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The Way

by T. Austin-Sparks

From unpublished manuscripts of spoken messages. Published on the web in March 2012.

Contents

Chapter 1 - Introduction

Chapter 2 - The Meaning of Christ's Birth and Burial

Chapter 3 - The Meaning of Christ's Anointing

Chapter 4 - The Meaning of Christ's Walk

Chapter 5 - The Meaning of Christ's Sufferings

Chapter 1 - Introduction

"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me'" (John 14:6).

"Saul... went to the high priest, and asked letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem" (Acts 9:1-2).

"Following after Paul and us, she kept crying out, saying, 'These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation'" (Acts 16:17).

"But when some were becoming hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way before the people, he withdrew from them and took away the disciples" (Acts 19:9).

"About that time there occurred no small disturbance concerning the Way" (Acts 19:23).

"And I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and putting both men and women into prisons" (Acts 22:4).

"But this I admit to you, that according to the Way which they call a sect I do serve the God of our fathers" (Acts 24:14).

"But Felix, having a more exact knowledge about the Way, put them off" (Acts 24:22).

The Lord Jesus said of Himself that He was the Way. Almost immediately after He had gone back to heaven and the events of the day of Pentecost had inaugurated the new era, Christianity became known as "The Way". Christ, Who always had to speak in a kind of parabolic way without giving explanations because the Holy Spirit had not yet come as the Interpreter, meant that He was the Pathway. Just simply, undefined, unexplained, He was the Pathway. Christianity took that up, but by the Holy Spirit embodied all that Christ meant by that, but did not explain. Christianity became the fulness of the meaning of Christ as the Way. These two aspects, then, Christ's own simple statement as to Himself, and Christianity becoming the full expression of what He meant, just resolves itself into several quite simple, but quite important things: firstly, what the Way is; secondly, what Christ meant as to Himself, and thirdly, what Christianity was at the beginning, and was always intended to be. Those things will be the ground of our consideration and enlargement at this time.

What the Way Is

Firstly, what a way is. A way is that which links together a desire and its realization, a goal and its attainment, a beginning and an end. That is perfectly simple, almost too simple, and yet there is a profound fulness in that simple definition when it comes to the Lord Jesus. The goal, according to His statement, was and is, the Father. The object is coming to the Father. "No one comes to the Father but through Me."

That implies two or three things. Firstly, that implies a closed way. It says to all men - "no man". "No man comes." So that all cannot come. The way is not open that anybody and everybody can just come or go to the Father willy-nilly, anyhow; that they will all get there sooner or later. "No man" means that there is a closed door; it is a governed door or way.

Then, it implies an exclusive way - "but through Me". That is exclusive, that is the only way. It is selective, it is discriminating: "But through Me".

But then it also has its positive side which shows that there is an open way. "I am the way." So much, then, for what a way is.

What Christ Meant as to Himself

Now as to what Christ meant as to Himself. Here we will just state the thing in broad outline and spend more time on it later. What did Christ mean when He said, "I am the way"?

a) The Representative of people whom the Father will receive

Firstly, He meant that there is a kind of person who alone could be received by the Father. There is a particular and special kind of person who will get to the Father and no one else, and Christ meant that He was that kind of person. He set forth in Himself what kind of people will be found with the Father, who the Father will receive and have with Him. It is a particular kind of people, and Christ is the representative of that people, because He is speaking about people coming to the Father. He is not saying that no one ever will get to the Father. But what He is really saying is that those who get to the Father will be of a special and particular kind, and He is that kind, "It will be when people take on My character and My nature and My likeness that they will be with the Father." That is simple and we will spend much more time on that presently.

b) Christ removes the reason for the closed way

Then He meant that the reason for the way being closed was dealt with and removed by Him. "No man" - that is a closed door. That door closed at a certain time. There was a particular point in the history of man when God closed the door and man could no longer pass through to God. We know the whole story. But the Lord Jesus has dealt with all that, and because He has done that, the way is open, but it is open only in Him and through Him. The first thing that we said as to the kind of person that gets to God, has to do with the Person of the Lord Jesus. The second thing as to the ground of the closed door being taken away has to do with His work.

c) The way is a Person

The third thing that He meant - and I am quite sure that those of you who know your Bibles at all will be able to see that I am not speaking out of myself, I am speaking closely according to the content of the Word of God - and the third thing that He meant was that the way is not a thing, the way is not a system, the way is a Person. The Person is representative of God's mind and inclusive of all those who, through faith, are in Christ. He is a great representative Person and He becomes a great inclusive Person. That again further awaits our fuller consideration.

d) Sonship the basis of coming to the Father

And fourthly, what the Lord Jesus meant when He said, "I am the way... no one comes to the Father but through Me" clearly indicates the basis of this coming to the Father. The very word that He uses, and uses carefully, He uses every time knowing what He is doing; not casually, for later in the Gospel by John He made the statement, "I have manifested Your name" (John 17:6). The basis of coming to the Father is sonship. The condition is being begotten, because it is coming, though it is not said here, to God. Here it is not a matter of getting to heaven or getting into the church; it is a matter of getting "to the Father" and that determines the basis of any kind of standing in the presence of the Father: begotten of God, children of God, sonship.

Well now, that is broadly what the Lord Jesus meant when He said, "I am the way."

What Christianity Essentially Is

Then we come to what Christianity essentially is. Christianity is not a system; Christianity is not a religion; Christianity is not a form of teaching or practice or procedure. Christianity is first and last a Person. Christianity is a Person Whose constitution and nature and essential being becomes the Way. Christianity takes on the values of the Person. It is not Christianity's business to preach doctrines, to set up systems of practice; Christianity's whole business is to set forth Christ, to bring Christ livingly into view, to register Christ as a living Person upon the world. It is that that makes Christianity the Way. You can have all the other and people never find God and people never come to new birth to become children of God, and therefore, after all, Christianity may be failing in its ultimate responsibility of bringing about a vital union between man and God as the Father.

You may have all the other and fail. Christianity is a Person in expression, a Person in revelation, a Person in impact. It is Christ Himself in His church, His Body, making Himself and His presence known. If Christianity is the making real of Christ as the Way and so embodying all that Christ is and has done to bring to the Father, then Christianity must take up into itself those things which were true of Christ, making Him the Way.

Christ Provides God with Perfect Satisfaction

The door is closed when God is not satisfied. There is no way through. Somehow God has got to be satisfied. This One, the Lord Jesus, has provided God with perfect satisfaction; God is satisfied. Christianity (or the church, it is the same thing in the mind of God, for our purposes we are using the term Christianity) must be characterized by God's satisfaction. That is, Christians must be living wholly in the good of God having been satisfied. They must be a satisfied people. There is no testimony, no registration, no value, no influence unless there comes through Christians the impression that they are a satisfied people, that their satisfaction rests upon God's satisfaction. Into their hearts there has been born the fact that God is satisfied.

It is a fundamental thing which Satan and all the evil powers are evermore seeking to upset. It is one of those focal points of the enemy's assault and pressure to rob us of that inborn witness that God is satisfied. You see, it is here that we are to take our character from Christ, what He was and is. He said, "I will give you rest"; "you will find rest for your souls" (Matt. 11:28-29). What did He mean? Well, just this quite simply. Here were a people in anything but rest, labouring and heavy-laden, and that does not mean that they were toiling in the work of this world of everyday vocation. They were labouring under the heavy load of the exacting demands of the Law as it had been developed into thousands of meticulous points by tradition and by the rabbis, so that it was an intolerable strain to try to live up to that standard, demanding an instant watchfulness lest you should slip up and make a mistake.

Life became a burden and a toil under that legal order. The meaning was, 'God is far from satisfied; He is a most dissatisfied, discontented God, and anything and everything that we can do will not please Him, will not satisfy Him. He keeps us all the time, every moment of our lives, on this ground of readiness to condemn, readiness to judge. What a discontented God He is, what a dissatisfied God He is, and therefore how hard it is to love this God, to serve this God. How difficult this kind of God makes our lives! There is no rest in this life.' The Lord Jesus said, "I will give you rest." How? Because in Him God had found His satisfaction representatively. He is the representative of those who will come by faith in Him to the Father, and then just take what is true of Him into their own hearts; what is true of the Lord Jesus, that God is satisfied, that God can look at His Son and say, "My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased" (Matt. 3:17). Then these through faith in Him can be accepted in the beloved One. God is satisfied with them in Christ, and so they come to rest, the whole burden has gone, the whole strain has gone, the whole intolerable labour, laboriousness, has gone. "Rest for your soul". So Christ is the way to the Father because He is the satisfaction of the Father.

Now Christians can only minister Christ, be here as expressing Him as the Way, and in effect being the Way (that is that vessel, instrument, channel and vehicle, of Christ to others) insofar as Christians themselves are living in, and enjoying, God's satisfaction. To put that the other way, our helpfulness, our usefulness, our serviceableness for the Lord to men will depend entirely upon the measure of God's satisfaction and rest in our own hearts. Hence the enemy will seek to destroy our usefulness, destroy our testimony, destroy our serviceableness, be constantly attempting to upset that rest and bring us again in some way to feel that God is a very dissatisfied God where we are concerned. That is maligning God, undercutting the work of the Lord Jesus, and setting at naught the very meaning of His Person. It is again closing the way to men.

It is very practical, this matter of the Way. There is no theory about this. You see, the Lord Jesus brought men to God not officially, but spiritually. The thing that drew people to God through Jesus Christ was that this Man has rest, this Man knows what rest is, this Man somehow or other speaks altogether of satisfaction, God's satisfaction. There is no strain in this Man's life. Rest is the secret of labour. Labour without rest, and your labour is for naught. Have rest, and your labour is fulfilled. The Lord's servants must know what it is to be in the enjoyment of the Father's satisfaction with the Son and with them in Him.

