Books by T. Austin-Sparks

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Chapter 4 - The Nature And Reality Of Spiritual Energy

In our previous meditation, we were speaking about the extra world of resource which the Lord had at His service, at His command, with which He was in communication and from which He was drawing. Everything for Him was from above that is, out from heaven. We are now going to consider a further element in His unseen reserve and resource, namely, the nature and reality of the spiritual energy that resulted in His activity and movement. That is something about which you and I will have to learn a great deal, if there is going to be anything commensurate with His life as the result of our own activities here on this earth.

The Purposefulness Of Christ

No one can read the Gospels without being greatly impressed with the purposefulness of Christ. It characterized Him from His youth, or even childhood. At the age of twelve, it was one thing which came out pre-eminently in the, shall we call it, altercation that took place between Him and His parents, when they had been to Jerusalem and had returned, not found Him amongst them, and gone back seeking Him for three days. In all their anxiety and concern He just quietly explained it all. "Knew ye not that I must be in My Father's house?" (Luke 2:49) - with the emphasis upon the 'must'. 'I just must, I am governed, I am controlled, I am under the mighty persuasion and girding of a heavenly thing, a heavenly relationship.' And how often afterwards, when He had taken up His life-work from the Jordan days, that word came from His lips. "We must work the works of Him That sent Me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work" (John 9:4). "Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring" (John 10:16). You see this tremendous imperative in His life of purposefulness, leading to so much of vital activity and involving or expressing such a tremendous energy.

Whilst I was reading in this connection, I naturally turned to the Gospel by Mark, and I thought that I might perhaps be able to put down on paper His movements in the first few chapters of that Gospel. But I found that by the time I reached the end of the fourth chapter, it was necessary to give it up. You just look at the movement - quick, rapid, incisive movement. 'Straightway He...', 'straightway He was...', and on from place to place. It is a picture of continuous activity and constant movement, from place to place, here and there, this and that; a life just crowded and crammed, the working out of some tremendous energy that was in Him. That was His life.

And when you move to the Book of the Acts, it is impossible not to recognise that same energy in the apostles and in the Church. It is a book of continual goings, of tremendous energies, of vital activities. It is the Spirit of God in action. And when you move still further, into the Letters of the New Testament, you find this same thing; but now it is carried into the spiritual life of the Church, the spiritual life of believers, and the constant urge is to go on, go on - "let us go on". It is the spirit of movement, of progress, of advance. It is the expression of the mighty energies of the Spirit, the goings of the Spirit of God in the Church and in believers.

Surely this is a true fulfilment of Ezekiel's vision of the cherubim, and the wheels, and the Spirit in the wheels, going straight forward, turning neither to the right nor to the left, but going. "The Spirit... was in the wheels", and they were going straight forward. And again, it seems to be so much the counterpart of what we have in the Book of Numbers. There, as you know, the Spirit is in charge, in the symbol of the cloud. When the cloud rises and moves, the tabernacle has to be taken down and moved, because the Spirit is on the move. The Spirit stops, and the tabernacle is set up - but only for a time; presently the Spirit rises and goes on, and the same thing is repeated - all under this forward movement of the Spirit, this going. The tabernacle, as you know, is that which sets forth the whole heavenly Person of Christ, Christ from every standpoint, and here it is the matter of all things concerning Christ being in the hands of the Holy Spirit, and constantly projected forward. It is the fulfilment of His own words in John 16:13, that "the Spirit... shall guide you into all the truth". All the truth; ever on. Christ is the fullness, the whole heavenly revelation, and the Spirit is here to bring the Church ever on. There may be a pause, for a purpose; but the pause, when the purpose is accomplished, is terminated, and on we go again.

