Books by T. Austin-Sparks

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 Spiritually, we have come to a New Jerusalem, we have come to the dwelling of the Most High God. We are come to Zion. We are come to that which Ezekiel spiritually saw—a Spiritual Temple. We have come now to that which in every detail is measured “according to Christ.” Let us ask ourselves: “Is this Christ? How much of Christ is here?” “According to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ”; that is the beginning of Hebrews, as well as Ephesians. And so, the chief point of the attack is always to take something of Christ away, divert from Christ, put something in the place of the very essence, the very essential, of Christ. Anyhow, anything, so long as the end of it is less of Christ, not so much of Christ, not more of Christ. It has to do then with the Lordship of Christ in everything.

The Lordship of Christ? We used to open our gathering with singing: “Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.” Lovely idea, beautiful thought, wonderful thing! But do you see what it means? Not only the thing as a whole, this wonderful Temple, House, Sanctuary; but to the last detail in the whole heavenly order, to the last detail:—Christ. Christ in your life, in mine, He is the decision! He is the controlling principle! This is the Kingdom!

Oh, how Christian phraseology does need redeeming and revising. We talk about the kingdom, the kingdom. “We are out in the work of the kingdom, for the spread of the kingdom.” I say these words, “kingdom,” “church,” and all the others, need redeeming. They need revision. What is the kingdom? Well, in the original language it is quite clear, but we have missed it by some other mentality. The Kingdom of God is the sovereign rule of God. The sovereign rule of God, that is the meaning of it; and that here is brought down to a detail. It is not just some comprehensive conception of a king. No, it is where I go today, what I do today, what the Lord would have about me today. That is the Kingdom of God. A Kingdom which cannot be shaken is of that kind, where it is all Christ; hence, the necessity for making known the ground upon which security rests, the ground which cannot be shaken.

Security is a very debated thing today, a very lively concern in this world. Security, security. In every realm, this word, “security,” is governing. There is nothing secure, eternally secure, but what is established by God; and that is concerning His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

That is the positive side to the New Testament always, and so I am going to conclude by reminding you of the nine and the ten. Why nine precautions? Why nine times does it say, beware, “lest”; beware, “lest”?! How precautionary the Lord is, even with His best servants, His most used servants. If they are really under His Sovereign Government, what precautions He takes. Do you remember the Apostle Paul? Had the Lord ever a greater servant than the Apostle Paul? Was there ever a servant more used of God than he? I venture to say in the annals of eternity that man stands very high in preciousness to the Lord. And what did that servant say? He said, “Lest, lest by reason of the... greatness of the revelations, I should... be exalted above measure, ...there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me... I besought the Lord three times that it might depart. And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient.” The Lord is always positive. He did not say “no”—instead He said, “My grace is sufficient.” But the precaution of the Lord is to keep a most used and valuable servant from deviating, to keep from the awful snare of pride, even in holy things, the things of God and heaven (for spiritual pride is the worst kind of pride); and so God moves to keep from pride, from the devastation of pride: “Lest I should be exalted.” God’s precaution is “Lest, lest”; and here you have these nine “lests.” Look at them, friends. Go through them not just as Bible study which is interesting, but note the peril that is associated with each “lest.” Be on your guard. Watch! Is this that kind that abides forever, indestructible and unshakeable? Is this Christ?

Be Utterly Committed to the Increase of Christ

Then you have: “Be utterly committed.” And that is where the other side comes in: the “let us, let us, let us” is ten times, and if you sum it all up, it amounts to this: “Be unreservedly and utterly committed.” “Committed”: I think that means something more than becoming a Christian, for many, many who are children of God, yes, genuinely born-again, are not utterly committed. Not utterly committed?—No, there are some other interests. They have got one foot, or even a toe, in the world—still something where there are alternatives to utterness. But the exhortation, “let us,” is mentioned ten times. “Let us, let us, etc.” Why? Because of this peril. Let us go on, do not drift, do not leave yourself to the mercy of the present current, the tide, the wind. There is nothing that will keep us safer than being positive.

I like that Moffatt translation of the phrase, “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” I think it is Moffatt who has translated it: “maintain the spiritual glow!” Oh, it is a safeguard. There is nothing more safeguarding than being positive. Remember David on the housetop?! The tragedy, catastrophe, calamity of David’s life, which left its scar on him, was being on the housetop when he ought to have been in the battle, reclining when he ought to have been going. Israel dilly-dallied in the wilderness for forty years instead of getting on with it, instead of going. “Let us go on to full growth; not laying again the foundations... but, let us go on, go on.” This is the great “let us” of chapter 6:1.

So often we are in weariness, tiredness, discouragement, despondency, perplexity, disappointment. The enemy’s plan is to make us sad, make us sad, take the initiative out of us, and we are inclined to sink down; and then again and again in our spiritual history, we have to gird up the loins of our mind and say: “No, this will not do! This will not do. This is a cul-de-sac. If I get down here, there is no way through, and the only way is to come out of it and go on.” Beware of your cul-de-sacs, your backwaters, your no thoroughfares. Keep on the high road, the main thoroughfare. In this sense, if you like, in this sense you can be marching to Zion; whether the doctrine is right or not, have the spirit of it. And you will sing again in that hymn, “I’ll walk the golden streets.” How often we carried on with that tune, and the Bible says there are no streets in the New Jerusalem, there is only one—a street of gold—all of God is in the New Jerusalem, the heavenly Jerusalem, only one, only one thing, a golden street. You are not going to choose your locality there. You are going to be put on to the Lord’s highway. You see figurativeness? It is just that—all of God as represented by a golden street, and only one. We will have to learn how to live together someday.

Do you see the point? The integrating, uniting thing is: “Let us go on to full growth.” If we are all of that mind, we will not be caught by these subverting things, these alternatives, these impositions. We will not be caught. No! The question for us is: “Is this going to mean, really and truly mean, an increase of Christ, a greater fulness of Christ; or is it some interesting thing, some fascinating thing, something that is going to be for the moment, for the time being, and then presently it is going to fade out, and I am going to be left high and dry.” That is what happens with so many of these things. They are just for a time. You can see history strewn with the wreck of things which at one time seemed to be the thing, the ultimate thing. Well, the only thing that is the thing is the increase of Jesus Christ. That is the test of everything: the increase of Jesus Christ. And the universal challenge, contest, is on that.

I have said enough. I close there praying, as I trust you will do, that this will not be a subject of a conference, just a man’s theme morning by morning. The Lord will make the challenge of it, “For yet, yet again, I will shake not the earth only, but the heavens”; and the shaking has begun. It has begun. Christianity has entered the great shaking. What is going to remain? Not the things that are made, not the earthbound things of Christianity; but that Kingdom, that Sovereign Rule, which cannot be shaken. It is Zion’s citizens, “as the mountains are round about Jerusalem,” it cannot be shaken. That is the Old Testament idea, but here it is. It is what is really and truly Spiritual and Heavenly that is in us and that we are in. It is that, to use our first word these mornings, to which we “are come.” The Lord help us.

Lord, with the indelible pen of the Spirit of the Living God, write the terms of the New Covenant on our hearts, on the fleshy tablets of our hearts. Write indelibly, so that it may not pass with the week, with the ministry, with the gathering of the people—however all this may be blessed and joyous—but that the Lord’s Own intention, revealed to us, may abide in our hearts. Continually check us up; arbitrate between the two courses; keep us from the options, the alternatives; and may we always come back to this: “Does this mean more of Christ?” Lord, so help us. We ask with thanksgiving, in the Name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.

[Shammu]

In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks' wishes that what was freely received should be freely given, his writings are not copyrighted. Therefore, we ask if you choose to share them with others, please respect his wishes and offer them freely - free of changes, free of charge and free of copyright.

What is a Christian?

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 1

"And Agrippa said unto Paul, With but little persuasion thou wouldest fain make me a Christian" (Acts 26:28).

Let us say at the outset that we are using the word "Christian" strictly according to what is found in the New Testament, and it is assumed that this will be accepted. Our enquiry will take the form firstly of a process of elimination, and we shall observe

What a Christian is Not

(1) To become a Christian is not to become 'religious', or to adopt a new 'religion'.

Among non-Christian peoples, a turning to Christ is often referred to as 'accepting Christianity', and in what are called Christian countries conversion is frequently referred to as 'becoming religious'. Such expressions, with their associated ideas, are altogether inadequate and indeed fundamentally false. There was no more religious man on the earth, in his time, than Saul of Tarsus. Read what he says of himself in Acts 22 and 26, and Philippians 3. Here was a man who was just aflame with religious zeal and passion. No argument is necessary, with history before us, to prove how wide of the mark religion can be.

And that is true of 'Christianity', when it is merely a matter of religion. To be a true Christian is not to accept a creed or statement of doctrine, to observe certain rites and ordinances, attend certain services and functions, and conform more or less diligently to a prescribed manner of life. All this may be carried very far, with very many good works; but those concerned may still be outside the true New Testament category of 'Christian'. Herein lies the danger of an assumed acceptance with God, which may bring that bitter disillusionment foretold by our Lord Himself in those startling words: "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not... by thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me (Matt. 7:23,24).

No, religion is not Christianity, either more or less; it may be only a deception. So that when we seek that people should become Christians, we are not asking them to change their religion, nor are we asking them to become religious. Religion, as such, has never made this world happier or better.

(2) To become a Christian is not to join an institution called 'The Church'.

If the truth were known, there is no such thing as 'joining' the Christian Church. We never took any steps, either of word or deed, in order to get our limbs to become members of our bodies. There is no distinction between our members and our bodies - our members comprise our bodies; but they do so, not by organization, invitation, examination, interrogation or catechism, but simply by life. So, in the Church of Christ, provided that a true life-relationship exists, a 'membership' in the technical sense is a superfluity, and may be a menace. If there is not that relationship, then no 'membership' can constitute the Church of Christ.

There are multitudes, we fear, who have 'membership' in what is called the 'Church', who are not able to stand up to the test which will be presented when we come to speak of what a Christian is. But let us say here that when we appeal to people to become Christians we are not asking them to 'join the Church'. And it must be realised that Christianity is not just one more institution or society. You may go to many places called 'churches', and never really meet Christ, or find satisfaction.

