Author's Rights

Published as an E-book

by

Austin-Sparks.Net

Email: info@austin-sparks.net

ISBN: 978-1-927228-61-6

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

"Sovereign Head" - The Unveiling of Jesus Christ

by T. Austin-Sparks

Notes on a Conference Address

First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazines, 1928-1929.

Contents

Chapter 1 - Jesus: Before Times Eternal

Chapter 2 - Sovereignty in Creation

Chapter 3 - Sovereignty and Grace

Chapter 4 - In History and in Grace

Chapter 5 - The Heavenly Origin

Chapter 6 - The Inclusiveness of Jesus

Chapter 7 - The Law of Heavenly Sustenance

Chapter 8 - The Twofold Law of Life

Chapter 1 - Jesus: Before Times Eternal

"That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death." - Philippians 3:10.

These words express the life-long quest of the Apostle. This quest had swallowed up all other interests, ambitions, and values. There was a time when he boasted above any other man of the advantages which were his by reason of ancestry, descent, inheritance, status, achievement, rectitude, influence, etc.

"If any other man thinketh to have confidence in the flesh, I yet more: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; as touching zeal, persecuting the Church; as touching the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless." There had come to Paul a glimpse of something which had made all this appear to him as "the veriest refuse" in comparison. That glimpse had been growing steadily, had reached the dimensions of "unspeakable things," but here right at the end of his life he is still crying "That I may know Him!" From all the writings of this inspired man we are going to seek to know what it was that had been breaking upon him as the revelation which was so all-absorbing, all-consuming, and what he saw to be the issues of such a knowledge. We therefore turn to see when and where this thing commenced, and what the commencement was. This is undoubtedly found in Acts 9:5. Here, smitten to the ground by the fierce blaze of the heavenly glory and in answer to his enquiry "Who art Thou, Lord?" The answer came clear, straight, deliberate, strong,

"I AM - JESUS!"

This answer issued in the collapse of an entire system and the reconstruction of everything for Saul who now became Paul. It sent him for two or three years into Arabia to get the significance of it. There is one phase of this declaration which we may immediately consider. Those words "I AM" which not only declared a fact but formed a designation, had often been on the lips of Jesus in the days of His flesh, and they had never been used by Him without some tremendous eternal significance on the one hand and some vital effect on the other. Let us look at some of these occasions.

John 4:26. - "I that speak unto Thee am" (he). The "he" is not in the original, and the Greek literally reads "Jesus said to her, 'Who speaking to thee I am.'" See the consequences of this!

John 6:20. - "He saith unto them, it is I, be not afraid." The Greek here again is "He saith, 'I am,' be not afraid."

John 8:24. - "Except ye believe that I am, ye shall die in your sins."

John 8:28. - "When ye have lifted up the Son of man ye shall know that I am."

John 8:58. - "Before Abraham was, I am."

John 13:19. - "I tell you before it is come to pass that when it is come to pass you may believe that I am."

John 18:5. - "Jesus said, Whom seek ye? They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus said unto them I am. When therefore He said unto them, I am, they went backward and fell to the ground."

Later in our meditations we shall come to see something of the great spiritual meaning of some of the more familiar "I ams" of Jesus, but here we are just pointing out that this declaration carried with it a potency of tremendous effect, and it was both the statement as a fact and as a power which started Paul on this great quest and opened the way for the revelation of the eternal and comprehensive purpose of God in Christ.

Paul started by coming to see that the Jesus of the New Testament is the "I am" of the Old, but it went beyond that, it ranged the eternities and the ages.

"Before Abraham was I am" that as to past eternity, "before times eternal."

"I AM He that liveth.... and behold I am alive unto the ages of the ages" - that as to the eternity yet to be.

We now turn to look through Paul's enlightened eyes, as we are given spiritual perception, at the first phase of this range of the revelation.

Jesus: Before Times Eternal

The whole system and scheme of things in the universe was related to this, "Jesus," "I am," "before times eternal." It would take all our time, beloved, to turn up the references to everything we are going to say, and you will pardon me if I don't do that; but you can follow closely and go to the Word yourself, and, like good Bereans "see if these things are so," and you must just give me your confidence that what I am saying is with scriptural foundation, but of course, most of you will be readily able to see this with the very words of scripture with which you are familiar.

Now, then, go back into the eternity past and find the Lord Jesus there. Of course, this mere fact may not carry you very far, but the interpretation of the fact, the revelation of the nature of the fact which has come to Paul is very very vital for present purposes, and we must be pre-eminently practical. We are not dealing with eternity past in itself merely as such, we are bringing the facts out of eternity past to bear upon the present and immediate issue. This is the important thing, and this is really what we are after. When Paul, by revelation, takes you back there in his knowledge of Jesus eternally co-existent with the Father, he sees something happening back there. He sees many things happening; he sees one thing with two sides happening.

Firstly, he sees the Father with a purpose in the nature of a design, what we would call a scheme, but the Greek word is not a safe word to use in this connection. In the Greek it means things which are external, which change. "The fashion (schema) of this world passeth away," so that one would not suggest that. What was in the mind of the Father was something transcendent and unchanging, but it was a design, a plan, a purpose, and that purpose was concerning His Son: and in and through and by and unto that Son all the divine thought and intention, purpose and plan was designed. And so, for that purpose, that specific thing, the Second Person in the Godhead becomes the First Begotten. Then, and right up until His resurrection through the Incarnation He was the Only Begotten, but in design He was also to be the First Begotten. In the resurrection He was the First Begotten, and there were those begotten after in Him; but we leave that; that is the other side.

"The only Begotten of the Father," and He became in that sense the Only Begotten Son, and then the Father (I am putting it in our language) as it were, tells the Son the whole plan and purpose, and brings the Son into fellowship with Himself in this, and, in effect, He says to the Son, Now this is My plan, My design, My purpose, My will FOR YOU; and it is all for You, and it is all to have its fulfilment in You and for You and through You. The whole universe is to be involved, and I gather it up for You and unto You to work it out through You. ("All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father" - "For unto Him, and through Him and by Him were all things created.") And now, says the Father in effect to the Son, It is Yours, it is for You ultimately, finally, consummately. It is for You, and I secure it in You; it is Your inheritance as Son and Heir. ("Whom He appointed heir of all things.") Now you undertake the realisation of it, whatever it costs; and there is, as it were, the Divine glance down the ages, and the dark shadow crosses the path, the shadow of sin, an apparent breakdown, an arrest, a coming in of sinister elements and of the issue and consequence, and the necessity for the Cross. And the Father says, "Yes, do You accept that?" "Yes, I accept that and enter right into that now in all the pain and the passion and the agony of it." And "The Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world."

Calvary became in eternity a realised thing before ever it came forth into time. The whole thing is gone through with the Son in prospect and committed unto the Son. You read those wonderful passages that come through Paul (and I assume that Paul had at least a very real hand in the writing of the Hebrew letter - if it were not his own hand it was as near his own dictation as could be) which take you back there and tell you, "Thy throne O God is for ever and ever."

Concerning the Son, read that marvellous first chapter of Hebrews again, and see what He says of the Son; and then take the first chapter of Colossians and see again back in eternity, what the Father is committing unto the Son, including in the Son, determining for the Son, and through the Son, and all ultimately unto the Son. Then first of all towards this realisation is the creating of the ages, and the Son does it unto a Purpose; the Son comes forth and creates the ages - "By Whom He created the ages." The Son created the ages unto a specific thing which the Father had registered for Him in Eternity as His Son.

Now that is one side. It is a marvellous thing which would occupy and fascinate us, and I think move us tremendously if we were to stay with it long enough, and you know the grip of a thing like that, how difficult it is to pass on when it is breaking upon you all the time. No wonder he said, "A Hebrew of Hebrews, of the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised the eighth day," - "what 'piffle' compared with this! I count all that the utmost refuse that I MAY KNOW HIM!" - he is seeing this vast thing - I AM, JESUS, before Times Eternal, with all this meaning of the Father, and much more.

But, beloved, there is the other side of this twofold thing. Oh, wonder of wonders, he sees that the realisation of this was not just the Son in an isolated capacity, not the Son by Himself, One alone, a Unit in the universe to have all this for Himself, but it is the Son in a corporate capacity! That word corporate is losing its force and power, and I am foraging around to find a better word for "corporate" that will revive the meaning of it - the inclusiveness of the Son - and Paul sees. Yes, the Father made a covenant with the Son. The Father came to an understanding with the Son. The Father did all this with and for the Son, but, at the same time, when the Father chose the Son the Only Begotten, chose Him deliberately, and the Son entered into the choice of the Father, when He had done that, the next step was to be, "we were chosen in Him (the Son) before the foundation of the world."

"We were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world"; and then a whole system of activities was projected called, "the works of the Son." Have you fathomed the works of the Son? Have you ranged the works of the Son? And these works were settled before the foundation of the world. The works were set and fixed and finished that we should walk in them - finished before the foundation of the world (Eph. 2:10, Heb. 4:3, &c.) There is a vocation settled in eternity; there is a kind of conduct, a nature of procedure, a system of activities out from God in the Son all ready prepared that we should walk in them. And then something more. The Son, "the express image of the Father's glory" (Hebrews, Philippians), in the form of God - ("Who being in the form of God") - the Son in the likeness of the Father, an express image, or eikon, representation of the Father, of course containing also, as the extra phrase has it, "the very underlying essence of His substance," but in presentation, or representation, of the Father; that is the Son.

Now listen - "we were foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son." Is not this mighty? Is not this wonderful? Not that we shall partake of the essence of deity, but that we shall be a manifestation, expression of His glory, of His nature, a reproduction of God in glorified human form - The Son Incarnate - glorified humanity expressing the very likeness and image of God; in that realm becoming the "Archetypal" Man, the Supreme Head, into which all are to be conformed; fore-ordained away back there in the Eternal Counsels, the Father and the Son and the Spirit in counsel, and the Father, as it were, revealing the design, the Son entering into it, and the Spirit co-operating as the Executive in all this. But we were in it, and in the fore view we were chosen in Him, and fore-ordained to be conformed to the image of His Son. What a background! What a thing to miss! What a motive for our being at all! What a key to our existence! Does anyone ask, "Why was I born? I never was consulted as to whether I should come into the world. Life is an awful enigma and full of pain. Oh that the darkness had covered me on the day of my birth!" So some talk. Oh beloved, let him who knows a little of Him speak to your heart and take you into this. But one wants to come to a very practical proposition, and I shall have to close almost at once. You see we were foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son. That is in the Purpose of God, a people, a race, represented in Jesus Christ in an inclusive representation, sharing His Life, sharing God's Eternal Purpose which is in Him, inheriting His heritage in God, secured in Christ through faith and ultimating in His likeness.

Now that is the grand first view of "I AM" before Times Eternal; but this is the practical thing - get this if you miss everything else - "Conformed to the image of His Son." The Greek word behind our English word "conformed" is the opposite to that word which I have just mentioned schema. This is morphe. Schema and morphe are opposites. Schema means the presentation in an outward form, which nevertheless is a changing form, or fashion that passes; morphe is the essential likeness, abiding likeness, or nature, the thing that is real and enduring. Now that word "conformed" is morphe. What is conversion? It is not schema, an outward change of fashion that passes, it is taking on the permanent likeness of Jesus Christ. That is conversion, morphe - converted to His likeness. It is not merely a change, but it is a change to a certain definite image, a certain definite form. Is that what we mean by conversion? Is that what we are talking about when we ask, "Have you had any conversions?" Is this what we are after when we say we are out for conversions? Is this the aim, the goal you have in an evangelistic campaign? Does conversion with you mean the taking on of the germ of the eternal image of Jesus Christ? In other words, receiving the Divine Nature, destined to transform and to make us like unto Himself, receiving the abiding likeness, image of Jesus Christ, and having received into us the Life which has it in itself to bring about the very likeness of Christ, we are progressively converted, transformed, transfigured into His likeness? Even that is conversion.

