Books by T. Austin-Sparks

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HIS CONTINUED LOVINGKINDNESS

What then? There follows the second half of the statement - "therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee" or "therefore have I continued lovingkindness unto thee." "I have borne with you all this time because I love you; anything could have happened to you, but I have not let it, I have shown you infinite longsuffering and patience, and earnest solicitude for your eternal well-being: because I love you, I have kept you alive, and have brought you to this time and to this place; I have not let you go." Oh, that this might come home to us! We may, all unconsciously be hearing this message now simply because of this infinite love of God which has been preserving us unto this hour to let us know it. You may think it is quite fortuitous that you are hearing it - just one of the chance happenings of life; but if you knew the truth it is this infinite love of God which has held you to this time in relation to the infinite purposes of that love to let you know it. There is nothing casual about it, there is sovereign love here. "Because I have so loved, because, self-sufficient as I am, I cannot do without you" - oh, mystery of Divine love! - "because I so much wanted you I created you, and now at this moment I am drawing you." We cannot take that in, but that is the teaching of the Word of God.

We started these messages by pointing out that behind the universe, behind the mind, the reason, the plan, the design, there is a heart. The universe exists as an answer to that heart. Today that heart in its love is bleeding. It has suffered a great deal of disappointment, deprivation; it has been robbed of its object - the wife has been unfaithful. But the Lord comes out in the presence of it all and says, "I loved you and I still love you; My love is an everlasting love: therefore I have kept, I have preserved, and I have brought you to this very hour and I am telling you now that this is the position; there is no breach of love on My part."

LOVE PERSISTING THOUGH SPURNED

But Israel went into a great deal of suffering and distress because they did not respond to that love of God thus expressed, and it looked very much as though the everlasting love was lasting no longer. But not so, it has never changed. You see, love has sometimes to change its form of expression, although in itself it does not change, and so we have another side to the revelation of God's ways with wayward and wilful man. Suffering, affliction and adversity to individuals and to nations and to the world is not because of a contradiction of the statement that God so loved the world. It is the only way in which that love stands any chance of getting a response of the kind God wants. God does not want that kind of love that is not love at all because it gets everything that it wants to satiate its own lusts. That is not love. This love of God must make us like itself, it must be after its own kind.

And so, strangely enough, many have come to find the love of God through the dark way of suffering - to discover that God was not their enemy but their friend, when they thought that He was pursuing with the object of destroying them. But I am not going to follow that out just now.

I want to be content now with making that great declaration with which we started, doing the little I can to try to bring it home to you - who it is that says it, what it is that He says, the people to whom He says it, with the assurance that, so far as He is concerned, He will never take another attitude but love, even if it is disappointed love and we ourselves should lose all that that love meant for us. To lose that and to know it would be our hell of hells. There could be no deeper hell than to discover all that was meant for you by infinite love, and to realize that by your own folly and your own stubbornness it has gone beyond your reach forever. What more of a hell can you imagine than that? I think that is the only kind of hell we need contemplate, whatever may be the full truth about it. For any one to wake up and have to say, "Oh, what might have been, if only, if only I had done so and so! If only I had taken the opportunity! It is too late now!" - that is agony of soul, that is misery, that is despair. You see, it is the effect of love, Divine love's immense purposes, and we discover that it is now all impossible because we have foolishly rejected, refused, repudiated, gone our own way, stubbornly said No! to the Divine love. That is the dark side of this, but I am not going on to the dark side now. Listen again, whoever you may be. If you know yourself only a little you must be amazed at this statement, but if it does not come to you as the most wonderful thing that ever was or could be, there is something grievously the matter with you; that such a One should say to such as WE, "I have loved THEE, with an everlasting love." May God Himself bring that home to us with something of its implication, something of its meaning and value, its glory, its wonder. If He should graciously do that, we shall be worshippers for the rest of our lives; there will be something about us that is in the nature of awe and wonder and we shall go softly. The realization of it will smite all our pride to the dust. There is no room for pride here. This will remove all those horrible things - pride, avarice, covetousness, self-interest, worldly ambition - and we shall be very humble, very grateful people, full of a great longing somehow to requite that love, somehow to win for that One His rights. This has been the motive and passion of many who have given themselves in the far places of the earth in a daily suffering for their Lord's sake. Love - a little return for this so great love wherewith He loved us.

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Chapter 6 - Love the Supreme Test of the Church

"His great love wherewith he loved us" (Eph. 2:4).

We come now to the close of the New Testament, the consummation in the book of the Revelation. A great deal of reading ought to take place at this point for which we have not the time. Will you open the Word at the beginning of the book of the Revelation and glance down through the first, second and third chapters as the first main part of this book, hurriedly recalling what is there, and helping as best you can as we go on by noting details also?

We have said that we are here in the consummation, and I think I shall have no difficulty in having your agreement that, when we come to the book of the Revelation, we do come to the consummation of all that is in the Word of God; that is, it is a gathering up of all at the end to a final settlement. That at least we can say about the book of the Revelation. Whatever may be our ideas of interpretation of the many things here, we are all agreed that here we are at the end and everything is being gathered up to a final settlement. At this point we must just ask a further question. Have we not much to go upon that we are now nearing that final settlement of all things, that we are in the days of the consummation of the ages? Is it necessary for me to gather up all the proofs and evidences and signs to prove that? But I think there again I have your agreement. We certainly are in the end times.

If that is true, then it is a matter of supreme importance that we should recognize what are the primary and ultimate factors with God; and if those factors are at all at issue in our considering them together at this time, then our meditation must take on a significance which is altogether beyond our own. It must be a very solemn and consequential time, and it must demand and receive from us a definite act of putting away every other kind of thought and consideration. There should be an open-hearted seeking of the Lord, with no prejudices, no suspicions, no curiosity, nor anything that is casual or indefinite. We must come, and, with all our hearts, take the attitude that if God is going to say to us that which with Him is of primary and ultimate consequence, we must note that and we must be in it.

I tarry to lay emphasis on one further matter. I am intensely concerned that we should not be just occupied with a lot of Bible matter. This is not just a theme that is being taken up, a subject, with all the subject matter about it being brought out. No, a thousand times no! If this is not God's message to us, well, we had better cut it short and go and do something else.

Well then, let us come to this book of the Revelation. We take chapters 1 to 3. I have many times made great efforts to resolve these three chapters into one clear meaning, but I have always finished with a sense of defeat. There has been something true and right, but in the thing that I was after I have had a sense of defeat and frustration; and when we come to certain details in these messages to the churches, such as Jezebel, Balaam, the Nicolaitans, somehow we seem to have got into a realm of the technical. The thing has not become a concrete, definite, positive message, it has escaped me. I knew what those things meant in principle, but what I so much wanted to do was to find one resolving thing which gathers them all up and makes of them as a whole a single message for the Lord's people. Until now, as I say, I have felt defeated every time, all through the long years. I am wondering if I have got it now; we shall see.

LOVE THE MASTER-KEY TO THE WHOLE BIBLE

It seems to me at length that the master-key to the whole Bible is in our hands when we come to this. The master-key to everything is love; and if you will look, I do not think there is any doubt but that you will come to see that all that is here is gathered into that one matter of Divine love. We are in the consummation of love in this book, and it begins and ends with the Church.

LOVE THE KEY TO THE VISION IN REVELATION 1

You take, then, the first chapter, and what is the key? The key to the first chapter and also to the whole book is to be found in the words, "Unto him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by his blood; and he made us a kingdom, priests unto his God and Father." You can see love in almost every word of that great sentence.

But alongside of, or following on, that statement, you have the presentation of the risen and glorified Lord, and He presented at once in that marvelous designation "Son of man," the title of kinship, the redeeming kinsman. "Unto him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins" - the title, you see, belongs to One who has come right into our estate, and eventually into our state. That is the theme of love. Oh, how great, how comprehensive, is that Son of man, flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, to redeem us unto His Father! He is described in that matchless presentation, verse by verse, step by step, and when you have read it all and noted everything that is said about Him, every detail of His person and of His adornment, you find it is the sum total of love.

He is "girt about at the breasts with a golden girdle." Every word speaks of Divine love, the breasts, the gold, the girdle. The girdle is the symbol of strength, of energy, of intention, of purpose. You mean business when you gird yourself. The robes are no longer flowing for leisure, loose for reclining. The girdle is golden, symbolic of the very nature of God who is love. Above the rest that girdle seems to me to include all the other features, give meaning to everything else.

