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The Cross, and the Unity of Vision and Ministry in the Church

by T. Austin-Sparks

Please Note: In the early magazines author's initials were not always provided. However, we believe this series was by TAS based on the content and style of the messages.

Conference messages from February 4-6 1928. First published in "A Witness and a Testimony" magazines 1928.

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 - One Vision

Chapter 2 - Soul-Sacrifice the Principle of Unity in the Ministry of the Church

Chapter 3 - One Ministry

Preface

The February Conference

[This summary of the conference preceded the notes of the actual conference messages in the magazine.]

The Lord gave the Word: this sums up the impression left by a remarkable Conference. His Presence was throughout the feature of each session. Indeed, we are learning, though it may seem trite to say so, that His Presence is salvation, for His Presence is everything; it certainly constitutes the ecclesia, since without His Presence we have no right to call ourselves the assembly of God. It is not the preaching, the teaching, or anything that may gather under the category of human activity, but it is HE, Himself, Who brings and supplies all the constituents of the feast. Without His Presence word and work are all in vain.

It is one thing to pay lip-service to such truths, but quite another to live in them and by them. We therefore praise God for His faithfulness in reducing us to such weakness and impotence that, having ruled us out, He has a free course for the manifestation of His glory.

It is also very difficult to report the spoken word. Our readers must therefore pray that the Lord may, by His Spirit so bring the messages that were spoken and are now reported in these pages through, that they may share with us the deep impressions made upon our hearts.

The theme we felt was Divinely timely, "The Cross, and the unity of the Vision and of the Ministry of the Church, the Body of Christ."

One thing was emphatically registered as being absolutely essential for the children of God to realise in these closing days of the dispensation - THE ONLY objective VISION of the Church must be JESUS, revealed by the Holy Ghost.

For fear of any question we mean Jesus the Christ come in the flesh, crucified, and thus glorified through His out-resurrection.

All other visions are subjective, that is, they may be realisations in experience of certain truths in the Christian life; but there abides ONE VISION, the Heavenly Vision; it is Jesus in the Godhead, and the fulness of the Godhead in Him. The Light, Who is God, is the Light of His Glory in the Face of Jesus the Christ.

The complementary truth to this was that the vision of the Body is not objective, but subjective. We do not visualise a Body: we see Jesus. But by the Holy Ghost we should realise the Body as a Life that is One in the fellowship of One Spirit.

So likewise the one ministry is the building-up of His Glorious Body in the energy of the Holy Spirit. The ministry is wholly of the One Spirit. He can only use us as the natural man is kept continually crucified, and thus His Life is free to function through us. And it is also so necessary to make clear that every saint should share in this one ministry, the Holy Ghost's upbuilding of the Body, for the Body maketh its own increase in that abiding constituent of the Divine Nature which is Love; that is to say God Himself in Christ supplies the increase as out from His own Being by the Holy Spirit. It is an increase of God! Therefore it must be by His Spirit, since it is a circulation and supplying of His own Life through the members as they abide in Him, and thus, through the travail of the Interceding Spirit, are made channels for the Divine communications.

This is so important to realise. What avail are mental visions of the truth of the Body without a spiritual realisation of the fact of the Body as working in our own hearts in the Passion of the Divine Love?

Then it is so easy to say this, and to re-affirm it, but once again, beloved friends in our Lord, it is not the anointed ministry in the Word that builds up the saints into the heavenly Body of God in Christ: this is but the means the Holy Spirit would use to bring the saints to maturity, a maturity in the simplicity of the revelation of the Truth as it is in Jesus, in order that they, the saints (including these anointed ministers also as saints now) might commence through the travail and in-working of the Spirit in their hearts to build-up the Body in the Love that prompts and compels continual Holy Ghost prayer.

May God call us all to our holy, heavenly vocation, a vocation so far beyond our self-bound nature as well as all natural powers, that we are forced to cry unto Him for His enabling Spirit to mightily energise us.

Surely the Cross in its utter ruling out of the self-life is the only possible basis for such a ministry.

Chapter 1 - One Vision

FEBRUARY 4, 1928

Reading: Ephesians 3.

The theme of our Conference is, as you are aware,

THE CROSS, AND THE UNITY OF VISION AND MINISTRY IN THE CHURCH,

and we are made to see in the passage we have read how the apostolic ministry of Paul was to the effect that he might bring this vision to bear upon the spirits of God's people. When we say "apostolic" we are not thinking of some ecclesiastical office, but of a functioning of the Holy Ghost through a member of the Body who does not think anything of himself but who calls himself in this very passage, as in the 8th verse - "Less than the least of all saints."

It is very important that we do not get "heady" ideas about office and position in the church, otherwise it will be fatal to our life and ministry. "If any man think himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself." In this life we have nothing possessive, as such, but rather we are possessed. It is not for us in the church to think ourselves to be anything, but rather to recognize that we are possessed of God unto an Eternal Purpose; and you get, therefore, the revelation of the humility of the Apostle, his essential humility, as he only ventures to speak to the church "As less than the least of all saints."

But as he himself has said (in the 7th verse), he has been made a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given unto him according to the "effectual working" of His power. As you know - this is a very common expression of the Apostle's - "the effectual working"; a word which is best translated "energising." It was an inward energising of the Holy Ghost that enabled him to serve. It was not something that he could go forward in as his own possession. He could not go about and be advertised as an Apostle; he could not speak as one who had authority in the realm of personal assertion. It was by the in-working and energising of the Holy Ghost, and for this he was very dependent; he depended upon the prayers of saints; he went about in weakness, in fear and much trembling; his speech was not in the persuasive words of men's wisdom, and there were places where he could not speak very much, for various reasons. There were other places where the word of God ran and had free course, and God was glorified; but he recognised that the source of his ministry was not in himself at all; it was in God, and only as it came forth from the Eternal Spirit, through the co-operation of other members of the Body, could he have that utterance, which is the utterance of God.

It is well for us to recognise these principles of ministry. There is nothing in which the Cross so operates as in Holy Ghost ministry. In the ministry of the flesh, the flesh, of course, is exalted; but in the ministry of the Holy Ghost the flesh is abased. That is to say, you are continually reduced to absolute impotence and weakness, and thrown back upon the resources of God, the Spirit. It would be well for us always to keep this in mind when we read the words of the Apostle, lest we get a false vision of him, and make him sometimes to look as a great figure, a master of assemblies; whereas the actual facts of the case are essentially different. He is an insignificant man among men, as far as the world is concerned. The Holy Ghost has preserved his epistles so that they come down to us making us to realise that he was the mightiest instrument Christ had in that early church; but he was among the people of his time as unknown, led of the Holy Spirit from town to town, labouring with his own hands. In the sight of men, not to be esteemed, nevertheless speaking in the power of the Holy Spirit. His ministry was chiefly with ones and twos and threes, or at the most with small and insignificant assemblies. That was the method in which the Body was being builded up in those days. One is led to say that, and to dwell upon it, because our imaginations so run away with us that we paint false pictures, and get wrong ideas of the way in which the Body is being built up. You will discover, as you go on, that it is in the hidden work of the Spirit that the glory of God is found, not in that which is seen and advertised among men.

Well now, his ministry is none other than this - it is to speak that word of the new creation whereby the light of God can shine in upon human hearts, and, as he himself has said in the second epistle to the Corinthians, it requires the same omnipotence of God to speak the word that breaks through into the heart to give the revelation of Jesus Christ, as was needed to speak "Light" in the first creation. God Who spake the light out of darkness, it is He who has shined in our hearts. It is the same omnipotence of God; but this ministry is only made possible by the weakness of our flesh, as we are reduced to ineffectiveness. It is thus He gets His opportunity of speaking His creative word of the new creation. In the 9th verse he says it is his especial work to enlighten all; to make all see.

You cannot make people see. We discover that more and more. We feel like shaking people sometimes to make them see and we are constrained to talk with great vehemence of spirit, and yet you feel somehow that words are not sufficient, and our cry is Oh, that God would make them see! But you cannot make them see except by the unction of the Holy Ghost. It is He, He Himself, makes people see; because these things are not seen by the natural mind at all. They are foolishness to the natural mind, and it is the natural mind coming into the things of God that creates confusion, which is why you have the chaos of today. This is very obvious, though perhaps in some directions, not so obvious; but the confusion today in vision is due to the fact that the natural mind comes in to speculate upon the things of God; and if there is one thing we need to learn, it is that the natural mind must not come in to speculate upon the things of God. I refer to those who are really born again, and who in the first place were enabled to see the Cross by the Spirit, but who afterwards have not recognised that God's thoughts are not our thoughts, as our ways are not His ways, and who still think they can talk about the infinite on a finite level. You cannot.

When God the Holy Ghost breaks in upon your spirit to reveal, not the historical Jesus, but Jesus in the Godhead, Jesus as God Himself in the throne - when the Holy Spirit does that amazing work in you - you cannot go on then to have a mental system of truth built upon or around that first revelation; but that revelation must continue to become, all the while, an increasing revelation of the Son of God. You find in the next chapter a reference to the climax of this process of revelation (13th verse) - "Until we all arrive at the oneness of the faith, and at the oneness of the full knowledge of the Son of God." That is to say there is a progressive revelation of the Christ, and that progressive revelation is all the while by the Holy Spirit. Now, one of the reasons for confusion in the church is because, after people have been born again, they still bring to bear their natural minds upon the interpretation of truth. This is why there are these endless schools of thought. We ought to be all saying the same thing; preaching the same thing; instead of that you have numbers of earnest Christians - one admits their earnestness, their spirituality of life - bringing the natural mind to bear upon the Bible, and upon interpretations, teachings about the Body, the coming of the Lord, translation, etc..