You see even for the evangelist we have to come right back to before times eternal. We see now that conversion means that, and that we were fore-ordained to be conformed to the image of His Son. That is conversion, beloved, and do you wonder - I do not, as I come to see this - that our ideas and our methods and means are altogether inadequate. We cannot bring this about by any kind of revival singing. We may work up an atmosphere to a tremendous tension with choruses and sensational stories, but it is a wonder that really anything abiding does happen sometimes, and I am not at all surprised that the thing breaks down before long, and unless you keep up the sensation and emotion and all that sort of thing it collapses; unless you bolster it up and keep it going, and put your shoulder behind it all the time it flops and goes out. Let us get an adequate conception of what conversion is, and then all mean methods, all this rubbish will be thrown aside, and we shall have an adequate gospel. And what the world is languishing for is an adequate gospel, a gospel which has in it that power which can accomplish the Eternal Purpose of God - "Conformed to the image of His Son." Now what can do that? That is the question we have to answer. Nothing less than the mighty energising of the Eternal Spirit out from God, the Spirit of the Covenant, the Spirit of the Purpose, the Spirit of the counsels of God, the Spirit Who, in effect, said, "I will go out and be the Instrument of this Almighty Power to function, to bring about this Purpose for the Son." And the Spirit is working for the Son all the time, not speaking of Himself, not making Himself the figure-head, not bringing Himself before the eyes of others, but all the time glorifying the Son, working mightily for the Son; and in the Son, and through the Son, enabling Him to go through the Cross by the Eternal Spirit. Nothing less than that, beloved, the very omnipotence of God Himself, can bring about our conversion to the image of His Son.

Now Paul sees that. That is the thing that has broken upon him. He sees Jesus before times eternal, and he sees what the Father has determined concerning Jesus, and then he sees his relationship to Jesus and in Jesus, chosen and then fore-ordained to a certain end, and that end the image of His Son, and he says, "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection," in order that I might be conformed to His image. That is the end. Of course it means much more than that, but I have stopped here with just this one thing. Do you know something now of the meaning of conversion? What have been your thoughts about conversion? Perhaps we have been guilty of thinking of schema instead of morphe? That is, a change of fashion of life, a change of mode of life, a change of things more or less outward in behaviour and conduct; instead of going to certain places, coming to meetings and all that. Well, now, that is not good enough when you have got to meet the impact that the Eternal Son meets in the Cross for the realisation of the Eternal Purpose. Nothing less than the very Life Principle of the Eternal Son resident within one will suffice to realise and attain unto the Purpose of God before times eternal in the Lord Jesus.

Oh beloved, this is our quest, That I may know Him thus, and this is where we begin. You have got to come down to the first activities of the Son in creation, that He is the creating One, "By Him the worlds were created" - "All things were created by Him and unto Him" - "In Him all things hold together" - "Upholding all things by the word of His power." This is the Son, and yet in the ultimate issue, it is not the isolated Unit, it is the Corporate Christ which is going to reign. It is the "Archetypal" Man, a Man with all those gathered up in Him who are to reign. The saints shall rule the world. Where we begin is - Have we got the principle of sonship, the power of sonship, that He was the Only Begotten, and in a sense is always the Only Begotten, and that He has in His resurrection become the Firstborn among many brethren, the First Begotten of a whole company of those sons whom He is going to bring to glory? The sense in which He is going to bring many sons into glory is not just to a place but to a state. He is the Son inclusive of all the sons who are "joint-heirs" with Him as the Heir. "He is the Heir of all things," and "we are joint-heirs with Christ," says the word, for "all things are His."

It is wonderful this unveiling of Jesus Christ, the "I AM," but you begin here with the principle of sonship, and that, of course, goes back - we share His Life and are attested sons in the Son by the power of the resurrection into which we enter through the Cross. We once and for all recognise His Cross as having for ever put away one system, an old type, and accept that and reckon ourselves in that mighty putting away and concluding of God, "God hath concluded all under sin." That is, He has finished everything under sin, and in that finishing, that concluding of God we have taken our place by faith truly, for ever reckoning that system, that type as gone. It is not for us any longer; we repudiate it all along, deny that self, and recognise that in His resurrection He has commenced this eternal thing, He Himself being "declared to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead," and we who have shared His death, and have been "planted together with Him in the likeness of His death" are now "in the likeness of His resurrection" on resurrection ground, receiving the gift of the Spirit of sonship, "born of the Spirit," "born from above" by the act of God. That is the basis; that is the beginning of the conversion which is to issue in His image, and "I shall be satisfied when I awake in His likeness." And the whole creation has become involved. "The whole creation groaneth, travaileth in pain until now." What for? "For the manifestation of the sons." You see here is this passion, the passion of God entering into creation unto this end. Creation writhes in its impotence and helplessness to get to the end God has fixed; it cannot; it waits for the manifestation of the sons; and when they are manifest, creation shall be redeemed with them - delivered! But we have gone on too far and must come back again to the principle and law of sonship, that is, conversion, to issue in His likeness - "That I may know Him."

The Lord answer our prayer as it really comes from our hearts more and more in the light of all this - "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection." - Amen.

Chapter 2 - Sovereignty in Creation

"That I may know Him." - Phil. 3:10.

Jesus - the "I Am" in Creation.

"And of the Son he saith... Thou Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Thy hands." - Heb. 1:10.

"All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that hath been made. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him." - John 1:3,10.

"Thou didst create all things, and because of Thy will they were, and were created." - Rev. 4:11.

"The Beginning of the creation of God." - Rev. 3:14.

"In Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible; whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him and unto Him; and He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." - Col. 1:16-18.

"There is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him." - 1 Cor. 8:6.

"For of Him, and through Him, and unto Him are all things," - Rom. 11:36.

"We are Has workmanship, created in Christ Jesus." - Eph. 2:10.

"To bring to light what is the stewardship of the mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God Who created all things... according to the Eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord." - Eph. 3:9-11.

"For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth....

For the creation was subjected to vanity.

The creation... shall be delivered.

The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain." - Rom. 8:19-22.

Having seen Jesus as the "I Am" before times eternal, we now come to see Him in Creation.

The above selection of passages of scripture make certain things quite clear. Firstly, there is the general declaration that it was Jesus through Whom and by Whom all things were created. Then there is the range of that creation and creative activity. Not just this cosmos but far beyond - the heavens - and hierarchies and "principalities," dominions, etc.; "things visible and invisible" (to us).

Following this there is the declaration that it is all for and unto Him, and that in Him it all holds together. This is all said to be related to an "Eternal purpose" which God purposed in Him.

Then there is seen the entrance of that into the creation which made it impossible for the creation to realise the end for which it existed; the deliberate subjecting of the creation to abortiveness until that purpose came through, and with that event the creation delivered.

All this is tremendous in its implications and requires fuller and closer consideration.

The first main and all-inclusive truth is that Jesus is the raison d'etre of the universe. He is the explanation of its existence. Dismiss Him from the universe and the universe ceases to have its motive and also ceases to have its integrating power and intent; it would then fall to pieces. That is why "it was not possible that He should be holden of death." "In Him all things hold together." Jesus is essential and indispensable to the solidarity, continuation, and purpose of "all things."

Then in the universe man is found and he is accounted for in the same way. No man will ever have his life explained until he has come into his place "in Christ Jesus." But when he comes there by the grace of God he discovers a very well-worth-while purpose in his having been born. It is one of the unvarying characteristics of life in Christ that a new sense of purpose is born, and the consciousness of being related to some eternal design and object.

The next thing to note is that not only worlds but ages were created by Him. The movement and purpose of God in Christ gives character and purpose to definite cycles of time and phases of eternity. It is not our purpose to deal with these, but to simply point out the fact that in various ages the one supreme purpose of God is being developed progressively. The basic principles and heavenly laws of the Divine intuition are the same in all ages. Ages represent phases and parts and forms of the whole and entire purpose, but it will be in the "ages of the ages" that the parts and phases will have become one whole and clear thing: everything seen thus to be not two or more things, but one thing, and Christ will be "All in all." To this end was the universe created, and this is the motive of creation. What will be the supreme feature of the eternal ages? We have already in our last issue answered the question. It will be a glorified humanity, sharing one Divine life and likeness. It will be the universal Sonship of God in all its meaning, nature, and purpose; the "many sons" in The Son, sharing the inheritance and fulfilling the yet unrevealed intentions of God in an eternal vocation.

Unto this - let us repeat - all things were created and this earth was brought into being as the sphere and instrument of its literal beginnings and processes. The creation existed for the "sons of God" (the whole creation, not merely this earth), but when that entered into the race by man's complicity with Satan, which made it impossible for that "man" (plural, inclusive) to attain unto that specific sonship the purpose of creation was interfered with, and it could no longer realise its end. Hence it is revealed that God in effect said to the whole creation - you cannot arrive at your wanted end until I get Mine. I subject you to vanity, I cut off your attainment until I have that for which you were brought into being. And yet this is only for such time; it is not for ever and it is not hopeless, we will have our end. So I subject you to abortiveness - but in hope, and you shall be delivered from the bondage - the grip of corruption. I am "the God of hope," the God of "The Hope." That hope is only possible of realisation on the ground of sonship; that men shall be born of Me, and there is no hope for any man otherwise. But I shall have My sons and then all things will find their purpose and their fulfilment. In the meantime I am travailing to bring forth this son race, and the pangs of My travail will be felt in all the creation. There will be an unintelligible ache in the universe and a groaning toward something. My Spirit groans behind the whole creation and specially within those of His indwelling toward this all-vindicating end.

So we put into the mouth of God the things which are implied by the scriptures. Now when Paul cried "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings," he was but recognising that in the resurrection of Christ there is the guarantee of the creation's deliverance in which he would share: that this would only be by "the exceeding greatness of His power... according to that working of His might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead," and that the "sufferings of Christ" were those mighty travailings toward "the manifestation of the sons of God" which would be His satisfaction, His vindication, and the establishing of the universe in His realised "eternal purpose." So thus that "waiting," that "groaning" is related to that "manifestation of the sons of God." That is, when all who shall be born of God, born from above by resurrection union with Christ shall - with Him - be manifested in glory. These are they who have recognised that His death was their death as a part of the first Adam; that His burial was the eternal entombment of that "body of death," that His resurrection was the birth of the New Man, the "new creation"; and having recognised this have, by faith, accepted and entered into it to walk in that "newness of life" in all its implications. Such, knowing Him and the power of His resurrection to a measure in themselves are called into the intelligent sharing of those mighty travailings and spiritual pangs which are toward the full manifestation of the sons which is to synchronise with the emancipation of the whole creation from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the sons of God. Every "new birth" from above by the operation of resurrection power is vindication of the creative work of Christ. Every such spiritual new birth is related to the universe and is not a thing in itself. Every new born one is constituted a part of the effectual travailing power of the Spirit of Christ "Who maketh intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered."

Much more has yet to be shown as the content and issue of all this, but here our purpose is to show that the instrument, purpose, and consummation of the whole creation is Christ - and Christ inclusive and corporate. Without Christ there is no purpose, no adequate motive, no hope, no goal, no justification, for existence. Without Christ there can be no world, no future, no harmony. All must be aimless, abortive, chaos, inexplicable, mockery, despair. This is the outlook of all that is "outside of Christ." Hence the great emphasis upon "In Christ."

