Books by T. Austin-Sparks

[Shammu]

 When we come into the new creation, are born from above, on the ground of our recognition and acceptance of the perfect, finished work of the Lord Jesus for our sin, for our salvation (and very often we are better believers at the beginning than we are later on!), when we come on to that ground of the new creation in Christ where everything answers to God's pleasure, do we not have the sense of the glory? The beginning of the Christian life is so often like that. While we could not explain it theologically or doctrinally, we feel it! 'It is wonderful to be saved! This is glorious!' It is something that just wells up inside of us. And what is it? It is the Holy Spirit bearing witness to God's satisfaction with His Son whom we have embraced with all the knowledge and understanding of Him that we have. We have accepted the perfection of Himself and His work, and there is a reflection, an emanation, of His glory, the satisfaction of God in our hearts. When we get away from that simple trust in the Lord Jesus the glory often fades - but I must not go on to that for the moment.

Move on in the Bible, and you have God's mind completely and perfectly revealed in pattern form in the creation of the tabernacle in the wilderness. It was meticulously prescribed to a detail, to a pin, to a thread, to a colour, to a position, to a measure, and it was all given by God. And the last chapter of that reads: "As the Lord commanded Moses... as the Lord commanded Moses... as the Lord commanded Moses." It becomes almost monotonous! It was done as the Lord commanded Moses, and the glory filled the tabernacle. God was satisfied! And you and I know that that tabernacle was only a foreshadowing in type of the Lord Jesus.

We move on to the temple, and, again, the prescription, the pattern, was given to David, and it was all perfected through Solomon. When it was finished according to the heavenly pattern, the glory filled the temple, and even the priests could not abide in it. God filled everything with His satisfaction.

The Lord Jesus came to His baptism and His great committal, and as He came up out of the water the heavens opened and the Father's voice pronounced: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17). God was WELL pleased. That was indeed a good foundation for starting His life work! God's satisfaction is the glory, and John says: "We beheld his glory."

Then we come to the perfection of His work on the Cross. There is nothing further to be done after Calvary. It is ALL finished. Oh, believe this, and believe it with all your heart: there is NOTHING remaining to be done for your eternal salvation. If you try to add something you will lose the glory and get out of the place of God's satisfaction. When the work on the Cross was accomplished, the work of redemption was a finished work, and the sacrifice was well pleasing to God. Calvary was finished, that Son was raised from the dead, and it would not be long before the temple received the glory of the Day of Pentecost - and then what glory filled the house of God! Why? Because Jesus was glorified. Until then "the Spirit was not yet given; because Jesus was not yet glorified" (John 7:39). But when He was glorified the Spirit was given.

There you have the Bible background. At the end this glory is seen coming down in the new Jerusalem: "The holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God" (Revelation 21:11). It is the perfected work in the Church, having the glory of God. It is all over, all finished, the battle is won, the course of Christian trial and discipline and suffering is all over, and the glory crowns everything at last because God is satisfied.

Have I, on the side of Scripture at any rate, proved the definition that glory is the expression of God's perfect satisfaction?

WHY NO GLORY IN OUR LIVES?

Now I said that you could put this to the test in your own experience. Some of us have had to go through this experience to learn these things, for they are not just theories. What has been the most miserable time in your life? Well, I can tell you what was the most miserable time, lacking in glory and having all that is not glory, in my life. It was when I allowed the devil to succeed in putting me outside the finished work of Christ by accusation. 'The Lord is displeased with you. He has it against you. The Lord is really, because of this affliction, suffering, trial, and sorrow, not well pleased with you.' Go down under that and the glory goes. And while you stay there, there is no glory, simply because God's ground is this ground of the absolute finality of the work of His Son for our redemption. Get off that ground by any accusation or condemnation of the devil, forsake the ground of Christ, and the glory goes and will never come back while you stay there. Make no mistake about that! If you are occupied with yourself how long is it going to take you to learn that that is not the ground of glory? Well, it will take just so long as you stay there on the ground of this wretched, miserable self that God has finished with in the Cross of His Son. If we move over on to the ground of Christ and His perfection, and by faith put our feet down on that, then the glory will return.

We have only opened the door to this matter, but we really have to apply all this, for I do not want to give you a lot more teaching for you to put into your heads. I have prayed that the Lord will use His word as a shaft to cut in and really do something.

IS GOD TO BE GLORIFIED IN OUR LIVES?

Dear friends, do we, you and I, really want God to be glorified in our lives? You say: 'Yes!', but there are some who say: 'Well, let us see what it means and then we will say Yes.'

First of all, it means exactly the same for us as it meant with the Lord Jesus, for He was here as our representative Man before God. Therefore it means the great and utter CRISIS: committal. Oh, let that word get hold of us! There are Christians, and there are committed Christians - and I must just leave that with you.

The great crisis experience in the life of the Lord Jesus was when He made the great committal to the glory of His Father and said: 'Everything from this day is going to be judged by the value of how much glory there is in it for My Father.' That was a crisis, and then, as I have said, everything did fall into line with that where He was concerned. He saw to it that His conduct, His own life with His Father, His secret life which no one saw or knew, and His life before the world, before people and before His disciples, were governed by this one thing - His Father getting the glory. His behaviour, the way He spoke and the way He acted were all governed by this one thing. If He had been a business man, it would have governed His business transactions. Were they to the glory of God? If not, He would not have had anything to do with them. His family, His brothers, sisters, mother - 'Is My family to the glory of God?' Is the behaviour in our families, in us, in our children, in our husband and wife relationship, in how we go on as a family, to the glory of God? How do people looking on view it? This is searching!

But if you come to a position like that where you really have a transaction with the Lord, do not think that it is going to mean a life of loss. No, you are going to see the glory of God. That is the upshot of this eleventh chapter of John with Lazarus and his sisters at Bethany. Difficult as the way to it was for them, the last picture is of an emanation of the glory of God. What a delightful scene that is in chapter twelve! Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus, whom He had raised from the dead, lived, and they made Him a supper. Martha served, in a new spirit of service, and Mary and Lazarus sat with the disciples. It must have been a beautiful time - real glory in resurrection life. But they had been through something to get to that! They had been tried and tested on this question: "Said I not unto thee, that, if thou believedst, thou shouldest SEE the glory of God?" Do you want to see the glory of God in your own life? It is not going to mean a life of loss, for if you have the glory of God you cannot get anything beyond that, or better than that.

[Shammu]

Chapter 2 - Glory Only in the Newness of Resurrection Life

Reading: John 11

We turn again to this eleventh chapter of the Gospel by John, and I would remind you that this chapter represents the culmination of the life, teaching and works of the Lord Jesus during the days of His flesh. This is quite evident, for you notice that in verse 47 it says: "The chief priests therefore and the Pharisees gathered a council, and said, What do we?" The rest of the chapter shows that this was the last of a number of such councils, and it was in this last council that they decided definitely and finally that this Man must die. So here we have that which marks the culmination of His life and work at that time. The finality is not by the act, but is the fullness of the very purpose for which He came, and, more than that, it is the fullness of Divine counsels.

Behind this chapter there are two things. There are the eternal counsels of God coming to their completion in His Son at this time, and then there are the counsels contrary to God which are seeking to bring that Son to an end, to destroy Him. The Divine counsels are summed up in what is in this chapter. No doubt you have read it many times and perhaps you think you know it. If you were asked what John eleven is about most of you would say: 'Well, of course, it is the chapter about the raising of Lazarus from the dead', and perhaps that is all that you would have to say about it. In so saying (forgive me if this sounds a bit critical of your apprehension) you indicate how really you have missed the way. Of course, we have all said that in time past, but as we have gone on we have come to see something more, and that is that this chapter contains all the major features and factors of God's ways unto glory. Have you grasped that? The end of all God's ways and works is glory, His own glory. It sometimes seems a tortuous way, as these sisters felt it to be while it lasted. It sometimes seems to be anything but glory, and you might very well decide, as perhaps these sisters decided at a certain point, that the end is not glory. You might feel that all this sorrow, distress, disappointment and despair could not lead to glory, but all that, from God's standpoint, is the way of glory and is unto glory.

Let me repeat: when God takes anything in hand - and you really must lay hold of this! - the end is going to be His glory. You need make no mistake whatever about that! The end of all God's ways is His glory. Read your Bible in the light of that, and you have the whole Bible in one chapter - the eleventh chapter of John.

FACTORS IN THE WAYS OF GOD UNTO GLORY

I have said that this chapter contains the main features and factors in the ways of God unto glory. What are some of these main factors?

A very big one is the incarnation of the Son of God; the Son of God taking flesh; God manifest in the flesh. Is that not a big one? The very purpose and object of the incarnation, of God taking flesh, becoming incarnate, is found in this chapter. Hold that for a while.

Then there is the method of God in redemption. Redemption is a big factor, is it not? No one will dispute that! In the eternal counsels of God redemption is a big factor, and the method of redemption is the substance of this eleventh chapter of John.

Another thing - and I am quite sure that, while you will have agreed with those other two, if you know anything at all about God's ways, you will agree with this - God's ways are very strange, and are beyond human explanation and comprehension. While God is in the process of moving towards His end, it is very difficult to follow Him. The Apostle Paul, who knew a good deal about the Lord, said of his experience: "Pressed out of measure" (2 Corinthians 1:, or, as another translation has it, "BEYOND our measure". The Lord is always a bit ahead of us. It would not do for us to be equal with Him, would it? We would soon be taking the place of the Lord! If we were right upsides with Him in everything our dependence upon Him would very soon go. So the Lord gets ahead of us, beyond our measure, and puts us out of our depth in order to enlarge our capacity. We would never grow if that were not true.

The simple way in which John's Gospel illustrates that is in chapter 10:4: "When he hath put forth all his own, he goeth before them". Well, of course, you have sometimes taken that as a comforting statement, but there is profundity in every clause of the Divine Word, and this Gospel in particular reveals that. "When he hath put forth all his own, he goeth before them" - He always is ahead of them, and they are always a bit behind Him. In a sense, He is too much for them. They have to move on, and still move on, if they are going to come up to where the Lord is, and when they get there, they find that He has gone ahead again. They have to keep going, to keep running all the time.

