite way for realisation. There first of all has something to be undone in this universe.

Oh, this incarnation, the coming of the Lord Jesus into this world, is a far, far greater thing than anyone has yet appreciated. But the Word of God makes a great deal of this coming into the world. You know, we've just been recently talking all the time about the birth of Jesus - Jesus born in Bethlehem. There's been so much about that in carols and in talk. It's all been, all been the birth of Jesus. Jesus born. But you know, the Word of God, while it uses that phrase, "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem...", the Word of God says far, far more about His coming. That was not the beginning of Jesus: that was the coming of Jesus. He definitely and deliberately and consciously, in that full form of His eternal existence with God, made a decision about this matter, a deliberate decision to come. Coming in babe form had its own meaning - we dare not stay with all the details of this - it had it's own meaning coming that way, but it was a coming.

And what the Word of God says about that coming first of all, was that it was a mighty, mighty renunciation on His part. Listen again. "Who being in the form of God counted it not something to be grasped at, to be on equality with God, but emptied Himself, emptied Himself... took upon Him the form of a bondslave, being made in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross". And there is, you see, an inference, an implication in that sentence in His great prayer: "Father, glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was" - "I had..." He's let it go, given it up. That mighty renunciation of God's Son of His heavenly, eternal glory, of His position - down to what? Servanthood. The word is a 'bond-servant', a bond-slave, the form of a bond-slave. You and I cannot grasp all that, because we cannot grasp what it meant for Him to be equal with God. We cannot understand all that He was and had in the eternity past. We know so little about that; we understand less. But here it is: it's all been renounced, and He is now here in incarnation, not as a master, but a bond-slave. "The Son of man", said He, "is come not to be ministered unto, but to minister". "I am among you as he that serveth" (Luke 22:27). "He took a towel, and girded Himself... He poured water into the basin, and washed the feet of His disciples". The God of the slave... the bond-slave, not an angel but the man... assuming responsibility for the state of things and for the recovery of what was lost and the re-instating of what had been forfeited, the redeeming of man and creation. For that He became incarnate, and then straight to the Cross, straight to the Cross. He had come for that - He had no illusions about that - He'd come for that. One of His great imperatives was always related to the Cross. "The Son of man must be delivered up... must be crucified". That imperative was in His heart as overruling and overriding everything else. He knew it, and that is why He repudiated and rejected the cheap offer of the kingdoms of this world at the hands of the Devil; because He'd come, not to have them as they were, but to have them as God ever intended them to be, and that could only be by the Cross.

So the Cross - the great repudiation of the world as it was and is, the great repudiation of man as he had become, the man that God could not accept, in whose heart is this very pride, the repudiation of him because, representatively, the judgment and death of Jesus Christ was God saying concerning the whole race, 'I have finished with that man', and turned His face away. The heart of His Son was broken as He cried, 'Thou hast forsaken Me!' Why? Because He was there as man's representative, the world's representative as it was, and He had to repudiate it, die as it, to it, as God, closing the door on it. But by that means He redeemed, He redeemed man, He redeemed the creation. And in His resurrection-ascension to the right hand of God He re-instated man, representatively, in the place that God ever intended man to have! This is not all isolated action on the part of Jesus Christ. This is related all the time. He is the inclusive One, and what happens to Him is what God means to happen to man. Until man is in Christ, he is repudiated by God. There is no way through. "No one cometh to the Father, but by Me". But in Christ the inheritance which was lost is recovered. In Christ, personally at God's right hand as His representative, in Christ man is reinstated. He is there as the earnest of what we shall be and where we shall be, by the grace of God.

All this is the setting of the Christian life; is it not immense? Is it not immense? This is the background of a Christian! You see, we strive, we struggle for words to try to set it forth, it's so great. And all I hope to do, and really all I'm trying to do tonight, is to leave an impression on you. I cannot explain, I cannot define, I cannot set it out, I cannot convey it; but all this, which is so, so poor an expression of it, surely, surely, should leave an impression on us. And this is what we're really getting at, that that eternal background is the setting of the Christian. This little thing of becoming a Christian; getting converted and becoming a Christian, it's, well... it's wonderful, it's blessed to be saved, it's wonderful to be a Christian; but dear friends, the conception and experience of the Christian life is such a little thing compared with God's thought! You have got to get the eternal dimensions of the significance of Jesus Christ as the setting of a Christian life.

We do not begin our Christian history when we accept Christ. By accepting Christ we are placed right back there in the eternity of God's thought concerning man! We are brought into something that has been there from all eternity in the intention of God, and, as we shall see later, linked on with realisations so wonderful in the ages to come. To become a child of God, to be born again, (however you may define or explain it or speak of it) is to come right into something first of all that is not of time at all - it's of eternity. It is not just this little life here on this earth; it is of Heaven, it is universal in its significance. It's a wonderful thing, beyond all our powers of grasping, and if we could only get some conception of the cost of our salvation, the cost of redemption, the cost of recovering the lost inheritance; the cost, the cost to God, the cost to God's Son - the awful depths of that Cross - if only we could get some idea of that, we should see that it is not a little thing to be a Christian. It's immense.

And so we must close by pointing out that if this is true, and I haven't spoken outside the Word of God; you must believe me that I've been keeping closely to the Book, I haven't troubled you to turn from passage to passage, but there's a vast amount of Scripture behind what I have said. It's all in the Word of God and more than I have given you. If this is true, and I say again it can be put to the test - the importance and the value of all that I've said is it can be put to the test; and it can be made true in experience, and you can know it now, in this life that it's true or not. That's the wonder of it: a truly born-from-above child of God knows within himself or herself, 'This is true! This is true, this is why I have a being; now I've got the explanation, and much more.'

Now I put to you, by way of argument, if this is true, what an immense challenge it is to be a Christian, and what an immense thing it will be, not to be in Christ. If all that is the meaning of being in Christ, what an immense thing it will prove to be, not only in this life, but more, infinitely more, in the ages to come, to be in Christ! It's a challenge... a challenge to you who are not in Christ, you're not dealing with just your father's or your mother's beliefs or faith. You are not dealing with some thing that you call 'Christianity', and your own conception of a Christian, it may be all wrong, faulty, and at most, inadequate. You're dealing with a vast thing, an immense thing. Yes, the immense significance of the Christian life. May God help us, from this contemplation... certainly not apprehension, or understanding or grasping, but contemplation of the setting of the Christian life, help us to reach out, if we've never done so, to embrace God's gift. If we have, to make sure that we are set upon knowing all that the Christian life means, that we are not going to be content with a little Christian life, with anything less than God's fullness for us; and if we have a lot of experience and knowledge, let this all lead us to a new determination that we, we shall not stop short anywhere of God's full and ultimate intention in apprehending us in His Son.

Chapter 2 - What Happens When We Become Christians

Our general subject is: What it means to be a Christian. Last week we were occupied with the immense significance of the Christian life; its setting in the eternal counsels of God. This evening we are going to consider what happens when we become Christians. May I repeat what I said at the commencement last week, so that we shall be drawn together in co-operation in what is being said. I have three classes or categories of people in mind: those (and in all probability there are some here) who have no definite experience of the Christian life, they have not yet begun. They may be in all sorts of conditions, but they form one category. Then those who are but newly in the Christian life without a great deal of experience or knowledge. And then the older stages who know all about it. Now, if something or a part of what is said does not seem to be fitting your position, just think that it may be for someone else; you enjoy your portion and try to enjoy someone else's as well. I say that because some of you might just feel, "Well that's far too elementary, we left that long ago" and you might feel bored. But remember, someone else might just be there, and so on. And you'll be very helpful to me if you will please take that attitude.

What happens when we become Christians? And we shall proceed this evening along the same lines as we took last week, not spending time on pointing out the misapprehensions, the misunderstandings and the misrepresentations of the Christian life, their causes, reasons, but rather shall we proceed to present the Christian life positively as to really what it is according to God's Word and leave you to make the comparisons and any necessary adjustments. The only thing that I will say in that connection is this, that we are seeking to be pre-eminently practical. That is, we are not occupied with the presentation of Christian doctrine in itself. Christian doctrine will be here, but in the abstract; we are not interested in presenting the doctrines of Christianity; important as they are. But what we are concerned with is to make everything practical and experimental - that which can be immediately put to the test - so that at once it becomes clear as to what things are and to where they belong and what the issues are.

There is, of course, a difference between the facts and the truths of the Christian life, and the explanation of them. That is, it is possible to have the experience, and therefore all the facts to be present in the life without the person concerned being able to explain those facts. That is a part of our business: to explain the facts, and to challenge as to the facts. Now, the explanation of the Christian life should be corroborated by the experience. That is, it ought to be possible for you to say, "Well, I could not have explained it like that, but I know exactly in my experience what you mean - that just does express my own life." So that the explanation must be borne out by the experience, the experience must corroborate the explanation.

Now then, come to this matter of what happens when we become Christians. We shall spend some of our time in seeking to get back behind this matter of becoming a Christian, to get to certain other facts - facts stated or revealed in the Bible, and true to human experience. This is where you will be able to give your own verdict upon the situation.

In the first place then, getting back behind becoming a Christian, we come to:

Man As We Know Him - As We Find Him by Nature.

And what we find to be the situation with man by nature is that his relationship with God is completely dislocated. We Christians say 'dislocated', because we believe what the Bible teaches: that things were all right once, and they've gone wrong. If you, for the time being, prefer to waive the word 'dislocated' it does not make any difference to the situation because things are not in order between man and God. Whether they never were, or were and have got into that state, need not worry us for the moment. Presently we shall come on that perforce. But the fact is, the relationship between man and God is in a broken-down condition. That is the basic, fundamental fact. The relationship is disjointed; it is in a state of strain. There is distance between man and God. The relationship, or the 'non-relationship', is a very unhappy thing: the situation is by no means a happy one where man and God are concerned by nature. The relationship is altogether unproductive; nothing coming from it. It is quite barren and desolate, unfruitful.

But that is more or less negative; it's worse than that in most cases, it is positively antagonistic in very many cases. Man is in a state of antagonism to God in his nature, and often in his mind, in his attitude, and in his reference to God; there is a state of conflict. There is much suspicion in man's mind or heart as to God. A great deal of resentment exists in many human hearts. And we can go further - for the Bible goes this far - and says that in some cases, perhaps not a few, there is even hatred in the human heart for God. We meet that sometimes, this very positive state of antagonism and hatred.

That is the first fact - the relationship between man and God naturally is all chaotic, broken-down, dislocated and marked by these characteristics and features which I have mentioned.

That is not all. We need to get inside of that and go further. Man has a set of senses belonging to his spiritual being which are not functioning - a set of senses which correspond to his physical senses. The physical senses, as you well know, are: seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling. But man has another set of five senses which are not physical, but which belong to his inner man. The counterpart of those five physical senses, and in man by nature, these other senses are not functioning. The Bible speaks of all these senses in a spiritual way in relation to God.

The Bible speaks of a seeing of God, which is not physical at all; it's not with the natural eye. There is that little fragment known to most: "The pure in heart... shall see God". That is certainly not a physical matter. Seeing.

Again, hearing. There is a spiritual hearing of God which is not audible through the natural or physical ear. It's something in the heart. It's not a voice, but it corresponds to that in a spiritual way. People are able to say they have heard the Lord speak to them, but they never heard anything with their natural ear. Hearing.

Tasting? Yes, the Bible says: "Oh taste and see that the Lord is good", and no one thinks that to be a physical matter.

Smelling... that seems to be difficult, perhaps. But you see, after all, we know what we mean, without any physical factor coming in, when we say that we are scenting something. We go into a room, and it is not physical through the sense of smell by the organ of our noses, but there's something in the air... people have been talking, and we see looks on their faces, and when we go in they suddenly become quiet and look at one another, and we 'scent' something. And you know, it is possible to scent the presence of God.

See what I mean? A whole set of spiritual faculties which relate us to God when they are in proper order and function, and in the natural man, the unregenerate man, those senses are not functioning at all. There's no seeing God, in that way; there is no hearing God speak to them; there is no feeling God - feeling God - it's a tremendous thing to feel God, not with your hands, but in an inward way. There is no tasting that the Lord is good, there is no sensing God or scenting God in the natural man. All these things are out of order - and yet the Bible speaks of them a very great deal. If you like to go and look it up again, the Bible teaches that man's condition, man's condition confirms and corroborates that where God is concerned, man is blind, man is deaf, man is numbed - has no feelings - man is insensitive to God. I said we're being practical. Is that true? That is the trouble with any one of you who may not have had a definite Christian experience: you don't see God in this way, you don't hear God, you don't feel God, you don't sense God; God is unreal, remote, far off, if He is at all. You don't know Him.