The Holy Ghost will give to us the certainty of truth constantly, but the great danger is that you may commence to preach in the Holy Ghost, or you may commence to prophesy in the Holy Spirit in forth-telling the mysteries of God, but afterwards bring your own mind in. That is the tragedy of many a figure in the history of the church. Those who have been raised up by God, commenced in the Spirit, and whether the devil or "I" got in we do not know (they both go together: where egotism begins the devil is at your elbow) they went on in their own mentality, they began to bring their own mind to bear upon the infinite things of God. That was where disaster came in. It is very well to recognise this principle at the beginning. You cannot know anything in the realm of the Spirit, except by the Spirit. You cannot know anything of the things of the Christ, except by the Holy Ghost; and we, who have commenced to speak, of all men, need to recognise our responsibility before God that we should not begin to go on in the energy of our flesh, in the energy of our intellect, or in any kind of thought of our own to interpret the things of God and thus to create special schools of teaching. And so you see how the cross must operate here in the mental realm to keep the messenger continually in the place of death; and the Apostle gives good reason why the stake should be driven through him, that he might be kept there crucified constantly, lest he might be exalted, so that God could have the opportunity of speaking that broken word through him right unto the end.

Now this is, you see, the marvellous functioning of the Holy Ghost, in that here is one, a sent one, who gives out from God, by the Spirit, His utterance, and is thus able to make all men see. Not that he is able, but that the Holy Spirit is able, through him, to make men see what is "the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the ages hath been hid in God."

And here you have stated "The Vision." The vision is the fellowship of the mystery which has been hid in God; and all the children of God should have that one vision. The Holy Spirit should be able to so break in upon the heart as to present this one vision - "the fellowship of the mystery which hath been hid in God."

Now, what is the fellowship which hath been hid in God? We could give many explanations of that. We could get into far-reaching ranges of truth about that; but it is well to ask ourselves if "the fellowship of the mystery which hath been hid in God" is anywhere clearly denied; if it is focal anywhere; if it is reduced to an issue in our minds where we can clearly see it as one thing, centralised, gathered into a single revelation? Well you have only to turn to that very familiar passage in the 1st chapter of the first epistle of John, which we have turned to again and again in successive conferences. Now this is what John saw: this is what Paul saw, and this is what Peter saw all by one Spirit. They all came to this. Paul saw it perhaps first the most clearly, and then others accepted the revelation of the Holy Ghost through him. John came to the same vision, and Peter at last we know came to it in clear vision as he testifies to his agreement with his "beloved brother Paul." But here it is! - "That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes; which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Logos of Life (and the Life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and announce unto you that Eternal Life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us), that which we have seen and heard announce we unto you that you also may have fellowship with us (the fellowship of the mystery): and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ."

So we see the fellowship of the mystery hid in God is the fellowship of a life, not the fellowship of a truth. This is very important to recognise. If you begin to think of fellowship about a truth you will soon find that Satan can attack that. It is the fellowship of a life hid with Christ in God, a life that is not your own in a possessive sense, but a life out of which you are born, and into which you are baptised by the Spirit. It is the life of the Son of God. It is the fellowship of the mystery which hath been hid in God. It centralises then in Christ: it is not separate from Him. It is life through a Person and life in a Person; and remains so. It is never divorced from Jesus. It is the truth as it is in Jesus, in those dimensions, of course, of Jesus of which we are speaking now. We are not speaking of Jesus local and finite. We are not speaking of Jesus geographically and historically, we are speaking of Jesus in the Godhead. We are speaking of the infinite God revealed in Christ Jesus, of Him who fills the heavens.

Now the Apostle John, as we have often seen, is filled with the amazement of this vision; he is lost in wonder. You never lose your sense of wonder if you have seen Jesus. You never lose your worship in the Spirit, if you have seen and retain your vision of Jesus. I mean this vision. I do not mean geographical vision, the vision over your shoulder we speak of - "the vision that fades in ancient shades of far-off Galilee" - but the vision of your heart's eyes lifted up in to heaven so that you have come to see through, because the Light has broken through. You see God in Jesus Christ; and you see what He has come into the world to do. Not only to die for our sins - for He died for the sins of the whole world as such - but because we have accepted, in this age, the full meaning of that Incarnation, and therefore what identification with Him in death is; so we have come to see that He has risen from among the dead into the Father in order to give to us that Life which He now shares with the Father as Man. It is that Life!

This is the vision of John, now an old man, but broken in heart with amazement and wonder and worship as He sees this Life so manifested. That is the fellowship of the mystery, the mystery of this Life which was hid in God and which was manifested in Christ here on earth first of all as in the days of His flesh, then when He had passed through the way of His passion, was further manifested to His disciples in His out-resurrection; then in His ascension Glory, and as He was afterwards manifested to Paul, and to others through Paul. He was seen received-up into the heavens, and the Apostles by the ministry of the Holy Ghost, manifested the Life as in the risen Lord, the Life of the Godhead in the Man, which we are now asked to come into and share. This is the marvel of the new birth. The new birth is not merely your own birth, but Christ's new birth. The Father declared: "Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee," and it was then made possible for you to be born again. It is not your personal new birth, therefore, but it is a birth out from Him whereby you are made one with Him to share a Life in the Christ of God. That is the fellowship of the mystery.

We have before seen how at the end of this epistle of John in the 5th chapter the Apostle has spoken with great emphasis about the testimony, "The testimony that God hath borne to us concerning His Son" in His resurrection, through His passion. He says finally as we have seen, in the 11th verse "And this is the testimony that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the Life; he that hath not the Son hath not the Life!" It is very marvellous as we dwell upon these points to see that the testimony which God has given to His Son is a testimony that includes the church. It is not the testimony to the Son of God personal in Christ Jesus our Lord only but it is the testimony of God through the Spirit, and through the water (or word) and through the blood to the Son of God as now He shares His Life in His church. This is the testimony - that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. That is to say it is not a life to be possessed personally. It is not life that you have merely as in yourself; it is a life that you share in Him with others. That is the fellowship of the mystery.

Now the vision of that is one vision; and it is first of all objective, or without yourselves, and so if you ask what is the vision of the church? The answer is, The vision of the church is Jesus. The vision of the church is not the Body. The vision of the church is not the cross. The vision of the church is Jesus. If you have a vision of the Body without the vision of Jesus remaining supreme in your heart, you will become mystical and theoretical. You will be talking about the Body all the time, but you, yourself, will not be an example of what it is to be a member of the Body. You may talk about the cross, and get a doctrine of the cross, but unless the cross is seen in the supreme light of the Person of Jesus your doctrine will be hard. It will be without love, and without worship, and people will wonder why you, who preach so much about the cross have so little of the love which is revealed in the cross. People will be saying that you are talking about the Body as something mystical in the heavens, and the love that should be manifest in you as a member of the Body is not revealed. But all this is because there is an absence of the vision of Jesus. That explains a great many things, and brings us back to simplicity. The reason why so many people come into advanced truth, as it is called, and manifest so little of the true grace of God is because they have lost the vision of Jesus. The vision of Jesus in the Godhead, that is the testimony of the church - We behold Jesus!

You find this oneness of Vision right through the Word of God - for instance in the epistle to the Hebrews, which we have already quoted - We behold Jesus! And the vision by the Holy Ghost is the breaking through to see Jesus in the Godhead. Take Paul. He is brought to where he is by a revelation of Jesus Christ. But it is always by a revelation of Jesus Christ that men are saved. Whatever other vision Paul had, all is found in this supreme vision of Jesus Christ. Who He is! And you find, as we have seen, that the Apostle is crying all the while for a deeper and fuller knowledge of Jesus. It is the personal knowledge of Jesus as God. It is the entering into all that infinitude of fellowship with Himself; the thing that draws you more and more toward Himself. And you and I discover in the Christ of God all our experience. Whatever experience we have had which is of any value, it was found in some unveiling of the Person of Christ in Jesus. If you lose that, you wander, you go into side-paths. You may be taken up with this school of teaching and interpretation; then you enter into another; and many of us may have created theories, schools of thought and teaching, and wandered away from the Central Testimony. We lost the supreme value of Jesus - the oneness of the faith which is bound up with the full knowledge of the Son of God. Peter said "Thou art the Christ." "Well, this is the Rock upon which I will build My church." And we must not think that foundation is something it is not - static, stationary. "Upon this living foundation of the vision of the Christ I will build My church." You are being built up into Him as you see Him. You are being built up into Him as you behold Him, and so you help to build others up. That is "holding fast the Head." Each member has to so hold fast the Head, wrestle to retain that singleness of vision.

You remember, when Jacob was wrestling at Peniel, he said, "I have seen God face to face." Well, in Jesus Christ you see God face to face. That is the revelation, and you are to wrestle to hold that. The devil would try to get your mind taken up with other things, but that is the thing to hold on to. To behold God face to face in Jesus Christ; to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. You find John saying, "We beheld His glory." That is the sum total of their experience. You find again the Apostle Paul saying that the gospel is "The gospel of the glory of God in Christ - Who is the image of God." (In the Authorised Version it is given as "The glorious gospel of Christ," but the correct reading is "The gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God").

Now this is objective. It is outside yourself, and you must retain that. It is the vision of the Person. Nothing must obscure that. Now subjective vision is that which you have as within yourself. But without this objective vision of Jesus you will find that subjective vision becomes obscure, misty, misleading. You will find you will begin to exclude this or that essential because of certain interpretations of truth, if you do not retain the vision of Jesus in the Godhead. As we have said, a doctrine of the cross minus that is without power; and a doctrine of the Body without that is unpracticable. I am emphasising this because one has seen a great many of God's children taken up with truth, they see truth; it becomes crystallised in their imagination, and they lose sight of the throne of God. If you and I keep the vision of Jesus we shall never become "heady"; we shall never become heretical; we shall never become divisive, schismatic; and so the unity of vision will be preserved in the objective vision of Jesus in the Godhead, oneness of vision for the whole church.

Healthy, subjective vision therefore depends upon the retaining of the objective. It is the overmastering, overwhelming breaking in of the Light of God in the face of Jesus Christ that keeps you and me in our place, so that we live in the glory of that vision.

But now there is another side to the truth - it is not only without ourselves, but, praise God, it is within ourselves. You find the Apostle turning to the other side when he speaks about, "The Son of God being revealed in Him." It is very wonderful when you get the true objective vision of Jesus, and believe Him, for upon that moment you are born again. I cannot explain it, but I know it happens. It is then that that which you see in Him is made true in you. You find it happened with the Apostle Paul. First of all there was the amazing revelation of God in Christ, and then he speaks about that synchronising with the revelation of the Son of God in him - "When it pleased God to reveal His Son in me." The Son of God revealed to you by the Holy Spirit and then the Son of God revealed in you by the Holy Spirit as you are born out from Him. That is the subjective side. You find you have a Life now, but that Life is joined to Him. It is His Life. It is not your Life, but His Life in you. Of course, when you speak of Christ being in you, you do not mean the totality of Christ - the totality of Christ is not even in the entire Body, but His fulness is.

