Author's Rights

Published as an E-book

by

Austin-Sparks.Net

Email: info@austin-sparks.net

ISBN: 978-1-927326-29-9

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

The Testimony of Jesus

by T. Austin-Sparks

Supplied by the Golden Candlestick Trust.

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Conflict in Relation to the Testimony

Chapter 2 - A New and Living Way

Chapter 3 - Resurrection Life by the Blood

Chapter 4 - The New Covenant in the Blood

Chapter 5 - Divine Fulness

Chapter 6 - God's Witness Concerning His Son

Chapter 7 - The Name

Chapter 1 - The Conflict in Relation to the Testimony

We are all very conscious of our being in a time of intensified spiritual pressure. No doubt it has a great deal to do with the world situation. [Note: although we don't know the dates for this series of messages, it seems they were given during World War II.] I mean that with such a tidal wave of hatred, malice, evil intent, with murderous thoughts unto wholesale destruction, there is bound to be a saturation of the very atmosphere with evil and antagonism and death which will itself be registered very much upon the sensitive spirit of every truly spiritual man and woman, and we are bound, if we are such, to feel the impact of such conditions. But behind all that there is something more.

Undoubtedly there is an increase of spiritual antagonism by the forces of evil which is really only recognised and sensed as to its true nature by spiritual people. I mean that everybody will feel the effects of a long-drawn-out war sooner or later - feel it in body and in soul. But not everybody will register that evil thing in spirit as being what it is, or have any perception as to what it means. But I think I can take it that most of us are something more than war-weary in this sense, that we are aware of an intensification of spiritual antagonism, a determination to destroy what is of God.

We want to discriminate between the two things. In this consciousness of things, I was just making this analysis, asking, "Now, how much of this of which we are so conscious is just war weariness, and is the result and effect of the world conditions in general? How much of it would go were the war to cease, were what men call 'peace' to be declared? Should we be out of it then?" Is there not something more in this, and for us we should find the war goes on whatever happens outside, for this is not something which came with the war. This is something that has been going on all our spiritual life and long before that. The conditions of the world may give a good foundation for our feeling the spiritual war, and may give a very good background for the evil powers, but this spiritual conflict is something in itself.

So may I run back over the history of God's people, taking in a great deal more than I can even mention at the moment; but I can indicate by one or two very simple instances what I mean.

When the Lord was about to deliver a people out of the bondage of the kingdom of this world, to emancipate them and bring them out to be His own people, Moses was born. And at the time of the birth of Moses there had just come into existence, seeming to anticipate his birth, a state of terrible hatred unto murder. We know the story - Pharaoh's command for the destruction of all the male children. It was a going forth of malice, evil, hatred, prompted by fear, and an awful determination to destroy, engulf, swallow up and wipe out that which was of God. That was what lay behind Pharaoh's command; though Pharaoh may not have gone all that way in his understanding of it, he was moved by other forces. I think that is clear from all the subsequent instances of the same kind. He was moved by other forces to anticipate this movement of God and to engulf that instrument and vessel for God's new thing. And that world in which the sons of Jacob were, into which Moses was born, was a dark world, saturated with evil, evil intent, malice, hatred and murder.

We move on a little and you see conditions in the days of Eli. Evil again is in the very atmosphere. It is a bad state of spiritual darkness and spiritual death. There was no peace to him that came in and to him that went out. And Samuel was born.

We pass on to that time in the life of Judah when things again are very dark. Through Jezebel into the house of Ahab had come Athaliah, and Athaliah, prompted by these same forces of evil, determined to wipe out all the seed royal, that which was of God, and to engulf it. So she commanded the destruction of all. One babe was rescued by the priest and hidden in the house of God for six years - Joash.

So you go right on to the Lord Jesus and this other move through Herod: hatred, evil, murder, to engulf this movement of God.

The point is this - whenever the end of a specific period in the goings of God was being reached and God was about to take a fresh step in His purposes, you have a situation like that arising every time right on to the end, right on to Revelation 12. From beginning to end it is like this: a crisis in the goings of God, the end of one period and a new step going to be taken in line with the full end, and at that time spiritual iniquity intensifies, there is a terrific determination to destroy that which is of God that can secure that fresh movement of God; that with which the further purposes of God are bound up.

My question, and I think the answer to it, is just there - this intensification of spiritual evil which is being sensed so much by truly spiritual people, does it not mean and imply that we are coming to the end of a phase in the ways of God and coming to the beginning of a new phase? We are all aware that the phase that has been cannot meet the new situation. Many people, not only spiritual people, are aware of that. What has been is not good enough for what now is. I do not mean God's provision in the foundation is not good enough for the future, but I mean the methods of God, the means that He has blessed, have got to give way to something new to meet the new situation. He must do a new thing. Well, He has passed on like that many times in the history of His goings on this earth. He has moved from one phase to another, from one instrumentality to another, from one kind of means to another, and with the passing from the one to the other there has usually been this terrific uprising of spiritual antagonism in which and out of which He has brought His new instrument or vessel.

You will have noticed that in the cases I have cited, that which was brought in by God in such a time was a very small thing. Moses is a babe, Samuel is a child, Joash is an infant, the Lord Jesus a babe. It is something quite small, but with tremendous, unspeakably great potentialities and intentions bound up with it. It does not do to despise such days of small things. They mean something very great and Satan has a different standard of weighing and measuring values from us. We think a thing is great by its bulk. Satan can recognise the tremendous stature of a babe Moses; of a child, Samuel; of an infant, Joash; the babe, Jesus Christ. Out of the intensified conflict and antagonism and hatred and murder of the powers of evil, God brings something which, looked at from any natural, earthly standpoint, is small, but with that is bound up all the meaning and value of His next phase in His goings from eternity.

I will not say anything about the test of faith that that produces, because it does demand such an amount of spirituality to recognise the values of what men would despise and set at nought and count as nothing, for the whole of this soul life of the natural man is looking for the thing which is manifestly, obviously to be taken account of: big, successful. And if you see none of the signs of success and prosperity and greatness, as judged from man's side, then there is nothing in it. But faith sees otherwise. However, that is something in itself, my point at the moment is this: that the passing from one phase to another in the goings of God, the change-over from a phase which is no longer His way to another phase which is His new way, that transition is a time of intense spiritual conflict in which the new vessel is born, but which is the occasion of all the conflict. It may be that the spiritual pressure that the true and wholehearted children of God are sensing today, from which they are suffering so much, indicates that we are passing from one phase of things to another in the economy of God, in the methods of God, in the means of God, and that the truly spiritual people in that crisis who are the sufferers are the key to the new situation.

I just pass that on to you for what it may be of help to you, as I am seeking always to get the Divine interpretation and explanation of the times and conditions in which we find ourselves.

Overcomers in the Conflict

There is another thing I might say. As I was passing my eye over this whole course of things, I noticed how many of those who served God in relation to the recovery of what was precious to Him, and whose lives were at a time marked by something very outstanding as of value to Him, passed out under a terrible shadow and cloud of failure.

Take some of those later kings who did serve the Lord in a peculiarly valuable way in their lifetime. Asa, Jehoshaphat, this Joash of whom we have spoken, Uzziah; there is no doubt about it that those men stood for something and what they stood for is recognised. But every one of them went out under a cloud. They failed at the end for some reason. In different ways they compromised at the end. They did great things, but they did not remove the high places. They made an alliance with something that was out of the Lord's favour. The point is that the enemy got them in the end - that is the point. They stood for something and counted for something at a time when everything was in decline. They stood against the force of evil and broke it, and there was that which was glorious about their lives, but the enemy got them in the end and they went out under a cloud.

What a glorious contradiction to them is such a man as Paul! He not only stood for something in his lifetime, but how he ended his life: "The time of my departure is come, I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith" (2 Tim. 4:6-7). That is a glorious finish. What about Peter? Well, Peter has stood for something and Peter was going to finish gloriously, "...knowing that the putting off of my tabernacle cometh swiftly, even as our Lord Jesus Christ signified unto me" (2 Pet. 1:14). He is acting deliberately in relation to the end. He is not overcome, not being forced out; he is co-operating with the Lord, he is in it to the last.

This is the point - these others were raised up to serve the Lord in a day of great spiritual need. The force of the enemy was withstood by them. They broke it in general, but the enemy got them in the end, and he got them not by a frontal attack, but by coming round somewhere to secure a compromise. What a warning that is.

Now the Lord has called us to be here on this earth to meet the full power of that antagonism. When I say 'us', I mean His true children, His spiritual ones; to be here to stand for Him against the full force of spiritual antagonism, to be His link with the next phase of His goings. Well, we must take that position, we must rise up and recognise the meaning of the spiritual evil we encounter. But we must remember that if the enemy cannot get us by frontal attack, if we are too much awake to be caught by open onslaught, he will always be seeking a back-door way of catching us by some compromise, something unjudged in our lives, some high place not destroyed, some alliance with what is out of the Lord's favour. It is all a great urge, exhortation, and warning about failing in the tremendous thing that the Lord has called us, His people, into in a time like this.

May the Lord find us strong. You know that the word of which we are very fond was said by a prophet to Asa: "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards Him" (2 Chron. 16:9). Asa made one of these alliances with Syria. The prophet went to him and reminded him, "Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubim a huge host, with chariots and horsemen exceeding many? Yet, because thou didst rely on the Lord, He delivered them into thine hand. For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards Him". When Asa's heart was perfect towards the Lord, then Asa could say, "What is a huge host of Ethiopians to the Lord?"

We may be in a very small minority. What is that to the Lord? Then it is that the Lord shows Himself mighty, when the heart is undivided; but when Asa's heart was divided and he made that alliance, a thing not according to the Lord's mind, his enemies were in power and he was afraid. "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect towards Him." And the heart that is perfect towards Him can say, "What does it matter?" - "There is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few" (1 Sam. 14:6).

Let us extract whatever values there are for us in this word.

Chapter 2 - A New and Living Way

Reading: Gen. 4:2-14; Rev. 12:11-12; Lev. 10:1-5, 16:1-2,12-19; Heb. 10:19-20; Luke 3:21-22.

The fragment which will stand over our consideration is that from the letter to the Hebrews, Heb. 10:19-20 - a new and living way, through His blood.

In the two passages with which we commenced our Scriptures, we have the first and the last references in the Bible to the blood that is in relation to God's great redemptive activity. Although the word 'blood' occurs several times after chapter 12 of the book of the Revelation, it is not connected with that particular work of God. It is only used in a more general sense; that is, not the blood of Christ. And it is of importance that we should recognise that in the book of consummations when everything is being gathered up and crystallised in its final application, the point where the new heaven and the new earth are brought distinctly into view and the great redemptive activity of God is being concluded in its practical application in this universe, we have this statement - "They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony; and they loved not their life even unto death". For in that final statement concerning the blood, we can see the fuller explanation of the thing which took place from the beginning and has been taking place all the way through; that is, we can see those very elements in the first reference to blood in the case of Abel.

Although there in Genesis in the account of the death of Abel, or of the sacrifice which he brought, there is not an actual using of the word 'blood' - that is, in connection with his sacrifice - his own blood is mentioned as crying out, and there is no doubt whatever but that in his sacrifice and in the offering which he brought, and in his own death, there are all the elements which we subsequently find in connection with the sacrificial blood. It is the blood of a testimony and it is that testimony mentioned definitely here in Revelation 12:11 that is to occupy our attention for a little while now.