But the Bible goes further still, it says that man by natural birth is lacking in that other thing which corresponds to his (and I use the phrase) his "biological existence", that is, life. We have a biological existence which we call "life". And it is, of course, a very significant thing that the New Testament puts two different words over two different classes of people. It uses that one word bios for natural life, but it never uses that word of the life of the Christian, it uses another word entirely which means something altogether different. But the Bible says that man by nature lacks not only those functions of his spiritual senses, but he lacks that which corresponds to his natural existence - life. In a word, the Bible says that man is dead; not only blind and deaf and insensitive to God, but he's dead. He's dead! "Death passed upon all men", says the Word of God.

Man is Dead to God by Nature

He is dead to the true meaning of his own existence. Man by nature doesn't know why he was born, why he has a being. We've all sorts of accounts of his being in the world - explanations and excuses, shelving responsibility, and so on - all proving that he is entirely dead to the real meaning of his own existence. He makes the best of it - and sometimes that is a very good best that a man will make of his life; but, after all, when set in relation to God and set in relation to eternity, he doesn't know why he is alive, why he has a being. He is dead to that. He is dead to eternal and heavenly things and values. What a futile and hopeless thing it is to talk to man by nature about the things of Heaven and the things of God! He looks at you, he gapes at you, he doesn't know what you are talking about. That belongs to a world with which he is not at all acquainted; far off, something different, and he is utterly bored. And he may be a very good man from certain standpoints, a very educated man. He may be occupying a position of high esteem and respect amongst men and he may be a very religious man. And there was such a man who came to Jesus, an outstanding specimen of the best product of humanity outside of Christ; and over him was suspended one big question-mark. He was full of the interrogation: "How...? How...?" And Jesus said, "Well, it's no use talking to you about heavenly things at all. You don't belong to that realm; you're dead to that."

Well, that's on the negative side, now, is this true? I said at the beginning that you can put everything to the test. This is not just a statement of abstract Christian doctrine. This is a statement of fact which is verifiable. Some of you may know it now in your own experience. Many of you did know it in time past, but thank God, you know it no longer. Man is dead, according to the Bible. There is, where God is concerned, no response; it is useless to speak to a corpse, you'll get nothing back. There is no correspondence, no interchange, no communion, no fellowship and that is exactly what the Bible and human experience say as to man's condition by nature.

That surely brings us to a very practical point in approaching this question: "What happens when we become Christians?" There are two fragments of New Testament Scripture which I think sum this up for us very concisely and very fully. The one is that statement, so familiar, and yet so little understood even by Christians, the statement made to the man to whom I referred just now, who came with his big question, his multiple, "How...?" And Jesus simply looked at him, and didn't try to answer his question at all, He knew how hopeless a thing it is to talk to a dead man. He looked at him, and said: "You must be born again", or literally, more correctly: "You must be born from above". The other passage is also very well known, from one of Paul's letters: "Wherefore if any man be in Christ, there is a new creation". Those two words sum up what happens: "born anew", "a new creation". And that takes us right over the ground which we have just covered in reverse. When we become Christian in this sense (and I don't know of becoming a Christian in any other sense, that is, properly and rightly - I said I'd keep off negative ground and on positive) but it is not becoming a Christian just to accept the tenets of the Christian religion and give a mental assent to them, or joining some society which is called a Christian institution, though it might go by the name "church". That is not becoming a Christian in the New Testament sense. The only true 'becoming a Christian' is along these lines: born anew, a new creation - which means you become a different species from what you were before, and from what all other people are who have not had that experience.

But when we so become Christians, what happens? Our state of death gives place to:

A State of Life.

This other Life, this reserved Life, which no man by nature has ever yet had, excepting Jesus Christ; this Life - which we will not even give in the New Testament terminology - this Life is given in the day of our faith-exercise toward the Lord Jesus as Lord and Saviour. A new aliveness takes place.

It is the first wonderful, basic experience of the Christian. The Christian at that time leaps into life and immediately begins to talk a new language about now knowing - knowing the meaning of life, what it is to live, and so on. But that is it; we have to begin right at the beginning: what happens when we become Christians? Well, we are alive from the dead! We become alive, but not just the resuscitation of something. It is the impartation of what was never there before: a new life, belonging to a new creation; that is, a new order, which is a heavenly order because this is a being "born from above". Jesus never said a truer thing than that. "You must be born again." And if there is someone here tonight who has not had that experience, you know, you know because of the truth of what I've said about the natural condition, you know quite well that, well, if you are going to see God in this way, and hear God in this way, and feel and sense God in this way, something has got to happen to you which is nothing less than that which corresponds to being born all over again in another realm. You know it, you ought to confess that. Jesus is right at any rate, on that, isn't He? It is true. "You must..." it is not just the imperative of a command, it is not just a declaration that you have got to become a Christian to be accepted with God, it is the statement of a fundamental and constitutional fact that you can never, never even sense God in a real way, to say nothing of having living fellowship with God, unless something happens which is absolutely constitutional. You've got to have a new life, which is God's own Life, to make you understand what God is, to know Him.

This new Life then immediately introduces:

A New Consciousness About God.

It is a consciousness of God. It is a consciousness of God. Immediately you're alive to God - you sense God. God becomes a reality, a living reality: no longer remote, far off, indefinite,  now very dear, very real, very wonderful, the greatest reality in your whole life: God. In a new way, a new consciousness of God.

And then to the next aspect: a new consciousness of the meaning of your own existence. Every Christian who is truly founded upon this basis of beginning, of resurrection, almost immediately leaps into this consciousness: "Now I've got the explanation of life! I've got the key to life! I know that I was born for something! I never before knew that I was really born for something, but I know now. There is a sense of meaning in my being here, and of destiny, wrapped up with this new experience. It gives an explanation to my own life." Is that not true, Christians? It is just like that, "Now we know, now we know why we are here" - a new consciousness.

And, to carry that just one step further - it's a new consciousness of purpose and vocation; not only that there is a meaning in our being alive, but there's a purpose that has come in with this new life, a sense of vocation. We are called for something. And you don't have to get a lot of instruction about that. You don't even wait for it. The true born-again child of God spontaneously, instinctively, begins to talk to other people about it. You can test your Christian life by that. You just begin, you must tell them, you must talk about it, you must let them know. That's vocation coming out. You feel you are called for something, there is business on hand. And that can develop, as you know, to specific vocations. But it is the consciousness of purpose, meaning and vocation which springs up with this new life.

And then it's:

A New Set of Relationships, of Interests, of Desires.

We know that; this is what happens. It's no use talking to anybody who has not had the experience about these things. They have their relationships, their interests, their desires, and they just despise you for not doing what they do and going where they go and engaging in the things which are everything to them. And they do not understand you - do not understand. They think you have missed the way, that you have lost everything that is worth having. But you know quite well that it's just the other way. You don't despise them, but you pity them, are sorry for them. This is a transcendent, superlative set of relationships. Christians know the meaning of that little phrase about those early servants of God who were arrested because they were doing this very thing - fulfilling, expressing, the sense of vocation, and not keeping it in and keeping it to themselves - arrested and brought before the authorities and threatened and what-not. "And being let go, they went to their own company" - instinctively, instinctively to their own company. Well, we know what that means. There is a new 'company' - a new relationship, a new fellowship, a new set of desires and interests - no one else can understand or appreciate, but the Christian knows them. That's what happens! That's what happens.

And further:

A New Set of Capacities.

And this is a wonderful thing about the new creation life, this that is called the 'born-anew' life, this true Christian life, it's a wonderful thing that you get a new set of mental capacities, something different from, and additional to, and transcending natural mental capacity. I mean a new understanding of things, and it's a wonderful thing this, one of the wonders of the Christian life. You may find a person who has had no great advantages academically, educationally, or in any other realm; a very ordinary person, and yet, coming into a real experience of the Christian life, they become remarkably intelligent, and knowledgeable and understanding and they've got an insight into things that the man of the highest education and the biggest brain is entirely incapable of grasping or understanding.

The thing that we Christians know to be so true, that very often we think that the person, a certain person, because of such academic achievements and qualifications, is bound to be able to understand, and we're bound to have some good interchange with them when we begin to speak about the things of the Lord, and we meet a blank. They don't know what we are talking about. But here is this simple man or woman who knows. It's a new mental faculty, a set of capacities and powers for understanding the things of the Spirit of God, knowing what no natural man can know - not by the way of study, but by the way of communion with God. Wonderful!

New capacities for understanding, for knowing, and these develop and grow as the Christian goes on. New powers of transaction and enaction - of 'doing'. The Christian has the power of doing things that other people cannot do: a power of endurance, a power of overcoming, and a power of working. Many of my friends here tonight will understand me when I say that sometimes - and very often, it seems - that the Lord takes pains to undercut our natural ability for doing, in order to lead us into a life where we can do without any 'do', and that without any natural explanation at all. If you look at much that has been done through true Christians in history in this world, you'll not be able to account for it at all on natural grounds. They were weak things, frail things, things at a discount in this world. But look what God has done through the "weak things" and the "things that are not"! Powers to achieve, to accomplish, to do, which are altogether new!

A new consciousness, a new set of relationships and interests, a new set of capacities.

A New Hope

A new hope - that is characteristic of the true Christian. An altogether new prospect has leapt into view; we shall see more of that later in the course of our evening. But here it must be stated that the Christian, if a true Christian, is not one characterised either by despair, by hopelessness, by a sense of final frustration and disappointment, but a Christian is one, deep down in whose very being there is rooted the consciousness that there is something wonderful ahead, something beyond. The final argument for the afterward is not in any system of teaching about heaven or its alternative. It's found in the heart, it's found in the heart, its found in the life - it's found in a mighty dynamic. What is it that has kept Christians going in the face of unspeakable difficulties and sufferings and opposition? What is it? What is it? Others capitulate, give up, let go, fall into despair, the Christian just goes on - not because the Christian is of better natural calibre than others, with more tenacity and doggedness. Not at all. Again, it's so often the weak ones, as counted by men; but there's this going on. What is it? This is something, something that has gripped within: this is not the end and this is not all, and there is that which lies beyond. There is this hope, which has come from the "God of hope".

Now, when I have said all that, what is the explanation of it all? A new life, new consciousness, new relationships, and all things new (and I do not exaggerate the Christian life). What does it amount to? What is the inclusive secret of it? You see, it is not just that the Christian receives some abstract things. You may call it life, you may call it understanding, you may call it hope, you may call it power, but these are not abstract things. The true, born-anew Christian has received, not abstractions, but a Person. God gives His Spirit to them that obey Him. The gift of the Holy Spirit is the inclusive explanation of it all. And I say that in order to carry things into their right realm.

You see, the Holy Spirit is God! Is God; no less than God, and the Holy Spirit has all the intelligence and knowledge of God, all the power of God, the eternal prospects of God; the elements of eternity, timelessness. All that is true of God is true of the Holy Spirit. Now, if, if God gives the Holy Spirit to become resident inside a person, and that person learns like a babe from the beginning, day by day, year by year, to walk in fellowship with the indwelling Holy Spirit, that person is bound, bound to grow in all these things that I have said. Bound to know Divine Life - God's own Life within.

It's is a wonderful thing, when you think about it - not just an 'It', but Himself, God in Christ by the Holy Spirit, our very Life. I do like the way the Bible puts that about God: "He, He," or "Thou art the length of my days - Thou art the length of my days". Think about that. That means that if God really is our portion, resident within, then our duration, our spell, is not dictated by things, by natural things. He is the length of our days. We shall die when He says the time has come, and not before. You see, things are in His hand, and until that time the threats may be many. The threats may be many, but His Life persists, and we rise again and rise again and rise again. We thought the end had come, but we rise again and go on - there's a going on because He is our Life. It's a Person. The Holy Spirit is called "the Spirit of Life" - to be resident within is a very wonderful thing.

