Books by T. Austin-Sparks

[Shammu]

A Principle of Spiritual Guidance

There are a great many questions which arise, questions we are often asked. They sometimes seem to be theoretical questions, technical questions about the Christian life. Now, we may seek to help one another by giving what we might call a technical answer, an answer, for example, from the Scriptures on some passage or some interpretation. But I am always doubtful as to the real helpfulness of that kind of answer. I think, beloved, there is an answer which goes deeper and which is much more satisfactory.

I have recently been asked a question, and I will answer this question publicly so that what help there may be in the answer will be afforded others. The question turned upon the difficulty over the difference between soul and spirit, and the place which the soul is going to have in the future life. Is it going to have any place at all or is it going to cease? Now you know I might answer a question like that with passages of Scripture, but I do not think that would be the most helpful way, because it would probably only raise more questions. But I am going to answer it in this way, because, although we are not dealing now with the matter of soul and spirit, I am seeking to get at a principle of guidance, a principle of spiritual guidance, the law of sonship.

I would ask you, What is your experience as a child of God in the matter of soul and spirit? Perhaps those words are too technical. Let me put it more simply. What is your experience with regard to that side of your life which is directly in touch with the Lord, in the measure in which you have a conscious life in the Lord (I think every child of God ought to have some little measure of a conscious life with the Lord), and that other side of your life which you know to be yourself, not the Lord, but yourself, your natural life; your spiritual life on the one side and your natural life on the other. Now when, as a child of God, you take just a little excursion into that region which is your natural life, what is the result? It may happen through a slip, a momentary breakdown, an indulgence - "overtaken in a fault" is how the Apostle expresses it - anything which means that, just at that moment, you drop down into the natural life, or the natural life rises up and gets the advantage for the moment, asserts itself and becomes the dominating thing. What is the effect of that upon you? If you are a true child of God and are really seeking to live with the Lord, you have a terribly bad time, and it is not just a matter of your conscience in the same way as any man might have a twinge of conscience. You know that there are other factors in this, that of the Lord being grieved, of something between yourself and the Lord having been damaged. It is something much more than just conscience. You have a bad time and you react, you rebound, you are stung by that, and you make haste to get back on to the other side. You seek to recover your spiritual ground as soon as you can with considerable regret and remorse and repentance. What has happened? Well, you have come out of your spirit in its union with God into your soul. You have learned a lesson. You take account of this thing and you say, "How was it that I slipped up there? Why was it, what accounts for that? I will prayerfully watch that in the future. I know now what that means." Now, it does not follow that you never do slip in the same way again, but as you go on you do spiritually grow out of that particular thing, and what is happening is that in spirit you are taking the mastery of your soul. You are not annihilating your soul, but you are bringing it under government and making it your servant; for mark, that frequently the occasion of stumbling is only the evil form of an expression which is necessary. Take anger, for example. You became angry; but you became angry in your nature, your natural life, and it was because there was a self-interest or some self-element in your anger that you had such a bad time. Anger is not evil. "God is angry with the wicked every day" (Psa. 7:11). "Be ye angry and sin not" (Eph. 4:26). Anger is not evil. You are not therefore going to annihilate your soul and make anger non-existent. I instance anger, but you can take any other feature that you like in the same way and you will find that the soul itself is not essentially evil. The evil lies in the evil principle that has got hold of it.

What are you going to do then? In spirit you are going to destroy the evil principle and get the mastery of your soul, so that anger is going to serve you. Love may have personal elements in it; but you are not going to annihilate love because you find love trips you up sometimes on a personal line and leads you astray. You are going to destroy the evil principle by the power of the death of Christ and master your soul and bring it under, so that by your spirit you use love, you govern the matter of love. Now then, the point that I am after is not so much the difference between the soul and spirit, but rather something related to the Holy Spirit Himself.

[Shammu]

The Holy Spirit an Earnest

The Holy Spirit is a basic necessity, but mark that the Word puts it in this way, "...hath given us the Spirit as an earnest of our inheritance" (Eph 1:14). What does that mean? Well, if the Holy Spirit is the energy, the power, the intelligence, by whom we are doing this very thing of which I have been speaking, He is pointing on to something. What is it that He is pointing on to as an earnest of something that is to be? Why, He is pointing on to a time when you and I will, in spirit, have our souls utterly and perfectly under our government; not annihilated but perfectly under our government, and I do not believe that in the resurrection life, the life hereafter, we are just going to be naked spirits. We shall be men, we shall have souls, but without the evil principle and without the soul being in the place of mastery. Through the organ of the spirit we shall govern all the rest of our being and enjoy a perfectly adjusted manhood. Manhood is not a temporary thing. It is an idea of God which is to go on.

Well now, you see the principle. But the question is answered when you get the law. All questions are answered. The question is this in general: What does the Holy Spirit do in us? How does the Holy Spirit lead us? What does it mean to us in a practical way day by day to be led of the Spirit? Oh, do not just narrow that down to the question of, Lord, shall I go here or there, shall I do this or that? That is only a mere fragment of being led of the Spirit. Without any such questions arising, the Spirit is in us to lead us, and to lead us to moral issues in the way I have just been speaking; that is, to show us the way and to say to us, No, that is not the way, this is the way; and we know, not by His pointing it out but by His effective working in us. Our reactions, as true children of God, are the work of the Spirit. That jumping back from the ground that we have touched to our hurt, that is the energy of the Spirit in us leading us, and it is a terrible thing for any child of God ever to come to the place where he can indulge without a reaction. The enemy would like us, because of our failures, to say, Oh, well, it is no good, we give it up! If you and I have a bad time when we touch the natural realm, that is a glorious evidence of sonship. Do not try to rule out all your bad times and make light of them, but beware that the enemy does not turn them to such effect as to make you introspective and morbid. But remember the Spirit will keep alive in you a very active sense of what is, and what is not, in accord with the mind of God. These are the sons of God who are thus led by the Spirit of God.

You see how we answer all our questions. I answer all my technical questions by looking to see what it means to me that the Holy Spirit is in me. What is the Spirit pointing to? What is the significance of today's touch of the Spirit upon my spirit? That is an earnest of something. If that is followed out, followed through, it will grow and develop and it will lead me somewhere. That is going to answer all my questions if I have got that principle. Have I been too difficult for you? Oh, listen to the Spirit, come under the government of the Spirit, and then, when the Spirit checks you, urges you, moves in you, gives you a bad time or gives you joy in your heart, note what that means, what it is leading to. Oh, there is something bound up with that, there is something at the end of that. I interpret everything in life by that touch of the Spirit and that answers all my questions. If the Spirit touches my mortal body today with His living finger and quickens it, I do not at once conclude that I have become immortal, that death for ever has gone and incorruption has settled down in my mortal frame. But I can say, "My resurrection body will be like that in fulness. It will simply be the consummation of that touch I have known today. I have a wonderful accession of life today, but the time is coming when that very thing will have been developed to its fullest extent and it will be nothing but Divine life. I have the Spirit as an earnest". I am trying to illustrate this thing. The Spirit touching us in any way, dealing with us in any way as sons of God, is pointing on to what it will be when sonship is manifested (the day of the manifestation of the sons) and the creation is delivered from the bondage of corruption.