Let me point out again, when we come to Revelation 12 we are at the end of things, we are in the end time, at the point of finality; and right at the end, in a most intense way, in a very atmosphere of fiercest conflict and antagonism spiritually, the blood is seen - there is reference definitely to the blood. They overcame because of the blood. And I gather from that that the conflict which sprang up with Abel and has gone on all through the ages, will find a full-orbed expression at the end. The very elements which have been the basis of overcoming from the beginning will have a place of special intensification at the end. Whereas in the first place it was individual, personal - no less vital for that - in the end the purpose of God as consummated in a company of people will be bitterly assailed by all the forces of evil, and the same means of victory will be brought out into its full-orbed meaning and value for the emancipation of that people referred to in this twelfth chapter of the Revelation.

You notice there that Satan is brought out in his fulness; all his titles are here - the Dragon, the Great Red Dragon, Satan, the Deceiver, the Accuser of the brethren, the Adversary. It is a picture of Satan extended, and fully extended; the same Satan as he ever was, but now extended against this company called the 'man-child'. Notice the singular, "the man-child" then the plural "they overcame him" - a company as one entity, as one man child. Against that company all Satan's meaning, significance, force, vehemence, antagonism, wrath, is brought out. And then over against that fully extended opposition of the power of evil, of darkness, the statement is that they overcame because of the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, and they loved not their life even unto death. What was true in Abel as an individual has now become true in another man-child, (we did not read the first verse of that chapter in Genesis about the birth of Cain and Abel), another man-child of a corporate kind. What was true about Abel's overcoming is true about this man-child.

Acceptance with God Through the Blood

What is this overcoming? Well, that is what we are going to see. But we may immediately indicate it from the reference to Abel in Hebrews 11:4: "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous". I venture to say at once, before we touch that more fully, that if you and I could attain unto that, we should have reason to regard ourselves as having overcome. If you and I could really enter into the full enjoyment of this that God says by His witness, "You are righteous" or if you care to change it, and God said to us, "Thou art My beloved son, in thee I am well pleased," should we not regard that as having overcome? But here is a man-child in corporate oneness with God's Son, "accepted in the Beloved" One. "Thou art My Beloved" (Mark 1:11). "Accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. 1:6), wrapped up in Him so much that as He is unto the Father so are they in Him; inheriting what is true of Him by faith, the witness, they are righteous. Well, that is what it means to be an overcomer, to overcome, to arrive at that and to stay there. Some people arrive there one day, but they are not there the next day. That is, the one day they rejoice in the apprehension of the righteousness of God which is theirs through faith, and the next day the enemy is having it all his own way with them because they have lost that ground. To overcome and to remain an overcomer on the field means to maintain that ground.

A New and Living Way into the Holy Place

But we must come back and look at this thing in fragments. Our basic fragment of Scripture is "Having therefore boldness to enter into the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the way which He dedicated for us, a new and living way". A new and living way into the Holy Place. Genesis 3 ends with the door closed. They were driven out from the Garden, from Paradise, if you like - from heaven as it was then. "He drove out the man", and He set the cherubim at the gate, at the entrance, to guard the entrance. They were driven out; the door was closed, barred; they were excluded. In the next chapter (there are no chapters, of course, in the original form), immediately there proceeds this: a man finding his way back, a man getting in through the closed door, a man for whom the cherubim held no terrors, a man who comes into the presence of God and does not die, a man for whom we can say there is an open heaven. "The Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering; but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect." Note: "And Cain said, 'Thou hast driven me out this day.'" "I am out," but Abel his brother was in, had got through, had found an open way, was accepted. He came into acceptance with God, we may say into the very presence of God, and did not die.

And you will have noticed from other Scriptures which we read that this is a key to the whole significance of the blood. Whenever there is the question of getting right in where God is in view, it is a matter of life or death. On the one hand, it is constantly repeated - "that he die not". Nadab and Abihu pressed in and died before the Lord (Lev. 10:1-2). Aaron went in, but, having provided himself with the Divine prescription for the presence of God, he did not die. It does not matter, even if it were Aaron the High Priest, he would have met the same fate as his sons apart from that provision, and that provision is precious blood. It is the blood which opens the way into the presence of God, and that is a living way, not a way of death.

Satan's Opposition

This passage in Hebrews says "a new way", a fresh opening into the presence of God, a fresh way, a fresh door, by the blood of Jesus. What does that involve and carry with it, for it is evidently a thing which Satan hates and Satan fears. What Satan is really set against is that there should be any people who escape from the bondage, the captivity into which he has brought them in his kingdom, who get through to that kingdom of the heavens. He is all against a people being freed from his lordship, his domination. He is all against a people being constituted under another Lordship and that Lordship especially the Lordship of God's Son Jesus Christ, his great rival to universal dominion. He is all against that. He is all against the formation of this heavenly commonwealth, a people freed from his thraldom and a menace to his kingdom, with whom is bound up the overthrow and utter destruction of his regime and order. Every man and woman who gets through, who comes into the blessing of this open heaven, who knows this access, becomes a part of the object therefore, of Satan's most vehement hatred and persistent antagonism right up to the last.

The issue in Revelation 12 is just that. It is the final emergence and emancipation of that people. What happens? The Great Red Dragon is waiting to swallow that man-child. What that carries with it is a description of everything that is vicious, everything that is fierce, destructive, evil, cruel - the Great Red Dragon! - watching, waiting, to devour that man-child; and it is caught up to heaven. It is through, it is out, and the Dragon, despoiled of its object, of its prey, is said at once to come down to the people of the earth with great wrath. "Woe for the earth and for the sea; because the devil is gone down unto you, having great wrath". Why? Because the man-child is out, is through, is free.

And what is put before us in a kind of literal way must be interpreted spiritually; although doubtless there will be a rapture and a literal gathering out and carrying up, yet we have to recognise that this thing basically is a spiritual thing; that is, that the formation of this people is going on now in a spiritual way - the formation of a people after Christ - being conformed, as Paul says, to the image of His Son, "Till Christ be fully formed in you" (Gal. 4:19). It is the formation of this man-child. It is a spiritual thing that is going on. You cannot see it, but it is happening. And while the spiritual formation is going on, while God is doing a real spiritual work in lives, and adding to that company and increasing the measure of Christ in it, is that company not already conscious of there being in the near vicinity an antagonism, a spirit of hatred, that is wanting to devour, and swallow up, to tear, to destroy, to frustrate? Is it not that of which we are conscious in this awful spiritual pressure? Is it getting easier in this world for people to live a holy life unto God? Is it getting easier to be utter for God? Is it getting easier to maintain your testimony in this world? Are we not all increasingly conscious of this evil thing about, that would destroy us and our testimony? It is intensifying; there is no doubt it is intensifying. Our destruction is the object of this power of evil, and that points to an issue, a crisis, a culmination, a consummation.

Blessed be God, we have the issue told us, exactly what it will be, that he will not devour, swallow up; he will not get the man-child company. It will be caught up unto God and to His throne. But that does not mean that it will not be through an atmosphere of spiritual wrath and hatred all around us.

But I was saying that the first feature of the testimony of the blood is this, that people have got through spiritually. That is, for them the heaven is opened and they know it. They are no longer with Cain saying, "I am thrust out".

The other side which we cherish here today as the Lord's children, is this - we know that we are in. Do you not know that you are in? Yes, not perfect in ourselves and far from it, but we are in, we have an open heaven, we have got through, we are accepted. We know that we need no longer stand outside wondering if peradventure we dare draw near. We know that we can come, not with fear and trembling, but with boldness. We can draw nigh, we can dwell in the very presence of God infinitely holy, because of what we have apprehended of the virtue of the blood of Jesus Christ.

But oh, what I want you to see, or what I feel the Lord needs His people to see and grasp more firmly is this: the tremendous power of an adequate apprehension of the blood in that connection, the blood that for us dismisses all the weaknesses consequent upon uncertainty, a question, a lurking doubt as to where we are with the Lord, as to the Lord's attitude to us, a lurking doubt that destroys our strength and increases the strength of our adversary. We are set in this scene of tremendous conflict which has gone on from the days of Adam and goes right on to the end of this age, a conflict with a great enemy, a terrible foe. Seeing that it is spiritual, it works out like this: that he has to in some way weaken us and undo us spiritually in order to maintain his own stronghold. And spiritual strength on our part means spiritual weakness of his part, and spiritual strength on our part is the result of a faith apprehension of the value of the blood of the Lord Jesus. You are strong or weak according to how you have apprehended that blood, not as in a doctrine and a teaching, but in your own innermost being. The Lord will take pains in the case of all who really are true and utter with Him, He will take pains to make the blood of Jesus Christ to them all that it is in His own sight, which means that He will have to again and again, bring them back by practical means, through experiences, to discover anew in their own hearts the infinite value of that blood, and their testimony will have to be a growing one, in ever greater strength, meaning, value and fullness.

I see in the blood of Jesus Christ far more today than I saw years ago. I even see more in that blood today; and that blood is more precious in my life today than it was a year ago! It has to be like that. This is not a static testimony or truth or teaching, something that is gathered up in a creed and we accept it. No, this thing is a mighty power which has to grow in us and we have to be brought to it, and the bringing to it will not be by our being led into sin to value the precious blood, but it will be by the opening to us of our own hearts and the depths of iniquity in our own natures. That means, on the one hand, that we will be increasingly made conscious of our own utter helplessness, but alongside of that, not to be left in our helplessness, but to be made to understand the mighty potency of that blood. The Lord is going to do that with us if we are going through to His full end.

This is what it means to overcome, and, as I was saying, the very first thing about the value of the blood is that there is no uncertainty as to where we stand with the Lord and as to what the Lord's attitude is towards us. Have you any doubt about that basically? Has this assurance been wrought in you in a spiritual way, as not just a mental thing, but something which God has done in you through the depths? You have learned the power of the blood as to this matter of an open heaven - a way through with God. Yes, through the veil, right into the most holy place, the most awful and terrible place that this universe possesses - to die the death and be carried out, but for the blood.

Who can define or describe what that means? Death is a very terrible thing. God's Son, the Lord Jesus, tasted death in the behalf of every man. Do you think that refers to His crucifixion? Do you think that that applies to His physically being on the cross when they killed Him? Not at all. You must ever discriminate between the crucifixion and the death. Do not think that the death of Christ is the same thing as the crucifixion of Christ. There is a vast difference. The Roman Catholic 'church' dwells on the crucifixion always, the outward objective side, but the Roman Catholic 'church' is what it is in moral corruption because it has not laid hold of the meaning of the death of Christ. No, He tasted death in the behalf of every man when He cried, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46). If ever a soul has entered truly, utterly, fully, into the full consciousness of what it means to be utterly God-forsaken and abandoned, that soul has tasted death. That is death and hell, not only to be abandoned by God, but to know it, to realise it, to be in the full realisation of it; that is death. For anybody who has known fellowship with God, a living relationship with God, to have had the shortest experience of losing that consciousness, that is hell, that is death. Not that they have actually lost the relationship, but sometimes the clouds of hell rise up and spread over the soul and you lose that blessed sense of the Lord being with you and you seem to be alone. It is the most awful experience that the soul can know, to enter into the awful reality of being abandoned by God. It only requires a moment of that to make an eternity, a moment of that is an eternity, and Jesus, God's Son, tasted that in the behalf of every man, "That he die not", that such a thing may not happen. What was literal in the Old Testament was only a type of this spiritual reality - "that he die not". And the blood has made provision against that awful necessity or possibility; the precious blood of the Lord Jesus.