And so, if He has all Divine intelligence, and we are in His school, living with Him, keeping fellowship with Him day by day, we'll grow in this intelligence, which no natural man has - growing in knowledge, growing in understanding, growing in ability to grasp the things of God, which no man, apart from the Spirit of God, can understand. I want to lay the emphasis upon that. It is the Holy Spirit Himself. I know that Christians, as such, believe in the Holy Spirit - the majority of evangelical Christians believe in the Person of the Holy Spirit. They put the article there - the Holy Spirit - whereas others speak of 'Holy Spirit'. But it's a part of our Christian faith to believe in the Holy Spirit as a Person and to have some knowledge of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit: His work, His power. But I find, my dear friends, I find amongst Christians a lamentable lack of understanding of what it means to have the Holy Spirit really dwelling within. And that is, that is disclosed and manifested by the very fact that they can act and speak so contrary to the Holy Spirit without being checked up by Him. We're amazed how many Christians can speak in a way that the Holy Spirit certainly does not agree with, and yet, and yet they are not conscious at all of that fact that the Holy Spirit disagrees with them. There's something wrong here about this, this practical expression of the indwelling Holy Spirit. So many Christians can believe lies about others, and repeat them, and never be checked up by the Holy Spirit within or never register the Holy Spirit's disagreement; for He's the Spirit of Truth. There's something wrong here.

Now, the true Christian life, and we've got to get to God about it if we're Christians, means that wherever the Holy Spirit is in disagreement with anything that we say or do, with the way we say it or do it, we should know it. We should know it! At once we should register - not a voice, but a sense - the Holy Spirit in effect saying, "I don't agree with you - that's wrong! That's not right, that's not true, that's not kind, that's not good, that's not gracious". There's a very great need for the reality of the indwelling Spirit to be expressed. Now, I'm not saying that that failure to recognise and sense and discern means that the Holy Spirit is not there; but I do mean that we are not walking in the Spirit if it's like that. There's something where we are concerned that is necessary in the way of adjustment.

But, coming to the positive (that's a word of correction) coming to the positive you see the true Christian life can be like this; it can be, and should be like this: the Holy Spirit resident within, and when you or I say or do anything with which He does not agree, we know it at once. We have a bad feeling right in the middle of us, and we don't get rid of it until we go to the Lord and say, "Evidently I was wrong in what I said, Lord, forgive me and put that out of the way. And if it's done someone any harm, well, let's try and put that right." That's a life in the Spirit; it's very practical, you see.

That's what happens when we become Christians. It begins like that. Well, the beginnings are very simple. If you are just early in the Christian life, you surely must know something like this in simple ways. Perhaps you go to do what you used to do, and something inside you says, "Oh, no, not now - that belongs to the past". Well, that's a simple beginning, isn't it? If you go on, you burn your fingers - and you know when you burn your fingers, because you're alive! If you were dead, you would do these things and not feel them, but because you're alive, you sense.

Well, that's what happens when we become Christians, in brief, very simply; but, while I know that many of you know all that, I do feel that with many coming to Christ in these days, the beginnings of the Christian life, it is important for them to know really what they have come into, really what has happened to them. They may be able to say, as I have said this evening: "Yes, well, I couldn't have explained it, I could not have put it into words or defined it; but I know what you mean. That's quite true, it's quite true in my experience." But, you see, it is something more than just feeling. We've got to understand, there's a lot in understanding, if we're intelligent about these things.

May God make us intelligent Christians - Christians who are going on in Life, fellowship with His Spirit within, and growing all the time. Oh, God forbid that if there are any young Christians here, in five, ten or twenty years' time you should be just where you are now, at the beginnings. That is not necessary, because you know that being born again is not the end of things - that's only the beginning!

Chapter 3 - The Divine Purpose and Principles Governing the Christian Life

May I repeat what I have said on each former occasion at the commencement, that in what we are saying, we have three classes of people, mainly in mind. Firstly, those who have never had a definite experience of what the Word of God calls being born anew. That is, they have never entered by a living experience into the Christian life. There have been some such with us on each occasion, and we don't want them to be overlooked while we are speaking of the Christian life. Then, in the second place, those who have but a little knowledge and experience of the Christian life, those who have but recently, more or less, entered into that experience and need to be helped at its beginnings. And then in the third place, there are the old stagers who know all about it and my point in saying this is that you will understand that if it doesn't just meet you where you are, it may be meeting someone else and you shouldn't be bored and impatient. Just try to think that that may be helpful to someone else. And so we shall keep the level and tone of the gathering fresh and living if we have that in remembrance.

Our subject, as you know, is generally what it means to be a Christian. In the first place we considered the immense significance of the Christian life. Then last week, what happens when we become Christians. Now tonight, the Divine purpose and principles governing the Christian life - Divine purpose and principles. Firstly then:

The Divine Purpose.

And it is very necessary for us to be fully aware of the fact that purpose does govern the Christian life. That word 'purpose', that thought, is very much in view in the New Testament. Most of you are familiar with one statement relating thereto, although it is usually cut in half and only the first half taken: "All things work together for good, to them that love God, and are the called according to His purpose". I say, we usually take the first bit: "all things work together for good". We might go on: "to them that love God"; but that is not the real statement: "and to them that are the called according to His purpose". Called according to His purpose. Then we have another word, not so generally known: "Predestinated according to the purpose of Him that worketh all things after the counsel of His will". According to the purpose. Again: "according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus". Once more: "according to His own purpose and grace". These are sufficient to indicate at least, that this word 'purpose' is a governing idea in the Christian life: that we are not saved, we do not become Christians just to be saved and just to be Christians. That is only the beginning of something; that is unto something very much more in the thought and in the intention of God.

You are asking, "Well, what is the purpose?" Well, there are quite a lot of things said with regard to it, as to what it is, and what it is unto, but I am not going to take time to cite from the Scriptures this evening, we must not take too much detail. But, when all things said about it are gathered together, there is one thing which includes them all, embraces and covers them all, of which they are all just parts. And that one inclusive and comprehensive thing, which sets forth the Divine purpose is in a clause in one of Paul's letters: "till we all attain unto the... fullness of Christ". The fullness of Christ is the purpose with which we are called, which governs the Christian life, which gives to the Christian life its meaning.

The Fullness of Christ

We are going to spend a little time in looking into that, but I'm sure you will instantly recognise that that makes Christ very great. Surely, if all the Christians that ever have been and are and will yet be are called with that purpose of attaining unto the fullness of Christ - and the number is just countless in all the centuries, in all the generations since the first Christian - all put together, this vast, uncountable number are called with the same calling, the fullness of Christ, then Christ must be very great indeed.

Yes, and the Christian life must therefore be something very great. If it takes its character, its meaning, and its dimensions from Christ, then the Christian life corresponding to Christ must be a very great thing. It makes the Christian life necessarily a progressive thing. No Christian at any time in their experience or history here on this earth can ever say that they have reached that end. It means that the Christian life is one of progress and development. It is all moving toward that ultimate fullness. So we find in the New Testament that the Christian life is set forth in three tenses: we are Christians, we are becoming Christians, and we are going to be Christians. There are three distinct words in the New Testament that are in the original language indicating those tenses.

I believe it was Bishop Handley Moule who was travelling on one occasion, and either he first or she first, however, a Salvation Army lassie got into the same compartment as he. And when they had got settled and on the way - although he was a bishop, or I believe, a Dean at that time, in his canonicals - she interrogated him: "Sir, are you saved?" Whereupon the kindly old bishop looked at her and said, "Do you mean..." and then he quoted the three Greek words. Sounds a bit pedantic to me to quote them to you! "Do you mean..." and he quoted the word "I was saved", and then the other Greek word, "I am being saved", or the other one which means "I am going to be saved". Of course, she was completely bowled over! It was a bit rough on her, and she didn't know what to say, but it led to a very profitable talk about the beginning, the growth, and the end of the Christian life.

My point is, that there it is in the New Testament. We were saved, we are being saved, and we are going to be saved. They're all there. We shall be saved is the word, we shall be saved - the final stage. We were accepted in Christ, we are growing in Christ, we are to be perfected in Christ. Christ, then, is spread over the whole life of the Christian, at its beginning, continuation, and consummation. That is a statement to which you all agree and needs no labouring, but what does this mean? What is the "fullness of Christ"?

Well, what is the beginning or simple, elementary nature of Christ, into which we come at the beginning? When we come into Christ, we say we have come into Life, we have come into Life, we have found Life in Christ. The great secret of the first experience is we have received "the gift of God", which is "eternal life". And, we know it, as we were saying last week. There is no doubt about it - we know that Life has been given to us. Let us hold that for a minute.

Then at the beginning we speak of having received our sight, or having come into Light, into the Light. But Light, although we may not be able to define or explain everything that has become illumined to us, altogether new as another world, we know, we know our eyes have been opened. We have come to see; light has broken upon us. We are able to say: "Whereas I was blind, now I see. I was in the dark - now it's all light." Put it how you will, the beginning of the Christian life is just that.

Life, Light - and then Liberty. Liberty - one of the great things of the beginning of the Christian life is a wonderful sense of release, of emancipation, having been set free. It's a great, great sum of teaching in itself, the liberty that Christ brings us into - it's a great reality, is this liberty, this wonderful setting free.

Further, when we come into Christ, we come into Love, Divine Love, and Divine Love comes into our hearts.

These are four of the things which, in an elementary form, we come into and come into us, right at the beginning. Of course, there's much more to it and there are many more things, but that's enough to provide for the answer to our enquiry.

Life - a new Life and a different Life. I don't mean now the way we live - that follows, of course - but a new dynamic power in us, which is called "Divine Life". A new life, another one altogether, and that Life has in it another nature. It belongs to another realm, and has the nature of that other realm. It's the realm of God Himself. With that Life there comes into us a new nature. I don't mean now at this point of course, that we are altogether other creatures; but this is the beginning. We are conscious that there is a new nature at work within us, working for certain things and against certain other things - which was never true of us before - a new and different life, an energy. And Life is an energy, isn't it? A wonderful energy, is Life; see what Life will do! Life really demands difficulty to prove its energy. I remember, some years ago, going down into Cornwall and staying on a farm and this farm had fields on a slope, and one of the fields was just strewn with large, white stones over the whole field. It was the time of the year when seed was in, and nothing was appearing. And I said to the farmer, "Surely you'll never get a crop of wheat in that field with all those stones!" "Don't you make any mistake, I thought that when I first came to this farm, so I cleared them off. And I had a very poor crop, so I put them back again. And I get a very much better crop with the stones - much stronger and healthier than I had before." Life, you see, proves itself by difficulties and opposition. Here is a new Life-force, an energy of a different kind, of another kingdom, that is given to us in our new birth. It's different.

Light - a new intelligence, a new understanding, a new clearness about things. Everybody who has had a genuine Christian experience knows that. They see what they could never see before. They were always striving and struggling to see, now they see, and it's another world that is open before them, just as a new world is given to any person who has been born blind and at some time gets their sight. They are given a world. They have heard about it, talked about it, had it explained to them, but they have never been able to say, 'Now I see!' Here it is, a new world given! Light.

Liberty - release, and with the release enlargement. What a large thing the Christian Life is! There's something wrong with a Christian life that is small, mean, and petty, limited, and narrow. The Christian life is a large thing; it's a "land of far distances". With that enlargement, there comes a new inward sense of prospect. Prospect! Things are ever and ever beyond. The further you go in the Christian life, the more conscious you are of how much more there is. You can never exhaust this, a real sense of prospect and future, of a large, wide-open door.

Love - a new motive power in the life, in the heart. A new motive power: Love. The hallmark of a true Christian, a true Christian life is love. At its very beginning it shows itself (as we said last week) in an instantaneous desire to share, to let someone else know all about it, to come into the good into which you have come. It's a great heart overflow to all the world that the world might know. And it is, in its character, so selfless. Selfless! Self goes out. You'd do anything, you'd make any sacrifice, you never consider yourself; this "love of Christ constraineth" - a great care for the interests of others, and a deep, warm devotion to their interests. It is a new love. We, of course, cannot expand upon each of these - perhaps least of all this wonderful love of God which is shed abroad in our hearts - but you see these four things alone are there right at the beginning in an elementary form.

Now, what is the fullness of Christ? It is simply the continuous and ultimate finality of those very things. The continuous growth of Life - the Life, the freshness, this dynamic force of God within the life - this motive power, this Divine nature, which is in His life - should never, never come to a standstill. It is supposed, according to the eternal purpose, to grow and grow and grow more and more. More Life! Oh, dear friends, do take this to heart. To receive eternal Life may be a gift once and for all, but you have yet to discover how wonderfully full that Life is, and how that Life can become more and more abundant as you go on. The longer we as Christians live, the more should we be characterised by this mighty Life of Christ - "the power of His resurrection", it's called. It should just be there all the time, and the same of all the others. The fullness of Christ is progressively the enlargement and development of those very things which came to us, and into which we came at the beginning; and if we attain unto fullness - which we shall never do here in this life, but ultimately move right out into the fullness - it will be the universality of all these things.