I am not going to mention in detail all the features of this Son of man as given to us here. What I am trying to convey to you is that this inclusive presentation of the risen and glorified Christ is the comprehensive presentation of love. "But," you say, "is that true? - because some of the terms used are terrible, awful. John fell at His feet as one dead when he saw Him. Is that the effect of love? Would it not be truer to say that this is the Lord All-terrible, rather than the Lord All-loving?" But think again. It is love, but not our idea of love. We have to reconstitute our conception of Divine love. This One here is described as "the faithful and true." Have you never been in the hands of the Lord in discipline, in breaking, yes, in shattering, being poured out like water on the ground, and afterward have had to say, "Thou wast right, Lord; it was the only way. It was a terrible experience, but Thou wast faithful with me, faithful to all the highest and deepest principles of heaven. It was not in anger and judgment, but in faithfulness and mercy to my soul that Thou didst do it." We have to reconstitute our idea of love. Here John says, "When I saw him I fell at his feet as one dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying, Fear not." This is not judgment, this is not destruction, this is not death and condemnation. The right hand is the token of honour, of favour. "Fear not; I am the first and the last." "Everything is in My hands and in the end it will be all right; I took it up and I am going to finish it; fear not."

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I was saying that John fell at His feet as one dead. There was another man who, travelling on a road with the positive intention of blotting out from this earth, as far as it lay in his power, every remembrance of Jesus of Nazareth, was met by this same Lord of glory. All-terrible? Well, certainly Saul of Tarsus went down, he was broken, the encounter overpowered him and left its mark upon his very physical body to the end of his life. For three days he had no sight, and they had to help him into the city. But do you tell me that was God the All-terrible? Oh, listen to the conversation! "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" What is the tone of that? It is not, I am sure, the tone of anger. It is a pleading tone of entreaty, of sorrow, of solicitude. "Who art thou, Lord?'' "I am God the All-terrible, and now I have brought you to book"? No - "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest... What shall I do, Lord?... Rise, and enter into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do." The Lord went ahead of him, prepared the way for him (Acts 9:1-9; 22:4-11). Do you tell me that terrible revelation was not love? Well, ask Paul himself what he thought about it, and see in after years what he had to say about it. He did not say, "He met me, He smote me, He destroyed me, He brought me into such awful judgment that I lost all hope." He said, "He loved me and gave himself up for me" (Gal.2: 20). That meeting, terrible and devastating as it might be in one sense, was a meeting with the Lover of his soul.

I say again, we have to make over anew our conception of Divine love. It is not that sickly, sentimental thing we call love. It is something tremendous. We have so to reconstruct our conception of Divine love as to see that our highest interests for all eternity demand very faithful dealings with us by God, and the more we really know the heart of God, the more we come to be ready to say, "Thou art right, Lord; even in what I would call Thy hard handling of me, Thou art right." God in His love has the end in view, not just the pacifying of some fretful child with a sop. We are called unto His eternal glory and "our light affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. 4:17). But we do not always believe it while the affliction is on us. We do not even call it "light"; but He knows how transcendently and infinitely the glory outweighs the suffering. He has decided, with the greatness of the end in view, it is worth His while to be faithful with us and let nothing pass that would take from that glorious prize of His glory or work against it. He knows quite well that, when we are with Him afterward, were we to see something that was not taken up by Him and dealt with because of the suffering and the pain it would have caused us, and because we would have murmured and complained, that we would say to Him then, "Lord, why didst Thou not do that in spite of me?" And so, knowing the end and dealing with us in the light of it, the faithful and the true love is other than our poor sickly conception of love. Love in our thinking so often means just giving way all the time, just having everything we want or giving everything that others want. God deals with us, not as infants, but as sons (Heb. 12:7). The presentation, you see, is all a comprehensive and detailed consummation of love.

THE CHURCHES CHALLENGED AS TO LOVE

Now you pass to the next two chapters, and you have the churches; and the Lord is here dealing with the churches on the basis of the presentation. That can be seen by noting that every one of the seven messages to the churches takes up some feature of the presentation of Christ in the first chapter. You can look at that and note it. Actual phrases in the presentation of chapter one are used in relation to the churches respectively. So He is dealing with the churches on the basis of Himself as fully presented, and therefore if the presentation is the comprehensive embodiment of love, He is dealing with all the churches on that basis.

Now you note that the messages and the churches are bounded by Ephesus and Laodicea, and not as unrelated but as embracing and covering all the seven. In Ephesus and Laodicea the trouble is defective love. Ephesus, "thou didst leave thy first love"; Laodicea, "thou art neither hot nor cold." The whole question with these churches is love. Let us hurriedly look at them separately, as far as we can.

FIRST LOVE AS COVERING ALL

Here again is the wonderful thing, that in Ephesus, which marks the beginning of everything, all turns on love. "Thou didst leave thy first love." What is first love? Well, first love is all-inclusive in its nature. You will not be able subsequently to find any characteristic or feature of love without finding it in first love. First love covers all the ground of love. We could not tabulate the meaning of first love. It is everything, it is all that you can say about love; utterly selfless, self-forgetting, uncalculating. It is fierce, it is fiery, it is completely hot, strong and faithful. That is where the Lord begins. First love is the basis on which the Lord takes up the whole matter, comprehensive of all love's features. So in relation to the ultimate situation, we see here, through Ephesus, that what the Lord must have in His Church is inclusive love, love in all its features. He must come at the end back to the beginning, and bring His Church likewise back to that basis. Of course, there must have been a first love; you cannot depart from what never was. That will challenge us.

To Israel the Lord said, through a prophet, with a sigh of disappointment and grief, "I remember concerning thee the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals; how thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown" (Jer. 2:2). That is what love will do. Love will go after its lover in a wilderness where there is nothing to live on.

If necessary, it will die of starvation in order to be with its lover. "I remember concerning thee... the love of thine espousals." Inclusive love is the basis upon which the Lord begins, and in effect He is saying, "I can be satisfied with nothing less." Oh, there is love in Ephesus, there is no doubt about that. "I know thy works, and thy toil and patience" - and this, that and the other: it is not that they are without love, but that they are without their first love, that utter, inclusive, every-sided love; that is the trouble.

Let this come to our hearts. We all love the Lord; I trust we can say that truly. We love the Lord and we will do much for Him. But is our love of this kind? Is everything in our lives prompted by love, or is much of it lived under a sense of duty, of obligation or necessity, of having to do; or are there other motives, other interests and objects that keep us in the work of God as Christians? Is it the fear that we must not drop out in case of what happens to us? That is all on a lower level of life. Inclusive love is God's starting-point, and He says, "I can be satisfied with nothing less; even you who labour and are patient and have this, that and the other thing which are very commendable, I cannot let your lampstand remain with a loss of first love." Testimony is really gone when first love is gone, however much remains.

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THE NATURE OF FIRST LOVE

(a) SUFFERING LOVE

We look now at Smyrna, and see that a great suffering has come upon the church there, a period of intense suffering in which it will be necessary to be faithful unto death; and so the Lord, in the inclusiveness of first love, would say, and does say, as I see it here, that first love is suffering love. It is indicated by what you will go through for the Lord's sake and out of love for the Lord, what you will endure, what you will put up with. No, not just to what part of the world you will go to minister to the heathen and lay down your life for your Lord, but what you will put up with at home, what you will put up with in other Christians, what you will put up with of daily martyrdom in love for your Lord without a revengeful spirit, without wanting to see those who cause your suffering and affliction made to suffer themselves for it. Suffering love, that is first love. Are you having to suffer, and suffer wrongfully? Peter says, "If, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is acceptable ("grace" - R.V. margin) with God" (1 Peter 2:20). As we have said, grace is only another name for love. Suffering love - that is first love.

I could illustrate that. You have no need that it should be done, but you know quite well that in a first wholehearted devotion to any object you are prepared to go through anything for that object. It does not matter what people say, the love is stronger than all hindrances.