Now all that is detail. You can drop the detail and get back to the foundation. What is it? The Holy Spirit is basic to everything. We will never get anywhere without the Holy Spirit; we will never know anything without the Holy Spirit; we shall never teach anything in the purpose of God without the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit has to be a conscious life with us; growingly so, as in the case of a baby. The baby has very little self-conscious life to begin with. As a baby, most things are done for it. But it is not long before the very first and remote signs of conscious life are there. Whereas up to a point there seems to be no consciousness of anything in particular, suddenly you will see a baby get its eyes fixed upon something, suddenly it sees something. From that time, the baby is taking account of something. It does not understand, but is aware of some object and it cannot take its eyes from it. It comes back to it, and as the days go by seems to look for it. Self-conscious life has started, and from that time onward that grows. In the spiritual life it is just like that. At the beginnings, most things are done for us as from the outside, although there is a remote sense of a new self-conscious spiritual life. But, as we grow, the Spirit's presence in us has to become a more and more conscious life of government; and these who are led by the Spirit of God are sons. That is the foundation. It is the foundation of growth, it is the foundation of understanding, it is the foundation of God's purpose, it is the foundation of all that is wrapped up in our relationship with God.

Forgive me for being so elementary, but if we can only get this, it is the key to everything. We do not want to have certain questions answered in a technical way to the satisfaction of our minds, but we get at the answer spiritually. We are never really satisfied by having a question answered so that our minds can grasp it. Presently we shall come up against new features of the thing and want new explanations. But if we can have the answer conveyed to our spirit - ah, then we are satisfied; and I say the answer is found in the presence of the Spirit and what the Spirit is indicating by His present dealings with us. What do His dealings with us indicate? What is the end of it all? If the Spirit today touches us upon a question of wrong, of evil, of something doubtful, what is the end of that? The end is holiness, perfect holiness. It will take some time because there are many things to be dealt with. But the end, when reached, is a holy being. So with everything else. In this the Spirit is therefore the foundation.

[Shammu]

Adjustableness a Mark of a Life Governed by the Holy Spirit

There are some other things that come up in that connection. One of them is this, that a mark of sonship or a Spirit governed life is adjustableness. Now, I want you to grasp this. You see, it means that nothing is final with us, so far as our attainment is concerned or our light, and that we can never, if we are under the Holy Spirit's government, come to a fixed place. We can never come to the place where we just accept everything and go on with it as it is. Oh no, a Spirit-governed life can never do that, can never become stagnant, can never become fixed. There can never be any sense of finality about the position or state in such a life. I am not talking now about those great truths which are settled, to which nothing is added or need be added. We are settled, of course, in the matter of what Christ has done and what Christ is, those great objective truths of our faith. I am not talking about that, but of our understanding, our apprehension, our knowledge, our growth, our relationship to these things, our position. These are all things which must remain open to enlargement, to expansion, and it may be, to drastic changes. You see, in traditional Christianity we have come into something that is more or less fixed. It is fixed in different ways. If you are a Baptist, then your position is a fixed position. If you are a Presbyterian or a Methodist, it is the same. These are things which are rounded off. I am only illustrating, not judging. What is within these things is something to which you have conformed, of which you are a member. That is your bound, your world: and I have only cited one or two examples; I could take any number more.

Now then, where are we? How did we get in? Perhaps we were born, brought up, in those things, or perhaps we came into them later. But they are something, and they represent a fixed position and we, if in them, are fixed and governed by that position. That is to say, within them, certain things are interpreted in this way, certain things are practised in this way. The method there is this method: and how often, when you have been speaking of things, have you had this reaction from people, "Oh yes, but I was never brought up to that way of thinking. In the church to which I belong" (really referring to the denomination) "it is taught and practised like this". That is a fixed position. Let me say it, without judging of these things, that any fixed position is a contradiction of the Holy Ghost and of sonship. It does not matter what the position is, and it may be (I am only going to say it may be, I could put it more strongly than that) that if you really come under the government of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of sonship, you may have to make very drastic changes and cease to be that and that, and go on with God. Adjustableness is a mark of sonship, and, as the Holy Spirit has never brought any of us yet to a final position, there is more light and understanding yet to be received. The ways of God are not all known to us yet.

We must remember there is all the difference between the permissive will of God, for such instruction in us as can never be gained in any other way, and the whole will of God, which is another thing. We all have to look back on our lives and believe that certain steps which were taken and courses followed were in the will of God for us. Yet, in later life, we have had to repudiate the position into which we then came, entirely change and adjust. But, beloved, I am going to say this: it does not mean that it was not the will of God for us that we took that step. The Lord may at one time, in His permissive will, lead us in a certain way, because of its being the only way we can learn certain things we have to learn. But that does not mean that God intends us to stay there for ever; that He has settled us in that, and that, because He led us in that way and into that, we dare not ever contemplate moving out of it. That is bondage. You and I as sons have to know liberty from bondage of every kind, and that means that we are to be adjustable, free for adjustments, not bound by any kind of conception that would prevent us from making changes as we are led by the Spirit: and it is true of every life that is Spirit-governed that tremendous changes take place. The things which at one time would never have been considered nor contemplated, have become actualities now. The basis of the life is the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit producing sonship means that you and I have to be adjustable, and if we are not adjustable, there is arrest at once. We are in bondage, we are in limitation. The Lord Jesus was adjustable under the government of the Holy Spirit. He was not playing a trick on His brethren when one day they came to Him and said, 'We are going up to the feast. Are you going up with us? If you do not go, people will wonder; you will prejudice your interest'. He said, 'No, you go up, I am not going up'. Yet when they were gone up, then Jesus went up to the feast. Is He playing a trick on them? Was He simply saying, Well, I would rather go alone, I would like to get rid of you? He had not the witness of the Spirit at that moment that He was to go, and therefore He had to stand His ground and take the risk of being misunderstood. But when they had gone up, He evidently got the Spirit's witness that He should go up, and He did not say, I have told them I was not going up; they will think I have played a trick on them, that I did not want them. No, He did not argue like that, but moved in the Spirit, and left it all with the Father. He was not bound by those considerations, of what people would think and say either way. If they should talk because He was not there - all right, let them talk. As for Him, He must be true to the Lord. Adjusting, even if it is at an hour's notice, that is life in the Spirit, that is sonship.

This is the basis of victory over the Devil. There is no defeating Satan save on this ground of walking in the Spirit, of being governed by Him. May the Lord give us understanding in these basic things about our life with Him.

[Shammu]

Chapter 4 - The First Adam and the Last

"So also it is written, The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit... The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is of heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly (let us also bear the image of the heavenly - Margin)" 1 Cor. 15:45,47-49.

Here we have some distinctions and definitions which are of the greatest importance to our spiritual understanding and progress. There is one similarity, but for the rest all stands in contrast.

Adam a Figure of Christ as Representing Headship

The one similarity is in the same name - Adam, the first Adam, the last Adam, signifying, as we know, two heads of two races. That is a simple and well-known thing, that both Adam the first and Adam the last stand by Divine order and appointment as the heads of races. In them headship is gathered up by God. To that we shall probably come back presently, but now, with just that mention of the one similarity, we move at once into the differences: and the differences are immense.

The Radical Difference Between Christ and Adam

Of course, on the face of it, we agree and assent to the fact that there is a great deal of difference between Adam and Christ. Without any thought we would agree to that, but it represents something more than we have perhaps recognized. The whole of this statement, this section of the letter, is tremendous in what it is signifying, especially in this matter of difference. What I mean is this: I think there are a lot of Christian people who have the idea that what God is seeking to do through the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus in atonement for sin, in the salvation and recovery of man from his lost state, is to get him back to the place where Adam was before he fell. Now, have you got that idea? Is that your idea of redemption, that you just undo everything that went wrong in and through Adam and restore things to that unfallen. state in which, Adam was before he fell? If that is so, you are entirely wrong. God is not seeking to do any such thing. He is not conforming to the first Adam at all, not even to an unfallen first Adam. He has gone immeasurably beyond an unfallen first Adam. He has left him behind altogether and has One who is an entirely different order of being from the unfallen Adam. The first Adam was a living soul; the last Adam is a life-giving Spirit. The first man was of the earth, earthy: the last is of heaven, heavenly. Therefore "as we have borne the image of the earthy, also bear the image of the heavenly." That marginal rendering I think, is a very good alternative, because it does not imply that all will bear the image of the heavenly. Let us make sure. However, we can leave the marginal suggestion for the moment and see what this says.