Nevertheless He remains God over all, blessed for ever. The Church does not become God. We need clear thinking here. When Paul speaks, therefore, of the Son of God being revealed in him, he does not mean the totality of the Son of God; but, that by the Eternal Spirit, he has been born out of that One Whom he has seen, and he has been made one with the One he has seen; and then he begins to recognise that He is the Sovereign Lord of his life, not only as outside of himself, but as within himself; and it is the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus working in him. Oh, once we get this revelation, this subjective revelation, this revelation within, what a blessing it will be as it makes us to cease from all self-effort, as we see that having seen Him He is then begotten in us by His Spirit; that we are a part of Him, an integral, essential, vital part of Him; and we live now by an inworking. As we are born by a begetting, we live by an inworking.

Of course, these are very simple things; but let us repeat them - we are born by a begetting. You cannot beget yourself. You are begotten out from God as you get the vision, as you see Him, recognise Who and what He is and accept Him. And then, just as you are begotten by a begetting, so you live by an energising. You do not live then as self-sufficient; you do not live out of anything that you have control of entirely. It is nothing possessive. You live by an energy, and Paul has been praying in this epistle, "That we might know what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power." Well, we behold Him, but that is not sufficient. The everlasting God is by His Spirit working in us, energising us, making us one with Himself in fellowship of life and ministry.

So the subjective side of the truth is this, that Christ is in you, the hope of glory. And the hope of glory is not the hope of your attainment; the hope of your being able at last to climb to some heights of merit where you can break through and somehow be acceptable to God by reason of all your wrestlings and determination. It is not that; it is by an energy within yourself as you yield to and acknowledge your Life. It is the presence of the Spirit of Him inworking, operating within you. The very power that raised Jesus from the sepulchre into the Godhead is the power that is working in your spirit to raise you into oneness with Himself.

Well, as we recognise we live by a subjective experience on the one hand because of an objective vision on the other - as you see Jesus by the Spirit so you find the Life of Jesus is being wrought out in you by the Spirit. Then you come to the truth of the "Body." And I want to point out very definitely and seriously that the truth of the body is not objective, but subjective. If I may make plain what I mean.

You may get visions about the Body and not be contributing very much to the Body. The only Heavenly vision that you must have is the vision of God in Jesus Christ; but the truth of the Body, or the vision of the Body is subjective. It is something working in you. It is something that is functional; something that is essential to your Life; something that is a part of you. You cannot hold it, so to speak, as a mere objective truth. In one way it is you, the new man, and you find the life now in you is a constituent life that belongs somewhere else than in you only. It belongs to Him, and it belongs to others; and you find the truth of the body is subjective. It is working in you.

Now in the course of my ministry I have found that a great many people are trying to discern the Body as a mental objective fact. It is not that at all. You cannot visualise and you are not asked to visualise the Body. The Holy Ghost makes you visualise the Lord Jesus - to behold Him - to worship Him - to adore Him - to love Him. That is your vision; but the vision of the Body is subjective. That is, it is being wrought out by the Holy Ghost within you. It is an inward realisation of unity. It is not an attempt to create unity, but an inward realisation that I am one with all other members of the Body because I am one in Him with them. I share His life and they share His life then in Him we are one; and because I now derive all my life from Him and worship Him and love Him, and am constrained by Him, you see the vision of the Body implies something working in me. It is not because I talk about it, and preach it, I must live it!

Oh beloved friends, I stress this - that we must live the truth of the Body. It is not an automatic mental thing to try to bring upon others as a truth that is merely to be conceived as something outside ourselves. The truth of the Body, if it is at all with you, is in you working as a passion, something of God Himself, by His Spirit, working in your heart. Oneness is not an ideal; oneness is a fact. There are ideals, and there is the consummation of God's purpose. There are wondrous things in the throne that we may see, but the oneness of the Body is a fact - a fact in God, and a fact in you - "Which thing is true in Him and in us." What we have to ask for is that we may behold Jesus more and more in the glory of the revelation the Spirit gives, and then we shall find, as the Apostle Paul says, "The love of Christ constraineth us." We are being exercised, energised, driven onward, embraced, constrained as by a mighty power, burning as in a consuming fire. "The zeal of the Lord of Hosts shall accomplish this." And so the vision of the Body is not an objective vision but a subjective vision, and the unity in that sense is brought about by a necessity of life. We cannot live without the Body. We come to the place where we must have fellowship with one another in the Holy Ghost.

The Cross then comes in here because you see it rules out the personal. We have spoken about the Cross and the oneness of visions of ministry. The cross comes in in ruling out the personal here, and that is why the Body is the very means whereby God works out the cross in you and me. You will find that when you come into the true subjective truth of the Body of Christ, where we have to live together in any kind of fellowship, that there you have the very means which the Holy Ghost uses to see that the cross shall be operative. It is very easy to talk about the cross from the platform, and it is very easy to sometimes pray about the cross, but when it comes to laying down your life moment by moment and day by day for others; that is the cross.

So you see Life in and for the Body rules out the personal, and that is why the instrument of the Cross, that death of His whereby He died to self in every detail of self-assertion that He might live wholly unto God as Man, is the principle that has to be wrought out in you and in me. You and I are to live unto Him in His Body, and that means the ruling out of the personal in the old creation. Thus all mental conceptions of the Body have to go, all mere emotional conceptions have to go, and even the self-will to this end has to go, and you find that the self-life in all its detail has to be continually stripped. As you seek to live for the church you will find that the cross will operate; the cross will bring to bear its impact upon your life, the self-life.

It is very easy to live a holy life alone. That can be a superior kind of Pharisaism; but live together with Christians in intimacy, and you know the irks, you know the way temperaments clash, you know the way possessive things come up in us, even in our zeal for truth. Why, we even talk about translation and get divided upon spiritual truth! Oh, you see, when you come to live truly in the Body of Christ you will find the vision is functional in us. This cross becomes subjective. But it is Jesus Who is seen as God and Whose pure burning gaze upon you causes you to know the terror of the Lord - the fear of God - beholding Him - recognising His sovereignty - His deity - as the impact of His Presence is turned upon you, you find that in the Body the vision has to be functional, an essential of life, and so it is made the very means whereby the Cross works out death in you. Your mental conceptions won't suffice, your conceptions of the Body so far as you are going to will the thing through won't suffice, and even those emotions and feelings that you may have won't suffice. It must be by the Holy Ghost functioning in you the Life of God so that you are able to lay down this miserable self-life, as it is stripped more and more in its antagonism before God.

Now, Christ died that we might live, and we have to die daily that we may live in Him and others may live also. I have to die. That is the principle of the Body. But only the Holy Ghost can work that out in you; and you see on the two sides the unity of vision is only made possible by the Cross first of all. To behold Him in the throne, and then to recognise it is His life that has to be wrought out in us, and that is only possible as the self-life is continually laid down at His feet that He may arise within us and manifest His glory, His multifarious wisdom before the principalities and powers. Of course the degree in which the truth of the Body is revealed in us, the degree to which the Life of Christ is present in us, is what is the devil's estimate of it! What is he thinking about it? What do the principalities and powers see, they who are enabled to judge, allowed by the Lord to scrutinise? What do they see by way of the love of God shed abroad in our hearts? That is the test.

May the Lord make us each one true members of that Body in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, in the oneness of that life which is hid with Christ in God for His Name's sake.

Chapter 2 - Soul-Sacrifice the Principle of Unity in the Ministry of the Church

(Notes of an address given at the February Conference.)

"The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it in abundance." (John 10:10.)

The thief comes with a very definite purpose. He comes to steal; he comes to kill; and he comes to destroy. You do not need to be told who the thief is. The thief is the devil. The one who would rob God of His glory, and of His purpose, and of His sheep, if that were possible. But there is a very precious word in this same chapter, "Neither shall any one pluck them out of My hand."

But the devil is not playing at things. He is a desperate being and out for desperate ends; but opposed to his desperation is the zeal of the Lord of Hosts. The antithesis to that desperate energy of the devil is the more than equally zealous energy of the Holy Ghost, the outgoings of Omnipotent Love, the passion of God by the Holy Spirit. And the only thing that can meet the devil is this passion of God. The passion of God met him in the blood, and overcame him. In the blood of Jesus there was released the energy of the eternal passion. We need to recognise that the soul of Jesus was the soul of One Who made God actual in this world by an Incarnation; and that behind His soul was the Eternal Spirit as the Spring of it; and that His soul was a constituent manifestation, through the blood in a body here on earth, of the eternal being of God. When the blood was shed that soul was poured out; and there was released in the universe the divine energy; yet the divine energy in another form, not in the form of omnipotence, but in a form that seemed to be weakness, nevertheless in an invisible might that you and I cannot discern, except by revelation, and then only in part. For it was the impact of almighty God through the blood of Jesus that met the devil. God was in the Christ. You see, you have something that has met this desperate purpose of Satan. And the only thing that can meet the desperate purpose of Satan in you and me is that same power that was in the Lord Jesus, and is now in us, by virtue of what He wrought. It is the zeal of the Lord of Hosts. It is very important to recognise that these are not pictures. The Lord has not given these parables for the sake of our imagination; but He is really trying to unveil the desperate issues that are behind the scenes with regard to the eternal purpose of God in the church. No member of the church, therefore, can afford to be complacent, or to be haphazard, or to be easy-going.

"The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. Now I am come that they may have life (and, as you know, this word 'life' means life in its essential vitality, 'zoe'), and that they may have it in abundance."

Abundant life! So that you have the adequate meeting of the need of the sheep, as there is that without which would continually perambulate in order to destroy, to steal and to slay. There is, on the other hand, the resources of abundant life for the sheep. But how is that obtained? Well, in this way:- "I am the good Shepherd; the good Shepherd layeth down His life for the sheep." But it is important to notice that an entirely different word is used for "life" here, "I am the good Shepherd; the good Shepherd layeth down His soul for the sheep."