Christ's Sense of Sufficiency

The Lord Jesus was wonderfully independent in the right sense, wonderfully independent of this world. There is about Him, as you study and watch and follow, a sense of sufficiency, being cared for, being looked after. He had nothing in this world, and probably deliberately so, in order that having nothing in this world, He might prove that God can look after people who have nothing in this world, and that they need not suffer any lack. Interpret that spiritually, and you see that wonderful confidence and assurance in Christ's life. He was never fretted about things. He said "But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith!" (Matt. 6:30). "So don't worry about tomorrow" (Matt. 6:34). A carefree life in all those realms; that was the Lord Jesus, and He spoke to people who were so burdened with care about everything, whose lives were such a strain.

Now that, of course, has an application in temporal things, but for the moment I want to keep on the spiritual side. That name "Father" was used by the Lord Jesus with the object of indicating that people who came to Him through Jesus Christ would be well looked after. "Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things" (Matt. 6:32); "Your Father"; "How much more will your heavenly Father...?" (Luke 11:13). It was because the Lord Jesus knew God, (if I may put it this way, not forgetting the facts of Deity and Trinity, but as Man here), in such a real way as Father that He had a life of such sufficiency, such assurance, and freedom from fret and anxiety, that people were drawn to the Father. If they came to the Father at all in His day and afterwards, they came because they saw that this was the way of deliverance from all their worries and burden of care. Here again Christianity must take its character from Christ if it is going to bring people to God, if it is going to serve in the capacity of the Way, if it really is going to live up to that original definition and designation - the Way. Christians must enter into that which was true of the Lord Jesus, that His Fatherhood means - and it cannot mean anything else - it means that they will be looked after. They may be tested, they may be tried, but they will be looked after. That is very simple, but "Father" means sufficiency - it must mean that.

Life in Christ

And then how much was one word upon the lips of our Lord, that word 'life'. "I came that they may have life" (John 10:10). When the Lord Jesus uses that word it means something more than existence, something more than just managing to get along. Life with Him is a quality of life; it is a great life, it is a wonderful life; it is a life no one knows anything about but those who have it. It is so different. You may have everything that this world contains and can give. When you come to have this Life that is in Christ, you discover you have something more than ever the world could possibly give you, and it is not just something more, it is something different. The difference is found in its contrast.

Those who have this Life do not have their circumstances made easier. Indeed, it very often seems - and I think it is quite true - that the Christian life, so far as circumstances are concerned, is a much more difficult life than anyone else's. We seem to be let in for something, a lot of trouble, when we come into the Lord Jesus, trouble that would never come our way otherwise. We meet a new world of opposition, and yet is it not true that, with all the suffering and difficulty of the Christian life, the true Christian would not give up that life for all that the world possesses? That is the Christian's testimony and that testimony is wrought out on the anvil of suffering. It is moulded in the fire, it is hammered out in affliction. The strange thing about Christians is this, that whereas they suffer so much, they cannot contemplate giving up Christ.

It has always been that, that has drawn people to God in true Christianity. Christianity becomes the Way, in effect, as Christ was the way, when it embodies that blessed spiritual reality of Christ - a life that is different, transcendent, more blessed and precious than any other life.

Well, all that is but introductory, indicating something of the meaning firstly, of Christ as the Way and then of Christianity being called the Way.

Five Main Features of Christ as the Way

From that point we have to go yet more fully. There are five main features of Christ as the Way. I have indicated some characteristics of Christ, but there are these major features of Christ as the Way. I mention them now, and leave their consideration for later on. These five features of Christ as the Way are the meaning of His birth, the meaning of His baptism, the meaning of His anointing with the Holy Spirit, the meaning of His walk here on the earth, and the meaning of His sufferings. We will consider them one by one in greater fulness.

The Meaning of His birth

But we may begin with the first - the meaning of His birth, and by that I mean His humanity, His manhood. God's normal way to man is by man. God's normal way for man to Himself is by man. Even in those extraordinary visitations in the Old Testament when God Himself came in what are called theophanies, men saw men, and afterwards said it was the Lord. It would be perhaps speculating, and certainly not very convincing or conclusive or profitable to say that that is probably how God walked with Adam in the garden - in a theophany, in the form of a man, just as He came to Abraham, and Abraham afterwards realized that it was the Lord. And so with others.

There have been, of course, independent speakings of God to men without any personal form being taken, but God's normal way to man is by man, and for man to Himself through man. Manhood is God's means and method of communication. Bear that in mind. God has so often refused to act independently of man. He has made Himself so largely dependent upon man. He has so largely committed Himself to man. In a very real sense God has put Himself into the hands of men. That is a very solemn truth. But remember that it is man in union with God who is God's instrument and means of bringing others to Himself, being His Way. That is, it is a certain kind of man: man according to God.

So we are brought to the fact of manhood. God never has and never does really commit Himself to a system. You may say that the Old Testament contradicts that. No, it does not. God never really committed Himself to the Old Testament system. The Old Testament system which God used was not the truth, it was not the reality, it was only a figure. If God had really committed Himself to that system and been really a part of it, He could never have allowed it to perish, He would have gone down with it. But when that system in any way failed God, God could wash His hands of it, He could desert the tabernacle in Shiloh, leaving it an empty shell. He never really committed Himself to a system, and He never does; He may use things, but that is as far as He will go. A system is not the truth.

When the Lord Jesus, pointing to the temple in Jerusalem, and then pointing to its counterpart in Samaria, Mount Gerizim, said, "But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth" (John 4:23), He was drawing a broad line of distinction between these objective, outward, temporal means, and the reality; saying, 'This is not the real thing, this is not the truth. I am the Truth, and I am the Way because I am the Truth.'

The fact of manhood is that God's way to Himself and God's way to man is by personal representation. Get hold of that: personal representation. "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness" (Gen. 1:26). That is God in representation. Man was made to be representative of God. I am keeping the clear distinction between humanity and Deity. I am talking about manhood. Man was conceived and made on the principle of representation. "Our image, Our likeness". That man failed, but another Man came and said, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father" (John 14:9). That is the whole principle of manhood where God is concerned - God brought near, God brought into view, God brought present in man-form. "Immanuel... God with us" (Matt. 1:23). God's likeness seen - representation, mediation, a two-way union, one hand on God, the other hand on man, and the Man of the hands bringing the two together, standing to mediate God to man and bring man to God. "For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5). Why did the Holy Spirit see to it that the apostle put that in? "The man". And again, "For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead" (1 Cor. 15:21). As through man sin, and through sin death, so through man righteousness and through righteousness Life - that is the argument of the letter to the Romans, but the emphasis is always upon this word 'man'. God's way.

So the birth of Christ or the incarnation is a master concept. God has solved this whole problem in manhood, manhood after His own mind, His own heart, and that manhood is exclusively realised and revealed in Jesus Christ. Christianity does not become in that identity Christ, but Christianity is supposed to be the expression of the truth that there is a new creation, there is one new man; that in union with Christ we are members of His Body, of His flesh and of His bone. There is a spiritual manhood brought into being with the church and so the church fulfils the function of Christ to bring God present where two or three are gathered into His Name, to reveal what God is like. Oh, how we fail! But this is the original concept of Christianity. This is exactly what it means that Christianity was called the Way. What is God's way? God's way is man according to His own mind, expressing Himself, embodying Himself; that is God's way. That is God's way for man to Himself, and that is God's way for Himself to man - by man.

What is the point? The majority of us take the name "Christian". We are in this thing called Christianity. But you see, Christianity originally, initially, was called the Way, which meant that it took its character from Him Who declared Himself to be the Way, and therefore Christianity is supposed to be that which by Christ, because of Christ, brings God into view. God cannot be seen in a world like this except through men and women. It is the world that we are thinking about. What God is like in His own realm of heaven we do not know, how He is seen there and heard there we do not know. That is another order. There will have to be a whole new set of faculties for seeing and hearing God nakedly, so to speak, in His own realm. When in a world like this, because this world is constituted on the human basis, the only way in which God can really be seen and known and understood is through man.

Christianity is supposed to be that collective man in Christ, Christ in it. It is a challenge. The next chapter will bring us very closely up against that challenge. But here is the statement of fact. What are we as Christians? What is the very idea of Christianity? What is its concept? What is its nature? What is its purpose? Oh, Christianity has become so many things! Christianity has taken on so many features. But let us get right back to the beginning. What was it? And how simple is the way in which it is put forth - the Way - and that meant a kind of person that comes to God, and a kind of person that is able to bring others to God. It is men, it is manhood, it is humanity, and Christianity can be gathered up into that wholly and solely, that it is a human expression of the Lord, an expression of the Lord in a world of human beings by a kind of people that are different from all other people. The difference is that they show forth the excellencies of Him Who called them out of darkness into His marvellous light (1 Peter 2:9).

You will see that the Lord's purpose is really to get down to the nature of Christianity and to get back to its true essence - the Way. The Lord help us to see it, and the Lord do something in us that others will be able to come to Him and will come to Him because they see the Way in us.

Chapter 2 - The Meaning of Christ's Birth and Burial

We believe what we have from the Lord is based upon the conviction that Christianity as we know it is, before very long, going to be shaken to its very foundations, and that a great structure which is called Christianity is going to crash and disintegrate. I believe that what has already happened in the East is not far distant for this part of the world. Indeed, the signs are not lacking that it has begun, and certain observers are aware of what is happening. That being the case, which remains to be proven and seen, we should expect the Lord to be speaking very seriously, solemnly and definitely with such a contingency in view. We should expect that He would be speaking about the true eternal nature of Christianity, the kind of Christianity that will go through the shaking and survive, and that conviction lies behind what He has given us. Therefore we have been turned to these seven references in the book of the Acts where Christianity is originally called the Way, as the full explanation of what the Lord Jesus said about Himself, that He was the Way. If we understand what He meant, having been much more fully revealed and disclosed in the ministry of the Holy Spirit after His ascension, we shall be able to understand what kind of a Christianity it is that the Lord wants that will go through the fires and the shakings which are bound to come.