This surely is the "Mystery" so often referred to in the New Testament. It is the mystery of the universe so much explored and speculated about by philosophers, scientists, theologians, mystics. God reproducing Himself in a glorified humanity. Jesus the Archetypal Man. Incarnation is the key to the mystery and Church - Christ's Body - the corporate example and instrument. This explains the universe and gives the secret of all creation. In the light of this we understand why Christ is called the "Logos," and as such He is "the First and the Last," for Logos means Thought, Reason, Power, and the Personification of these.

In the beginning He creates all things. In the end He fills all things.

Chapter 3 - Sovereignty and Grace

Having seen Jesus in the counsels of God "before times eternal," and then in His creative activity and purpose, as the explanation of the universe in general and man in particular, we proceed to consider two other phases of this unveiling and testimony.

These will have to do with history in general on the one hand, and spiritual experience on the other. Two words will gather up all that can be said in these realms, namely

Sovereignty and Grace.

Sovereignty governs and controls history and forces it to serve a specific end. Grace operates in history to secure out of it that upon which the Divine Heart is set.

Firstly, then, we see Jesus as the "I am" in history, and the testimony concerning Jesus persisting through the course of the ages, and like a steady, strong, unwavering line running through all events, laying hold of world movements and making them bend to that inner thing. We see the rise and fall of Empires, Dominions, Thrones, Nations; the pageant of world-powers; the glamour and glory, the pathos and tragedy of historic epochs. If our inner eye is open we can see that all this is related to one thing - "The Testimony of Jesus," that He is imminent in all, though by the world unrecognised, and often unseen by the very people with whose affairs He is most intimately associated.

Someone has aptly said "History is His story." Paul undoubtedly saw this to be so. Oh, what a different conception from that which "Saul of Tarsus" had of Jesus. Why, now he saw that that "Galilean upstart, a mere flash in the pan, who carried away a lot of poor ignorant folk and deluded them, and then was put an end to," this same Jesus goes back to eternity and then travels down the ages with His hand upon the ages and history, "upholding all things by the word of His power," and that the deepest thing in all is that testimony concerning Him.

Now there are many phases of this great fact, and a whole and large library would be required to embody them, so that we are compelled but to indicate it along one or two lines only.

You begin to read the Roman letter, and by the time one has got to the end of the third chapter (and there were no chapters in his letter) he has swept the world. He has dealt with the whole race, Jew and Gentile, every department of the race, all nations, and he has shown to you that there is an abiding testimony to great spiritual facts related to God in every part of the creation. "The invisible things of Him are made manifest by the things which are seen." There is a witness. From that great general witness in the creation, the witness to the fact, and the power, and the wisdom, and the glory of God, he brings the thing down steadily, like the mills of God grinding exceeding small, and he tells you that you cannot put your hand upon a being in the whole race of humanity who has not at the very centre of his being a consciousness, however dim and darkened and covered by rubbish, nevertheless, a consciousness of himself as standing in vital relationship to a supreme object of worship and reverence whom he calls God, and that he goes to work to give expression to that consciousness, hewing out idols of wood and stone, but he is giving expression to a fact that somewhere deep down in the very centre of his being he is conscious of standing in that relationship to some supreme object which claims his worship and that consciousness gives rise to three elements: the fact of sin, the fact of righteousness, and the fact of judgment.

It may be imperfectly understood, and apprehended, vague, remote, but there in the whole creation there is a testimony, and then you sweep in all the systems of expressing that fact and that consciousness, all the heathen modes and methods, and you find that one thing is common, that in relation to that consciousness and that demand, propitiation is seen, a life for a life, a getting even somehow, and that on a basis of sacrifice. That is there. Paul goes to Athens, and he sees the altars, "I saw on an altar an inscription TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship Him declare I unto you." Here is the underlying consciousness, the fact, the nature of which they are altogether ignorant, but the fact is there demonstrating itself in these expressions, and here is the Testimony of Jesus. Beloved, however false, wrong and distorted and wicked and devilish may be the nature and form of the expression in the race, it had its roots in God. You trace it right back to the very first fact that before the foundation of the world a Lamb was slain. Oh yes, distorted, taken hold of by the devil and used to sensual ends, made the very basis of devil worship - yes, that is the devil's way, to take hold of the things of God and turn them to account for himself - yet however poor and awful the form of expression, trace it back, and you get back there where God with a pure and true and clear and high and right meaning and significance laid down the foundation of a right relation to Himself in the Blood of a Lamb. And we don't talk about the religious system of Israel and the primitive ideas in Israel of sacrifice and so on as being derived from the heathen. We say that this distorted thing amongst the heathen was derived from the pure; it is the other way round, the right thing gone wrong.

Now, here, you see, is the Testimony, and Paul sees this, that the Lord Jesus has persisted in the deepest consciousness of the race, demanding rectification, laying the sense of sin, of judgment, and the demand for righteousness in every being.

When the Lord Jesus said that "When He the Holy Spirit was come, He would convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment," He was not announcing a new fact in the matter of the convicting, although there would be a new emphasis of this through the gospel, but He was particularly declaring the basis of that new emphasis - even His work at Calvary. It was to be related to Himself in a new way and the preaching of "Christ crucified" would be the occasion of the convicting. "Of sin - because they believe not on ME; of righteousness because I go unto my Father; of Judgment, because the prince of this world hath been judged."

Another phase of this very broad outlook is the fact that the whole creation groans for incorruption and "eternal life." Why is it that the secular press finds that the most popular and attractive stunt that it can introduce is to open up the subject of the continuity of life; existence after physical dissolution, immortality? The thing is pathetic, tragic, and often ridiculous, in as much as those who write on it have no authority whatever, and that it is only possible of conviction in the spirit and not demonstration to the intellect. Does not 1 Cor. 2:14 settle this finally? Nevertheless the fact remains that the vogue is successful as an advertisement because of the universal consciousness of man that he was made for something more; that there is something more; and that if this is all then life is a mockery; there is no justice in the universe; righteousness is not to be found; judgment is non-existent; sin goes eternally winked at.

But it is a constituent of man that it is not so, and that - whatever may be his false, mistaken, unenlightened, apprehension, his wilful and persistent refusal in days of health and prosperity to measure up and take account, his preparedness to take his chance; or his closing of his eyes tightly to the fact - he knows within himself that there is something beyond. This, also, is the Testimony concerning Jesus, and it declares first, the fact of an eternal purpose, the principle of which is the basis and constituent of man's very nature and being; but also that that purpose can only be known or realised and that nature satisfied - as experience proves - in Jesus Christ.

These are great generalities in human life and history, but we must narrow down to the more particular.

Paul saw - not only this broad sweep of the Testimony of Jesus - but that that testimony was being in a specific way established by a chain of elect links through the ages. I am not going to discuss again the question as to whether Paul wrote the letter to the Hebrews, but believing that he had a hand in it in some way, read again the eleventh chapter. Here the line is traced from Abel through Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Israel, &c. We leave these links for consideration later on, but here consider Israel; Israel among the nations, with the eyes of all the nations upon that elect nation.

Now in numerous ways Jesus is imminent and pre-eminent in the testimony of Israel. Take it from this standpoint alone; the unifying factor in the entire national life of Israel was the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle was that which held Israel together as a spiritual whole, and made of them a spiritual nation with a spiritual mission. Now we know, do we not, that there is not a single thread in any one of all the curtains of the tabernacle that does not declare Jesus. You cannot find a bolt or a bar, a hook or a pin, a strip of ribbon, a tag, from the remotest point right through and through and right up to the very Mercy Seat that does not declare Jesus. It is called the "Tabernacle of the Testimony." And what Testimony? The Testimony concerning Jesus. The Testimony which in spiritual reality is that which is mentioned at the other end of the Book in Revelation - the same Testimony. Note now, Jesus then being at the centre, the unifying fact in this nation as a spiritual force right in the centre of the nations, upon which the eyes of all the nations rest, was the great object-lesson through those ages. It was perfectly impossible, so long as Israel was faithful to that Testimony, for any one of those nations, or for all of them combined, to crush Israel. So long as they stood faithful to that central testimony, be they in themselves a weak, comparatively insignificant people, without military caste, or history, or training, be they the most helpless among the nations from any natural standpoint, they are more than a match for all the nations.

What does it mean? It declares this, the sovereignty of Jesus amongst the nations. So when they come to cast out the nations from the land which they are going to possess, the very first thing that is said to them in Jericho is, "We have heard of you and your God, and we know quite well that the game is up for us." The nations knew. And what about those Jebusites who came along having obtained some old bread, and put on old clothes and shoes and said they had come on a long journey and when they started it was fresh baked bread and the clothes and the shoes had got worn out (although in truth they had not come from afar off) "because we have heard of you!" The nations knew the testimony of the sovereignty in Israel. Even taking the dark side, when the very Divinely raised up institutions of God fail Him, He persists; and when Israel failed through idolatry and went into captivity the Testimony does not cease, for even in the land of their captivity that Testimony goes on. He has His red line running along in a Daniel, Shadrach, a Meshach, an Abednego. The nations passed through their desolated land. They look at the desolation and say, What is the meaning of this? And the answer is "because of their unfaithfulness to their testimony."

You see there are two sides to this testimony, the testimony which is glorious, and the testimony which proceeds, nevertheless, and shouts through the wreckage of unfaithfulness. And you know those words which are so often used in their prophetic sense and forgotten in their historic sense bear this out - words that have been prophetically put into the mouth of the Lord Jesus on His Cross, "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow." Historically these words belong to Israel. They were the words which the broken-hearted prophet put into the mouth, as it were, of the land desolated, and the travellers of the nations, passing up and down that desolated land hear the cry of the desolation of Jerusalem and the land, "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?" Is what nothing to you? That this speaks of my unfaithfulness to a testimony. This is because that great thing which was the very constituent element in my national being was violated. This is the result. What a testimony to Jesus that when Jesus goes out wreckage and ruin comes in, and the very wreckage is a testimony to His sovereignty, to His supremacy!

Now you see the point is this, that He is all the way through proceeding in His testimony. It is there in history. Babylon the great, the wonderful - crushed because of the testimony of Jesus. To save that testimony He has got a remnant, but in order to get that remnant out Belshazzar must be slain, his throne upset. This law of the sovereignty goes right the way through. Now, if only we knew it, it is in the nations; it is making the nations rock; it is the cause of all the upheaving. It is that testimony - Jesus is there, imminent. Take the case of His church. He goes out of the objective in the care of Israel, and comes into the subjective in His church after His resurrection, and He is again imminent there - Sovereign Lord in the church and Sovereign Head of the church, which is His Body. Now touch that church! The mightiest nation that this world has known with all its force and resource exhausted itself to destroy the Testimony of Jesus as it was in a company of those whom the world said were "the weak things, the foolish things and the things that are not." God in Christ entered into that company and constituted them His Body in which He was resident, and Rome may exhaust all its resource to wipe out that Testimony, as represented by that company, and what is the issue? The issue is that Rome is torn limb from limb, shattered, and is as a tale that is told. But where is the church? It has gone on, and the Testimony of Jesus has proceeded, and the more it has been assailed in the church, the mightier it has grown. Persecution and adversity has been the very best thing for its growth.

Beloved, there are many things that ought to come to us out of this truth for practical use and service in our own lives and in our own hearts. One simply mentions that, for our own encouragement and comfort, we who are in Christ Jesus have come into a sovereignty which all hell cannot overthrow. Jesus shall reign because He does reign, always has reigned, and so may this Apostle, either directly, or indirectly, it matters not, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost take up the scripture and say of Jesus, "Thy throne O God is for ever and ever." Here you have the great "I AM" out from eternity creating the ages and proceeding through the ages, in spite of everything that sought to rule Him out of the ages and out of the universe. Oh what a Christ, what a "Head"! And oh, what a wonderful revelation of Who Jesus is and what Jesus is! Can you again wonder that Paul said up to his last breath, "THAT I MAY KNOW HIM"?