This heavenly Man, this last Adam, this life-giving Spirit, is of an entirely different order from unfallen Adam, of a higher order altogether. Now, that does not mean that the first Adam; had he not fallen but been obedient, would not have come to a time when he would have been transfigured and have taken on the heavenly order, been conformed to that order. But that is not our point. That might have been. I do not know whether we have very much to go on other than assumption or deduction in saying such a thing. Probably it would have been, but it was not. It did not happen, and therefore Adam remained of a certain order; and God's full order is not that, that is not God's full thought. That was not the goal to which God was working. God has something transcendently greater than unfallen first Adam. His last Adam, His second Man, is of a heavenly order, a spiritual order, and, blessed be God, an order - and this is the whole point of 1 Cor. 15 - which cannot know death. 1 Cor. 15 is the chapter of resurrection and what the resurrection order of things is. It deals with what the resurrection body is, and what the risen man, unlike the first Adam, is not capable of, and what the risen man is beyond the possibility of knowing, namely, corruption. Therefore of the last Adam it is written, "Neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption" (Psa. 16:10). You see the tremendous difference. So do not let us drop down on to that poor level of an unfallen first Adam. It might be a great deal better than our present natural condition, but it is not good enough for God, and it should not be good enough for us. Therefore, "let us bear the image of the heavenly". There is your first basic and great distinction between the two, the first and the last.

[Shammu]

Conformity to the Image of God's Son

That brings clearly into view what God's objective is. Having made the Lord Jesus the Head of His new creation, His new race, His objective is to conform the race to the likeness of its Head. Christ becomes the one object in the eye of God concerning which and unto which He is doing all His works. Perhaps at some other time, we might look at that fully and see how all the works of God in the first creation were toward, and headed up into the bringing in of the man after His own likeness and image. And the Lord is now working in the new creation, in you and in me, to conform us to the image of His Son. We may take it that God has no other work on hand. God has only one work on hand, and that is His work. That is to be taken account of when we realize the Lord is trying to do something. The Lord is at work. We may not be able to see what He is doing at the time, but if we ask the one general, all-governing question, What is it that the Lord is seeking to do? the answer is one, and comprehends everything, every method of God, every means of God, every interest of God. It is reduced to one simple, comprehensive thing: He is seeking to reproduce His Son in us, to conform us to the image of His Son.

From eternity, God has been governed by a great desire to express Himself, and all creation is God's way of seeking to express Himself. Now, when we look at the Lord Jesus, we see God realizing His desire, and then, when we look at His activity with us, we see God seeking in this yet more fully extended way, beyond the individual Person of the Lord Jesus, to reproduce Himself in the Church which is Christ's Body; that is, to make it Christ in expression. That is very simple and very elementary; but this heavenly order of which Christ is the Head is what God is seeking to bring about in a new race.

A Life-giving Spirit - Begetting in His Own Likeness

Then the next thing is this: the last Adam is a life-giving Spirit. Thank God for that! You see, Adam could only produce after his kind, and his kind was an earthly order, a soul order of man. He could not produce after the full, complete and final thought of God. It was not in him to reproduce himself in an order above his own level. Even as unfallen, he could not do that. The Lord Jesus is bound by the same law, but the difference is that as a life-giving Spirit, producing after His own kind, He has power to accomplish the Divine purpose, by bringing in this heavenly, this spiritual order.

You see, that brings us back to the simple presentation of these things in the Gospels, where we have all Divine principles in just germ form. There, in Matthew 3, the Lord Jesus emerges from the river, the type of the grave, in which one race has been representatively set aside and blotted out from the eye of God, and in His emergence, the new race is brought into view in its new Head - Jesus Christ. Immediately that Head and race are in view the Holy Spirit comes upon Him, and from that moment, every movement, every word, every time in His life, is by the energy and direction of the Spirit. The next step, as we have noticed was, "Then was Jesus led of the Spirit": and so it was to the end. You have, then, a new race in view set forth in its Head, and in union, as one with Him, not as two, the Spirit with the Son becoming the energy by which the end shall be reached - a life-giving Spirit. The Lord Jesus in us, the Holy Spirit in us, which means the same thing in effect, is the energy and power to produce or reproduce after His own kind. That makes a heavenly order possible.

What Baptism Signifies

Now, that is a very simple word bringing you right back to the kindergarten, but it leads up to our testimony this afternoon. What are we doing? Having a baptismal service, baptizing people, following the steps of the Master? Is that all? No, we are testifying to this immense thing, that the creation of which we are a part by nature is no longer the creation in which we voluntarily live, but which for us is a closed realm because God closed it. It is shut down in burial, and now there is but One in view, our racial Head, the Lord Jesus. We are baptized into Him and as Head He governs all our concerns, interests, aspirations, and the one thing which is in view for us is conformity to His image; to be as He is, of the same order, heavenly and spiritual, in the inmost reality of our being. If you look more fully into the Word (but we will not do so now beyond this suggestion), you will find this, that everything to which God set His seal related to the making of the Lord Jesus Head. Pentecost was that. We have been asking in these messages what a life or church governed by the Holy Spirit will do. At Pentecost, the Spirit came upon the believers and they stood up, and began to speak: and what was it that they said as directed and governed and compelled by the Holy Spirit? "God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified" (Acts 2:36). God hath made Him Lord, and, on the strength of that testimony, men in their thousands were brought under conviction. A new creation was ushered in and many were born that day. The last Adam abundantly saw His seed that day born from above, and God's attestation is always and only upon the ground of the established Headship and Lordship of Jesus Christ. You and I never come into the real living fulness of the Divine attestation until Jesus is Lord. We have blessing when we have Him as Saviour; but oh! the fulness is held up until He is established as Lord.

I trust that this is going to mean to us all a new acclamation of Jesus as Head, Sovereign Lord and Christ, and that will mean a move on in the heavenly order of things - conformity to His image.

[Shammu]

Chapter 5 - The Knowledge of the Glory of God

"And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway from the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him; and lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:16-17).

"...it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve" (Matt. 4:10).

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." - "Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old things are passed away: behold, they are become new. But all things are of God..." (Gen. 1:1 - 2 Cor. 5:17-18).

"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." - "Seeing it is God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." (Gen. 1:3 - 2 Cor. 4:6).

"And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness." - "Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love." (Gen. 1:4 - Col. 1:13).

"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." - "If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God." (Gen. 1:6 - Col. 3:1-3).

The New Creation in Christ

We have read together in Matthew 3 of the baptism and descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Lord Jesus, because it is just there that we have the new creation in Christ introduced. I want you to take particular note of this quite simple thing, that the new creation is in Christ; or, in other words, Christ is God's new creation, and everything that is a part of God's creative activity and method is to be found in the Lord Jesus Christ. So that, when He emerges from that typical death in Jordan and the Spirit comes upon Him, it is God by His Spirit typically bringing a new order of things into being, as represented by Christ and as embodied in Christ, and from that moment, by the Spirit of God - Who was the executive of the Divine purposes at the beginning, brooding over the darkness and the chaos - from that moment by the Spirit governing the life of Jesus, everything will be a progressive development and unveiling of what the new creation is. Then, of course, comes the inclusive statement that it is when we are in Christ that there is a new creation; that is, the new creation has its rise, so far as we are concerned, by that experience of coming into Christ, being made one in union with Christ, having now our place and our life and everything in Christ. It is there that all the meaning of God's new universe in a spiritual way becomes a part of us. Those are just simple basic facts with which most of us are familiar.