There is a vast amount of praying for revival. The question is: what can the Lord revive? And then further, is the Lord really going to do a great thing which will only mean the strengthening of something that is not real, or will the Lord permit the great shaking in order to revive what is revivable? I leave you to answer the question, but the necessity for us is to know what it is that the Lord would revive.

So we come back to those features and elements of Christianity as it was fresh from the hands of the Holy Spirit at the beginning.

The Difference Between the Two Humanities

That makes it necessary for us to understand the nature of man according to God; what God's mind is about us as human beings, for it is there the focal point of God's movement with mankind is found. You and I have not yet become sufficiently awake to the real and utter difference between the two humanities - Christ's humanity and ours. It is just there that we need a very real waking up. It is just there that the enemy concentrates his attention to keep us asleep or to deceive us. You see, the words used by God about man as he is now found in this world since Adam's sin are very utter and final words. When God uses the word 'lost' in relation to man, He means lost. He means that man is lost, and if you are lost you are lost; you just have to say, 'Well, I am lost.' When God uses the word 'dead', He means dead, dead in trespasses and sins. "This son of mine was dead" (Luke 15:24) is the parable, but contains the truth. And when God uses the word 'dead' about man, He means that; and when God uses the phrase 'afar off', He means afar off. When God uses the word 'alienated', He means that, just what we mean by alienate, made foreign, of another kind of nature, nationality, of another race. An alien is a foreigner, not a native, and when God uses the word 'alienate' as He does, He is saying, 'You belong to another race, another order of being, another nationality; you are a foreigner, afar off and foreign to God.' These are utter words.

Now all errors have their taproot there. You will find all errors to contain something faulty about the conception of man. Either there is that in man which makes it possible for him to be his own saviour, or some other form of making something of man which puts it within his own power and scope to do something to make himself acceptable to God, whether it be the humanism at one end, or whether it be the ritualism at the other. There are many phases between that declare that man does not need a saviour, he is his own saviour, he has only to cultivate what is in him... there is the God and the Christ in every one of us by nature; this is natural religion. That on one side. On the other, all your works, your good works, your religious works and activities, your observances of rites and so on, will bring you to acceptance with God. In between the two extremes there are many phases, all of which put something to the credit of man. Every error is rooted there.

Christ's birth, the incarnation, embodies this fact: that the very beginning holds an unbridgeable gap. Right at the very beginning where man is concerned there is an unbridgeable difference. That is the meaning of the virgin birth. If you can repeat that, if you can duplicate that, if you can imitate that, if you can reproduce that, you have bridged the gap. If you cannot, the gap remains. And that is the whole significance of the virgin birth. There is something initial that no one can repeat, no one can reproduce, no one can duplicate. That is something by itself, different from all the processes of nature, different from all the will of the flesh, different from all the will of man. The will of man, the will of the flesh, the processes of nature, are brought to a standstill there. That is the end of all human capability. When it comes to the virgin birth, you have something that is altogether outside of the course of humanity as we know it. It is a break in from the outside of another world, and therefore of another order, another humanity.

The birth of Christ sets forth then, that that which is of God and that which is going to come to God because it came from God, is not of this order of humanity. Essentially, fundamentally, there is a difference, and such a difference that cannot be rubbed out and cannot be bridged. There are likenesses, it is true, the human form, the human constitution of spirit, soul and body. All those things are likenesses, but when you have said all that, and look at Jesus Christ, you have another. Deeply and inwardly He is not of this order; He is of another order. There is a mystery about Him that no human mind or intellect can fathom or explain, and you have either got to rule out such a thing as the virgin birth as fiction or falsehood, or you have got to accept that this is something that you cannot account for on any ordinary ground. It must be God.

The Necessity for New Birth

So Christ's initial and fundamental, all-governing imperative, was and is, "You must be born again" (John 3:7). That is in keeping with the incarnation. I am not talking about Christ's Deity, and I am not suggesting or hinting that what takes place in us makes us a part of Deity. You understand that. I am keeping a very wide eternal gap between the Deity of Christ and His humanity, and I am only dealing with the significance of His humanity as our Kinsman-Redeemer.

God put man originally into a perfect garden, and man has made it a perfect bear's den. It is man who makes the world, or unmakes it. Always it is man who makes the world what it is, what it becomes. Outward values depend entirely upon inward condition, inward state, and it does not matter how man may develop this world, because man is what he is, the end of all his developments will be suffering and destruction. He cannot help himself. When the Lord Jesus says such things as "you will be hearing of wars and rumours of wars" (Matt. 24:6), He is not just making a prophetic statement in an objective way that that is how things will be. He is speaking on principle and He is saying in effect, that man, being what he is, will only increase difficulties in this world, he will only bring about an ever-increasing state of conflict because he himself is a conflict, he himself is all disrupted.

War is not some objective thing; war is what man is in himself! Can you deny that? In spite of man, in spite of his outward efforts, he just does it. Man says, 'The war to end all wars'. Man says, 'This is the last world-war; no more war.' What endless talk there is like that, and all the time if he were a sane creature he would realize that he is only working for more, and the end of his works does mean more, he cannot avoid it. It is the coming out of what man is and you and I know that very well. That is the meaning of this fundamental imperative, "You must be born again." There must be another kind of man to have another kind of world. There must be another humanity. Redemption comes by another kind of humanity, and that is the principle of the incarnation.

Our Discovery of the Difference

You see, the Christian life is one long discovery on the negative side of this difference between Christ and ourselves. Thank God it is not only that, but on one side it is that - one long discovery and realization that we are one thing and Christ is another. That is the basis and the background of all the meaning of the Gospel, all the work of grace, all the growing knowledge of the Lord, all the discipline. There is no meaning in such words as "predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son" (Rom. 8:29) if conformity does not mean a change from one thing to another. Language has no meaning if that is not its meaning. You and I are really in this thing on one side of our Christian experience. What Christ is is something utterly, wholly different from what we are. There lies the real danger in all doctrines of eradication which put young Christians in a position where they believe that everything is done in an instant. They do not know the terrible depths of the difference, and which knowledge is necessary to spiritual education and spiritual growth.

Christ Provides a Way Back to God

If it is true, as God says it is, that man is lost, then he needs a way back. He will never be recovered unless a way is provided and set before him. Christ was never lost, hence He can provide a way, indicate the way, tell you the way. He was never lost, and so He says, 'The way is what I am, I am the way.' The way does not become objective to Christ, something to which He points. He says, 'The way is what I am, and I am the kind of Man that reaches God. I am the kind of humanity that links God's purpose with its realization, God's original beginning with God's end, God's desire with its attainment, and man's too; I am the way.'

So you see, this gives the meaning to Christianity as the Way. Christianity as the Way means that there is another humanity brought in by regeneration or new birth, another kind of being. Is not that the deepest truth and reality about us if we are the Lord's? Oh, I know about all the framework and all that we carry with us, but fundamentally some radical difference has been made, and we know right there deep down in the centre of our being there is that which is against all the rest that is true of us, that knows quite well that all the rest is wrong, all that other has got to be repudiated. Something has happened that has linked us with an order that we are not naturally. Is not that the deepest truth of our being as Christians? We have not just accepted certain teachings and practice and by so doing joined Christianity. Something has happened in us and that happening is that which corresponds to what happened at Bethlehem, a different kind of being has been brought into this world.

The Distinctiveness of Christianity

When Christianity became known as the Way, it surely meant at least that it was something distinct. The article is there every time - the Way. It does not just say a way, although there were others. It is the Way. They were the people of the Way. It was this way, something quite distinct, something different, something other, something recognizable as being other. When you sift it down and ask what it is, you cannot find that it was just because these Christians were changing their religion and their religious procedure. You arrive at this, that these Christians are different people. They are different from all the rest and it is that that makes them known as the Way. It is the way which is marked out by a difference in the people themselves, and when you ask again, What is that difference? - if you had asked these people who formulated that title, that designation, 'What do you mean by the Way?' they would have said, I believe, that they are related to Jesus of Nazareth; Jesus of Nazareth is everything to them. Jesus of Nazareth is all they have to talk about; it is the Jesus way. Ah, it is the only explanation and definition of the Way. It is something which brings Christ into view, something that presents Him. Christianity, therefore, in its very inception, is that which is intended to be the embodiment of Christ as another order of being.

We have said enough about His birth, His humanity, as the inclusive background of what is meant by the Way. It is not some thing, it is a kind of Person.

The Meaning of Christ's Baptism

I said there were five major features of Christ and of Christianity as the Way. That was the first; and the second is the meaning of His baptism. The birth declares the difference in the humanity, of one humanity which will not be acceptable to, or accepted by God and another humanity which will be accepted. That is the secret of the birth.

The baptism, as the next major outstanding thing in Christ's life sets forth the door into the Way. Let us be very clear here. We are not preaching baptism. The apostles did not preach baptism. Oh, but, you say, what about Peter on the day of Pentecost? "Repent... and be baptised" (Acts 2:38). What about Philip and the eunuch? I repeat, they did not preach baptism. But, you say, what about the great commission - "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19)? I repeat, they did not preach baptism. Now, you say, how are you going to get round this? Go straight through it! We are not saying that baptism is the door into the Way. We are not talking about baptism and saying that it in itself is anything; we are talking about baptism in its meaning. It is the meaning, not the thing. Let us leave ordinances aside, for we are not talking about baptism as an ordinance.

The apostles preached Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. They set forth Christ, what He was, Who He was, and what He signified in the sense in which we have been speaking - another, different, and only way - and the Holy Spirit came upon their preaching of Christ and brought conviction and men cried out, "What shall we do?" and then as a reply to a Holy Spirit created conviction about the Lord Jesus, they said, "Repent... and be baptised." You see the order. Baptism derives its value from a seeing of Christ, and God help anybody who is baptised who has not seen Christ - seen Christ, the altogether different, the altogether only.