(b) DISCERNING LOVE

Next we come to Pergamum. Here we have an awful state of mixture, contamination, compromise, entanglement with evil things. If we seek for the cause, we find that the church in Pergamum has not discriminated between the things that differ, between what is of the Lord and what is not. It has compromised by reason of defective spiritual sight, and so the issue here, the matter of first love, is that first love is a discerning love. There is much about that in the Bible. Paul is rich on the matter of discerning love. "...having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints" (Eph. 1:18). "The eyes of your heart enlightened" discerning love. Love is as far removed from blindness as heaven from earth. "Love is blind"? No - not true love. The fact is that true love sees everything, but transcends everything. The love of Christ for His disciples was not blind love that did not know His men, love that was duped, deceived, misled, but eventually found out that they were not the men He thought they were. No, "he... knew what was in man" (John 2:24). His love saw everything, could tell them beforehand exactly what they would do; but love persisted in face of it all. Love is a great seeing thing. If you are consumed with a burning love for the Lord, you will be very quick of scent as to what is doubtful and questionable. You will not need to be frequently and continuously told when a thing is not right. No, love for the Lord will bring you quickly to see and to sense there is something that needs to be adjusted. You may not know what it is at the time, but you have a sense that all is not well. Love will do it. All the instruction in the world will not bring you to it. You may have the Word of God brought to you on all such points, and you might even say, "All right, because you say so, because it is in the Bible, I will do it, I will be obedient." Do you think that is good enough? Such a thing has never come to you through the eyes of your heart. But mark you, if this love, this discerning love, has really filled your heart by all the intelligence of the Holy Spirit indwelling you, you will sense it without being told; or if it should be brought to you from the Word, that within you will say, "Yes, I know that is right, the Lord tells me that is right." Do you not think that is the kind of Christian that is needed, and what the Lord needs at the end? That is what He has had in mind from the beginning and He calls that first love that is quick of scent to see what needs to be cut off or added, what adjustments are necessary, and does accordingly. You do not have to follow round and say, "Please do this; have you never taken note that you might be helpful in this way?" You do not have to do that where there is devotion, love watchful all the time, aliveness, alertness, perception, readiness to do without being all the time told to do it. Real devotion to the Lord is something that far outreaches legality. First love is discerning love.

I would like to spend all my time on this matter of discerning love, because there is so much about it. We do not grow by teaching and information, by being filled up with the Bible and its doctrines and its truths, however wonderful and true and great they are. We only grow by love, and we grow by love in terms of spiritual discernment. "Love buildeth up" (1 Cor. 8:1); but love buildeth up because love gives us spiritual insight, and the simplest child of God, who has never been brought up in profound things, in the midst of a great wealth of teaching, but who loves the Lord, will make far greater strides in spiritual growth than those who have it all mentally and intellectually and not through the eyes of the heart. It is true. If there is an adequate love there will be no compromise with error, with wrong, no permitting of questionable things, no long-drawn-out shedding of things which, while they may not be altogether wrong, would be better not there. The Holy Spirit can come along that way. Have we not seen it? Have we not seen people making all kinds of changes in their habits, in their manner, in their very adornments and fashions, as they have grown spiritually, and because of an intense love for the Lord, without anyone having said anything at all? Probably had someone pointed out various things - I had better not mention them - they might have said, "All right, he says we must not do this." Is that good enough? Oh no! But without ever mentioning these things, we have seen people gripped by the love of God, some right at the beginning of their Christian life, steadily through following months changing themselves outwardly, becoming different people. Love is the key. You can see, then, why the Lord spoke to the church at Pergamum in the terms in which He did. What was needed there, and therefore what is needed in the consummation, is first love as marked by discernment.

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(c) UNCOMPROMISING LOVE

In Thyatira again we come to a bad state, as well as a sad one, a state of spiritual tragedy. Look at the language, the names, the history behind certain names there, and it is the history of the seduction of Israel. They have been seduced, and corrupted through seduction. That is summing it up. What, then, is the requirement, in what way will love express itself? If a state of compromise in Pergamum requires discerning love, in Thyatira seduction and corruption demand an uncompromising love, repudiating Balaam and all the rest of his kind. No compromise, no seduction unto confusion, no mixing things up, no trying to bring together contrary things, no wearing of linen and wool, no ploughing with ox and ass - the symbols, you know, of two realms, of two natures - none of this trying to bring together the life of the flesh and of the Spirit; it cannot be done. No compromise can really be established between the flesh and the Spirit, between the world and Christ. No; here first love to be recovered will mean no compromise, no mixture, no confusing of issues.

(d) DISTINGUISHING LOVE

Sardis - what is the upshot of things in Sardis? "Thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead." You look at the message to the church at Sardis and try to put it all into one word. What is the word that sums it up? Well, you have to say it is indefiniteness. So we can say again, in the light of the whole standard, that first love, ultimate love, the love of Christ, the love which He is seeking, is a distinguishing love that marks you out as clearly defined for the Lord and all that is of the Lord. Distinguished, different, outstanding, defined, unmistakable by the love that characterizes and governs. The thing that distinguishes from all else is this great love, and this great love brings about a distinctiveness of life. You cannot be indefinite if you are mastered by this kind of love. First love does not care one little bit what people think or say. Oh, everybody is saying this and that about the lover in the grip of first love. They may be using all sorts of language - He is a fool, he is mad! - it does not matter. This love is making them clear-cut - one object, one design, one thought, one intent. They are people marked by one thing and not two. There is no doubt about it. We have our humorous ways of speaking of people who are in that state. He is in love, you cannot get away from it, everything goes by the board! There is one thing and one thing only in that life. That is, of course, how it ought to be. You young people, never have any relationships in the beginning that are not like that. First love is like that, and the Lord says, "I want you where you were at the beginning." Or shall we say, "I want you where I have ever been. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end; I am like that from first to last. I want you back there in a distinguishing love."

(e) STEADFAST LOVE

Philadelphia is very quickly summed up. While the name itself means "brotherly love," there is one word that sums up this message, and that is patience. "The word of my patience." First love is patient love, or, to use the other word that is always in the margin of the New Testament when you come on patience, steadfast love. That is first love, that is the love of Christ. "He loved them unto the end" (unto the uttermost): "I have loved thee with an everlasting love"; and oh, what a triumph that kind of love was and is! It needs steadfastness to go on with all that love has to encounter and suffer and endure. It is the quality of the love of God, steadfast love.

(f) FERVENT LOVE

Finally, we have Laodicea. What is the word which sums up Laodicea? It is mediocrity, neither one thing nor the other, nothing outstanding, nothing positive. You cannot say they are not Christians, but yet again you cannot say very much that is good about them as Christians. They are very ordinary. There is no such thing as an ordinary first love. In first love you are a most extraordinary person. What then is first love? It is, as over against Laodicea, fervent love, which means red-hot love, white-hot love, fervent love.

This is the sum of first love - suffering love, discerning, uncompromising, distinguishing, steadfast, fervent. Have we the key to the messages, have we the key to the end time? There may be another, but I have not found it yet. This is the last one I have found. I think we are right this time, and it amounts to this, that the Lord is going to speak to the Church, to His people, to us at the end, and that the thing He will speak about is the matter of love. He will place more emphasis upon that than upon anything else. All other aspects of truth are important, and they will be the directions in which love will work itself out; but the foundation, the spring of all, that which is to impregnate all - whether it be the service of the Lord, the very truth of the Church's eternal calling and vocation, the greatness of the work of the Cross, whatever it may be as a matter of aspects of the one whole truth - beneath and through all must be this Divine love. Have the things in themselves - the truths, if you like to call them that - have them all without love, and they are nothing. May the Lord write this in our hearts.

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Chapter 7 - The Issues of Love

In our previous meditation, we arrived at the consummation in the book of the Revelation, and we were taking note of the wonderful truth that is in the first three chapters of the book of the Revelation, the whole question is the question of love, love relating to many things, but all a matter of love.

We now go on to the issues of that love. Here we do really come up against the vital point that, while the Lord is seeking in His people that love - love like His own - there are tremendous things hanging upon it. It is not just an optional matter: everything hangs upon it. That is what arises here when the Lord says, "To him that overcometh." You know that is said to each of the seven churches. Even where the Lord has not to point out any serious delinquency, He still says, "I see big issues bound up with this love, and everything hangs upon it." So we will spend this little time in looking at these great issues found in that final word to each, to all, to us - "He that overcometh"; or "to him that overcometh."

LIFE IN FULLNESS

Ephesus; and again we remind ourselves that the challenge there relates to the all-inclusiveness of love, the first love, and so, when we touch the matter of love in its fullness, we expect to find an all-inclusive issue. That is to say, we expect to find that the thing which is bound up with an all-inclusive love is an all-inclusive outcome, and we are not wrong in that expectation. Here it is - "To him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God." Here, with love after this kind - the love of God, the love of Christ, the love of the Spirit - is bound up the whole question of life in its fullness: and what an issue that is! There is a reference to the tree of life in the Paradise of God. It is a backward look as well as a forward one. It takes us to the beginning and then to the end. We shall find that tree of life right at the end of the book of the Revelation as the ultimate thing. It was the first, it is the last; therefore it is all-comprehending, this matter of love.