Overcoming by the Blood

Now, when you consider that death is Satan's rightful weapon and instrument in the realm where sin is, because sin is his ground, then you can see that the blood of Jesus Christ must take Satan's rights, power and ground from him. It deals with sin; that is his ground. It deals with his right, it deals with his power; death is his power. The blood deals with all those things, as you know from the whole revelation of blood in the Scriptures; it is just that. The blood takes up the sin question as Satan's rightful ground of accusation and the ground upon which he wields his rightful weapon of death. The blood cancels it all and robs him of his standing and his power. To recognise that, to have hold of that with strong faith is such a thing in the realm of evil as to provoke that realm to its uttermost depths of antagonism. But it is the hatred provoked by fear of the consequences of that blood; what that blood means, on the one hand for Satan's undoing, and what it means on the other hand, for that people who stand in the presence of God in virtue of that blood. All that is bound up with this testimony of the blood. It is a way through, a new way.

I must close there and do so by asking you again: What does the blood mean to you? Is it just a part of your Christian creed, your simple faith in the Lord Jesus? Well, it may be good as such, but oh, are you growingly seeing the immense power of that blood? Are you growingly apprehending it? If so, then yours is a life of victory. You may be in a terrific battle, but there is victory right at the heart of the battle. If you have this faith, hold on to the blood of the Lord Jesus.

I do feel that the Lord would seek to bring us back to a full position as to the basic testimony of the Lord Jesus to meet the increasingly difficult spiritual conditions at the end. I do not think I am speaking to people who have no understanding of spiritual pressure and conflict. If there are some of you who do not know what spiritual conflict is, what fighting with the very devil is in a spiritual way, being withstood by the forces of evil, if you are just going on in a glorious, triumphant, procession where there is no fight, then what I am saying has no meaning for you. But if you are finding the spiritual life is not getting easier, but much more difficult, and that the forces set against you spiritually are showing their strength increasingly, then you know what I am talking about and the question is: how is it going to be met? It is what we are led to expect from the Word of God. We are led to expect it is going to be like that, and at the end Satan is going to come out in this full-orbed way as in all his titles wrapped up in this great red dragon set to devour. How are we going to overcome, get through, be caught up to God, to His throne? That is something consequent upon an inward something.

The outward is the result of something inward, and the inward is: "They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony; and they loved not their life even unto death." That does not mean necessarily that we are going to be literal martyrs, but it does mean that our own lives, all that that means - our interests, that which makes up our own lives - all that has got to come into balance with our testimony, all that has to be made subservient to this one great issue: that God gets what He is after in us. If there is any dividedness between the Lord's interests and ours, His life and ours, that is where the enemy gets in and destroys it all. That is the weakness. It is an undividedness of heart that is necessary to a complete victory over the enemy.

The Lord Himself just speak and make clear to us what it is that He sees we need to know at this time.

Chapter 3 - Resurrection Life by the Blood

Reading: Heb. 10:19-20; Gen. 8:20-21; 1 Pet. 3:18-21; Matt. 3:13-17.

In the previous chapter we were seeking to come into the realm where the Lord could speak to us through His Word in a new way regarding the mighty efficacy of the blood of Jesus, and that in the light of the increasing spiritual pressure from the forces of evil which the Word of God reveals to be the state of things at the end. We referred to Revelation 12, the end-time condition, where the great dragon, that old serpent the devil, and Satan the accuser of the brethren, is seen to be on full stretch to devour that which is being formed, to be caught up to God and to His throne. And as we, I think, are right in concluding: to fulfil the promise made to overcomers in a Laodicean period, to sit with Him in His throne, and to fulfil that word, "to rule the nations with a rod of iron". Against the bringing forth and translating of that company, all the pressure of satanic animosity is put forth and we believe that we are knowing something of that now.

This is a time when that very thing is going on spiritually, and true spiritual people of God are aware of the pressing in of the forces of evil and of death spiritually, so that the maintaining and getting out of the testimony of Jesus is an increasingly difficult thing. There is little way for it, it is being shut in and shut down. And every bit of spiritual progress, real genuine spiritual progress, every bit of real gain of a true spiritual character is fraught with a very great deal of conflict and cost in these times. We are not speaking about great movements, but we are speaking about real spiritual gain.

There are many great organised movements which seem to be doing something, but we have learned to look deeper. Experience has taught us that that kind of activity does not always indicate real spiritual gain. Very often the afterward finds very little indeed of solid spiritual value. What is really an increase of Christ is something which is always met by the forces of evil in a most intense way. The taking of the smallest bit of ground in a true way is very costly, and the Word indicates that it will be increasingly so towards the end, and that the people of God will need to know their ground very thoroughly and their weapons very truly. If we are aware that such conditions of spiritual stress exist and of the difficulty of maintaining a true living testimony in our own lives and in this world, we need to have a constantly renewed spiritual apprehension of the means which God has provided for victory, and the first and comprehensive means of victory is the blood of the Lord Jesus. We need, therefore, to come back continually afresh to an apprehension of the tremendous significance and value of the blood of the Lord Jesus.

We saw with just a glance that Abel was the first of the witnesses of the Lord in the earth to meet the full force of Satanic antagonism in terms of death, and although in his body he was destroyed and murdered, in his spirit he triumphed and was the first of the overcomer line of testimony, and he overcame because of the blood. It was by his blood testimony that he overcame. We are going to touch a little more fully upon the nature of his overcoming. We just state the fact for the moment. Right along from Abel onwards through all the ages, that has been the means of overcoming, for the same antagonism has been met by all the true children of God in every age at all times. And right on to the end it is so, as this chapter in Revelation makes clear, the company called "the man-child", "they overcame because of the blood of the Lamb, because of the word of their testimony, and they loved not their life even unto death". The blood has been the basis of overcoming all the way through and overcoming has been no small thing. It has been a terrific battle.

We have only to glance at some of these instances to see how great a thing it was. We mention here, just by the way, the matter of the extricating of Israel from Egypt - that mighty Passover night in Egypt. What a tremendous thing it was! God there had extended the powers of evil to the last degree. You may have wondered, if you have read the story thoughtfully, why it was that God did not, right at the beginning of His dealings with Pharaoh, just come right in with His full force and smash the situation and get His people out; why it was that He took it in a kind of graduated way. The first round with the rod of Moses - and the rods of the magicians seem to be equal to God. Yes, that is the first round; their only difference in degree is that Moses' rod swallows up all the other rods - or Moses' serpent into which the rod had been turned. That is supremacy, but not final by any means. And then other things similar where they seem able to be equal. God is drawing them on... the plagues one after another, extending. And when you remember that the word is "against all the gods of Egypt" (Ex. 12:12), and recognise that what was taking place was registering in the spiritual realm, God was dealing with the gods of Egypt and putting them out of action. He turned the very object of worship upon the worshippers. The river is worshipped; He turned it into blood. There is a god behind it. God is dealing with the spiritual background, gradually drawing out until at last He has the whole thing fully extended to the very question of life and death, and that is final.

My point is this, that all the power of spiritual evil is being gradually drawn out, and then God smites it as a whole and He smites in the blood of the Lamb. On the Passover night, the blood is the sign of the covenant and the means of victory, and the fully extended power of evil is met on the ground of the blood and overthrown, and the people are out. I only mention that by way of indicating that this blood of the Lord Jesus represents the basis of victory which is something greater, mightier, than the fully extended power of evil.

The Blood is the Life

Now for a little while we want to get more inward into the nature of this victory because of the nature of the blood. It is necessary then, right at the outset, to make a discrimination or to define this term 'blood'. We must dismiss from our minds the symbolism, if that symbolism causes us mentally to misunderstand or fail to understand the real significance of the blood, for the term 'blood' is a symbolic term. The Lord Jesus in resurrection has no blood. The resurrection body is a bloodless body. It is actuated and energised by another principle. He said "Handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones, as ye behold me having" (Luke 24:39). If that had been before the resurrection, it would have been "flesh and blood", but all the mighty power of the blood is still spoken of after His resurrection and ascension and right on to the end - and there is no blood literally. Therefore 'the blood' is a symbolic term, and we must grasp the significance of the thing symbolised.

Simply, the blood is the nature. Sometimes it is "soul" - it is the same thing. Sometimes it is "life" - life and blood are synonymous terms. Sometimes it is even "heart", but a symbolic term "heart", not literally. If you like, it is the life, the very kind of life or nature, so that it is the nature or life of the Lord Jesus - the kind of life, the kind of nature that is in Him. That is the power. When we speak of the blood, we must always remember that we are speaking not of the red fluid in His veins, but of the life which He poured out and the nature which was in Him.

Then, when you come back to all your symbolism of the Old Testament in the offerings that were to be offered to God, it is always something without blemish and without spot. A lamb without blemish, without spot (Ex. 12:5). Noah, we have read, took of the clean beasts and offered them unto the Lord. It is always like that. They were scrupulous as to the purity, the cleanness of a sacrifice which was offered to God. The great thing that God laid to the charge of people in the days of Malachi was that they were offering maimed and blind things upon God's altar. The crime, the iniquitous crime of such a thing was that that altar and that sacrifice were supposed to represent the Lord Jesus. A blind and maimed offering was a blind and maimed Christ; intolerable to God. "Away, I will have nothing! 'Ye are cursed with a curse'" (Mal. 3:9); not recognising the meaning of the sacrifice. All those sacrifices were intended to symbolise the utter perfection, sinlessness, incorruption and incorruptibility of the nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is in that moral nature that there is the mighty power over which Satan has no authority, where he has no place, "The prince of this world comes and he has nothing in Me" (John 14:30), says Jesus.

That is the great problem and enigma for Satan with the Lord Jesus. He goes round and round trying to find a way in, to get something that will give him a foothold of right, a standing of authority to destroy Him. It is this nature which is Satan's undoing. All the temptations of the Lord Jesus were Satan's efforts to get something in that was not there, to get Him to let something in. "If thou be the Son" (Matt. 4:3 e.v.); to let something in that was not there in order that Satan might be able to dethrone this One from His place of spiritual supremacy, to undo all the meaning of that Sonship, the Son of God with a perfect nature, God's own nature, God's own mind. That is where Christ's supremacy is. It is in His sinless nature.

Now you see that sinlessness, holiness, purity, incorruption, is the undoing of Satan, is the worsting of Satan, and it all resolves itself into one word through the Scriptures - righteousness. "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous, God bearing witness in respect of his gifts" (Heb. 11:4). God bearing witness that he was righteous; that was his victory - a righteousness by faith, a righteousness which is of God through faith. And he overcame even in the presence of the murderous onslaught of the power of evil. He being dead physically, yet speaks. Which, interpreted in the light of other Old Testament words, means this: that the blood, when it is severed from its vessel, is still living. We know that today. There has been a tremendous development in recent years of the transfusion of blood, stored blood, stored for weeks, and still living, still vivifying, vitalizing. Blood is a living thing.

Now Abel's blood, after having been shed and the ground having opened her mouth to receive it, is spoken of as still speaking, still energetic, still vital, still appealing. "The voice of thy brother's blood cries unto Me". It is symbolic language.