The Effect of Seeing Christ

Where does it lead me and lead you? When we, under the power of the Holy Spirit, see Christ, we immediately see our own lostness. Is that not true? When the Holy Spirit reveals Christ to us, the immediate accompaniment is the sense that we are lost and we are hopeless. An accompanying despair goes with a real seeing of Christ. That is conviction; call it conviction of sin, if you like. It is conviction of what we are as over against what He is. This difference immediately springs into view.

Christ is one thing and I am another, and the difference is so overwhelming. In myself I am utterly in despair, there is no hope. God's way is not negative. That is just condemnation. God's way is positive and He reaches His ends by contrasts. If God were to come to us and just begin to bring us under condemnation in itself, where would the end of that be? Well, that is a negative way, a very unprofitable way. But if God holds up something and then shows us the contrast between us and it and then tells us this is what He wants where we are concerned, that is a positive way of salvation. That is the revelation of Jesus Christ and it brings this sense of hopelessness in ourselves in order that we may discover that our hope is in Christ. You see, the true effect of an impact of Christ upon the life is despair to begin with, and the continuous effect of the revelation of Jesus Christ is that the more we see Him, the more we see the hopelessness of ourselves as ourselves. To see Him will produce the cry - "Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man" (Luke 5:8). It is the first reaction to a true seeing of Christ. "I am a sinful man."

The Beginning of the Way: A Grave

Now you see, that helps us, for when Christ officially takes up the work of revealing the Way (and I say 'officially' because it was officially that that He did it at the Jordan in His baptism) He was stepping into His finished work as Redeemer, and when He takes up that work of revealing the Way, He makes the very beginning of the Way a grave. The beginning of the Way is a grave; that is the Jordan - a burial. The Holy Spirit makes much of that idea of burial. "We have been buried with Him through baptism into death" (Rom. 6:4). Those who have seen Christ will at once recognize not only the necessity but the blessed possibility of being buried. What I am in contrast with Christ! Let me get buried and out of the way! That is the effect. Let me get off this earth, let me get out of view! The baptism of Christ is the provision for us of a grave, providing our old man with a grave. "Our old man was crucified with him" (Rom. 6:6). "We were buried". Thank God! Let us get into that grave as quickly as we can! It has to be the result of conviction, not because the church says that baptism is something you must conform to and accept, not because in Christianity baptism has a place in the creed and in the practice, not because anybody tells you you ought to be baptised and it is the thing to do; Christ was baptised and you ought to follow His example. None of that. But it is because the Holy Spirit has come to you and made you feel, "Let me get buried as soon as I can!" It is something wrought in us. Do not entertain baptism until the Holy Spirit convicts you. I am not preaching baptism, I am preaching Christ, and saying that His baptism is a figure of our death with Him. He is representative and inclusive, and in His baptism we step right into what God says about us in ourselves, for Christ has taken our place officially and representatively to be carried out of the sight of God.

Ah, but with Him it was a terrible thing, for the counterpart of His baptism was the cry of anguished despair - 'My God, You have forsaken Me!' There is the despair Christ has entered into which is our despair when once the Holy Spirit gets to work upon us. He has touched our despair, our hopelessness, to its uttermost depths; tasted that depth for every man that in His despair our despair should be swallowed up and carried to the grave, that the thing of despair should be put right out of the sight of God. Oh, thank God for the grave! It is the grave of the humanity that God knows it to be. First, what God knows it to be is something that can never stand in His presence. It is the grave of the people who have come to despair because the Holy Spirit has opened their eyes to Christ.

So long as any other hope exists, the way is closed. That is a strange contradiction. So long as any other hope exists, the way to God is closed. If we hope in our works, if we hope in ourselves, if we hope in our own righteousness, the way to God is closed. And that is one of the great emphases of Christ's life on this earth. He thundered about that. Righteousness? - it is your righteousness that bars and locks the door which opens the way to God! Your works, your good works, your religious works? - they are the very things that are keeping that door closed. Your goodness, something in yourself that after all is worthy of God? - such an idea keeps the door fast closed. When you have come to despair about your righteousness, your goodness, your works, your religiousness, you are not far from the kingdom of God, you are on the threshold of the Way, you are at the door, for that door finds people at it, and only people who have lost their hope in any other way or direction.

Well, baptism is something very much more than an ordinance, is it not? Baptism is a funeral, baptism is a conviction; and you do not get convicted that you ought to be baptised, you get convicted that you ought to be buried. If the Lord has provided a way for your putting your conviction into practical expression and that way is baptism, then it is just the meaning of baptism that is all-important and not the thing itself. Although the thing constitutes a challenge to our reality, seeing that we are, after all, human beings, men and women, and not disembodied spirits, we are called upon to put these things into very practical expression, but that follows something of the Spirit's work in us. People come to me and say, 'Ought I to be baptised?' I never say, 'Yes, of course', and I never ask anybody if they have been baptised. But if the matter arises I say, 'Has the Lord spoken to you about that? Has the Lord been troubling you about that? Has the Lord been showing you that that is necessary to express some work of His Spirit in you?' If the answer is 'Yes', what is left for anybody to say? There is no need to come and ask about it; of course the answer is 'Yes'. If that is not the cause of it, do not be baptised on any other ground at all. It is the Holy Spirit bringing the greatest truth home to the human heart, which is that we are fit for nothing but the grave. The Spirit would tell us that, and many of us know that. Perhaps some of you are knowing that as very really now.

Christ's Death Representative and Inclusive

Christ's baptism was representative and inclusive. That has been said many times, but what I mean by that is this - He takes a position as representing us. It is not so many baptisms as there are Christians who are baptised. It is not your baptism and my baptism; it is His death and He takes that place for us and as us and by faith we step right into Him, and, so to speak, we go down into His death and His grave. That is what He did.

And let us say this simple thing again, that it is not something that will happen today. It is something that did happen. This whole thing took place hundreds of years ago. The apostle does not say, 'We are baptised with Him' or, 'We are buried with Him when we are baptised.' He says that we were crucified with Christ, we were buried with Him. We only recognise, acknowledge and accept what took place back then when we ourselves bear this testimony. That is, perhaps, too simple, but it may be necessary. The great, governing phrase of the New Testament is that little phrase "in Him". Sometimes it is put, "together with Him". It is "in Christ".

The Death of Christ an Active Thing

One added word on this. The death of Christ is no mere passive thing. The death of Christ is a power, is dynamic. I think it was Dr. Mabie who many years ago said, long before this present time when we are so familiar with these terms, "The death of Christ is radioactive." Now you know what radioactivity is. You touch some ground which has been affected by radio action! You know you must be insulated, you know it is going to affect you, to disintegrate you; it will make you fall to pieces physically. "The death of Christ", said Mabie "is radioactive"; the death of Christ is a power right up to date. If you and I really come into vital touch with the death of Christ we meet a registration. Let me put that another way. If you and I have really spiritually entered into the meaning of Christ's death, then if we touch something that that death was against, we know it. You touch it, and see if the death of Christ does not register - keep off that; leave that alone; you have died to that; the death of Christ cuts you off from that; the death of Christ witnesses against that; the death of Christ said no more of that! Touch it and the Holy Spirit brings back the power of Christ's death. You say, 'Oh, I wish I had not touched that; I wish I had left it alone; somehow or other that death has touched me.' Anybody spiritually alive knows that that is true. We are not talking about ordinances, performances, rites and ritual, burial as such. We are talking about the death of Christ, and that is a mighty thing. It affects us. It is not a performance, something that we do which is objective to ourselves. It affects us, it testifies in us against a whole world, a whole realm. It witnesses against all that is not of God, and it is a living witness right up to date because the Holy Spirit has charge of that matter and He is alive right up to date.

So, you see, baptism is not some thing. It is a declaration of a deep reality. It is the declaration of the meaning of Christ's death. It is interesting that as soon as Christ steps out into His official work, it is at Jordan - baptism is the door. As soon as the church starts on its course on the day of Pentecost, it is baptism. The very first thing - "Repent... and be baptised." Baptism comes into view. It is the door to the Way, and if the church is going to really express and represent Christ as the Way and in effect be the Way for man, it has got to be a baptised church, that is, a crucified and buried church, raised from the dead. You and I will never, never help people to God except in so far as we are crucified, dead and buried, so far as our old life and nature and relationships are concerned. Only a crucified church can bring the mighty power of the death of Christ to affect other lives.

When John was baptising at Jordan, Jesus came, and different classes and sets of people came to be baptised. The soldiers came, we are told, and the soldiers, whether they were the Roman soldiers or the temple soldiers, represent the strength of this world and the strength of this world, the power of this world, has got to go down into the grave. The publicans came, and they were the commercialists, the embodiment of this world's wit and wisdom and cunning and acquisitiveness, possessiveness along the line of cleverness, and it has all got to go into the grave. And the Pharisees came, and they are the embodiment of a religion that is Christ-less, and it has to go into the grave. Every class in this world is in the grave to be buried. And then the only One Who has an open heaven and the seal of God is a different kind that has come up out of that figurative grave: "My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased". He is the only One to survive the grave and be accepted with God.

That leads us to His anointing in the next chapter.

Chapter 3 - The Meaning of Christ's Anointing

"Then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan coming to John, to be baptized by him. But John tried to prevent Him, saying, 'I have need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?' But Jesus answering said to him, 'Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfil all righteousness.' Then he permitted Him. After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him, and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased'" (Matt. 3:13-17).

"When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent, rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting... And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:1-2,4).