Of course, that is negative. We must realise, however, that when we become Christians we share one new life in Christ with all other born-again believers, and thus we become one in Christ. That really is the Church. It is for us, then, to cherish that relationship and jealously watch over its sacredness. There are immense values in it.

(3) To become a Christian is not to become a part of a new movement.

It is true that there is a sense in which Christianity is a movement, a Divine movement from Heaven. But there are very many who conceive of Christianity in terms of a great enterprise for world betterment or even evangelization. The appeal is so often made that people will come and associate themselves with this great 'work'. There is that in most people which makes a response to such an appeal, and would like to be in a great movement. But such a way of approach is to court trouble, or at least to be found sooner or later in a false position. Moses got the 'movement' idea in Egypt - and then had forty years' inaction in the desert.

There is that which comes before the 'movement', and the movement is with God, not with us. The greatest value in movement, when God's time comes for it, often is that we have learned not to move without Him.

We do not appeal to you to join a movement. We do not invite youth, saying, 'Here is something into which you can throw all your natural powers and youthful enthusiasm!' We would say: 'God has a purpose: you are of concern to Him in relation to that purpose. But - you cannot even know or enter into that purpose until something has happened in you which has made you another person. In that purpose you will need much more than natural powers and youthful enthusiasm.'

That brings us to the positive side

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What a Christian Is

In seeking to show what a Christian really is, we can do no better than take the case of one who not only was a great instance himself, but whose experience has been that of every true Christian since. We refer to the one who was addressed by a Roman 'King' in the words at the head of this chapter - the Apostle Paul. While the method of his conversion may not be the usual or general one, the principles are always the same.

Here, then, are the first three principles and realities of a true Christian life.

(1) "Who art thou?" "I am Jesus."

The first thing is the inward realisation that Jesus is (not was) a living Person.

The very first words of Paul when confronted by Christ were: "Who art thou?" To which the answer came clear and strong - "I am Jesus!" It was a startling discovery, and Paul might well have exclaimed, 'What, Jesus alive?' Jesus had been put to death, crucified. All that remained to do was to blot out the memory of Him and destroy what represented Him. To this work Paul (then Saul) had committed himself. We can hardly imagine, then, what a startling and paralysing thing it was to be confronted with the fact that Jesus was not dead, but alive, and in glory. And not only with the fact, but with the Person Himself.

All that this implied and involved has been the teaching of many centuries since. But for those to whom these present lines are addressed, this can be resolved into a very simple matter. We begin our Christian life by an experience of this living reality. Not a Jesus of history, but a Jesus of heart experience. That He really is alive is the one thing which is open to be proved by us, and it is the most serious matter as to our eternal destiny. We have only to drop our traditions, our prejudices, our suspicions, our questions, our mental problems, and, quietly kneeling, speak to Him (although unseen) as we would speak to one whom we could see; telling Him out of the honesty of our heart what we would tell Him if we were face to face. The first step is definitely to speak to Him, as to a Person.

This is the way of a discovery. We learn from the New Testament that the Spirit of God is abroad in the world just to bring about this discovery - to make real that Jesus lives to save and be our very life. This wonderful realisation, that Jesus lives, comes to the heart of every one who honestly turns and puts it to the test; and everything springs out of that.

There is only one way, really, of knowing Jesus, and that is by coming to Him. It may seem very unreal and foolish to say something to someone of whose existence you have no inward proof; but might this not be the same in other circumstances? You have heard of a physician. What you have heard makes you feel that he is just the man for your case. Will you say that you don't believe that there is such a person? Will you say that there is plenty of evidence available that he was killed some time ago? Will you go as far as going to his house and seeing the man spoken of, and then telling the man that you don't believe that he is the physician? If you will do this, then either your case is not very serious, or you are refusing to admit its seriousness. If you are really alive to your need, the very least that you will do will be to go to the physician, tell him your trouble, and say: 'I am advised that you can meet my need, and I ask you to do so. My coming to you represents an honest enquiry and committal, in spite of many doubts and questions.'

My friend, Jesus Christ was ever ready to make the desired gesture to an approach like that. The discovery that Christ is a living reality is the first thing in the Christian life. This is a test as well as a testimony.

(2) "What wilt thou have me to do, Lord?"

The second thing - in Paul's case, as in every true Christian life - is represented by one sentence: "What wilt thou have me to do, Lord?" (Acts 22:10).

This represents a new position and a new relationship. How very different from that of the old Saul! Hitherto his life and activity had been out from himself - what he thought he would do, what he proposed, purposed, planned, determined, and desired. Self-determination had been his way of life, although he would have said that it was done in a good cause - even done for God. What an example Saul was of the fact that a man's very best intentions and devotions, in what he believes to be God's interests, may yet be doing God the greatest disservice - and he himself be totally blind to the fact. We shall speak of this again later (chap. 2, sect. 2).

We see here, then, that one thing is a clear evidence of a life truly acceptable to God; it is the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ. Paul first used that word, "Lord", at his conversion; it came out spontaneously when he realised that Jesus lives! From that moment Jesus was his Lord, his Master. We know from his life afterward how utter was that surrender and change of government. Everything from that hour was on the basis of "What wilt Thou?"

Yes, it is the hall-mark of a true Christian life when, with the same inward realisation and abandonment, we say to Jesus, "Lord", and thenceforth have our whole lives governed by Him as Master.

(3) "Christ in you".

There is one more indispensable mark and feature of the Christian life to which we will point at this time. It is shown in the words addressed to Paul by one Ananias: "The Lord Jesus... hath sent me that thou mayest... be filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 9:17).

The consummation of this basic work, by which we become Christians in the true sense, is that everything which is true of Christ is made an inward thing with us. Up to this point, although everything has been very real and deep changes have taken place, it has been mainly as in an outward relationship with Christ. But it would have been fatal to have left it there, however great the discovery. We cannot live upon something which happened at a certain time. We cannot meet all the tremendous forces of evil which will oppose us, in the strength of a mere memory, however vivid. We shall never live triumphantly, or serve effectively, or satisfy God truly, on any basis of what is merely outward and objective.

The fact is that only Christ can really satisfy God; only Christ can do God's will and God's work. Only Christ can overcome the spiritual forces of evil. Yes, only Christ can really live the Christian life. Hence, the one great inclusive and crowning reality of a Christian is - Christ Himself WITHIN! Paul later put this in these words:

"Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27).

This becomes true by a definite act when we believe. The Holy Spirit takes possession of us in an inward way. This indwelling of Christ had never been known by any man in history until Christ had died and risen and been glorified. It is therefore the peculiar wonder and glory of the Christian. It is this very thing that explains the New Testament term - "born anew". There was nothing like it before.

So, then, in a word, our question, 'What is a Christian?' is answered in three initial things.

(1) Realising that Jesus is alive.

(2) Enthroning Him as absolute Lord.

(3) Having Him as an inward presence and power by the Holy Spirit.

The testimony of a true Christian must ever be -
'He lives! He lives!
Christ Jesus lives today!
He walks with me, He talks with me
Along life's narrow way.
He lives, He lives,
Salvation to impart!
You ask me how I know He lives?
He lives within my heart!'

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Chapter 2

"Thou wouldest fain make me a Christian" (Acts 26:28).

"I heard a voice saying unto me... Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" (Acts 26:14).

The above words, spoken to the same man - Saul of Tarsus, later Paul the Apostle - in the first case by a ruler under the Roman Empire, in the second case by Jesus of Nazareth, contain the essentials of a true Christian experience. This Paul was a truly typical Christian, both in the way in which he became one, and in his life as one. While there may not be many who become Christians with the same form or accompaniments of their conversion: we may not have been smitten to the ground by a blinding light as we went on some journey, and heard an audible voice from heaven calling us by name: yet the principles are always the same. Let us look into these words for the principles.

1. Something Absolutely Personal

"I heard a voice saying unto me... Saul, Saul..." There were others travelling with Saul on that day; how many, we do not know. Paul speaks of them as "all" - "when we were all fallen to the ground." It would seem that there were quite a number. But Saul was singled out, and what happened was so directly personal that it was as though he were the only man on the earth. He ever afterward spoke of his experience as something extremely personal. The amazing thing to him was that Christ knew him by name, and knew all that was going on inside him.

It is a fact, and a fact which we must realise, that God has a personal and direct interest in us, and a very personal concern for us. The writer had a friend who visited military hospitals. He always carried in his pocket some texts to leave with men who might be in need of a little bit of God's Word. Before starting out he used to pray that he might be guided to give the right text to the right man.

On one of these visits, when entering a ward, he looked around, and up in the corner was a bed with a form bandaged so completely that only nose, mouth and ears were uncovered. He was about to approach the bed when the nurse said that it was useless - the man was too far gone to be spoken to. He paused a minute, and then decided to leave a text on the bandaged hands. This he did, without looking to see what the text was. As he was moving away from the bed, a muffled voice said,

'What's that?'

'Oh,' said my friend, 'it is only a little bit of God's Word.'

'What does it say?' asked the dying man.

'Let me see - yes, here it is, Proverbs 23: 26. It says: "My son, give me thy heart".'

'Who said that?' asked the soldier.

'That is from God's Word - the Bible!'

'Read it again,' said the wounded man.

"My son, give me thy heart".'

Silence for a moment, and then -

'Did you say that is in the Bible?'

'Yes, and God says it to you.'

The soldier heaved a sigh, but there was a question in the sigh. My friend waited a moment and then asked what was perplexing or surprising him.

'Look at the card over my bed,' said the soldier.

My friend did so, and was amazed to read, on the card giving his Army particulars, the name JACK MYSON

Do you say 'Accident!' 'Coincidence!'? That man was about to pass into eternity, and God spoke to him by name. Again, it may not always be in just the same way; but the fact remains that God has a personal concern for each one of us, and a true Christian is one who has come to have such a personal relationship with God as to make it possible for him - or her - to say, as did Paul:

"He loved me, and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).