It was by the laying down of His soul that the gift of "Eternal Life" was made possible. Because as He was manifest in the flesh, and offered in the passion of the Cross, He was justified in the Spirit, and the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God Himself was released through the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ in His passion. He not only stripped off from Himself principalities and powers, triumphing over them in it, but in His ascension He secured the release out of the Divine Being of the Holy Ghost for the church. This is the gift of the Holy Ghost; this, the release of the Spirit of God out of the Divine Being in and through the ascended Lord. The Spirit of Divine Man as the nature and substance of our life henceforth - born out from God, and energised and maintained by God. It is that. This is the stupendous fact of God now in Christ and in the church - THE HOLY GHOST. He has received the promise of the Father. The Spirit that was already His as the Son of God in fellowship with the Father from all eternity is now given to Him as ascended Man and Head of the Body, so that He is able to release for us, as out from Himself, the Eternal Spirit, to dwell in and upon us as members of the church.

Each one of us, as members of Christ's Body, have resting in and upon us the eternal resources of God for our spirit. That is the truth that every born from above child of God ought to know. There is the energy of a life in your spirit which is infinite, exhaustless, because it proceeds out from God. And in your new birth you are not merely made a little puny individual spirit, but you are related to God in one Spirit, and therefore upon you rests the descended Spirit of God continually, as you abide under the blood. But this was not possible except as He laid down His soul - laid down that life in its human essence and form.

"I am the good Shepherd, the good Shepherd layeth down His 'psuche,' or soul, for the sheep."

This was the quintessence, the very essential nature of that sacrificial love in Him, which caused the Father to delight in Him (17th verse).

"Therefore doth My Father love me, because I lay down My 'psuche' (soul) that I may take it again (in His ascension). No one taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have authority to lay it down; and I have authority to take it again. This commandment (or charge) have I received from My Father."

He needed the commandment of the Father to lay down that peculiar "psuche," life, or soul, because it affected the life of the Divine Being. It was bound up with the Trinity: the Father, Son and Holy Ghost were alike bound up in the soul of Jesus. The value of the soul of Jesus and the dimensions of the soul of Jesus are the value and dimensions of the Eternal Spirit. You need to recognise that it was through the Eternal Spirit He offered Himself unto God. Once we get the meaning in these words the Holy Spirit means us to have, we see that it was through the Divine Being in its essence as Spirit that He offered Himself - through the out-pouring of His soul. There is, therefore, a coming through of God in the pouring out of the soul of Jesus, a coming through of God in the shed blood; for the blood is not merely the corpuscular fluid, but there is released as the blood is shed that other life, which is commensurate with the source of it, begotten out from God. A Divine Life is in the flesh of Jesus, and that invisible soul of Jesus manifested in the glory of His Manhood (but, of course, illimitable in its resources in the Eternal Spirit), that soul was released, and there came through all the values of the Eternal Spirit, for through the eternal values of His own Spirit He offered Himself unto God. May the Lord give revelation that we may see the might of the blood of Jesus as a heavenly power, as something that is able to meet Satan in the highest realms of his range.

You find the last phase of the church of God has the revelation of the meaning, the value, the power, of the blood of Jesus:- "They overcame him (Satan) because of the blood of the Lamb."

It was the Lamb that John (the Apostle) saw by the Holy Ghost. The Lamb in the midst of the Throne - the Lamb newly slain and bleeding in the throne of God. All symbolic, because our finite minds can only take in truth as it is presented in symbol, but the reality is that in the centre of the Divine Life. Sovereignty is the power of the blood of Jesus.

The Lord Jesus, therefore, needed the commandment of the Father because the laying down of His "psuche" or soul involved the Trinity, involved Deity; and as an integral Being out from God, the Father in Him, and He in the Father by One Spirit, He needed the authority of the Godhead to lay down this life. Of course, we need to recognise that He could never have been slain. No man could take it from Him; no devil could take it from Him. He voluntarily laid down His life. He was crucified through weakness, through His yielding Himself to that passion whereby He met the powers of darkness, being our Representative for sin, triumphing over them in it. But if we could only see the other side of that Cross we should behold the magnificence of God, the glory of God as revealed in it.

Now one is led to this verse because here is the principle of unity. This is the principle by which God is harmonising the universe. It is the thing of which Jesus has given so wonderful an example in laying down His soul. He laid down His peerless, unique, spotless soul: the incorruptible blood of the Christ was poured out, that essence of His life, which has cleansed the universe and reconciled all things unto God. "Things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions, all things reconciled to Him." He laid down His pure, peerless soul in order that there might be released life abundant, not that "psuche" life, but that Spirit, that Life out from God Himself, for you and for me as we are begotten of Him. This is the principle of unity because thus He becomes the Head of the universe in the Godhead as Man, and thus He secures the eternal principle that all things shall be gathered up, or headed up in the Christ of God. In John 12:23 there are words that are very familiar:- "Jesus answered them saying - The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified (in the Godhead: He does not mean that He might simply have some display of glory as for Himself; but that He might be glorified in the Divine Being as Man, and the Divine Being be glorified in Him.) Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit."

He is speaking of Himself first of all as laying down His soul, but now He extends that principle to those who shall share with Him this life, this life of ascension in God, this life which is Spirit. We must follow the same principle that He followed, not only for our salvation, but for our identification with Him. We do not save ourselves in any way by trying to follow Jesus. I hope you recognise the meaning of that. We do not save ourselves in any way by trying to follow Jesus, because we cannot. The one who endeavoured best to follow Jesus in the flesh was Peter. He tried hard; and he did all kinds of desperately courageous things, and there was no man so resolute, and determined as he. He was the one who stepped out on the sea in that dark and stormy night. If ever there was a dare-devil it was Peter in the realm of his flesh. You must not minimise Peter's attributes of heart and mind as a man in the natural. He was the man who took out his sword and was prepared to fight single-handed the armed forces that came to arrest the Saviour. Just two swords they had, and Peter unsheathed one and was prepared to defend the Lord Jesus Christ against the world. That speaks for his courage; but he knew nothing about this other thing. He knew nothing about the impact of hell; he knew nothing about the impact of principalities and powers.

You remember the Lord (ch. 13) says - "Whither I go thou canst not follow Me now," and Peter says: "I will lay down my soul for Thy sake." But he did not know what it is to lay down the soul. He thought it was to die in the mortal body. That is not laying down the soul. There are plenty of men with dare-devil courage who will face that, but that is not laying down the soul. And the Lord tells him: "Wilt thou lay down thy soul for My sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee the cock shall not crow till thou hast denied Me thrice." As much as to say, You do not know the impact of Satan, and the weakness of your own moral fibre. You will crumple up as I take My sheltering hand from over you; but I have prayed the Father that thy faith fail not, and when thou art turned again at last, and hast seen thine own weakness, then strengthen the brethren. And it is only the brethren who have had this crash who can strengthen others, because they know the weakness of the flesh, the impossibility of any man or woman fighting their way through.

"Thou shalt follow Me hereafter." That means following Him in the way of laying down your life; but we are only able to lay down that life through the operation of the Cross. It is only as the Holy Spirit makes possible the laying down constantly of the natural life into that death which Jesus has already died for us that we can follow Him through into the Godhead, have access unto the Father in Fellowship of one Spirit in Him. We only live in the Spirit as we are crucified in the flesh. We only live in God as we die in ourselves. That is the fashion of it. The Apostle accepted the working out of the cross in his own life. Bearing about in his body the putting to death of the Lord Jesus that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in his mortal flesh. The life of Jesus, which is the life of the Eternal Spirit, is only made possible in our mortal flesh as we lay down our souls by the power of the Cross. This is the principle of unity. He is speaking here in John to His future disciples - those who together with Him shall become that "first-fruits" unto God in that Pentecostal presentation. He is the first-fruits to God in that Easter presentation of Ascension, but now there will be that Pentecostal presentation, that baptism whereby we are baptised into One Body, and shall be the first-fruits of the new creation in and through the Christ Personal Who is "God over all, blessed for ever."

Thus He elaborates what must be the principle of our following - "He that loveth his life (life here is 'psuche,' soul) shall lose it." Now how many of us are fondly loving our souls. Well, I would not like to say that there is one person here who did not still love his own soul. I find I do love myself, and it is the cross to constantly lay down by the power of the Spirit - this self-life. What makes your pride to be hurt so swiftly? It is the self-love. What makes you so self-conscious about the testimony? It is self-love. Why is it that you suffer this and that agony very often under the slights and rebuffs of your brethren and of the world? It is self-love. It is that in us which is self. It is that personal life in us (not that individual life in us) which is the thing which prevents the unity of the Body. It is the "ego," the "I" in its various manifestations that prevents unity. And so He says: "He that loveth his soul shall lose it; and he that hateth his soul in this world shall guard it unto life eternal." That is to say, the true soul life shall become manifest in eternity when you and I are resurrected in His likeness; when you and I at last receive the end of our faith, which is the gaining possession of our souls; then our personal life will be saved because it will partake of His Person and His Nature. We guard that personal life of ours, which is so dear to us, as we lose it, lay it down constantly by the power of the Spirit thus working out the cross in our nature day by day.

Then He says these tender words: "If any one minister to Me." This is our ministry - to minister to Him. It is not our ministry to minister to one another first. You remember in Acts 13:2, it describes certain disciples ministering unto the Lord. Oh, if we had this vision, that our service is to minister to the Lord, not first of all to the church. A ministry to the church in your self-life is void, and your personal ministry becomes a thing that is your snare. But, as we saw this afternoon, the vision of the church which makes for unity is the vision of the ascended Lord. The objective vision is the vision of the Christ Himself - we see Jesus! We have that same faculty to see by the Spirit that He had. He was able to lift up His eyes into heaven. That has been very precious to me this Conference - He lifted His eyes into heaven and He saw, as it were, by the Spirit. "No one hath seen the Father but the Son." The glory of the Father filled His life. The love of the Father constrained His heart that He was able thus, because of that vision of the Father's glory, to lay down His soul constantly, until at last it came unto that death of the Cross when He was made sin for us. And what a test! He met all the accusations of hell, as our representative, in the realm of His soul. He lost His soul, so to speak, in pouring it out for our sakes, and He guarded it in the Life Eternal. That is the way He went, and that is the way you and I are called to follow. That is, as He had the faculty by the Spirit to lift up His eyes into heaven, so, praise God, we have also.