The Lord Jesus has released His own life through His cross. We say He shed His blood. Yes, that is the symbolic language, but He has released His life, poured it out, and He has said, "Take, drink. Except ye drink the blood of the Son of Man, ye have not life in yourselves (John 6:53). This cup is the new covenant in My blood (1 Cor. 11:25). Drink ye all of it" (Matt. 26:27). He has released His nature, His Divine nature, His sinless nature, and by His Spirit has given it to us. Peter says, "Exceeding great and precious promises whereby we may become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4). We have received His life. Symbolically, we have drunk of His blood, received His life. Within our renewed, regenerated, born again spirits there has been deposited something which is sinless and incorruptible by the Spirit of God. We are not that, but He is that, "the witness that God has borne concerning his Son. And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that has the Son has the life; he that has not the Son of God has not the life" (1 John 5:10-12). We are two beings; outwardly we still remain what we were, inwardly we are another: partakers of Christ, sharers of His Divine life, His nature. We have drunk of His blood.

Now, it is that thing that is the cause, the occasion, of all the conflict. What is that blood? It is His righteousness of nature which, in the innermost truth of our being, makes us as righteous as He is before God. That is the testimony. "As he is, so are we in this world" (1 John 4:17). As righteous as He is. That is a tremendous thing! It is difficult to grasp, and perhaps that difficulty is often the enemy's opportunity; but oh, our whole cry is to lay hold on this. It is not only the matter of our salvation from hell and our getting to heaven, it is the basis of this mighty testimony for the overthrow of Satan, the bringing in of the kingdom of God, and for all God's purpose to be realised. It is not just a part of the simple Gospel of the forgiveness of sins - it is that, but infinitely more. Right up to the end, all the mighty purpose of God in this universe is bound up with that blood and with our faith holding the meaning of that blood in which there is the righteousness which truly satisfies God.

Resurrection Life by the blood

We read, "Noah built an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled the sweet savour" (Gen. 8:20,21). Do you see what has happened? It is a new world. It has emerged from judgment; a world that has been judged, gone down into death, been buried; in Peter's language, a world that has been baptised (1 Pet. 3:20-21). Peter says that the flood was the baptism of the world, a baptism into death as something judged, condemned and raised a new world.

But that is not enough. That new world raised has to be vivified, made alive unto God, and Noah sheds blood at the altar, and by the shedding of blood, the offering of that sacrifice on the altar, he presents the new world alive unto God. The blood makes it alive.

If you doubt that that is the true interpretation, come over into the case of the tabernacle and all its furniture and system. Remember what is said about it, that the blood was sprinkled upon everything: the curtains, and the altar, the furniture, and even the book. For what is the blood put upon everything? It is a beautiful system, it is perfect according to pattern, but that is all. You can have things constituted even according to Bible pattern and be as dead as anything; you can have New Testament order, but without Life. The thing has to be vivified, vitalized, made alive, actively alive; and Noah in effect, by the blood of that sacrifice, made this thing alive unto God. How? Well, Peter explains it: "Eight souls were saved through water, which also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism". Then he safeguards what he has said, "Not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation, the answer, of a good conscience towards God".

What is a good conscience towards God? Well, men may have a good conscience towards themselves because they do not do a lot of things and they do a lot of other things. That is not a good conscience towards God. The only good conscience towards God is a conscience which has been purged. In other words, it is a conscience which answers to God's standard of absolute righteousness; that is, sinless perfection. Now, do not take that out of its context. I have not finished. I am not preaching sinless perfection in ourselves as a doctrine. It does not matter what we are, God never comes down to any lower standard than sinless perfection. That is His demand and He will not for an instant take less than utter sinless perfection. And you have to stand on that ground to have a good conscience towards God.

How can it be? God has provided Himself a Lamb. God has found, has provided Himself with that in His Son. The utter sinlessness of the nature of the Lord Jesus answers to God's requirements. "Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased" (Luke 3:22). But do you notice how it happened? That testimony happened through baptism. It happened with the Lord Jesus through baptism. Peter says so. "The answer of a good conscience". How? Well, to bring in Paul's way of explaining this, here is a criminal who certainly has no good conscience; the case is all against him, and rightly so. He is condemned to death and he is put to death, he suffers the final penalty of his sin. "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). He is dead; all that the law demanded has been exacted. The law has exhausted itself upon him as he is now dead. That man gets up, rises from the dead. Can the law rightly come back and do it all over again? No, the law has satisfied itself; the man is free. Paul calls it being acquitted. He that has suffered, Paul says (and he means this final suffering of death), is justified from sin, is acquitted, is free. We have died in Christ; He has died as us. He has been made a curse for us, and all God's requirements have been satisfied. And He is risen from the dead as us. No more judgement; acquitted, justified!

That is what He meant when He said, "Suffer it to be so now; for thus it becomes us to fulfil all righteousness" (Matt. 3:15). How do you fulfil all righteousness? Well, die to all sin, die as the sinner. Where there is unrighteousness, let all the righteous requirements of God be wrought out, and bring about a place where unrighteousness no longer obtains because it has been dealt with and buried.

The answer of a good conscience towards God is this: that we are in Christ risen, where our sin has been judged forever and our sinful nature, our sinful man, dealt with in Him and put away, and we have received by faith His sinless nature, His sinless life. And I say again, in the innermost reality of our being God is satisfied.

Continuous Cleansing by the Blood

Now that has done something that has brought about a situation where Satan is rendered powerless, where his ground is taken from him, his authority is destroyed, but he does not give it up in his despair of that situation. He must go to work with us as he did with our Lord, to try and get us off the ground where he is powerless. Now, in the case of the Lord Jesus, he was trying to get something in that was not there. In our case he tries to get us somehow to forsake the ground of what Christ is and take other ground, especially the ground of what we are in ourselves. So at the end in the consummate place, he is called the accuser of the brethren, "Who accuses them before our God day and night" (Rev. 12:10), saying, "Look at this and that, look at the other thing about this one and that one; see that loss of temper, that slipping up, that..." - oh! any one of the thousands of things that are true of us in ourselves. He accuses and tries to get us to move on to that ground and take that ground. And if we do for a moment, our joy goes, our assurance goes, our strength goes, our countenances are fallen, we are miserable. Death comes in and Satan steadily tightens that hold, and how difficult it is to recover, to get back on to the right ground. It means a real fight. Nevertheless, God has made provision for all that.

God has made provision. Here is the basic, initial position: that by faith we are justified, that is, we are accounted just. We have the witness that we are righteous, in Christ, because of His blood. Then God has seen quite clearly all the rest, what we are in ourselves, and has made provision that all that shall not interfere with and upset the basic position necessarily. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8). A lot of people have tried to get over this difficulty of a non-correspondence between their condition and their position by arguing something about not having any sin in them, and it is a delusion, it is not true, and most of those people know otherwise and they have to call sin by other names. But God knows the truth and He says in effect, "What you are in Christ basically is one thing and you are that; what you are in yourself is another thing, but even there I will make My provision."

"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves (we make him a liar)" (1 John 1:10). "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). Oh, I cherish the way in which it is stated, I cherish it more and more as I understand why it is put in that way - "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). We have lost it in our English language! The tense of the words there is - "The blood of Jesus his Son keeps on, goes on, cleansing from all sin". This Life is an abiding thing, this sanctifying Life, this righteous nature. Perhaps we have slipped into some darkness, a dark action, a dark spirit, a dark temper, slipped into something that is darkness and not light. What are we going to do about it? Go on in it, persist in it? Or are we going to turn aside there and confess it? What happens if we walk in darkness? We nullify the value of the blood for ourselves. If we stop and confess it, the blood does not do a new thing, but goes on doing what it has always been doing: maintaining our position before God. It is a question of keeping short accounts with God, not going on in sin, but confessing. He is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The mighty power of that blood, that Life, that nature, that righteousness, keeps on working while we keep on in our relatedness to it by faith.

I think you can see, I trust you can, a little of the tremendous power of this blood and what it means in the whole range of spiritual things, spiritual forces, and of the possibilities of God's purpose being realised. It is this blood, this nature, this answer of a good conscience towards God, this satisfaction of God which is provided by the Lord Jesus dwelling within. It is "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). If we are looking for the hope of glory anywhere else, or in ourselves, there is no hope of glory at all. It is Christ, the hope of glory, within.

The Lord make this all very much more precious to us.

Chapter 4 - The New Covenant in the Blood

Reading: Ex. 12:1-8; Jer. 31:31-32; Rom. 7:4; 1 Cor. 11:25; Eph. 5:25-28; Rev. 19:7,9.

"This is the new covenant in my blood."

"The covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt... I was a husband unto them".

It is quite clear from the Scriptures relating to both the Old Covenant which God made with Israel, and the New Covenant in the blood of the Lord Jesus, that the basis of the covenant, the nature of the covenant, was that it was a marriage covenant. "The covenant that I made with their fathers... I was a husband unto them". Many Scriptures will occur to our minds in that connection. The Lord said that He had espoused Israel to Himself. He mourned through the prophet Jeremiah, "I remember for thee the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals; how thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown" (Jer. 2:2). There are other Scriptures which establish this fact, which we will not discuss now.

Here in the New Testament the same idea comes in. In this chapter in the letter to the Romans, the apostle is speaking about being married to the law, then dying to the law, that husband; and in resurrection being free from that husband in order to be married to another, even to Christ. That is passing from the old covenant to the new, from Moses to Christ. The great truth of Christ and the church in marriage relationship is brought out in these matchless words of Ephesians 5:25: "Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it", and so on. And all this is pointing on to that great consummation, the marriage supper of the Lamb. It is a great and a glorious thing, far beyond our power to understand. Certainly we cannot compass it, but here are one or two thoughts for us to ponder.

A Marriage Relationship

A marriage relationship is in view between the Lord and His people, and that is constituted by His blood. The relationship between the church and Christ is established in His blood, the blood of a New Covenant. We were seeing something of the meaning of the blood in our previous meditation - its nature and therefore its tremendous power. What then comes into this covenant relationship of marriage is the actual establishment of a relatedness which is a sharing of one life, becoming common participators in one nature, one Life, one essential Person. That is the meaning of the blood.

From what we know now in the full revelation of this matter in the Scriptures, we are able to see what lay behind those sacrifices, those blood sacrifices, from Abel's onward. It was the reaching out to secure a relatedness of perfect oneness and fellowship with God. Abel in his heart was reaching out for that. He was reaching out for the meaning of a covenant relationship with God, and he found it in virtue of the blood. The same was true of Abraham, and God made a covenant with Abraham by means of the blood; and in Israel's case also, the whole nation was brought onto this basis in covenant relationship with God by blood.

The meaning is plain. It is a position and a life of absolute fellowship and oneness with God as sharing His own very Life, that is in view. That is what God meant by this. That is why God appointed the lamb and the blood. His thought was perfect oneness with Himself to the forsaking of all others forever. That was His mind about it, and of course that explains the terrible things that are said from time to time about Israel's unfaithfulness as an unfaithful bride, because of the utterness of God's thought. No two lives any more, no two interests, no two lines of concern, but a single Life, a single nature, a single object - an utter oneness is represented in the blood of the everlasting covenant. It is a marriage relationship with all that God means by that relationship. We know how sacred God holds that relationship, what it means in His eyes.

The earthly relationship, as we have so often said, which God has established, the marriage relationship is meant to be an earthly reflection of a great heavenly eternal thing God has in mind between Himself and His redeemed - a marriage relationship in terms of one blood, one Life, one nature - no dividedness, no double elements at all, a singleness. "This is the new covenant in My blood." "Drink ye all of it."