"I heard a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul..."

Then Saul came to realise that his inner history was all known to Christ. The other people could see what was going on outwardly. He was going in hot haste to Damascus. He had certain documents authorising him to arrest Christians and take them bound to Jerusalem. He was doing his business with a will, and those other people would put it down to his religious zeal. But there was One above who knew something else. He disclosed that knowledge when He said -
"It is hard for thee to kick against the goad." (Acts 26:14).

So, really, he was like an ox harnessed to a plough, which, unwilling to go in a certain direction, and being goaded against its wishes, was letting out in rebellion, and kicking against the goad. What a different picture this was from what others would have had of him, and how different from what he was trying to make himself believe! But that One above knows things that we are not prepared to admit or accept. He sees through us, through all our pretensions and self-deceptions and resistance.

Saul was striving desperately to establish the falsehood of Christ and Christianity, but the truth was that he was not so sure of himself as he had hoped. Something had touched him, and it would have been fatal to his position if he had given that something a chance. So he had to gird himself up and resist with all his might. Inwardly he was kicking, in effect saying, 'I don't want Christ! I won't have Christ! I am not going to be a Christian!'

Well, Christ is a reality, and sooner or later we shall have to have Him. There are different times and ways in which that may be.

We can have Him now, as our Lord and our Saviour, and, like Paul, enjoy a life of wonderful fellowship with Him and useful service for Him.

Or we might have Him at the end of our life, whether that be sooner or later. But that will mean the unspeakable regret and grief that we have no life of service to lay at His feet - an eternally forfeited life of fellowship with Him in the great purpose with which He is now occupied.

Or, alas, when this life is past, we shall have to have Him - not as our Advocate and Friend, but as our Judge.

God has determined that eventually "every knee shall bow" to His Son, but His desire is that it shall be as it was with Saul: "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" This is what it means to be a Christian. But there is yet more in the words that we have quoted at the head of this chapter.

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2. Christianity - Not a Religion, but a Person

"Why persecutest thou me?" asked the glorified Christ. What an idea! Here was a man just going 'all out' in religious devotion. So far as his reason was concerned (even if his heart had some lurking and bothering question), he was convinced that he ought to do this thing in the interests of religion. He was really a divided man inside, but in his zeal for traditional religion, and, as he would have argued, for God's sake, he was suppressing every question and relentlessly forcing himself on. And yet, all the time, he was working against God, against God's Son, and against Heaven! What a state of confusion!

Much could be said about this: as to the difference between being religious and being a genuine Christian; as to how it is possible for people to be passionately devout and devoted to what they believe to be of God - or for God - and yet to be rather obstructing His real interests by that very devotion. But we must resolve it all into one inclusive issue.

A Christian is not a person who is religious, either more or less. A Christian is not a person who has taken on a lot of 'dos' and 'do nots'. God is not going to deal with us on these grounds. Neither is He going to judge men on the basis of the number or nature of their sins. He has one basis of judgment, than which any other basis would be unfair, because everyone, by his or her birth, upbringing, advantages, temperament, and so on, would be either favoured or otherwise. That one basis of judgment is, and will be: What are we doing with God's Son, Jesus Christ?

God sent His Son, and by Him we are all brought to a common position. He is presented as God's appointed Lord and Saviour for all men. God will never say in the judgment, 'How many sins did you commit?' 'What kind of sins did you commit?' - but, 'What did you do with My Son?' It is not necessary to be violent in our rejection, or actively and vehemently to fight against Christ, as did Saul. We can - with exactly the same eternal loss - just reject Him; say 'No' and close ourselves to Him; or simply ignore Him. We are lost just the same. There is no need to dash to the ground the saving medicine in order to perish. It is only necessary to leave it where it is and not take it. But it is a terrible responsibility to have known that it was there, and to have just failed to take it.

We see, then, that all questions of life and death, sin and righteousness, Heaven and Hell, time and eternity, are bound up - not with 'religion', 'church', 'creed' - but with a living relationship to the Son of God; and a Christian is one who has himself come into such a living relationship, and has found all these questions answered in the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Hast thou heard Him, seen Him, known Him?
Is not thine a captured heart?
Chief among ten thousand own Him,
Joyful choose the better part.

Idols, once they won thee, charmed thee
Lovely things of time and sense.
Gilded thus does sin disarm thee,
Honeyed, lest thou turn thee thence.

What has stripped the seeming beauty
From the idols of the earth?
Not a sense of right or duty,
But the sight of peerless worth.

Not the crushing of those idols,
With its bitter void and smart;
But the beaming of His beauty,
The unveiling of His heart.

Who extinguishes their taper
Till they hail the rising sun?
Who discards the garb of winter
Till the summer has begun?

'Tis that look that melted Peter,
'Tis that face that Stephen saw,
'Tis that heart that wept with Mary,
Can alone from idols draw

Draw and win and fill completely,
Till the cup o'erflow the brim:
What have we to do with idols
Who have companied with Him?

Anon.

[Shammu]

In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks' wishes that what was freely received should be freely given, his writings are not copyrighted. Therefore you are free to use these writings as you are led, however we ask if you choose to share writings from this site with others, please offer them freely - free of changes, free of charge and free of copyright.

What it Means to be a Christian
by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 1 - The Immense Significance of the Christian Life

There are many misconceptions as to what the Christian life really is. I shall, however, not say very much about this negative side - that is, as to that which is either mistaken, confused or inadequate. The best way of dealing with all such difficulties is to take the positive line, by seeking to present the truth in its fullness, as we may be enabled, and so leave the comparisons to be made by those who read.

Our first phase of this matter, then, is the immense significance of the Christian life. That phrase embodies a principle of very great importance. It is this, that we shall never really appreciate anything presented to us in the Word of God until we see it in its full setting. If we regard it as just something in itself, we miss a great deal. We need to get its great background and its great setting in order to feel the full impact of its significance. That is what we shall seek to do now, as we are Divinely enabled - to see something at least of the immense significance of the Christian life.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE BEGINS WITH CHRIST

We shall probably be on the ground of common agreement when we say that the Christian life begins with Christ, but that means a great deal more than it sounds. To say that Christianity began with Jesus is true if you put Jesus in His right setting, and it is just at that point that an adjustment may be necessary in order to grasp the immensity of this matter. For neither the Christian life nor Christianity began with the historic Jesus. They did not begin when Jesus was born, when Jesus lived here, when Jesus died and rose again. It is just there, I say, that we need to make an adjustment. We must know what it is that the Bible shows as to our Lord Jesus Christ.

CHRIST IN THE 'BEFORE TIMES ETERNAL'

Now you take up your New Testament, and open at the Gospels. You find that Matthew traces the genealogy of Jesus back to Abraham. Luke takes Him back still further, to Adam. Mark begins his life of Jesus at the time of His baptism, when He was thirty years of age. But John reaches beyond them all, back through the thirty years, beyond Bethlehem, back to Abraham and beyond Abraham to Adam; and he does not stop there, he goes still further back. "In the beginning" - whenever, wherever, that dateless time was - "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." That is a statement - and it is only a statement, a statement of truth, of fact - as to the Person of the Lord Jesus; and that, with one or two other sentences, is all that John gives us.

But we have in the New Testament, through another Apostle, a much fuller revelation concerning Jesus in that dateless past. Through the Apostle Paul we are taken right back and shown a very great deal about God's Son "before times eternal", not only before He came into this world, but before this present world order came into being. It is the general custom to begin a biography with something concerning the ancestry of the person in view, leading up to his or her birth, the whole thing being, of course, just an account of the human and earthly history of this person. But the biography of Jesus Christ does not only go right back long before His own birth into this world and beyond His human parentage or ancestry. A large section of the biography of Jesus Christ in the Word of God relates to that which is called "before times eternal". Here are some fragments of Scripture. We hear Him praying. He is praying to His Father, and He is saying: "Glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was" (John 17:5). That is really a bit of His biography, or autobiography - "the glory which I had with thee before the world was." And then the Apostle Paul, in that matchless description of Him, has this one clause, this mighty clause of only five words: "He is before all things" (Col. 1:17). "The glory which I had with thee before the world was." "He is before all things."

It is right back there, then, that we travel to find the meaning of a Christian, the Christian life and Christianity. Let us contemplate the Lord Jesus there, from the standpoint of definite statements in the Scriptures.

First of all, as to His Person - what He was like then. "God... hath... spoken unto us in his Son... who being the effulgence of his glory, and the very image of his substance..." (Heb. 1:2,3). That certainly does not belong to the days of His humiliation. That goes right back, as we shall see in a moment, in the very connection or context of those words - "the express image of his substance", "the effulgence of his glory". That is what He was like before the world was.

What was His position then? "...Who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped" (Phil. 2:6). Though He was equal with God, on an equality with God, He counted not that equality with God as something to be grasped. Equal with God, on equality with God - that was His position then.

Then as to His appointment. Here again is the Scripture context of the words we quoted just now. "God... hath... spoken unto us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things". "APPOINTED heir of all things". When did that happen? That was not done in time, that was not at the time of His birth or subsequently. That was right away back there in eternity past. There was something done in the counsels of the Godhead, whereby the Son of God was appointed Heir of all things, when it was determined that all things should be the heritage of God's Son, His rightful inheritance as God's Heir. It was not, of course, that He was to come into it on the demise of God, but God bound up all things with His Son, and made Him their Inheritor. These are things that we know through the Scriptures. How did the men who stated them come to know? Well, they tell us. Paul, who says most about this, tells us quite definitely that it was given to him by revelation: God made it known to him.

That, then, as to the "before times eternal". And out of that relationship with God, out of that fellowship with God, and out of that appointment of God, came the next move, the creation of the present world: not the creation of the present world condition, but the present cosmic order; and again we are given very much information and light as to the relationship of Christ to this.

CHRIST THE AGENT OF CREATION

We are told in the first place that He was the Agent of it, God's Agent in the creation. Here is the statement: "All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made" (John 1:3). Or again another statement: "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" (Col. 1:16). And if it needs another word to bear that out, here it is: "There is... one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things" (1 Cor. 8:6). He was the Agent in creation.