Now we come to the third of these major features of Christ as the Way, one of which we have just read. Its part and its counterpart in Christ and in the church is anointing. The statement is made, "Jesus of Nazareth... God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 10:38). This took place on the ground of resurrection where the new man after God's mind emerges. We are not now trying to say a great deal about the Holy Spirit. This is not a discourse on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the many aspects of the Holy Spirit's Person and work. It is just focussing down upon one thing only, that is, the meaning of Christ's anointing with the Holy Spirit. This is the chief and the inclusive factor and feature in the new creation, in the risen man, the new man: that He is anointed with the Holy Spirit. It is that anointing which marks Him out from heaven by God as that which is acceptable to God and can come to Him and stand before Him in His presence. When the heavens were opened and the voice from heaven was heard saying: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased", God was saying in those few words, 'I have a man Whom I can accept, to Whom I can commit Myself, the Man of My pleasure.' And this One is a type of those who are foreordained to be conformed to His image, and the mark, the seal, the indication of God is the giving of the Holy Spirit in anointing.

That resolves itself into two or three quite simple and concise things. Firstly, that this is something which is wholly of and through God; secondly, this is something which is wholly for God; and thirdly, this is something which is to be wholly by God. Let us look at these things more closely.

Something Wholly of and Through God

The anointing indicates that this is something wholly and exclusively through God. Of all the things that God has ever done, the thing which most of all sets forth the uniqueness and exclusiveness of God's work is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Men can do a very great deal and very many wonderful things when they have got life to handle, but when once life is extinct, man has to close the door and walk out. He can do no more. If God does not go in and take up the situation, that is the end for ever. It is God and God only. And so the emphasis is so constantly made in the New Testament, after the Holy Spirit had come, upon the fact that God raised Him. "You nailed (Him) to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. But God raised Him up again" (Acts 2:23-24).

It was a unique and peculiar intervention of God, the fact that this One is back here alive, and there is no question about His death. We need not stay to go over that ground, to see how very sure His death was made. This is no theatrical set-up, no pretence. His death was real, and the fact that He is now back here alive represents a mighty intervention of God in the whole course of human history.

Perhaps you think there have been other resurrections from the dead. No, there have not. There have been resuscitations, but no resurrections, and there is a great deal of difference between resuscitation and resurrection. The resurrection body of the Lord Jesus Christ is something altogether different from any other body that was resuscitated - raised from the dead, you may say - yes, in a certain sense that was true of Lazarus, it was true of Dorcas, it was true of the daughter of Jairus, but not in the sense in which it was true of the raising of Jesus from the dead. We will not stay with that. There is plenty to be gathered in to give proof of that and to explain it, but it is something which is distinct, which never was before, in its nature. If God does that, it says that thing is wholly through God. The very existence of that is through God, the very being of that is through God, and God sets His seal upon that as having its being only by His intervention and His unique action. The anointing says that the existence of this One or this thing is something which could only be by God and is only through God. That is very simple, perhaps, in statement, but you see that is one of the constituents of Christ as the Way, and it is that which is taken up in Christianity - the Christianity, of course, of the beginning. It is not true of the Christianity we know today, but the Christianity with which we are dealing, with which we are occupied at the beginning, was that.

Here is something which, by the anointing Spirit, is marked out as God's act. No one else brought this into being, nothing else could produce this. This is of that nature which is not of the will of man or of the will of the flesh, but God. The only Christianity which will abide and go through the ordeal of fire and testing at the end into which we have already come is the Christianity which is only through God, not of man's making, producing, organizing or propagating, but something that God does. We have to be very sure that we rest upon that. It is not the Christianity of our parents, it is not the Christianity of our associations, of our Christian education, or of our Christian tradition, of our denomination, of our society; it is the Christianity which rests upon God having done something in us that no other power in this universe could do; that we have received the Holy Spirit of anointing which attests that this is something of God, and therefore God can set His seal upon it and say, 'That is a thing with which I am wholly well-pleased.'

The counterpart of that is in the word - "He has made us accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. 1:6 A.V.). It is a pity that the translators have not given the full translation. They have just left it "accepted in the Beloved" which many Christians have thought to mean 'accepted among Christians'; "in the Beloved" - that is the family of God. That, of course, is included, but it does not mean that. The word is in the masculine - "the beloved One", so that this Christ standing on the far bank of Jordan under an open heaven as the attested Beloved, is the One in Whom we are accepted; beloved of God in Christ even as He is beloved of God. That is the meaning of the anointing and that is the Way. That is Christ as the Way, and that is what makes the church the way, and oh, that the church were like that, oh, that Christianity were after that kind, that all knowing it and coming into touch with it could really recognize and sense, feel that there is something here that is not of man; it is only of God.

But let us not think in broad terms. Let us come right back to ourselves. Is our very existence a testimony to something that God alone could do and God has done, and the witness is that we have received the Spirit?

Something Wholly For God

Then this is wholly for God. The whole history of anointing through the Old Testament in figure, type and in symbol, is related to that which was anointed, being separated unto God, being hedged around for God, being shut up to God alone. This, by the anointing, is God's sole and only property. Various words - consecration, sanctification, holiness, separation, are all the same thing in essence and root. They all mean that this thing is put apart from all else for God, distinguished from everything else, separated from everything else, apart from everything else - it is God's, it is unto God. It is not to itself, it is not to the world, it is not for men. So the apostle puts that great truth into familiar words when he says, "For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf" (2 Cor. 5:14-15). The anointing takes away all our rights to ourselves, rights to our own lives, rights to our own interests, rights to our own prospects, rights to our own arrangements and plans and programmes. It takes away all those rights and puts those rights in God's hands, saying that our future, our time, our strength, our everything, is now in God's hands. The Holy Spirit has come and taken hold of that.

How true that was of the Lord Jesus. Every moment of that brief but so full life was unto God, not unto men's systems, not unto the thing that was there established, the religious order; but every movement, word, every going or staying was by consultation with the Father. The Spirit consumed Him unto God as a mighty consuming fire. So the anointing says that what God has raised together with Christ is for God. That is searching. That has got to come down meticulously to all the points of our lives. Oh, that we were alive to this! No doubt most of you who are the Lord's do consult the Lord about most things in your lives, ask for His guidance and His counsel, but that is just the system, largely the external system, of our lives. There is a very great deal more inside of us that has to be subjected to the scrutiny of God. We have got to get the permission of God to think like that, to feel like that. We have to bring our moods to the Lord, our temperamentalisms to the Lord, and say, 'Lord, is it right to be like this? Is this acceptable to You that I feel like this, that I am down like this? Is this right, is this really for God?' It has to run right through our whole being. That is what it means to be filled with the Spirit.

If you are filled with the Spirit there is no room for anything else - you are filled, that is all, and to be filled means that God occupies the uttermost recess and corner, and dictates about everything. We shall only get over and out of our moods and our bad times as we come into the presence of the Lord and say, 'Lord, I do not believe that this is what glorifies You; that this is of the Holy Spirit; that this is right; that this is in the realm of the well-pleasing; because of that, it must be changed.' You have got to have an adequate motive. If you just come because you are feeling miserable and say, 'Lord, I am feeling so miserable, do make me a little happier' - that is for yourself. Do you think that is an adequate motive? 'Lord, I am having such a bad time, do give me a better time.' Is that good enough? No! 'Lord, this is not of the Spirit, this is not for Your glory, this does not speak of a Spirit-filled life, this does not correspond to the anointing, this can produce nothing for the Lord.' That is an adequate ground upon which the Lord can work. It is our motives that the Spirit searches out, and so the anointing goes through like a refining fire to deal with all motives, all thoughts and intents of the heart to bring about an inclusive state where it is all unto the Lord.

Something Wholly by God

Then the anointing signifies that all is by God. Everything from that point is to be by God. All the values of the anointed life are for God. All the future possibilities of a life from that point on the other side of Jordan under the open heaven, all the possibilities of that life, from that moment, are from God only. Oh, you can go and do ten thousand things with your life. You can be very successful in your own sphere, your own profession, you can accomplish many things without the anointing, but the point is - how much of that is related to the eternal purposes of God and will be seen in eternity? How much of that will go right through? How much of that will appear again with eternal glory? How much of that will have served the ends of God? That is the question, and nothing whatever can serve God's ends that does not come out from God, and is not done by God. That is very thorough. The anointing means that we are given the power to know the things which are of God, and no unanointed person can know the things which are of God. That is categorically stated in the Scriptures. The things which are of God are a closed realm, a closed book, until we have the anointing. So that, what can you do without knowledge, what can you be without knowledge in any sphere of life? Well, nothing is possible if we do not know anything about it; we are just helpless, impotent. And so in the realm of the things of God, the Holy Spirit of anointing is given that we might know the things which are of God.

It means that the anointing introduces us into a new and other world of knowing, and the knowing is the beginning of everything, because you can never do until you know, and therefore the anointing leads on to capacities for doing what no one else can do, and the anointing is given that we might go through what no one else can go through and may be found at last standing when everything else has gone. He is the eternal Spirit. Everything with Him is of an eternal character and nature. The great phrase which governs all this is 'in the Spirit'. "I was in the Spirit", said John (Rev. 1:10); "praying in the Holy Spirit" (Jude 20); everything in the Spirit. It is the great comprehensive, but very detailed governing thing, is this little phrase - 'in the Spirit'. Anything that is not done in the Spirit will not be of any value - from heaven's standpoint, I mean, from eternity's standpoint. It has no spiritual value. It is only prayer in the Spirit that counts, but prayer in the Spirit does count. Preaching is valueless unless it is in the Spirit, preaching in the Spirit. Walking in the Spirit - which means our conduct, our way of life - in the Spirit. It is all to be in the Spirit.