Oh, tell me friends, what do you see when you pray? Do you know Jesus by the Holy Ghost? Have you the revelation of Jesus as there in your spirit, a clear light shining right down from the Godhead into your heart so that you see Jesus crowned with glory and honour, a consciousness of Jesus over all? There was in Him a God consciousness; and there is in you and me also as we are born out from Him a God-consciousness in our spirit, and we lift up our eyes into heaven. So we saw that the unity of ministry is secondary to the vision of Jesus. There is no disunity when people have the vision of Jesus. In old days I have been at church meetings that were a little bit lively and some members got cross with one another and began to talk as if God were a million miles away. But that is not possible when we are conscious of the presence of God.

But this is the consciousness of the child of God - the presence of God. Lift up your eyes into heaven. Behold Jesus. That is the one thing that makes for unity as the objective vision. And then, as we saw this afternoon, the subjective vision - the vision within our hearts - is the functioning, the reality of the Son of God revealed in us. He is revealed to us in the Godhead, and He is revealed in us as a functioning Life, as members of the Son of God. I touch you, I touch God. You touch me, you touch God. Touching God? Yes! "Why persecutest thou Me, Saul?" As our brother was saying some months ago, Paul touched Jesus in Stephen. The Son of God whom Paul harried was also by His Spirit in those. They were integral parts of Him, essential parts of Him. So the objective vision that makes for unity is the ascended Lord; the subjective vision that makes for unity is a realisation in the Body, a realisation that is inward, functional, essential, vital; and if one member of the body suffer, all the members suffer with that one; and if one member of the body is glorified, or exalted, all members are glorified in that one. It is a functioning life - and have you realised that the Life is inward in us by the anointing? We should recognise how precious each child of God is to the Father, and therefore how precious they should be to us.

But now here you have the principle by which unity is promoted in us. "If any man minister to Me, let him follow Me." Peter in the flesh cannot follow Him, but Peter in the Spirit can. Peter in the new birth, and under the anointing of the Spirit can follow Him in the way of the Cross. He is not following Him now as a sinner, but following Him as a saint, as one who is sanctified, as one who is being led by the Spirit, "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God." These are taken step by step through their life as blind men, being willing to submit to the Spirit; but you can only submit to the Spirit as the self-life is laid down. "If any man will minister unto Me, where I am there shall also My ministering servant be." Ah, then you know, in identification with Him, your life is hid with Christ in God. Yes, even here in the earth, you ascend into heaven by the Spirit and He says, "If any man minister to Me, him will My Father honour." That is our ministry, to minister to the Christ and to minister to Him first of all directly in worship, in fellowship, in adoration, and then to minister to Him in the Body. But that ministry in the body, as we saw this afternoon means the laying down of the soul.

Now the soul life in you and me is the personal life, it is not the individual life. There is a distinction here which we need to recognise. As individuals, you and I persist. You do not cease to be. There is no "Nirvana" to the Christian, no absorption into anything, not even into God. The marvellous thing is that God transforms you absolutely and entirely so that you are a new creation. "Old things are passed away, and all things are become new." You somehow persist, and that is the miracle. Paul says, "I am crucified together with Christ." (God has wrought that, I believe it.) Nevertheless I live. That is a mystery. No longer I - still that is not altogether true. Paul, you have still a bit of "I" in you, surely? "No longer I, but Christ liveth in me." How can this be? Listen further, "and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God." It is to live it by faith. It is by faith there is the upspringing of another life in you as you are prepared, by the Cross, to relegate your life to death. The other Life, the Spirit of the Eternal in your spirit springs up as the puny self-life is relegated to the Cross, yet you persist. That is the miracle, the marvel of God, that after He has destroyed you, so to speak, after He has put you to death, yet you live. That is the doctrine that is foolishness to the natural mind and to the wisdom of this world. To us who believe it is the very dynamic of God. The one who is speaking knows that it is the power of God that as he is prepared to relegate constantly, by the power of the Spirit, the self-life to death, another Life out from God springs up in his spirit. This is what we confess:-

Thou of life the fountain art

Freely let me take of Thee

Spring Thou up within my heart!

But He does not spring up as the religious man merely. It is not because you sing hymns, because you have been to revival meetings and your religious emotions have all been stirred, your love of music has been fed. That is not it. It is in the reality of the Christian life. That is, you lay down constantly the self-life, another Life springs up out from God in your spirit,

Spring Thou up within my heart

Rise to all eternity.

Personality then has to be relegated to death, being in the realm of the soul, but individuality is in the realm of the spirit, deeper down. God preserves this, and yet He transforms it, and the unity of vision in the church and the unity of ministry is always imperilled by this thrust of the personality, the uprising of the human personality, but not the human individuality. God does not rob you of your individuality, but He wants you to lay down your personality. It is the personal that attracts and gathers, intrudes and causes schism. It is when He is obscured and hidden by some other personality, some other interest than He coming between, and that is the point where the self-life, the soul-life has to be hated, loathed. Why? Because it would rob my Lord of His place. It would be sacrilege, robbing the temple, intruding something else in the place of God Incarnate in Christ Jesus, and I must lay down this soul of mine in all its operations.

Now, we who have heard a lot about soulishness in these past years are in danger of some deception because we think of psychicality in only one realm, and that is in the realm of emotion. We think of temperamental, nervous, hysterical, easily moved people, and say: Oh, that is very soulish. But that is not the only form of soulishness. We do not need to be told that the soul has three forms of life - in the realm of the emotions, in the realm of the intellect, and in the realm of the will. Soul is made up of these three forms of personal life - the emotional or life of sensibility: the intellectual life, or reason, and the volitional, or the life of will. Now, a great many are ready to recognise it when it is in the realm of the emotions, but they do not recognise it when it comes in the form of intellect; and because they are cold and not emotional; they are inclined to think they are not psychical but they may be much more psychical than a rather highly-strung person who gives way to feeling. This is one of the perils. There you get the breaking in of the devil as he is able by powerful intellectual impact to bring about schism, and it is the intrusion of the self-life there that makes for disunity of vision.

The vision must be only of God on the one hand in Christ, and only of the Body as an expression of the Christ on earth - a two-fold vision. One of Him in the Godhead; the other of His life shared in a great corporate company, and the divine purpose to be realised in the progression of that corporate company. So you see another aspect of the self or soul life, quite apart from the emotion, is the intellect or reason, which must be laid down. Oh, how that can intrude into the realm of the spiritual! How there can be the thrust of the personal in the intrusion of teaching, of doctrine, and how there can come in mixture. There may be first of all a genuine revelation, and then intellectual pride comes in and adds to it, or takes from it, which all makes for disunity. Why is it that now in the body of Christ, in the church, there is such a multitude of divisions gathered around powerful teachers, and every school thinking it is right, and looking askance at one another? It is because there has come in this element of the soul in intellectuality.

Then there is the will. Oh, the will seems to be splendid because there is neither now - no psychicality apparent in the form of emotion, or in intellect, only the strong personal hold and drive and thrust. That is will, and all that personal life of ours has to be laid down and hated if we are to minister to Him, because we can only minister to Him in the Body, as the life is functional in the Spirit and rules us out. That is the hardest thing to bear - to be ruled out. Here I must lay down in the dust life's glory dead: to recognise the meaning of the word "All flesh is grass." And the glory of man, what is that? "The flower of the field." The soul-life? Well, that also is grass and must perish. What is it that endures forever? The word of God - the written, uttered, incarnate and now consummate Word of God as bound up in the progression of the Body.

Paul recognises his ministry as a member of the Body in Colossians - that he might complete the word of God. The word of God has to be completed in all those who shall be born out of that Eternal Word and made one with Him. Paul sees that, and he is prepared to suffer afflictions for the body's sake; to lay down constantly all the self-life; all self-realisation! Yes, even self-realisation in the body! And there is a snare! You and I can still have a subtle thought of self-realisation, rather than that He might see of the travail of His soul. There is only One to see of the travail of His soul: that is the pure soul that was laid down at Calvary. Your soul and mine in their natural state, as God sees them, are very, very unspeakable things, for they express the natural corruption of our hearts. It is only that which is of the Spirit is life. It is only that which comes out from Himself that brings a glory to God. All that which comes out from me; all that which springs out of my personality, whether it be in emotion, intellect, or will, will not glorify Him. It will obscure Him; it will draw attention to me. This life of mine must be laid down that His life may come through. That is why God can only use the weak. He cannot use the strong, He cannot use the wise, He can only use those who are quite unable in their own sight. It is the "nothings," or those that have been brought to nothing by the impact of His glory, and have found, like Daniel, "That all their comeliness is turned to corruption," or like John at Patmos - falling at His feet as those who are dead. Yet again, we get the principle of unity in falling at His feet as those who are dead! Dead men don't quarrel, and dead men don't make schism. Dead men do not provoke that which would in any way obscure His purpose, because their self-life has been reduced to dust and ashes in their own estimation as before His glory, and now they choose to live only by the Spirit.

Now, as one says that, one is stating the ultimate reality. There is a principle in that which we do not achieve ever by any attainment. If you lived to be one hundred years you would never get there. It is a process first, the thing that the Holy Ghost has begun to perform in you and me: "He that hath begun a good work in you will perfect it unto the day of Christ," and we are in school. We are disciples. We have gathered around Jesus, not as they gathered around Him in the days of His flesh, but we are gathered around Him as He is in the throne. He is in the midst of the Church; He is in the midst of two or three where they gather unto His name. We gather around Him; we learn of Him; we learn of Him the meaning of His Cross, the significance of His Cross. He endured His Cross, not for His own sake, but for our sakes; and the principle of His Cross is now made to operate in us by the Holy Ghost. So we see that as we are born out from Him there is going to be a constant striving of the Spirit in us to secure the realisation of this new creation, for it is in the realm of the new creation we are while our life is hid with Christ in God. Romans 8: "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in birth pangs." In it, and also in us, are the convulsive workings of the Holy Spirit Who is seeking to break through in the universe; but first of all to break through in the church. Just as you have it in that marvellous type of Jacob who was of promise, so in you and me there is that struggle. Well, He is going to overcome. Only Israel can prevail, that which is indeed of God, because He has seen God face to face; because He has had the vision, the one vision of the glory of God in Christ. Peniel! I have seen God face to face. There is a struggle going on continually - the self-life, the I, that is my original I, still here; but now there is another Life arising out from God by faith; and this other Life from God, energised by the Spirit, crucifies the other. As he comes up in the realm of feeling he is to be crucified; as he comes up in the realm of intellect he is to be crucified; as he comes up in the realm of will he is to be crucified.