Now you can see how vast Christ is, and how vast the Christian life must be! For here the Scripture speaks of Christ "filling all things" - Christ filling all things - "that He should fill all things". How is Christ going to fill all things? Well, just in this way, that when that comes about, all things - and it is a vast 'all' - will be full of His Life and there will be nothing else; full of His light; full of His liberty; full of His love, filling all things. And it is just all that Christ is, expressed in the whole creation. That is the purpose of the Christian life, and we have failed of the purpose if that is not true, in a progressive way, now. If it is not true that these things are increasing in us, we have missed the very object of the Christian life. Yes, if there's not more love, and still more love, and yet again more love, we've missed the very purpose of the Christian life. And that is true of everything else.

Christ filling all things - and all things filled into Christ. I don't know how best we could illustrate that. And perhaps a very good illustration is from the Old Testament, because it is an illustration which is there for this purpose. And everybody knows something about King Solomon, well, you read the story of Solomon, his great wisdom, the very synonym for wisdom: "the wisdom of Solomon". If anybody shows particular wisdom or acumen, we immediately dub them 'a little Solomon'.

I saw recently this (perhaps you saw it) a class of boys were being told about the incident of the execution of John the Baptist. You remember that the girl Salome danced before Herod, and he was so pleased that he said, "What's your request? What you ask for I'll give it to you, even to half of my kingdom." She went away and consulted her evil mother, who hated John the Baptist because of what he had said about her evil ways. And so the mother counselled the daughter to ask for the head of John the Baptist and she did so. And Herod was very, very distressed. He looked for a way out and found none, and because of the oath that he had made, he commanded that the head of John the Baptist should be brought. And the teacher turned to the class, and said, "Now, what would you have done if you had been Herod?" And one bright boy chirped up, "I would have said to the woman, 'That belongs to the half of the kingdom that I did not promise!'" And so, over the story is: "A Young Solomon". That just by the way.

But Solomon is the synonym for vast wisdom, also of vast wealth, "the riches of Solomon". Vast power: for his kingdom reached beyond all the kingdoms that had ever been in Israel. And his vast glory - even the Lord Jesus referred to that - it was proverbial, He said: "Even Solomon in all his glory..." All his glory! Now then, that was Solomon and his kingdom: so great in wisdom, riches, power and glory - his people were in it; they were in it, right in it! For it says when the queen of Sheba came to prove for herself all this, her verdict was: "The half was never told... I heard, I heard fabulous stories, but the half was never told!" And Solomon's people were in it - they were in the good of that. Well, in certain senses, it was in them; it was in them as well. You know, I'm quite sure, as you get a description of his table, and when those who fed at his table got up from the table his glory was in them, his richness was in them and they knew it! It worked both ways: they were in the greatness of Solomon, but the greatness of Solomon was in them.

Now here, in the New Testament, Jesus says: "but a greater than Solomon is here..." A greater than Solomon is here! Christ infinitely transcends Solomon, and therefore the people of Christ are that much greater than Solomon's people. His fullness is to be their inheritance: they are to be in it - it is to be in them. The purpose of God is that. What God has purposed is to have a people eventually in great prosperity, great wealth, great spiritual riches, great spiritual glory. We are called, says the Word of God, unto His eternal glory. That's the purpose; briefly and very simply.

The Principles Governing the Christian Life

The first is this, and mark you, there is no realising the purpose apart from the principles. The principles are basic and governmental to the purpose. We'll never get on in the purpose, either progressively, or to it finally, only by way of the Divine principles. Now, if the purpose lays hold of our hearts, and we, we do respond and say, "Yes, it's a wonderful thing to be a Christian, a wonderful thing to be called according to that purpose, and I want to attain unto that", it is necessary to know some principles which govern that and without which, apart from which there is no getting on in the purpose and no development of the purpose in us.

And the first basic principle of the purpose is:

The Cross.

The Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Cross operating in two ways or the Cross as on both of its sides: firstly His Cross and what it means for us, and then His Cross and what it means in us. Those are two sides of the Cross which occupy a vast amount of the New Testament teaching.

The Cross is a work fully and finally done; it is a work which is finished on one side. That is, as to our being allowed to come to God, having access - that's the New Testament word - access to God, and having union with God and having fellowship with God; all the work for that has been fully finished. We are "made nigh through the blood of His Cross". We have been made one with Him by the Cross. The Cross on that side is a fully accomplished work for our approach to God, our access to God, our union with God, and there is nothing more to be done apart from our accepting of it by faith.

But there's the other side to the Cross - what it is to mean in us. The Cross is also an abiding power in our lives. It's a principle to be continuously at work in us. On the one side, it is what the Cross meant in itself, then and there. On the other side, it is what the Cross requires of us.

What did it mean? Well, all-inclusively and comprehensively, the Cross meant the removal from God's sight of one kind of man. Jesus Christ at a given point assumed the representative capacity of all men, as they were in God's sight: in sin, under judgment. "He", says the Scripture, "was made sin for us, He who knew no sin". Again, He was made a curse in our place. That's where we were, all men were there - sin. Not only sinners, but they were sin in God's sight: under judgment, under condemnation, in rejection. And Jesus at that given point took that place - your place, my place, the place of every man as in God's sight under that rejection - and entered into all the conscious meaning of that rejection which you and I have never known, never known. To have the slightest taste, the slightest sense of having been rejected of God is enough to disintegrate the very soul. If you and I should have any little consciousness of being forsaken of God, it would be devastating to our moral being, intolerable and unbearable. He took the sum of that in full consciousness. It disintegrated Him - His very heart ruptured under it and broke - because He knew and endured in that one awful eternal moment being forsaken of God, on our behalf. "My God, Thou hast forsaken Me!" That was done for you and for me. We never need awake to that, if we will accept what He has done for us.

But it was, you see, the setting aside of a kind of man which He had voluntarily accepted, voluntarily allowed Himself to become, or to take the place of that kind of man in that awful hour. It was God saying, "I close the door to that forever; to that kind of creation." That's what the Cross means, that in Christ's death you and I have been set aside in what we are naturally - men and women by nature. God has in Christ disposed of and removed a kind of being, a species of creation put out of the way. In the resurrection of the Lord Jesus that's all done: that man's gone; it's not that man that is raised from the dead: a new Man - Another, He has now put off that man, and now assumes the place of a new creation Man.

And there the Heaven is opened, God accepts that Man! That Man is installed and instated forever before God as the type of man that God has ever had in mind. The Cross, on the one side, sets aside one man, and on the other side, it instates and installs another kind of man. "Wherefore", says the apostle, "if any man be in Christ, there is a new creation: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new". The Christian life is just that. In principle the Cross, the Cross has registered this: that there's a difference, a difference between where we were, and how we were, and what we were in God's sight before, and how it is now: a different man, a different creation, in Christ. In Christ, by faith in Christ. Another man is placed where the other was, in the resurrection of Christ.

Now there arises all the teaching, the necessity for our, first of all, accepting that position. We will never get anywhere in Christ, into the realm of fullness, on the way to fullness, until we have accepted that position in which God has put us in the death of Christ. In effect He says to us, "Look here: in yourself you're a dead man, a dead woman, where I'm concerned. You have got to recognise that when My Son died, you died in Him. Until you do that, you'll never get anywhere at all. When you do that, then you are in the position to take your place in Christ risen. Christ risen - and there is a new creation!"

You see, first of all it is a matter of a position to be taken, deliberately taken by faith. This is something not new to many of you, but it needs constantly to be underlined. That's the basic position of the Christian life; it's the basic principle of the Christian life, that we have got to consent to God's verdict upon us by nature. We are not to dissect ourselves and say, "This is good and this is bad, and this is not so good and this is not so bad" and do that sort of thing. God says: "The whole lot of you has gone in My Son. I don't make differences between what you call good and bad, I regard you as altogether under condemnation. There is none good, not one".

Now, that's basic, and I say again, it makes all the difference when you get hold of the fundamental principle of the Christian life. Many Christians don't make any progress at all, and this development and growth in fullness is stayed and arrested because they haven't got that settled. They're still trying to make something of the one that God says He never will entertain at all - still thinking that they can be something in themselves, and trying to be something in themselves - they've never accepted this utter, ultimate position. God says, "I put you in a grave with My Son, and that was the end of that. Now everything has got to be from another source altogether, of another kind: it's all got to come from Christ risen, and not from you at all."

That is the key to fullness. It opens up the way, throws open the doors widely when you get that really settled and by faith take that position, there is no limit to what can be in the Christian life. But then, when the position, the utter position, has been taken and accepted, acknowledged, received by faith, then the other side begins - the application of the principle. We accept that ultimate position as a basis and recognise it as God's own verdict, and then the principle of the Cross begins to work in us. Yes, the tenses again are (Romans 6) - we were crucified with Christ. We were crucified with Christ, but then Paul says: "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life whereby Jesus conquered death should be manifested in us". Again he said: "I die daily". And his aspiration was: "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection". You see, the principle is at work: it was done, but now it's being applied as an active thing in the life, on the one side bringing, bringing to an actual reality our death with Christ, and on the other side, corresponding and balancing the bringing into actual experience our Life-union with Christ. As the death works, so the Life works. This is just the meaning of the Christian life!

What is God doing with us? Why all this trouble, all this difficulty, this discipline, this chastening, this hard way, this difficult school? Why all this? "I thought the Christian life was going to be one continuous song and picnic and joy-ride!" You find that it isn't. It doesn't mean that joy disappears, not a bit of it. The miracle of joy goes on in spite of everything, but it does mean that we come into a lot of difficulties and into what, to our 'old man', that old man, is a very difficult way. What's the meaning?

Ah, God is applying the principle - getting the old man out of the way and making room for the new. And is it not true of a Christian, a true Christian, as differing from any other person, that suffering produces beauty? Suffering produces the fruit: the nature of Christ. Suffering just brings out what Christ is! In others, so often, usually suffering brings out bitterness, resentment. Some of the most difficult people that I have ever met and tried to help, have been people who, because of some great adversity in their lives, have turned against God, become bitter, sour. Suffering's done that. That is not what happens to a Christian. The marvel of the Christian life, the miracle of the Christian life, is just this: that you find some dear children of God, in lifelong suffering and agony, either in body or in circumstance, just wonderfully radiant. Wonderfully radiant! You go in where they are, and it's the peace of God, deep joy. The hymns they sing are hymns about the love of God. They're their favourite hymns, and if they ought to sing about anything at all, well it ought not to be that, naturally speaking, but they're their favourite hymns - the love of God. You say, "This is marvelous! This is marvelous!" I have certain instances clearly in my mind of such people, outstanding in my own experience. It's like that.

What's it all for? Why, the principle of the Cross is at work, on the one side clearing the ground for Christ, for this new creation Life, for making way for the fullness of Christ. That is the first principle and it can only be mentioned in brief as we hurry to a close.

And this is a very important principle that I'm going to mention, the next, that is, the principle or law of fullness is:

Relatedness.

See, no individual Christian, and no number of Christians just as separate isolated individuals, can come to the fullness of Christ. Of course that goes without saying, if you think about it. How could, if Christ is as big as that, if Christ is as big as we have said, how could any one individual come to that? It's nonsense to think of it. It would be arrogance to suggest it. It will require a vast, vast multitude to come to that, but they will never come to it as a multitude or congregation of individuals.

You see, the great conception that is given to us in the New Testament of the aggregate of Christians is the Body of Christ. You have only to think for a moment about that, about your body, and you know quite well that no one member of your body or all the members of your body if detached from the others will grow. It requires not only all the members, but all the members united, making one body. There can be no development, either of any member or members, nor even of the whole body together until articulation has taken place, has been made. I believe that the very first thing that a student of medicine has to face is a box of bones - at any rate very early in the course of things - a box of bones is handed over. It's all the members, all the bones of the human body, "Now then, put those together and make up a skeleton!" That's the first lesson. And the very first lesson of fullness and of growth is the articulation of Christians, the recognition of this fact: firstly, they belong to one another. Secondly, that they cannot get on without one another. Their spiritual life depends upon their relatedness with one another, and the maintenance of that adjustment to one another is the secret of spiritual growth.