Living by the Lord

There is a mystery about our eating and drinking. How something happens, no one knows. The processes can be described, things can be analysed, but there is a point at which no one can give an explanation. That point is where the food that we take becomes the thoughts that we think, the very sound of our voice. The meals that you have taken up to this point are now expressing themselves in your being able to be audible. Stop eating and drinking long enough, and you will lose your voice! Your thoughts will go, you will not be able to think. Somehow or other, those meals that you have been eating, that drink you have taken, has now become thought and sound and many other intangible things which are the very expression of our being.

The point is this - "eat My flesh, drink My blood". There is a mystery of how by receiving the Life of the Lord Jesus, receiving Him, He becomes assimilated so that He becomes expressed in us. There is a change from what we are, to what He is. Our food and our drink - they make up our personality presently. If you only feed on a certain restricted line of things, your very demeanour will change, you may become morose, sullen. What you need is a change of diet or you become something else, a different person according to what you mainly take in. It is a mystery, strange, wonderful, how our very personality is affected like that. Anybody who understands will at once say, "You have taken too much of so-and-so and it has made you like this. You must change, you must have something else". What we feed upon makes us what we are.

Take, eat; take, drink. There will be a result, a spiritual result. The very basis of your being, of your life, will be what you take in, and if you are taking in Christ, assimilating Christ, the miracle will be taking place in you that you will think Christ, express Christ. Christ will come out in intangible ways, but very real ways. That is the relatedness: a change taking place in us that is no longer ourselves, but it is now Christ our Life, Christ our thought, Christ our object, Christ our line of things. It is all Christ. No two lines, ours and His; no two ways, no two interests, no two worlds: only one. "For me to live is Christ" (Phil. 1:21). We have received Christ. We are constantly receiving Christ, and the result is that what we receive means that what we give is Christ, what we express is Christ.

Now it seems perhaps going a long way to say that is God's thought about a marriage relationship, but it is. The marriage relationship according to God is this, that the wife joined to the husband receives, participates, in his life and she has but one life - that is his; one interest - that is his. She comes into line with him. How important, therefore, in a decision of this kind to be quite sure that that is what God is going to look for, and we have got to see that that is possible. I do not want to diverge to a homily on the marriage relationship, but this is God's idea - one life, and the other being altogether yielded up to that one life, being governed and dominated by that one life so that they are no longer two lives, but one. That is God's thought because it is a reflection of this higher relationship between Himself and His redeemed, between His Son and His Son's Bride; assimilating Christ so that it is one Life.

Our Committal to the Lord by Faith

Now notice that whenever we find in the Scriptures a covenant being brought into view, a covenant in blood, the factor of faith is always present. "By faith Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain". A covenant was made then, was entered into. When you come to Abraham a little later, you have the same thing. Faith is the basis of the covenant made with Abraham. God made a covenant with Abraham and that covenant was entered into in that day described in Genesis 15, when Abraham prepared the sacrifice, divided it in two, laid it there before the Lord and the lamp passed between. A horror of great darkness assailed, the birds of the air came down to devour, and he fought them off until the going down of the sun. Then God made His covenant; there was the blood shed, there was the ground provided for the covenant and God made His covenant with Abraham. But we are told so much about the faith factor coming in over it. "By faith Abraham..." it is all by faith; his whole life is by faith. The same is present with Noah. "By faith Noah..." and God made a covenant with Noah and the altar was built and the sacrifice offered and the rainbow was given as a sign of the covenant. There was the blood. By faith, all by faith. And with Israel. Every time there is a covenant coming in, the faith element is basic.

How true it is in the New Covenant. It is all to them that believe.

What does this mean? In the covenant in blood, the marriage relationship is set forth.

What does it mean that it is all in faith? I think it is quite simple. In a marriage relationship there is a big step of faith taken - on the one side especially. On the side of the wife, it is a tremendous step of faith. It means nothing less than this: an utter committal over on to another. I am giving myself for good, for bad, for better or worse. I am giving myself, my life, my very being, right over to another, and now I have simply to believe that that other one will not fail me, will not let me down, that I shall have been justified in the end in giving myself to that one.

That is what Abel did; he handed himself right over in faith to God and took the blood as the sign, the token, that he had done that. That is what Abel did. He handed himself right over to God and made the blood the basis of that handing over. That is what is in God's mind all the time with the blood - the handing over utterly in an act of faith, complete faith, which says, "I give myself in perfect trust to another; I have no questions, no reservations". It is a great act of faith, abandonment in faith. That is one side of the covenant. That is the meaning of our taking and drinking. We are saying that we have handed right over to the Lord in utter faith, we trust in Him, count on Him, as a bride in a right relationship, in the relationship which God means to be represented by marriage, as the bride hands herself right over in perfect confidence, lets herself go, no longer tries to realise her own life but lets another do it. Of course, if there were more marriages like that, it would be a very happy world. But that is God's thought, at any rate, to hand over for the other to realise the life and trust the other one to do it. That is what we have done when we have entered into the covenant in the blood of the Lord Jesus. We have handed over to Him to realise everything, and we trust him to do it. He has taken us for that very purpose.

The Lord's Committal to Us

But there is the other side of the covenant. A covenant always has two sides, and when we, on our side, enter into the covenant in His blood by faith, which means our utter abandonment to Him, He from His side, the other side of the covenant, says, "I am all for you when you are all for Me; I am committed to you, all My resources are at your disposal!"

And, you know, we are tested on this matter. We are so much tested on the question of the covenant relationship. Abraham was tested on this thing. "Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, and offer him" (Gen. 22:2). It was almost as though God said, "Did you mean it - all for Me? Prove it". It says, "God did prove Abraham". God is proving us as to whether we mean it from our side, whether we are so over to Him that we have no other outside interests, and trust Him absolutely. That is what the blood requires, calls for, and means.

But is it not true that after every test, whenever we have been tried anew in this matter of trusting the Lord, committing all to the Lord, of standing true to the covenant relationship, the Lord comes back Himself from His side and says, "Because thou hast done this thing... in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed" (Gen. 22:16-17). From His side He is always ready to come in and to give that increase of His when He has proved our faith, and through trial got us more deeply established in the relationship with Himself.

This is just a little glimpse further into the meaning of the blood of the New Covenant and into the meaning of what we do here so often, what we mean by the Lord's Table, what we mean by the blood of Jesus Christ - an established relationship in utterness of abandonment to the Lord and faith in Him to realise all that is possible in our lives to His glory.

Chapter 5 - Divine Fulness

Reading: John 2:1-11,13.

"This beginning of signs", the first miracle, the things which go to make up this basic thing (for there is no doubt about it that in its meaning, this beginning of signs is basic to everything else), the things which go to make up this basic thing are: the third day, the marriage, water, wine, and the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

A Marriage Relationship

Let us begin with the marriage. We were speaking about this in our previous meditation, showing that the New Covenant, or indeed, the covenant in blood, both the Old and New, was a marriage covenant. The Lord said concerning the first covenant He made with Israel that He took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt and became a husband unto them. That taking by the hand and leading out took place on the night of the Passover. The blood of the Paschal lamb was the basis of that new relationship, that new history. And the Lord said, "This shall be unto you the beginning of months" (Ex. 12:2), a new life in relationship with Himself as betrothed to the Lord on the basis of blood. The New Covenant is that; it is a marriage relationship, a betrothal, a uniting which is to have its great crowning in the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Most of what we said earlier was from one side - the Divine idea and conception of marriage being from the one side an utter abandonment in faith, in perfect trust to another. That is where we said most, but that was not the end we had in view. It is very important to realise that the blood of the Lord Jesus represents a life union, a covenant union, and that on our side it is always a matter of unreserved abandonment and committal in faith to another. That is the marriage covenant.

Of course, that is the ideal, the Divine ideal. It is not the general situation as we know it here on the earth among men, although such a thought and such a standard should be in mind among men, and would have a tremendous influence in the making of the world a great deal happier.

There is the other side, however, that if from the Divine standpoint the requirement is for an utter abandonment in faith obedience from the one side - that is, that which is represented by the bride which is the church of which we are members and in which we are involved: "Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it" (Eph. 5:25); "The church of God which He purchased with His own blood" (Acts 20:28) - there is the other side also. Speaking humanly, coming down on to the human and natural level in this matter, the testimony on earth to the thing in heaven, to the spiritual thing, that abandonment must be justified upon the other side. That is, if a wife is to abandon herself unreservedly to her husband and commit her life entirely to him and forsake her own life and way to live one life with him and for him, he must be worthy of it, he must live up to that.

That is where the Holy Spirit puts such tremendous emphasis in the words in Ephesians, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church" (Eph. 5:25). "Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies For no man ever hated his own flesh" (Eph. 5:28-29). It means that on the man's side there is a tremendous standard to be maintained, for he is to be worthy of that absolute confidence and trust. That is on the human side.

It is a representation of something Divine, and the question arises: Is Christ worthy of our abandonment to Him? Does He set up a standard which justifies such an utter confidence? It is a matter of our appreciation of the Lord Jesus, as to how far we will forsake all others and cleave only to Him. It is a matter of whether we have come really to recognise His utter and absolute trustworthiness that we can commit ourselves, not only for this life, but for all eternity to Him and have no longer any interest of our own; to have everything bound up with Him. That is what He means by a marriage. He presents Himself, and presenting Himself, He interrogates, "Am I worthy of your trust? Have I merited your confidence? Do I embody the standard which will give you complete rest in handing everything over to Me? Are you going to feel that it is necessary for you to steer your own course and safeguard your own way and exercise your own independent judgment?"

Now you will see that in hundreds of ways that may work out as to our relatedness to the Lord Jesus and what marriage to the Lord means. It works out again and again as we go on as to the question of independent judgment, independent ways, the numerous causes of clash with Him on the road, and He has to come back again and again and say, "Look here, what was our covenant? What was the ground of our relationship? Did we have then any kind of understanding that we would agree on so many things, but we would agree to disagree on others, or was it complete abandonment to Me in all matters of judgment, decision and the way to be taken?"

We find it necessary from time to time to come back to what we call "the cross". We allow our own separateness in any way to be put to death in us and a new yieldedness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That stands over this first basic sign. Remember, it is a sign, it signifies something, it is basic.

The Lordship of Christ

I am tremendously impressed with Mary here. I do not know how she arrived at this - telling Him they had no wine. Why she should tell Him, and why as an aside to the servants, she said, "Whatsoever he says unto you, do it", but it is perfectly clear that she was in the place where He was Lord, and she brought this whole thing under His Lordship. She gathered it all into that. He is Lord! And really, He is Lord of this marriage. The whole thing would have broken down, would have been a fiasco, a tragedy and scandal, but for Him. He is in the place of Lordship. Mary recognised that, testified to that, and brought it through. The Lordship of Christ in the marriage - that is going to determine whether the thing is going to be a success or not. It is a major factor in this relatedness of ours to Him - whether we are going through without a shame, a scandal, a breakdown in our relatedness to the Lord depends entirely upon His Lordship. The Old Testament marriage was on that basis, for the husband was always called "lord" by the wife.

The very word used in Jer. 31:32 - "I became a husband" is one of a number of words translated 'husband'. It is only translated so three times in the Old Testament, that particular Hebrew word, and it means 'ruler': "I became a ruler". But in another place where the same word is used, it is obviously 'husband'. Husband there was the ruler. The trouble with Israel was that the Lord as the husband was not Lord, and consequently - the tragedy of Israel. Well, we will not add words to that. That is the setting to this. The marriage is set in His Lordship and whether the marriage is going to be a success or tragedy depends upon whether it is like this - "Whatsoever he says unto you, do it". If He says anything to you, do it; everything hangs upon it. Don't you do it because of what other people say. What He says, do it.