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CHRIST THE OBJECT AND INTEGRATOR OF CREATION

He is the Object of creation. "In him were all things created". "All things have been created through him, and unto him". And yet another statement: "For of him, and through him, and unto him, are all things" (Rom. 11:36). And then a further movement, or a further constituent of this creative activity and purpose, is indicated. It is found in the little clause which completes that wonderful statement that we have read earlier. "He is before all things, and in him all things consist" (Col. 1:17). The Agent, the Object, the Integrator. "In him all things hold together" - are integrated. He is therefore the very reason for the creation. Remove Him, and the creation will disintegrate. When they crucified Him and He committed His Spirit to God, saying: "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit", there was a great earthquake, and the sun was hidden, and darkness was over the face of the earth. The very Object of the creation has been put out of His place by man. The creation knows that its very Integrator has been rejected. These are but tokens of a great fact. Jesus Christ is the very meaning of this creation: without Him the creation has no meaning.

Perhaps, if you are a thinking person, you are saying, 'Well, these are tremendous statements; they may be a wonderful theory, a system of teaching, wonderful ideas; but are they facts? How can you prove them?' My dear friend, you are yourself a proof of them. In these talks we are seeking to discover the meaning of the Christian life. Until you find Jesus Christ you have no meaning at all in your own creation. The first thing that is livingly true about one who finds Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour is that they are conscious of having found the meaning of their very being - they have discovered why they are alive! Life then takes on its true meaning, and these are no longer just great wonderful truths, suspended in an abstract way for our contemplation, acceptance or rejection. They are borne out in the creation, and you and I are a part of it. There is no unification of our own individual lives; we are divided, scattered people; life is not an order at all - it is a chaos - until Jesus becomes the centre. But when that happens, there is a marvellous integration.

We shall have to come back to that presently. At the moment we are occupied with Jesus Christ, firstly away back before the world was, and then as the Agent, Object and Integrator of the creation. Out of this, three wonderful, though simple, things quite clearly arise. Firstly, His likeness to God - He was the very image, or impress, as the word is, of God's substance; secondly, His oneness with God; and thirdly, that aspect of His Person as the agency of God. I want you to keep those things in mind, because they are carried over and they come very much into this matter of the Christian life. With all this, however, we have to recognise a uniqueness and exclusiveness about Him, and I want to underline that as many times as I can, lest presently it might look as though I were on very dangerous ground. But I want you to extract those three things: likeness to God, oneness with God, and agency of God's purpose and God's work - in the case of Christ something unique and absolutely exclusive, gathered into the word Deity, 'very God of very God'. That, in brief - but oh, what a comprehensiveness, what a profundity, what a fullness! - that in brief is what we are told about Jesus Christ before He came into this world. Let us now pass on to what the Bible has to say about man.

MAN MADE TO REPRESENT GOD

What is the very first thing that the Bible says about man? "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Gen. 1:26). That is the Divine conception, that is the Divine idea. And what does that amount to? Surely it amounts to representation of God. Any image of a thing is supposed to be the representation of that thing, and the idea or conception of man in the Divine mind was that man should represent God. Not, of course, in that exclusive sense - Deity - of which I have just spoken: that does not come into it with man at all; but in this matter of being an expression of God, bearing the likeness of God: so that if you should meet a man who answers to the Divine idea you have a very good idea of what God is like. If only that were more true! - but in a very limited way we do know something of it, when we sometimes meet what we call a 'godly' man (and 'godly' is only 'God-like' abbreviated), and we say to one another, 'When you meet that man, you seem to meet the Lord, you seem to find something of the Lord - you seem to touch what you think the Lord would be like.'

Now, that was the Divine intention, conception, idea, as to man; but the intention was that the representation should be a full one, that the existence of man should convey the knowledge of what God is like in His moral character, in the beauty of His personality, that in touching man you should touch an expression of God, and be led back to God. And therein is a principle, mark you, a principle that we ought to take up, and that is to be carried into this matter of what it means to be a Christian. All our talking about God or Christ is utterly worthless unless we CONVEY God and Christ - unless our Lord is found in us. That is the best thing, and sometimes that does its work without any talking, whereas a vast amount of talking will do nothing unless there is the touch of the Lord there. The conception of man in the heart of God is just that HE should be found in a creation.

You see, the Lord Jesus when He was here was always trying to convey, by different means, sometimes by stories or parables, an impression of what God is like. He was speaking to people of very small spiritual apprehension. He could not go beyond illustrations, pictures and figures such as, for instance, the parable - or was it a life-story? - known as 'The Prodigal Son'. I think it is a misnomer. It would be better to call the story 'A Father's Love', and you would get to the heart of what the Lord Jesus was after. What He was saying was that when you have contemplated that father, his broken heart and his marvellous forgiveness and restoration, even smothering confession before it is finished, and lavishing upon that renegade son all that he had, you have got a faint idea of what God is like. And man was intended to be endowed and endued with the Divine nature. Peter even uses those words. "He hath granted unto us his precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). Once again, let me emphasize that we leave Deity out. It is enough that we may bear the Divine likeness - a likeness in nature - without aspiring to Deity.

ONENESS IN LIFE

It was God's thought, moreover, that man should become an inheritor of the very uncreated life of God. He was put on test, on probation, and missed it. It was there in the symbolic form of the tree of life, to be had on condition, but he missed it: and so man by nature - all the children of Adam right up to our own time and ourselves - has never possessed that Divine life outside of Jesus Christ. But that is the gift. As we shall see later, that is one of the great things that happen when we become Christians: we become partakers of God's own, Divine, eternal, uncreated life.

FELLOWSHIP IN PURPOSE

Then again, God's idea for man was not only likeness and oneness, but fellowship in purpose: that man should be brought into a working relationship with God in His great, His vast, purposes in this universe. The statement of Scripture is: "Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands" (Ps. 8:6) - fellowship with God. Here again we have a vast amount in the New Testament. I think we could probably say that ninety percent of the New Testament is occupied with this co-operation with God in His great purposes on the part of Christians. The Apostle Paul is so fond of using that phrase, 'according to His purpose'. Fellowship in the purpose of God - that was in God's mind in creating man.

But note, that all this likeness in nature, oneness in life, and fellowship in purpose, is related inseparably to God's Son, Jesus Christ: there can be none of it apart from the appointed Heir. We are said to be "joint-heirs"; that is, we come into things by union with Christ. So the Apostle Paul has as his abundant phrase, found everywhere (two hundred times) in his writings - "in Christ", "in Christ": nothing apart from Christ, nothing outside of Christ. It is all in Christ, inseparably bound up with God's eternally appointed Heir of all things.

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THE FAILURE OF MAN

Before we can follow that through into the Christian life, we have to look at that tragic interlude, as we may call it - the failure of man. We know the story, how it is written and how it is put. If you have difficulty in accepting the form in which the story is given, that is, either the actual way in which the test was set before Adam, as to the tree, the fruit, etc., or all this as symbolism, you should be helped in such difficulty by remembering that behind any form of presentation there are spiritual principles, and these are the essential and vital things. It is the MEANING that matters, not so much the form of conveyance.

We want to get behind that man's failure. The Bible tells us what the source of that failure was. Here again, marvellously, we are taken right back before the creation. The veil is drawn aside and we are shown something happening outside of this world, somewhere where those counsels of God have become known, His counsels concerning His Son and the appointment of His Son as Lord of creation, as Heir of all things. It has become known amongst the angels, the hierarchy of Heaven, and there is one there, the greatest created being of all, Lucifer, son of the morning, who becomes acquainted with this Divine intention. How - this is the mystery - how into that realm iniquity could enter we do not know: we cannot fathom the origin of sin; but what we are told is that "unrighteousness was found" in him (Ezek. 28:15). Pride was found in his heart.

Pride immediately works out in jealousy, does it not? Think of pride again. It always immediately shows itself in jealousy, rivalry. Pride cannot endure even an equal. Pride will always lead to a trying to 'go one better' in whatever realm it is. And so all the jealousy and all the rivalry sprang into that heart. We are told in the Scripture that that one said: "I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; ...I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High" (Isa. 14:13,14). He was jealous of God's Heir, and a rival to His appointment; Heaven was rent. But that one was cast out (Ezek 28:16-18). We are told that he was cast out of his estate together with all those who entered into that conspiracy with him against God's Son. Those "angels which kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation" (Jude 6), were cast out.

The next thing we see is the appearance of this one in beautiful guise - not with horns and tail and pitchfork! - but in beautiful guise to deceive; we see him coming into the realm of God's creation, to man and his partner. Now, what was his method? We shall never understand the meaning of the Christian life until we grasp these things. What was the method, what was the focal point, of the great arch-enemy's attack upon the man - this man whom God had created to come into fellowship with His Son in the great purpose of the ages?

The focal point was man's SELF-hood. I doubt whether the man had any consciousness of selfhood until Satan touched him on that point and said, "Hath God said?" The insinuation was - 'God is keeping something from you that you might have; He is limiting you. God knows that, if you do this thing which He has forbidden, you yourself will have the root of the matter in yourself, you will have the capacity and faculty in yourself for knowing, knowing, knowing. At present, under this embargo of God, you have to depend entirely upon Him: you have to consult Him, refer to Him, defer to Him; you have got to get everything from Him. And all the time you can have it in yourself, and God knows that. You see, God is withholding something from you that you might have, and you are less of a being than you might be - so God is not really favourable to you and your interests.'

It was a maligning of God. But the focal point was this: 'You, YOU - you can BE something, you can DO something, you can be "in the know" about things' - self-centredness, self-interest, self-realisation, and all the other host of 'self' aspects. The 'I' awoke, that 'I' which had brought the enemy out of his first estate. 'I will be exalted above the stars, I will be equal with the Most High'. To awaken the 'I' in man - so that, instead of man having his centre in God, deriving everything from God, he aspired to have the centre in himself; instead of being God-centred, he was self-centred - that was the focal point. And man was enticed into the same pride as had brought about Satan's downfall, leading to the same act of independence - nothing less than a bid for personal freedom from God.