Chapter 4 - In History and in Grace

Now all too briefly we must look at this other side.

Grace

Paul saw this wonderful majestic side, the Lordship, Kingship, Headship, Sovereignty of Christ proceeding through history, triumphant all the time. But he saw that the Eternal Purpose out from the Eternal Counsels of God was also and only to be realised upon a principle and basis of GRACE. We come immediately now to the direct application of that principle without illustrating it at all through the ages and in the greater revelations, but come right down to what we ourselves are learning of this fact.

To begin with, you can never enter into the Eternal Purpose, and take your place as the "called according to His Purpose," except on a basis and principle of grace. Try and get in on anything else and see how far you get. That is, you try by struggling to be saved. Put it in that simple way. Many have worn themselves out to utter despair in trying to contribute something toward their own salvation; to get salvation, by something that they could do. The Lord has stood aside all the time until everyone has come to see that they have nothing in themselves whatever that can get them through. You start there. You struggle to come up to this and that. Have you ever said, "Well, I must be better before I can come to the Lord." "I have to make this adjustment and that adjustment before I can be a Christian." "There are certain things that I can see will have to be given up before I can give myself to the Lord." You know the common talk, and yet how mistaken all that! Some have even thought that they could pray themselves through into salvation, or shed enough tears to get through. It is not either tears of repentance, or prayers, but the Blood that avails for the soul, and the explanation of the earliest spiritual experiences of a penitent is found in this principle that it is not their penitence which is of avail, whatever form it may take, it is the grace of God and that alone. If, beloved, for one moment in all eternity any man, or any woman could lay their salvation to the account of their own strength of will, their own power to break with evil habits, their own persistence, it would entirely upset the whole system of grace, and throw into confusion the whole case for salvation, because there are multitudes who, in themselves, have not persistence, or strength of will, or determination at all, and therefore they must go to the wall, and it is a case of the survival of the fittest. That is not salvation. That is not the system of grace.

God takes the strong and the weak on the same footing, and He says right at the beginning that this Eternal Purpose can only be entered into on a basis and principle of grace, and from that moment onward it is all of grace. The sustenance of your spiritual life, beloved, is not upon the basis of your exhaustive study and apprehension of the Word of God as such. There are some people who have the most comprehensive and marvellous grip of the scriptures who are the leanest souls in creation when you come to real spiritual body. They are as thin as rakes, and yet they have a marvellous knowledge of the book. Now that does not mean - of course you will not misunderstand - that there is no place for the study of the Word of God, as I should be a denial of my own theory if I were saying that, because I do believe, as much as anybody does in plunging deeply into the Word, but you understand that is not the basis of my spiritual growth. It may be an instrument of grace. But what is the basis, the law of my spiritual sustenance and growth? It is the same law as my initial entering into, the Eternal Purpose. "I AM," all the way through. It is the "I AM, the Bread of Life." "I am come down from heaven for the Life of the world." It is grace all the time, by which Christ imparts Himself in some mystic way to my spiritual nourishing and upbuilding. It is the Lord Jesus being imparted to me.

Now you have come back to "THAT I MAY KNOW HIM." But how are you going to know Him? You are going to know Him on the principle of Life which is the free gift of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. The Life Bread given by Christ continuously imparted. Oh, how the enemy assails, how he afflicts and tortures on this matter of accusation and condemnation! It certainly is not a matter of passivity, or fatalism, it is a matter in spirit of strongly looking toward the Lord, and in spirit strongly drawing upon the Lord by faith. But, beloved, it is the Lord freely, in Christ, imparting Himself all the time. Hurl that back at the enemy every time he accuses you and robs you of your spiritual vitality by telling you that because you have done so and so, or failed to do so and so you are going to lose your salvation. One has met that continually from the enemy, and one has learned that this is the law: "If I have made a mistake, I deeply and terribly grieve - I would not consciously make a mistake that would injure You. I would rather die. Take me out rather than I should in any way fail You consciously or persistently. Now I take the precious Blood as over against my failure, believing Your grace to forgive." Thus you cut the ground from under the feet of the devil. He has no ground for accusation. You have got to believe in this whole thing as being a matter of grace, and it is not upon a matter of my faultlessness; it is His grace. It does not give me licence to go on as I like, to be careless, but it does call upon me to believe strongly in His grace. Grace that will flow as He knows my heart is right toward Him, and I would not wilfully or consciously blunder and fail, and every time there is any suggestion that I do so, I simply tell Him of my grief, and that I do believe in His grace to cover all my sins.

Then, not only in spiritual sustenance and growth, but in spiritual service it is all of grace. Here we learn many lessons and not least among them is that we cannot take anything for granted in ministry. Because the Lord used us on one occasion we cannot take it for granted that that will be repeated and proceed upon this assumption. It is not because of some position that we hold, or some programme to which we have been committed, or some expectation from us, or some preparation that we have made. We cannot programise the Holy Spirit, or commit God to our system.

Reputation, position, prestige, commitments, or any human ground whatsoever which is thought or assumed to be a reason why the Lord should come in and stand by is of no account to Him. He will shatter and shame and confound if we fail to recognise that it is all of grace. Oh, the perils to any spiritual ministry when the man is in view; when people take hold of the man and circle round him. That we are nothing and have nothing, and depend upon the Lord for every breath, every step, every word, every resource, is a fact which the Lord will take infinite pains to establish if a truly spiritual and Divine ministry is to be fulfilled.

Now, He stood upon that law Himself, and showed that as Representative Man, even in the service of God. He was truly dependent upon God for every word that He spoke. "The words that I speak I speak not out from Myself!" And if God ceased to be gracious, well, that was an end of divine ministry. He might go on as a popular leader, and have a great future as an eloquent preacher, but that would all be a horrible deception, and the real thing not there. "The works that I do I do not out from Myself." "I am truly dependent upon God being gracious to work through Me every work." There are people who seem to think that because you have a testimony you are an expert on certain lines of spiritual work, and they look to you as such experts, as if you had set up a spiritual surgery. But no such ministry can be taken for granted, every single case is by itself and rests upon a specific act of Divine Grace.

Now you see that law of grace as the principle which governs all spiritual experience. Why does the Lord empty us? Why does the Lord constantly pour us out, keep us at an end? Why is it that one of His chosen methods is to bring us to weakness, to emptiness, and to keep us there? Because it is all of grace, and grace was the principle that made Him empty Himself. "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Who though He was rich, for our sakes became poor." Though He possessed all things He emptied Himself. That is the grace of the Lord Jesus. And He set the standard and initiated the law of all spiritual service, which is the emptying of ourselves that God might do the thing Himself, and do it through an instrument, and everybody would say, "now if you knew the truth about that man or that woman you would never for a moment suggest that it was out of themselves that they did it, you would know that it was the grace of God that was doing it." It is the explanation of His method with us in His spiritual works. Why He shatters, empties, gets us down to the end, and why He all the time gives us nothing beyond the present moment, so that we have to come again for the next time, and start all over afresh with Him as it were. Why He keeps us on short commons in ministry so that sometimes it is true we do not know how we are coming to this ministry, and we come to the conclusion that we have nothing whatever to give, and then, in His grace He rises up and brings something through. And the same thing has got to be done again before there can be any more ministry. Self-sufficiency, self-confidence is the antithesis of the law of grace. Grace then is the law.

Now the whole of the Eternal Purpose is not going to be realised because we see, because we have a wonderful comprehension of that Purpose. No. Thank God for the revelation, but to make that revelation real, and to bring through the Eternal Purpose - Oh, He can do it, and He will do it, in His sovereignty He will accomplish it. To be of any use in its realisation, we shall come in to that sovereign Purpose and abide in it only on a principle of grace. Just as the initiation and the continuation is by grace, so the consummation will be by grace. The problem of how it is going to be done arises in the natural world. The cry in the natural world is, "How can a man be born again?" There is no resource on the natural side for that, it is all of grace: and as to a man's continuation in spiritual life and strength - "How can this man give us His flesh to eat?" There is no explanation on the natural side at all, but the answer is, He does it by His grace. When we come to the consummation there is still a problem on the natural side - "How are the dead raised up?" There is no explanation and no resource on the natural side, but He will do it by His grace. "He will raise us up at the last day." The explanation is in grace. That is the two-fold law all the way through - Jesus Christ as Lord, in the Eternal Purpose of God realising that Purpose through "the things which are not," and that is grace.

Chapter 5 - The Heavenly Origin

Jesus - the "I Am" in Incarnation

The key word to these studies is the great utterance of the Apostle Paul: "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death," (Philippians 3:10), a quest which commenced in the startling revelation to him on his way to persecute unto the death the Lord Jesus in the form of the members of His Body in Damascus, and that Lord, uniting Himself with those members in their suffering said, "I am Jesus Whom thou persecutest."

We have been coming to see through - what shall I say - the eyes of the apostle, by the same Spirit Who has opened his eyes, how far-reaching that was, that the Jesus of the New Testament is the "I AM" not only of the Old Testament but of eternity. The Incarnation has two aspects, one which relates to the fallen creation, the disordered and disrupted system through what is all too inadequately termed and understood as the "Fall." The Incarnation comes in there on the one side, and God Incarnate in Christ becomes Representative of that system in death to abolish that system entirely and wipe it out of existence.

We shall not go over that ground now, but we shall begin on the other side. The other aspect of the Incarnation is that it was retrospective to the pre-Fall purpose. It went back before times eternal and took up the thought and intent and design in the mind and the will of God in eternity, and continued out from eternity the realisation of that design, so that in the Incarnation Jesus becomes the Representative in Life, but that Eternal Life, the Ageless Life of that original race which transcends the Fall in the power of a Life which does not know death, which would have been ultimately but for the fall, and thus He becomes the Representative Man of that conception and idea and thought of God when He projected His design, His plan, His intention, into the universe.

Now we have to see what the nature of that man is and what are the laws of that Life; and here, of course, we become very practical, and we come right home to what we call our everyday life. Why did Paul say with regard to his knowledge of Christ that he would not know Christ after the flesh, but that he would know Him after the Spirit? It was because on the one hand we have to look to the Resurrection Life, the Man on the Resurrection plane to see what was in the mind of God when He said, "Let us make man in our own image." The man that you meet in the ordinary walk of life is not that man, and Adam before the Fall had not attained unto the full measure of the stature of the man that God intended when He commenced - through Christ - that creative work (Heb. 1:2). The type, the kind that God intended is the Man Whom you see on the mountain peak transfigured there, an anticipation of what was to be and what is to be, the Representative of that race; glorified humanity, humanity clothed with the glory of God. That is the presentation. That is realised only on Resurrection ground and by Resurrection Life, but it is a very blessed thing that the Lord has broken through in that one glorious manifestation.

He broke through again for Paul. It seems perhaps that Stephen caught a glimpse of Him, but there He stands, and there is a peculiar significance attached to the time of the transfiguration, and that peculiar significance is to give tremendous emphasis to the necessity of the Cross, for Moses and Elijah were found speaking to Him of the exodus which He was about to accomplish, and the exodus was out from a system into another by the Cross; it was the way through. That is why, for one reason, he refuses to know Jesus any longer according to the flesh. The other reason, of course, is very patent, that to know Jesus as He is to be known unto that tremendous realisation and consummation, you can and must only know Him in the Spirit: you have got to be there with spiritual senses and perception and discernment and capacities for receiving revelation before you can know Jesus in this marvellous sense. Beloved, the point of such tremendous importance is this, that there are a very very few who really KNOW Jesus.