Hate your own life; and then another life, His life accepted as your spiritual life, arises within you. It is by the energy of another life! And when we come to realise that we cannot live the Christian life, we cannot follow Christ in the energy of our flesh, neither by dint of intellectual power, because the vision of far distances is open to us, nor in the realm of our will because of the tremendous determination about us, but because we recognise that "In me, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing," and we are humbled to the dust, because in the realm of the personal we are not in it. Yet we remain individuals, but allow another Life to come in, not in passivity, but in a rigid assent, claiming continually that the Holy Ghost shall put that self-life to death. "If ye through the Spirit do put to death the doings of the body, ye shall live."

And what a One we have to gaze upon, Whose soul was spotless, and in Whom was no sin, yet He laid it down for our sakes and became poor, continually poorer, helpless and impotent in this world. The most foolish of the foolish who could not save Himself, and could not help Himself. Could not turn a stone into a barley loaf to feed Himself, though He might feed a multitude! Who is wearied as other men are, yet gives life to others. Who in Himself knew the weakness and frailty of our mortality, yet had the resources of immortality, because in His self-life He refused to live, the peerless Jesus! Endued, we must believe, with every possibility of human glory, with every equipment of emotion and intellect and will, that could have out-Napoleoned Napoleon, of course, and out-Caesared Caesar. He could have been a prince of men by reason of natural endowment, as we would call it, but: He refused so to live. He laid down His soul, constantly in ever, ever increasing tests of faith, until the Lord at last made Him realise that He must pour out that soul that had never known sin as a sin-offering and taste death spiritually for every man - to be cut off as far as His self-consciousness was concerned from the Eternal Spirit, Who was the spring of His life. He was obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.

We are not called to face such things as that, but we are called to hate this life because it caused that. It was self-assertion in Satan that began the thing, simply self-assertion. "I will" - only the will - only another conception to that of the glory of God. If you read the scriptures carefully you will see that this was the sin of the beginning, and this self-assertion in me is begotten in me from him, the devil that root of sin, which is this life of self deep down entrenched in my being, so much so I cannot detect it. It can come up in the most deceptive ways - the deceitfulness of sin - this thing in me caused that. Well, if He laid down His life, surely I ought to be willing to lay down mine, and to lay it down in such fashion as He makes possible because He said "Ye shall follow Me afterwards." So you yield to His Spirit, and then you cease to be anything that causes disunity, anything that causes schism. It is always the "ego" uprising that causes disunity in one form or another.

May the Lord make us worthy of this calling for His Name's sake.

Chapter 3 - One Ministry

Concluding Address at February Conference

February 6th, 1928.

Reading: Mark 6:47; Philippians 3:1-15.

"And when even was come, the ship was in the midst of the sea, and He alone on the land. And He saw them toiling in rowing, for the wind was contrary unto them; and about the fourth watch He cometh unto them walking upon the sea; and would have passed them by; but when they saw Him walking upon the sea they supposed that it was an apparition (something seen by the imagination, or something supernatural breaking through the veil of sense), and they cried out with fear: for they all saw Him and were troubled. But He straightway spake with them, and said unto them, Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid. And He went up unto the ship; and the wind ceased." - Mark 6:47.

You find a somewhat similar experience of fear on the part of these disciples who so loved their Lord after His resurrection as recorded in Luke's gospel, 24:36:-

"And as they thus spake, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them and said unto them, Peace be unto you. But they having become terrified and affrighted supposed that they had seen a spirit. And He said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and wherefore do reasonings arise in your heart? Behold My hands and My feet; that it is I Myself: handle Me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones according as you see Me to have. When He had thus spoken He showed them His hands and His feet. And while they yet believed not from joy, and wondered, He said unto them, Have ye any meat? And they gave Him a piece of broiled fish and a honeycomb. And He took it and did eat before them."

In the Philippian epistle (3rd chapter) you find the dimensions of this vision of Jesus changed altogether. Now He is known as Very God, and yet you find the same banishing of all fear from the heart of a sinner, the heart of one whose life had in all its strenuous years been misspent, who had found that he had been living in a wrong direction, and had been brought to such extremity at last by the enmity of his carnal mind against God that he had not only been persecuting the church, but had blasphemed the Name of Jehovah. Yet He is able now to say, "Finally, my brethren, rejoice, in the Lord." He then proceeds to give certain admonitions, and speaks about himself and all the others who with him have the same joy, that if their joy is in any danger of waning, to remember that they are now of the circumcision, that which has been cut around, encircled by the blood of the Cross, cut off by that encircling of His blood from fear, and from the devil, so that nothing can pass that ring of the Divine Life into which they have been gathered. We are the circumcision, he says, which worship God in the Spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. He then enumerates all those things which might have given him some standing before God, and declares that all these things which were his own, his self-righteousness, self-satisfaction and self-appraisement, he has counted to be but loss on account of Christ, of Whom he has tasted in measure; of Whom there has been a revelation, a revelation not only of His glory, but of His grace.

He not only saw the Lord out from heaven as Judge of his sinful and desperate flesh, his wrong nature, but there had come in the same moment, well-nigh, the revelation of that Judge as Saviour also. There always is that. God in the same breath of revelation of His glory gives the revelation of His grace. This is the day of grace, unlimited grace, grace flowing like a river. It is the current of the Divine Love that is now turned, as it were, in its fulness upon us, through the Cross, so that no matter what may be the degree of our self-despair, when once we have seen Jesus Christ, and HIM crucified, our very self-despair is the ground of God's mercy; our brokenness is the very opportunity for God's help. Once we have come to that place where we recognise that our nature is like a festering corpse that will become more and more corrupt to our own consciousness as the days pass, so, on the other hand we see there is another Life offered to us freely which we receive by faith, which is within us by faith, which springs up by faith, and is maintained by faith out from Him Who is our God and our Saviour. Then we get clear of the phantom atmosphere of fear, terror, fright, lest the glory of God, Who is a Consuming Fire might break out upon us to our judgment and destruction.

Now the fact is that some of the children of God are afraid of the coming of the Lord for this very reason. The devil has got them into such a state that they are afraid of the coming of the Lord, because, you see, they have not recognised yet that there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. They have not recognised the fulness of that salvation from sin which God hath wrought Himself. It is upon this ground the Apostle tries to expostulate with us - "Who is he that condemneth? Why it is God that justifieth." It is the God Whom you fear in His glory and majesty, for the justifier is Christ, Who is God in another form. It is He that died. "I am He that became dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore." Of course the impact of the glory of God upon our flesh is always to smite us with fear, if we live in the flesh; if we stay there; if we think of meeting God in our flesh. If we think to meet Him on any ground of self-justification; if we are thinking that we can bring before Him something by which we have earned a share in His glory, then, of course, there is a fear in that realm. There will be an impact of dread, and the Apostle knows of this in the realm of his flesh. "Therefore knowing the terror of the Lord we do persuade men." He knows it, but he is not living there. He is living on this side of the Cross.

You find that when John, who had lived by the grace of God so holily and devotedly in His service, had the manifest glory of the Godhead in Christ revealed to him, he fell at His feet as one dead. The impact was so terrific upon his consciousness. But there came the voice, "Fear not, I am the first and the last. I am He that liveth, the Living One, and I became dead. It was I Who became dead. It was I who went down into that spiritual death for you, and behold, I am alive for evermore. But not as I was. I, the Living One, the eternally Living One, Who from everlasting to everlasting am God, I now am alive for evermore as Man for your sake, partaking of your nature, and I am not a phantom, not a spirit, I am JESUS! This is the revelation that removes all fear. I am Jesus." So glorious, so stupendous, so beyond the range of all our thought. From that Form God, in Whom dwelleth the fulness of the Godhead, bodily, sustaining the universe by His substance, there comes the Voice, "I am Jesus." This is the parable of the One Who treads the stormy, heaving sea. There came something of that terror of God, that impact upon their consciousness of the fear of Him when they were toiling in rowing, and when He came to them upon the storm they thought they had seen an apparition. Is your God an apparition? Is your God a phantom? He may be a phantom vast and tremendous, a God formless and unknown, Whose approach brings upon you the sweat of terror, of judgment because there is a breaking in upon you of the unseen and unknown. Is that your God? Then, ah, of course, you will have fear; you will have terror, judgment. But is He Jesus? He says, you see, out of all the terror of that night, and of all the supernatural impact of the way of His coming, a way that was beyond their reason and their sense, "Be of good cheer. It is I. Be not afraid." He came walking upon the sea! Supernatural, surely! Yes. But He says, "It is I." And so in His resurrection, surely this one Who bursts through space and presences Himself in the company of His disciples, though His glory is veiled as yet, this is a terror-striking experience; they are affrighted, and think they see a phantom, and He says, "Be not afraid, it is I. Spirit hath not flesh and bone as ye see Me to have. Have ye anything here to eat?" He comes down to the level of their consciousness and their need, and He eats with them. Communion! He wants to commune; He wants to eat and to drink, and that we may eat and drink with Him and have fellowship with Him.

Now this is the vision of God that satisfies. The near vision of Jesus. It is also the vision of Him in the throne, but that might be a mental one. You might be dimly seeking to apprehend some vastness which is called "God." You might be trying to descry some glory beyond the stars; but by the Holy Ghost He comes and presences Himself in order that we might partake of His substance; that we might eat and drink with Him, and He with us. That is His message strangely enough to the last church, the church of Laodicea. "Behold, I stand at the door. It is I, Jesus." The Holy Ghost, the Spirit of the Eternal God? Yes, but the Spirit of Jesus. "I stand at the door and knock. If any one hear My Voice and open the door, I will come in and sup with Him and He with Me." The intimacy of Jesus! His desire that we should entertain Him - open our heart's door constantly to Him, and banish all this phantom fear which the devil brings upon our minds by reason of past sins and present unworthiness that haunt and depress us.