As to the results, well, we know them. The older this world becomes, and the greater the development of this race, the more and more terrible is the manifestation of this original thing. We see a picture of man trying to get on without God, man saying that he CAN get on without God; man seeking to realise himself, fulfil himself, and to draw everything to himself; seeking to be himself the centre of everything, not only individually but collectively. That is the story, that is the history. The results? Look at the world - all the terrible, terrible suffering, all the misery, all the horror. We should never have believed, had it not become an actuality in recent years, what man is capable of doing - all because of his break with God. We will not dwell upon it; it is too awful. If we ask, Why, why should all this suffering and misery and wretchedness go on in the world? - surely the answer is this. God can never remove from man the consequences of this act of pride and disobedience, independence and complicity with His arch-enemy, without letting man go on in his independence. All this is God's way of saying - the way in which He is compelled to say - It is an awful, awful thing, to be without God, to be in a state of breach with God.

Now suppose you come into the Christian life. That does not remove all the misery and suffering in the creation, and it does not remove the suffering from yourself, but there is a difference. The mighty difference between one who is outside of Christ and one who is in Christ is this: both suffer, but whereas the one suffers unto despair and hopelessness, in the sufferings of the other there is the grace of God turning it all to account to make him or her Godlike again. The others suffer without hope, die without hope, but the sufferings of a Christian are to make that one like their Lord. It is a marvellous thing to see the likeness of Christ coming out in His own through their sufferings.

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THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD JESUS

We come now to the next phase of things - the incarnation of our Lord Jesus: for it is just at that point - the incarnation - that all that was appointed for Him, all the Divine design and conception of God's Son in this universe, all the creative activity through Him and by Him and unto Him, and all the meaning of man's creation, as we have been trying to show, is taken up in a definite way for realisation.

This incarnation, the coming of the Lord Jesus into this world, is a far, far greater thing than any of us has yet appreciated. The Word of God makes a great deal of this coming into the world. You know that, at a certain season of the year, we are talking all the time about the birth of Jesus - about Jesus being born in Bethlehem. There is much about that in our carols and in our talk. It is all about the birth of Jesus. But the Word of God, while it uses that phrase, "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem...", says far, far more than that about His coming. That was not the BEGINNING of Jesus: that was the COMING of Jesus. He definitely and deliberately and consciously, in that full form of His eternal existence with God, made a decision about this matter, a deliberate decision to come. Coming in baby form had its own particular meaning - we cannot now stay with all the details of this - but it was a coming.

And what the Word of God says first of all about that coming is that it was a mighty, mighty renunciation on His part. Listen again. "Who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross" (Phil. 2:6-8). And there is a clear implication in that sentence in His great prayer: "Father, glorify thou me... with the glory which I had with thee before the world was" (John 17:5). He has let it go, He has given it up. That was the mighty renunciation by God's Son of His heavenly, eternal glory, of His position of equality - down to what? Servanthood. The word is 'bond-servant': a bond-slave, the form of a bond-slave. You and I cannot grasp all that, because we cannot grasp what it meant for Him to be equal with God. We cannot understand all that He was and had in the eternity past. We know so little about that; we understand less. But here it is: it has all been renounced, and He is now here in incarnation, not as a master, but as a bond-slave. "The Son of man", said He, "came not to be ministered unto, but to minister" (Matt. 20:28). "I am in the midst of you as he that serveth" (Luke 22:27). "He took a towel, and girded himself. Then he poureth water into the bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet" (John 13:4,5). That was the job of the slave, the bond-slave.

The next part of the statement as to this cycle from glory to glory is - "being found in fashion as a man". This just relates to the central feature and inclusive meaning of the Incarnation: i.e., to all that is meant by the fact that everything was by Man - as man - for man. There were many theophanies in Old Testament times (theos = God; phaino = to show), manifestations of God to man by actual appearances (some believe that these were the Second Person of the Trinity, but that need not be discussed here). But the Incarnation is something different, and its essential point is that the great work of redemption was not committed to angels, but, as the hymn goes:

'O generous love! that He, who smote
In man for man the foe,
The double agony in man
For man should undergo.'

It was Man for man assuming responsibility for this state of things, and for the recovery of what was lost and the reinstating of what had been forfeited, the redeeming of man and creation. For that He became incarnate, and then straight to the Cross. He had no illusions about that - He had come for that. One of His great imperatives was always related to the Cross. "The Son of man MUST be delivered up... and be crucified" (Luke 24:7). That imperative was in His heart as overruling and overriding everything else. He knew it, and that is why He repudiated and rejected the cheap offer of the kingdoms of this world at the hands of the Devil: because He had come, not to have them as they were, but to have them as God ever intended them to be, and that could only be by the Cross.

So the Cross was the great repudiation of the world as it was and is, the great repudiation of man as he had become, whom God could not accept, in whose heart was found this pride. For, representatively, in the judgment and death of Jesus Christ God was saying concerning the whole race, 'I have finished with that', and turning His face away. The heart of the Son was broken as He cried, 'Thou hast forsaken Me!' Why? Because He was there as man's representative, the world's representative as it was, and He had to die as it. He "tasted death for every man", which meant experiencing God-forsakenness, repudiation, and the closed door of Heaven, God's eternal 'No' to that fallen creation. By that means He redeemed man, He redeemed the creation, and in His resurrection-ascension to the right hand of God He reinstated man, representatively, in the place that God ever intended man to have. This is not all isolated action on the part of Jesus Christ. This is related all the time. He is the inclusive One, and what happens to Him is what God means to happen to man. Until man is in Christ he is repudiated by God. There is no way through. "No one cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6). But in Christ the inheritance which was lost is recovered. In Christ, personally at God's right hand as his representative, man is reinstated. Christ is there as the earnest of what we shall be and where we shall be, by the grace of God. But, mark you, the Christ risen is not now the Christ made sin in our place, but with sin put away, and a new creation instated, though still MAN.

Well, all this is the setting of the Christian life; this is the background of a Christian. Is it not immense? We struggle for words in order to try to set it forth, it is so great. All I can hope to do is to leave an impression on you. I cannot explain, I cannot define, I cannot set it out, I cannot convey it; but all this, which is so poor an expression, surely, surely, should leave at least an impression upon us. We should at least grasp this - that a Christian is set in an eternal background. It is a wonderful thing to be converted and to become a Christian; it is blessed to be saved; but oh! our conception and experience of the Christian life is such a little thing compared with God's thought. We need to get the eternal dimensions of the significance of Jesus Christ as the setting of a Christian life.

Christianity does not begin when we accept Christ. By accepting Christ we are placed right back there in the eternity of God's thought concerning man. We are brought into something that has been from all eternity in the intention of God, and, as we shall see later, linked on with a realisation unspeakably wonderful in the ages to come. To become a child of God, to be born again, however you may define or explain it, is to come right into something that is first of all not of time at all - it is of eternity. It is not just this little life here on earth; it is of Heaven, it is universal in its significance. It is a wonderful thing, beyond all our powers of grasping, to be a Christian. If we could only get some conception of the cost of our salvation, the cost of redemption, the cost of recovering the lost inheritance; the cost to God, the cost to God's Son - the awful depths of that Cross; if only we could get some idea of this, we should see that it is no little thing to be a Christian. It is something immense.

What I have said has not been outside the Word of God; I have been keeping closely to the Book. I have not turned you from passage to passage, but there is a vast amount of Scripture behind what I have said. All that I have given you, and more, is in the Word of God. And the important thing is that what I have said can be put to the test - it can be made true in experience, now, in this life. That is just the wonder of it: a truly born-from-above child of God knows within himself or herself, 'This is true; this is why I have a being; now I have the explanation, and much more.'

Now if this is true, if all that is the meaning of being in Christ - and I put the 'if' by way of argument - what an immense challenge it is to be a Christian, and what a terrible thing it will be not to be in Christ. What an immense thing it will prove to be, not only in this life, but more, infinitely more, in the ages to come, to be in Christ!

If there is one reading these lines who is not yet in Christ, it is a challenge to you. You are not dealing merely with your father's or your mother's beliefs or faith. You are not dealing with something that you call 'Christianity', or with your own conception of a Christian, which may be all wrong, faulty, or at most inadequate. You are dealing with a vast thing, an immense thing. May God help you, from this contemplation of the setting of the Christian life, to reach out, if you have never yet done so, to embrace God's gift. If we know what it is to be in Christ, let us make sure that we are set upon knowing all that the Christian life means, that we are not going to be content with a little Christian life, with anything less than God's fullness for us; and if we have a lot of experience and knowledge, let this all lead us to a new determination that we shall not stop short anywhere of God's full and ultimate intention in apprehending us in His Son.

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Chapter 2 - What Happens When We Become Christians

In these talks, we are seeking to be pre-eminently practical. That is, we are not occupied with the presentation of Christian doctrine in itself. Christian doctrine will be here, but we are not interested in presenting the doctrines of Christianity in the abstract, important as they are. What we are concerned with is that everything shall be practical and experimental, and capable of being immediately put to the test.

There is, of course, a difference between the facts and truths of the Christian life, and the explanation of them. That is, it is possible for all the facts to be present in the life without the person concerned being able to explain those facts. It is a part of our present business to try to explain the facts, and to challenge as to the facts. Now, any explanation of the Christian life should be corroborated by the experience. That is, it ought to be possible for you to say, 'Well, I could not have explained it like that, but I know exactly in my experience what you mean - that does just express my own life.' So that the explanation must be borne out by the experience: the experience must corroborate the explanation.

Let us, then, consider what happens when we become Christians. We shall spend some of our time in seeking to get behind this matter of becoming a Christian, to get to certain other facts - facts stated or revealed in the Bible, and true to human experience.