And you will see that if Satan can carry out his master-stroke of separating Christians, he has effected their spiritual arrest. It's always like that. That's why he is after it. Divisions are the masterpiece of the Devil, set against God's ultimate purpose - the fullness of Christ. If we would only look at our divisions - not only the larger ones, but the little ones, between us and somebody else - in the light of how it affects our spiritual growth or their spiritual growth, and then relates to the larger interests of Christ's increase, we would have a motive for getting rid of those divisions, healing those quarrels, and adjusting our relationships.

Relatedness is vital to growth. It's like that. It is first of all articulation, that is, member to member, and then it is mutuality of Life. Mutuality of Life - dependence and interdependence, the recognition of the fact that we must have one another, that our very spiritual life depends upon it. Fellowship is essential, it is indispensable. That's a principle of growth, don't make any mistake about it. You will be greater or smaller in your measure of Christ according to the recognition and observance of that principle.

But, mark you, it is not artificial, it is not something that we organise, it is not institutional, it is organic - it is by Life and by Love. It is not from the outside,  our arranging it, deciding to have it and fixing it up; it comes from the inside - it comes from Christ within. Paul put his finger upon that very thing when in the church in Corinth, he found different circles. One circle centred in himself, a circle saying, "We are of Paul". Another circle centred in Apollos: "We are of Apollos." And another circle centred in Peter - "And we are of Peter"; and so on. His appeal to them was this: "Is Christ divided?" Is Christ divided? Of course, the answer is, "No, you cannot divide Christ." Then if Christ, if Christ is in you and governs, this is all a contradiction to Christ, this is all not Christ!

And no wonder the poor, mean, miserable measure of spiritual life there was at Corinth at that time. Thank God, we have another side to the story later on. They evidently got over it, got right, on the basis, the principle, of the Cross. Paul's second letter to them gives a very different picture of things there, but there it is. Christ cannot be divided, and all divisions, whether they be just between two Christians, or more, unto the great divisions of Christians, are a contradiction of Christ. And no wonder there's spiritual poverty, weakness, ineffectiveness, and lack of registration and impact upon this world - the Devil has triumphed there. We must take note of that. It's a great battle is this matter of fellowship, for that very reason that all the evil forces are set against it. And Paul says this is a matter about which we have got to be very diligent, it requires diligence: "give diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit".

I close by just mentioning a third principle, I am not enlarging upon it. It is the principle of purity of spirit. You and I will not grow at all in the increase of Christ, toward the fullness of Christ, unless we maintain a very pure spirit. You ask me what I mean by a pure spirit? I mean an open heart. An open heart: free from prejudice, free from prejudice, free from suspicion; a readiness to receive, ability to adjust, no final closure, even though you may have been brought up in a certain way, open that if the Lord has "more light and truth to shine forth, to break forth from His Word", we are open to it. Never come to a final position that you know it all, you have got it all, you are in it all. A pure spirit. A pure spirit, an open heart, a ready spontaneity to every bit of light that God gives; obedience instant, without arguing. That's a pure spirit. And you'd be surprised how much hangs upon that.

Chapter 4 - The Eternal Prospect of the Christian

Really try to get to understand what the Christian life really is. In the first place, to show that it is not a petty, small, trivial thing to be a Christian. Hence our first evening was occupied with the immense significance of the Christian life. Then that it is not a superficial thing of passing, changing feelings, sensations, emotions, impressions, but that it rests upon some deep and radical changes in our very constitution. Thus our second evening was occupied with what happens when we become Christians - that is, what happens to us and in us. Then that it is not something which is exhausted in its initial experience, however wonderful and great that may be. It is not all limited to its beginnings, but it is inexhaustible, it is boundless. So our third evening was occupied with the Divine purpose and principles governing the Christian life. And finally, it is not by any means a matter of this life alone, be it short or be it long, but it relates more to what follows, to the life to come. Hence this evening we are to be concerned with the eternal prospect of the Christian life: its relation to the eternal future.

We saw at the beginning that the Christian life is dated back to eternity past; it is not something which just springs up in this particular Christian era, as it is called, but that it was designed by God in His eternal counsels. The New Testament has quite a lot to say about that - and that that eternal Purpose and design is pressing in to this special dispensation in a very definite and particular way.

The past eternity is pressing and pressing up in this age in a particular way. Now we are to see that the future eternity is also pressing into this dispensation. The future eternity is governing the present, is shaping the present, and explains the present. God is not only working onward, really, the onward aspect of Divine activities is our side of things. God is working backward; His side of things is always backward to His full thought in eternity past. He is bringing us on, but He is really bringing us back.

Now to come to this matter of:

The Eternal Prospect of the Christian.

We have to realise - and there's so much of it, it's not difficult to realise - that there is a very large prospective element in the New Testament. That is, the New Testament is always looking on. In the New Testament everything is dominated by the ages to come. The conception was an eternal one, not just a time one. And that conception is far, far too big to be realised in fullness in any time. It is much bigger than all time; it certainly, therefore, cannot be realised in any lifetime of any person. It outbounds time. This is "from eternity to eternity", and it requires timelessness for its full realisation.

This, of course, explains a great deal. It explains the very nature of the Christian life and of Christian service. A very big factor in the ways of God with His people, with Christians, is that of experience. God puts a great deal of value upon experience. It's just when we are beginning to profit by experience, the end comes, and others are beginning to profit by our experience, that the end comes and we are called away, and all the long and full and deep experience has really had no adequate expression. And there is something about that, that would be a problem if God puts so much value upon experience, and then when we have got it we can't use it; it's like a contradiction. It requires an extension somewhere, somehow, to make good all that deep experience which God has taken so much pains to produce. It explains God's ways with us in the path of deep and deepening experience.

Then as to the work of God. Well, the work is difficult, it's hard; the progress is all too slow. And though you may do much, and fill your life, when you have had all the days that can be allotted and have spent yourself to the last drop, what have you done? What have you done, after all, what does it amount to, at most? We have to say - little, comparatively little. There is so much more to be done, and every successive generation of Christian workers has the same story to tell. On we go, on we go, and we never overtake, we never reach anything like fullness in this life. Something more is required to make perfect both our imperfect lives and our imperfect work.

And then another factor, which is not a small one, that God seems (I put it this way, "seems") to be so much more concerned with the worker than even with the work. This, of course, creates the perplexities of Christian life and service. If God were only concerned with our Christian work, well, He ought never to allow us to be laid aside from it, especially either repeatedly or for long periods, and He certainly ought not to allow us to die "prematurely", as we would say. If the work is everything, then He ought to keep us at full strength all our days and extend our days to a full period; but He does not. So many of His choicest people are not able to serve in the way in which Christian service is thought of, be in action; and even those who are fully in action are conscious that the real need, the real need in the work of God is for their own deeper knowledge of God Himself and that God is concerned with them very largely, even more than He is with their work.

What does this say? If all that discipline, chastening, trial, testing, all that we go through under the hand of God, is all that just for now? Surely He is preparing people for something more. People! He is concerned with men and with women - with people - quite as much, if not more than with what they do for Him. This, of course, will never be taken as an excuse for not working to our full degree, but it is all a case for something more. There is nothing perfect or complete while death remains. You'll remember the argument about the priesthood of the Old Testament which the apostle develops in the letter to the Hebrews. The priest of the old dispensation could bring nothing to finality because they died and had to hand on to another; and he never brought anything to finality, he died and had to pass it on to another; and so it went on. And the argument is that nothing was made perfect because of death. But He - Jesus, our High Priest - does, and has made things perfect, because He "ever liveth". The principle, of course, is just this principle: that while death remains nothing is completed or comes to finality. It requires an endless life, the power of an endless life, to reach fullness. That is clearly shown in the Scriptures.

You see, the picture of immortality which the Bible gives us, is a very wonderful one, and one, of course, which we cannot understand in our present order of things. The picture of immortality which the Bible gives us is that of new productions without the dying of the old. Our order at present is that everything new comes out of the death that precedes it. Trees, flowers, everything has to die to produce something new. That's the order of this dispensation! The heart of this dispensation is the great truth of Jesus Christ, the "corn of wheat", falling into the ground and dying, that there should be a production on a larger scale. That's the order of this dispensation, but that is not the order of the coming eternity. The picture of immortality there, as given in the Word, is trees, yes! And new branches, new leaves, new fruit, and the old never dies. The old never dies! Its fruit is brought to perfection without any death at all. I think that's rather wonderful, don't you?

And then when you come to the Word again regarding this prospective factor and element, what a lot there is in the nature of an urge and an imperative to utterness! All the time the apostles are urging us, bringing upon us the weight of this great imperative to go on - go on - go on! By exhortation, by warning, they are constantly saying to us, "Go on and ever on!" This urge and this imperative in relation to being utter, utter for God, having no margin of life that is not burnt up for God, and the point of that argument, that urge, and that imperative, is the coming eternity. All that is in the light of the afterward. Why be utter for God? Ah, the answer is to be found afterward! We must, they say, we must be utter for God because of what is going to follow, because this is not the end, because there is that which, coming afterward, will show the justification for having been utter for God.

Now, that leads us to the next thing in this connection:

The Comparative Element in Eternity.

There is (I think we agree) there is a prospective element in the Christian life which occupies a great deal of the New Testament all of which has to do with the Christian life. Cut out that prospective element from the New Testament and see how much you have got left, whether it be Gospels or Epistles. You won't have very much left if you take that out. It's there and it's mightily there. But in addition to it, there is what I am calling the 'comparative element' in relation to the coming eternity. And again, there is in the New Testament such an element. What I mean by the comparative element is this: that things are not all going to be on one 'mass production' level hereafter. There are going to be differences where the children of God are concerned, and very great differences.

It was to this, of course, that the apostle was pointing when writing to the Corinthians. Speaking about foundations and superstructure, he said: "The foundation is laid. Now let every man take heed how he build thereon. If any man build thereon wood, hay, stubble, gold, silver, precious stones, every man's work shall be tried by fire". And if, if, he implies, it's wood, hay or stubble, it's all going up in smoke. And then he brings in this tremendously forceful word: "If any man's work suffer loss: but man may be saved; yet so as by fire." He may be saved, yet so as by fire; that is, well, the man may just scrape through, as a kind of emergency thing - just managing to get in, as we say, 'by the skin of his teeth'. But everything's gone. The argument surely is that is not what God intended. Over against that we have a phrase like this: "For so an abundant entrance shall be ministered unto you into the everlasting kingdom". On the one hand the possibility of just getting in with your life and nothing more; on the other hand, an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom. You see, there are differences, there are comparisons afterward.

What about those messages to the seven churches in Asia, which we have at the beginning of the book of the Revelation? Now, I do not agree that the people in those churches are only professers and not true Christians. If you grant that, then you have got to face this, that between Christian and Christian there's a difference, and there are certain very distinct promises given to certain Christians there. "To him that overcometh..." "to him that overcometh..." "to him that overcometh will I grant..." See? Surely logic implies: "If you don't, then you won't. If you don't overcome, then you won't get what the Lord offers." There are differences. I don't believe that this is a matter of loss of salvation, but this is something more than just being saved, getting in.

What is the nature of the difference or the differences? Some people will say, "Well, of course, it's reward!" All right, let's leave at that, it's reward if you like. But what reward do you want? What is the reward that you're looking for? You want wealth? Is that the kind of reward you want, riches? Well, a lot of people say it's going to be without them. I don't think that can be looked upon as the sort of thing that will bring us what we need, and really what we want. Do you want honours? Do you want titles? Do you want an armchair for all eternity? What is it you want by way of reward? Let's put the question in another way:  what does the New Testament show to be the nature of the rewards if we're going to hold to that word "reward"? And the answer is this, quite clearly if you'd like to look again. The reward is vocational - it is always vocational. "And His servants shall serve Him; and they shall see His face". Service, without all that is associated with service now, service to Him without limit, without restraint, without opposition, without suffering. Service. To be able to serve Him! Well, how does that appeal to you? I can think of nothing that would be a greater joy than just to be able, without all the straitness, and limitations, and difficulties of the work now, to serve the Lord in fullness.