But you have to look back to the beginning to see what a tremendous issue it was and is. God, having first created the heavens and the earth, and all things, then created man and set him in that garden, and in the midst of the garden placed the tree of life; and everything of the creation and everything of man and everything of the Divine heart-purpose was centered in that tree. It was the tree of life. That is more than the animal life, more than the human life, more than the natural life. That kind of life, the animal, the human, the natural, was all there, but there was a life that was not there except as represented by the tree. As constituting a test, symbolically it was there, but its real significance was spiritual and unseen. And when man failed in this matter of reciprocating the love of God, and doubted and questioned and disbelieved and disobeyed - all of which is the contrary of love - God made it impossible for that man as he was, in that state, to have that other life; and therefore the creation faded like a fading flower, was disrupted, and man came under the terrible shadow of judgment and death. Says Paul, "Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men" (Rom. 5:12). For the very creation, for man himself, that life was essential for God's purpose. Man never received it, and he lost it on the ground of lost love, failure in love.

Now look at the Lord Jesus. He came in the fullness of times. God sent His own Son, the Son of His love, and when the Son stepped out from His hidden years into the open, to assume definitely His great life work, the heavens were opened and God said, "This is my beloved Son" (Matt. 3:17). And John said of Him, "In him was life" (John 1:4). Here He is, the embodiment of a new creation, in whom is that life which Adam missed. It is here in Him. "In him was life," that other life, that different life, that Divine life. It is in Him, and God says of Him, as embodying a new creation, "in whom I am well pleased."

He is the Son of God's love, He possesses the life which no man had ever before possessed, He is the answer to all God's heart, God finds His perfect pleasure and satisfaction in Him. But look at Him. What do you see? Well, in this world amongst men, He appeared outwardly no different from any other man. There were repeatedly hints of something unusual about Him, which at times were dimly discerned by others, but these related to His nature and character and not to His outward appearance. Apart from this, men saw nothing different; even those closest to Him saw nothing. But there came a day of which it is written, "And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart. and he was transfigured before them and his face did shine as the sun, and his garments became white as the light"; and all this was accompanied by the same voice from heaven, saying, "This is my beloved Son" (Matt. 17:1-8). Not a different Christ, not a different Son, not another, it is the same One. The life had been hidden, and now it blazed out. The life had been a secret thing, and now it was divulged. The life that was in Him was now seen to be what it was. What a transfiguring life! His whole body transfigured, aglow, agleam with Divine glory. Everything about Him was glory, the glory of heaven, the glory of God, and it was just the nature of the life that was in Him being given an opportunity to express itself. And that is a parable and a prophecy; for does not Paul tell us that the day is coming when this body of our humiliation shall be fashioned anew that it may be conformed to the body of His glory (Phil. 3:21), when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, this mortal put on immortality, and death shall be swallowed up in victory? (1 Cor. 15:50-55). The life which we have received in Jesus Christ is that kind of life. That is the extra life that Adam never possessed, and you see it is all on the basis of love, Christ's love for the Father. His was a love which was unto death, that would battle through the hordes of evil forces: that, in obedience to the Father's will and for our salvation would cause Him to give Himself into the hands of the evil forces and say, "I am at your mercy, do your fell work; this is your hour and the power of darkness" (Luke 22:53). All this He was ready to do in obedience to the Father's will.

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The Cross was right in view, and when on that mount Moses and Elijah appeared, they spake with Him of the exodus that He was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. They were speaking with Him about His Cross. He was already under the shadow of the Cross, had already accepted it in principle, already yielded by every test to the will of the Father. Love was triumphant already in Him. He was going all the way, and the Divine love and the glory broke out. This is the inclusive note from Genesis to Revelation. Love is always linked with life and life with love - that kind of life.

Is this to you merely a beautiful theme, a lovely song? Does it matter to you whether you have a body of glory? Or is it just a negative matter with you, that you will be glad when you have done with this one, and that is all there is to it? Have you no concern for the glory that is to be? Are you not interested in that great and marvellous statement that we have been called unto His eternal glory (1 Pet. 5:10), to be glorified together with Christ when everything of death shall be fully and finally quenched and destroyed, and life - that Divine, uncreated life, that unique life of Christ - shall show what it is, manifest its nature, its qualities? The very glory of God is in His life. It is a big issue, the issue of life.

We know something of glory of this life even now; it is not reserved only for the end . It is not so much in our bodies, perhaps - although sometimes the Lord touches even them with a touch of the powers of the world to come and revitalizes them with His own life - but we do know the whole question of life and death in our spirits, our souls, and what a difference there is between life and death! To sense death, to know something of death inside us, in our spirits, in our souls, to be touched by, or to be in an atmosphere of spiritual death, is an awful thing. But what a glorious thing it is to be in an atmosphere of Divine life! It is glory in our spirits now. For those who have to live in a world in which there is nothing of the Lord at all, it is all spiritual death, whether it be secular or religious, and it is a horrible thing. But it is a grand thing when you can escape that and find yourself in the presence of the Lord amongst His people and taste something of life. That is glory of a spiritual kind inside. But think - that is going to be manifested in its fullness for our whole being, including our bodies! It is the prospect, the calling, of the people of God, and it is all a matter of life.

But that life is based wholly and solely upon this matter of love. If you touch anything that is other than love - if you touch hate, animosity, suspicion, prejudice, criticism, jealousy, envy or any other thing that is contrary to love - you touch death. It is horrible. When you meet somebody who is eyeing you, not sure of you, suspicious of you, oh, how helpless, how hopeless, the situation is; you cannot get on, you are glad when you have passed, but you are sad. You have met with a touch of death. You touch love in another child of God coming out to you, and oh, what a prospect fills the air, what possibilities arise! There is a way through, everything possible where there is love. That is the issue which bounds all, and that is why you begin with the tree of life.

You end with the tree of life, but it is in the garden, the garden of Divine love. That tree can only thrive in the soil of love. These are very practical matters with a challenge. Do not forget that while you need people to love you and show you love, so that your spiritual life may grow and you may be released from smallness and pettiness and limitation and be enlarged, other people need your love to the same end; and you are not going to enlarge other peoples' spiritual life by criticizing them, by eyeing them. You are going to help their spiritual enlargement by loving them with the love of God.

This is inclusive; it includes everything else. We are not surprised, therefore, that when at Ephesus the matter of first love is raised, which is love inclusive of all the features of love, the all-inclusive question and issue arises, namely, that of life.

NO SECOND DEATH

You are able then to pass on to break it up with what is said of the church in Smyrna. The issue of love triumphant in Smyrna was to be that the overcomer should have part in the first resurrection. "He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death." What is the second death? Briefly, it is that death where there is no recovery. It is the door finally closed, where there is then a distinct and abiding separation between God and man. All goes out in the second death: it is the end. There is no hope beyond that door, no possibility of life. But here in Smyrna, of him who is triumphant in love it is said, "He... shall not be hurt of the second death." Fullness of death shall be broken and defeated and deprived of its prey. Love means that you will never be allowed to be touched by that ultimate despair of separation from God. That is no small thing. If the end on that dark side is to be without hope, where God is lost and the soul has gone out into the everlasting desolation, never able to find God, it is a big matter that we should never be touched of that. And love triumphant, this kind of love in Smyrna which is suffering love ("Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life") means that, although it may cost you your earthly life, you shall never be touched of the second death. You may know the first death, in this sense, that you may go into the grave, and that maybe at the hands of murderers; you may have a martyr's grave, you may die because of the opposition and suffering that is heaped upon you; but that is only a first kind of death. There is a much deeper and more terrible death than that, and if you are faithful unto that first death, you shall not be touched of the second. You will find you will be amongst those who have completely conquered death. Now, whatever it means to you to have to exercise the love which suffers long, remember there is a big issue bound up with suffering love. You who are putting up with things for Christ's sake, who are enduring, who are suffering in any way in love for the Lord, by that suffering love you are in the way of cheating death in the end. You are undermining the power of death, you are destroying the very touch of death. Perhaps that wants explaining, but there is the fact stated, that by suffering we conquer death.