MAN'S RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD DISLOCATED

When we come to consider man as we know him, man by nature, the first thing we find is that his relationship with God is completely dislocated. We say 'dislocated', because we believe what the Bible teaches: that things were all right once, and they have gone wrong. If for the time being you prefer to waive the word 'dislocated' and substitute 'severed', you may do so. We shall probably at least agree that things are not in order between man and God. The relationship between man and God is in a broken-down condition. That is the fundamental fact. The relationship is disjointed; it is in a state of strain. There is distance between man and God. The relationship, or perhaps we should say 'non-relationship', is a very unhappy thing: it is altogether unproductive; there is nothing coming from it. It is barren and desolate, quite unfruitful. With many God does not seem to matter, and is quite ignored.

But that is more or less neutral or negative. In most cases the situation is much worse than that - it is positively antagonistic. Man is in a state of antagonism to God in his nature, and often in his mind, in his attitude, and in his reference to God; there is a state of conflict, there is suspicion in man's mind as to God. A great deal of resentment exists in many human hearts. And we can go further - for the Bible goes this far - and say that in some cases, perhaps in not a few, there is even hatred in the human heart for God. We meet that sometimes. So that is the first fact - the relationship between man and God is chaotic, broken-down, dislocated or disrupted.

SPIRITUAL FACULTIES WHICH ARE NOT FUNCTIONING

That is not all. We need to get inside of that and go further. Man has a set of senses belonging to his spiritual being which are not functioning - a set of senses which correspond to his physical senses. The physical senses, as we know, are: seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling. But man has another set of five senses which are not physical, but which belong to his inner man. They are the counterpart of those five physical senses, and in man by nature these other senses are not functioning. The Bible speaks of all these senses in a spiritual way in relation to God.

The Bible speaks of a SEEING of God, which is not physical at all; it is not with the natural eye. There is that little fragment known to most: "The pure in heart... shall see God" (Matt. 5:. That is certainly not a physical matter.

Again, HEARING. There is a spiritual hearing of God which is not audition through the natural or physical ear. It is something in the heart. It is not the hearing of an audible voice, but it corresponds to that in a spiritual way. People are able to say they have heard the Lord speak to them, but they never heard anything with their natural ear.

TASTING? Yes, the Bible says: "Taste and see that the Lord is good" (Ps. 34:, and no one thinks that that is a physical matter.

SMELLING? - that seems to be difficult, perhaps. But we know what we mean, without any physical factor coming in, when we say that we are 'scenting' something. We go into a room, and somehow we detect that there is 'something in the air'. People have been talking, and when we go in we see embarrassment on their faces, and they suddenly become quiet and look at one another, and we 'scent' something. In an analogous way, we know that it is possible to sense the presence of God. There are thus a whole set of spiritual faculties which, when they are in proper order and function, serve to relate us to God; and in the natural man, the unregenerate man, those senses are not functioning at all. There is no seeing God, in that way; there is no hearing God speak to him; there is no sensing or feeling God - it is a tremendous thing to feel God, not with your hands, but in an inward way. There is no 'tasting that the Lord is good' in the natural man. All these things are out of order - and yet the Bible speaks of them a very great deal. The Bible teaches, and man's condition corroborates, that, where God is concerned, man is blind, man is deaf; man is numbed, has no feelings, is insensitive to God. Is that not so? That is a true description of anyone - it may be you who are reading these lines - who has not had a definite Christian experience. You do not see God in this way, you do not hear God, you do not feel God, you do not sense God; God is unreal, remote, far away, if He is at all. You do not know Him.

It is no real contradiction of the above and of what follows when we say that in most cases - very, very few exceptions exist - there is a consciousness of the existence of some supreme Object demanding recognition. Our point is that there is no fellowship, understanding, knowledge, or living relationship with God.

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MAN BY NATURE DEAD TO GOD

But the Bible goes further still. It says that man by natural birth is lacking in yet another thing, which corresponds to his - may I use the phrase? - biological existence, his life. We have a biological existence which we call life. Now it is a very significant thing that the New Testament puts two different words over two different classes of people. It uses one word (bios) for natural life, but it never uses that word of the life of the Christian. For that it uses an entirely different word, with an altogether different meaning. What the Bible says is that man by nature not only lacks the functions of his spiritual senses, but even lacks that which corresponds to his natural existence - life. In a word, the Bible says that man is dead; not only blind and deaf and insensitive to God, but DEAD. "Death passed upon all men" (Rom. 5:12), says the Word of God. By nature man is dead to God.

DEAD TO THE MEANING OF HIS OWN EXISTENCE

And he is dead to the true meaning of his own existence. Man by nature does not know why he was born, why he has a being. We have all sorts of accounts of his being - wild explanations and excuses, shelving responsibility, and so on, all proving that he is entirely dead to the real meaning of his own existence. He makes the best of it - and sometimes it is quite a good best that a man makes of his life; but, after all, when set in relation to God and in relation to eternity, he does not know why he is alive, why he has a being. He is dead to that. He is dead to eternal and heavenly things and values. What a futile and hopeless thing it is to talk to man by nature about the things of Heaven and the things of God! He looks at you, he gapes at you, he does not know what you are talking about. That belongs to a world with which he is just not acquainted. It is something foreign, far off, and he is utterly bored.

He may be a very good man from certain standpoints, a very educated man. He may be occupying a position of high esteem and respect amongst men - he may even be a very religious man. There was such a man who came to Jesus, an outstanding specimen of the best product of humanity outside of Christ; but over him was suspended one big question-mark. He was full of interrogations 'How...? How...? How...?' And Jesus said, in effect: 'Well, it is no use talking to you about heavenly things at all. You do not belong to that realm; you are just dead to that.'

Now, is that true? I said at the beginning that you can put everything to the test. This is not just a statement of abstract Christian doctrine. This is a statement of fact which is verifiable. Some of you may be actually knowing the truth of it now, in your own experience. Many of you did know it in time past, but, thank God, you know it no longer. According to the Bible, man is dead. It is useless to speak to a corpse - you will get nothing back. As far as the things of God are concerned, man makes no response. There is no correspondence, no interchange, no communion, no fellowship possible. That is what the Bible and human experience say as to man's condition by nature.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE BECOME CHRISTIANS

That brings us to a very practical point in approaching this question: What exactly happens when we become Christians? There are two fragments of New Testament Scripture which I think sum this up for us very concisely and very fully. The one is that statement, so familiar and yet so little understood even by Christians, the statement made to the man to whom I referred just now, who came with his big question - his multiple "How...?" Jesus simply looked at him, and did not try to answer his question at all, because He knew how hopeless a thing it is to talk to a dead man. He looked at him, and said: "Ye must be born anew", or "Ye must be born from above" (John 3:7). The other passage, from one of Paul's letters, is also very well known: "Wherefore if any man is in Christ, there is a new creation" (2 Cor. 5:17). Those two words sum up what happens: "born anew", "a new creation".

(a) A NEW ALIVENESS

I said I would keep off negative ground and on positive, but let me say here in parenthesis that it is NOT becoming a Christian just to accept, or give a mental assent to, the tenets of the Christian religion, or to join some society which has the name of being a Christian institution, even though it may go by the name of 'church'. That is not becoming a Christian in the New Testament sense. The only true 'becoming a Christian' is by way of being born anew, becoming a new creation: which means you become a different species from what you were before, and from what all other people are who have not had that experience.

But when we so become Christians, what happens? Our state of death gives place to a state of life. This other life, this resurrection life, which no man by nature has ever yet had, excepting Jesus Christ; this life - which we will not even refer to in the New Testament terminology - is given in the day of our faith-exercise toward the Lord Jesus as Lord and Saviour. A new aliveness takes place.

It is the first wonderful basic experience of the Christian. The Christian at that time leaps into life: he immediately begins to talk a new language about now knowing what it is to live, knowing the meaning of life, and so on. What happens when we become Christians? Well, we are alive from the dead! We become alive.

But it is not just the resuscitation of something. It is the impartation of what was never there before - a new life, belonging to a new creation: that is, a new order, which is a heavenly order. For this is birth "from above". Jesus never said a truer thing than that. "Ye must be born again." If there is someone reading these lines who has not had that experience, you know, after what we have said about the natural condition, that, if you are going to see God and hear God and feel and sense God, in the way of which we have spoken, something has got to happen to you which is as radical as being born all over again in another realm. Jesus is right at any rate on that, is He not? It is true. "You MUST..." - it is not just an imperative of command, it is not just a declaration that you have got to become a Christian to be accepted with God. It is the statement of a fundamental and inescapable fact: that you can never, never know God in a real way, far less have living fellowship with God, until something has happened in you that is absolutely CONSTITUTIONAL. You have got to have a new life, which is God's own life, to enable you to understand what God is, to know Him.

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(b) A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD

This new life immediately introduces a new consciousness of God. Immediately you are alive to God - you sense God. God becomes a reality, a living reality: no longer remote, far off, indefinite, but now very dear, very real, very wonderful, indeed the greatest reality in your whole life. You know God in a new way, you have a new consciousness of God.

(c) A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE MEANING OF OUR EXISTENCE

And then you find you have a new consciousness of the meaning of your own existence. Every Christian who is truly founded upon this basis of beginning, of resurrection, almost immediately leaps into this consciousness: 'Now I have got the explanation of life, I have got the key to life. I know that I was born for something! I never before knew that I was really born for something, but I know now. There is a sense of meaning in my being here, and of destiny, wrapped up with this new experience. It gives an explanation to my own life.' Is that not true, Christians? It is - it is just like that. 'Now we know why we are here!'

(d) A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS OF PURPOSE AND VOCATION

And to carry that one step further - it is a new consciousness of purpose and vocation. It is not only that there is a meaning in our being alive, but that a purpose has come in with this new life, a sense of vocation. We are called for something. You do not have to have a lot of instruction about that. You do not even have to wait for it. The truly born-again child of God spontaneously, instinctively, begins to talk to other people about it. You can test your Christian life by that. You just must tell them, you must talk about it, you must let them know. That is vocation coming out. You feel you are called for something, that there is business on hand. And that can develop, as we know, to specific vocations. But this consciousness of purpose, meaning and vocation springs up with new life.