Now, we just come to take up the matter in these corresponding words in the Old and the New Testaments.

"In the beginning God..."

I do not think there is any great mystery about that word "beginning". A very great deal has been made of it. The simple fact is this, that right at the inception of something called "the creation" there was God. Everything took its rise from Him, sprang from Him. The beginning is the beginning of a new universe, and new order, and there it is with God. I am being exceedingly simple in the statement of truth in this meditation. It may not be all so simple as we go on, but I do want to get this thing quite clearly before you at the outset. It is God intervening in a state of things which is chaotic, and the key to everything, the secret of everything, is the Lord Himself in a living, personal, active way, coming into that scene.

What is true here in the material universe and creation is just as true in the spiritual experience. It is that God comes into the scene, into the situation, that there is a living, personal, active God breaking in upon things as they are: and most of us know that is true from experience. What is the remedy for everything, what is the key to all the problems, the solution of every difficulty. It is the coming in of God Himself into experience in an active, personal way.

Now, in the New Testament where we are dealing with the new creation, the whole weight of revelation bears down upon this, that it is God in Christ intervening in the life and state of things in a living, personal way, coming right in in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in Him is that which will answer the situation at every point in all its forms, and the knowledge of Him coming in is the way to that perfect order, that glorious order, that universe which expresses at every point the glory of God.

You see, the statement in 2 Cor. 4:6 is this - "...the light of the knowledge of the glory of God": the knowledge of the glory of God. Break the statement up into its parts - The glory of God; the knowledge of the glory of God; the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. That is what is in view. It is God desiring to make Himself known in terms of glory - over against the situation as we find it typically in Gen. 1:2. "The earth was waste and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep". This, as we know, was but typical of a yet deeper spiritual darkness that had overtaken the creation. So that this awful chaos and darkness and disorder, this state of things which we know to be true of the human heart, of the broken down creation of human nature, shall be resolved into, or give place to, a revelation of the glory of God: and we shall know the glory of God - how? By what He does. You never can know anyone really apart from what they do. It may be the most able, clever person in this world, but if that person should happen to be away in some remote place out of touch with the rest of the world, you would never know anything about their ability. It is only as they come into touch with the world and express their ability in their actions that you know what they are. And God desires that the glory which is true of Him, which He has, should be known, should be displayed, and that by what He does as over against the situation that exists.

In the beginning God - and now, in New Testament terms, In the beginning God in Christ. You may think that does not get you very far, but I want you to be quite sure of my point, which is this, that the coming in of the Lord Jesus upon the scene is the full embodiment of everything that is going to end in a new universe for us expressive of the glory of God. Beloved, if the Lord Jesus is in us and if we are in Christ, there is the sum total of all Divine glory. Now it is a matter of progressive working out, discovering and knowing; but it is all there. God was no bigger on the sixth or seventh day than He was on the first. May I put it like that? It was all there in Him before He started, and the Lord Jesus, God in Christ, being on the scene, existing in the midst of a situation, means that all the fulness of Divine possibility is there present and the glorious end is already here. The Lord Jesus will be no greater when this whole universe is transfigured into His likeness than He is today, no bigger than He is in your heart. If He is there, you have a new universe and my desire at this point in emphasizing this is to point out that it is all a matter of having the Lord Himself and not things. We want this and that and something else which we think to be parts of the new creation. We are wanting sanctification, holiness and all sorts of things, and so we are reaching out for things which to us are things which make up the new creation, and there are any number of things after which people go. Let me say that if you have the Lord Jesus, you have all the things, and what is necessary now is to discover what Christ is, what is in Christ, and it is all a matter, not of making new discovery of things, but of making progressive discovery of the Lord.

[Shammu]

You see, the first day represents a revelation of the Lord. The second day - why, it is some fuller revelation of the Lord, a discovery of the Lord in a fuller way; not things, but the Lord. It is all coming back to the Lord, and, as you make progress through the days right on to the end of the creation, what is happening is this - "Oh, what a wonderful Lord this is! On the first, day, I thought He was wonderful, but on the second day, I thought he was more wonderful; and, as the days have gone on, I have found He is infinitely more wonderful than I knew He was." That is the point, and that is all true in the case of the Lord Jesus: wherefore Peter says, "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (2 Pet. 3:18); and Paul also says that we grow up thus unto God, and for us now that is God in Christ - "The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

"In the beginning God created..." - "If any man be in Christ there is a new creation." God's intention and thought and idea in creation was specifically and entirely with a view to having Himself in universal expression, that, by reason of what He brought into being, the result of His activity, He should be seen. "The invisible things of him", says the Apostle, "are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made", showing God's idea that things which otherwise would be altogether hidden from His intelligent universe should be seen by His creative activity; God putting Himself out to be known along the line of creation. If that be the case in the material creation, how very much more is it so in the new creation. If the new creation is in Christ Jesus, then all that God is which cannot be known otherwise is to be known in Christ. God has brought the sum total of what He is in Himself within the range of our spiritual knowledge by breaking in upon the scene in the form of Jesus Christ. A new creation! "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father". But how few have seen Him. Hence the importance of seeing Him, and with other than natural eyes. What a difference it makes!

Some Features of the New Creation

(1) Light

"God said, Let there be light: and there was light" - "God who said, Light shall shine out of darkness" (or God who said, Let there be light) "hath shined into our hearts". It is the same creative activity. God said, Let there be light! God hath shined. In the matter of light, the new creation is in Christ. "I am the light of the world", said He: "he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life." You see, God brings in light in order that what He is going to do may be done in the light, may be carried on and seen. There may be a sense in which God works in the dark. God often does work in secret, in a hidden way, but really all God's works are in the light. He carries on His works, His purposes, in the light. Now, with regard to the new creation in Christ, the first feature in the movement forward is light. The Lord Jesus is the Light in which, or in whom, God proceeds with the unfolding of His purposes. A knowledge of the Lord Jesus by revelation of the Holy Spirit is a knowledge in the light of which God is able to fulfil all that is in His mind. That is not very well put. I will try to put it more clearly.

God has a great, an extensive, a many-sided thing on hand, but God cannot realize all that is in His heart save as there is light in which to do it; and you and I, beloved, who are a part of His creation, need light, need illumination, need revelation, need the darkness to be dismissed, in order that God shall reach His full end in us. Therefore you have so much in the New Testament, both in the Gospels by way of illustration, and in the Epistles by way of direct teaching, which points out that, in order to reach God's full end, you have to have light, you have to have revelation. There must be a state of illumination, a state of enlightenment. We are not talking about specific illumination now, but there must be an enlightenment of the eyes. Now, what does this mean? It just means, beloved, that God will not go on with His work apart from illumination. God cannot. You cannot take it for granted that you are going to come into all that is in God's mind willy nilly, drift into it just automatically, or mechanically come to it. It is not done that way. The very first step in new creation is a matter of the eyes being opened, and every successive step has to be the outcome of illumination. God must work on the basis of illumination, and all true experience bears that out. You and I do make progress immediately we see something, and we do not make progress until we see. Is that not true? For a long time maybe we are held up about something and we are conscious that we are not moving, not making progress, and there is something we need to know; and then, under the Spirit's operation, there is illumination, and as soon as we get that illumination, we are free, we are released, we move on, we gain ground: and it must be like that, and it is always like that. It is a fresh revelation of the Lord Jesus which is the basis of progress towards God's full end.