The Apostle Paul explains this when he said right at the end of his full life: "That I may know him" (Philippians 3:10). 'I have not caught up yet. He is still beyond me.' The mystery of God's ways, the strangeness of what we call 'Providence', is a major factor of God's ways, and that is in this chapter.

Another thing, which is not by any means a small thing, is the farsightedness of God. How much beyond our seeing He is! Or let us come to this chapter - how much the Lord Jesus was beyond the seeing of these sisters and the disciples! They just could not see beyond this present happening and experience. The thing that was immediately before their eyes was their horizon. But God, in Christ, was moving here on the principle of farsightedness, beyond the incident, beyond the present. However big this was to them, He was far beyond it. His horizon was far outreaching this thing, and He was acting accordingly. The farsightedness of God is no small factor in the ways, the works and the dealings of the Lord, and it is all here in this one chapter.

How unfathomable are the ways and the works of God!

[Shammu]

THE LORD IN CONTROL

Now, having said that, let me step back for a moment and remind you of something here which we must get hold of. Do believe me, dear friends, when I say that it is not just the TEACHING of John's Gospel in one or all of the chapters with which I am concerned. This has to come right into our very own history. It has to be taken out of the Bible, out of the history of Jesus during His time on this earth, and put right into our history, and we shall never get anywhere unless that is true. It is applied truth, and not theoretical truth that is here.

So let me say this: The thing that comes out at us as we quietly and thoughtfully dwell in this chapter is that the Lord Jesus has the situation in His hands. Let me put that in another way. If this is God incarnate, then it is God with whom we are having to do here. When you come to this chapter you see how the Lord Jesus has everything in hand, and in His hands, and He is not letting it go out of His hands all the way along.

Look at the various aspects! He said He would go back into Judaea. The disciples immediately reacted: 'No, the Jews recently sought to kill You there. You must not go back there!' You see the move to take things out of His hands, to govern His movements, His judgments and His decisions, but He is not having it. He has taken this thing in hand, and, disciples or no disciples, He is going on. There is something that He is after, and He is in charge. Messengers are sent to him about Lazarus when He is away somewhere else, and undoubtedly the message means this, although it is not recorded: 'Lazarus is dying. Come, please! Come quickly! Come as quickly as You can!' The beloved sisters would have said that, but to do as they wished would have taken the matter right out of His hands and ruled His judgment, ruled His feelings, governed His movements, set a time that He did not set, and taken it over. No, He abode where He was. He had the situation in hand and was not going to let it out of His hands, although the appeal was from those whom He loved. It is stated that that was so. The situation was one which could appeal to any sympathetic heart, but that was not going to decide this thing. It was in His hands and He was going to decide the ground upon which He worked, the time in which He worked, and when He was going to move, and nothing would alter His decision. The Jews, of course, ever ready to criticise Him and discredit Him, and put Him in a bad light, said: "Could not this man, which opened the eyes of him that was blind have caused that this man also should not die?" All these forces were at work in every realm, from the centre to the circumference of His relationships, to get Him under control, but He was not having it. He had this matter in hand, and that is a very important thing. Why? He stated it: 'This sickness is not unto death, finally, absolutely. This sickness is not going to end in death, but is for the glory of God.' And what then? "And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there." Oh, what are you going to make of that? Put yourselves in the position of these sisters with a beloved only brother slowly passing out, in the grip of this apparently fatal sickness. Their hearts were wrung with distress and anxiety, were breaking, and they had seen to it that He knew about it - and this was His attitude: "I am glad for your sakes that I was not there."

Well, you see, He has got hold of this situation and is in charge. We are dealing with God. He is in charge, and if He is working to a certain end you cannot hurry Him, you cannot take over from Him and make Him do what you want Him to do. He is going to reach His end, and it may be a very trying way for our flesh and our natures, but He will get there, for He is in charge.

THE LAW OF TRAVAIL

We sometimes sing, rather glibly and without watching our words too carefully:
"How I long to climb to the utmost heights!"

I wonder if we realise as we sing that that the utmost heights are only reached through the utmost depths! You and I, dear friends, will never reach God's end except along the pathway of brokenness. That is what this chapter says. While we are whole, and substantial, and well-knit, and self-confident, we will never reach His end.

You see, God, right at the beginning of the Bible and of human history, planted something in human experience which became the LAW of all true knowledge of God from that moment. The great issue in the Garden was KNOWLEDGE of good and evil. Man made a bid for knowledge, under the instigation and inspiration of the devil, and God came along on that declension, on that breakdown, and established a law by which He said: 'You shall never have true knowledge except by this law. Everything that is going to be true and real in the future is not going to be gained so easily as you thought.' The law of travail was planted right at the heart of human life. Travail was introduced as a law for the future, and you and I know very well that true love only comes out of travail. Put it another way: we never value anything that has cost us nothing. We can let it go very cheaply if we have not paid any price for it, but if we have paid a price, if it has been costly, if it has meant something to us of real suffering, or sorrow, or great trial, that is infinitely precious to us, and we do not let it go easily.

So God came right in at that point and put this law of travail into human life and human history, and said: 'You tried to get everything cheaply, but you will not get anything that is worth having without cost in the future.' And from that point, you notice all through the Bible, until you come to the travail of His soul, the travail of the Garden, the travail of the Cross, of which Isaiah had said: "He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied", that out of travail is the preciousness. It is the law, you see, that there is no reaching the heart of God and having true knowledge without costliness.

Peter learned that by a deep way. He tried to get things cheaply. "It is good for us to be here, Lord. Let us build three tabernacles, one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah", and I suppose, although he did not say so, he meant: 'We will have some tabernacles, too. We will stay here.' Peter was like that, but he went the deep way of utter devastation by the Cross of the Lord Jesus, and years afterwards he wrote: "Unto you therefore which believe is the preciousness" (1 Peter 2:7).

The last picture of the Church is of the city, and its gates are of pearl, which is the very symbol of agony, of blood, of tears. That is how it is made. It is costly, and very precious because it costs.

I said that this is a comprehensive chapter, did I not? We will come back to it. Here are these dear sisters, and how they are baptized into the passion, the agony of the Cross, and how they are having to know a tasting of death in order that they might know the preciousness of resurrection life! There is no other way to it.

"I am glad for your sakes that I was not there." He was farsighted, and saw that, although He was running this risk of being misunderstood - for everybody, sisters and all, were misunderstanding Him and were incapable of comprehending Him - He must accept the risk. He saw beyond, to the ultimate. And what is the ultimate? "Said I not unto thee, that, if thou believedst, thou shouldest see the glory of God?"

The end of all God's ways is glory. How rich and how full all this is! We are in the presence of God, and when we are there we are in the presence of profoundest realities. Oh, that we might have the grace, when the Lord has us in hand and is dealing with us, not to wrench ourselves out of His hand, but to remain there unto the inevitable glory!

[Shammu]

THE BATTLE OF COMMITTAL

I am so hesitant, dear friends, just to add words to words. I do want to make sure that what I am saying is going deeper than your heads, than Christian theory and doctrine.

First of all, as we said last time, there has to be the basic and utter committal to the Lord. Now, of course, I suppose there are few of you, if any, who would not say that you have surrendered your lives to the Lord, and perhaps you say that you are UTTERLY given to the Lord. You don't know what you are talking about! I am sorry to say that, but it comes out of very long experience. We shall never get beyond the point where there is no more battle to get perfectly adjusted to the mind of the Lord. It does not matter how long you live here. If you are walking with the Lord there will be, right to the end, occasions when you find it is not easy to accept some new revelation of the mind of God for you. Indeed, you will have a new battle every time on this, and that is what I meant when I said: 'You don't know what you are talking about!' That is not, of course, to discourage or discount any consecration that you have made, but there has to be a basic, initial, fundamental committal, when we say: 'Now, Lord, I do not know all that it is going to mean, or how it is going to work out, or what it is going to cost, but I put myself into Your hands. I am Yours. I am committed. You are my Master, and I want you to have the absolute mastery of my being. If at any time it becomes difficult for me to yield to Your mastery, I am going to seek grace to adjust to it.' There must be something of an attitude taken which is COMPLETE committal.

I ask you - not with the sum total of all that it means known to you - has the Lord got the mastery of your being, of your life? As we have already said, this touches every point and aspect. Has He got the mastery in your business, in your business relationships, in your business transactions? Are you doing business that does not lie in line with the glory of God, that is, are you doing business that is a contradiction to the glory of God?

I knew a young fellow once who had got on very well in business and had tremendous prospects, but he was in the biggest tobacco firm in Europe. He had a good position, with great prospects - and he came up against this matter as to whether the Lord was glorified in his doing that kind of business. He decided eventually that that kind of thing was not to the glory of God. As he saw it working out, he found that it was contrary to the glory of God in human lives, so he surrendered his position and came right out of the firm. For a time he was tested by his action and by the position which he had taken of faithfulness to God. The Lord looked after him in the end, but I am not throwing that in to say that you will get a reward, or will get compensation.

The point is: not policy, but principle. The world is governed by policy, by what is politic and what is diplomatic. That is the whole spirit and law of this world, but the Lord Jesus is not policy nor diplomacy, and the principle is the glory of God.

That is what it means to be committed. Is your home in the committal, your domestic relationships, your social life and relationships?

And so we could go on. It is just not a matter of getting on your knees and saying: 'Lord, I am Yours. I give myself to You absolutely', and then when the Lord comes along the next day and says: 'What about this?' to say: 'Oh, I did not mean that!' The Lord is very practical!

Forgive me for speaking like this, but we must, for we are in very serious times, and God is coming near to His people in order to sift out. The end is going to be a tremendously sifting time amongst the Lord's people. Peter says, speaking about the time of the end: "The time is come for judgment to begin at the house of God" (1 Peter 4:17), and if it begins with us, where will the sinner and the ungodly be? We shall be sifted down to this: Is your priority in life really settled, and is that priority the glory of God? If so, whatever happens, you will go through and you will reach God's end, the glory. "It is God with whom we have to do!"