Lest anyone should misunderstand the implications of what we are saying it may be as well to strongly emphasise that we are not touching that uniqueness and exclusiveness of the Lord Jesus in the very Godhead. We are not called to that, neither can we ever share that. Dedication is not our goal. Glorified humanity is not deified humanity - that is the doctrine of antichrist. May we be saved from a suspicion of such teaching. In His Divine Person, the Lord Jesus stands for ever apart from us. It is only in His representative capacity as Son of Man that we are joined with Him.

Now this next thing, that Paul came to see in the Spirit was that the laws of the earthly life of Jesus the Christ were the laws by which and upon which alone the heavenly Man was to be attained unto. That is coming back, of course, to that great word of Eternal Purpose that when He, the Son, was chosen of the Father before the world was, "we were chosen in Him" and "fore-ordained (or predestinated) to be conformed to the image of that Son." Now in order to arrive at that conformity you have got to know the laws and principles of that Son's life upon which we alone can arrive at that; and oh, how wonderfully does the Spirit corroborate Himself in all those who are led by Him.

One of the very strong elements, the living elements in a meditation of this kind is that if we know anything about the Holy Spirit's dealings with us inwardly we are simply corroborating the experience of the apostle, and the apostle is interpreting for us our own experience, and the life and the law of the Spirit is one in all those who are the sons of God, "having received the Spirit of His Son whereby they cry, Abba, Father"; and it is these laws and principles of the Life of the Son of Man which Paul saw to be the principles and the laws by which there was going to be an arriving at the full measure of the stature of that man in Christ. How shall it be that we are conformed as sons to the image of His Son for which we were predestinated by grace. Well the answer comes out of the very life of the Lord Jesus Himself when here on earth. Here He is living a life according to certain laws governed by certain principles and therefore arriving at a certain standard. And what a standard! What a standard of triumph! What a standard of effectiveness! What a standard of beauty! How is that to be realised by us? Oh beloved, you may try and imitate Jesus as much as you can, you will never get there. The imitation of Christ is a heart-breaking thing, and it is a very, very poor kind of apprehension of the Christ ideal to try by human resource, however exhaustive, to bring about the standard of the divine conception of Life. There is no impact in it; it does not reach out to anything like the dimensions of the Eternal Purpose of God. It is not universal in its significance. It is not fraught with the terrific impact of Almighty God to shatter and nullify the forces of evil in the universe. It is a mere empty imitation.

Now how is it to be? Oh, you see it is to be on the resurrection principle. He must die, and He must be raised again by the operation of the exceeding greatness of the power of God, and then transmute those principles into a corporate being called "His Body" of "many members," even that Body of those who have been brought into resurrection union with Him. There, and there alone, can you live, or hope ever to live according to the Divine Idea from before the foundation of the world. Now Paul has one word which explains all that. "The mystery which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." He is going to do it all over again. How? By ceasing to have an individual personal isolated existence and, like a corn of wheat falling into the ground and dying, He has risen, not an isolated corn, but one corporate whole of many members living out the same principle that He lived Himself. "Christ in you the hope of glory," and there is no hope only according to that law, but there is the hope. There you have the hope of justification which gives you standing in the presence of God. There you have the hope by identification which gives you acceptance with God. There you have the hope of resurrection which means sonship of God. There you have the hope of union which is power, sharing His power. There you have the hope which is by sanctification, which is the hope of glory. You notice that five-fold hope. (1) The hope of justification - standing, (2) The hope of identification - acceptance, (3) The hope of resurrection - sonship, (4) The hope of union - power, (5) The hope of sanctification - glory.

(Here again we must break in to say emphatically that this last statement does not relate to our Lord's bodily physical resurrection. That remains a thing by itself, and we believe in it absolutely. The Lord Jesus rose from the dead in His personal physical body, and so He remains!)

Now, then, that being the all-inclusive principle and basis of our attaining unto a conformity to this Representative Heavenly Man, this Arche-Typal Man, let us see some of those laws of life by which there is to be an attainment to the heavenly life of the Son of Man, and the first is that law of an essential heavenly ORIGIN.

The Heavenly Origin

Paul does make this so very clear and with such strong emphasis because he, more than we, has realised the significance of this. "The first man was of the earth, earthly: the second Man is the Lord out of heaven," and we are no longer out of the first man, we are now in and of the second Man, and all the way through he is saying that again and again, trying to remind the Lord's people that they have no relationship whatever to the earth and to the earthlies. Their relation to the earth will be manifest later on, when they govern it, but at present, the death of the Lord Jesus has cut them right off from their earthly origin and earthly ancestry, and all their earthly connection, and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus has brought to light the fact that God's Eternal conception of His Man is that his origin should be heavenly, and you do not now date back to Adam, you date back to the Son before Adam was created. In your essential being, in the central reality of what you are in Christ you have ceased to be a child of Adam and of the earth, earthy. There is a part of us we know that will go there, but that is not the essential part. We have received the seed corn of a heavenly body; when that shall be "earth to earth and ashes to ashes" this other contradicts and works against that, not of the earth, earthy; not ashes to ashes, but glory to eternal glory.

That one first law of the Life of the Heavenly Man is enough to keep us for a long time, to see how all that works out, because, as we said at the beginning the Holy Spirit operates in all the sons in the Son in the same way, and we shall find our heavenly origin by the Holy Spirit is being forced home upon our spiritual consciousness more and more, and that the demands of that origin will be laid upon us to cut every link with the earthlies, and we shall find that we are being almost imperceptibly and unconsciously at times swung out from the earthlies. In the matter of relationships, the law of the Heavenly Life is that we find that the earthly relationships take a second place to spiritual fellowships! So we come to the state, and it sounds brutal even to our earthly relationships which have not come into the realm of the Spirit - "Who is my mother, who are my brethren?" That is, we have come into another set of relationships which has transcended those, and we find that the law of the Heavenly Life has demonstrated itself by the unity of the members of the Body of Christ.

Now I want you to notice, my dear young friends in the faith especially, that one of the marks of the truth of your heavenly relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ is your love of the fellowship of the Lord's people; that you want the fellowship of the Lord's people more than you want anybody's fellowship. That is very simple you may say, but it is very important. To some who profess to be the Lord's children the company of the Lord's people is boredom, and they are glad to get away - they have not come to their own company, there is a reversion to type. In the spiritual realm the Lord's children gravitate towards the Lord's children always, if they are truly the Lord's children. That is a simple law, but here is the law in the Master's Life, "Who is my mother?" "And who are my brethren?" "These are my mother and my brethren that do the will of my father," and it is that principle that is at the heart of these seemingly very harsh sayings of His. "Except a man hate father and mother, sister and brother for my sake." It is a thing which demonstrates as a working principle almost imperceptibly that those who are of blood kinship on the earth (but who are still of the world) are very often the most distant from us, and the most difficult to get on with, and we are glad when their visit to us comes to an end and they go home. On the other hand, when we meet with the Lord's people, though we may never have met them on earth before, we enter into something we have in common. This thing springs up in the most unexpected ways and places, and it comes out if only you leave it as a matter of Life. Immediately you get into the mental realm you find you have differences, but leave it as a matter of Life, and it is a reality. Keep the human element out, that is, the fallen human element, and the thing is beautiful, it is Life. That is one of the things we have to learn.

If we all abide in the Spirit the fellowship would be unbroken. It is when we get into that other realm from which we have really been severed in the resurrection that all the things come in to destroy, or interfere with the fundamental unity. It is not our business to create a unity, it is our business to keep it. He has created it. Now you see that one of the involved principles of Christ as Head of the Body is unity of Life. It is there you have to find it, and you find that the origin of that thing is heavenly, and it is always making you to gravitate toward your spring, toward heavenly things; that you are losing all the time appetite in the things earthly, and you are becoming more and more conscious of the "stranger" spirit; that we are pilgrims and strangers in a very intense way. Our at-homeness is somewhere else, and that for us for the time being is a spiritual somewhere else, and not a geographical somewhere else. We are there, we are not going there. We are there in the heavenlies in Christ. Violate that law, and you at once interrupt the progress of conformity to His image. Touch the things of earth voluntarily, choose the things of earth voluntarily, and you arrest your own progress to His image. That is, you put a check upon the eternal intention of God concerning your own life, and the enemy's scheme is all the time to try and divert you from the way of the upward calling in Christ and to get you on to things which, clothed in the most orthodox phraseology, gripped in the vision of ultra-spirituality, are nevertheless side-tracks, bypaths and not in the direct route, and they are calculated to get you out into a realm of mental spirituality which arrests your conformity to the likeness of His Son.

Well now, we see that that is the first law, the law of a heavenly origin. Now the Son of Man has declared, "I came out from God," "I am come down from heaven." Jesus, the I AM down from heaven, out from God. The Representative and the Inclusive One of all those who are chosen in Him before the foundation of the world and predestinated to be conformed to His image, out from God, down from heaven. You remember that picturesque little Psalm 87, the viewing as it were of the pageant of the nations, and the boasts and vaunts of those who were born in Tyre and Babylon, etc., saying, "I was born there! Look at great and glorious Babylon, I was born there! Look at Tyre, and all her stately majesty, I was born there!" But the Psalmist snaps his fingers at that and says, "But what of Zion? The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God, and in that day it shall be said, This one and that one was born there." And the Psalm closes, "All my well springs are in thee." That is the place from which I derive my life. Babylon, Tyre, Ethiopia! My word, not to be compared with Zion, and I was born there! My well-springs are there!

Now I wonder if this comes not only as a testimony, but as a test. Do you know truly that your relationship to the earth has ceased and your relationship to the heaven has commenced. All your life is there and derived from there, and all your interests are there. Is it true of you that all your heart is drawn above, and that you need not to be exhorted to seek those things which are above, for you know that your treasure is there, and where your treasure is there your heart is?

Chapter 6 - The Inclusiveness of Jesus

We have been seeing a very little of how that answer - "I am Jesus" (Acts 9:5) - that designation and definition was the instrument by which the Apostle Paul was taken right back into the pre-creation times, the "before times eternal" into the counsels of God - the Father and the Son and the Spirit - and how out of those Eternal Counsels, the Son, in a covenant relationship, came forth to project the counsels of God known as "The Eternal Purpose."

We have seen Jesus "I AM" in eternity past before Abraham was and before the world was. We have seen Jesus the "I AM" in His creative activity. We have seen Him, the "I AM" in history, governing and controlling; and we have seen Him, the "I AM" in spiritual experience on a basis of grace. We have still to see much.

One would just like to read one or two other fragments of the Apostle's utterances which link this up before we come to the specific phase for this moment, but remind ourselves again of his words in. Phil. 3:10:

"That I may know Him."

This is the new quest, the new passion, the new outlook, the new direction of this man. If you want to know what the old one was you can put him into the 27th verse of Acts 13. Undoubtedly he is included here, although he is speaking about others, but they were his set, of which he was a member:-

"For they that dwell at Jerusalem and their rulers, because they knew Him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath day, fulfilled them in condemning Him."

"They knew not Him, nor the voices of the prophets which were read every Sabbath day." That is a very sweeping and tremendous affirmation, seeing that Jesus was the personification of patriarch and seer and psalmist and prophet; that He gathered up into His own Person all the spiritual elements of all that had ever been written in Moses and the prophets; and they knew Moses and the prophets, they were read every Sabbath day, but Him they knew not. The voices of the prophets they knew not, they only knew the words. It is a tremendous thing, and Paul came to recognise that he was one of those, who knew the prophets but Him he knew not. He came to see just how far we may have a wonderfully comprehensive knowledge of the letter, and act in absolute contradiction thereto in spirit. It was that One whom he was desirous of knowing "THAT I MAY KNOW HIM."