Now, the Lord Jesus is the light, the full light, and it is only in Him, in His light, in the light of what He is, that you and I can come to know the glory of God. Oh, how true this is to the Word! "Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?" There is nothing more blinding than unbelief, and there is nothing more illuminating than faith. Poor Tennyson was very wide of the mark when he said,

    "We have but faith, we cannot know,
    For knowledge is of things we see."

We are outside of the New Testament when we begin to make poetry like that. No, there is nothing which is more the key to knowing than faith, and the Lord has established that quite definitely. Believest thou that I am able to do this thing? It is always the Lord's challenge before opening eyes, before doing a work which is to result in a new fulness of spiritual life. It is the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ. It is light in Christ you and I need for spiritual growth, for spiritual fulness, and so we must ask the Lord to maintain us in the way of continuous and progressive revelation; for immediately that ceases, our growth ceases. We do not mean we should seek revelation to come in a direct way apart from what He has given us in the Scriptures. We are not talking of extra-Biblical revelation, but the revelation of God's fulness which lies within what He has already given us in His Word. We know quite well, any fragment of the Word of God, under the Holy Spirit's illumining, can reveal things ever new and ever fresh and ever more wonderful. We today are using the Scriptures which have been in use for long centuries and still there is fresh light to break forth from them. To be kept in that way is new creation, and that is spiritual growth, that is moving on to fulness. That is how it should be in the new creation. Just for the moment, our point is this, that there is no progress in God's purposes where we are concerned apart from light, spiritual light by the Holy Spirit.

[Shammu]

(2) Discernment

"And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness."

God made a distinction, and said, This is darkness and this is light; and in the later covenant, you remember, it was said that, as long as the earth remained, there should be day and night, summer and winter, seedtime and harvest; these things should be divided up and put in their place under an irrevocable covenant or ordinance of God. These things stand apart; light and darkness stand apart: and that points on so much to the new creation. We quoted Col. 1:13 - "hath translated us out of the kingdom of darkness (or the power of darkness) into the kingdom of the Son of his love": and, says the Apostle, "Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day": we are not of the night, nor of darkness. The distinction is made.

Now, you see, God is not satisfied with the simple bringing in of light in order to go on with His great work and purpose. God makes an ordinance of this; that light is light and darkness is darkness. You have to discriminate between the two, and a feature of progress, whether in the progressive activity of God in the creation or in the new creation, is that there is a distinction which is to be observed, to be noted, to be taken account of, and that we are not to go on as though this thing did not exist. In nature, for instance, if you violate that distinction, you are going to suffer. The turning of day into night and night into day is costing the race a good deal. You have not, after a time, the same stored up energies. Your energies are not repaired in the same way as if you were working by day and resting by night; for night sees a suspension of certain vital forces in nature so that you should rest, whereas there are energies let loose in the day in order to enable you to work. While there are natural forces that are at work to vitalize unto labour during the day, you have, in contrast, that terrible zero hour in the very early hours before daybreak - sick people know it, sufferers know it - the zero hour, that desperately perilous hour for someone who is very low in vitality. You see, God has ordered His creation with principles and laws, and these obtain with even greater force in the spiritual and new creation; and God says, "You must not ignore a distinction that I have made. This is darkness and this is light, and you belong to the light and to the day. You do not belong to the night and the darkness. You have been translated, and you must have intelligence to discriminate between what belongs to the darkness and what belongs to the light, and to keep these things apart". It is a mark of spiritual growth to be able to do that; it is spiritual progress.

By reason of being now in the new creation, you have a faculty given to you for appreciating the differences, appreciating what is of the Lord and what is not of the Lord; what is of the light and what is of the darkness; what is of the day and what is of the night. You have a power of discerning in the new creation, and you have to use it. This is exactly what the Apostle meant when, writing to the Hebrews, he said that strong meat was for fully grown men who, by reason of exercise, have their senses developed. That is maturity, that is growth, that is the attaining of a point of spiritual advancement, that you have your senses exercised to discern. It is a mark of growth when you can discern what belongs to this realm and what to that.

God fulfilled all these things in the creation at the beginning through the executive instrumentality of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit of God who is dividing and setting things in their place. In the new creation the Spirit of God becomes the intelligence within us, to make us know what belongs to light and what belongs to darkness and where the divide comes. That is what life in the Spirit means. It is very practical. Thus we are told about the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and we have experience of the Spirit of God through the Word, saying, in effect, Now this belongs to that realm and that belongs to that realm; and you must take account of the different realms and these two things must not be confused. A life in the Spirit means that we come to be able to discern what belongs to soul and what belongs to spirit, or that which is natural and that which is Spirit. It is a real creation, it is a living creation, it is an intelligent creation. God has not designed a creation of chairs and tables without sense, just things which He has made. He has made men and women to form His new creation, and they are to have sense and intelligently understand God. Mark that it is the knowledge of God that is spoken of, the knowledge of the glory of God, and the knowledge of the glory of God means knowing how to discern what is of God and what is not of God, and, as we know what is of God and keep to it, so we move on in the glory of God. But when you and I fail to discern what is of God and come into something that is not of God, the glory of God fades from our hearts. We know there is no glory. "God divided the light from the darkness".

[Shammu]

(3) Heavenliness

    "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." (More literally, the waters above from the waters beneath).

Let there be a firmament between the waters above and the waters below. In other words, Let there be that which determines what belongs above and what belongs below. This is only an extension of what we have just been saying, but it is a phase with a particular point because it brings in the whole matter of where rule and government are to be seated. The government, is to be above. There is a distinction and a gap, and the New Testament passage which we have used to correspond to this is Col. 3:1-3.

    "If then ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God."

To what did you die? You died to your old creation which as we pointed out in our previous meditation, belonged to the first man who was of the earth, earthy, and you rose to the last Adam, the second Man, who is from heaven or of heaven.

    "As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly" (1 Cor. 15:48).

Two men, two orders. Now then, there is to be a space between, and we are to be governed entirely by what is above the firmament. That opens up a tremendous field. It carries us right into Ezekiel at once. We see that the whole of Ezekiel is the outworking of one statement, that above the firmament was the Throne and the likeness of a Man. All the rest that follows is the result of that - A Man in the Throne above the firmament. Is that not true in the new creation, exactly where the new creation commenced in the second chapter of the Book of the Acts? The mighty coming in of the new creation, so far as the Church is concerned, is because there is a Man above the firmament. All is governed out from heaven and by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven: all is of heaven now. God has made a divide, and here is another step forward, a big step forward, toward God's full end, and progress, development and fulness is a matter of our being heavenly in life and government and interest, and being separate from what is merely earthy. Here is the principle of progress, God going on with His work.

But how does God go on with His work? What are the principles of His being able to go right through to make a full end in His new creation? It is that there are these differences, and that we who are of and in the new creation are governed by these differences; that is, that we are now in the place where there is a divide between what is earthy and what is heavenly as governing our lives. What is influencing you, what is governing you, controlling you, directing you? What is it that is affecting you in your life? Are earthly interests the controlling things or are heavenly things? Is there a distinction and definite space between these things where you are concerned, so that everything is not a jumble, earthly things all mixed up with heavenly things. That is a way of spiritual progress.

So, then, we have to know by the Holy Spirit in us that there is a firmament. Has the Holy Spirit definitely constituted a firmament within you? Can you say that in your heart, in your spirit, there is a firmament; that is, God has put a space between what is heavenly and what is earthly, and you know it, and that space is there as a real thing? It means that your interests, your resources, your well-springs are all above. Your life is hid with Christ in God. It is a way of spiritual fulness, moving unto God's end.

[Shammu]

(4) Fruitfulness

    "And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so."