GOD'S ATTITUDE TO HUMAN LIFE

In this chapter we are dealing with the ultimate things, the primary things and the eternal things. I am going to say what may perhaps be a very difficult thing for you to accept, but it shouts at us and we cannot get away from it, much as it hurts us and we do not like it. The attitude of the Lord Jesus towards the situation and all concerned with it is God's attitude towards human life as it is. Here in this chapter you find human life represented by a number of different aspects. You have the Jews, the scribes and the Pharisees. Well, you are not perhaps surprised at God's attitude towards them, but move on into the heart of the chapter. Here are these dear sisters, and there is this man Lazarus, as far removed from scribes and Pharisees and ruling Jews as could be, humanly. You would say that they are lovely people, but what is the attitude of the Lord Jesus? He is non-committal, holding a reserve. It says that He stayed where He was for two days, and that when He came at last Lazarus had been dead four days. Four days had elapsed between receiving the news and arriving there, and, as you know, they mentioned to Him the state of things which naturally would have prevailed. WHY did He let Lazarus die? He could have raised him, for He had healed many others and raised other dead. Why this one who was so beloved? Why did He allow the sisters' hearts to be broken, torn with this sorrow and this distress? Why this attitude? This is God's attitude to humanity at its best in Adam as well as at its worst. This humanity at its best is something that in Adam God has set aside, and He is not going to patch it up. He is not going to give it medicine to cure it. He says: 'It must die!' The only possible thing is resurrection, a new life altogether, something different from the natural and earthly even at its best.

Do you think I am exaggerating, or going too far? I want you to pick up this Gospel and read it from end to end. Why the marriage in Cana of Galilee? Why did He attend, why did the wine fail and why did that terrible predicament arise? "They have no wine", says His mother, in a kind of appeal and expectation that He would do something. Consternation is over the whole thing. There is no resource left. It is an end of the very thing that makes life. "Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come." It had been the appeal in a predicament, the appeal of an opportunity, the appeal of a mother's heart, the appeal in a difficult situation, but, no, He would have none of it, for there is something more in it than just patching up this feast. There has to be something that is above the natural, and that is newness of life, and not the old thing patched up. This old thing MUST die, and then resurrection alone is going to be the answer. That is the explanation - something different. God's attitude is that the old creation is bankrupt, and the only prospect is a new creation life. "This beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory" (John 2:11). Glory is the end of God's ways. How? In something that is beyond all natural possibility. Cana is the beginning and Lazarus is the end of the story.

In between - I cannot stay with them, but I will just remind you of some of them - there is Nicodemus, with all his religion and all his learning, to whom Jesus said: "Art thou the teacher of Israel and understandest not these things?" (John 3:10). All the religious knowledge, learning, position and tradition are bankrupt. 'You must be born from above. This natural life of yours, though it be all like that, will not get you through.'

There is the man at the pool of Bethesda. He was for thirty-eight years lying in that position, struggling every day to get on to his feet and into the water. Try that, perhaps a dozen times every day for thirty-eight years, and see whether you have much hope left at the end! Without the use of the pool and without any artificial aid, He who is the resurrection and life comes on the scene and there is another sign, another showing of how hopeless the natural is until Jesus comes in, but He comes in with another kind, another order of life.

Then we come to the woman of Samaria at Sychar. What a story of moral bankruptcy that is! "Go, call thy husband... I have no husband... Thou saidst well, I have no husband, for thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband." Everything has been exhausted in that realm, "but the water that I shall give shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life" ... "Sir, give me this water" (John 4:14-15).

So John goes on with his Gospel until we come to Lazarus, and there in one chapter all this is gathered up, showing that the glory of God is the end - "Thou shouldest see the glory of God."

The glory of God is not something that God can do in human life, for He is not going to patch that up. Men can do that. You call in the doctors and they may help to keep this thing alive for a time, but God says: 'No let that die. The glory is not in that kind of thing. It is something absolutely new and different.'

The end of all God's ways is like that. I do trust that you will interpret everything in the light of this. Have you suffered? Have you been knocked about? What are you doing about it? Are you putting it merely and only into the category of things common to man? No, the end is glory, and when you come through you will see the glory of God in the newness of resurrection life.

[Shammu]

Chapter 3 - The Father of Glory... The Lord of Glory... The Spirit of Glory

In pursuing the matter which has been before us, I want to call to your remembrance three fragments of the Word:

"For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which is among you, and which ye shew toward all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him" (Ephesians 1:15).

"My brethren, hold not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons" (James 2:1).

"Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you, which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing happened unto you: but insomuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings, rejoice, that at the revelation of his glory also ye may rejoice with exceeding joy. If ye are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are ye; because the Spirit of glory and the Spirit of God resteth upon you" (1 Peter 4:12-14).

May I just remind you that we have been occupied with the truth that the end of all God's works is glory. We have defined glory as being the expression of God's full and final satisfaction, God giving out from Himself His pleasure, His delight, and, like a heavenly contagion, those who come within its range and its reach are very conscious that He is pleased and satisfied. In one place He is called "the blessed God" (1 Timothy 1:11), but the original says 'the happy God'. You know that if you go into the presence of people who are really happy you are affected and infected by their happiness. It is possible to go amongst people who are heartily laughing, and you begin to laugh, not knowing what you are laughing at! The atmosphere influences you. Now, if God is happy, satisfied, well pleased and delighted, and you come within touch of Him, you catch something from Him and feel that happiness. That is exactly the meaning of glory: God being completely contented with a situation, or with a life, or with a person, and if you should happen to be that person you just take from Him something of His contentment and satisfaction. It is a glorious sense of contentedness, of satisfaction, of blessedness.

So the end of everything that is really of God is that wonderful power of His own personal pleasure. I think there is nothing in all the universe so blessed as to have a sense that the Lord is well pleased. It must have been a great day for Abraham, a wonderful, inexpressible day, when God called him His friend, and for Daniel, too, when the messenger of God said: "Oh Daniel, thou man greatly beloved". What do you want more than that from God? That is glory, is it not? Well, God is working toward that in all His works in the universe, in the creation and in the redeemed.

You will have noticed from the three passages that we read that the triune God, the three Persons of the Trinity, are personally related to glory. First, the Father of glory; secondly, the Lord Jesus, the Lord of glory; and thirdly, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of glory. Each member of the Godhead takes character from this word 'glory', and each Person of the Trinity is supremely concerned with glory. That opens up a very large door, but I shall not go very far through that door just now. I will just mention that you can follow through the Bible how God, as Father, the first Person of the Trinity, is always concerned about glory; how the Lord Jesus, the second Person in the Trinity, is always working on the line of glory; and then how the Holy Spirit all the way along is operating toward glory, with glory as the governing concern. I leave that, for it is a long, long line of very blessed revelation. The point for me just now is that the Godhead is united, is one in this thing. The three are united concerning glory, and their interest is one interest. As we have already said, it is their priority. So the priority of the triune God is glory.

All I am going to do now is to say a little word about each of these designations - the Father of glory, the Lord of glory and the Spirit of glory - and may the Lord give us something in our hearts from our brief meditation!

THE FATHER OF GLORY

What does that mean? Well, it means that God is the source of glory, and that glory emanates from Him. The principle of fatherhood is that the father is the source, the beginning and the projector, so all that really emanates from God has, as its very purpose and destiny, glory. We are children of God, and the very object and purpose of our being His children in His mind is that we should come to glory, that is, that we should be brought to that position where at last - oh, wonderful thought! too wonderful to grasp! - God says: 'I am perfectly satisfied and content.' Can you imagine God saying that about you? Can you believe that the all-mighty, eternal, perfect, holy, great God could look down upon us and say: 'I am well pleased. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord, into the very satisfaction of My Father heart.'? It is too much for us to grasp just now, is it not? But that is the meaning of His Fatherhood. He has begotten us, brought us into being as His children, is responsible for our coming into being as His children, has taken responsibility for us as His children, and all with this one object of bringing us along the line, along the way, to the end, which is an entering into that unspeakable awareness that He has nothing whatever against us, but is satisfied to the last possible degree.

Whatever comes out from God, whether it is children or His creation, comes out as destined for that glory of His perfect satisfaction. Things are like that at the end of the Bible. There is a state of glory, a glorious condition, which means the outgoing, the emanation of God's own perfect satisfaction. Paul puts it in this way: "Foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Romans 9:29). What is that? His SON! - "My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17). And we are to be conformed to that! We are to inherit God's own attitude toward His Son, to come into that position and condition that His Son occupies of the perfect satisfaction of the Father.

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 You see, His Father-dealings with us are along that line. "My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art reproved of him; for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth" (Hebrews 12:4). What is the chastening all about? "All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous, but grievous; yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness" (Hebrews 12:11). What is righteousness? It is that complete peace in the heart that God's sense of rightness is satisfied.

THE LORD OF GLORY

"Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory" is what James calls Him, and it is a wonderful thing that James, His own brother in the flesh, should say that of Him! There was a time when James did not believe on Him. "For even his brethren did not believe on him" (John 7:5), was what was said about James formerly. Of course, we have a fairly shrewd idea of why that was. In those early days James and the other brothers of Jesus were a bit worldly and they had an eye to business, to success, to popular acceptance, and they wished especially to stand well with the authorities. That is worldliness, is it not? It is the spirit of the world to wish to stand well with the authorities. This older Brother of theirs was taking a course that was getting Him into trouble with the people who had it in their power to take everything away from Him, and they belonged to His family, which meant that they would suffer because He had taken that line. Well, we will leave that, but I think it is a fairly true judgment of that statement: "Even his brethren did not believe on him." They could not accept the way that He was taking, for it was not going to bring popularity.

Now here is this brother of His, these many years afterward, calling Him "the Lord of glory". Something has happened! James is saying that his own Brother is "the Lord of glory"! Once he did not believe in Him, but now he calls Him "the Lord of glory". That is indeed a wonderful thing! But what did he mean, and what does it mean to call Him "the Lord of glory"?

Well, you know, if anyone is a lord, he has everything under his control. If you should be a 'lord', then things are under your control and in your power. You dictate how these things are going to work out. Yes, you are lord in this situation and, indeed, in all situations. Jesus is Lord, and as Lord of glory He is in a position of mastery.