Then you may link with that such words as those which he wrote to the Corinthian brethren, "When I came to you I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified."

Now if you leave out some of the words you really see the force of that declaration and his determination: "Brethren, when I came to you I determined to know Jesus Christ and Him crucified." That is the positive side. The negative side is "not to know anything."

And then further you will remember the familiar words which immediately bring you on to the ground of resurrection, the other side of the Cross:-

"Henceforth know we no man according to the flesh. Yea, though we have known Christ according to the flesh yet henceforth know we Him so no more."

His quest and his determination was to know Jesus only after the Spirit. We may see the force of that before we are through, but we are just staying to see this quest for a knowledge of Jesus in a certain realm of a certain kind to a certain end.

We have worked thus far, although we shall have to go back with glances, right up through history into grace, and now Paul's revelation of Jesus in incarnation, and this was for him the door, as it were, of hope through which he saw everything as practically possible, nay, more, practically assured. He had the vision, the revelation of Jesus away back in eternity past, Sovereign through history, as the Instrument and Agent, the Cause and the Consequence of creation, but now how was all this to be brought into the experience and the possession of man. As we have seen, it was to that end; this was not all for Jesus as an isolated unit as a Member of the Godhead. It was unnecessary from that standpoint, but the Purpose had as its main element and main factor, that all this Eternal Purpose, this Divine Design, was relative, and man was included in it, the sons in the Son, yet how was it all to be brought into the possession and experience of man? Or, to put it the other way, how was man to come into it and possess it? And Paul sees, by the Spirit, that it is on the basis and by the principle and law of incarnation. The incarnation of the Christ is the key to the whole thing, and I would just like to read two or three fragments again in this connection which reveal Jesus as the Heavenly Man. Philippians 2:8: "Being found in fashion as a man."

The "Fashion" and the "Form"

A simple study of two Greek words will throw much light on this; Schema and Morphe. Schema relating to the outward form, the fashion; and Morphe relating to the inward reality, and in verses 6 and 7 you have the two: Morphe "Who being in the form of God." That is, the essential reality, the abiding thing, the essence, the form, the morphe of God. And then, "Took upon Himself the form of a servant." That is most striking, that He did not just assume the fashion of a servant, but literally entered into the spirit of the servant. That is, He became a servant in reality. He was not acting a part, as Satan acts a part; you read that even Satan is transformed into an angel of light. It is the word schema, which means an outward form merely, assuming a guise, assuming a fashion. Now Christ never acted a part when He became a servant, He entered into the reality of this thing, so real that He went through death and hell in this thing. It was no mockery matter; it was the Spirit of service, and that we have to see in relation to obedience presently.

Now we come to "in fashion as a man." Here you have the word schema. He is taking an outward form, but there is an inward reality. This outward form, as He assumes it, will change as it did change, and that is the central point of this part of our theme - the change through death and resurrection, not that He ceased to be man, but He changed the form of His manhood, and you see how the key to the Incarnation, the Purpose of the Incarnation was the changing of the form of manhood, and that not only because of "the Fall," but in the purpose of God. When He created man He created him on a principle that he could be changed into another being. Adam as he was in creation before the Fall was not quite as God intended him ultimately to be. Christ is the ultimate, the climax of creation, and it was like unto Him that Adam was to be made. We are anticipating the subject somewhat by saying this, but it comes here, one must say it, and you will bear with the reiteration later when you have to look at man in resurrection to see what was in the mind of God when He said, "Let us make man in our own image." That is where you arrive at the Divine idea and ideal. Now the change in the form of the man is here indicated that He was found in fashion as a man. He took a certain form in which to do something which would produce another form, or make possible the other form, and that is why Paul said we do not know Him any longer according to the flesh, not the historic Jesus, but Jesus Risen is the One we want to know, "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection." It is the Risen Christ Who alone can fall in with the Eternal Purpose and be the realisation of that Purpose.

Just link with that those familiar words in Hebrews 2:10: "Verily He took not on Him the nature of angels, but He took on Him the seed of Abraham." One's emphasis there is simply this, "Not the nature of angels."

Man Higher Than Angels

The suggestion behind those words is this; that He is assuming something which, in the mind of God, transcends the nature of angels; that human nature when it reaches its highest level through resurrection power transcends angelic orders. If He had taken the nature of angels He could only have reached to the highest standard of angelic life, but God intends something higher than that for man, and we do not sing about wanting to be angels, we want to be something more than angels. We want to see the tremendous meaning of Incarnation; we want to see what God really meant when He made a human race to be partakers of His Divine Nature. Beloved, I do not know whether this sounds to you like a very wonderful theory, or conception, to me it carries tremendous values, it has a great spiritual significance of present practical meaning and helpfulness. "He took not upon Himself the nature of angels," no, He took upon Himself the seed of Abraham. "He was found in fashion as a man." "The Word became flesh," in order that humanity might be brought to a position above the angels. That is our goal.

Then this other word that you know so well in 1 Cor. 15:45:-

"The first man Adam was made a living soul. The last Adam a quickening (or life-giving) Spirit... Verse 47: "The first man is of the earth, earthy [that is not where the Lord intended him to stay]: the second Man is the Lord from heaven."

Now what we have to do before we are through is to see the nature of the second Man, the last Adam into Whom we are incorporated to share that nature. But now we must just come to this, and note that the Incarnation has a two-fold aspect. On the one hand, it is representation in death - you are familiar with that. "He was made in the likeness," the fashion, not the substance, not the morphe, but the schema, the likeness, the fashion of sinful flesh, and that implies and carries representation in death, and is retrospective to the Fall, and means abolition; back to the Fall the abolishing of a system representatively and inclusively. That is one side of the Incarnation, the whole scheme of sacrifice summed up in Him whereby judgment and death bring an end to a system, to a state. On the other hand, it is retrospective to the Eternal Purpose, beyond the Fall, and prospective to the consummation of that Eternal Purpose. That is in the Incarnation. It goes right back beyond the Fall.

The Incarnation was not merely occasioned by the Fall, something bigger than that is in the Incarnation, but the Fall, and the dealing with all the consequences of the Fall is included in the Incarnation, and the Incarnation is the gathering up of an infinitely higher purpose than redemption, it is the bringing of a race into living likeness to, and union with God which is the final intention of God in creation. In order to do that, redemption becomes incidental by the Fall, but "the Head of all creation," if it is a human creation, that is, the creation of a human race, must be manifest, whether there be a Fall or no Fall, to gather up into Himself. I wonder if you see what I mean. That if in the "before times eternal" Christ was appointed Head of all creation, Heir of all things, that all things were to be gathered up into Him, and that these "all things" were created by Him, and on a human plane, then, as the climax of glorified humanity, He must inevitably be revealed, be manifest in the flesh apart from a Fall. It seems to be a necessary conclusion, and there are distinct traces of this very truth in the revelation that came to Paul as to Who and What Jesus is. Now that other side of Incarnation which leaps over the Fall and all its consequences into the Eternal Purpose of God and takes up the nature of that Purpose so far as man is concerned, and then leaps over the ages to the consummation in Christ at the end of all, is the nature and purpose of the Incarnation. To put it more simply and again in another way. The Incarnation, the Manifestation in flesh, on the part of the Lord Jesus, is that He should be manifestly the Inclusive God-Man, and so Paul, in his quest to KNOW HIM is all the time seeking to know

The Inclusiveness of Jesus.

Now perhaps the most familiar thing amongst us is that little phrase which he uses more than any other,  "In Christ Jesus." I wonder if we have exhausted that yet. It is a small key, but it unfastens a mighty door. "In Christ Jesus." All that is there in the Purpose of God from eternity, from a to z, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end," the initiation and the consummation of all things, everything in the Eternal Mind and thought and intention of God is there in Christ, and now it is all there in Christ for us, concerning us, and we are concerned in it. So in order to be in it we must be in Christ, and how do you get into Christ? On the ground of incarnation, that He has become the Inclusive Man, the All-inclusive Man, the Federal Head of this race, the Generic Man, the last Adam, the Second Man, and we become incorporated into Him on the ground of His resurrection, having been planted together with Him in the likeness of His death. But Paul saw that the death side of the Incarnation was only one - it does not minimise the value, but was only in order to make all this other possible and real. It was not an end in itself, it was incidental in the course of the ages. It was not the main thing, it came in because of the Fall, but our incorporation into Christ as this Arch-Type Man, this Federal Head, this Generic Man dates back long past the Fall. "We were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world," before any Fall took place. Now then our union with Him in death is incidental to the main business of God, essential, indispensable, and so Paul saw, but don't stay there, get that settled, get that reckoned with once and for all, and come right out into the main thing.

This death is like a ghastly hiatus in the course of God's Eternal Purpose; it is a kink as it were, it is not in the straight line of God's will, but was only to make possible all the other, it had to be, it was a necessity because of what had happened, but resurrection union is the thing that brings us at once right into the heavenly realm, and right into direct alignment with that great eternal thing of God, so by resurrection union we do not become united with Him in the fashion of a man, the likeness of sinful flesh, we become united with Him in that transcendent arrival and achievement of God, the highest realisation of His creative Purpose, and we are no longer of the earth, earthy, we are now of the Lord from heaven. That will be seen when we come to study more closely the nature of this Heavenly Man, and see our nature in Him, the whole constitution.

What Paul saw was the inclusiveness of Christ in His real Person. This Christ of history is not the real Christ in a sense - don't misunderstand me (if that were printed by itself it would lead a lot of people into a fog), but in a sense this is not the real Christ, the real Christ is that which the world did not see. "The world knoweth Him not." "They knew Him not, nor the voices of the prophets." There is this other Christ transcendent in union with the Father Who was manifest only to a few comparatively. Now Paul has seen Him, and that is the real Christ, and the only One to know, but Whom to know is to bring us into the Life of the Ages, the Eternal Life, out of the life of time, out of the historic into the Eternal. The inclusiveness of Christ as He was essentially, and not as man saw Him, that is what he wanted to know, and he saw that the Incarnation was a Way into all that which was included in Christ.

Now you take up Paul with that simple thought - A Way. "By Him we have access, through Him we have access by the new and living Way which He has consecrated for us in His flesh." The Incarnation a Way! Now go back to Genesis 3:24 (Paul started to study the scriptures all over again when he began to see Jesus, and he knew the scriptures), "So he drove out the man, and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden the Cherubim, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, keeping the way of the tree of life."

Now you see what has happened, "keeping the way of the tree of life," barring the way of the tree of life, judgment was in the way, and therefore, seeing that the tree of life was hedged around and safeguarded, "Eternal Life" was impossible. How? By disobedience. Is that a "Pauline" phrase? A very declaration of Paul! Disobedience and death - the tree of life safe-guarded. Now listen to Paul! "He became obedient unto death, yea, the death of the Cross," - and when He fulfilled that obedience to the last degree, and there was nothing more of obedience to be fulfilled "He cried with a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, and the veil of the temple was rent from the top to the bottom." "And hath opened a way for us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh." The Incarnation in the uttermost obedience to God has cancelled death, and opened the way into life. The Tree of Life, which is His real self, is no longer cut off by judgment, because the judgment of the flaming sword lighted upon Him in that assumed likeness of sinful flesh, and in His uttermost obedience He brought Life and Immortality to light, brought a Way into Life, and into all that which is in God from which Adam was excluded, both experimentally and potentially; for Adam never received his full inheritance in God, but Christ received all that by obedience and opens the Way in His flesh into all that: the full inheritance of the joint-heirs with Him Who has been made Heir of all things.