When the Holy Spirit comes in anointing, He comes as the very preciousness of Christ. The very preciousness of Christ comes with the Holy Spirit. That which is precious to God in Christ is brought to the Life by the Holy Spirit, and when the Holy Spirit is there, there is that which is very precious to God. That life, like a vessel, holds a very precious treasure. It is the preciousness of Christ. "This precious value, then, is for you who believe", says Peter (1 Pet. 2:7), so that "He reproved kings for their sakes, saying, Do not touch My anointed ones, and do My prophets no harm" (1 Chron. 16:21-22). 'My Spirit is upon them, there is something very precious to Me there.' You be careful how you speak about a person who has the Holy Spirit; you be very careful what you do with an anointed vessel. God's eye is upon that, the Spirit is there, and the Spirit implies the preciousness of Christ. There is something there very sacred to God and very precious to God.

The Holy Spirit has ever, by anointing, singled out the object of anointing as something before God in dignity, something set up in dignity. The old symbol of the setting up of a pillar and anointing it, carries this significance: something which is set up before God, having the Spirit upon it; set up, not lying prone upon the earth in that undignified position of helplessness and impotence that cannot stand up, cannot lift itself up, but something that has been set up before God. The anointing means that the anointed are set up before God in dignity. You go back over the Old Testament and you see what dignity the anointing gave. These are kings and priests unto God; there is something dignified about this, and an anointed life before God is something very dignified. There is no conceit, no self-sufficiency, no pride, but we ought to recognize that, having the Spirit, there is something there with us of very great importance to God. There is a right sense in which we are very important, in showing men the way to God. It is no use our going about as though we had lost everything in the world, as though we are poor, miserable wretches hardly holding ends together, going to everybody to try and get help, full of self-pity like beggars or paupers. That is a contradiction and a denial of the anointing.

The anointing sets us up in a right sense and makes us dignified and gives us competence, something to draw upon, wealth, standing. The élite of God are the anointed. They are the aristocracy of heaven. The anointing means that. Take that in the right way and ask the Lord to save us from our pettiness, our misery, our lack of real dignity. This is the way. You read the book of the Acts and see that these people were not going about the world begging for help to carry on the work of the Lord or for their own sustenance. They were dignified, and, in a sense, independent people who could in a right spirit say, 'We have got what you need, we do not have to come to you to get what we need, we have it; it is with us.'

The Lord save us from spiritual pride, the pedestal, but at the same time, make us people who know that we have, if I may use a vulgarism, "got the goods", we have got the answer, we have got the solution. God needs the Josephs today. When the problem of spiritual sustenance is so acute, the problem of spiritual bread so pressing, when Christianity does not know, it is for a people like Joseph to know the secret. "In whom the spirit of God is" (Gen. 41:38).

Well, that is the way. You all agree, that is the way. Christ was like that and therefore He was the Way. The Lord would have us like that because we are not straining this application. We have Scripture for it, that "Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God" (2 Cor. 1:21). In Him we are anointed, and so Christianity should be the Way in this sense - a people whose existence is accounted for by God; a people who are utterly and wholly for God; and a people who are marked all the time by things which God is doing; their sufficiency is of God, and it is a glorious sufficiency. The Lord make us such a people of the Way.

Chapter 4 - The Meaning of Christ's Walk

We now come to the fourth of the five major features of Christ as the Way - His walk.

There are two fragments to which I would like to refer - one in the Gospel by John, the other in the first letter of John. "Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, 'I am the light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life'" (John 8:12). Here is a walking in the Way, and the Way is Christ. "The one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked" (1 John 2:6). We can just look at that last clause - "as He walked".

When we quietly consider and meditate upon the life of the Lord Jesus during the three and a half years of His walk in the midst of men, there are certain things about Him which are quite evident and quite impressive. Those things are the things which must be carried over into our own lives if others are to have indicated to them the way to God.

Christ's Consciousness

We will begin by noting one thing that is so very evident and always present and noticeable about the Lord Jesus in His earthly life, and that is His consciousness. In a greater or lesser way every life that is really alive is marked by a consciousness, and in a very marked way this was true of the Lord Jesus. His consciousness was that of His relationship to heaven. You just cannot fail to recognize that. He is constantly speaking about it, and His speaking of it so frequently and so much is because that is the ever-present and uppermost consciousness with Him, His relationship to heaven. Just as a man's native country is in his blood, so heaven was in the spirit of the Lord Jesus. Perhaps you know what that is. You of course do not know very much what that means unless you have been away from your native country, and then you know after a time that that country is not so far away after all, it is in your very blood. There is a pull and a call and a remembrance, the consciousness of where you belong, where you came from, which rises up and asserts itself. I think some of you know what I mean. If I may make a personal reference, there was a time years ago when I spent years in London and was not able, neither was there the demand then, for going to Scotland so often as there has been in recent years. At a certain time in the year Scotland made such an appeal that I just had to go, that is all. If it were only for a weekend, not with any object at all, not for any work, but I just had to go and come back again. Something would not let me rest until I had just gone and come. The pull was there.

Now what is true in the natural was true in the spiritual with the Lord Jesus. "I am come down from heaven" (John 6:38). And He even said that He was still in heaven while He was here (John 3:13). Strange, strange speaking! The Son that came from heaven and is in heaven! It was this strong deep consciousness of His relatedness to heaven, and that had various meanings for Him.

It meant that heaven was the source of His life. His life came out from heaven, and He was all the time living out from heaven by that heavenly life. He could find nothing here to answer to the life that was in Him. Everything here just failed to give what that life in Him demanded and required. He just could not live here except in so far as life was constantly ministered to Him from heaven. Heaven was the place of all His resources. For every demand He went back to heaven to have it met. That is, He got away in spirit, He got away in prayer, to draw what was required for the situation, the need, the next move, for every crisis and for His whole life. Heaven was His source of supply.

Heaven was the seat of His government. In everything He went to heaven for direction. You know what I mean, He got His Life from heaven, He refused to be governed by things here, He refused to be governed by the world, what the world expected, what the world demanded. He did not allow the world and its mind and its way to influence or affect Him at all. He refused to be governed by religious tradition, by the established religious order. He refused to be governed by religious expectation and religious precedent. Often they tried to impinge that upon Him and tell Him that was the thing expected, that was the thing done, that was how it was usually and He refused it all. He stood back and got His direction from heaven. The oft-repeated phrase indicated this heavenly life - "My hour has not yet come" - the phrase which He used in so many different connections, at so many different times, not meaning as He used it that final hour, His hour, but meaning, 'The time has not come just at this moment for Me to do that, I have not got it from heaven; it may be your hour, it may be the hour of circumstance, it may be the hour of seeming demand, but that does not weigh with Me; My hour is the hour when heaven says, "Now!"' Heaven was the place, the seat, of His government.

Now let us pass this over as we go along, that is, in that threefold way: the essential consciousness of the true Christian and of true spiritual Christianity and of the only Christianity which, as we have repeatedly said, will go through the ordeal of fire. That is something which is implanted in us at our spiritual birth and if we are not able to sense that, we ought to attend to it, for it is an essential feature of being born from above that immediately - not in its fulness - but immediately we are aware that we are related to another world, we are related to heaven. To put that round the other way, immediately we have become strangers here. The true Christian from very birth has a stranger-consciousness in this world. It may be a simple beginning, but what is true of every Christian going on in the way of Christ is that that strangerhood grows and grows and deepens all the way along until it becomes, on the spiritual side, almost impossible to live in this world. We have got to do it, it is no use trying to get out until the Lord takes you out, but you know spiritually it is becoming more and more difficult to accommodate yourself to this world, to find anything that you can call home here.

Forgive the simplicity of this, but it is an important factor. It is the very witness of the truth of our Christian life, but the fact is so apparent that a vast amount of what is called Christianity has no such consciousness. It can accommodate itself to this world, and it is doing so, and moreover, it thinks hardly of those people who do not do it. The 'Christianity' that really does not understand Christians who cannot accommodate themselves to this world is a false and an illegitimate Christianity. If ever there was a stranger here, He was that stranger. His consciousness was altogether other and we "ought to walk as He walked".

Again, it should be true of Christians that all their resources are in heaven, not as a fact but as an experience, that they really are being supported and sustained out from heaven, and further, that their seat of government is in heaven. We put it before in this way, that the church has no headquarters on earth, its headquarters are in heaven, and all government is to come from heaven by the Holy Spirit. That is how He walked, and unless that is true in our case and in the case of Christians, there is something fundamentally weak and wrong and lacking, and only in so far as that is true shall we be able to stand up against the world. We have got to settle that. Is it strange to you that the world knows you not and the world is against you? Is it strange to you that you have no place here? Well, if it is, you have missed the point. It should not be strange. It is native, it is natural, it is just a part of a true position, and it is quite false to be otherwise.

Then a second thing about the Lord in His life here is what we will call His balance. What a balanced life was His, what a balanced walk! He was marked by a total absence of fear. He was utterly fearless and what we may call self-possessed; so steady, so rock-like, so unmoved. All the forces which ought to have broken Him broke upon Him. There is a calm serenity and tranquillity about Him that is very marked.

Then again there was no civil war inside of Him. He was a unity not a duality. There was no conflict in Himself, no internal conflict; a very important thing, a tremendously powerful thing that is spiritually.

And then, His universality; how comprehensive He was. He had no partialities, no biases, no prejudices. Everyone was at home with Him except hypocrites. All nations, all temperaments, all dispositions, all languages and all the ages found in Him an answer. He belonged to no one particular age. You cannot say that of other men. They were men of their own age. Sometimes they lived before their time, but the Lord Jesus has compassed all time. So it does not matter in what age you live, whatever may be the characteristic of that age - and how different are the ages! How different, for instance, in this part of the world, is the present century or part of the century from what we call the Victorian era. In the Victorian era, things were of a certain character, and now that has practically gone. It is all so different that people today, if they want to use some kind of phrase to indicate that you are out-of-date they say, 'You are Victorian.' And so the ages change their nature, their constitution, their manner of life, their complexes, but strangely and wonderfully the Lord Jesus meets every age; He just fits in to every situation. He is the same, yesterday, today and forever (Heb. 13:8).