Peter, who at one time denied Him vehemently later said: "He is Lord of all" (Acts 10:36). A big thing has happened in Peter, too, as well as in James. Indeed, it had happened in all of them, for they all called Him "Lord". We know from the very context of Peter's words that he was at that time having to recognize the absolute mastery of the Lord Jesus. Peter was arguing a bit. It was very strange that he should have been arguing with the Lord Jesus at that time "Not so, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common and unclean", but he had to succumb to the mastery of the Lord Jesus, and he did. Then he said: "He is Lord of all", meaning that He was in charge both of Peter and of every situation, and, being in charge, this situation was going to work out to the end that He intended. So, when James says "the Lord of glory", it means that the Lord Jesus is in charge of everything to make it work out for glory.

You have only to read through the book of the Acts of the Apostles, as it is called, and as you go through you see the Lord of glory holding the situations. Yes, in phase after phase, and stage after stage. We need only lift out one or two examples.

Peter is in prison, with his feet in the stocks and four quarternions of soldiers to guard him, and the inner and outer doors of the prison tightly closed. Herod has made very sure that THAT man is not going to escape! This looks a somewhat difficult proposition, does it not? I doubt whether it would have been possible for any man to have liberated Peter that night. At any rate, all the forces of this world are determined that he should not escape. He is the key man, the strategic man in this new movement, so he must be kept safe. All right, do all you can and all you wish. Take every precaution, every measure, to make everything secure. But the Lord of glory has other ways, and so an angel comes and smites Peter, who is asleep.

It is rather wonderful that when the Lord of glory is in charge you can go to sleep, even in situations where you are going to be brought out for execution tomorrow! You are in a condemned cell, and you know that tomorrow you are going the same way as the other James and be executed, but you just go to sleep right through the night. Well, it needs the Lord of glory to make you do that, so that you can say: 'The Lord has this thing in hand, so I am going to sleep.'

I remember a man who was here in the West in the wild days of long ago. He was travelling and came to a shack, which was in a perilous place where bears were roaming about. He was very tired after travelling all day, but he found that he could not get into the shack. He could only rest under the awning outside, so he lay down there. He belonged to the Lord and before he settled down he read a Psalm: "He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." He said: 'Well, Lord, it is no use the two of us keeping awake. If You say You are keeping awake all night, I am going to sleep!' And so he went off to sleep and had a good night. That is trusting the Lord!

Peter went to sleep and the angel smote him, struck off his chains and fetters, and said: 'Rise up and follow me.' They left the guards, the cell and the chains, and went out through the first door, then through the next, until they came to the outer gates, which opened of their own accord, and Peter was landed out in the open. This circumstance, so apparently adverse and impossible, was in the hands of the Lord of glory. And what about the glory? We have Peter's Letters, written years afterwards, and they are wonderful Letters, are they not? His was a wonderful life, and so much wealth has come to us through Peter's ministry in these Letters. Yes, there was glory, and Jesus is the Lord of glory.

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 One more thing from that Book of the Acts. We are in Philippi. Paul and Silas have arrived, because the Lord has sent them there. 'They had assayed to go into Asia, but were forbidden of the Holy Ghost, and they assayed to go into Bithynia but the Spirit of Jesus suffered them not.' Then, wondering what all that meant - 'Why are we not allowed to go this way or that?' - Paul, in a vision, saw a man of Macedonia and heard him say: "Come over into Macedonia, and help us." "And," said Luke, "concluding that God had called us for to preach the gospel unto them" (Acts 16:10), they set sail, arrived in Philippi, quite sure that the Lord had sent them there - and the next thing they knew was that they were in a dungeon with their feet fast in stocks and their backs bleeding after thorough lashing. Now what do you make of this? What are you going to do about it? It seems an absolute contradiction, and that a big mistake has been made. Are they saying: 'We have got into confusion over our guidance'? No! Not a bit. In that condition they are singing and praising God at midnight. The Lord of glory has the situation in hand, and that is proved before the morning. There is the earthquake, the prisoners are released, the jailer and his house saved and baptized, and the church in Philippi established. The jailor and his family were amongst the first members and I do not believe his family were infants! It says: "They spake the word of the Lord unto them", and you do not put a little innocent baby in a chair and preach the gospel to it, or teach it the things of Christ. They were intelligent and old enough to understand the teaching and preaching of Paul, and to accept it, so they were all baptized as responsible persons. They were amongst the first members of that church; and we have that beautiful Letter from Paul's own prison, written years afterwards, when he was in Rome. We would not sacrifice that Letter to the Philippians for anything, would we? It is very precious. There is the Lord of glory, you see. It is the Book of the Acts of the Holy Spirit, the acts of the Lord of glory, for He is in charge. I wish we could always believe that when we are in prisons, tied up, with things all against us, and we are having a difficult time! If we could always just say: 'The Lord is the Lord of glory. He has charge of this and the end is going to be glory'! Well, it works out that way, even though He has to say to us afterward: "O ye of little faith! Wherefore didst thou doubt?" Although we, under the trial, sometimes feel that there is nothing of glory in the situation, or in our condition, in the end He is faithful, and we find that glory is the end of His strange ways. He is the Lord of glory which means that He controls everything with glory in view.

THE SPIRIT OF GLORY

Peter calls the Holy Spirit "the Spirit of glory". Now the context is necessary as the background of that title of the Holy Spirit. If you read this first Letter of Peter's you will see that it is very largely about the sufferings of the Lord's people to whom he is writing. It says that he is writing "to the elect who are sojourners of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father". Then he opens up on this matter of the sufferings of these people: "Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial among you, which cometh upon you to prove you, as though a strange thing happened unto you."

There is a lot about the sufferings of the Lord's people in this Letter of Peter's, and when he has mentioned the sufferings there are two things that he links with them: first grace, and then glory, grace issuing in glory. It is very helpful to notice how Peter speaks of grace, but, unfortunately, in our translation there are places where the word is changed, and the word 'acceptable' is used. In chapter 2:19 and 20 we read: "For this is ACCEPTABLE, if for conscience toward God a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye sin, and are buffeted for it, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is ACCEPTABLE with God." But in putting this right we have something very rich: "For this is GRACE, if for conscience toward God a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye sin, and are buffeted for it, he shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is GRACE with God" (R.V. margin). Grace, then glory. In chapter 5:10 Peter says: "And the God of all grace, who called you unto his eternal glory in Christ, after that ye have suffered a little while, shall himself perfect, stablish, strengthen you." 'Through the suffering of this little while there will be grace sufficient to make us triumphant.' Grace triumphant in suffering, and that means glory.

We sometimes sing:

Jesus, Thy life is mine,
   Dwell evermore in me;
   And let me see
That nothing can untwine
Thy life from mine.

Thy fullest gift, O Lord,
   Now at Thy word I claim,
   Through Thy dear name,
And touch the rapturous chord
Of praise forth-poured.

That came from the bed of an invalid! It is something, is it not? Well, that is what Peter is talking about - the sufferings, the fiery trial, and then he says: 'Grace in that means glory.' The Spirit of glory.

The Lord help us! We can say these things, and I say them carefully, guardedly, for we can be so put to the test on things that we say. The Spirit of glory can take hold of the things which could destroy us, and could be our undoing if we had the wrong reaction to them, and turn them to glory. This suffering, this reaction, this trial can mean glory. Paul said: "And by reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelation - wherefore, that I should not be exalted overmuch, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, that I should not be exalted overmuch. Concerning this thing I besought the Lord thrice" (and when Paul sought the Lord you may take it that he did so very thoroughly, and when he did it three times you may be sure that Paul put himself right into it!). "And he hath said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee; for my power is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).

The Spirit of glory can take hold of our trials, and will do so, if we trust Him, and turn the dark things, the hard things, the painful things, into glory. That is, in those things He will lead us to find God's pleasure, God's satisfaction, God's 'Well done!', and what more glorious thing could we desire than that we should hear Him say: 'Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.'?

The Father of glory, the Lord of glory and the Spirit of glory. The Lord place this word in our hearts!

The End

Up next, The Gold of the Sanctuary

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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 you are free to use these writings as you are led, however we ask if you choose to share writings from this site with others, please offer them freely - free of changes, free of charge and free of copyright.

The Gold of the Sanctuary
by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 1 - The Supreme Importance Of The Incorruptible

I would like at the very outset to seek to put into two or three concise statements what I believe to be the Lord's object for this time.

In the first place, God is supremely concerned with ultimate and time-outlasting values. Then, He would have those values secured as directly and immediately as possible. Further, the effectiveness of a believer's life, and of the life of God's people together, is all a matter of the measure of intrinsic value; not of comparative or superficial, but of intrinsic value. And therefore, finally, it is a matter of primary importance that the Lord's people should recognise this and be committed to it. Now, probably these statements will take on significance as we move from chapter to chapter, and so it will be profitable if they are repeated from time to time; but I hope that the outstanding word in it has struck you - that you recognise that really what the Lord is after is intrinsic value, not comparative value, and that therefore He works with that object in view. Surely, if time is shortening, He will press that issue more and more closely.

Now will you turn with me to a passage of Scripture - 2 Timothy 1:8-10. We read this whole section because what we are after is included in it and is a part of it.

Be not ashamed therefore of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner: but suffer hardship with the gospel according to the power of God; Who saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal, but hath now been manifested by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, Who abolished death, and brought life and immortality (Incorruption, A.R.V. margin) to light through the Gospel.

The clause which we take out as the key to our present consideration is this - "Who abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to light", or, to cut that down still further - "life and incorruption".

The Great Issue Of Christ's Coming

This is a statement as to the grand issue of the coming into this world of the Lord Jesus; as to His life, His death, His resurrection. The one great issue here is stated to be the bringing to light of life and incorruption. That coming, that living, that dying, that being raised, had secured the substance of the Gospel, so the Apostle says here, and that Gospel brought to light that great issue. This whole great matter was brought to light by the Gospel. The issue of the preaching, of the proclaiming of the good news, was life and incorruption.

Logically, therefore, the conclusion is that, apart from that coming, that living, that dying, that rising, neither life nor incorruption would be known, nor would it be available. Some translations of the passage have the word "immortality" in place of "incorruption" - "life and immortality": an unfortunate translation for us, because "immortality" has taken on a much more general meaning in the minds of people than the word here allows. It is thought to mean continuance after physical death, survival after the life here; but, although the Bible teaches the survival of all after physical death, that all have to stand before the judgment seat after death, that is not what is meant by the word as it is used here and in several other places in the New Testament. The word here used is connected with several different things (if I may use that word 'things' for the moment).