A DEEP, SECRET LIFE WITH THE LORD

We come now to the issue of love triumphant in Pergamum. It is remarkable that to this church that had come into a state of compromise from their failure to detect the inroads of evil, because of the low condition of that love for God which should normally be alert and sensitive to things injurious to God, it is remarkable that to them this word is addressed, "To him that overcometh, to him will I give of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and upon the stone a new name written which no one knoweth but he that receiveth it." But I can tell you in a word what it amounts to - that there is some inner fellowship with God to be known which is not the common lot of people; some inner knowledge of God which is a secret thing to be possessed, which means a very great deal. It is something to have a personal, inner, secret knowledge of the Lord, a knowledge which other people, not having, do not understand at all; you know the Lord in your own heart and you are enjoying something of the Lord in yourself; but you have to have it to yourself, it is your own secret. Is there not something in that for believers now? "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him" (Ps. 25:14). There is a mysterious something in the inner life of some children of God and in their walk with the Lord; they have a secret. They can never make other people understand it, it is a mystery to others, but there it is. It is their blessed possession, and oh, what it means to them! And that is what is here. Hidden manna, a white stone, a new name written thereon, His own name; "I will set him on high, because he hath known my name" (Ps. 91:14); and that distinguishes people who know the Lord in some more inward and some deeper way than the majority. It is not the ordinary kind of knowledge to the Lord that is here.

And that is said to the people whose great need was discerning love, and the message, therefore, is that if you have this love, you have a secret with the Lord. If this love is in us, this first love, this complete love, this true love for God, we have a secret life with God, God means something to us in secret that He does not mean to everybody. And we are elected to that: not that we are favourites, but through suffering love we come to discerning love. That is the sequence - suffering love, then discerning love. Those who have the deepest and most inward knowledge of the Lord are those who have suffered most for and with the Lord. They have knowledge others do not possess. So you move from Smyrna to Pergamum; from suffering love to discerning love - through suffering to the hidden manna, the mystery of a love-relationship with the Lord in a knowledge which is not common knowledge.

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A POSITION OF POWER AND AUTHORITY

Thyatira - seduced and corrupted, calling for uncompromising love. What is the issue of that uncompromising love? "He that overcometh, and he that keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give authority over the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron." Here we are touching a tremendous principle. Do not materialize that for the moment and picture yourself somewhere as a reigning monarch over the nations of this earth, and that sort of thing. That is not what I am getting at. It is the principle that matters. Here you see, when love triumphs over that state of compromise and mixture and confusion and entangling of contrary things, and comes right out into an uncompromising place of victory, you are in a position of tremendous ascendency, of power to govern. Test it the other way. You find a compromised life, a mixed-up life, a life with contraries all entangled; some of the world, some true Christianity; some flesh, some Spirit, things which ought never to be brought together. Will you tell me that such a life has any power in it, any authority, any power of ruling and reigning? Not at all! Was it not just in that connection that the devil through Balaam seduced the corrupted Israel, to bring Israel down from their high place as the ruling nation among the nations, to rob them of their spiritual government, to make them broken among the nations, when God had said, "The Lord will make thee the head, and not the tail" (Deut. 28:13)? That is the principle here. Love, uncompromising love, brings into a position of power, of authority. You will never pray through so that God comes in and does things if your life is compromised, if there is any kind of double life going on. You may pray until you cannot pray any more, and the Lord will not come in, you will not govern in prayer if the life is mixed up. Love, which brings us out into an absolutely clear, pure, transparent place before God, means we are put into a position of great spiritual power. What that may be afterward we are not going to stop to say. I merely indicate it. The Church is going to rule in the heavenlies in the ages to come, and in the letter to the Ephesians, where the revelation of the Church and of its eternal calling and vocation is presented to us most fully, love is the triumphant note - "...to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God" (Eph. 3:18-19). That is set there in relation to the Church. The Church is to come to that place. There are big issues bound up with this matter of love, both that of spiritual power and ascendency now, and afterward throughout the ages to come that of governing in the heavenlies, when the Church will take the place occupied now by the evil principalities and powers, the world rulers of this darkness. That is no small vocation. It depends on first love. Such is the lesson of Ephesus and of Thyatira. Right at the heart is love, first love, full love, and the outcome of that is authority over the nations.

OUR NAME CONFESSED IN HEAVEN

Then comes Sardis; and, because of its indefiniteness, the call for distinguishing love, the love that marks you out; not only that you are marked out by love, but love marks you out. Do you think that is a distinction without a difference? Not so. When you come here to this distinguishing love, what is the word to that church? "He that overcometh shall thus be arrayed in white garments; and I will in no wise blot his name out of the book of life, and I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels." Is this not distinguishing love, love leading to distinction? - white garments, and his name confessed before the Father and the holy angels. Maybe I can help you by a very ordinary illustration. I have a brother who is an engineer, and I went to see him the other day and found him in his office behind his engineering works where some sixty men, all experts, were busy mostly on government work. I talked with him for some time, and, being an opportunist, and remembering that there was something I needed done to my car, I said, "I have a little trouble with my car; I wonder if you can do something about it?" He came downstairs to look at the car, and then said to one man, "Put that on the lift." He then sent for his chief expert on that side of things, and when he arrived said to him, "This is my brother; if ever he brings his car in here, see to it, please, and see that the job is done properly." "This is my brother" - and the whole sixty men and all the works were at my command! Everything there could be centered in my interest at that moment. "I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels." "I will say, 'This is My brother'" - and all heaven will be interested. Love, honour in heaven; our names confessed and honoured in heaven, when love distinguishes us. Oh, we try to curry favour and get service and help and status by being important before men, by putting on airs, by making demands, by being something big. That is the way in which men try to get recognition. But here it says that love is the distinguishing thing in heaven. It is love that makes you a distinguished person there. It is love that will bring you before the Father and the holy angels as one to be taken account of; and that is an issue for now, not only for hereafter. Oh, if only we have this love, the Father will take account of us. "This is my beloved." The holy angels will take account and put themselves at our service as beloved of the Father. It will be because we are not only located in the Son of His love, but in heart-fellowship with what that love means, that we are marked out by heaven.

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SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE

Philadelphia marks the call for steadfast love, and so you expect in the issue of steadfast love to find something that would correspond. To Philadelphia the word is - "He that overcometh, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go out thence no more: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God, and mine own new name." "A pillar in the temple of my God." Again, do not materialize, for later we read, "And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb are the temple thereof" (Rev. 21:22). A pillar in the place where God dwells, a pillar in the house of God, the place of God's abode. A pillar, a strong thing, carrying responsibility in the very house of God. Steadfast love has that issue. "And I will write upon him... the name of the city of my God." He shall have the franchise of the heavenly Jerusalem. He is a man of substance, a person that counts, he is carrying weight, he is a freeman of the new Jerusalem. "And mine own new name"; which means "I commit myself to that man." Are these things too big to grasp? They are not exaggerations, but that is what is implicit in this statement, and all who are of the character of Philadelphia, marked by steadfast love, become a strength in the place of God's dwelling and in His interest. They are people that count. Job said of his days before his affliction that when he went out everybody took account of him and bowed down to him and honoured him. To be not self-important, but from heaven's standpoint, with that kind of importance that is humble, meek, altogether without arrogance or pride, to be of great importance to God, in the presence of God, important in the Church which is the new Jerusalem - love is the thing that must characterize us. Do you desire in a right way to carry weight, to signify something, to be really a strength in the things of God, to stand before the Lord as one who counts for something? Do you want that? Do you know the way there? I wonder what you think it is. Do you say, "Oh well, if I study, if I get a lot of teaching and Bible knowledge, and am always busy in the Lord's work, I shall become something"? No, not at all! In the dealings of God with you, you will find you will be emptied and brought down to nothingness in yourself, until you reach the place of pure, selfless love for the Lord for His own sake. Oh, there is a difference even in loving the Lord - whether it be for what He can do for us or for His own sake. You do not want to be loved because of what you are able to do. You want to be loved for your own sake. When it is like that, and we get away from all our ambitions, all our craving for recognition and reputation, and we love the Lord for His own sake, we have attained a place of tremendous importance - pillars of strength in the things of God, in the temple of God, in the presence of God. Love is the key to all spiritual significance.