You see, up to this point, there was no distinguishing between the land and the sea. Waters were general, waters were all pervading: and when you look for the symbolic meaning of waters, you find that they are the lawless elements in the universe. Of course, if you have been to sea when the waters are stirring themselves up, you know that to be a very good simile; lawless elements indeed they are! Here is the thought of something that has got the law into its own hands and is all pervading. Now God says, we are going to break in upon that universal reign of lawlessness, that anarchy, and we are going to bring all that within a limit and bind it to a fixed compass, to a place and a space of its own, and, in so doing, we shall make possible the bringing up and out from it of that upon which we are going to develop the revelation of the glory of God. Thus the next thing is the dry land, and then all that comes on the dry land; the verdure, the beauty, the fruitfulness. But you can never have dry land, you can never have that beauty and fruitfulness which comes on the dry land, until you have broken the reign of lawlessness. There is no prospect of trees and shrubs and fruits, the earth bringing forth its splendour for us and for God, a revelation of the glory of God; there is no prospect of that until lawlessness has been harnessed, its reign broken, and it has been brought within limits and bounds.

That is the new creation; that is the work of the Spirit of God in the new creation. How much Scripture we could cite at once about that. "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts" (Gal. 5:24). That is only one of a large number of passages which bear upon this thing, that spiritual progress under the government of the Holy Spirit toward God's end means that all that running riot of our fallen nature has been brought under arrest and put within limits. It may still make itself known; but there is the check of the Spirit of God at a point which says, So far, and no further! to the sea. You and I know there are still those wild, lawless elements in regions of our humanity. We know it, and those things do trouble us. It is part of the infirmity of our broken down creation. You have only to suffer from a nervous complaint to know the awful distress that comes to you through irritability. It is in our broken down humanity. But, blessed be God, that is not all, that is not universal.

What is it that makes you and me to some very real extent amazed at the way men are going on today? Do you not often feel that you would like to get into touch with some of these men and reason with them and seek to persuade them along the line of sweet reasonableness, and really to put before them a higher, better way. What makes you feel like that? You see, perhaps once you would have done the same thing. If you had been provoked or if you had been mastered by a great ambition, you would have stood at nothing, you would have gone fiercely on, riding rough-shod, to gain your end. That is our nature; but something has happened and there is another side of things which brings forth the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control. That is the dry land bringing forth. In Christ, we all have something of that. You may think it is too little, but in that realm this riotous thing does not hold the day. No, we know that in Christ God has broken in and put back into a certain place that old creation lawlessness of evil nature, and has brought up something else, and that something else makes us constantly react against the thing that is still there somewhere and that makes itself felt from time to time. Every reaction of ours, every bit of suffering when there is an uprising of that old thing, declares there is something else. If it were universal, we should have no reaction in sorrow, no pain over failure. Blessed be God, He has - we say it to His glory - He has made a difference in our natures and constitution, and He has drawn the line between the waters and the dry land; the riotous elements of our old nature and the beauteous elements of His Divine creation. There is a difference. Well, you see, this is a mark of progress. God is getting on with His work, and to know that difference is something for which to thank God. We cannot boast and we cannot talk about our virtues and goodness, but we do secretly thank God that a change has come about. Whereas at one time we were far more governed by self-interest and passions than by Divine interests, it is becoming more and more the other way round. The new creation is growing apace. It is the increase of Christ and what is happening is that it is more of Christ now and less of the old Adam in lawlessness against God.

(5) Resurrection

    "And God said, Let the earth put forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree bearing fruit after its kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth: and it was so."

Now, in order to get the full value of that, you have to come over to verses 29 and 30, and 31.

    "And God said, Behold I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food: and to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for food: and it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."

Do you see the difference? To man God has given that which has seed in it for food. To the beast, the birds, the living creatures, He has given the herbs without the seed. What is the meaning of that? Well, I must go over to John 12:24.

    "Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit. He that loveth his life loseth it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."

We are speaking about the knowledge of the glory of God. "Said I not unto thee that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?" Do you remember the connection of those words? Lazarus has died and fallen into the ground, and the knowledge of the glory of God is going to come about by resurrection; and you can only have resurrection when you have seed that falls into the ground and dies. You and I are controlled in our knowledge of God by this law. We only know the glory of God on the principle of resurrection. That is progress. You are, we are moving on. Yes, the way to know the Lord in ever growing fulness is on the principle of resurrection. You will remember that we are shown the supreme instance of this in the letter to the Ephesians.

    "...that ye, may know... the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named."

There you have a very full knowledge, but it is by way of the power of His resurrection. Well then, you and I must know more and more on the one side of that dying to live, that going down to be released, that breaking up which means enlargement, that grave for what is not of heaven in order that what is of heaven may know emancipation into fulness. That is the law, the law of the seed.

Is not the Holy Spirit's way of keeping to spiritual principles wonderful? The Lord marvellously indicated this very thing away back there in Genesis 1:11,29-31 - 'You are to come as the new creation to be a revelation of Myself in fulness. There shall be a knowledge of Me, My glory, and, in order that it might be so, you have to feed on resurrection. Your very sustenance and maintenance has to be by resurrection, and that is to be the law of your maintenance'. Resurrection! The whole Bible gathers round that, does it not?

There is much more. Ask the Lord to keep it alive and make it of value. These are not just theories, but very practical and important things. They are the real things of the new creation. The Lord teach us in our hearts what they mean.

[Shammu]

Chapter 6 - The Holy Spirit in Relation to the Exaltation of the Lord Jesus

"And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway from the water: and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him; and lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:16,17).

"Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil... Again, the devil taketh him unto an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and he said unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve" (Matt. 4:1,8-10).

"And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one" (Matt. 6:13).

"The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet. Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified" (Acts 2:34-36).

"...which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name not only in this world, but in that which is to come: and he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:20-23).

The Exaltation of Christ

It will at once be recognized that the thing which is in view in these passages is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, and now as gathered up and vested in the Lord Jesus, and it resolves itself into a matter of the exaltation of Christ. It is all a question of where the kingdom, the power and the glory reside, of where the Lordship is established, where the government is; and this is the grand issue of all time. It runs through the whole of the Old Testament as the supreme issue back of everything else, and you will always be helped if you take account of that fact whenever you are reading the Old Testament. Wherever you read, you will find that things gather round this one issue. The thing which, while it may not immediately be patent, lies there inherently is the seat of government, the place of authority, rule, dominion; and, of course, not only is it there in the Old Testament whether manifestly or hiddenly as the issue behind everything, but it has come out very clearly as the issue in the New Testament. Here, for a very obvious reason, it has been brought right out into the light. That obvious reason we shall mention definitely as we go on; but no longer is the thing hidden when you come to the New Testament, because you hardly begin to read the New Testament with the first chapters of Matthew, before you find this question of the kingdom, the power and the glory, a manifest question, a thing brought right out into the open and made now, not a hidden battle, but a very conspicuous matter of conflict, and from that point right through to the end of Revelation it is this tremendous issue which is being fought out in the heavenlies and having an expression also in the earth. So then, we are now concerned with the issue of all time as becoming more and more manifest as we move toward the end.

This calls for something. It calls for the Church to take up its position most deliberately and positively on the ground of the exaltation of the Lord Jesus; for, until the Church does take that position, there is no hope whatever of the Evil One being cast down. Let me repeat that in the opposite order. The only prospect of the overthrow of the kingdom of darkness, the powers of evil, the Satanic system, is by reason of the Church standing into all the meaning of the enthronement of the Lord Jesus. That is the challenge of this hour as it has been the challenge of every hour, and it is becoming a much more pressing challenge. It cannot be more definite than it has ever been, but it is becoming more pressing as we near the end. So it is with that the Lord leads us today to be especially concerned, really solemnly occupied with it, and it spreads itself over several of the primary matters in our Christian life and activity.