Now I realise that is all imperfectly stated, and is not as clearly put as one would have liked to have presented it, but perhaps the Lord conveys something to you through the words, as one finds it so difficult to explain this. You see the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus deals with the thing that has come in between and brought death, and removes it out of the way, and gets God's Eternal Way open right through, clear, by His obedience, and that Way has been reopened by the Incarnation - if "re-opened" is the right word to use. God's way has been made clear for Him to go right on to the consummation of that Purpose to realise a perfected and glorified humanity in His Son. Disobedience cut clean across that Way, as it were, or caused this kink, this hiatus, but the obedience of the Son unto death, yea, the death of the Cross issued in a Way being made right into the fulness, and that is what Paul is seeing. He is seeing the fact that Jesus is the Way. Paul got his revelation by the Spirit, not from John. John wrote his many years after the Apostle had laid down his pen for good. Paul got right through in the Spirit and saw Jesus in the Incarnation as the Way, and there is no coming into this Eternal thing only through the Veil of His flesh which has been cleft by God, and not by man from the top to the bottom, not from the bottom to the top.

If you could only see the meaning of that cleaving, that rending, it, in itself, is a marvellous key to the scriptures. There are two sides to a way always, and you will find there were always the two ways of God's coming through. Take the offerings in the book of Leviticus. In the main offerings there were two kinds which represented the two sides of the way. There was the kind which was utterly judged and destroyed from the presence of God, not a saving element; then there were the sweet savour offerings which were acceptable to Him. The other side of the way. The way through to God is that which speaks of destruction from God, and acceptance by God. Take the smaller offerings, and you find that the two elements were in single offerings. Take the scapegoat - two halves of one sacrifice - one goes out into the wilderness to perish under the judgment of sin, destroyed from the presence of the Lord; the other is offered unto the Lord and accepted. Destroyed unto the Lord, and destroyed from the Lord - two sides of the way. He is the way. When He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh He was destroyed from the presence of the Lord, and that was retrospective to the Fall, but on this other side of the way He represents the eternal conception of God concerning glorified humanity in which God is resident and He is offered to the Lord and fully acceptable. Two sides of the way.

A covenant in those old days always had these two sides. A sacrifice was offered, it was parted in the middle, and the two people making the covenant came between the halves and had a meal together. You remember in Genesis 15 the Lord makes a covenant with Abraham. The sacrifice is made and one half is put here and one-half there. It is divided asunder on two sides, and a light passes in between and the Angel of the Lord prepares a meal in between the two, and Abraham enters into that sacred feast with God between the two halves of the sacrifice, and the covenant concerning the redemption of a people from the land of darkness is entered into. You see this is the way through, God coming through and making possible the realisation of His great Purpose, and He hath consecrated this way open, a way through His flesh, and you know the Veil with its four-fold colour and four-fold type -

BLUE - Heavenly glory and mystery.

PURPLE - Sovereignty and majesty.

SCARLET - Sacrifice and passion.

WHITE - Holiness and righteousness and then worked upon it the CHERUBIM.

What are the Cherubim? The figure of the -

Lion - Sovereignty, majesty.

[Eagle -] Heavenly glory and mystery.

Ox - Suffering and sacrifice unto service.

Man - Presentation of the Perfect Man Christ Jesus.

Here He is representing humanity. The Incarnation of the Lord Jesus is there, His perfection, and the realisation of that perfection in holiness and purity through sacrifice and suffering into the heavenly glory. It is all there, and then God comes in and through that makes a way - rent from the top to the bottom, and the new and living Way is opened. It is all so rich, beloved, that one simply has to skim the surface. I am breaking here and one ought not to break at this point because immediately emerges in this presentation of Christ Incarnate the laws and rules of the life of the Heavenly Man, and if we are called unto Him we have got to know those laws and rules by which to live is to bring us into the state of glory ultimately.

Chapter 7 - The Law of Heavenly Sustenance

Begotten of God. It is not sufficient that we should have a heavenly origin, but there is to be a definite act by which that heavenly origin is to become an experimental thing, a realised thing - a heavenly begetting. Now this brings in the place of the Resurrection. Paul, by revelation, placed his finger with tremendous emphasis upon the significance of the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus was the time and the occasion for a special attestation from heaven as to His Sonship, that "He was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead." And then Paul in many places points out that our relationship to the Lord Jesus to realise the Eternal Purpose, and to come into our heavenly heritage, and to know our heavenly Life is by a divine act when the power of His resurrection is wrought in us, and by that resurrection power we are separated once and for all from the death of the old Adam into the Life of the New Man, the Heavenly Man, the last Adam, the second Man - a heavenly begetting. It did not come to Paul in the words of the Lord Jesus in the days of His flesh. John got his revelation that way; he recorded things that Jesus said, but Paul recorded things that he in the Spirit saw. John wrote his gospel and his letters years after Paul closed his last epistle, but Paul has got right through to these eternal realities in the Spirit, and he is understanding in the Spirit what John later wrote as a historic record, "Ye must be born from above." "Ye must be born anew." "Except a man be born anew he cannot enter into the realm of God."

You see, beloved, this whole vast thing of God's Purpose hangs for ever upon that divine thing which we call being born again, born from above. That is a divine act when the reality of our heavenly calling becomes experimental by the impartation of a heavenly Life. When there is a begetting there is the reception of a life, the impartation of a Life out of God which is commensurate with the vast range of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection."

Now for most this is away back in the beginnings of the gospel, but we ought never to get very far from the beginnings while there are still souls who are not sure that they have been born from above, and one stays to stress this in order to interrogate any who may be reading this. Are you sure you are in the Eternal Purpose of God in Christ. How can you be sure? By this, that having received the gift of that Eternal Life you have come to know that you are no longer of this earth, but you belong somewhere else. Now that is a simple test for some of the Lord's people who are troubled, uncertain about their salvation even yet. Are you not quite sure because of certain things? Now is this true of you, that for you He alone satisfies; He alone answers to that something in you which is you really, and without Him everything would be blank, dark, and you would sooner not have a being at all, because you realise that without Him the very spring of your life has been cut off. Are you there? If that is so you have got something to go on with, something to encourage you. Beloved, I have often had to tell my own heart that.... There are times when the pressure is so great, and the enemy's tactics are so severe, and all manner of accusations are brought by him to bear upon us that we have to look into our own hearts and cry - where are we? And for myself, the only answer that I have been able to give which has brought me peace from time to time is, if I lose the Lord I lose everything, and that being the case, that I cannot and have no wish to live without Him, I think it is all right. I think He will accept that at any rate. He has linked me on by His own Life to Himself, and that Life which is Christ then is the hope of glory, the assurance of glory, because it is the power by which there is going to be the full realisation of all the meaning of His resurrection in spirit, soul and body.

I would urge upon you once again to look up Paul as he writes about this thing. The matter of sonship on the basis of resurrection, and our union with Him in that resurrection. "Christ was raised from the dead, so also we." "The exceeding greatness of His power which is to usward, the power which He exercised, or energised in Christ when He raised Him from the dead," and, "ye are risen with Him." Just make a special note of Eph. 2:4-6, Col. 3:1, and look at them again in this connection.

The Law of the Heavenly Sustenance

The next law of the Life of the Heavenly Man is the law of a heavenly sustenance. I think Paul, in re-reading his scriptures, which were scriptures of the Old Testament, in the light of the revelation of Jesus which had come to him, came to see this principle as he saw Jesus right down through those scriptures, and then he wrote to the Corinthians, "I would not have you ignorant brethren, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and were all baptised into Moses in the cloud and in the Red Sea, and they all did eat of that spiritual meat, and all did drink of that spiritual drink, for they drank of the Rock which followed them, and that Rock was Christ." Here is the sustenance of the Heavenly Man - one who has been called out by God into a heavenly union. It is the impartation of Christ by the Spirit, and you may get at this again by asking your own hearts this question - Have I an insatiable appetite for the Lord Jesus? For that is one of the characteristic marks of a truly born-again life. It is a hunger, it is an appetite. One is so sad sometimes to find young Christians without that appetite - professedly Christians - so many of those who take His Name and claim to be the Lord's people, but they have not really anything of an appetite for spiritual food. Do you hunger and thirst for Him? Is your longing for Him that of the Apostle's, "That I may know Him." And with what does that connect his quest? "I have counted all these other great things of earth as the utmost refuse," and Paul begins that by saying if any man has whereof to boast I can go beyond any man. I have more than any man to boast of, and if you are going to boast then he can catalogue the things that he can boast about, and they are not mean things, but then he comes to this, but "I count these things as the veriest refuse that I may be found in Him." Now, beloved, has everything that you could desire, long for and boast of in this world become the veriest refuse compared with your desire for the Lord Jesus? That is a test, but it is a law of the upward heavenly life.

So Paul comes to see the other Jesus "I am the Bread of Life." That is, I am the sustenance, the maintenance, the nourishment, the basis of growth and strength and health in spiritual things. "I am the Bread of Life." That is spiritual meat; that is spiritual drink. He knew what the Lord had said to His people. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God shall man live." Do you live by Him? He is the sustenance. Now, beloved, He may be presented to you, to me, in all the wonderful intrinsic value of His sustaining properties, and yet being brought to you, you may just fail to know Him as your sustenance, for you know the real value of food for us is not merely in its inherent properties. You may offer me a most wholesome and nourishing meal, and yet it may not mean life to me, it might mean just the opposite! What is necessary is that there shall be that in me which is able to take hold of it and to break it up and assimilate it and make it mine. That is the law here of Christ in you, Christ being formed in you, but Christ in you as the Life which takes hold of the things of Himself and makes them you. You see you must have a corresponding principle in your own being to that which is in Him, then there is Life in that meal, but unless I have Life in me which can take hold of the Life in the meal, that meal will profit me nothing, and I think that is the peril of conferences and of meetings, that there is not the Life in so many that gets hold of the Life, the corresponding principle which extracts the nutriment and translates it into their own very being. The law of heavenly sustenance.

Now what is the test? If, beloved, I am, by the corresponding principle in me extracting the Life from the meal, I can effectually work. And how much of all that comes to us of the Lord is translated into spiritual effectiveness? It is a test. I am going to stop there, but it is on one's heart - forgive me if it sounds like criticism or judgment, for one has to judge oneself in this - but one does so often feel burdened almost to an aching that it seems that in all the conventions and meetings that are held all over the country and the world, there is not a corresponding spiritual effectiveness that acts like a terrific impact upon spiritual forces. And the proof that all this is doing any good at all will be in as much as He, through us, Who is our life becoming us, does register the almighty impact of His own personal sovereignty upon the forces which are opposed to Him. It works out in our prayer meetings. It will work out in many ways - spiritual effectiveness, spiritual strength - I do not mean many activities, I do not mean programmes and schemes and all that sort of thing, I mean the real spiritual effectiveness that counts behind the human factor that really is felt and powers of darkness say, "Jesus I know, Paul I know, and so-and-so I know, and such and such a home I know, but all this conventioning, who are you?" You know the disparity between the presentation and the working out of the presentation.

Now I am not judging you any more than I am judging myself, but I do feel this, the test and the proof that Christ is our life, and that He is more and more becoming our life, and that we are knowing Him more and more in the power of His resurrection is that He, through us, really does make Himself known amongst the spiritual hosts that are opposed to Him around and back of situations in which we move. That is the proof. Is it working out like that in downright practical spiritual effectiveness? Is it growing, beloved? Is it on the increase? Perhaps you say that is not for us to say. Oh, but there is a realm where "By their fruits we shall know them." It might not be good for us to know that the Lord is doing mighty things through us, but are we impotent and helpless, paralysed in the presence of some spiritual situation which is not essentially complicated, but more or less simple. Well now, don't be disheartened and discouraged, but just see this, that the Lord Jesus wants to impart Himself to us, His children, in that increasing way that shall make Him manifest in the power of His throne and sovereignty through us, and we must see to it that the end of all our receiving Christ does mean that as He gives opportunity and calls for action in Him, we seek definitely to deal with spiritual situations; that we do not go round in a circle all the time of our personal concerns, but that we move out in the Lord. We must, otherwise it is all in vain, and when we meet for prayer that must be the order.