SHARING HIS THRONE

And finally, Laodicea; poor Laodicea, with its mediocre kind of testimony, neither hot nor cold, and the demand, therefore, for fervent love with no mistake about it, burning love, love at white-heat. What is the issue hanging upon love like that? "To him that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father in his throne." You have reached the highest place now - throne-union with the reigning Lord. All that that may mean we can never describe. Were we to start, we should never be able to tell it; but it must mean something that the Lord should say to people on this earth - "On certain grounds you shall sit with Me in My throne, you shall have the place that I have, you shall share with Me the position to which I have come." It must mean something tremendous. And He says that is related to victory over mediocrity in the matter of love. When you have this kind of love, fervent, full, strong love, you will come to the place of uppermost ascendency, the place in the throne.

You may not remember all I have said, the detail may go from you; but remember that in the Revelation the last times and the last things are in view. If you forget all the details, remember this one thing, that the ultimate, the supreme issue of our life and union with God is bound up with this question of love. How great, then, in importance is this question of love. How great, then, in importance is this question of His love being shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. What a wonderful thing is His great love wherewith He loved us, when it is found in us. It is both toward us and should be in us. The Lord make it so!

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Chapter 8 - "Lovest Thou Me?"

Reading: John 21:15-23

We are now nearing the end of our contemplation of "His great love," and we shall conclude with a word on the way of love. It is still through the Apostle John that the message is coming to us. His writings are the last of the New Testament, and the final and predominant feature is love.

The twenty-first chapter of his Gospel is a kind of appendix; almost like an afterthought. He seems to have concluded at the point marked verse thirty-one of chapter twenty, and then, as though on reflection, he seems to have said to himself, "I cannot leave it there; there is something yet to be added. I must resolve it all into a personal application, a matter of personal love for the Lord proved by PRACTICAL devotion." So we have - in the first place -

"Lovest thou me more than these?" The challenge is made very personal and direct: not to ANY Simon, but to "Simon, son of John." He is penned down and is not allowed to be mixed up in a crowd of Simons. Then, it was THIS Simon who had protested that, whatever might be the failures of others, his love would be stronger and more reliable than theirs. "Lovest thou me MORE THAN THESE?" Doubtless many who read this, were they asked by the Lord if they loved Him, would be quite emphatic in their answer of "Yes!" But the Lord was evidently seeking an answer that was more than Simon was giving.

That is why He was so insistent. "Simon, you have protested that you do love Me; you have even gone as far as to say that you would out-love other people; but, Simon, Simon, really look into your own heart - do you? Why, under trial, when I was withdrawn from you and you were left alone, and everything seemed to have gone wrong and to have broken down and all your personal expectations and ambitions and visions had proved worthless, why did you say, 'I go a fishing'? as though you said, 'I am going to find some alternative to this kind of life, it is not satisfactory, it is so uncertain and there are so many difficulties, I cannot see the way, therefore I am going to make a way myself.'"

There was another of this group who took the course of despair, passive despair - I refer to Thomas. But Peter put his dilemma into a positive form and said, "I go a fishing." We may adopt different courses in our perplexity, in adversity, under trial. When the Lord hides Himself and we cannot see Him, or hear Him, and we do not feel that He is with us, He seems to be so far away and to have gone right out of our world, all we were expecting seems to have come to an end, and we do not know where we are, then we are prone to go some way that we choose for ourselves, and begin to take alternatives to steadfast love. It is a real challenge, it is a positive challenge, because these are experiences, these are tests, that the Lord allows. It is not a wrong thing to say that there are times when the Lord hides Himself, when the Lord lets us feel that we are left alone, when the Lord seems to close the heavens to us so that there is no to-and-fro communication, and when everything that we had looked for, expected and preached, seems to have come to an end and to have broken down, we are just left in what seems like ruins of everything; the Lord just does do that, and peculiarly does He do that sort of thing when He has people in view who are going to count. Take that, brothers, sisters! People who are going to count for Him go through deep experiences like that, and the object is to get them on to a basis which will make it possible for Him to use them. We will never be used unless we can stand on our feet in the storm. We are useless to the Lord if we go to pieces when everything around us, and in our spiritual life, seems to have come to a deadlock. If then we give it up, we are of no use to the Lord. The whole question of future usefulness to the Lord is based upon a love for the Lord which does not give up and say, "I go a fishing," "I take an alternative to following the Lord, I take an alternative to going on with the Lord because of the situation."

That is why the Lord came back, once, twice - "Follow me," "follow thou me." "You went back under trial, under testing - follow thou Me." And you have got to follow and go on following when you cannot see Him, when you do not know where He is, you have got to go on. These are the kind of people, and these alone, who will be used as Peter was. The basis of everything was that kind of personal love to the Lord Himself, not for what He was doing for Peter at the time, but for Himself. Oh, that is difficult - God only knows how difficult it is - to love Him for Himself when He does not seem to be doing anything for us at all. That is the challenge of love.

Really now, have we got very near to this? Love is something more than being a nominal Christian, bearing the name of Christian and going to meetings and taking up Christian work and all that. Love for the Lord is something very much more than that. The Lord says, "Lovest thou me?" I am not stopping with the different words that were used for "love". The Lord used one word, Peter used another. We will leave that aside. The challenge is this - "Lovest thou me?" What is the calibre, the quality, the content, of your love? "Lovest thou me?"

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THE PROOF OF LOVE

Peter answered, "Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee." The Lord came back upon that declaration, imperfect as it was, for He Himself had used another word, the Lord came back and said, "All right, prove it." There was the challenge of love, and then the proof of love. "Feed my lambs." "Tend my sheep." And where is the emphasis in that? The emphasis is upon "my" - MY lambs, MY sheep. Love is not for the ministry, love is not for the work in itself. Oh, we can love to preach, we can love to work, to be in the work. We can love the whole system of Christian organization, activity, and all that, and find a great deal of satisfaction in it and place for ourselves, but it is not that at all. It is not love for the ministry, not even for tending and feeding. There is an awful snare in that. The love lies in this, "Because they are Mine, just because they are Mine, and yours is a love for Me, anything that is Mine becomes the object of your love and your devotion and your activity." This is really a sifting out. You perhaps like to be in Christian work, you like to teach, to preach, to do things and you would say that it is for the Lord. But let us ask our own hearts, if it is because we really love that which is dear to the Lord, is that really the motive? Just because it is the Lord's, will we pour ourselves out, break our hearts over it, will we really shed tears because of genuine love for our Lord and what matters to Him? Is it like that? Why are you doing what you are doing, whatever it is, in relation to the Lord's things? Sheep and lambs can be very trying and cause us almost to despair, but love for the Lord and because they are His will keep us from giving them up.

Oh, I could break that up to apply it. I do not know what you are doing, but you may be doing various things. Where it is within the company of the Lord's people, you may be looking after the door and bringing the people in. You may be playing the instrument, you may be doing anything that people do in Christian work. Why are you doing it? Is it really out of a heart-love for the Lord, for the Lord HIMSELF, because this is the Lord's, or can it be put down to anything less than that - you have been persuaded or appointed to do it. Really are you doing it from the heart as unto the Lord? This is for the Lord consciously and deliberately, He puts everything on that basis. The proof of love is our concern for what is His. It is just His, and that is all there is to it. It is something that counts for Him, that matters to Him, and I need no other persuasion, no other coercion, no other urge or invitation. It is because it is the Lord's, and that is enough.

THE MASTERY OF LOVE

And then the mastery of love. "When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither THOU wouldest not." When thou was young - in other words - you did as you liked; when you get old, you are going to do what you would not have done then. And love is going to make you do a lot of things you would not have done before. It is something more than "like"; it is love. You are going to be mastered by another master than yourself and your own likes and preferences. You are going to do quite a lot out of love, because you are love-mastered, that you would never do otherwise. When love is the master, you are going ways you would never go otherwise.

Is not this something that discriminates between spiritual infancy and spiritual maturity? In effect, the Lord is saying here, "In spiritual infancy and immaturity, people always do as they like, as they want to do, as they choose. But when you get to spiritual maturity it is no longer what you want or the way you would go, it is the way the other Master says, the Master who is love." The day comes when you say:

"My Master, lead me to Thy door;
Pierce this now willing ear once more:"
"At length my will is all Thine own,
Glad vassal of a Saviour's throne."