In the first place it is used in connection with God. He is spoken of as "the incorruptible God" (Rom. 1:23). You would not put the word 'immortal' there in the place of "incorruptible", because you at once recognise that there is some element about incorruptibility that is more, and much more, than just eternal existence. He is the incorruptible God.

The word is used in connection with the Lord Jesus - "Neither wilt Thou give Thy Holy One to see corruption" (Acts 2:27). It was not possible that He should see corruption. The Lord Jesus had an incorruptible nature and life, and that meant that there was something there which conquered death. It was not just death suspended or put aside; there was some element that destroyed death. It was that incorruptible element.

The word is also used of the Blood of Christ. "Ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold... but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish" (1 Peter 1:18,19). You see, there is an element in incorruption that is extra.

It is also used of the glorified bodies of believers - "this corruptible must put on incorruption" (1 Cor. 15:53). That is related to glorification.

And once more it is used by the Apostle in relation to an incorruptible crown. "Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown" (1 Cor. 9:25). We know what that means - something that not merely fades and dies, but completely disintegrates, and becomes something very other than glorious. "But we an incorruptible" - the incorruptible crown means more than just survival, as of a flower that does not die, an everlasting flower. It is something with an extra element in it.

And that is the word that is used here: "Jesus Christ... abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel". It is the quality of the life, the inherent and intrinsic nature of the life that He has brought to light, that is the incorruptible thing. He ANULLED death, not just only non-existence, but destroying the essential nature of death which is corruption. Life and incorruption, in the way in which the Apostle links them here, are one thing. Incorruption is the nature of the life.

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Effectiveness Dependent Upon Incorruption

What we are concerned with, then, at this time and you will suffer this preliminary laying down of foundations, because it is a very important thing to do - what we are really concerned with now is the one supremely important thing of being incorruptible. The thing of supreme importance is incorruption. As Christ's concentrated effectiveness depended upon certain spiritual factors, so it will be with us, and the factors upon which that concentrated effectiveness depended were the factors or features of incorruption - those things in the background or constitution of His life which were incorruptible things. It was those that gave to His life its tremendous, its immense, meaning.

What a great amount of intrinsic value was found in three and a half years. That is not much in a lifetime, especially when you are looking back on life. But just consider again all that those three and a half years contained. It has not only taken two thousand years to touch the very fringe of it: it will take all the ages of the ages to exhaust the content of those three and a half years. It is an inexhaustible fullness. From the baptism to the glorification there was a concentrated fullness of value capable of filling eternity. Men through all the centuries have been drinking at the fountain of those three and a half years, and they are still drinking - all nations, all classes, all languages - and it is as full as ever. It is still more full than all that has been taken out of it. How pregnant were the values of that brief spell of life here! What a seed plot for the whole universe! How could it be that so much should come out of so little? How could it be that for ever and ever afterward there should be this flowing of the mighty river of inexhaustible Divine values?

That is the question, and that is the question to which, I believe, at least to some extent, the Lord would give us an answer here; and I say again, it was because during those three and a half years that life was constituted upon incorruptible principles, incorruptible elements. While Jesus was the Son of God, and thus fundamentally, infinitely, different from us as regards Godhead and Deity, the New Testament makes it unmistakably clear that the features of an incorruptible life are to be reproduced and to reappear in His people; not the features of Deity or Godhead, but these features of His life. Otherwise what is the meaning of this - that they are 'brought to light by the Gospel'? What is brought to light? Just certain facts? No. Certain values for us, which are to become ours and are to be true of us as of Him, the incorruptible values and features and characteristics of Jesus Christ as the Son of Man. And so we say again that concentration of effectiveness, of values, depended upon these incorruptible elements; and our effectiveness, our value, will correspond to the measure in which there are incorruptible values in our life. Therefore certain things follow.

Incorruption The Standard Measure Of Heaven

Firstly, the standard weights and measures of God, of Christ, of the Holy Spirit, of heaven, of eternity, are the one standard of incorruption; that is, everything is weighed and measured, from the Divine standpoint, from Heaven's standpoint, from Eternity's standpoint, according to its incorruptible characteristics. Have you grasped that? It is a tremendous statement, but it is a very true statement. Heaven has no other standard of values, God has no other standard of values, the Holy Spirit has no other standard of values, Eternity has no other standard of values. Everything is weighed and measured by its incorruptibility. Heaven takes this attitude - How much will reappear and abide throughout eternity? How much will come through when all else has gone? What will be found ultimately as glorified? That is heaven's standard; that is the law of the incorruptible.

The Standard Of Incorruption Applied To Our Lives

Therefore, again, we should judge everything of our lives and in our lives by its incorruptible nature and value. You have to sit down with that and think. Everything that makes up my life, everything in my life, brought to the bar of the incorruptible, i.e. that which can take on glory. How much will stand the test, how much will pass, how much of all that makes up my life will go when time goes, when I leave this world, when all that is here ceases where I am concerned? How much will go on and appear again with eternal glory? It is a very serious challenge; but that is how heaven is viewing things all the time, and that is what heaven is at work upon. All the dealings of the Lord with us are according to that law, that standard - to make very, very little of the corruptible, the passing, the transient, whatever it is, and to make everything of the incorruptible. What will be the proportion of the incorruptible to the corruptible resultant from our time here? I suggest that very few more solemn and serious questions could be asked or faced than that. Oh, how much there is that makes up life, that we are interested in, that we are dealing with, that we are accumulating, how much time, how much expenditure, how much worry, how much there is that is going and will show nothing afterward, will not stand, will not reappear! How much in all this and through all this is incorruptible? How much of it is being turned really to account for the incorruptible, or is just being spent on our corruptible?

I said that our first statement would take on significance when we began to look into this matter. God is primarily concerned with intrinsic value, and that is not with Him a comparative matter - it is an absolute matter. "The fire... shall prove each man's work of what sort it is" (1 Cor. 3:13), the Word says. That is a universal and an imperative dictum. "The fire shall..." - that is imperative - "prove each man's work" - that is universal; and I think, in the light of the New Testament, we would be right in adding 'the fire shall try every man', and not only his work. The fire shall try every man. Fire may mean many things. It may mean the personal fiery trials of which Peter speaks, the fiery trial trying faith, proving the gold. It may be the ordeal of the Church in persecution and suffering - and God knows how much more that may be, in the near future, than it has been in many parts of this world - the fiery ordeal for the Church. But whatever the fire may mean in its manifold application, it is that which puts things into the categories to which they belong. The fire puts the corruptible into the category of the corruptible, and makes it know that it is corruptible, that it belongs there: the fire declares it. The fire, on the other hand, puts the incorruptible into its category, and shows it has no power over that: that belongs to the incorruptible, and the fire has no power over it. It has defined its nature: either that it is of the perishable and the passing, or that it is of the imperishable and the permanent. The fire does that.

And do not let us think merely objectively. Are you in the fire now? Is the fire not at work in your life now - the fiery trial of testing, of adversity? How many words could define the work of the fire in us! Yes, it is a BURNING in our experience. We know already the individual ordeal of fire. What is the fire doing? Why the fire? For one thing only, under the hand and in the intent of God - to put things in their place, to make us think ever more lightly of the corruptible and to lay store by the incorruptible, to make the incorruptible the transcendent in our standard of values. The fire shall try every man and every man's work.

Therefore, again, this law of the incorruptible must be applied to everything. It must be applied firstly to ourselves. When we have lived our lives and have gone hence, what will go on as the substance of the incorruptible resultant from our having been here at all? - a universal question, though a difficult one. What will there be that defeats time, defeats decay, defeats death, defeats the whole realm of corruption, and appears again in glory for ever, as the outcome of our having been on this brief journey on the earth? We have to apply this question of the incorruptible to ourselves.

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Applied To Our Knowledge

What about all our Christian knowledge all the teaching we have had, all the truth we possess? We have to apply the question here. How much of that great store of teaching and truth, doctrine and knowledge, is producing the incorruptible in us, is going to appear again in eternity? We must test our conferences by this. We have been, perhaps, to many conferences, we have had a great deal of teaching by one means and another. Well what is the upshot of it all for eternity, when the fire tests our teaching, when the fire tests all our knowledge, perhaps in this life? A great deal of teaching has been given and now the fire is testing the incorruptible value of that teaching. What can survive and triumph over the fire? In all that we know, in our Christian profession, as we bear the name of Christ embodied in the title 'Christian', Christ's one, how much of that very profession is more than a profession? Is it a possession, an intrinsic value, incorruptible reality? All our Christian tradition handed down from our fathers, all that we inherit through the centuries of Christianity: how much of it now is of this particular quality, this essential value, this essence of Christ, and how much is just form, habit, an established and recognised and accepted thing? How much of it in our case is incorruptible? All our emotion, our excitability, our noisiness - is there behind it all that substantial element that will stand up against the fury of Satan, the hatred of hell?

As to ourselves, this matter of the incorruptible is a very pertinent thing, and, if I mistake not, this is going to be the kind of thing that will be pressed home by God to the nth degree at the end-time. If, therefore, we are in the end-time, and it is not easy to doubt that, such a word is of importance. If we were to turn aside to consider that matter, we should find that never before was there so much in the Scriptures that was never understood, even by its writers, which today is intelligible with a mere modicum of intelligence. The very language of Scripture which could not possibly have been understood at the time when it was written is as patent as anything can be patent today. - But that is an aside. We are unmistakably and undoubtedly at an end-time. Therefore God would gather His people, those who really mean business with Him, and He would begin to say, 'That is good, but there is something very much more than that: this is the thing that matters - the intrinsic value, the essential value'. He would put His finger upon the absolute essentials. How much of the very essence of Christ is wrought into us? That is the point.

Applied To Christian Work

This question of the incorruptible has to be applied, of course, to Christian work and works, and everything must be tested by it. It is all very well - size, appearance, seeming, immediate effects, the trappings and the means - but what about the essential, intrinsic value? God does not judge by the size of a thing as it appears, by the seeming of things, nor by the immediate effects produced by man's means and methods. God is looking through, His eyes are the eyes as of flame, and He looks right in to find the measure of the incorruptible that will not be gone in a week, a month, a year or a few years, but will go right on and appear again. He is looking for that.