Divine Fulness

The third day; I think everything here comes within the sign. Number three in the Bible, as you know, is Divine fulness, and that is really what is very much to the fore in this whole incident.

When you come to the water, you reach a state of bankruptcy. There are great jars of water, and there is a measure of water in them. They are not full. And, mark you, they are for purification, but they are lacking. They are not at all full with water. What do those jars and the water, represent? They represent Israel, Israel's spiritual condition, inadequacy in their moral standard and their spiritual life. Look at Israel in the days of the Lord Jesus, what He had to say about their corruption, how far short they came of the Divine requirements in the matter of holiness, righteousness, truth and purity. Israel in the days of Christ was bankrupt spiritually, and that is the state to which this marriage comes - bankruptcy. The water is poor, weak, insufficient, representing Israel at that time.

The Lord Jesus comes on the scene and brings things to the full, turns it all into wine - and wine is ever the symbol of the blood, as we know. And it says, This is transition in relation to the Lord Jesus from that spiritual bankruptcy, spiritual shortage, insufficiency, weakness, disappointment, tragedy; transition from that to fulness of life in Christ, and it is in union with Christ. This marriage union with Christ sees the change from the old covenant which has not been kept, and therefore all its blessing has departed; the transition from the old covenant to the new covenant in His blood, Divine fulness.

Now, that Divine fulness demands that Jesus is absolutely Lord. It could never have been otherwise, and it demands the basis of His precious blood, His life. The new Life is this wine, the best kept till the last, the unusual, the surprise, the wonder, the glory of His life, His risen life.

Well, you see the features. The parable is very plain. Here we are, then, taking the spiritual interpretation. It is a question of a union with Christ; as married to the Lord. That union means fulness, Divine fulness. That Divine fulness is by the imparting of His miraculous life. To use the symbolic language again - it is by the power of His blood, and it is all a question of doing what He says.

You know there is a great deal more in this. "Mine hour is not yet", how He used that phrase through His life! It is related to the cross; it led to the cross. So the very first miracle was related to the cross. It is the blood of His cross that is meant by 'Mine hour'. Our translation of His words to His mother sounds very abrupt, but not so abrupt in the original as it sounds in our language. "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" It was not that. What He actually said was this, "Woman, you are thinking in a different realm from what I am; you and I are thinking in two different realms; the realm of which I am thinking is not your realm at the moment". Meaning this - His mother was thinking of the scandal, the shame, the embarrassment, and was hoping that He would do something, knowing, believing, that He could do something to save from the embarrassment of this breakdown. That was the realm of her mind, that He would use miraculous power to obviate a human inconvenience and embarrassment; and He was moving in another realm. 'Mine hour' is the end that governs everything; "I am moving in the realm of Mine hour, and Mine hour is the hour of the blood shedding, and this has to come into line with that!" Oh, what an immense range it is! It reaches right on to the marriage of the Lamb.

Chapter 6 - God's Witness Concerning His Son

Reading: 1 John 5:5-12.

"There are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and the three agree in one."

It is the threefold witness to the Lord Jesus as the Son of God, and that is gathered into a single testimony. The three bear witness and agree in one, and the one thing which embraces the threefold witness is that Jesus Christ is the Life, that Life is in Jesus Christ, God's Son, and that God has given Him, and in Him eternal Life.

You notice, then, that all this is a matter of God testifying to His Son, God bearing witness to His Son, that Jesus is the Son of God. That is the inclusive fact; God bears witness to His Son that He is the Son of God. Then it is how God bears witness, by what means and in what way He bears witness. It is a question of how we are to know that Jesus is the Son of God, and that knowledge is resolved into a very practical matter. It is lifted completely out of the realm of theory and doctrine and creedal statement and placed in the realm of experience and inward knowledge. Notice what is said here about it being an inward thing. And the threefold means and method of God in bearing witness in an inward way to His Son is said here to be the Spirit, the water, and the blood.

The Witness of the Spirit

Firstly, then, the Spirit is God's witness within to the Divine Sonship of the Lord Jesus. It resolves itself into this: that where the Holy Spirit operates the result is a living knowledge of the Lord Jesus as God's Son in an inward way. He is known inwardly in terms of Life as the result of the operation of the Holy Spirit. Of course, the Holy Spirit is entirely committed to bearing witness to the Lord Jesus. We know that in an outward way. You remember that the Lord Himself said that when the Comforter was come, He would bear witness of Him (John 15:26). Then in the Acts where things are taking place, the statement is made - "We are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit" (Acts 5:32).

But here it is not the outward testimony to the fact borne by the Holy Spirit so much as it is the inward witness by the Holy Spirit. How does the Holy Spirit bear witness to the Divine Sonship of the Lord Jesus in an inward way? The answer is: in terms of Life; that is, by means of Life. It is all a question of Life here in this letter of John. God has borne witness, "The witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son." God's witness borne to His Son is that He has given unto us eternal Life. Our having eternal Life is God's witness to Christ.

But how do you know that you have eternal Life? In other words, how do you know the witness of God in terms of Life? Firstly then, it is by the Holy Spirit's activity and operation in that direction. The Holy Spirit's object being to establish the witness of God in us that Jesus is God's Son will, wherever He has right of way in a life, so work as to make that life know in a very practical way, in many practical ways, the Life of the Lord Jesus.

Take, for instance, the argument we have in Romans 8:10-11: "The body is dead because of sin... But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwells in you." What does that mean? It means this, that, being in the hands of the Holy Spirit, on the one side we have experiences of death in ourselves, even in our bodies; that is, we know through experience what it is to be drained of life, to have our very vitality sapped until we are in a place of complete impotence as we face a demand. We cannot meet it of ourselves, we have not the resource, energy, vitality or life with which to meet the demand. The demand is too great for us and we have been made aware of it, and the Holy Spirit has done that. Then the Holy Spirit comes and quickens, energizes, even the physical frame, the mortal body, to meet a demand which it could not meet otherwise apart from that quickening, and the thing is done, the work is accomplished, the obligation is met, the demand is satisfied, the work is carried out in an energy not our own. The Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead has quickened, and that is how the Holy Spirit bears testimony that Jesus is the Son of God and bears testimony in an inward way. We say as a result that we know the Lord as our Life. We know, because God has borne witness in that way by His Spirit in experience in a very inward way to His Son as His Son in terms of Life. That is only one instance and one way in which it is done, but it indicates the method.

The Holy Spirit works, on the one hand, to make us know that, apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, we have no Life, we are lifeless, helpless, and hopeless and the whole situation is an impossible one for us. The Holy Spirit does that. If ever you come into that position as a true child of God where you are face to face with a situation which you cannot meet and the Lord wants you to meet it, it is something that, in the will of God, has got to be met (I must say that because sometimes it is not the Lord's will to do some things and we do not get Life from the Lord for those things), but if in the will of God there is something to be met and we find ourselves incapable of meeting it and carrying it through, let us remember, that is a work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has done that deliberately and definitely. It is the way of true spiritual life.

It is not the way of true spiritual life to feel always sufficient for everything, to feel that you can do it, that you are capable. Very capable people are not always the people who are most spiritually productive. The Holy Spirit works, on the one hand, to an incapacitation naturally and humanly in order to pave the way for His own witness to the very Sonship of Jesus Christ coming in upon a negative ground, an impossible situation, and giving Life to go through that, perhaps only to go through that, but to go through it and to go through it royally. The result is that Christ has been made known as our Life and God has borne witness by His Spirit to His Son's Sonship, and we know Jesus Christ as the Son of God like that. The first great witness is the Holy Spirit working in the life of the child of God to bring up God's testimony to Christ in terms of Life. That is true individually. It is also true collectively. What is God's witness in a company of His people? God's witness is not that they believe that Jesus is the Son of God as part of their doctrine and creed, nor that they affirm it with great vehemence. "The devils also believe and tremble" (Jas. 2:19). No, the witness of God in a company is that that company in itself as such is to be a dead thing in itself -  lifeless and hopeless and helpless in itself - and yet the throbbing of God's Life is felt when that company is together in the Spirit.

What are these people, who are these people? They are nothing and yet you are conscious of a Life there which is more than mere emotion and enthusiasm of an assembly and congregation. There is a power, a quickening, a vitalising, energizing by being in their midst, being gathered with them, and you come away perhaps enlightened by the teaching more or less, understanding or not a bit understanding the things said, but you have to say - it is Life, it is renewal, it is renovation, it is energizing. It is like new wine. God has borne witness to the doctrine, to the truth, in terms of Life by His Spirit. That is God's witness - Life. I am not saying that Life is separate from the truth as doctrine, but doctrine without the Life may be a very dead thing. You may, as a matter of doctrine, believe with all your might that Jesus is the Son of God, but it is not that kind of thing that is effective. That can be mere fundamentalism which is not always spiritual Life. It is God the Holy Spirit bearing witness to the fact of the Sonship of the Lord Jesus in terms of Life.

So the Holy Spirit is committed to make the Lord Jesus known in an inward way as God's Son by this very practical means, that He is Life unto us, and it would be impossible for us to go on unless we knew the Lord as our Life.

The Witness of the Water

"The Spirit and the water". God is bearing testimony to His Son as His Son by means of the water. I know there are various interpretations of this. For myself, I feel quite sure that this relates to His baptism. "This is He that came by water" or, in water, and that water is God's instrument of bearing witness to His Sonship. Of course, it was so in His own baptism, by means of His baptism, by means of the water: God bore witness at once - "This is My beloved Son".

But how does the Lord do this in an inward way by water? What is the meaning of the water, or of His baptism, or of baptism? Briefly it is this, as we said in a previous meditation: it was the fulfilment of all righteousness. As He said to John: "Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becomes us to fulfil all righteousness" (Matt. 3:15) - all righteousness fulfilled, the righteous judgment of God satisfied. For that water is a burial, a grave, a putting away out of sight of that which is not acceptable to God, and upon which the judgment of God has been pronounced. It is sinful, it lies under a curse; therefore it must die. "The wages of sin is death". And there is witness borne that the righteous requirements have been fully satisfied in the burial of the Lord Jesus. The wages of sin have been fully paid, the law has received the last token of its exacting. Sin is fully dealt with and the sinner has died. Therefore there is remission of sin.

The witness of the water is the witness of our union and identification with Christ in His death and burial; sin is no longer laid to our charge, at our door, God is wholly satisfied. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, He has made peace by the blood of His cross. The witness of the water is the witness that God has no more to ask. He has received all that He requires and is satisfied in the death of the Lord Jesus, in the fulfilment of all righteousness, the satisfaction of all Divine requirements. The witness is that - that the Lord Jesus in His death and burial, has taken our place. We know that, but this is borne in upon us in terms of Life. It is a living thing. It is, again, not just the teaching of the New Testament, but it is something in our own hearts. We know in our hearts, the witness of God is in our hearts that, in the death and burial of His Son, He has found His satisfaction for His whole righteousness and we have passed from condemnation; condemnation no longer rests upon us.