That is a new kind of mastery. There has been service to the Lord, but this is something new, this is maturity. You notice that Paul said the very same thing in another way in 1 Cor. 13, "A more excellent way show I unto you. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal," and on he goes with what might be, yet without love, and of it all being nothing, and then he goes on to the positive unfolding of the nature of true love. "Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own..." and then, without a break, it is not another chapter on another subject, he says, "When I was a child I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things." Oh, love, mature love, true love, this love is not childish in its thoughts and ideas and ways, seeking its own. But mature grown-up love, the love now of the man as against the child, is a different thing altogether from that. This is the love of the mature man that Paul is talking about, and it is his way, his lovely way, I was going to say - his clever way of just letting the Corinthians see that it was all childishness, this that was going on in Corinth. "I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas" (1 Cor. 1:12). It is childishness and it is not love, and when you come to mature love, when you grow up, all that sort of thing will go. You will not be selecting your favourites, you will not be doing any of those things the Corinthians were doing.

When thou shalt become a man, thou shalt be under another mastery, and, although you will not like it, your flesh will shrink from it, you will even go to the cross. No man chooses that for his own fleshly comfort, he would shun it; but you will go to the cross. "Now this he spake, signifying by what manner of death he should glorify God." He would be so mastered that he would stretch forth his hands - Peter according to tradition was crucified - he would stretch forth his hands, he would be carried not the way he would like, but another way because of another master, the mastery of love, mature love, grown-up love.

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Now this brings me to this point. The Lord does really need men and women to serve His ends. In many ways there is a need for more young men to come on in the ministry of feeding and tending. A lot of people have interpreted that "Feed my lambs" as Sunday School work. I do not believe the Lord meant that at all. The lambs in this case are not little children, although that may be your ministry and it may be included. You know, one of the most difficult things is to tend and minister to the immature, the spiritually delayed in their growth. But whatever it is, the Lord does need those who will serve Him in ministering to His own. Young men, He does! He needs you to preach the Gospel. He needs you to teach His people, to feed His people. There is a great need. Perhaps you have thought about it and perhaps you have desired it. Perhaps that is your will or your hope. But listen - the need is very great in all phases and directions of the Lord's work, He needs you; but the fact that the Lord needs you does not mean that you can do it, or that He can come now and call you into it and open the way for you. His need may be very great, and yet He may not be able now to open the way for you to come in to serve Him in meeting it. Why? It might be that you would come in on some other ground - to be a minister, to be a teacher, to be something; to study up the Bible and then pass on the fruits of your study. All sorts of things you might begin to do, and the Lord is waiting until your heart is broken over this whole situation, and it is such a heart-matter that you come to the place where you say, "Lord, the only justification of my life is that your interests are served." It must be a matter of heart-love for the Lord and for what is His, and not for the work, the ministry; not for anything but for your Lord and what is His. When you get there, and you are found upon your face before the Lord breaking your heart because you see He is not getting what He ought to have, when this becomes the travail of your soul, you will find the Lord will begin to do something. This is the necessary basis for the Lord to bring out His servants. That is what is here. You may come in the way to the place where you find it painful and not likeable at all, but that basic grip of the master-love will keep you going when everything would make you run away. When I see young men with ambition to be ministers, I quietly say inside, "The Lord have mercy upon them." This is something to be guarded against unless the Lord puts you in and holds you in. Do not have natural ambitions in the Christian realm, but ask the Lord for this love that will hold you in when you would give anything to run away.

You say, It is terrible to talk about Christian work like that! But, in a true spiritual realm, you meet forces that you would never have imagined existed. You meet hell when you are seeking to build the heavenly kingdom. Well, here again the Lord does need you. The need is there, He wants you. There is work for you to do and plenty of it. Oh, His people are hungry, His sheep need tending and feeding; they need guiding, counselling, instructing, and to be provided for, and the Lord wants you to be His under-shepherds. I am so glad Peter wrote his letter about the great Shepherd and the under-shepherd. Yes, He wants you, He needs you. Do not be mistaken about that. And if He is keeping you waiting, do not think it is because He does not want you, because there is no need. It is all there, clamant, pressing, but He must have you on this basis, nothing else will do - your own personal heart-love for Him that will not choose your own way or go anywhere because you like it. You will go against yourself altogether under the constraint of His mighty love.

THE CONCENTRATION OF LOVE

If I were to add another word, it would be this - connected with Peter's seemingly superficial reaction to this terrific thing. Suddenly seeing John following on he turned round. The Lord has said, "Follow me," and he immediately turns round, sees John and says, "Lord, and this man, what?" What I am going to say about it is not all it contains, but it is this, that you are going to be called, appointed, to your particular ministry. Others will be called to theirs and theirs may be different from yours, theirs may be in another realm altogether from yours. The Lord's servants are often characterized by a specific ministry. They have to recognize what that is and keep to it.

Effectiveness depends upon concentration and avoidance of either distraction, diversion, or divided interest. There is something in the nature of rebuke in the Lord's rejoinder to Peter - "What is that to thee?" The whole statement seems clearly to mean that the Lord has sovereign rights to dispose of His servants as He wills, and they must not allow themselves to be diverted from what He appoints for them severally.

Love for Him must work out in giving oneself WHOLLY to THE thing to which they have been called. Superficially turning therefrom to what is not THEIR calling is itself contrary to love, it is fickleness.

Well, Peter learned this lesson, did his job, and glorified his Lord. He became a true shepherd. No one can read his letters without feeling his love for his Lord above all dividedness of heart. Love works out in faithfulness to the particular function, and faithfulness thereto unto the end - the long last proves the love.

The End

Next up, "That They May All Be One, Even As We Are One" - Volume 1

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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.

"That They May All Be One, Even As We Are One" - Volume 1
by T. Austin-Sparks

Meeting 1 - God's Ways Are Different From Our Ways

First Meeting
(January 30, 1964 P.M.)

Well, I can only repeat the words of my wife by saying, how glad I am to be with you again! The very precious times that we had together on my last two visits have remained fresh as a very joyous remembrance. But I want to thank you, dear friends, for the very warm welcome that you have given us. Manila always gives us a very warm welcome. And I tell you that only two days ago, we left the freezing cold in London; and we got on the airplane with all our winter clothes on. When we arrived in Manila, we arrived with a very warm welcome, in more ways than one. I do not think the heat of the weather here is greater than the warmth of your welcome, when we looked out of the plane at the airport yesterday and saw that crowd of happy faces, and heard those happy voices, and felt those happy hands. You would need to be in our place to understand what I mean when I thank you for the warm welcome. And that is the first thing that I want to say to you. I hope that when we go away, you will not have grown cold towards us.

Now let me say a little word about how it is that we have come and why it is that we have come. I have received quite a number of pressing invitations to come to Manila for nearly two years past. During that time, the invitations have become stronger and stronger. Perhaps you wonder why I have waited for nearly two years. The explanation is a very important one, and it is going to be one of those very vital matters in our time together. We have not delayed so long because we did not want to see you, nor was it because we did not want to come and try and help you. But you know, dear friends, we are the prisoners of Jesus Christ. We cannot go where we would like to go. And we cannot move when we would like to move. When we made Jesus "Lord," we made Him "Lord" of all our movements and all our time. Remember that the Apostle Paul on two occasions did try to go in certain directions. He thought it would be a good thing to go into Bithynia. There was great need in Bithynia, and no doubt the people there were pressing him to come to them, but he said, The Spirit of Jesus would not allow us to go (Acts 16:7). He felt the same about Asia. He began to move in the direction of Asia; and Asia was a very needy part of the world. The churches in Asia were going to be the seven churches to which we have the Letters in the Book of the Revelation. But at that time, he was forbidden to preach the word in Asia. You see, it is not need that governs. It is not when we feel we ought to do something that that is the time to do it. It is not when we think it would be a good thing to do this.

The Lord's time is a very important thing. If you get out of the Lord's time, you may spoil the whole thing. The Lord knows all about the need. The Lord knows all about the people's invitations. But the Lord says, "Not now. I have My time for that." He did not tell Paul why he could not go into Bithynia and Asia. He just told him not to go then. He simply said, "No, not now." And Paul, being the prisoner of Jesus Christ, knew that he could not move until the Lord moves. I hope you recognize that that is a very important principle in all the things of the Lord. It may be quite a good thing, it may be quite a right thing, and it may be a thing that the Lord is going to do, but it must be in the Lord's time. Now, if I had come a year ago or two years ago, something very important might have been lost for two years. And I would have gone away, saying, "No, we have not got there yet." Evidently the time has not come. But that is not the end of our story.