And then remarkably, while some religions and teachings are very suitable to certain kinds of people and they cannot get on very well with something that does not fit into their own nationality, their own national constitution; they must have it of a national kind. For example, the Eastern cannot get on very well with the Western in the matter of religion, they must have an Eastern religion with an Eastern complex; or the Westerner cannot get on very well with the Eastern, we have our Western complex in religion. In the case of the Lord Jesus it is not at all like that. It just fits right in, whether it is China or India or Timbuktu or America - or even Britain! He fits in. He is of no specific nationality but of all. He is universal.

Then, you see, we make our gods after our own likeness, and one of the great problems of religious life is this problem of temperament, that our religion is so very largely made by our own temperament. We think God is what we think He is. We think God is what we feel He is. Other people do not feel as we do about God and they, therefore, have a different kind of God from ours. Our God is this one. He is made after our likeness, and so it is everywhere. Temperament is a very big factor, and it does really divide into watertight compartments and give particular and peculiar complexes. The Lord Jesus just fits into every temperament. Whether you are phlegmatic or practical or artistic or sanguine or whatever you are in temperament, He just meets your need. He comes, so to speak, to you just where you are.

He is not the Christ of the rich or the poor exclusively; He is not the Christ of the learned or the illiterate exclusively. He can meet the greatest intelligence, the highest intellectuality and beat it; and He can meet us right down there in our ignorance, in all our lack of such things. Somehow He fits in everywhere, in all classes, and so we could go on.

How comprehensive and universal He is. He is not really a Jew. He was born in Israel and a great deal has been made of the fact that He was of Jewish birth. Yes, that for specific purposes, but you cannot tie Him down to that. It does not matter what nationality it is, He just fits in. He is just as good for us in the West as He is for those in the East. That is true. That is a mark of His life here when He was on the earth. These are true things about Christ.

Oh, does not Christianity need to take on that truth about Christ, to get rid of its prejudices, preferences, distinctions, complexes and partialities; to get rid of all its denominationalisms, all its sectarianisms, and find Christ comprehensive, gathering all, meeting all? Oh, for a church that really is after the nature of Christ in that way!

It becomes a very personal matter. We have got to be like that, we have to have a heart large enough to embrace all. We have to be much bigger than all these things of this earth - national, denominational, and all the rest -we have to be enlarged to the dimensions of Christ.

The Secret of Christ's Walk

Now, what were the secrets of Christ's walk? Can we put our finger upon any one particular thing that gives us the secret to this life of His? I think we can, and if you will think about it even more than I am saying, take it away and dwell upon it, I think you will see that there is a very great deal more in this than I have pointed out. The secret of Christ's walk in the sense in which we have spoken of it was His utter selflessness, His utter self-unconsciousness. Think about it.

It is this self-consciousness that is the root of nearly all our trouble. It is self-consciousness that makes life unbalanced. Some way or other, self-consciousness produces a state that is unbalanced. If you are not very careful and become too occupied with yourself, always drawing attention to yourself, you develop a neurosis which will make you a nuisance. Your life is unbalanced and a burden not only to yourself, but to everybody else, and Christ was never that. There was nothing neurotic about the Lord Jesus. Yes, here is a strange paradox. No one perhaps ever spoke more about Himself, no one used the personal pronoun more than He did, and yet alongside of that there is this total selflessness. How utterly selfless! What a lot of ground there is for us to move in when we think of that. Oh yes, you cannot find self-interest there, you cannot find self-occupation there, you cannot find self-protection there, you cannot find self-assertiveness there, you cannot find self-importance there, you cannot find self-sufficiency there, and least of all can you find self-pity. In the day when He is passing to His cross, knowing exactly what was immediately before Him, the women of Jerusalem bewailed Him, and He said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me" (Luke 23:28), 'you need not pity Me'. He was not drawing attention to Himself, He was not seeking pity, sympathy. No, this was the key to His balance. And this was the key to His helpfulness to all classes and all conditions, this complete absence of self-consciousness in the sense of being occupied with Himself and how things would affect Him. Oh, it is a great secret! That is how He walked.

And do you not feel that if the Cross really does lie at the very root of a life, if it is true that we have come by the way of Jordan, by the way of the meaning of His baptism, then we ought to be crucified to ourselves, we ought to be dead to ourselves, we ought really to be saved from this accursed self? It is the bane, it is the root, it is the trouble, it is the core of everything. Take it to heart.

I take it to heart because we are all so cursed with a self, a selfhood. It springs in in so many ways. It does affect us, this self, it really does. Let us ask the Lord about this, because it is the only way of serenity. If we are going to be affected by ourselves, we are not going to be very serene for long. It is the only way of steadiness, it is the only way of that mighty calm in the midst of storm, it is the only way of meeting situations and people who naturally have it in their power to do us a lot of harm, and to meet them, and for them to be rather under our power than we under theirs - I mean spiritually. If fear is rising, fear being a betrayal of some self-interest, some self-concern, then it spoils everything and weakens us.

So I could go round this whole thing, touching numerous points, but here it is. The secret of our Lord's walk, His mighty, influential, useful, serviceable life, was very largely because in that Jordan He had entered into the real meaning of the Cross, and was able to say, "For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me" (John 6:38); "not My will" (Luke 22:42). That of the personal was set aside. If it is true, it will be with us as it was with Him - we will have a wonderful ability to help everybody, to go through all situations. "The one who says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same manner as He walked" (1 John 2:6). This is the way of the Master, this is the way for His servants, for His people.

How untouched was the Lord Jesus by such things as policy, expediency, diplomacy. The dictionary deals in a hard way with people who hold those names. It says of policy that it is statecraft. Craft indeed! The Lord Jesus was untouched by policy, what was politic. That never touched Him, never entered for an instant into His consideration - what is the political thing to do? The dictionary says of a diplomat that he is an adroit negotiator. The Lord Jesus does not fit in there. Oh, how foreign to Him was anything like - as we say - wire-pulling, manoeuvring. Expediency - the dictionary says contriving, and this I find in my Oxford dictionary against that word 'expediency' - 'more politic than principle'. That is hard on the people in that realm, but how untrue of the Lord Jesus that would be. He never resorted to expedients. He always was governed by principle. Sometimes it looks as though He was compromising, but He was not. It was a mark of the greatness of our Lord that He paid His taxes. That is, the Lord Jesus never gave unnecessary offence. Principle governed Him, not policy, not expediency, not diplomacy, not anything that would turn out for His own personal advantage, never!

I think that is something very searching for Christianity as we know it. We have to say there is a very great deal of expediency and policy and diplomacy in the Christianity that we know - manoeuvring, contriving, and doing everything it can in spiritual politics to gain position, favour and support in this world. Such considerations never came into the heart or mind of our Lord, and that is the way. God is not in the other way. You try policy and see if you find the Lord with you. You never will. Try any of these things, and you have got to get on with it, the Lord is not going with you that way. You have got to come back to this way of utter heart transparency, the transparency of heaven, nothing at all that is shady or questionable or doubtful, not even in the interests of Christian work. That is why so much of what we know by the name of 'Christianity' is going up in smoke in the day of the fiery ordeal. It will just vanish, it will not stand, and what we are concerned with in this message is that which will abide. We do not want to be swept away and our Christianity with us in some great testing or trial. We want to go through, to abide. Well, "the one who says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same manner as He walked", and these were the things that constituted His walk. The Lord make us walk in His ways!

Chapter 5 - The Meaning of Christ's Sufferings

Reading: John 14:6; Acts 9:1-2; 16:17; 19:9,23; 22:4; 24:14,22; Luke 22:14-23.

We come now to the fifth of the five major features of Christ as the Way - the meaning of His sufferings and the little clause - "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer" (Luke 22:15). The table of the Lord particularly, brings into view His sufferings. It is meant to keep His sufferings in view, and inasmuch as He gave them the cup and the loaf, He called them into fellowship with Him in His sufferings. These are not His vicarious sufferings. We have no place or part in His atoning sufferings, His redeeming sufferings. Blessed be God, He did that completely, fully, utterly alone. We can add nothing to that, and there is no need for us to add anything. It is complete and finished. But the New Testament makes it perfectly clear that there is a side of the sufferings of Christ into which we are called, what Paul calls "the fellowship of His sufferings" (Phil. 3:10); not atoning, not redeeming, not vicarious, but the fellowship of sufferings. We will see what those are as we go on, and what that means.

Let us understand right away that whenever we as Christians come to the Lord's table, we are declaring that we are in the way of His sufferings. Whatever else that table may represent - and it does represent a number of other things - inclusively and pre-eminently it represents His sufferings. There is an aspect of His cup which He will offer to us to drink. There is an aspect of His brokenness into which He will bring us.

His table, the symbol and representation of His sufferings, embodies all that we have said, the whole of the five things. It sets forth His unique humanity, for it is a Body which is different. It sets forth the end of an old life; it sets forth the beginning of a new, a risen Life, anointed and devoted to God. It sets forth His holy, pure and heavenly walk, and it sets forth that aspect of His sufferings which is vicarious. All that is crowded into the testimony of the Lord's table, and we have all those things before us whenever we come to the Lord's table.

But having said that, let us come exactly to this point. When we speak of Him as the Way and when Christianity at its pure heavenly beginnings was called the Way, that way is, whatever else it is, the way of His sufferings. We need perhaps to make some little adjustment to that fact. A very selfish Gospel is being preached nowadays. The popular Gospel is the Gospel of what comes to those who will accept Christ in the way of their own personal benefits - attractions, offers, almost bribes, prizes and presents and what not; that side of things which is to anybody an attraction, what anybody naturally might want - peace, assurance of forgiveness, a way to heaven, and joy; all those things which will come to the individual who will accept Christ. Now those things may be quite true, but there may be something of a hidden deception, and it may lay the foundation for a good deal of subsequent disillusionment, not that the joy will not be forthcoming, or the peace, or the pardon, or the heaven. But it might be after a while that those who came in on that ground only would say, 'You did not let me know what I was in for; if I had known what I was in for, I probably would have thought more seriously about it; you made it too cheap.' Now the Lord Jesus never did that. Whatever He offered of pardon and peace, of joy, (and He did offer those things), He always offered them in fellowship with His sufferings, that is, He always was perfectly honest, candid, frank about this. "Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14:27).