While this is such a familiar doctrine, it is a thing, as we have emphasized before in these meditations, which the Lord's people must come to apprehend with ever-increasing reality. Recently this was borne in on my heart in a new way, in such a wonderful way, that I cannot tell you what it has come to mean to me. I thought I knew something about the meaning of justification through Christ's death, but quite recently in a dark time of terrific conflict, day and night the enemy coming with the force of death to try and force one into death, to accept death, in this very dark time lasting for about a week - day and night conflict, hand to hand conflict with death - at the end of that time or towards the end of that time, I was turned to the life of Martin Luther. As I gradually moved with him in the terrific conflict that took place in that soul - oh! what a battle raged in that soul between the system that he was in of righteousness and justification by works, his whole soul writhing under it. You remember that memorable day when he had visited Rome to get indulgence and going up on hands and knees on that staircase, every step of which was supposed to bring an indulgence, relief, release, from condemnation into justification, as he got so far in this awful process, a clear and distinct voice spoke in his ear - "The just shall live by faith" (Rom. 1:17). He went up no more steps on his hands and knees. He turned and rushed down again, crying, "The just shall live by faith", and that was the great turning-point. Then there began this awful spiritual conflict. Up to that time, it was a conflict with a system, a kind of mental conflict with the system of Romanism, but now it assumed a spiritual form, the very devil himself coming to bring Luther under condemnation, laying to his charge all manner of sin.

And then I came to this great statement, the most utter thing that you could ever lay your hand upon. Luther cried one day in the midst of this conflict, "Oh Christ, I am Thy sin, Thy curse, Thy wrath of God, Thy hell. I am" - listen to that! "I am Thy sin." That is only saying, "Oh Christ, the sin which is laid upon Thee and for which You are now regarded as guilty, is my sin, is me; I am Thy sin". How utter it is put in that way. "I am Thy sin, Thy curse. The curse under which You lie. Oh Christ, it's me. I am!" Not, 'my curse is Thy curse', but, 'I am Thy curse, Thy wrath of God. The wrath of God which is upon You is me. I am that, I am the cause of that, I am that. Thy hell, that tasting of death, that abandonment of God which is hell, I am that. Oh Christ, I am Thy sin, Thy curse, Thy wrath of God, Thy hell'. And contrariwise, "Thou art my righteousness, my blessing, my life, my grace of God, my heaven!"

That came to me as right out of heaven in that dark hour of conflict, and, as I say, I cannot tell you what that new revelation, that new witnessing of God to my own heart need, meant to me - something altogether new, something that never has been before in my life of strengthening, of lifting up, of bringing out of that terrible conflict; of what identification with Christ means in His death and burial. It is an inward thing.

The witness of God is this, the water is the way of Life. That way of death is Life, it is the way of Life through that death. His baptism was His way through to God, but it was the way through death, and there is no other way for us.

The point is this, that we know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God by the inward witness that sin has been met in Him, judgment has been borne by Him, righteousness has been satisfied by Him in His death. He dying, He lying there dead, is the sinner which you are and I am. God is satisfied. Oh, are we really living in the strength of this inward assurance that, so far as we are concerned, because we are in Christ, God is satisfied on all matters of righteousness?

We have much more to learn and grasp about this, but oh, it is a tremendously emancipating thing, tremendously strengthening. More than half the troubles of most children of God, arise from some kind of shadow which exists between themselves and the Lord, uncertainty and question as to what the Lord's attitude is towards them, what their position is with the Lord. The really happy people, the really satisfied people, the people who are at rest and who really have living testimony, are the people who are living in the good of this that they, in Christ, have died to God's judgment. God's judgment, so far as they are concerned, is exhausted and finished. All condemnation is over.

"Free from the law, Oh! happy condition,

Jesus hath bled, and there is remission".

Cursed by the law and bruised by the Fall,

Christ hath redeemed us once for all".

How? By dying as us, by being us as sin, the curse, death and hell, and delivering us from the lot by His death. To live in the inward enjoyment of that is Life, and that Life is the testimony to God's Son.

The Witness of the Blood

Finally, the blood. "The Spirit, and the water, and the blood". The witness of God to His Son as His Son is by means of the blood. Here I only need to remind you of what has already been said in this series, that the blood speaks of the Life, the Life of God's Son, and we said that it is synonymous with nature. His blood is His life, and His life is His nature, and He has said, "Drink ye all of it". "Except ye... drink the blood of the Son of man you have not life. He that eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life" (John 6: 53-54). The blood is the life, the blood is the nature, and the witness to the Son of God is this: simply that we know that there has been given to us the power and energy of another nature. We may be very conscious of our own old nature, but there is another now within; we know it. It is that Other which tremendously reacts to our own old nature. If our own old nature does break out and assert itself, we have the most terrible reaction, and we are not at rest until we get back to the place where we repudiate that breaking out of the old nature and take sides with this Other reacting to it. By these Divine reactions within which are more than conscience, the mighty movement of another Life in us, we are led steadily away from ourselves and what we are in ourselves and are drawn on to Christ. We more and more repudiate that other and take sides with Christ, and so we grow.

This spiritual growth, this conformity to the image of God's Son is not just teaching, doctrine. It is a very practical thing, and it works out very often through tremendous convulsions in which we are called upon to take very definite sides against ourselves; not something presented to us as according to law and legality, but something that is rising up within us to demand another course, and that something is the new nature, the new life, the powerful working of Christ's nature in us, and that is God's witness to His Son.

How do you know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God? "Because He has given unto us eternal life". Because the blood means that we have received another nature which is working tremendously. And it is a ground of real assurance for us ourselves and for others, if only we know that we have received eternal life, if only we know that we have come into the value of the precious blood of Jesus Christ, received it into ourselves, have drunk, as it were, of that blood, that life, taken in by faith that nature of Christ. If only we know that someone for whom we are concerned has really passed through that crisis and experience by which they have received the values of the blood, they do possess eternal life; it is a ground of real assurance. We know quite well that they will have a bad time, they will not be able to do wrong without meeting something within themselves. God is bearing witness by that means all the time. He is keeping His Son alive, as it were, in us, by bearing witness in this way.

I know that this is not the whole meaning of the witness of the blood. I am selecting one thing. The witness of God to His Son in us is by means of a new nature, the energy of a new nature. There is a very great deal of difference between that inward witness to the Son of God by a new nature, and a merely orthodox creed about Jesus Christ being the Son of God. There are many who hold an orthodox creed and believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but whose life is very much out of keeping with that, a violent and a persistent contradiction to their belief. The true witness of God will bring us, not free from failure, but bring us constantly back from our failures to the Lord. You cannot get away from Him for long without a reaction. You ask any backslider, who has really known the Lord, whether they are happy. You will find, whatever may be their cover up, deep down underneath, if you patiently work to find it, that they would give anything to get back again. The slightest bit of deviation is like a dislocation, an awful toothache. Let us get free from this, get back again! That is God's witness to His Son. Jesus is a living reality; this is not theory, creed, He is a living reality, and God bears witness by this means. So the testimony of Jesus is maintained in terms of Life in this threefold way - the Spirit dealing with us to make Christ our Life, the water testifying to no condemnation now, freedom from the law; and the blood witnessing by means of a new nature. Well, it is simple, but it is very practical and effective. This is "the witness that God has borne concerning His Son... God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son", and the threefold way in which that Life is manifested is by the Spirit, the water and the blood.

Chapter 7 - The Name

Reading: Gen. 11:1-9; Acts 3:1-16,19-24; John 17:6,11-12,16-17.

We have been much occupied with the matter of the prophetic function, the function of prophetic ministry. We have been seeing that the function of prophetic ministry is to hold things in relation to the full thought and purpose of God, especially in a time when the tendency of the course is away from that full thought and purpose. It is a matter of a function rather than an office, the function expressing itself continually by one means and another. That is, God brings up this particular ministry and function to again bring into view the fulness of His mind when His people are in danger of losing something of that fulness or departing from it, and all prophetic function is related to the Lord Jesus, for all God's thought and purpose is centred in Him and there is nothing outside of Him and nothing beside Him. Therefore the fulness of God's thought is bound up with His Son, the Lord Jesus, and this is the concern of the Holy Spirit in all ages, and every truly anointed instrument will, in some way, bring the Lord Jesus into view.

Now, what I want to say here at the outset is this: that this prophetic function is the real business of the church. We have just read again that fragment concerning Moses in Acts 3:22: "Moses indeed said, A prophet shall the Lord God raise up unto you from among your brethren, like unto me" ("as He raised me up" A.R.V. margin). Moses, with other functions, fulfilled the prophetic function, and the greatest way in which he did it was to inaugurate and establish a vast system which in itself was prophetic in that it pointed on to the Lord Jesus. The tabernacle, which was the embodiment of all the people, which represented the people of God as gathered into a habitation for God, was a great prophecy. Everything in it was a prophecy. It pointed on, it prefigured, it predicted. That whole wonderful system was a great prophecy to fulfil a prophetic ministry. It was declaring beforehand the Lord Jesus. In that way Moses fulfilled a prophetic ministry. He brought in, in a symbolic way, the Lord Jesus. He brought Him into view comprehensively in the full thought of God. How full is the thought of God in the tabernacle - how many-sided, how comprehensive, how exhaustive! You cannot touch one small point in the whole system which does not signify something of the Lord Jesus. Every measurement, dimension, bar, loop, tassel, curtain - everything, the smallest detail - speaks of the Lord Jesus in some way; all that goes on there is speaking of Him. It is a great prophecy.

But it also pointed on to its spiritual counterpart. Its spiritual counterpart is the church. We know from the letter to the Hebrews that that is so. It was a pattern of the heavenly thing, and we are coming to the heavenly thing. All that was there in type is now entered into in a spiritual way and in a very living way by the church. The church takes it all up in a spiritual way, it is a spiritual habitation of God; it is a great spiritual system - in the right sense, a spiritual one - a great heavenly order of things; Christ, the High Priest. We, in terms of Sonship, are ministering as priests in the house of God. All I want to say is that it was a prophecy of a spiritual counterpart. The spiritual counterpart takes up the function of prophecy; the church comes in in a spiritual way to hold the thoughts of God in fulness here in this world and in this universe to represent and set forth the whole comprehensive thought of God. The church takes that place and function.

Now, I want to just leave that to get to another specific point which is comprehensive as to prophetic ministry. If you will look again, you will see that the prophetic function had a peculiar and particular relationship to the Name of the Lord. There is a sense in which the Name of the Lord was the primary thing in prophetic ministry. It was the honour, the glory, and the uniqueness of His Name. It was that Name in all its meaning, purity, majesty, glory and uniqueness which was continually being assailed by evil powers. The prophets came in relation to that Name, the honour of that Name, to recover the honour and glory of that Name among the Lord's people, to lift up that Name again, to put that Name in its place, to hold the full thought of God as represented by His Name. We read in Acts 3:16, "By faith in his name has his name made this man strong". That leads on to this - "A prophet shall the Lord God raise up unto you from among your brethren, as he raised me up" (Acts 3:22). So said Moses.

This matter of the Name of the Lord Jesus is gathered into this. Moses, as a prophet, was pointing on to Christ and His whole life and His whole work, and now Christ is here, and Christ is here in the glory and power of His Name. How do you know the real meaning and value of prophetic ministry? You know it by the working power of the Name of the Lord Jesus. You remember what we were saying in a previous meditation - how do you know that Jesus is the Son of God? You know it by the witness of the Spirit first. "There are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood". We saw how the Sonship of the Lord Jesus is testified to in a living way by this threefold significance inwardly of the Spirit, the water, and the blood; their mighty virtue as an operation.