(e) A NEW SET OF RELATIONSHIPS, INTERESTS AND DESIRES

And then we find we have a new set of relationships, of interests, of desires. We know that; it happens. It is no use talking to anybody who has not had the experience about these things. They have their relationships, their interests, their desires, and they just despise you for not doing what they do and going where they go and engaging in the things which are everything to them. They do not understand you. They think you have missed the way, that you have lost everything that is worth having. But you know quite well that it is just the other way round. You do not despise them, but you pity them, are sorry for them. This is a transcendent, superlative set of relationships. Christians know the meaning of a little phrase that was used about some early servants of God who were arrested because they were doing this very thing - fulfilling, expressing, the sense of vocation, and not keeping it in and keeping it to themselves. They were arrested and brought before the authorities and threatened. 'And being let go, they went to their own company' - instinctively to their own company (Acts 4:23). We know what that means. There is a new 'company' - a new relationship, a new fellowship, a new set of desires and interests. No one else can understand or appreciate it, but the Christian knows.

(f) A NEW SET OF CAPACITIES

Further, we have a new set of capacities. This is a wonderful thing about the new creation life, this 'born-anew' life, this true Christian life. We get a new set of mental capacities, something different from, and additional to, and altogether transcending natural mental capacity. It is a new understanding of things, and it is one of the wonders of the Christian life. You may find a person who has had no great advantages academically, educationally, or in any other realm, a very ordinary person: and yet, when they come into a real experience of the Christian life, it is remarkable how they acquire an entirely new understanding and intelligence. They have an insight into things that a man of the highest education and the biggest brain is - by these means alone - entirely incapable of grasping or understanding.

This is something that the Christian knows to be so true. Very often we may think that a certain person, because of such academic achievements and qualifications, is bound to be able to understand, we are bound to have good interchange and fellowship with them: yet, when we begin to speak about the things of the Lord, we meet a blank - they do not know what we are talking about. But here is this simple man or woman who knows. They have a new mental faculty, a new set of capacities and powers for understanding the things of the Spirit of God, for knowing what no natural man can know - not by the way of study, but by the way of communion with God.

And these wonderful new capacities grow and develop as the Christian goes on. We find that we have new powers of transaction and enaction - of 'doing'. The Christian has the power of doing things that other people cannot do: a power of endurance, a power of overcoming, and a power of working. Many of my readers will understand me when I say that sometimes - indeed very often - it seems that the Lord takes pains to undercut our natural ability for doing, in order to lead us into a life where we can do without 'abilities', without any natural explanation at all. If you look at much that has been done through true Christians, in this world's history, you will not be able to account for it at all on natural grounds. They were weak things, frail things, things at a discount in this world. But just see what God has done through the "weak things" and the "things that are not"!

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(g) A NEW HOPE

A new hope - that is characteristic of the true Christian. An altogether new prospect has leapt into view; we shall see more of that later. But here it must be stated that the Christian, if a true Christian, is not one characterized by despair, by hopelessness, by a sense of final frustration and disappointment. A Christian is one, deep down in whose very being there is rooted the consciousness that there is something wonderful ahead, something beyond. The final argument for the afterward is not in any system of teaching about Heaven or its alternative. It is found in the heart, in the life - it is found in a mighty dynamic. What is it that has kept Christians going in the face of unspeakable difficulties and sufferings and opposition? What is it? Others capitulate, give up, let go, fall into despair. The Christian just goes on. And it is not because the Christian is of any better natural calibre than others, with more tenacity and doggedness. Not at all. So often they are the weak ones, as counted by men; but there is this going on. They are gripped by an inward conviction that this is not the end, this is not all, there is something beyond. There is this HOPE, which has come from the "God of hope".

THE SECRET OF THE "ALL THINGS NEW"

Now what is the explanation of it all - a new life, a new consciousness, new relationships, all things new? We are not exaggerating the Christian life. What does it amount to? What is the inclusive secret of it? You see, it is not just that the Christian receives some abstract THINGS. You may call it life, you may call it understanding, you may call it hope, you may call it power, but these are not merely abstract things. The true, born-anew Christian has received, not abstractions, but a PERSON. The inclusive explanation of it all is the gift of the Holy Spirit. God gives His Spirit to them that obey Him (Acts 5:32).

Now, the Holy Spirit is God, no less than God, and the Holy Spirit has all the intelligence and knowledge of God, all the eternal prospect of God; the elements of eternity, timelessness. All that is true of God is true of the Holy Spirit. If, then, God gives the Holy Spirit to become resident inside a person, and that person learns from the beginning, like a babe, day by day, year by year, to walk in fellowship with the indwelling Holy Spirit, that person is bound to grow in all these characteristics that we have mentioned.

In the first place, they are bound to know Divine life - God's own life within. This is a most wonderful thing, when you think of it. We have not just an 'It', but Himself, God in Christ by the Holy Spirit, as our very life. I love the way the Bible puts that about God: "He is... the length of thy days" (Deut. 30:20). Think about that. It means that if God really is our portion, resident within, then our duration, our spell, is not dictated by natural things. HE is the length of our days. We shall die when He says that the time has come, and not before. You see, all things are in His hand, and until that time comes the threats may be many, but His life persists, and we rise again and rise again and rise again. We thought the end had come, but we rise again and go on - because He is our life. The Holy Spirit is called "the Spirit of life" (Rom. 8:2). To have such a Person resident within is a very wonderful thing.

And so, if He has all Divine intelligence, and we are in His school, living with Him, keeping fellowship with Him day by day, we shall grow in this intelligence, which no natural man has. We shall be growing in knowledge, growing in understanding, growing in ability to grasp the things of God, which no man, apart from the Spirit of God, can understand. I want to lay emphasis upon that. It is the Holy Spirit HIMSELF. I know that Christians as such believe in the Holy Spirit - the majority of evangelical Christians believe in the Person of the Holy Spirit. They put the article there - THE Holy Spirit - whereas others speak of 'Holy Spirit'. It is a part of our Christian faith to believe in the Holy Spirit as a Person; to have some knowledge of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, His work and His power. And yet there is among Christians a lamentable lack of understanding of what it means to have the Holy Spirit really dwelling within. This is disclosed and manifested by the very fact that they can sometimes act and speak so contrarily to the Holy Spirit without seeming to be checked up by Him. It is truly astonishing how many Christians can speak in a manner in which the Holy Spirit certainly cannot acquiesce, and yet seem to be quite unconscious of the fact that the Holy Spirit disagrees with them. Many Christians can believe lies about others, and repeat them, and yet never register the Holy Spirit's disagreement. There is something wrong here in regard to the practical expression of the indwelling Holy Spirit - for He is the Spirit of truth.

Now the true Christian life means that wherever the Holy Spirit is in disagreement with anything that we say or do, or with the way we say or do it, we should be aware of it. At once we should register - not a voice, but a sense: the Holy Spirit saying, in effect, 'I do not agree with you - that is wrong, that is not right, that is not true, that is not kind, that is not good, that is not gracious.' There is a very great need for the reality of the indwelling Spirit to be expressed. It is not that the failure to recognise and sense and discern means that the Holy Spirit is not there; it simply means that, if it is like that, we are not walking in the Spirit. There is something needed on our part by way of adjustment.

But, coming to the positive side, the true Christian life can be, and should be, like this. With the Holy Spirit resident within, when you or I say or do anything with which He does not agree, we know it at once. We have a bad feeling right in the middle of us, and we do not get rid of it. We have to say, 'Evidently I was wrong in what I said, or did. Lord, forgive me and put it out of the way.' If it has done someone any harm, well, let us try to put it right. That is a life in the Spirit. It is very practical.

That is what happens when we become Christians. It begins like that. The beginnings are very simple. If you are still quite young in the Christian life, you surely must know something of this in simple ways. Perhaps you go to do something that you used to do, and something inside you says, 'Oh, no, not now - that belongs to the past.' That is a simple beginning, is it not? If you go on, you burn your fingers - because you are alive! If you were dead, you would do these things and not feel them. Because you are alive, you are sensitive.

Yes, that is what happens when we become Christians. It is very simple; many of us know about it from experience. But it is important for the many who are coming to Christ in these days, who are at the beginnings of the Christian life, to know really what they have come into, really what has happened to them. They should be able to say: 'Yes - well, I could not have explained it, I could never have put it into words or defined it; but I know what you mean. That is true to my own experience.' But, you see, it is something more than just FEELING. We need to UNDERSTAND, we need to be INTELLIGENT about these things. May God make us intelligent Christians - Christians who are going on in life-fellowship with His Spirit within, and growing all the time. God forbid that any young Christians, reading these lines, in five, ten or twenty years' time should be just where they are now. That is not necessary, because of course - praise God! being born again is not the end of things - it is only the beginning!

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Chapter 3 - The Divine Purpose and Principles Governing the Christian Life

It is most important that we should be alive to the fact that the Christian life is governed by purpose. The thought of 'purpose', indeed that very word itself, is much in view in the New Testament. Most of us are familiar with one statement relating thereto: "To them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to his purpose" (Rom. 8:28). Unfortunately it is usually cut in half and only part of the first half taken: "all things work together for good". We might go on: "to them that love God"; but that is not the whole statement, which adds: "to them that are the called according to his purpose". Then we have another word, not so generally known: "Foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will" (Eph. 1:11). Again: "according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Eph. 3:11). Yet once more: "according to his own purpose and grace" (2 Tim. 1:9). These are sufficient at least to indicate that 'purpose' is a governing idea in the Christian life: that we are not saved just to be saved, we do not become Christians just to be Christians. That is only the beginning of something; it is with a view to something very much more in the thought and intention of God.

WHAT THE PURPOSE IS

You are asking, 'Well, what is the purpose?' There are many things said about it in the Scriptures, which we cannot stay to cite just now. Without going into great detail, when all things said about it are gathered together, there is one thing which includes and covers them all, of which they are all just parts. The Divine purpose is all-inclusively set forth in a clause in one of Paul's letters: "till we all attain... unto the... fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). We are going to spend a little time in looking into that, but you will instantly recognise that that makes Christ very great. Surely, if all the Christians that ever have been and are and will yet be are called with the purpose of attaining unto the fullness of Christ - and the number is just countless in all the centuries, in all the generations since the first Christian - if all this vast, uncountable number are called with that same calling, the fullness of Christ, then Christ must be very great indeed.