"He showed them His hands and His feet. Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord." That is the attitude of the disciple. The vision of Jesus, not in the mental range, as one has already suggested, but in the way in which He comes to us in nearness by the Holy Spirit, and you and I become His temples. Well, what does it mean to be a temple of the Holy Ghost? Is it to be some kind of strange mystic clay vessel in which there is some element of God's substance? It is not only that. It is true that there is a substance of God in you, since you are begotten out from Him, but to be a temple of the Holy Ghost means that the Spirit Who comes to dwell within you, comes as a loving Friend. "When the Comforter is come, Whom I will send unto you - the Strengthener - He shall teach you; He shall comfort you; He shall guide you. He shall be in you and to you, what I am now. I will come unto you. The Father and I, We will come unto you and make an abode in you."

Oh, beloved friends, all our vision, and all our ministry is impossible without a personal acquaintanceship of God in Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit. You and I have not got a religion that we are trying to live up to; we have not merely a series of doctrines, very tremendous in their range so that when people come to hear us they say, "They have wonderful truth and deep teaching!" If we have not JESUS we have nothing. He, Himself, is God manifest in the flesh, not a Spirit only, but a MAN who has become such that you and I may share His Life and Substance. And once fear is taken away there is then, of course, the incoming of that perfect love. Fear is cast out when love is made perfect, when we see Who Jesus is, not only in the range of His Godhead (and we need that vision), but in the very fact of His retained humanity, the Man in the throne, the One Who comes nigh in the Spirit is the One Who died for our sakes. Thus there can be that intimacy with Jesus on the part of the disciple. This is the blessed provision that the Holy Ghost makes, the present Jesus!

And one does desire that amid all these declarations of truth we do not become "heady"; we do not have lines that reach out into the infinite where we lose ourselves in conjecture, but we do come down to the actual and the personal fact that Christ presences Himself by the Holy Ghost, and in Him you know your God. It is the people who do know their God who are strong and do exploits. You will find that some of the simplest people, who would not use your phraseology, know the Lord better than you do. I remember telling a young brother who had a good deal of the truth of this testimony and who was meeting a certain Christian person, "now remember she knows the Lord far better than you do. She has not the phraseology, but she has known Him for many years." That is the principal thing, beloved, to KNOW the Lord, not to see some phantom coming across the waves, not to see some apparition of the night, but to hear and to know His welcome voice, "It is I, be not afraid."

Now, I believe that all the scriptures are deeply prophetic, and that this passage is prophetic of the last hour. I believe the parable of His coming in the fourth watch, the disciples toiling in rowing because the winds are contrary, pictures us in these days surely, as there comes in the impact of the supernatural opposition to our advance, as you and I are seeking to press through into that position we believe is for us in the heart of God. Is not the wind contrary? We find it very difficult. It is a battle! There are principalities and powers in their rage hotly against us, and we are toiling in rowing; but it is just at such a time He is coming. It is when the battle is tensest, when success seems distant, and an impossible thing. But you and I are still rowing. You don't give up. You don't become passive. You are still rowing, resisting, fighting.

Oh, don't think that all this means passivity which I am speaking about. I have discovered this rest in God is the best fighting tonic there is, but if you are so to speak spluttering and gasping and trying to keep your head above the waves in a desperate effort to keep on top, that is not fighting. It is when you are assured that your rest is in God, that is the best fighting spirit. Still there is a fight on, a terrific fight, and the impact of evil is going to become more and more terrific; but there is nothing to fear. Just when there might be the possibility, if there could be the possibility of His grace and His indwelling strength to fail us, He comes walking upon the sea. That is the vision for these times. We expect His coming, the breaking through of His Person, but not as a phantom of the night, not as an apparition that frightens and terrifies the senses, but as one who says "It is I - I AM," not an apparition, a phantom; not even a vision, a hallucination, something strange. But actual. "I am bone of thy bone, and flesh, of thy flesh. I am the One Who has begotten thee, and by My Spirit thou art Mine." Such is the climax of our knowledge of Jesus, but you must have that knowledge also as the starting ground for all this pressing through.

Now in the third chapter of the Philippian epistle you have this pressing through. Here is the Apostle Paul living in that timeless life of the Christ: "that Eternal Life," - speaking the same thing that you and I now speak because of the grace of God; here we have the language of the fighting saint. Paul was a pattern member of the Body (not the pattern Christian, because the Lord is the pattern Christian; it is He who has given an example for us to follow in His steps). But Paul is the pattern member of the Body. So wonderful, this man's epistles, written under such conditions that he never thought they would see the daylight of the twentieth century and be scattered all over the world, known in practically every tongue! Here he is, speaking language that the Holy Ghost has put within his spirit as a member of the Body, and declaring as a member of Christ's Body, that he with every other member, shall, by the grace of God, break through into the heavenlies by the power of the Holy Ghost. This is our individual responsibility before God, as we rely upon the Spirit within us to press through into that Oneness with our Lord in the Throne. And because we have no confidence in the flesh, and have accepted the judgment of the Cross upon it, we have entered into the realm of no condemnation.

There must be the foundation of joy in your Christian life. You must be a happy warrior. There are no dismal, successful (sic) warriors of Christ. Those who appear to fast do not really fast. Those who give the impression to others that Christianity is a heaviness, a groan and a burden, are no commenders of our Lord. The joy of the Lord is your strength; and the burden is upon your spirit, not upon your mind. There is a vast difference between a burden upon your mind, and a burden upon your spirit. The burden upon your spirit, that comes when you are before the Lord; you take His yoke upon you, and your heart is pressed with the travail of His love; but a burden upon your mind you will carry everywhere, and you will be an oppression to your friends and a block in the meetings if you carry a weight which is purely mental. That is all psychical; but the burden of the Holy Ghost is upon your spirit. And so you find the Lord saying, "When thou fastest, appear not unto men to fast; but wash thy face and anoint thine head." That is, commend your faith. Give witness to your salvation. Let the joy of the Lord be your strength. It is very important to recognize this.

The basis of all successful conflict is joy. It is the joy of your salvation. Your helmet, the protection for your mind, is the helmet of your salvation; otherwise the devil breaks in upon your mind and possesses you with fear. He haunts you with yourself. He crowds you with phantoms. He is everlastingly portraying before you some dismal prospect. But if salvation has come to you; if you are resting upon the finished work of God in Christ, then you are free. If He has quickened you, He has also raised you together with Himself and enthroned you. You do not struggle to keep your feet upon the throne of God. You cannot do that. You are there! Your life is hid with Christ in God. And so, upon the ground of personal experience, your life is sheer joy; the assurance of salvation; the absolute confidence in the work of God. It is for this reason the apostle says, finally "to sum up everything, brethren, - rejoice, and again I say, rejoice!" Why? Because we are they who worship God in the Spirit. It is by the Holy Spirit we worship. It is not with our mentality; it is not by way of any kind of outward ritual or mental adjustments that we approach God, when we do Him service, but it is by the energy of the Holy Ghost, for we have no confidence in the flesh.

The flesh means, of course, as you are well aware, not the physical tissue, but the whole make-up of the natural man. No self-confidence! But every confidence in the finished work of Christ, and in the grace of His Spirit's indwelling. The basis of all prosperity in Christian service and any progress in the Divine Life is that you are not afraid of Jesus. If you are afraid of Jesus, well, He tries to reassure you and says, "Be not afraid, it is I." He tries to let you know that God and He are identical, "He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father." There is no difference. And so in the Vision of that Face, there is absolute joy.

Of course, if your heart condemn you, that is another thing. It is because God "readeth your heart and knoweth all things." It may be there are some in whom is an evil heart of unbelief. It may be, that, secretly, you are not following Him. It may be that you have some reservation; that you are not free. That is another question. But I say that every man and woman absolutely abandoned to God has nothing to fear. Yielded to Him there is nothing can separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The love of God is in Christ. You remember that wonderful paean of confidence at the end of the 8th chapter of Romans:- "I am persuaded neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Rejoicing in the revealed Lord as Saviour is the basis of all advance in life and service. We cannot think of ministry until we have such a vision of God as brings Him to us actually in Christ Jesus. As I have said, if there be fear, there may be a ground for it. I do not want you to have that fearlessness of Ignorance who went blithely whistling along, but had never come through that Wicket Gate, and had never fled from the City of Destruction. If you are still making sport in the City of Destruction; if you are still looking back upon Sodom and Gomorrah; if you are not surrendered to God, of course there can be nothing but lifelong contradiction and eternal loss awaiting you. But if you are surrendered to God; if you have come to Him via the Cross, and really recognise the judgment of God upon your entire nature; that there is nothing good in you at all; if you have given yourself to Him upon that basis and believe in the blood of that mercy seat, which in Christ Himself, God Himself manifest in the flesh, crucified on your behalf; if you have come to see our absolute need, now BELIEVE, and never let another doubt trouble you as long as you live. The devil is a liar! And all these fears and terrors and accusations are of hell; and they are quenched by the blood. You can quench them if you only believe in the omnipotence of the Blood of Jesus.

Now one is dwelling upon this at length because one wishes to impress the fact that when you examine the reason why you fear, if you are really surrendered, there is no reason to fear; if, however, our heart condemn us, it is because "God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things. But if our heart condemn us not, we know that the Blood cleanses, and we have confidence toward God."

You remember what the Apostle says in the Hebrew letter:- "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus; by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh."

Through the flesh of Jesus (of which we are members) we come into the actual presence of God Himself. But do we so come at prayer meetings and gatherings? I think it is most important that we should take up our responsibility, each one of us, to press immediately into the actual presence of God Himself. I think we are far too casual in our gathering together. One has often detected (one does not wish to suggest anything by way of reproach) a lack of realisation that we are in the presence of God, and that where two or three are gathered together there He is actually by His Spirit in the midst. We need to recognise that.