Now, that's where the New Testament puts its finger. It's vocational! And this, it goes on to show, is a matter of related positions, that is, positions in relation to the Lord - different positions for service. Take one illustration, an instance, from one of those messages to the churches. "To him that overcometh, will I grant to sit with Me in My throne". "To sit with Me in My throne..." there you have two ideas. One is a very close relationship with the Lord, a very intimate nearness to Him; and the other, royal service - call it what you will, it's the service of the throne. Again, what's your conception of sitting with Him in a throne? Let us put our mentality right about all these things, thrones and what-not, don't get pictures of sitting on golden or ivory thrones, and that sort of thing. It simply means union with the Lord in the administration of His eternal kingdom. That's the service! But that is said to be a special gift to certain people - if you like, it's their reward. But the point is that it is vocational, and it's a matter of relationship to the Lord.

The final picture that we have in the New Testament, while being so full of symbolism, is an embodiment of these spiritual principles. It's the picture of the City. Now again get your mind clear, and don't think of a literal city. It's only an illustration, a figure, a symbol. This City undoubtedly is the Church. Need I argue that? "The Jerusalem which is above... is the mother of us all...". "Ye are come unto the heavenly Jerusalem". "Ye are come..." we are not coming later on, afterwards, but "Ye are come... to the heavenly Jerusalem... to the church of the firstborn ones", identical: Jerusalem - the Church. So that that City which is said to be the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, is the Church. Now it is put into a particular and peculiar position, like a city, and the idea of a city is that it is the administrative centre. And then we are told that "the nations walk in the light thereof". You see, there is something at the centre for government, and there is much more that is not at the centre. Here is proximity to the Lord, relationship with the Lord for eternal vocation in an administrative way in His kingdom.

That, surely, is enough to bear out what I am trying to say, that there is a comparative element in the eternity to come. And that, that is the point of the urge and the imperative, that is the force of the constraint: "Let us go on unto full growth" - not looking back, but pressing on; with the warnings - not that you lose your salvation, but, but, but there are positions and there is a vocation to which you are called in eternity; you may miss that - you may miss that. I think Paul saw that in what he called "the on-high calling" he saw something of this reigning life in the ages to come.

Now, with God, nothing is just official. God never appoints officers in His Kingdom. It doesn't matter, they are not politicians - officials politically in His Kingdom, neither are they officially, officially ecclesiastical. With God, I repeat, there is nothing just official. You know, God doesn't appoint officers in His Church. God's principle of appointment is always, always according to spiritual measure. God indicates those who are even now in the Church where it is a spiritual thing, where it is according to His mind - He indicates those who are to have oversight as being men of spiritual measure; not selected, chosen and voted in by popular vote or unpopular vote. But according to spiritual measure, that's the principle of the New Testament, and in the Kingdom it's like that. No one is going to have any position just because they are appointed officially to it. Not at all! Every position will be according to our spiritual measure.

Hence again repeatedly:

"Let us go on to Full Growth"

And you know that connected with that phrase "full growth" (in the Authorised Version 'perfection', an unfortunate translation) full growth, it is always the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. It's the measure of Christ! It's just how much of Christ there is, how big we are according to the standard of Christ. That is God's basis of appointment, it will always be with God, it is now, and in the ages to come, it will always be that vocation is settled upon how much of Christ there is in those concerned. God's whole thought, as we saw at the beginning of these meditations, is that Christ shall fill all things.

Now that explains our discipline, for our discipline now is our training for then; and the nature of our discipline now is just to increase the measure of Christ - as we have seen: decreasing the measure of 'I', of ourselves, in every way; setting aside the one man that occupies the place of Christ, and putting Christ in his place. The one all-inclusive object of the Holy Spirit in this dispensation is to make Christ everything, and to get as much room for Christ as He possibly can - and where we are concerned, as much as we will let Him have. Now, that throws us back, of course, upon: are we, are we really going to be utter? The measure of our utterness will be the measure of our usefulness in the ages to come. It's going to be governed by spiritual measure and by no other principle.

Some people find difficulty - a purely mental one - in reconciling reward and grace. It is possible that some legalists are coming back on me in their minds while I'm talking and saying, "Oh, it's all of grace, and you're making it a work. After all, it's all of grace!" Well, of course, you've got to, you've got to somehow explain the place of rewards, haven't you? And how you can't reconcile rewards and grace, but, but it's not so difficult as all that. It's all of grace that we have a chance to be 'utter' at all! It's all the grace of God that I can be a Christian and that I can go on with the Lord, that I can serve the Lord a little bit. It's all of grace. And if suffering is going to lead to glory, and the measure of the glory is going to be according to the suffering, then it will require all the grace of God for that. You can never get outside of grace! And if ever there should come a reward - if you like to visualise such a thing literally now, a reward being offered, I tell you, dear friends, when we get to that point of full understanding and knowledge of all the forbearance and long-suffering and patience of the Lord, we fall on our faces and say, "Oh, I can't take any reward - it's all of Your grace!" It will be all of grace.

But then remember that grace is spoken of in more than one way in the New Testament. There is grace which gives us access and acceptance. "This grace wherein we stand..." all the favour of God, without merit, that we are saved at all, that we belong to the Lord. Yes, that's grace. But then grace is also spoken of as strength - strength beyond salvation - what the Lord meant when He said to Paul in the presence of his affliction and suffering: "My grace is sufficient for thee: My strength is made perfect in weakness". Grace is acceptance without merit, but grace is strength to labour, serve and suffer. It's all grace, however you look at it.

So now we have to focus down upon this: that there is a large place in the New Testament for our meaning business with God. It's not all willy-nilly: you believe, you accept Christ, and that's the beginning, that's the end of it; you get everything now. Well, there's this large place for what I call, "meaning business with God". Here it is, all these entreaties, exhortations, beseechings, which bear down upon this: don't leave anything to chance. Don't leave anything to chance! Don't say, "Oh, well, this doesn't matter very much, this won't hurt, there's not much wrong in this; I've got salvation, and the grace of God will cover all these things and imperfections. I can do this and that, and it won't make much difference; God is a God of love..." The New Testament says, "Don't take any risks." If it doesn't mean about your salvation ultimately, it does mean about something. Something! The whole force of the Word is: "Look here, you be utter!" and God doesn't make provision for anything else.

You go all the way with the Lord, for it's that to which you're called. The Lord has never said anything about, "Well, you only need go so far, and I'll excuse you the rest." No, it's always fullness that God keeps in view, and He's challenging all the time, if we mean business, if we will mean business with God. There will be no place, at last, for our boasting in our endurance, our success, our utterness. Even though we pour ourselves out to the last drop, at last we will be the worshippers - we  will be the worshippers, we shall be the ones who are down before Him most. The most utter people are the ones who are most conscious of their indebtedness to the Lord. It's like that.

And now, we must draw to a close. The great crisis which determines everything, it's always there in the Scripture, always kept in view: a great crisis: the coming of the Lord.

The Coming of the Lord

It's there, it's then, that everything will be determined, though we may have passed on before He comes, the Word makes it perfectly clear that that makes no difference - we'll be there when He comes. We'll be there when He comes and those who are alive when He comes will not get ahead of us. Together we'll be there, and so we'll all be on the common footing and then it will be determined what the future is going to be - just exactly what our place will be, what our function will be. This is the big factor in the prospective aspect of things, it's always that in view: the prospect, always keeps the Lord's coming in view. When we are saved, we receive a new hope, but when we are believers we find that that hope becomes something very definite and concrete, and it becomes, called in the New Testament, "The hope". The hope, and the hope is related to the coming of the Lord.

So that all the appeals, and all the warnings, and all the entreaties are focused down to this: the Lord is coming, and at His coming everything will be decided, everything will be settled. Then the future eternity will be decided upon where we're concerned. And you know all those appeals in the light of His coming, for watchfulness, for being fully occupied till He comes, being on full stretch, and serious warnings that if we're not, something's going to happen - something's going to go wrong. I am not putting this into any system of doctrine, crystallizing it into any form of teaching; but these are the facts; pure, simple facts. At the coming of the Lord, great decisions will take place, and if we are not watching, if we are not occupying, if we are not on full stretch, something's going wrong. The Word makes that perfectly clear in various ways. Something's going wrong! I put it like that, I mean that something's going to be missed.

So we bring the eternity that is ahead right into the present, and see that this is a tremendous motive. It gives a tremendous motive to the Christian life. Oh, the life hereafter, "going to Heaven" or however we may speak about it, is not something that is just out there, in a kind of objective, detached way, and we are looking forward to that day, waiting for that day to come. My dear friends, that day has pressed right into the present! That day is here now in all its implications! I have often put it like this: there is little hope of our going to Heaven, if Heaven hasn't already come to us! Our place then, at any rate, and our vocation then, will depend very largely, if not our salvation, upon the measure that Christ has in us in this life.

Well that, again, explains a lot of things, doesn't it? How the Lord does press into a short time very often, a great deal that produces a measure of Christ in a wonderful way: much suffering, much suffering, much affliction, much trial. And you can see the growth in grace. You discern the patience, the forbearance, the kindness, the love of Christ coming out in this suffering child of God. Why, there's preparation for glory, there's preparation for service. It explains a lot! We can go round it, and look at it from so many different standpoints, but after all it amounts to this: the New Testament keeps the future in view as the great governing thing for the present. The New Testament says that it's going to make a difference in the eternity to come just how far we have gone on with the Lord, and how much room the Lord has gained in our lives now. It's going to be different. It's going to be different and the New Testament says the Lord is coming.

This is no time matter at all. You may die, it makes no difference. You may live, it makes no difference. The Lord will come in His own time, and then all will be decided. See, so many people are interested in the second coming of Christ purely from perhaps a prophetical standpoint - events and happenings in the world and so on - and so few Christians are alive, fully alive, to this fact that the coming of the Lord in the New Testament is always brought to bear down upon this: your spiritual state! "He that really hath this hope" not, "he that hath this prophetic interpretation of the second coming", but "he that hath this hope purifies himself"; he gets ready, gets ready. He seeks that his state is all right, as well as his standing. It matters, it will matter a very great deal.

So we must open the door wide in our Christian lives to that far greater, far greater life that is before us. At most this is a brief one, a small one, but it's only the beginning and all its meanings are going to come out then in fullness.

But will you hear the appeal? The Christian life, as we have said, is a tremendous thing, an immense thing. We are called with an eternal calling, unto an eternal vocation. Here we are just brought into relationship with the Lord, and then are dealt with by the Lord. We are allowed to serve the Lord, but, even in our service we are in school, we are learning, more than anything else. Don't you think that that really is how it ought to be? Not just doing a thousand and one things, but learning a lot. The school of experience... and it is all related to the calling on-high, and the great vocation afterward.

The Lord move our hearts to be utter for Him, leave nothing to chance whatever, take no risks, but like His servant Paul, go for the highest prize, the fullest thing that the Lord ever intended.

Chapter 5 - Principles of Divine Guidance

In the book of Exodus, chapter 40. Chapter 40, the book of Exodus, verses 34 to 38: "Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of meeting, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went onward, throughout all their journeys: but if the cloud was not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and there was fire therein by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout their journeys".

It's on my heart this morning to say a little about Divine guidance.

Divine Guidance.

A matter, which I am quite sure interests us in a very real way, in this matter at any rate, one has not to try and create a basis or a word, it's amongst those matters which are always very much to the fore in the life of the children of God. Now, in this matter of guidance, life has to be viewed as a whole. That is the first thing about it, and a very important thing. The guidance of the nation of Israel through the wilderness is always viewed conclusively. There are such words as: "He led them on safely, so that they feared not"; "He led them by a straight path, that they might go to a city of habitation". In the phases and the stages of the journey very often that seemed not to be true; they feared not because He led them on safely? By a straight path? In neither of those matters did it always seem to be true. But you see, this matter of their guidance, of their being led by Him is always viewed conclusively. The fact is that they got there at last, and it is the end and the verdict which covers the whole course.

And it is like that with Divine guidance. We must recognise this, and settle this, that we have got to take Life as a whole. If we only take it at given times and in given situations, we shall be in confusion, in contradiction, perhaps with big questions as to this matter of guidance: a great deal of perplexity, uncertainty, doubt, and perhaps a feeling that we've just been left - there's no guidance at all in our lives. But we must take the long view, and the end will prove that we were being guided, even when we thought otherwise, that the Hand was upon us when it seemed that it was not so. Divine guidance has to be viewed from the standpoint of the whole - life in its entirety has to be brought into relation to the guidance of God.