Yes, and the Christian life must therefore be something very great. If it takes its character, its meaning, and its dimensions from Christ, then the Christian life corresponding to Christ must be a very great thing. It must necessarily be something progressive. No Christian at any time in their experience or history here on this earth can ever say that they have reached that end. It means that the Christian life is one of progress and development. It is all moving toward that ultimate fullness. So we find in the New Testament that the Christian life is set forth in three distinct phases: we ARE Christians, we are BECOMING Christians, and we are GOING TO BE Christians. These three phases are indicated in the original language of the New Testament by three different tenses of the verb.

I believe it was Bishop Handley Moule who was travelling on one occasion, and a Salvation Army lassie entered the same compartment as he. When they had got settled and on the way - he was, I believe, actually a Dean at the time, but of course wearing his canonicals - she interrogated him: 'Sir, are you saved?' Whereupon the kindly old scholar looked at her and said, 'Do you mean...' - and then he quoted the three Greek words. He quoted the word meaning 'I was saved', and then the word meaning 'I am being saved', and then the third word which means 'I shall be saved'. Of course, she was completely bowled over! It was perhaps a bit hard on her, poor lass: of course she did not know what to say; but it led to a very profitable talk about the beginning, the growth and the end of the Christian life.

Well, there it is in the New Testament. We were saved, we are being saved, and we are going to be saved. We were accepted in Christ, we are growing in Christ, we are to be perfected in Christ. Christ, then, is spread over the whole life of the Christian, from its beginning, through its continuation, to its consummation. That is a statement which needs no labouring.

THE FULLNESS OF CHRIST

But what does that mean? What is the "fullness of Christ"? Well, what is the beginning - the simple, elementary nature of Christ, into which we come at the beginning? When we come into Christ, we say we have come into LIFE, we have found LIFE in Christ. The great secret of the first experience is that we have received "the gift of God", which is "eternal life". And, what is more, we know it. There is no doubt about it - we KNOW that life has been given to us.

Then at the beginning we speak of having received our sight, or of having come into the LIGHT. Although we may not be able to define or explain it, everything has become illumined to us, has become altogether new as another world. We know our eyes have been opened. We have come to see; light has broken upon us. We are able to say: "Whereas I was blind, now I see." 'I was in the dark - now it is all light.' Put it how you will, the beginning of the Christian life is just that.

Life, light - and then LIBERTY. One of the great things of the beginning of the Christian life is a wonderful sense of release, of emancipation, of having been set free. It would need a chapter all to itself, this liberty into which Christ brings us, this wonderful setting free. It is a very great reality.

Lastly, when we come into Christ, we come into LOVE, Divine love, and Divine love comes into our hearts.

These are four of the things into which, in an elementary form, we come, and which come into us, right at the beginning. Of course, there is much more that could be said, and there are many other things, but that is enough to provide for the answer to our enquiry. Let us run over them once again.

First of all, LIFE - a new life and a different life. I do not mean now the way we live - that follows, of course - but a new dynamic power in us, which is Divine life. It is a new life, another one altogether, and that life has in it another nature. It belongs to another realm, and has the nature of that other realm. It is the realm of God Himself. I do not mean, of course, that we are now at this point altogether other creatures; but this is the beginning. We are conscious that there is a new nature at work within us, working for certain things and against certain other things - which is something that was never true of us before.

Yes, we have a new and different life - an ENERGY. Life is an energy, is it not? See what life will do. Life really demands difficulty to prove its energy. I remember, some years ago, going down into Cornwall and staying on a farm. This farm had fields on a slope, and one of the fields was just strewn all over with large, white stones. It was the time of the year when seed was in, and nothing was appearing. I said to the farmer, 'Surely you will never get a crop of wheat in that field with all those stones!' 'Don't you make any mistake', he replied. 'I thought that when I first came to this farm, so I cleared them off, and got a very poor crop. So I put them back again, and I got a very much better crop with the stones - much stronger and healthier than I had before.' Life, you see, proves itself by difficulties and opposition. Here is a new life-force, an energy of a different kind, of another kingdom, that is given to us in our new birth. It is different.

LIGHT - a new intelligence, a new understanding, a new clearness about things. Everybody who has had a genuine Christian experience knows that. They see what they could never see before. Up till then, they may have been striving and struggling to see. But now they see, and it is another world that is open before them, just as a new world is given to any person who has been born blind and at some time receives their sight. They are given a world. They have heard about it, talked about it, had it explained to them, but they have never before been able to say, 'Now I see!'

LIBERTY - release - and with the release enlargement. What a large thing the Christian life is! There is something wrong with a Christian life that is small, mean, limited, petty and narrow. The Christian life is a large thing; it is a "land of far distances". With every enlargement, there comes a new inward sense of prospect. Things are ever and ever beyond. The further you go in the Christian life, the more conscious you are of how much more there is. You never exhaust this wonderful sense of prospect and future, of a vast, wide-open door.

LOVE - a new motive power in the life, in the heart. The hallmark of a true Christian life at its very beginning is love. It shows itself in an instantaneous desire to let someone else know all about it, to share the good things into which we have come. It is a great heart overflow to all the world. And it is in its character a selfless love. Self goes out. You do anything, you make any sacrifice, you never consider yourself; this "love of Christ constraineth", in a great care for the things of others, a deep, warm devotion to their interests. It is a new love. We cannot enlarge upon each of these - least of all, perhaps, upon this wonderful love of God which is shed abroad in our hearts - but you see that these four things alone are there, in an elementary form, right at the beginning.

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CHRIST FILLING ALL THINGS

What, then, is the fullness of Christ? It is simply the continuous enlargement and ultimate finality of these very things. The continuous growth of life - the freshness, the dynamic force of God within the life - this motive power - this Divine nature, which is in His life - should never, never come to a standstill. It is intended, according to the eternal purpose, to grow and grow and grow more and more. More life! Let us take this earnestly to heart. To receive eternal life may be a gift once and for all, but if you are at the beginning you have yet to discover how wonderfully full that life is, and how that life can become more and more abundant as you go on. The longer we as Christians live, the more should we be characterized by this mighty life of Christ - "the power of his resurrection", it is called. And the fullness of Christ is the progressive enlargement and development and sum of those very things which came to us, and into which we came, at the beginning; and if we attain unto fullness - which we shall never do here in this life; but we shall ultimately move right into the fullness - it will be the universality of all those things.

Now you can see how vast Christ is, and how vast the Christian life must be. The Scripture speaks of Christ 'filling all things' - "that he might fill all things" (Eph. 4:10). How is Christ going to 'fill all things'? It just means that, when that comes about, all things - and it is a vast, an infinite 'all' - will be full of His life, full of His light, full of His liberty, full of His love, and there will be nothing else. All that Christ is will be expressed in the whole creation. That is the purpose of the Christian life, and we have failed of the purpose if that is not true, in a progressive way, now. If it is not true that those things are increasing in us, we have missed the very object of the Christian life. Yes, if there is not more love, and still more love, and yet again more love and life, and light, and liberty - the very purpose of the Christian life has been missed.

ALL THINGS FILLED INTO CHRIST

Christ filling all things - and all things filled into Christ. Perhaps one of the best illustrations of this is provided by Solomon; indeed, he is in the Old Testament for that very purpose. Everybody knows about king Solomon and his great wisdom. 'The wisdom of Solomon' is the very synonym for wisdom. If anybody shows particular wisdom or acumen, we often dub them 'a little Solomon'.

I saw recently in the paper the following story. A class of boys was being told about the incident of the execution of John the Baptist. You remember that Salome danced before Herod, and he was so pleased that he said, 'What would you like? What is your request? I will give it to you, even to the half of my kingdom.' She went away, and consulted her evil mother, who hated John the Baptist because of what he had said about her evil ways; and the mother counselled the daughter to ask for the head of John the Baptist. When she did so, Herod was very, very distressed, and looked for a way out; but he found none, and because of the oath that he had made, he commanded that the head of John the Baptist should be brought. Here the teacher turned to the class, and said, 'Now, what would you have done if you had been Herod?' And one bright boy chirped up, 'I would have said to the woman, "That belongs to the half of the kingdom that I did not promise"!' And so in the paper the story was headed: 'A Young Solomon'.

That is just by the way. But Solomon is the synonym for vast wisdom. Also of vast wealth: we know of the riches of Solomon. Vast power: for his kingdom reached beyond all the kingdoms that had ever been in Israel. And vast glory: even the Lord Jesus referred to that - it was proverbial. He said: "Even Solomon in all his glory..." And we read that, when the queen of Sheba came to prove for herself all this, her verdict was: 'The half was never told me! I had heard fabulous stories, but the half was never told!' And Solomon's people were in it - they were in the good of that; and in certain senses it was in them too. Solomon would not have arrogated all this to himself, but it would be seen in the lives and homes of the people. They were in the greatness of Solomon, but the greatness of Solomon was in them also.

Now here, in the New Testament, Jesus says: "...a greater than Solomon is here" (Matt. 12:42). Christ infinitely transcends Solomon, and therefore the people of Christ are in the same measure greater than Solomon's people. His fullness is to be their inheritance: they are to be in it - it is to be in them. The purpose of God is that. What God has purposed is to have a people eventually in great prosperity, great wealth, great spiritual riches, great spiritual glory. We are called, says the Word of God, unto His eternal glory (1 Pet. 5:10). That, briefly and very simply, is the purpose.

THE PRINCIPLES GOVERNING THE CHRISTIAN LIFE

Now, there are principles governing the Christian life. It is exceedingly important that we should recognise this: for, apart from the principles, there can be no realising of the purpose. The principles are basic and governmental to the purpose. We shall never move on in the purpose, progressively, or attain to it finally, except by way of the Divine principles. So, if the purpose lays hold of our hearts, and we respond and say, 'Yes, it is a wonderful thing to be called according to that purpose, and I want to attain to that', then it is necessary to know some of the principles which govern it - principles which are indispensable to the development and realisation of the purpose.