The Universality of the Name

Now then, added to that: the Name of the Lord Jesus. What we are concerned with largely in these messages is the recovery of the basic things of the testimony of Jesus. We started with the blood, we went on with the cross, and now we are at the Name, and everything is gathered up into that Name. I want you to see the setting of things. Through the day we have been seeing that what God needs is a vessel of prophetic ministry, that is, an instrument to hold things in relation to God's full thought - firstly, God's thought as in the blood, to hold things in relation to the full significance of the blood of the Lord Jesus; then to hold things in relation to the full meaning of the cross of the Lord Jesus; now to hold things in relation to the full meaning of the Name of the Lord Jesus. That is the ministry that is needed, that is the prophetic function that is required today - a recovery of God's full thought in these things which relate to His Son - the blood, the cross and the Name.

We have read Genesis 11 and of course we underlined the one fragment, "Let us make us a name; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth". I do not think that they just meant that they would get a reputation by something they were going to do. They meant they would get a single name, they would make or constitute a single name, a name which would represent their unity, their oneness, and therefore their power, authority and dominion in the whole earth. Their thought was that in a name they would find universality, unity and dominion. Those things are implicit there in what they did and in their mind about this matter - "lest we be scattered"; that is unity. God said, "'Nothing will be withholden from them'; they will be in a place of universal power and anything they decide to do they will do. They will have universal dominion, universality and dominion."

But that singleness of entity in that position as represented by the name that they were going to make or take would have belonged to people who had departed from God, who were out of relationship with Him, a people the imagination of whose heart was evil, and God was not having universality and unity and dominion bound up with that. So He came down and investigated, took the significance and the meaning of this thing and this name that they were going to take, and decided that this was a direct contradiction, violation and opposition to His eternal thought, "There is only One who can have a universal Name - that is My Son! There is only One in Whom all things can be gathered together in a solid unity and that is My Son! There is only One Who can have dominion in all realms and that is My Son! He is eternally appointed to hold that Name and to hold it in relation to Myself, not out of relation, not in independence and separation, but in a holy relationship to Myself", and that is the very essence of John 17.

So we come at once to what the Name of Jesus signifies. It signifies in the first place: universality. All things are to come under that Name. "God... gave unto Him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth" (Phil. 2:10) - the universality of the Name of the Lord Jesus, all-comprehending. That universality is reserved by God for His Son, and that is why He could not tolerate this effort for a universal name on the part of the people away back there. It was a counter-move of the devil in another kind of humanity to the Lord Jesus.

The Unity of the Name

The Name of the Lord Jesus stands for unity. Here in John 17 you see it so closely related to that. "Father, keep them in thy name". "I made known unto them thy name". "That they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in Me, and I in thee". It is the oneness that the Name of Jesus speaks of that is of such tremendous power, potency, effectiveness.

Keep in the back of your minds all the time this - the honour and glory of the Lord's Name. And that honour and glory is upheld by making that Name absolute in heaven and in earth and in hell. The universality of the Name is absolute. It is not just territorial, it does not belong to some limited place. That Name is absolute. There is no realm outside of the Name of the Lord Jesus. He is Lord in every realm, and this prophetic function is to hold things in relation to the absolute universal supremacy of the Lord Jesus.

His Name is honoured in heaven, we know. The testimony of His Name has to be established in the earth, and that is the meaning of Acts 3, bringing in the Name to establish it as a testimony here. Hell at once rises up and challenges, as you see in Acts 4. There is a tremendous reaction to this testimony of the Name. Hell would cast it out and cast out those who stand related to the testimony of the Name, but it is universal, and the honour of the Lord is bound up with the testimony to the universal virtue of the Name of Jesus.

But the honour of that Name is also bound up with the unity that that Name represents. If there is one thing more than another that hell is against, it is a spiritual unity of the Lord's people, because that unity is a tremendous testimony to the Name. That Name is honoured by the unity, the oneness, of the Lord's people. That Name is dishonoured by schisms and divisions and disunities among the Lord's people. So this great prayer about the Name, with the Name there all the time, is on the matter of unity, oneness. The devil wants a oneness of his own like that in Genesis 11, because he knows well enough that oneness is strength. This being gathered into the Name of Jesus, this allowing the Name of Jesus to express itself in the oneness of all who are baptized into that Name, is a tremendous testimony. It has tremendous repercussions in the realm of evil influences. We must remember that that Name is robbed of its glory and its honour whenever Satan gets the advantage of a disruption among the Lord's people, for that Name speaks of oneness. The calling of that Name upon us simply means that we are one. It is one Name, one people, and that oneness is the power of the Name.

We never get through or never get the advantage over the enemy, you never destroy any of the work he is doing, if we are divided. Two of you praying together will have to symphonise to overcome the evil thing against which you are praying. It is not a matter of so many people having met and prayed with a formula - 'in the name of Jesus'. There has to be a spiritual oneness represented there because the Name means that, and if in that gathering there is a dividedness, a strain in relationships, the prayer in the Name is set at nought. Coming together in the Name of Jesus means something more than taking the phrase 'in the Name'. It is being in a state of spiritual oneness. The Name means oneness. It is a contradiction to the Name which we bear, the Name of the Lord Jesus, to have divisions with other Christians, with other children of God, and it is an advantage to the enemy. Probably that is why much of our prayer is held up. Perhaps it explains why there is much weakness in corporate prayer times, because secretly, unknown, behind, there are children of God who are in disagreement, out of fellowship with one another. The Holy Spirit knows all that and the devil knows all that, and the whole thing is brought under arrest, and the Name of the Lord is not glorified and real work is not done for that reason.

Do remember that strain in Christian relationships is much more far-reaching than just a little tiff, a little upset in our social connections, in our personal affairs. It reaches right back to the Name of the Lord Jesus and everything is held up while that state exists; the Name is robbed of its honour, its meaning, its power. Oh then, let our respect and love for the Name of Jesus lead us to very swift reconciliations with our brethren. If we really do honour the Name of Jesus, we will not postpone one minute longer than we can help, the putting right of anything that has come between us, and we shall strive for the retaining of fellowship and love with all our hearts, not because we do not want to have unpleasantness, but because we see what the devil is after. He is after the honour of that Name. Here you have this great illustration of it at Babylon. Oh, let us remember if we are scattered abroad, that is weakness, that is our undoing, that is disintegration. A Name will hold us together. Held by a name! Well, if they saw that, those devil-inspired people, so ought we to see it inspired by the Holy Spirit, that there is a Name that speaks of oneness which is a tremendous power, and anything that is not spiritually one means a destruction of that power, because it dishonours that Name.

I like the way in which Peter and John cling to each other. Notice how they are together in those early verses - Peter and John, inseparables. "Peter, fastening his eyes upon him, with John...", not leaving one another out. Peter is not doing it and John coming on behind. They are moving together, they are one, and in that oneness moving together in the Spirit in such a perfect and beautiful fellowship, they bring in the Name to such account. It takes that oneness to make the Name effective, otherwise it is only a mere formula. The Name came in, with what tremendous effect!

Sometime ago we were speaking about this chapter in its larger significance in relation to Israel. It is set here, a tremendous indication of something much greater - a nation which had been crippled, paralysed, impotent for so long, represented by this man; that nation Israel... impotent, lame, helpless. Why? Because the Name of the Lord was dishonoured. And then the Lord Jesus comes in with the Name, bearing the Name of the Lord, and this man, who represents a crippled, impotent, helpless nation, comes into the value of the Name of the Lord Jesus and is lifted. And it is a testimony to Israel. It is saying quite clearly, "Oh Israel, so helpless for all these years, so lame, so impotent, having all the time to be borne, to be carried. If only you look on Him, the Prince of Life, accept Him, believe His Name, you too shall be lifted from your bed of impotency and set on your feet to leap and praise God." It is the testimony to Israel in Israel's very condition.

What this Name means of a testimony when you find that which the Name signifies there: a real oneness between the Lord's people. Peter and John are two men in whom are gathered up the Christian church; the church is very fully represented by them and they are in this place of spiritual oneness in the Name and things happen. If the Lord gets a condition like that, then the Name is a functioning thing, a mighty thing. Do you see that what the Lord wants is to bring in again the expression and testimony to the mighty power of the Name of the Lord Jesus and what that Name means and can result in? But He has to get it in consistency with what it means, that is, a spiritual oneness, a mighty spiritual oneness, for the Name means unity. We were all made one in that Name. If we are truly in that Name, there is a glorious oneness. It works out in just the opposite of what the Lord had to do with the people of Babylon. He said, "They are one people, and they have all one language", and He confounded their language and scattered them abroad. Their work ceased because they did not understand one another. That is the result of their trying to get a name. But when you really do get the Name which God does allow, which God does accept, which God does recognize, the only Name that He recognizes as a universal Name, you get one language, one speech. It does not matter where you come from, you understand one another in the Spirit without opening your mouth. There is a common intercourse in the Spirit between all those who are really in the Name. It is a heavenly language which only those who belong to the Lord understand, but they do understand. Sometimes it is language conveyed only by a look. Some of us have met those from countries whose language we cannot understand, but we have met them and at once we have spoken to one another, we have had intercourse at once just in the look and in some interchange of spirit. We are in Christ. Well, the Name means a deep inward oneness.

The Authority of the Name

It means universality, unity and authority. Here we have it in Acts 3. The Name was authoritative. It spoke of Christ being in the place of power, of authority. The whole testimony of Peter and John to the people who ran together was concerning the exaltation of the Lord Jesus to the place of authority. That is all gathered up into His Name. Given the real foundation or basis of that Name, that is, given our being right in the place that that Name signifies, there is tremendous authority there, there is tremendous power there.

We have to get into a spiritual position before the Name functions in its power, in its authority, but having got there, then that Name means authority over all the power of the Evil One over every situation. When there, being in harmony with the Name, consistent with the Name, on the ground of the holiness of that Name, the oneness of that Name, the honour and glory of that Name, being there through the blood in the meaning of the Name, where the blood has dealt with all that is contrary to the very meaning of that Name such as unholiness and Satan's work in divisions, and we stand really, truly, on the ground of the Name, oh, what tremendous things can happen, and did happen! Said Peter and John, "Silver and gold have I none; but what I have, that I give thee." And what had they? "In the Name of Jesus...". I have the Name of Jesus! We have the Name of Jesus, and that will do you more good than all the fortunes of this world. If you had asked that man afterwards, "Well, would you sooner have had your legs given to you or five pounds or a hundred pounds?" I am quite sure he would have said: "The Name of Jesus brought me something far more than all the wealth of this world could bring me!" The Name of Jesus has bound up with it tremendous values, tremendous enrichments. It is the power of walking and leaping and praising God. It is the testimony of the Name.

I close where we commenced, saying this, that what the Lord needs is that vessel here among His people which holds for Him His thought in fulness concerning these three great things in relation to His Son - the testimony of the blood, the testimony of the cross, and the testimony of the Name. I do ask you to pray very definitely, very much, that the Lord will - if it is a matter of recovering, reviving, reconstituting, or bringing in a new cruse altogether - move very strongly to have for Himself a living ministry which keeps in a living way this threefold testimony before His people - the tremendous significance of the blood of Jesus; the great meaning and value of the cross of the Lord Jesus and then His Name, that it may be honoured, that all its honour, its glory, its majesty, its uniqueness, may be felt among us, that there may be more done by the Name of Jesus to His glory. The Lord grant it!

Table of Contents

Author's Rights

Contents

Chapter 1 - The Conflict in Relation to the Testimony

Chapter 2 - A New and Living Way

Chapter 3 - Resurrection Life by the Blood

Chapter 4 - The New Covenant in the Blood

Chapter 5 - Divine Fulness

Chapter 6 - God's Witness Concerning His Son

Chapter 7 - The Name