There are two kinds of starting-points you know - man's and God's. Man usually starts with big frameworks, with a big plant, machinery, publicity, structures and so on. That is how man usually starts when he is going to do something for God. It is a propensity; it is our way. We may argue that God is worthy of something big. That is man's way. God's way is never like that - it never was. You search in vain to find any instance of God beginning like that. Pentecost came out of very deep and drastic dealings with twelve men. God's starting-point is always the intrinsic. God has always begun with life, with the inherent, with the potential. Man's beginnings usually end in only a small percentage of lasting value. God's beginnings always end in a very great percentage of lasting value. But God's beginnings seem so small, they appear so little. But so does a seed: it is a small thing, a little thing; yet look at the potentialities in one seed, one grain of wheat. It is the intrinsic with God. That is where God begins. That is why anything really of God has a long and hidden history of deep dealings on His part.

God's Secret Work

The thirty years of our Lord's hidden life had a great bearing on the three and a half. The forty years of Moses away back there in the desert, looking after those sheep of his father-in-law, had a great bearing upon the rest of his life. They were not lost, wasted, futile years. And so we could take up one after another - Abraham, David, and others, who had a long, deep, secret hidden history: it was out of that that the effectiveness came. Very often more is done, when God has been at work, in the last few years of a life than in all the years previously. That does not mean that all the previous years have been of no account, having no place. It means that God has been working to get intrinsic values, and now at last these values are coming out. Be careful, young people, that you do not write off older saints as back numbers. You may be violating the very principle of your own life - that of intrinsic value. But God have mercy upon an old man or an old woman who has no intrinsic values. As we get older, we ought to be the substance for the generation to follow. And God help the generation that follows that has not an inheritance of intrinsic value. No, let us be careful how we judge things. It must not be by time, but by the incorruptible.

Let me repeat that God begins with the intrinsic. His greatest things are the coming out of intrinsic values to make themselves known. Therefore He takes a lot of time and a lot of pains in secret history with that one object, and it may be that, though you may be thinking the years are going, and what does it all amount to? - soon life will be past, all over, and you have missed the way, and it has all been a problem, an enigma - it may be that in a few years an infinitude of spiritual value will come out of the time through which you are going, out of this which you think is lost time. Only adjust yourself to this, that God is not careful at all about our standards of values, either in time or in method or in any other way. What God is careful about is to have the inherent, the potential, the essential, the intrinsic. Lay that up in your hearts and cherish it and let it be a real governing factor with you. God works for depths, God works for solidity, God works for intensity: therefore He works through testing, through hiddenness, and with very, very little appeal to our natural pleasure. Incorruption is therefore a very testing thing, and may demand a complete adjustment of our whole mentality.

Having reached this point, we are committed to an enquiry into the nature of the incorruptible. If all the foregoing was true of the Lord Jesus, and if it is true that the Word of God teaches that, Deity and Godhead apart, what was true of Him in this way is to be reproduced in His own, then we want to know what were the incorruptible things that constituted such a life, and we shall go on to look at these, for it is in this way that we shall have the best explanation of what we have already been considering.

[Shammu]

Chapter 2 - The Incorruptible Characteristic Of Union with God As Father

Reading: 2 Timothy 1:8-10

We came in our last chapter to the point where we were found committed to investigate, to enquire, and seek to know, what were and what are the incorruptible characteristics of the life of the Lord Jesus, because the real value of life, the real value of work, of service, in the sight of God and heaven, will be on the same basis as was His.

Sometimes, in connection with our printing work, we have samples sent to us from different firms, and recently I had some samples of stocktaking sheets, which could be supplied with narrow or wide margins. While these were lying on my desk, they said something. Stocktaking with narrow or wide margins. What is in the margin? A wide margin of surplus, in the stocktaking, that does not stand for any value, and a small area of intrinsic worth, or a large area of the intrinsic and a very narrow margin of the worthless? For there is going to be a great stocktaking. Yes, we all have to go the way of the stocktaking of life and of work, and then there will arise the question of the width of the margin and what is in it. Of all that life has contained, of all that we have done and have had and have used, have expended or drawn in, how wide will be the margin of that which just did not matter or count in the light of heaven and eternity? That is a very serious matter, and it surely is a way of bringing us back very forcibly to this important consideration. God is after no margin at all, but the whole page filled with that which is of intrinsic value. God does not want to have to draw lines and say, 'On the one side of that line there is so much that is more or less good; on the other side no good at all'. He wants no lines, and if the Lord has His way - and, mark you, He does seek by every means to have His way in this connection - He will get as full a measure as we will let Him of real intrinsic value.

With this preliminary word, let us go on. We have said that the Lord Jesus is the great example of a life without any margin, a life reaching wholly to the edge, on every side, full of intrinsic value, and that such a life has an explanation. He, then, was the embodiment of the incorruptible. Life and incorruption were embodied in Jesus Christ in terms of Manhood, as Man. We are now leaving out of our consideration His Deity, His Godhead. It would not need to be discussed at all in this connection. Very God of very God leaves no room for discussion or argument concerning incorruption. But when it comes to man, it is another matter. And so we are concerned with Him on that side of His person and personality in which He is called the Son of Man. This whole question and issue of the incorruptible is therefore a human question. It is a matter which relates to and concerns man.

Man, or Man-hood, is a big and specific thought of God. The idea of Man, of Humanity, was born in the mind of God. He is a peculiar creation in the mind of God for a special purpose. The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews says "Not unto angels... But... What is man?" (Heb. 2:5,6). 'Not unto angels... but man'. This is not a matter, then, which concerns angels and it is certainly not a matter of abstract and unrelated ideas. There is a testimony which has to be found in the concrete expression of man and manhood. The Bible makes it perfectly clear from beginning to end that the idea connected with man or manhood is that of representation, representation of Divine thoughts. "In the image of God", in the likeness of God - that is representation, and that idea in relation to man runs right through the Bible. The question all the way through is - Does man, or does man not, fulfil the purpose of his being, which is to represent God, to express God?

Now, man was made for incorruption, for incorruptible life issuing eventually in his glorification. If that is not understood at once, just hold it for the present as a statement. Man was made for incorruptible life, so that at length he might be glorified, might be endowed with Divine glory. I am not going to argue that from Scripture; those of you who know your Bibles will at once be able to support the statement - those of you who do not, go and read your Bible! But man missed the purpose of his creation, he missed the incorruptible life by his disobedience and unbelief, by his rebellion against God, his self-will, his pride. He missed his incorruptible inheritance or heritage. He is no longer a candidate for glory in his natural condition. Glory is not possible for man as man is found outside of Christ. But Christ came, and in His coming fulfilled a work by which the destiny and purpose of man was recovered and secured. That is, in Christ incorruptible life is recovered and secured for man. Christ was a man who could not be corrupted, and, therefore, because He could not be corrupted, corruption was kept out of the very stream of His life. It was not possible that He should see corruption even in the grave. "He Whom God raised up saw no corruption" (Acts 13:37): that is the statement of Scripture. He was incorruptible in His life and therefore triumphant over corruption in His death. So Christ was constituted on incorruptible characteristics, and we are now going to ask what they were. In the ensuing pages we shall say something about the first of these incorruptible characteristics of Christ, which are to be reproduced in those who are in Christ by faith.

A Relationship Established By The Holy Spirit

The first, then, of these characteristics was His union with God as His Father - a simple statement, but oh, how much was in that union with God as His Father! We are aware how often He used that word 'Father', and how often He said 'My Father' and then 'the Father and I'. His enemies saw the point; they were not slow to pick on what they thought was heresy and blasphemy. 'He makes Himself equal with God' (John 5:18). That union between Him and the Father was of such a kind that their relationship was absolute and final. That relationship was established by the Holy Spirit. I am speaking now of Christ as Son of Man. The relationship between Him as Son of Man and God as His Father was established by the Holy Spirit. In His birth He was begotten of the Holy Ghost. In His work He received through anointing the Holy Spirit. In His walk, it was ever in and by the Spirit. In His Cross, He offered Himself up by the eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9:14); and we can complete the circle by saying that it was through that eternal Spirit that He was raised. The Holy Spirit initiated, maintained, and consummated that relationship with the Father. That union with the Father was the governing thing of His whole life. At every point, at all times, He referred and deferred to God as His Father. All His works were out from the Father. "The Father abiding in Me doeth His works" (John 14:10). His words were out from the Father. "The word which ye hear is not Mine, but the Father's Who sent Me" (John 14:24). You are well aware of that. Everything for Him was out from the Father, by way of this union, this oneness, and this was the very occasion of all the conflict in His life. It was the very point of all the attack and assault of the enemy. The one thing that the Evil One and all the evil powers were ever focusing upon was this oneness and fellowship with the Father, in order to try somehow to drive in a wedge, to get that relationship ruptured. That was the point of the attack all the time, and that is very significant. If an enemy concentrates all his attention and all his resources upon any one point, it is clear that he regards that as the point upon which the whole thing will collapse, everything is gathered up in that one point of concentrated attention; and it did not matter which method the enemy used of the many ways which he did use - whether open antagonism or friendly suggestion or subtle subterfuge or bribery or any other means - that is the point. 'If only I can get between these two somehow, the Father and the Son!' I say again, that was tremendously significant.

The Relationship The Explanation Of Suffering

That union, then, that relationship, was the explanation of all His sufferings and His testings - indeed, of the whole ordeal of His life. Would He, on any consideration, with wonderful offers, bribes or threats, or the presentation of a dark shadow of suffering, the awful anguish of the Cross; would He, on any consideration, let go, violate, the principles of that union? - and to maintain it, to preserve it, to adhere to it, was no small, light thing for Him. For that one thing, the most terrible cost that ever a man has paid in the history of this universe was paid: the cost of that dark moment of the Cross when everything seemed to have gone out of His universe. There was not one glimmer of light even from the Father's face while He was under that test. Yes, this was a costly thing, because there was something involved in it. There must have been some very great issue involved in this union. There was nothing superficial about this. It must have been something unspeakably great that was bound up with it. What was it?