[Shammu]

The Holy Spirit and the Throne

In the first place, it brings us immediately into touch with the Holy Spirit and all that is signified by the advent of the Holy Spirit. Let us allow a great many of our particular interests in the Holy Spirit to fall away from us for the moment. What I mean is that we have particular interests in the Holy Spirit along the line of gifts, power, sanctification and so on. But let us leave those for a minute. They are truly related to the Holy Spirit, but they do not represent the inclusive and the pre-eminent concern of the Holy Spirit. They are the outworkings of something else; they follow, they are not initial. What we have to see is that the primary and all-inclusive concern of the Holy Spirit is with the throne. When I use that word "throne" I am speaking about the Lordship, the sovereignty, the government, the dominion; the kingdom, the power and the glory, and the seat thereof, and it is with that, all that is represented by those various words and terms, that the Holy Spirit is primarily concerned. That statement embraces a vast amount in the Word of God. I am not going to attempt to gather up the evidence of that. I simply indicate it from one or two instances.

A familiar one, by way of type, in the Old Testament, is given us at the opening of the book of Joshua, where Joshua is challenged by the presence of the One standing with the drawn sword, who announces Himself as the Captain of the host of the Lord and whom we recognize to be none other than the Holy Spirit Himself, who is always represented as being in possession of the sword. "The sword of the Spirit": familiar words, are they not. Here, then, stands the Holy Spirit as Captain of the Lord's host, and the issue in view is that of the kingdom, the power and the glory. In other words, it is the rule of the heavens. It is the seat and exercise of Divine authority, it is Lordship. The whole thing there lying ahead is the overthrow and casting out of the entire system of false and evil government in the realm of God. Seven nation's speak of a complete spiritual government that is in opposition to God, and it has to be entirely cast out and the establishment of God's government, God's kingdom, has to take its place. This, then, is the very object for which the Holy Spirit appears on the scene. His interest now, though including many things, is primarily and ultimately the establishment of the throne of God in the realm where the evil rulers and powers have held sway, and that is a key to the whole subject of the Holy Spirit and His advent.

You may take another illustration from the Old Testament, and perhaps with this one we should be sufficed, so far as the Old Testament is concerned. You come to the matter of the monarchy. David is anointed; and you know the anointing always sets forth the coming of the Spirit to commit Himself to a purpose. Here, in the anointing of David, it is in type the Holy Spirit committed to the matter of kingship; the kingdom and the power and the glory. Well, it is not long after the anointing that the antagonism is dragged out into the open. Indeed it follows spontaneously. It always is the case, because of the issue which is bound up with any coming of the Holy Spirit. The primary issue is not some detail of the Holy Spirit's work, but that inclusive purpose of the Holy Spirit to establish the Divine government. So the anointing of David is very quickly followed by an uprising of antagonism, and David finds himself soon after committed to years of terrible conflict because of the anointing: and that clearly indicates that the evil powers recognize what that anointing signifies. It does not signify anything merely as to man. While it might be of concern to the enemy that a man should be holy, that he should be sanctified, or that a man should have this or that spiritual gift, that is not the thing which supremely concerns the enemy. That anointing sets forth the fact that the government is being taken from the enemy and centred somewhere else. That is what precipitates the warfare. Thus David, because of the anointing is thrown into those years of terrible conflict: and there are two things about that which we may recognize to our encouragement.

Two Grounds of Encouragement

One is this, that the very conflict itself which was produced by the antagonism of the Evil One was the very thing which prepared and qualified David for government; and that is true also of the Church.

The second thing is that, where the anointing really does abide, the issue is settled: the government is there, you cannot set it aside. There may be weakness, there may be failure, David may at points break down; but the anointing abides and he is God's king, and there shall never fail to sit upon the throne of David a king because of the anointing. It is the anointing which is the principle of succession always, and the occupied throne of David for ever and ever is because of the anointing. And where does the anointing rest? Well, upon David's greater Son. That throne has never been vacant because of the anointing. It is the Holy Spirit committed to the throne. Well, there is the Old Testament signification.

[Shammu]

The Antagonism of the Enemy
(a) The Assault on our Lord Jesus Christ

When we come to the New Testament, the thing comes right out into the light. The Lord Jesus steps upon the stage of this world's history, the anointing comes upon Him, and immediately the enemy is out, the battle is set, the conflict begins. There are two sides to that. The fact of the anointing drags the enemy out into action always, but the fact of the anointing also commits the anointed to worst him. While the anointing or the Spirit with us will drag the enemy out and we shall be aware that he is against us with all his force, the fact that we have the Spirit commits us to see to it that the kingdom, the power and the glory are God's; that is, we are committed to stand for the rights of God against the challenge of the enemy. We must not let it be a one-sided battle in which the enemy does all the attacking. The anointing commits us to the battle on the surest ground of ultimate triumph. Here, you see, this committing of Himself to the Lord Jesus at the Jordan on the part of the Holy Spirit, means that the issue is joined anew out in the open spiritually with Satan, and the question at issue as ever is this supreme matter of the throne.

Well, that fact is headed right up: "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." That is the seat of authority, of government. It is to that seat that the appeal is to be made, and that, as you notice, over against Satan, in his presuming to offer the kingdom to God's Son; a repudiation of Satan by relating the kingdom to the Father. Then, soon after, we have the Lord Jesus showing His own, His Church in representation, the principles of prayer, and, in the light of chapter 4, He teaches them to say, "Bring us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one, for thine is the kingdom, and the power and the glory". Thine! We must be delivered from the enemy in his attempts to get us on to his kingdom line of things and take and maintain our position that the kingdom, the power and the glory are in heaven. The Holy Spirit has that in view.

Well, you see, that follows at once in the temporal realm in the case of the Lord Jesus. Satan has failed in the spiritual realm. He has failed and been defeated in the unseen back of everything. Now he will seek to move through the realm seen, the earthly. Thus we find that Matthew's Gospel heads right up to one issue. The claim of the Lord Jesus to the kingdom is turned against Him as the very case for His destruction. He has claimed to be King of the Jews, He has claimed a kingdom, and subtly oh, we see this subtlety working today in the twisting of things round in propaganda - subtly there is a taking hold of His very claims to the kingdom, and a turning of it against Him - "We have no king but Caesar". Oh, the evil of it; surrendering to something which was utterly false! That was not true. Those Jews would not really in their hearts acknowledge Caesar as their king, but they are willing for anything in lie, in false position, in iniquity, if only this One who claims the kingdom can be destroyed. That is the sort of thing the Devil will do. He stands at nothing. When you come to deal with the evil powers, with the Evil One, you are not dealing with any consideration for truth, any consideration for moral standards. Not at all! That is all flung to the winds. Any lie, any depth of iniquity will do, because of the greatness of the issue. The thing which is at stake is the kingdom, the authority, the throne.

Thus between Christ and the Jews it is the same eternal issue. Where is the Lordship? Where is the throne? Who has it? Satan seeks His destruction because of the anointing. The triumph, you see, over Satan in that last fell, foul, iniquitous act of compromise to destroy the Lord Jesus, is this, that in that very thing the Holy Ghost Himself takes hold and turns it to the supreme triumph over the powers of the enemy, as represented by those words, "who through the eternal Spirit offered himself" (Heb. 9:14). That is another complexion upon the thing altogether! Satan on the outside has brought this King to the Cross, has brought Him under the hand of the murderer, has brought Him to destruction because of this big issue, the throne. But the anointing is there, and the anointing takes hold of this very thing, this Cross, and makes it something altogether other than Satan meant it to be, and, through the eternal Spirit, the Lord Jesus offers Himself without spot to God and there is triumph. But our point now is that the anointing, the Holy Spirit, is all the time committed to the matter of the exaltation of the Lord Jesus, committed to the throne.