When we have got that clear - and you know the Word of God does bear that out very fully - we are able to take another step, and to see that this inclusiveness, comprehensiveness, and conclusiveness of Divine guidance is related to two things.

Firstly, it is related to:

Divine Purpose.

All the guidance of God is related to His purpose. His purpose is a very clearly defined thing, a very concrete and definite thing, a set and fixed object, and His guidance is completely bound up with His purpose. And when His purpose is really governing, has come to become the sole interest and object of our lives, there is a sovereignty over everything. "All things work together for good," for, or literally, "God works good in all things to them that love Him and are the called according to His purpose". That is a very comprehensive "all things". And the statement is that not one of the "all things" is without some good being definitely put into it, and got out of it, by the sovereignty of God, when His purpose governs. That cannot be said of the 'all things' which compose lives which are not so governed. Their 'all things' do not work good. The guidance of God is therefore inseparable from His purpose.

This is perfectly clear in the case of Israel. The purpose of God was made known quite clearly and definitely, to bring them into the land; from the beginning that was made clear. It came out so definitely and positively when they were over Jordan, and Joshua was actually about to lead them in. The Lord said so definitely to Joshua that he was to be strong and of good courage, because he was to bring the people into the land which the Lord had sworn to give them. There's the purpose; the sworn objective of God to bring into the land. That was His purpose. We know that that is an historical figure and type of what we have in the New Testament - the heavenly country and all the riches and fullness of Christ. That land of Canaan was a land flowing with milk and honey, wealth, riches, mines, deep mines full, and so on. It was only a pale foreshadowing of what came in with Christ, "Oh the depth of the riches... the unsearchable riches of Christ". Well, we know all about that, but this, just to reiterate, that the purpose of God is the fullness of Christ, and all Divine guidance is bound up with that.

And then in the next place, Divine guidance is bound up with, and centred in:

God's Vessel.

Here in the case of Israel it is set forth in the tabernacle. Immediately the Lord had accomplished the redemption of His people, He proceeded to reveal that great design which embodied His purpose - the tabernacle - His vessel. And again, we know so well that the tabernacle was a two-fold figure of Christ and His Church; if you like, of Christ dominant, and then in corporate expression; I need not argue that, I think we shall all agree that that was so. Christ and His Church, Christ its foundation, Christ its character, Christ giving it its nature and meaning - it taking from Him everything - that is the vessel of God's purpose. That was to precede, that was to be central, that was to govern, and all Divine guidance was related to that.

This is a point that perhaps has not been clearly recognised. This tabernacle was a far, far more important thing than we have recognised. We like the pictorial aspect of it and we are very pleased with all this typology of the tabernacle, but it has been brought down to such an earthly level. Just reflect for a moment that for forty days and forty nights, in unceasing communion, God was revealing to Moses the details, the whole conception and construction and constitution of that tabernacle. Forty days and forty nights Moses was with the Lord in the mountain getting this thing. A pattern, we are told, only a pattern; a representation of something and then, when he had from the Lord received that so meticulously, carefully and fully, it required a definite coming in of the Holy Spirit to superintend the making of it in every part and detail - the whole structure and the whole material. "Men full of the Holy Ghost", the Holy Spirit is definitely in charge of this thing, there's something here of tremendous significance and account.

It is a great, heavenly order of things, a vast heavenly order of things condensed into the framework and material of a symbolic representation, but all that vast heavenly order and system is there implicit in principle and when it was set up, all Divine guidance was bound up with it. That's the point. The cloud rested, they could not move; the people could not move without it. The tabernacle - Christ and His Church - in figure. He governed all their movements and all their times - their goings, and just as much the stoppings and the stayings. You see, the Church - when it is as God would have it - governs movement, determines progress.

God sometimes has to wait for His Church before He can move. There were those stayings and waitings of the cloud because things were not right amongst the people. Adjustments had got to be made, wrongs had got to be righted, evil had got to be put away. There's no movement in the Church, there's no guidance to any further step or stage or measure until this Body is right. And that could be profitably enlarged upon but it's a very important thing to see how God binds up His guidance with the state of His people; with His Church and how our relationship to the Church is an important factor in the guidance of our own lives. Not one individual in all the thousands of Israel was an independent unit in this matter and could go without the others! Every individual as such had to wait for all the rest for their guidance. Their guidance was a related matter; that's the point: their guidance was a corporate matter. The cloud rested upon the tabernacle, and the people were bound up with that, inseparable from that; it was one thing.

These are very important things, dear friends, for progress, for guidance. You are exercised about the guidance for your life? Your guidance, if this is true, very largely, if not absolutely, rests upon these two things: God's purpose - the fullness of Christ, and God's means or vessel - His Church. It is a related thing. I know as I speak that difficulties arise, but I can only enunciate the principle at this time, leaving details for another time.

See, then, how jealous God was for this tabernacle - jealous over every detail of it, and jealous over relationships to it because He was not seeing a thing called a 'tabernacle', or the tent of meeting and all its paraphernalia. He was seeing His Son, He was seeing His Church. God always has that in view, not things, but the eternal reality, that of which this is only a pattern. Now then, having said that, you must take that to heart and think about it, for it may answer some questions, or solve some problems.

We note further then, that there was always an element of mystery about this guidance, as there always is, an element of mystery in this that God's wisdom and God's knowledge in His ways with us, in His guidance of us, are not always revealed to us. The element of faith is always present, or has always to be present. And God's wisdom is a hidden wisdom, His full knowledge is a secret thing - He does not disclose to us His 'whys', His 'wherefores', what He's doing and why He is doing it, in this way or that, He does not explain. But there is always a meaning, as this history of Israel shows, always a meaning in each stage of the Divine guidance. There's a meaning at every stage. There's something there, lying within every thing of the Divine movement - or the Divine non-movement. There's something in this; this is not just a random thing, a casual thing, an inconsequential thing. With His purpose in view, God has a meaning in every phase and every stage of His ways with us and it is important for us to believe that, and always look upon any particular phase, or stage, or aspect of our life with God from that standpoint: What has God got in this? That is the thing that matters. Not, "Let's get out of this as soon as we can, let's get past this, let's go on"; see? No, what has this got to reveal? What has this got to teach? There's something there that God has, and we have to discover it, because the cloud will not move until we have.

It may be that some are in the stopping place of Divine guidance, and you're all restless and hot to get on to the next phase, the next stage. You are impatient. Are you quite sure, are you quite sure that you have got your hand upon the meaning of this phase that you are in, that you've been in? Are you quite sure? Are you quite clear, that you can say, "Well, I don't know, I didn't know why the Lord brought about such a situation, such an arrest; allowed such an experience, but I have believed that He had some meaning in it, and I have definitely had this understanding with Him that I don't want to miss what He has got at this present time because it is all a part of that cumulative value which, after all, is the fullness of Christ"! For the fullness of Christ is not some place to which you are going, it's some spiritual Life which is growing now. We have got to eliminate these geographical factors, you see, from an earthly representation of heavenly things, and remember that here time and distance have no place at all. They only have a place - if they have any place at all - in this: that we can proceed years in a moment, we can take, to use literal terms, miles spiritually, in a step.

We have only got to grasp what God means in this way: that you are determined not, not to move until you do know that you have got what God means by your present experience. You only need to grasp it, see it, come alive to it, and you'll have moved on years and moved on a great distance. Time is only a factor while we are failing either in apprehension for some reason or other, or in obedience. Do you see the point? Israel could have got through to the land in nine days. And it took forty years. Why? Not because the Lord had appointed forty years, but because the purpose of God was not strongly enough settled in their hearts as all-dominating to rule out personal interests and considerations. And so they made the time, not the Lord; they made the miles, not the Lord. I hope you've grasped that.

But let's concentrate back on this one point, dear friends. Let us make sure that we are learning what God is trying to teach us now, because there will be no movement until we do. The cloud will not lift and go on until we have got it in our hands, "What has the Lord been after in all this?" That's vital to the next phase and all subsequent phases. Have you got it? Are you quite sure about it? Well, there is something hidden to be discovered and to be laid hold of in every phase and stage of the way.

And all that is:

Discipline.

You see, the fact that God has a great purpose settled, and fixed, and clearly defined, and that we are called according thereto, and that there is a working of Divine sovereignty - all that never eliminates the factor of discipline, for the simple reason that God is not acting mechanically. This is not a machine put together and wound up and started going just by itself, by its own momentum. Always in God's purpose and His methods with us, there is the element of responsibility. God never made a machine, He made man, man! And man has responsibility. See? Responsibility. We are responsible creatures, and therefore discipline has its place because there is no mechanical reaching His end by God, but along the line of our choice. Will, of course, is the point, the focal point of everything. Will, will, will - that was the trouble with Israel; that's the trouble with us all. It's the will. There will always be the bafflement of the human mind, very largely, but the way through is a will that is absolutely set upon God's end, whatever that may cost.

And then, although there will always be this element of mystery and perplexity, discipline and instruction, growing intelligence unto responsibility, there will always remain a large margin for Divine sovereignty. Think again of Paul and his journey to Rome. You know what he says, don't you, at the beginning of his letter to the Romans, long before he went to them. The opening of his letter to them told them of his love and his unceasing prayer for them, and then he tells them that he would have them know that he would have come to them again and yet again he would have come to them, but he was hindered. Here is a man with his heart set upon the interests of the Lord in His Church as represented in Rome. He is a man whose life is wholly and utterly abandoned to Christ and to the Church, who is longing to be able to minister Christ to them in greater fullness, who purposes to go, and then is hindered; and purposes again and is hindered; seeks to move in their direction, and apparently is frustrated. The point is, what a strength of purpose and desire for God is here - and the mystery, the mystery of hindrances, frustrations and delay!

And then, at last, at long last, how did he get to Rome? Very, very differently from what he intended, and purposed, and thought! He had never calculated with that last voyage and all that was in it. It seemed, on the one hand, that all hell was determined that he shouldn't get there. On the other hand, God's mysterious ways. We don't know what would have happened if Paul had just gone to Rome in the way in which he had gone elsewhere, to other places, paid a visit, but God had some infinitely greater thought in Paul at last reaching Rome than Paul had ever thought. That's the mystery of God's ways.

Well, the shipwreck, the shipwreck the way that he did get there, but the historian just sums it all up in one clause: "and so we came to Rome..." the verdict of the long run, mystery between the conception and inception and the realisation - the mystery of satanic interference, the mystery of difficulties, the mysteries of reverses and of shipwreck and everything else, but the verdict: "And so we came to Rome." We came to Rome! Divine guidance has to cover everything. If Paul had settled on any one of these incidents, he would have been in very great difficulty indeed with the Lord. But, he got there, he got there, at last.

If you and I, dear friends, are so governed, dominated, mastered, by God's end - the fullness of Christ - and wedded to Christ Himself, and will allow the Lord to do it in His own way, and will seek to get hold of the meaning and value of every part of the way, the end is sure, the end is secured. The end will be - "And so we came... sometimes it looked as though we should never get there! Shipwrecked? Yes, shipwrecked in many ways, it looked very, very much as though we would never get there, but the fact is, we're there!"

But we must see the principles of Divine guidance. The first is God's purpose of fullness; the second is God's vessel of realisation, the Church is the fullness of Him, and it is relatedness that is a law of fullness. There will always be enough mystery about God's ways to demand faith, which is another law of guidance. But, sovereignty is over all for such; and no matter what the delays, frustrations, hindrances, or threats, at last we shall say right over all those times and experiences when we thought it so otherwise, in present situations, right over: "Jesus led me all the way".

Chapter 6 - The Coming of the Kingdom in Power

The gospel by Matthew, gospel by Matthew chapter 16, at verse 28:

"Verily I say unto you, There are some of them that stand here, who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom. And after six days Jesus taketh with Him Peter, and James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain and He was transfigured before them; and His face did shine as the sun, and His garments became white as the light. And behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elijah talking with Him. And Peter answered, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if Thou wilt, I will make here three tents; one for Thee, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. While he was yet speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold, a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him. And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore afraid. And Jesus came and touched them and said, Arise, and be not afraid. And lifting up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only."