[Shammu]

Providing God With A Place

It can be answered in one brief sentence. Primarily, it was the issue of providing God with a place. Go back to the first man. God created that man in order that He might have a place in that man and in all his seed; and not just a place, but THE place. In a sense God's place had been taken from Him. God had been rejected and put out of His place with man. He still remained sovereign Creator, of course. He still remained Ruler and Lord, the original Owner, but there was a difference. Let us look at it like this. Pardon the descent to such a low level to try to illustrate such infinite and holy things.

Here is a landlord. He builds a house and he is the owner of that house. In kindness and friendliness he lets that house to some people, and to begin with the relationship is quite a happy one, so happy that he is able to visit that house and is welcomed and has a place in the family; they are always glad to see him. But someone comes along while he is not there and begins to say things about him that are unworthy and that are scandalous, begins to defame him, to insinuate motives, make suggestions, with a view to getting him out of his place in that home and that family, and this evil one succeeds so well that no longer has he a place in the heart of that family. He is still the landlord, the rightful owner, and all the law is on his side, but there is a difference between being a landlord and having the law on your side, and the thing being yours and having a place in the heart of the family. That is what I mean. God lost His place. He is still sovereign Owner of this universe, He is still Lord, and one day He will assert His legal rights over His creation. But do you think that is good enough? Within His creation He wants to have a place.

There is all the difference between sovereignty and fellowship. The union between Christ and His Father was not the relationship of a sovereign and a subject. He did not live that life and do that work under the sovereign government of God. God was not just acting sovereignly in the case of this Man - doing His own will, asserting His own rights, claiming His own place, demanding His own recognition and carrying through His own programme in a sovereign way. No, it was all on a very different footing from that. It was fellowship. God can do a lot of things with us and through us and by means of us in a sovereign way, but that is never, never good enough for God. He wants us in fellowship, He wants a place, not as sovereign and as despot, but as Father - FATHER. That is the significance of the word on the lips of the Lord Jesus. He taught them to pray, "Father". The significance, then, of the relationship between Christ and God as His Father was that God had a place, a place in the heart of a Man.

Now the whole Bible is occupied with that one concern; that is the issue arising all the way through. God is seeking to have a place in the heart of man - somewhere where He has a place, not just as sovereign Creator, but in terms of fellowship, in terms of love, in terms of delight to have Him. The Old Testament is full of that in type and illustration. He seeks some place for His Name, where His Name is loved, some place where He can meet men on the ground of fellowship and love. The New Testament brings that out into bold relief. Its beginnings contain links between the Old and the New. Christ, as Son of Man, is the inclusive Link. Here again is the law of incorruptibility. There is that which will go through to eternity, there is something there that Satan cannot destroy, there is something there that death cannot annul, there is something there that is so precious to God that it will appear again for ever. When all that is capable of corruption has gone, the love relationship as between Christ and His Father will abide. Oh, what a difference between this and much of the relationship with God that exists in general.

This, of course, is clearly seen to be the idea of the New Testament as to the INDIVIDUAL. What is God after with us? It is just that - to have a place in our hearts, on the basis of love and of fellowship. "My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him" (John 14:23). "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). That, too, is the idea concerning the NUCLEUS - that they, little companies of two or three, should give Him a place. "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I" (Matt. 18:20), and "I come unto you" (John 14:18). And it is the New Testament idea of the whole CHURCH. What does the Church mean in the Divine thought? Just a place for God in love relationship, in joyous relationship, in perfect fellowship. That is the idea of the Church.

So then, if Christ meant anything, He signified the coming of God into this world in terms of fellowship. And this is an eternal issue. If we could project ourselves into the ages of ages, the eternal hereafter, and see the nature of things, the very nature of things, as it will be then, we should find it was just this: a perfect harmony between God and man, so harmonious that it is all music, there is no discord, there is no strain, there is no shadow, there is no suspicion, there is no prejudice, there is no fear. All those things have gone, with the corruptible; the incorruptible remains; and in this first instance the incorruptible is this - fellowship with God. It is this KIND of relationship. It is an ETERNAL issue. I underline 'eternal' because that is only another word for the incorruptible.

The Test Of Everything

Therefore, the test of everything with us will be: How much of God really came in by our having been here? That is a fairly thorough-going test. It may sound very exacting, but it is just this - how much of God came in by your and my having been here? How much, afterward, will it be possible for others to say, 'Well, through that life I came to know God, I came to fellowship with God, to enjoy more of Him'?

Yes, that is testing and that is discriminating. The test of everything, of all our teaching, is, how much of it results in more of God - not more of knowledge, not more of mental apprehension, but how much more of God. Two of us were talking one day. We were talking about certain men of God of the past, and their life-work and teaching, and at the end this is what we agreed - that, although there were those things in their teaching which we did not feel able to accept, they themselves have left us a heritage, they have given us a deposit of God, there is something of the Lord that has come through them to us; and THAT is the thing which marks their life for us. It is not that they were great teachers, not that they were great organisers of Christian work, not that they were great missionary statesmen, but that somehow they have passed to us a deposit of God; God has come through them to the enrichment and enlargement of our lives.

That is the test of everything. For me, at least, it is a terrible test - one that I wonder whether I can face. Is it going to be like that - that after all the speaking, after all the teaching, there is a heritage of the Lord Himself left behind? Teaching, truth; the truth of the Church, the teaching of the House of God - all very well in themselves; but oh, let us be careful of any of these things AS SUCH, of putting the emphasis upon the TRUTH of the thing, the TRUTH of the House of God, the TRUTH of this, that and the other! Beware of your emphasis. The emphasis is - what is the House of God for, how does it work out, what is the issue of all the teaching about it? The issue is this - that God comes in. His place is provided, He is there. We may have meetings, and all the rest of the paraphernalia of Christianity, but if it does not issue in this, that the people concerned have more of the Lord Himself, then the whole thing is futile. Yes, with all our exact technique, and the rest - if the Lord is not found there, it is meaningless, it is valueless. All must be related to this one issue - God having a place, and God being there, and God being there without a margin, right to the edge. That is the incorruptible element.

That is what the Apostle says in the passage that we read. "Be not ashamed... of the testimony of our Lord." The testimony of our Lord - what is it? "Who annulled death, and brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel." The testimony of our Lord is His incorruptible life. The testimony of His life, the testimony in His death, of His resurrection - the "testimony of our Lord" is found in that word 'incorruption'.

We have been considering the first of the incorruptible characteristics of the life of the Lord Jesus, which must be reproduced in us. Our conferences will go, our meetings will go, the whole set-up will go, and what will remain will be the measure in which the Lord has come in, the Lord has found an abiding place, the Lord is there intrinsically. That will be the issue. One thing about heaven and about eternity will be that the Lord is there and the Lord fills everything; there is no room for anything else. That was the life of Jesus. He provided a place for God, and there was no other place in His life for anything else at all. Oh, that we might come to that! It will be that, may I say again, which will determine the measure of the permanent, the eternal, the intrinsic value of our lives and of everything - how much there is of the Lord.

[Shammu]

Chapter 3 - The 'Plus' And 'Other' Of Heaven

Reading: 2 Timothy 1:8-10

The incorruptible characteristic of the life of the Lord Jesus upon which we shall dwell just now - all too insufficiently, I am afraid - is what I will call the 'plus' and 'other' of heaven. That is rather an awkward phrase, I know, but you will understand it better as I go on: the 'plus', or extra, and 'other', of heaven.

You have no doubt been impressed, as you have read the Gospels, with the frequency with which the word 'heaven' was on the lips of the Lord Jesus. It occurred, so far as I can see, nearly one hundred times, and when one word is so frequently on anyone's lips you are not left in very much doubt as to their main preoccupation. When we go abroad, and meet people there who are from our own land, we find that they are always eager and anxious to talk about 'the Old Country', and either that phrase, or else the name of the country, is continually on their lips as they meet us and we are in conversation. So it was with the Lord Jesus here. He was always talking about what to Him was the 'Old Country': He was always referring to heaven. You look it up again, and get a fresh impression, from His constant reference to heaven and His relationship thereto.

This, in Christ's case, indicated three things, or three aspects of one thing.

The Background

Firstly, there was His own personal background. The background against which He lived and moved was heaven. That was always in His consciousness. Secondly, there was His 'extra' to this life and this world. It was something which to Him was a great 'plus' to life, a great extra to everything here. Thirdly, to Him it was a great and wonderful difference. There were these things, then, about Jesus as Son of Man, so that when you met Him, met Him, so to speak, on the surface, face to face, as a man, it was just impossible to feel that you had met everything, that that was all. There are some people whom you meet - and that is all. You meet them, you perhaps have an interchange with them, pass the time of day or have a few words with them, and then you part, and that is all. They came and they went, and there was no more to it than that. It was never so with the Lord Jesus. If you had met Him, you would have immediately met something more than the ordinary, but you would also be left with the consciousness - 'That is not all; there is something very much more there than I have touched or seen. He implies a vast amount more than I have been able to recognise or grasp. The impression that is left with me is that that is not all, there is something more than that. That man has a lot more behind Him than is on the face of things.'

That is very simple, but that helps us toward this whole matter of the incorruptible. Suppose, instead of waiting till later on, we begin to make our application at once - because that was the thing, that was the incorruptible thing about Him, the undying thing, the thing that would abide - the fact that He did not put all His goods in the shop window, so to speak; it was not all there so that you could comprehend it all at once, and that was all there was to it. You were conscious of something there of a vast and profound fullness and depth, and that left a mighty impress. And let me say at once - If that is not true of you and me and of the Church of God, then we are sadly lacking in the material of the incorruptible.

Let me apply that here. Suppose we are a company of Christians and we are moving about the same world as the Lord Jesus - with, of course, many changes; but it is the same world, and people are more or less the same in all generations. When people meet you and meet me, when people come into the midst of us as companies of the Lord's people, what is left afterward? Can we move amongst them, can they come into touch with us, can we touch them in this world, and then part, and that is all there is to it - that is the beginning, and that is the end? 'He has gone - well, a nice fellow, a nice woman, a nice girl' - superficial impressions, judgments formed, and then fading and passing away - nothing more than that? Oh, no; that is not the incorruptible, the eternal, the abiding, the thing that will appear again in glory for ever. Not at all. That was not so with the Lord Jesus, and it must not be so with us. It must really be that when we have gone this way and touched lives, moved through this earth and gone our way, there is something left which is the plus of our lives which will abide for ever. People have to say, 'There is something more in them than was just on the face of them'.