Well, we are in the presence of God now with joy and confidence, because we share His righteousness in the Holy Ghost; then having got to this thing which is in the Apostle Paul, this vision, and this ministry which is in the vision, for the ministry is of God in Christ come down to us by the Holy Ghost, - Here am I! Jacob, so to speak, crooked by nature; and here down to Bethel, which is the house of God, there has come that shaft of Divine light and life. The vision, by the Spirit of God, has reached even me, and I am born out from Him, Whom I see in the Throne, and yet not separate from Him, joined to the Lord one spirit. And what is my way now, my path eternal? It is to mount up and up, and to go through in that way until I am found there in the Throne altogether in Him. That is my vision. That is the vision of the Apostle Paul. Now when every member of the Body has that vision there is something converging; there is a moving towards a Purpose. God, Himself, by His Spirit, is prepared to do all He can from His end, from the throne. He sends down His Spirit to dwell in our hearts; but you and I, by faith, must seek to lay hold of that which has laid hold of us. And as God by His Spirit is seeking to press through our hearts to bring about His Purpose in the Body, so you and I must co-operate in turn by taking hold of Him as He has taken hold of us. That is what is known in the 2nd chapter of the Colossian epistle as "Holding fast the Head."

Holding fast is not holding on desperately to save yourself. It means this holding with a wrestling. The word used to describe Jacob at Peniel where he had the Vision, but it took him twenty years to realise it. At Bethel there he was as Jacob, a man of the flesh, full of his crookedness, yet with the vision of God. The way of the Light came down to him at Bethel, but at Peniel, after much travail in his flesh, and much exercise and busy work for God all in vain, he is left alone, and there comes the other end, as it were, of the Bethel experience; but it comes by wrestling. He wrestles through the night, and he sees God face to face. There you have the Christian experience in parable. You have it actually in the Apostle Paul. He has commenced in Christ, and Christ is commenced in Him; he has seen the wonder of Christ. The vision has come down to him. The glory of God has come; he has seen that God was in Christ. The whole thing has somehow broken in upon his consciousness and he sees Who Jesus is, and what He is prepared to work out in him for His eternal purpose; and now he is pressing back in the Spirit in turn to apprehend Him Who has apprehended him. He is wrestling to know more perfectly the Jesus he already knows.

Some one asked Confucius if there were a word that could sum up all religion, and he answered, "Is not 'Reciprocity' such a word?" One quotes Confucius with diffidence, but is not the nature of the Christian life also found in this word, Reciprocity. We have sung it in this Conference, "I take," "He undertakes," or put it the other way, "He undertakes," "I take." That is true, but He has undertaken. "He who hath begun a good work in me will perfect it unto the day of Christ." "Whom He justifieth, them He also glorifieth." God's intention is perfect, and God's power is perfect. Reciprocity. He undertakes, He takes hold of me; but now I take hold of Him.

This is a not passive life, but an intense activity in your spirit. And this is the line of much of the church's activities - One vision - all Christians engaged in this laying hold of God in Christ and all service springs out of it. You need not worry about service. You take hold of God as God takes hold of you, and as you wrestle with God your service will come. You can be obsessed with your personal ministry, and there is no greater danger than that. If you are always talking about it and wanting other people to pray about it, it will end in becoming all in the flesh. But if you are taking hold of God; if you are burdened by the Holy Ghost; why, your ministry is alright. "Out of your inner being (unknown to you) will flow rivers of  living water." You need not worry about your ministry.

Are you loving God in Jesus Christ with all your heart and with all your strength and with all your might? That is the fruit of the Spirit, and as you are bound up with Him in one Life, your ministry will take care of itself. And there will be no rivalry in that ministry. Each one will be minding his own business in the Lord. You find this illustrated in the case of Peter. The last rebuke of the risen Lord was this: when he became anxious to know what was going to happen to John - "What is that to thee, follow thou Me." What is following Jesus? Following Jesus is following Jesus in the Holy Ghost. It is following in this celestial way, the way everlasting, from the dust to the throne. And here you have it all expressed by Paul. It arises out of an intense spiritual love for his Lord, and a love that desires that love may be begotten. Love does not come as a mighty current first of all in your life sweeping you off your feet. It may come first like a seeping spring in your heart as you cry for it. A little love first, and then the love increases and increases. That is the way of our salvation. It is out of faith unto faith; out of love unto love. It is not a great mighty faith first of all, but faith which is simply the quickening of the heart. All life is like that. You do not hear the buds "bang" in spring, they just quietly unfold themselves. God's Life manifests itself like that, but a good many Christians want to go off like squibs all at once. I am using such crude expressions because they really illustrate the principle of the matter. You don't grow like that. Do you see the spiritual reality of it? It is faith unto faith. Faith as a grain of mustard seed, Life as a grain of wheat too, all that same seed of God.

Oh, if you love a little now, and hold on, you will love more and more; and if you believe a little you will believe more and more. It is the gift of God; it is the grace of God. He gives you the beginnings of faith in order that you may ask for more. He gives you the beginnings of life in order that you may ask for more life. You are not so conscious of the Life; but God is faithful, and every one that asketh receiveth, and everyone that seeketh findeth, and to everyone that knocketh it shall be opened. His Spirit is given to everyone who asks, and He turns none away. But it is one of the perils of our time that people expect some phenomenon to break in upon them, they want instead a supernatural experience, and visualise their conversion upon the standard of somebody else's.

Now notice the order of the Cross subjective. The Cross objective is a finished work. Christ has died once for all for sinners, and He dieth no more. And you do not die by way of merit. God does not ask you to add another death to that of Christ. There can be a great deal of mental mal-adjustment about the doctrine of the Cross. If you don't know Jesus; if you have a doctrine of the Cross outside of Jesus, there can be a great deal of distortion about it, and you have people painfully trying to crucify themselves to please the Lord. Well, where is grace? For this would be additional to grace. You cannot present yourself a sacrifice for sin, your own sin! The sacrifice the Lord wants of you is a living sacrifice, and a living sacrifice is a joy that is in the Cross.

There is a Cross subjective. There is a working out of the Cross in your life and mine to the glory of God's grace. It is by grace we are able to be crucified in the laying down of our self-life. Not by regulations and laws, and the impact of our own will, or other people's wills upon us, but by the grace of God; and if you read the tenth verse the order of doctrine is, "That I may know Him (by the Holy Ghost) and the power of His resurrection" - the power of His ascension Life in me. First of all, Life in you, the Life of God, the Life of the Risen Christ, and what does that effect? The intimacy and communion you have with your Lord which the Holy Spirit brings about in you. A fellowship of His sufferings; not those sufferings at Calvary; but the suffering with Him for His Body's sake. The love of God, the love of the Spirit burdening your heart so that you are willing to lay down your life for others, daily, constantly, by the Life of the risen Lord, by the Spirit within you, putting to death the doings of the body. We do need to get our minds clear as to this.

You cannot crucify yourself. Why, if the flesh could not keep the ten commandments of the law of Israel, how do you think the flesh is going to maintain the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus? Except by the Spirit, you are helpless. It would be the most cruel mockery that God could inflict upon us to ask us to attain to a standard of righteousness in Christ when we failed to attain the lower law of the ten commandments. No, it was as many as received Him on the ground of what He did for them at Calvary, to them gave He the power, the authority, to become the children of God; and it is by the power of His resurrection, that ascending power of God that lifts you and causes you to ascend unto the Divine likeness and power. It is that which enables you to enter into the fellowship of His sufferings. Not the sufferings of the Christ crucified, but the sufferings that remain in the Holy Ghost, the travail of the Spirit, the love of God, the passion of His love so that you live for the Body's sake. You live for others and you lay down your life for the brotherhood.

But what does this bring to you? This brings you at last to the conformity to His death. The death comes last. Life is first, then; afterwards the fellowship of His sufferings in the Holy Ghost's ministry; the travail of prayer for the Body's sake. There is thus wrought out in you that which makes you conformable to His death. Then as you are being made, by His grace, and by the power of His Spirit, unconsciously to yourself, conformable to His death, then there will be the outbreak of that resurrection that is the goal towards which you are pressing. The negative side is that you disappear, unknowingly to yourself may be, but others are seeing a change, less of self seen, less obtrusive. Yes, we see this miracle of grace happening around us.

Some of God's children used to be so hard, self-righteous; but they are mellowing, becoming more tender, more sympathetic, more thoughtful, more mindful of the weak and the erring and those who are out of the way; more Christ-like, more like Jesus. And oh, beloved friends, that is what we want: to become, like Jesus, so that people may see in your face that you have something of the love of God - conformable to His death, and this ugliness which is "I" disappears. I cannot make it disappear; I cannot crucify myself; but because I know the power of His resurrection in me by the grace of His Spirit, and because there is something in me of the fellowship of His sufferings for the Body's sake, the praying in the Holy Ghost, there goes on in me the conformity to His death, so that I decrease and He increases. Then you have the splendid objective side with the humility of the Apostle: "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect; but I press on, if also I may lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have laid hold; but this one thing I do! (Here is the one line of Christian service; the one line of Christian ministry; the one line of Christian vision, as we have it on our motto-card - not looking vaguely out into the unseen, but "Looking off unto Jesus!" as God in the Throne, coming down to me to live in my spirit, to run the race, not a personal race only, but a race in which you and I are included. And we shall all arrive at home!)

That is the vision to gather us together into oneness by the ministry of intercessory prayer, and by the pressing on of our own hearts to be found identified with our Lord in the Throne, for He also identified Himself with us, and He Who condescends to you and to me to live with us by His Spirit is saying to our fearing hearts day by day, as Satan seeks to oppress us with fears, "Fear not, it is I." It is He who shall ascend in us and with us and the Holy Ghost shall take us all home. It is God's Spirit Who is going to take us home, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. But you and I are pressing towards this realisation of His Life. But His Life is Love, and Love in the Spirit for Him and for the Body. If you love Him Who begets, you love those who are begotten. This is the essence of the Christian Life. Paul is showing the heavenly way, the surpassingly excellent way of love.

May the Lord bless us at the close of this Conference with the one thing needful, that we may not be busy about the many things, the many visions, the many services, the many businesses of the Martha spirit, the flesh, but that we may listen to the Holy Spirit within us, and choose the good part that cannot be taken away from us.