Although we are familiar with this incident of the transfiguration of Jesus, I've always had a feeling that we have not really grasped strongly enough the significance of it. We view it objectively as something that happened in the life of our Lord here, perhaps the most wonderful thing, and then, having read it, become informed of it, we leave it there and fail to realise that there is a tremendous challenge in it, and that it means something of very great importance and significance in the whole economy of God. More, we fail to realise that this is the focal point of all the Scriptures from the beginning of the Bible up to this point, and from this point onwards, everything past and future meets here, is focused upon this, and this, therefore, contains that which is of tremendous account. The Lord Jesus said with emphasis, Verily, there are some who stand here, who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in His kingdom. Pentecost was the fulfilment of that, but the transfiguration was the meaning and nature of that. The two go together - the transfiguration and the coming of the Holy Spirit as He came on the day of Pentecost.

Now, in order to get right to the meaning of this, let us note - and Jesus was always very deliberate and quite calculated in what He did, not just casual, there was nothing casual about Him in word or in deed, it was always with a very large conscious background which pressed into what He said and what He did, it was not just something in itself. And so here it says that, Jesus taketh with Him Peter, and James, and John... and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart. Peter and James and John, more than any others of the disciples of our Lord, were those who had the great Kingdom complex. They, in the very full way, were looking for the coming of the Kingdom. They had all the Jewish concept of the Kingdom and all the Jewish expectation of the Kingdom, and from various ejaculations of theirs it is quite clear that they were thinking in terms of the Israelitish kingdom coming in relation to Jesus, Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?. That is their mentality, their expectation, their hope. We can say this trio was a kingdom trio in mentality and concept and expectation. It was as though all this system of truth or teaching about the Kingdom was focused upon and gathered up into those three men.

And Jesus taketh them deliberately apart up into the high mountain and was transfigured before them. They were the spectators of this. They were the ones who had this unique experience. Jesus was giving them an object lesson of the Kingdom. The transfiguration is the great object lesson of the Kingdom. If you look at all the features you will see how truly that was so. Jesus had said, the Son of Man coming in His kingdom. That is the first significant thing.

The Son of Man in His Kingdom

That is relationship to man, that is man being brought in according to God. This Kingdom is the Kingdom which God intended man to have, to be mans Kingdom. It is the Kingdom of the Son of man as representing man according to Gods mind.

And so at once we are taken right back to the beginning of the Bible, and we see what God intended regarding the first man - to give him the Kingdom! Thou makest him to have dominion (Psa. 8:6). The Kingdom was the great idea in Gods mind in the creation of man, that all things should be put under his feet. See? But that first man missed the Kingdom or lost the Kingdom, and it was not only a matter of government. Why he lost the Kingdom was because he became another kind of man, for this Kingdom belongs to a certain kind of man, and Adam, the first for whom it was intended, changed his nature by disobedience, by unbelief, and so he missed it or lost it. Another, the last Adam, comes in and recovers what Adam lost or missed - the Kingdom.

But He shows what kind of a man is the Kingdom man, and you have two things here in this presentation of the transfigured Son of Man. One is moral perfection. Here He is presented in all the purity and perfection of moral victory, tested, proved in every way in which a man can be tested and proved, emerging triumphant after all. There is nothing more really to be done so far as He personally is concerned. If He descends the mountain and goes to the cross, that is not on His own account. That's to bring the other men into the Kingdom, but on His own account all is done. He has reached the point of moral perfection, tested and tried. And so perfection is written large in the very description of Him here: His garments and His face - the picture of moral and spiritual perfection.

The other is, and consequent upon that, is glory.

Glory

And when you put those two things together, you know what the Kingdom is. It is spiritual and moral perfection in manhood issuing in glory. That is a word very difficult to understand. Of course, we usually do associate with the word glory the accompaniments of this transfiguration - bright, glistening, fierce light. That is quite true in this sense: if you find a person who is really, really by the grace of God overcoming, they are up against something that calls for much grace, maybe in themselves, some difficulty, some handicap, some discouragement, something that is so calculated to make them anything but, but triumphant Christians; or it may be in some other person with whom they have to live and work, it may be in the home, it may be in the business, it may be anywhere, and it's an awful trial, these people are an awful trial to them, but if you see these people triumphant through the grace of God over those trials, you do see something about them that is glory, you can even see it in their countenance. How different they are from the people who are under their troubles. Their face tells whether they are over or under. There is something you recognise there of glory. Glory! It is a very faint illustration of this thing.

Jesus has triumphed, reached the point of absolute victory on all matters, and the glory follows. The glory follows. I do believe that when we are glorified together with Him, there will be something very light about us - I don't mean frivolous - something light and bright and glorious. We'll be radiant people, that's the word: radiant people. It's going to be a glorious place in heaven in this sense - that everybody's going to be so radiant.

Now, here is Christ the Son of Man radiant, and the basis of His radiance is His spiritual life. That's the Kingdom! It was for that that man was created. It was that which he lost. It is that which the last Adam has recovered in His own Person, and here in the transfiguration He gives these three representatives of the great theory of the Kingdom a real object lesson of what the Kingdom really is. The Kingdom is not you sitting upon thrones and exercising your importance over other people, ordering them here and there and all that sort of thing. This is the Kingdom: the Kingdom is in terms of spiritual victory resulting in spiritual radiance.

Now, when He came in His Kingdom on the day of Pentecost, look how radiant they are! See how so many of those things which had bothered them and troubled them in themselves and with one another up to that point, just disappeared. They were a quarrelsome crowd; couldn't get on together even when they were with the Lord. They're always, always spoiling things by their wrong approaches and reactions and interests and ambitions. But see now! There's a mighty victory over all that. We could say it was never before possible for those twelve men to stand up together. They might have done it physically, but to really have stood up together is a mighty victory over temperamental differences and all that sort of thing of the natural man. It's a mighty victory to really be together: one voice, one heart, one mind, one objective. They're together. Lots of things have been transcended now by the coming of the Kingdom. The sovereign rule of the glorified Lord has descended upon them, and that which had been so contrary to the Divine idea of the Kingdom, has just gone out, has just gone out; and there's radiance there... filled with joy. Just filled with joy! It's a wonderful picture really of transfigured men, isn't it? And the church is supposed to be a transfigured church on that basis.

Here you've got the heart of the transfiguration. It's the Kingdom: what God meant, what man missed, what Christ has brought in in His own Person and unto which He has called us, unto His eternal Kingdom. It was a wonderful event. I started by saying this is the right focal point of history; I think it was the greatest thing that had ever happened in the history of mankind, was the transfiguration of our Lord, and yet the newspapers said nothing about it, the world knew absolutely nothing about it, completely ignorant of it for the time being. It's not found in any historical record at all apart from the New Testament, and the greatest thing in the history of mankind, the Kingdom, is always like that. The world cannot appreciate it, cannot understand it, cannot apprise it. The world really does not know anything about this. Its, its system of values is altogether different from spiritual values and moral perfections, and therefore it can't appreciate even the joy and the radiance of Christians. The world looks on at the radiant Christian, and says, I don't know what it's all about, what you're making all the fuss about. It just cannot appreciate, but it's the greatest thing in history.

Well, this whole thing needs to be analysed much more thoroughly, but we're not going to be able to do that this morning. But note: these men, these men Peter, James and John, as beforehand representatives of that other idea of the Kingdom, and now the nucleus of this new idea of the Kingdom, these men felt the impact of that Kingdom that day. We even have to excuse Peter for, as we say, putting his foot in it. It was an awful blunder that Peter made, but there you are, you see. When you get an overwhelming experience, you make all sorts of blunders. You get carried away from yourself. And so he blurted this thing out. But the fact is that these men went down under the impact of this thing. This was the Kingdom coming in power, and when the Kingdom comes in power, we go down, we just have to go down.

Dear friends, this is, this is the test and the challenge of the Kingdom where we are concerned. We've got all the teaching about the Kingdom, we've got a number of different systems of teaching about the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of heaven, and so on. But it is not our teaching, it is not our system, it's the effect that it has upon us. And really, to truly hold the truth of the Kingdom means that we are people who have gone down with our faces to the ground before the revelation of Jesus Christ. This thing is too much for us, it's overwhelming, it's a tremendous thing. We just fall on our faces; we are like dead people. Is that how the presentation of Divine truth comes to us?

Do you ever sit in the presence of the presentation of the Lord Jesus, either in a meeting or with your Bible, and as it's going on, you're hearing, or you're reading, you bow your head and say, It's too big for me, too wonderful, it's overwhelming? I don't mean intellectually overwhelming, but spiritually. This is tremendous, this is tremendous! It touches the heart like that, and unless, unless that is true, there's something lacking in our apprehension of truth. Truth ought to bring us to our knees. The presentation of Jesus Christ ought to humble us and empty us, and we ought to go down on our faces - yes, if you like, in fear and trembling, anyhow, so long as we go down, and that's what happened to them. It came, it came in power, in representation, in the Person of the Son of Man that day, and it registered something overwhelming upon them. You know that, because it was many years after this, many years after this event that Peter wrote about it. This voice we heard... when we were with Him in the holy mount read further what he says about it. You had better take heed, you'd better take heed he says, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place. See? Peter never forgot it. It came back to Peter with renewed force and it went through to the end of his life with him. Something like that.

Now, we may not have the physical, objective sight of a transfigured Lord, but the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit would make the glorified Lord glorious to us. You see, it's borne out, it's borne out all along. When John himself so many years afterwards saw this Son of Man, he said, I fell on my face as one dead. When Saul of Tarsus saw the glorified Jesus of Nazareth, he was down on his face, a broken, crushed man, helpless - impotent in his own strength. We need to recover, do we not, this element of the wonder and glory and greatness of the Christ about whom we hear so much, that He should be redeemed from the commonplace, saved from familiarity; our hearts should be deeply moved.

Now I've only time for saying perhaps one other thing. Peter? Well, we'll excuse him. Probably we should do something very much like that in such an experience. This he said, says another writer, not knowing what he said. All right: but when he said it, heaven took serious account of it. And while he was yet speaking, a cloud overshadowed them, a reaction of God from heaven, and a voice came out of the cloud saying, This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him. Now then, the whole question and issue of utter subjection to the Lord is brought in at that point. That is the Kingdom! You may talk foolishly, frivolously, impulsively, but look here - you'd better subject all your talking to the absolute domination of your Lord. Dont our tongues want to come under the Lordship of Christ? Oh, they do! And our tongues therefore are to be touched by the Kingdom and transfigured. Tongues have got to be delivered from that which is not the glory and purity of the Kingdom of the Son of Man. And in every other way this little phrase, Hear ye Him - dont you go dictating to Him; dont you make suggestions to Him: you listen to Him. That's the law of the Kingdom. Christ is the first and the last. Christ is the only One from whom we are to take our orders, our instructions. We have got to be there where we refer everything to Him, we defer everything to Him, where He is in the place of absolute Lordship.

Isn't it an amazing thing? I think it becomes the more amazing when we consider it - here is the Son of Man transfigured and glorified in that brief moment as an object lesson and an example, but look at Him again and consider and contemplate all that that means, all that that signifies - a Man in the glory, a Man glorified because perfected - all that that means. We can't grasp it. And then, listen - And ye killed the Lord of glory - a terrible thing to contemplate, killed that One! Here He is, look at Him, look at Him: transformed, transfigured, and then: "kill Him!" He was no other Son of Man or Son of God that they crucified than the One on the mount; He was the same One. The point is just this: that we need really, we need really to have our eyes opened to the Lord Jesus to save us from making the most awful, awful blunders where His honour and His glory are concerned. They did it because they were blind, and they were blind because they were prejudiced, and see what they did because they were prejudiced! It is not two Christs, the Christ of the Transfiguration Mount, and the Christ hanging on the cross. It's the same Christ, and they can do that as the result of prejudice. They can do that, a thing like that, because their hearts are not willing to have Him as Lord, as King. Oh, what we can do by reason of a closed heart and a closed mind. How necessary it is, then, for us to be in the place of openness to the Lord and what it will lead us into. Do you get my point? Openness to the Lord will lead us right into that which Adam lost, the glorious Kingdom. Openness to the Lord is the first thing back into the Kingdom. Closedness to the Lord, like Jewish prejudice, meant that Israel lost the Kingdom. And that's the Kingdom.

Oh, may the Lord give us an open heart, an unprejudiced mind, a pure spirit, transparent honesty, and see what it will lead to. It will lead to the Kingdom, and the Kingdom as we have been saying recently is not just a system of things, although it will become that eventually. It's a nature; it's a spiritual power. It will lead us to glory. There is no glory along the line of a closed heart, or a closed mind of prejudice, fear and suspicion. That's the way away from glory. The open heart, the submission, subjection to Christ, is the way into the Kingdom.