Do you feel that is too simple? But oh, how it applies to everything! How concerned about this matter we must be, as to what we leave when we have made a contact, what the impression is. It may not be that they can define it, it may not be that they even sit down to think about it, but somehow or other they are aware, whether they take thoughtful account of it or not, that 'having met him and having met her, I have not met everything, there is something more there'. And it is just that something more that is the ground of the Lord's activity in lives. He knows where there are people who are looking for something more than this world can give, something more than they have. They are disappointed, they are hungry; or they may have been peculiarly in the Lord's thought to be brought into something more for a specific purpose, a chosen vessel unto Him to bear His Name. The Lord knows where that Saul of Tarsus is, where that Ethiopian eunuch is, where that Cornelius is, marked out and recognised, and hungry deep down for something more. And where is something more to be found? The Lord must have it available - He must have it in a Philip. He must have it in a Peter, in an Ananias; He must have it in you and in me: that is, the incorruptible, the immortal, the eternal factor: so that there is a point of contact made between heaven and lives by means of this heavenly background and heavenly place in you and in me.

That is the principle of service. You think of the work of the Lord, the service of the Lord, as giving up business and coming out and taking a course of Bible study and then going out preaching. That is not what the Lord thinks about it at all. What He thinks about is - Where can I find something which is an extra, a real extra, a mighty extra, that I can use as the ground of bringing about contacts, touching lives? That is 'evangelization', that is 'the extension of the Kingdom', if you like to use those phrases. It is that something is there to which the Lord can bring as the point of His contact.

You can test that. So often it is not what we say at all. We try to persuade, we try to argue, we try to urge, we try to bring about issues in other lives - and we are missing the way all the time. The real upshot rests upon this - Was there something more than our argument, something more than our effort, something more than our persuasiveness? - so that if something happens, those in whom it happens will afterwards say, 'It was not your argument, it was not the way you put things, and it was not even your earnestness. There was something about YOU; you have got something, and that found me out.' Unless that is there, we seek to persuade and argue in vain. That is the incorruptible thing. The Lord Jesus had a background, something behind Him, and men knew when they met Him that that was not all. Now you and I are moving about and we are contacting people all the time; and what is the impression? You see how important it is for us to have this plus of heaven.

[Shammu]

The Extra

Then not only was there something more behind Christ, but it was to Him an extra world - an extra world of resources that He could draw upon, an extra world of knowledge that was available to Him, an extra world of relationships, heavenly relationships: with the Father, with the Spirit - yes, and with other intelligences, celestial intelligences; an extra world, another world of relationships. What a big world He had behind Him to draw upon in this life down here, in its vicissitudes, its difficulties, its trials, its adversities, when He was alone and no one could help Him. Even those who would want to seek to help Him could not. He was alone here. Without the resources of this world, He had another world to draw upon, a wonderful other world of resource.

And what is the incorruptible world? It is that which gives the real value to our life here, which says that this is not all. The knowledge that we possess and the knowledge that this world possesses which is available to us comes to a point where it can no longer help us. Have we something beyond that? Is there a realm of knowledge which is altogether beyond and above this world's knowledge at its greatest and our knowledge at its fullest? When we have exhausted things here, we are only beginning with the resources of heaven. That is no exaggeration; for, after all, most of us, as the Lord's people, know in experience something about this, if it has not been put that way in our minds: we are after all living out from and drawing upon another extra, plus world. When we pray, we do that; whenever we go to the Lord, we are doing that, we are drawing out from a realm which is more than this one.

Oh, how much more real that must be to us and in our consciousness! 'Here I have come to an end of my resources, here I am right up in a corner, here I am, not knowing, so far as this world is concerned, which way to turn: I am at a standstill, a deadlock, an IMPASSE; but I have another world to draw upon, a very real world, and that other world can come right into my situation.' And it is just as we are living out from heaven, out from our extra, our plus, world, that things will partake of the character of the eternal, and that into this life will come the imperishable: so that there is something in that solved problem, that overcome difficulty, which is not just the result of human ingenuity, but of Divine intervention and undertaking. That is the incorruptible, and God is always seeking to have it like that. Perhaps that is why He allows the problems and the IMPASSES, to make us know that this is not all. There is another world of resource, all so infinitely in advance of what is here.

[Shammu]

The Difference

Once more, not only a background, and an extra, but a difference. Looking at the Lord Jesus, speaking as men speak, we could say that that Man was governed by different standards, by different conceptions, by different ideas, from anything here. He did not act just as people usually act here. His conduct was different from the usual conduct of people, from the established and accepted order of things, of how it is done, and how people think it ought to be done and all that kind of thing. No; He did not belong to that realm at all, He seemed to have entirely different standards and different ideas and different conceptions. He could not be involved in our system of ideas and procedure and conduct at all. He just would not allow Himself to be roped into our order. He had another world with an altogether different set of conceptions, and He acted according to them and was governed by them, and that made Him so strange amongst us. We thought the way was THIS - this is the ordinary way, the usual way, the accepted way; but He did not do it our way at all. He had a strange way of doing things.

Now that word 'strange' means 'not just as we do things'. You can of course use it in another sense. We sometimes talk about people and say, 'A strange person', meaning that they are a little mentally out of order. But the Lord Jesus was strange in the sense that He was a foreigner to this set-up, to this whole order of things. He belonged to another world, and He had that other world's conceptions. There was a great difference about Him. They just could not keep Him in, they just could not make Him conform, they just could not understand Him at all.

Well, it was those very heavenly standards and conceptions and ideas which were the incorruptible things. This world's ways of going on - what do they lead to? They lead to corruption. At their fullest, highest, greatest, they lead to corruption. Never, never was that more apparent than in our own day. The greatest development of human ideas and ingenuity is leading to the greatest development of corruption. In every realm, corruption. Men are talking very freely now, men who know best - talking almost with bated breath, yet talking quite a lot, of the end of the human race now within sight. Well, that is the end of human ingenuity, of this world's wisdom - corruption.

HIS ideas did not work out that way. You and I - we have come to know something of the Lord, something of the Lord's standards, the Lord's conception of heavenly things, and we know quite well that this is not corruption, this is life and incorruption. We know it, do we not? We are rejoicing in something because we have come to know the Lord; but what have we come to know? Something from outside of this world altogether, something different.

Now let us apply this. Let us be very careful that we do not just seek to be all of a piece with men here, all in tune with them, all in step with this world, just falling into line and being one. If we do, we forfeit the very essential of our heavenly birth and our heavenly relationship, which is this something so other and so different. Paul is saying here to Timothy, "Be not ashamed therefore of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but suffer hardship with the gospel according to the power of God". Why this "be not ashamed"? Oh, for shame, we try to be on good terms with the world, we are ashamed to be otherwise, we think we will lose prestige, we think we will lose influence if we do not just come into line and be hail-fellow-well-met with everybody. What a deception! We simply throw overboard the very values of our Christian life when we do anything like that. See how it worked out in the case of the Lord Jesus. This other - well, it worked out and resulted in contacts, yes, but without connections. Can you make that discrimination - contacts without connections? Oh, He was in contact with people, He was in contact with things, He was moving amongst them, meeting them, yes very definitely in contact, but there was no connection. He was not all of a piece. Associations - yes, He associated Himself - a marriage, a funeral, a feast, and the rest, but no compromise or acquiescence. A gap was always kept between association and compromise or acquiescence. It was not kept formally, it was not kept in a kind of strain or pretension - You belong there and I belong here, you keep on your ground and I am keeping on mine. That may not be said in word, but so many people, I am afraid, give the impression. It was something spiritual. He associated, it was a charge laid against Him, that He was a friend of publicans and sinners (Matt. 11:19), but He was not a publican nor a sinner. Association, but no compromise, no letting down, no letting go, no acquiescence, no acceptance of what was there. It was that relationship with heaven, that extra, and that other which kept Him incorruptible. He was the incorruptible One in it all. It was all summed up in one precise phrase of His - "I am not of this world" (John 8:23).

There never was another who so filled his time seeing to things, carrying the burden of other people's lives, no, never anyone else whose life was so full of things in relation to other people's interests, but at the same time so marked by a detachment. There was something there that made Him different, that still made Him a kind of outsider, and everybody knew it. That is a very important thing. The Christian life in the New Testament is clearly shown to be heavenly in every respect, heavenly in birth, born from above, heavenly in sustenance, sustenance from above, heavenly in consummation, in translation or rapture, yes heavenly in vocation, a heavenly calling, everything heavenly makes up the Christian life according to the Word of God. The Holy Spirit coming down from heaven has not come just to make us successful in this world, not just to prosper our ventures here, nor to be used by us to realise the thing in which we are interested and to further those plans of ours. He has not come down from heaven for anything like that. He has come down to reconstitute us as heavenly people, and then translate us to heaven. That is His whole work, the reconstituting of our whole being according to heaven's ideas. That is what He is getting at if we understood the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, which is only the work of God in our lives, His dealings with us, His ways with us, if we understood the ways and the workings of the Spirit we should see that what He is after is not to make us something here at all, not to make a lot of this life, but to get us to turn everything to heavenly account, to make us according to heaven's pattern. He is after the incorruptible. All this other will go.

That is a very simple word, but let us follow it through again. We must ask ourselves this question continually - When I have been met or when I have met others, when I have gone through this world, in my business, my social, my domestic contacts, in my religious activities, I have come and I have gone, is that all, is that all there is to it? That is that! Is it? In the deepest consciousness of others, whether they will admit it or not, whether they try to explain it or not, whether they can define it or not, deep in their consciousness they know somewhere remotely at the back of their mind - 'I did not meet everything when I met them, there is something more there than I am wholly aware of, there is something more, and it is that something more that is the thing in their life, that accounts for them, and that something more is something not of this world. You do not get that sort of thing here, you do not get that sort of thing in the ordinary run of men and women and there is something different about them'. That is the testimony of the incorruptible. That is the first challenge to us. Let us ask the Lord very much about that and about everything. It must be like that. In our teaching, in our meetings, our whole Christian procedure, there is something extra and something different, the incorruptible, that has been brought to light through the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Who annulled death, and brought life and incorruption to light.