[Shammu]

(b) The Assault on the Church

Well now, from Christ Himself, of course, we can easily follow on and see that this same issue has been behind the history of the Church ever since. It was the issue back of the conflict between the Church and the Roman Empire. It was a question of Christ or Caesar. Where is the authority, where is the throne, where is the government; where is the kingdom, the power, the glory? With Christ or with Caesar? The two cannot co-exist. The conflict between the Church and the Roman Empire was simply the conflict between Satan, and Christ as to the throne. So the conflict started on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came in. Again, it is the Spirit committing Himself to this; and what is the supreme note that is sounded forth, that clarion note, on the day of Pentecost?

    "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet."

And the grand summary of all is: -

    "Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified."

Everything is headed right up to that. That is the topstone and the battle is joined. The Spirit has done that. That is the Holy Spirit proclaiming aloud the Lordship of Jesus Christ through the Church, and it is not long before you come into the new conflict. The Church meets the implication of that, and the Church's history of suffering and persecution begins and has gone on down the ages; and today, beloved, that is what lies behind the world situation. This is not just a bit of the course of history that finds nations once more locked in war as they have been again and again. No one today can really fail to see that there are great spiritual factors in this. We are all impressed with it. Men who are not spiritually minded men, who are not really discerning in spiritual matters, but who have just a very ordinary sense of things, leading men, during these past few months have been saying that this thing is Satanic. Has not that escaped the lips of many leading men? That is the feeling about it. We have never had it like that before. But what is it? It is the kingdom and the power and the glory. It is the throne; and this thing is intended, back of everything else, to be a blow at the coming, the imminent establishment of the throne of the Lord Jesus.

What I want us to see now is that the Holy Spirit, above all other considerations, is committed to, and concerned with, the throne. Therefore if you and I are at all under the government of the Holy Spirit, it will be in that matter that we shall be mainly exercised. It will be in the matter of the overthrow of the powers of evil, the dethronement of Satan and his system. That will be the object to which the Holy Spirit is working in us and through us continually, and we must recognize that; because, until we really get on the main thing which the Holy Spirit has in view, we cannot know the fulness of the Spirit. You ask for Pentecost rightly or wrongly, you pray for Pentecost to be repeated. What do people mean when they are praying in that way for another experience of Pentecost? I think we have missed the point. We are after some thing, something to be experienced in the matter of sense, power, demonstration. All sorts of things will happen if only we can get Pentecost again. Revival will come! Such is the common outlook. The Lord open our eyes! While those things may be quite good and may result, that is not the essential meaning of Pentecost. The fulness of the Spirit is related to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, nothing less, and that will find us very much in need of the Holy Spirit because of the intensity of the conflict on that issue.

The Authority of the Name

That means, then, that two things will result from the Holy Spirit being really committed to us. If really the Holy Spirit gets His place and His way, two things will result, will need to result. One is, that we shall have to learn the values of the authority of the Name of Jesus. You notice that came up very quickly at Pentecost. Oh, do get hold of that! From that moment when the Holy Spirit came, the thing upon which the Apostles were moving, acting, challenging, was the Name, the Name of the Lord Jesus. You have seen that, of course. That is no new thought to you, but it will do you good if you underline those early chapters of Acts again at the points where the Name was used. "This name, through faith in his name..." and so on. You and I will have to learn the values of the Name of Jesus anew because it is by means of those values that this precipitated conflict is to be waged to a triumphant issue. I cannot stay now to speak about the power of the Name: that is not my point. I am simply saying that, when the Holy Spirit comes, His object is the throne, the dominion, and for the Church, therefore, by the Holy Spirit, the Name has to be known in its values, its virtues; and you see, you cannot say that Jesus is Lord but by the Spirit. That does not mean that you cannot use the phrase "Jesus is Lord". It is quite clear that the Apostle meant that the spiritual virtue of that declaration requires the Holy Spirit. You cannot, with any spiritual power or value, make the declaration apart from the Holy Ghost; but when you do in the Holy Ghost, something happens all the time.

    "God hath highly exalted him, and given him the name which is above every name" (Phil. 2:9).

It means, beloved, that you stand in the apprehension and appreciation of the exaltation of Christ, and, because you are there, the values of His Name are made effective.

The Testimony to the Lordship of Jesus

The other thing which will arise with the anointing, with the Spirit committing Himself, is that we shall have to stand quite deliberately, positively, on this ground before God against the Evil One that Jesus is Lord, and that stand will be challenged, challenged up to the hilt, challenged in every way, and we shall find that our Ephesian position becomes a necessary one - standing, withstanding, and having done all, to stand. By that I mean that just to take a position will not be enough. We have to act upon the position in resisting every encroachment upon that position - standing! And, when you have done all that, you have still to be found there, holding the ground. It is all a matter of the throne as related to the people of God, as the thing with which you and I, in the eternal counsels of God, are connected. Perhaps as we go on we shall see more how that is so, but here we begin, and our first important thing is to recognize this fact, that the Holy Spirit has one object in view, and all His activities are toward that one object, namely, the establishment of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That is what He is after, and if you want the Holy Spirit to operate, to work in your life and through you, remember it is to that He will work, and it is not always the Holy Spirit's way to give us lovely sensations and beautiful experiences which would bring us into prominence, and make something of us. The Holy Spirit may take us into deep depths in order to get the Lordship of Jesus Christ established, and He will do it in the way which will reach His end best. He will dethrone, He will break down all our strength, our glory and our kingdom. His end is the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost prayer is, "Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever".

[Shammu]

Chapter 7 - The Exaltation of the Lord Jesus and Spiritual Fulness

    "Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever" (Matt. 6:13).

We have kept closely in relation to that statement the earlier words from chapter 3 concerning our Lord Jesus when coming up out of the water at His baptism, when the heavens were opened and the Spirit descended and lighted upon Him, and the voice from heaven attested Him the beloved of the Father: and then immediately, the Spirit having lighted upon Him, He was led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil, and the closing words of His conflict with the Devil were -

    "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve" (Matt. 4:10).

We have noticed the significant thing that the next reference to the Devil is that where the Lord teaches His disciples to pray -

    "Deliver us from the evil one: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever."

Now we have brought alongside words from Acts 2:34-36.

    "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet. Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified."

And, finally, with that we link this passage from the letter to the Ephesians.

    "...when he raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: and he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:20-23).

The Practical Expression of the Lordship of Christ in Relation to Spiritual Fulness

In our previous meditation, we were occupied with the exaltation of the Lord Jesus as the pre-eminent work of the Holy Spirit. I am going on with the next phase of that, in connection with the throne, namely, the Holy Spirit and spiritual power and fulness; for this exaltation of the Lord Jesus, this throne position of His far above all rule and authority and every name, is bound up inseparably with spiritual power and fulness in the life of the people of God. We can only speak of power and fulness, so far as the individual believer is concerned, in a comparative way; that is, power and fulness in the complete sense relates to the Church, and we can only know power and fulness in a measure individually. But the principle applies to both the individual and the Church, the principle, that is, of the absolute Lordship and Headship of the Lord Jesus.

So then, we have to see in the first place that the Lordship, the exaltation, of the Lord Jesus governs the whole matter of spiritual power and spiritual fulness. Fulness is always in relation to the throne and fulness is only known as what is meant by the throne is pre-eminent. The Holy Spirit has written this truth deeply in the history of the Old Testament, and now, with the light that we have in the New, we are able to discern it very clearly throughout the Old Testament story. It may be helpful to us once more to note it in one or two Old Testament illustrations.