And in other such words at the beginning He made it perfectly clear that this was going to be no joyride to heaven. If that were all, if we left it there, of course, it might be disconcerting, it might set some back. But you see first of all, the Lord is not going to minister to our selfishness by His Christianity. Christianity is no ministration to anyone's natural self-interest. Therefore the Gospel which Christ preached and which the apostles preached, and the Way which they presented, was no cheap way, no easy way. It was the way of suffering. It is to be noted that on every occasion when that phrase occurred in relation to Christianity in the beginning - the Way - it was connected with opposition. The very first time that it is mentioned was in connection with persecutions through Saul of Tarsus, and what bitter and terrible persecutions they were, something that followed and haunted that man himself to his dying day. "I persecuted the church" (Gal. 1:13). "When the blood of Your witness Stephen was being shed, I also was standing by approving" (Acts 22:20).

When Paul said that years after, there was a sob in his throat. The way from the beginning was the way of opposition, and, I repeat, every time that it is mentioned as such it is in connection with trouble. "There occurred no small disturbance concerning the Way" (Acts 19:23). "Speaking evil of the Way" (Acts 19:9). That is the connection all the way through, the Way which is the way of suffering.

Fellowship in Relation to the Supreme Purpose of God

But we must redeem that from oppression or depression. That does not mean that gloom should at once gather over the way. This suffering, this fellowship with Christ's suffering, is fellowship in co-operation with God and with Christ in relation to the supreme purpose of this universe. God is committed to immense things where this universe is concerned. God has committed Himself to wonderful things where this race is concerned, and God is working out those purposes and they are being worked out through the cross of the Lord Jesus; they are being worked out through the sufferings of Christ and the fellowship of His sufferings; in other words, the fellowship of God's eternal purpose. It is to be hand in hand with God in the working out of the things of His own heart. Paul saw that; he was a man who knew something about the fellowship of Christ's sufferings. He could say the "sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance" (2 Cor. 1:5). He could speak of, "I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions" (Col. 1:24). He knew something about it and not a little, but at last right at the end he cries - "that I may know Him... and the fellowship of His sufferings" (Phil. 3:10). What does he mean? Is he inviting trouble? Is he such a fire-eater? - let any suffering come, I can take it!? That is not the spirit, that is not the attitude, that is not the meaning.

Paul, perhaps more than anyone else, knew what God was after, what God was engaged upon, the great eternal counsels of God, and saw that because of things being as they were and are, the only way for their realization is through travail and through anguish. It is out of the pangs that the new creation will be born. "The whole creation", said he, "groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now"; "the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God" (Rom. 8:22,19). Out of the pangs of creation, the sons of God will be born. Paul said, 'I share the pangs which will produce the sons; I share the travail which will bring forth to new creation, and that is a high honour; that transfigures the sufferings, that gives an altogether new angle to this Way.'

Oh, that we might find the transfiguration of all the sufferings and the adversities which come to us because of the Way; that they might take on a new complex; that we might see that this which abounds unto us of the sufferings of Christ is fellowship with God in the realization of His great purpose.

Suffering Because of the Testimony

But then that suffering - and there are several things to be said about that - is because of the testimony of Jesus. And the testimony of Jesus is first of all the testimony against Satan's work in man. Satan's one object from the beginning was to capture man, and, as we pointed out, when he gets hold of man, he will in some way or another seek to make that man feel that either in himself naturally or by his works he can be his own saviour. That is the glory of man in the place of the glory of Christ. Glorifying man has ever been Satan's object; to make something, yes, to make everything, of man, so to work for the exaltation and glorification and inflation of man that at last the great superman comes as the incarnation of Satan himself.

When Jesus comes and says that whole manhood and humanity is finished, that God is no longer going to make anything of that man, that natural man, that God has brought in another Man and that kingdom that Satan has hold of for his own ends is at an end, that God has no place for it, do you think Satan likes that? See what it cuts from under his feet, see what a tremendous thing that is when all the ground of Satan's hopes and purposes and intrigues is simply swept away, and Jesus stands to declare another kind of man in whom God is interested. Therefore if we stand for the other Man and with the other Man and on the ground of that different Man in which Satan has no place at all, we are in for it. By any means Satan will spoil us, will mar us, will break us, will put us out, and that is the fellowship of His sufferings. It is the sufferings which come because Satan cannot get hold of that Man, cannot do anything with that Man, but he is going to do his best to spoil those who are in the Way of that Man, to put that creation out of the way.

Again, on the positive side, the testimony of Jesus (that is the testimony in Himself, what He is) is the testimony of God's eternally conceived and purposed destiny for His Man. "You make him to rule over the works of Your hands" (Ps. 8:6); "You have put all things in subjection under His feet" (Heb. 2:8). Satan says, 'Not if I can help it, I will have him under my feet.' God's destiny in Christ as representing this new manhood and God's destiny eternally determined for all who are of Jesus Christ, the new manhood - that means that Satan's kingdom is going, that means that his rule has its end secured, that means the time is coming when this Man, Christ Jesus, and this corporate man in Christ Jesus, is going to have the pre-eminence, is going to reign together with Him, and that reign is not just something official, it is spiritual, it is moral. It means that all enemies shall be put under His feet and under theirs, and you can quite clearly see that the enemy will postpone that as long as he can, and will do everything to make it hard for those who are eventually going to oust him and his kingdom. So it is a suffering way.

And did he not with Him Who is the Way, try to turn Him aside by any means, by subtle tricks, by friends, and by opposition and suffering, from being that great predestined Head of a new eternal kingdom, to stop Him from going to the cross to accomplish it? The way of suffering is the way of its accomplishment and its realization.

Suffering Because of Misunderstanding

Then the sufferings of Christ are seen to be so much in the realm of the complete impossibility of the world to understand, and that includes the religious world. One thing that the world, the natural man, desires, is to be understood. The most difficult thing for anybody is to be misunderstood or un-understood. Oh, how we naturally long to be understood! "For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him" (1 John 3:1). And there is a great deal of suffering bound up with the world being entirely unable to understand.

You will never be able to explain yourself to the satisfaction of the world if you go on with the Lord Jesus. You will carry about something hidden in your own heart which others who have not gone your way will never understand. It will be the suffering of a lonely way so far as the whole world outside of Christ is concerned. "You... will leave Me alone. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me" (John 16:32 NKJV). But there was something of a pang in His voice when He said that. "You will leave Me alone", you just will not be able to understand. How true it was even of His closest friends and disciples; they could not understand why He should go to the cross, and why He should accept the cross, why He should not do everything to avoid and evade it, to escape it. They begged Him, they pleaded with Him, not to go that way. They could not understand. For them every hope was dashed should He go to the cross. He had to go His lonely way without one person being able to understand. There may have been sympathy, there may have been pity, but there was no understanding. And that is always the way of those who are going right on with the Lord. You will always find that even amongst Christians if you are going right on with the Lord, there are many who will not understand. They can go so far and they do not know why it is you will not stop there, why you will go that bit further. Yes, it is a lonely way, and that is a large part of the suffering.

Suffering Because of Prejudice

The way that Jesus took was the way which encountered the blind prejudice and pride of the whole religious world, which would not come under the government of the Spirit of God, the world which would govern itself by its own judgments and standards - that was the religious world of His time. And it is the religious world of our time, that which is not wholly governed by the Holy Spirit and therefore not wholly open to all the thought of God that will be marked by prejudices, by pride, by a closedness, to a great deal which it will not have, is not prepared to accept. For such as are going the whole way - and this is not just a statement of a theory, it is the borne-out experience of many - they will encounter their chief prejudice and opposition from religious people themselves. They will find less sympathy in that realm than even in the world. Is that true? It is true. The Book from which one speaks is a very large volume of history, the history of those who have set their faces to go in this way wholly. Yes, prejudice and pride and jealousy and envy and much more of that kind, and it creates a great state of suffering. You just have to get on in spite of it and suffer because of it.

I do not think I need enlarge upon this any more. All I have said and all that I could say would simply resolve itself into this - the Way, as in the case of Christ personally and in the case of the church and Christianity at its beginning, is a Way of suffering. It will be that for all those who are going to identify themselves with the Way, but that suffering in the Way in fellowship with the Lord Jesus is infinitely fruitful suffering.

It is tremendously impressive when you just stand back and think of it, that here is a throne, not necessarily a literal throne, but a throne, a centre of universal government and supremacy, a glorious throne. Around that throne are ever-widening circles from the immediate circle to larger and larger circles until you get a great multitude out of every nation and tongue and kindred, a multitude which no man can number, all in the ecstasy of their full redemption realised and possessed, all in the glory of a mighty triumph, all now in fellowship with the supreme universal Lord, and that Lord is a Lamb in the midst of the throne. It has all come from the offering of the Lamb, it is all out from His sufferings.

The Lamb of sacrifice always speaks of suffering. But look, from the heart of things where there is the symbol of suffering, the Lamb, the whole universe is full of glory and praise and worship and adoration. The language being used around that throne is not human language. Human language is defeated in its effort to set forth the worship that you find around that throne. Yes, by way of suffering. Ah yes, it is not all in vain. If that is a true revelation of the fruit of suffering, it is not in vain; and if that is true, then it is worth our having some fellowship in it. It was not fruitless suffering. It was not suffering to desolation. It was suffering to glory, "...if indeed we suffer with Him, so that we may also be glorified with Him" (Rom. 8:17).