We are here. At last, we are here. And that is not because of the pressing invitation, that is because as we continually waited on the Lord, we had the sense that the Lord was saying, "Now is the time." You know, a very great many things are necessary when it is a matter of going from one side of the world to the other, especially when you get to be so very, very old. We are not young any longer. We used to travel about the world quite a lot. It did not mean so much in our younger days. But it is not so easy nowadays. We are getting old. However, that only makes it more important to go with the Lord. And as soon as we felt that the Lord's time had come, we began to get those various tokens from the Lord which confirmed that. I will not trouble you with all the details, but I think this evening I have learned for the first time what the Lord said to my wife. If she told me about that word from the Lord, I do not remember her telling me. But I went to the Lord and asked Him for a word for me. I said, now Lord, it is very important that you give me a word to go on. One morning I was reading my Bible, I was reading a chapter that I know very well, I was reading chapter fifty-two of the prophecies of Isaiah. I did not know that I was going to get the Lord's answer to my prayer in that chapter. But as I read on, I came to this verse, and it was as though the Lord said, 'That is My word for you over Manila.' And the words are these: "The Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your reward'' (Isa. 52:12).

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So, the Lord said that as we went, we should find that He was always ahead of us. We should find that He had gone before. And then there were a lot of things to leave behind. Quite a lot of responsibilities, and we had to have those taken care of. But the Word said, "the God of Israel will be your reward.'' The Lord will be before you and the Lord will be behind you. Do you think you could want anything better than that? Well, we have come on the strength of that word; and we are expecting to find the Lord before us every day.

Now, what is it that is in my heart as to this time which we shall be here? I do want you to understand this that I am going to say now. I hope that it will not disappoint you. I do not feel that the Lord has brought me here to give you a lot more teaching as teaching. I mean, I do not feel that I have come to give you something that I have studied from the Word of God, to give you a number of addresses on some subjects. It is not something that I have got from someone else, neither from books nor men. I feel that the Lord wants me to speak out of experience. Experience is a very valuable thing. There are plenty of people who can give us wonderful Bible addresses. But experience is far more important than that. And, as you understand, we have had a long experience with the Lord.

Personally I have been in the Lord's work for a good bit over fifty years. There has been FIFTY years of very wide and very deep spiritual experience in the school of the Lord. He has sought to teach me things in my own life. And the main thing that He is teaching me are the principles upon which He works. I shall have much to say to you about that. But I do want to put the emphasis here. It is not theory that I am going to give you. It is not something studied up for meetings. It is that which comes out of practical experience under the hand of the Lord. Therefore, it is going to be very practical.

I am sure you have got plenty of theory. You have a great deal of teaching. Perhaps I could not teach you much more than you know. But perhaps these gray hairs speak for themselves. They speak of deep experience in the school of God. What I have to say to you, is what God has done in me. You are not going to have an easy time, dear friends. You are going to be faced up with very practical issues. Now if you do not mean business with the Lord, do not come to these meetings. I shall take it that all who come, really do mean business with God.

You have been taught a great deal about God's purpose. I expect if you were asked, every one of you could put down on a piece of paper what you know to be the purpose of God. But there is one thing more important than the purpose of God. It is how God realizes His purpose. It is almost more important to know how God fulfills His purpose than it is to know what His purpose is. God has a way, not only an end; and it is very important to know the ways of God as well as the end of God. If there is one thing that we have learned more than another thing in God's school, it is this. God's ways are very different from our ways. So often we would do a thing in a certain way, and the Lord would say, "That is not My way. Your ways are not My ways. My thoughts are not your thoughts. I have My own ways of doing what I want done." You just cannot say, "I know the Lord wants such and such a thing done, and therefore, I am going to do it!" The Lord says, "Wait a minute, I have a way of doing that, and My way is just as important as My object." And I think the Lord wants us to learn something of His ways in these days together - to learn those spiritual laws which govern the purpose of God.

Only one last word, especially to the young people, and to everybody else. This learning of God's ways is a life-long business. I do not know it all. I have not yet learned it all. I have still to learn a great deal of God's way. The Lord is constantly having to say to me, 'No, not that way.' 'No, not at this time.' This is a life-long education. But the Lord is very faithful with us. If we are really in His hands, He will teach us His ways. You know the word to Israel was this: "that to Israel the Lord showed His works, but to Moses and Aaron, He showed His ways." And the ways are very much more important than the works. Moses and Aaron were honored servants of the Lord, and the Lord showed them His ways. To all the people, He could only just show His works. Will you be satisfied with just seeing the works of the Lord? Or would you rather be in the secret of the Lord? The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him; and He will show them His ways (Psa. 25:14; 103:7). The other people will only see His works.

May I ask that in these days, you will set your hearts upon knowing the ways of the Lord. For that is really the most important thing. Now, I only intended to give you a word of greeting, to thank you for your welcome, and to tell you that a lot of people in London said, 'Give the friends over there our greetings.' And as you can see, I have gone a long way beyond that. But I hope that I have not wearied you.

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Meeting 2 - "That They May Be In Us"

Second Meeting
(February 2, 1964 A.M.)

Will you please open your Bible to the New Testament. Firstly, in the Gospel by John, chapter seventeen and verse twenty-one. You know that this chapter contains the prayer of the Lord Jesus just before going to the Cross. In that prayer we have those words of verse twenty-one, Jesus says to His Father, "That they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us" (ASV).

I want you to particularly notice how the Lord put this matter in the last clause that is so important, "That they also may be in Us." Now I want you to turn to the Gospel by Matthew, in chapter twenty-seven, at verse forty-six. "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?' that is to say, 'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?'" These are practically the last words of our Lord on the Cross. All that remained for Him to do was to commit His Spirit to His Father. Really His last words were, "My God, why has Thou forsaken Me?" This is the last phase of the death of Jesus Christ and it marks a very great change in His spiritual life and experience. Jesus had lived all His life in the Father. He said to His disciples, "Believest thou not that I am in the Father?" His whole life in everything was lived in the Father. We have many instances of how He refused to move out from the Father.

In the little town of Cana in Galilee, you will remember that He performed His first miracle. It is the miracle of turning the water into wine at the marriage feast. Some way through the feast all the wine that had been provided came to an end. Thus wine was the very important thing in the feast, and there was a serious situation. The mother of Jesus was sitting beside Him at the table and she just turned to Him and she said, "They have no wine!" She, of course, believed that He could do something about it and she presented this situation to her Son. In effect, she said, "You will have to do something about it. This whole marriage feast is going to break down. Everybody is going to be in trouble." Now really He must do something about it.

You notice what the Lord Jesus said. He turned to His mother and He said, "Woman, what do I have to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come." There are two things there, a seeming necessity is not the grounds on which Jesus works. Just because it is something that seems to be needy, He does not do that. He is waiting for something. He says, "My hour is not yet come. I cannot do this now. I understand how serious the situation is, but I cannot do it now. I may have perfect sympathy for these people, but I just cannot do anything!"

Why could He not do anything at the moment? He was abiding in the Father, He was not living in the circumstances. In His Spirit He was saying, "Father, do You want this done? These people are in difficulty; My dear mother says I ought to do something. But Father, I cannot do anything unless You tell Me to." He was living in the Father. And as He waited for the Father, it seems that the Father says, "Yes, all right, go on." And then He said, "Fill the waterpots with water." That is the first illustration of how Jesus lived in the Father.

There was another time when there was a feast in Jerusalem, Jesus and His disciples were not in Jerusalem at the time. His brothers after the flesh were with Him. You know it is said, that they did not believe on Him. They said to Him, "You go up to the feast, we are going up, you see everybody goes up to this feast. It is a thing that everybody does. If You do not go up to the feast, people will not understand You, they will criticize You, You will lose influence with them. If You want to be popular, You had better do what everybody else is doing. We are going up to the feast." And now they said to Jesus, "You go up to the feast."

What did Jesus do? Did He move in a way that would make Him popular? Did He do things just because everybody else is doing them? Did He do it because it is the custom to do that? No, He turned to His brothers after the flesh and He said, "You go up to the feast; I go not up to the feast." And then His brothers went. And after they had gone, Jesus went to the feast.

Now this is a very strange way to go on. Did He not want to be in the company of His brothers? So He told a kind of untruth? "I do not go up, you go up." Did He play a trick on them? Why did He say that? He was abiding in the Father. He was waiting for the Father's word to go up. He will never do anything because it was the popular thing. He would never do it because all the religious people were doing it. He did not do it because it was the custom to do it. He did not do it because He wanted to stand well with the people. The one thing that governs His life was, "Did the Father want Him to do that?" So after His brothers were gone up, He said, "Father, do You want Me to go up?" And evidently the Father said, "Yes, go up." Then went Jesus up. Not before that. He would never do anything until the Father said so.