Chapter 8 - The Twofold Law of Life

We have recently been considering some of the laws and principles of the Life of the Heavenly Man, and we come now to another of these which is the law of Life by the obedience of faith. We will go right back to the beginning of our theme with:

Acts 9:5: "Who art Thou, Lord ? - I am Jesus."

Phillippians 3:10: "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death."

Now simply, undoubtedly the first thing which astounded and astonished Saul of Tarsus in that response to his enquiry was that Jesus was alive. Jesus alive! Doubtless he carried that with him in those days prior to his retirement into Arabia and then through the two or three years in the Arabian desert, Jesus alive, the one thing constantly recurring in him, and it was that that was re-shaping everything on the one side while it upset everything on the other. Jesus alive, and for ever after that was the basis of his spiritual quest to know Jesus after the Spirit, no longer according to the flesh, in the power of His resurrection, the vast cosmic and universal significance of His sufferings in their ultimate outworking and the essential method of entering into the Eternal Purpose in the first place by being made conformable to His death. So we hear him from time to time saying such things as "Last of all He appeared to me," and then "Have not I seen the Lord Jesus"; "the Living One," to use now the words which came through John many years after Paul had laid down his pen for the last time, "I am the Living One (or as the Authorised Version has it) I am He that liveth, I became dead, but behold I am alive unto the ages of the ages, and I have the keys of death and of Hades." "All the issues of death are in My power. I live!" This was what broke upon Saul of Tarsus, and became the sphere of an abiding spiritual enquiry, investigation and quest in Paul the Apostle. He came to see, and wanted to see more and more that Jesus as the Life Personified was the key and the door to the Eternal Purpose of God. That is the theme of Paul.

Now Jesus as the Way of Life is first seen in the early records of the history of God's dealings with man. In the last verse of the third chapter of Genesis you have the second mention of the Tree of Life, but there you have it mentioned in relation to a way - the way of the Tree of Life. It is perhaps a little side glance, but it is a light which comes upon the immediate subject to remember that on every occurrence or appearance of this Tree of Life it is always related to a way. When it reappears in the prophecies of Ezekiel, in the 47th chapter for instance, you find it is related to a way. And then when it reappears in the Revelation, 22nd chapter, it is "in the midst of the street thereof, and on this side and on that it is a way of the Tree of Life" - a street. Now, coming back to this Tree of Life in the Book of Genesis here Jesus as the Way of Life is first brought before us, so far as this world is concerned. You remember its virtue, the power what the New Testament calls aeonic life. You remember that it had to be safeguarded after sin had entered lest being partaken of it should bring about a perpetuation of a fallen state. That is its virtue - we need not stay with further details.

Wherein lay this virtue? Now surely not in its physical properties! Surely this aeonic life, this perpetual life in Christ is not merely a physical matter! One feels most strongly as we come back with the full revelation of God in all the Word that it was not in the physical element of taking literal fruit from that tree which resulted in Eternal life, but it was in the spiritual properties. And what were the spiritual principles of man's relation to that symbolic thing, that typical thing? Undoubtedly they were faith and obedience. The violation of those two principles brought death; the observance of these two principles would have meant life. So you have rising up right at the beginning in relation to the way of Eternal Life, the Life of the Heavenly Man on the ground of resurrection, these two basic principles, FAITH and OBEDIENCE. The obedience of faith. The violation, let us repeat it, of those two principles brought double death, the loss of this Life in the first place, which was never partaken of, or received, but death in addition to this. "The day that thou eatest thereof (the other tree) thou shalt die." When you take the optional thing, forbidden, in preference to the other which is allowed you die a double death, a second death. Now I am not staying with these things to follow them out in themselves, as you see, one is mentioning them to pass on. There is a difference between the immortality of the soul and eternal life in Christ.

Now the way to the Tree of Life after the violation of this two-fold principle of relation to God on a basis of Eternal Life was, one was going to say, closed, but more wisely we should say, secured in something, by something, for something. How?

The Cherubim

I want you to notice here a very small point, it may seem, but which has its own great significance. It does not say that God placed Cherubim in the way of the Tree of Life. It says He placed the Cherubim. The history of the Cherubim we do not know, but obviously their existence and their character is taken for granted. He placed the Cherubim, and the force of the Hebrew is He made to reside there the Cherubim. It was not just a momentary thing, it was an established principle. Without again analysing the history and the nature of the Cherubim all we need say is that the Cherubim were a combination in representation of earthly and heavenly elements. You remember all the way through the four-fold symbolism in the Cherubim - the man, the lion, the eagle, the ox.

Eagle - Heavenly glory and mystery.

Lion - Sovereignty and majesty.

Ox - Service and sacrifice.

Man - Representation.

And so here you gather up in the Cherubim the combination of heavenly and earthly elements. These appear again and again in the history of God's dealing with men in type and symbol. In one word, what is it? Incarnation! The incarnation of the Heavenly, God manifest in the flesh, the majesty and sovereignty on high, the heavenly glory and mystery incarnate in man fulfilling the Eternal Purpose by the Cross of service and sacrifice, made flesh in order to serve and to suffer unto the will of God, which is the Eternal Purpose. That may be imperfectly presented, but I think you are capable of recognising what one is endeavouring to say. The Incarnation was that. That veil of the temple, for instance, which God rent from top to bottom at the last moment of the accomplishment of the will of God in Christ suffering death. Paul tells us that it was by a new and living way, the way of Life which He opened for us in His flesh, the veil, and on that veil, as you know, were inscribed the representation of the Cherubim. Here you have the combination of the heavenly and the earthly, the perfect Man indwelt by God. The way of the realisation of the purpose of God was then the way of Life as by the Incarnation - the perfect Man Christ Jesus - God Incarnate - the way of the Eternal Purpose in that Incarnation.

What happened? Well, you go back, and you find that Life is secured in the Cherubim, or in other words, Life is secured in the God Man, the Arch-Type Man, the Representative of that which God had set His heart upon, which is only realised on the ground of resurrection. Then in the incarnation of God in Christ the serpent was met and vanquished, sin was judged and put away; fallen humanity was gathered up and for all future purposes of God put away, abolished. Death was destroyed, being robbed of its sting, and Divine Life became triumphant, the way of life being thrown open. This, of course, is the inner meaning of the incident in the last scenes of His earthly life between Himself and the one who is called by us "the dying thief." "The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day"; and the Master said to him, "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise." He was only saying in effect, "the way of life is flung open today, because I have vanquished the serpent in this cross. I have destroyed death; I have abolished sin. I am the Life, and in Me there is secured the paradise of God, and with Me you will be in paradise." That is the earnest of everything geographically and everything more that you want, but the first thing is that you should take of the Tree of Life, and that is the One which forever Paul sought to know in this power of His resurrection. So then, beloved, we come back to the principles, the laws of this Life, of this Heavenly Man -  the way of Life is the way of faith and obedience, and that was consummated by Christ in His Cross. Faith and obedience found their ultimate realisation in His Cross by Himself.

The Path through the Ages

You notice the path of this through the ages. God's way of Life. It is a thin red streak, but straight, direct, unwavering, sheer, always speaking of Life by these two laws. The obedience of faith. That gathers up the story of Abel. It is a short story; we say it is a tragic story, but it is a far-reaching story. "He being dead, yet speaketh." The Christ, the greater than Abel has answered the cry of the blood of Abel. Abel's life story is gathered up then in two words - Faith - Obedience. "By faith Abel offered..." Isaac in action - that is the story.

Enoch - Enoch walked with God. How? By faith. What did he do? He walked. Some people's faith doesn't put them on their feet and cause them to go strongly in the way of the Lord. But, Enoch, by faith, walked. And you know it is almost a hackneyed observation that the little sentence about Enoch comes in a long monotonous story of this and that man died and was buried, and you go on verse after verse until you wonder why you should read this, and suddenly in the midst "And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him." That is all. Here, however, is the divine interruption of the course of death, God breaking in upon death with His own principle of Life, and showing that that monotony, that course of things is broken up when you find a man walking with God by faith. The effect and out-working of the obedience of faith is to destroy death and to bring you on to resurrection ground. That is Enoch's life. Two words - obedience, faith.

Noah - "By faith, Noah warned of God believed and built an ark to the saving" - the obedience of faith.

Abraham believed God, but his faith led him out, and he acted upon it, "not knowing whither he went."

Isaac - Jacob - Joseph - Moses - Israel - God's line, God's way of Life through the ages. The disobedience of unbelief brought death every time. The obedience of faith brought them into Life. Of course, one is now in the realm of type and figure, not the reality which was yet to be. So God had His path of Life, concerning which David prayed "Lead me in the way everlasting." This, then, was consummated, as we have seen in Christ, through the veil, that is to say His flesh, with the Cherubim rent, when He had accomplished all and was able to say it - the all-inclusive will of God - It is finished; it is perfect, would be more correct: it is complete. He was then able to pronounce the finality of the accomplishment of the divine will, and that veil was opened, and the way through into the immediate presence of and communion with God was made clear, so Paul cries "I live by the faith of the Son of God."

It is no insignificant thing that Paul in Colossians 2:12, in speaking about baptism, says that we were raised into union with Him in resurrection life by faith, by the operation of faith - buried with Him in baptism. That is the obedience. God has to give you some direct immediate and definite forms of showing that you are obedient. It is all very well to go away into some abstract realm, and say I believe in the spirit of obedience. The Lord brings you down in personal direct immediate methods of proving that you are obedient, and that you believe, and all the way through life He is bringing you up against this; but there are such instructions in His word which are to be observed as acts of obedience - the obedience of faith - issuing in Life, and that is the proof. So he says "Buried with Him in baptism." There is your act of obedience - "Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." The obedience of faith - issuing in what? We are joined to Him in the likeness of His resurrection by the operation of faith. I think we need say very little more. Listen to this as we close - Romans 5: "By the disobedience of one, death; by the obedience of One, Life."

And something more. 1 Cor. 15: "By man came death, by man came also the resurrection from the dead." That is tremendous. All this drama of the ages circling round the Christ is truly unnecessary where God is concerned if He remains in His isolation and detachment as God over all infinitely mighty and powerful, then all this has no meaning, but if the Eternal Purpose of God relates to glorified humanity, the Purpose has got to be wrought out upon that level, and it is to be man that does it - "By man came death, by man came also the resurrection." But what man? By this Man. But this Man is only One, one says it not in any lack of recognition of the supreme value and significance of the Lord Jesus as Head, but nevertheless, this in the "Arche-Typal" One, Representative of all the others, and this thing which God has secured in Him, has got to be made real in all of whom He is the Arch-Type. Now how is that done? By knowing Him, and the power of His resurrection. The obedience of faith - every step, faith, and God all the time cutting off from any basis whatever that is other than faith. To get you out there taking from under your feet everything upon which you might stand and trust that is outside of Himself to get you swung out to a realm of faith, and then to act by that faith, to live by that faith. It is a simple law, but you see how far back, and how far on it takes you. The law of the life of the Heavenly Man is the law of Life by the obedience of faith, and that will carry you through.

May the Lord increase our faith and energise us unto a complete obedience.

NOTE: In these studies, while we are considering Christ in His representative capacity as "Son of Man" we are not for one moment suggesting that we are intended by God to be so many Christs. There is a great and distinct difference between God being manifest in flesh, very God, and man being joined with God in Christ, sharing one life and enjoying perfect fellowship.