My point is to indicate the tremendous energy that there is related to God's purpose as embodied in the Lord Jesus. Perhaps we have in the past put too much emphasis upon the negative side of this. So often we have quoted the words of the Lord, "I can of Myself do nothing" (John 5:30), "The Son can do nothing of Himself" (John 5:19), and similar passages of Scripture which indicate the negative side, the impossible side, the side of limitation. I say, perhaps we have put too much emphasis on that. It is a most impressive thing that the Lord who said that - "I can of Myself do nothing", "The Son can do nothing of Himself", "The words that I speak unto you, I speak not from Myself: the Father abiding in Me doeth His works" (John 14:10) - the Lord who said all that was the most active and energetic person that has ever been on this earth: His was a life more crowded with movement - I mean movement to effect, movement with an issue, movement with values of eternal character - a life more crowded with that kind of thing than any other life has ever been.

Perhaps therefore we should pass over to the positive side; but, as we do so, we must understand that this is not just bare activity, this is not merely energy, this is not a restless, feverish drive. There is a NATURE here, and it is that nature of things, of the energy and of the movements, which contains the quality of the result. There have been, and there are, many full lives, tremendously active lives, but again we come back to our great test of everything - how much is of the incorruptible character which will appear again, and what proportion of it all will be there in glory for ever? That is the test; that is the question. My point is not just to say that the Lord Jesus had a very busy life, that He was always on the move. My point is to say that there was something in it which was not just the movement of a very energetic person; there was something very much more about it than that.

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The Goings Of God

In the first place, these goings were the goings of God. They were not goings initiated by man. These goings were not of the planning of man; these movements were not promoted by man. They were the goings of God, and the Lord made it perfectly clear that, with all that He was doing, He was getting it from above, it was what the Father was doing that He did, and He did nothing other than that. It came from above. All the plan, all the purpose, all the activity, every work, and the time of every work, was given Him through the eternal Spirit from above: that is why it is all eternal, that is why it was so full of potentiality, and all so tremendous in its effectiveness.

We can, of course, easily test that. We know quite well that that is not true of a great mass of energetic activity, even in Christianity. The percentage of the really eternal, incorruptible value is very small in all our work for the Lord. What the Lord is wanting to say to us at this time is this: that He wants the maximum of the intrinsic, the maximum of the eternal, the maximum of that which will not pass when its vessels pass, when those used have left the scene; that which will be established for all time, appearing again and again in the spiritual life of His people, and appearing in glory as the substance of that whole Kingdom which is to be. The maximum of the intrinsic value - if it is to be like that, as it was with our Lord, it must be on this wise, that the goings are the goings of God.

But let me say again that the goings of God are really very, very much in action. I think some people imagine that a life in the Spirit is a life which is very passive, with much waiting and doing nothing. Perhaps we have to adjust ourselves about this. There are times when the Lord keeps us out of action - as we call actions - but there are another lot of actions going on in us. There are times when it seems, outwardly, that we are not being allowed to fulfil any great purpose, but the Lord is doing something which is very vital to His purpose. His goings are in operation all the same. A life in the Spirit is never a passive life, never a quiescent life, never a life without movement. If ever, inwardly or outwardly, you come to the place where there really is nothing doing, you may take it that you have got out of the way of the Lord. There is always something doing provided the Holy Spirit is in charge. You must not put your judgment upon it and say that there is nothing doing. God is at work IF we are under the government of the Holy Spirit; there is no doubt about it. We must always keep on the positive side of this, and not think that a spiritual life is a life without purpose or action. It is nothing of the kind. We will come back to that again presently. The goings are the goings of God: they must be so if the values are to be eternal values; and the value, the eternal value, will be in proportion to our oneness with God in His goings, not our own.

The Direction Of God

Then the directions are the directions of God. God has never yet asked any man to make a plan for Him - never! You will never find anywhere that God says, 'Please plan My work for Me, please arrange things for Me, please provide Me with a schedule'. God has never done that. God keeps the plan in His own hands. God designs everything; and mark you, again, the measure of real value from heaven's standpoint will be the measure in which we are moving in God's plan, not in our own, in the way in which God has predetermined He should fulfil His purposes.

The Energy Of God

Not only the goings, and not only the directions, must be of God, but the energy must be the energy of God. That is the pivot of our present consideration. It is the energy of God, and this also makes a big and very deep discrimination. Our energies, as such, will never accomplish anything eternal. Let us settle that. We start on that side, and come to the other side in a moment. Our driving force, our strength of will, our strong-mindedness, our determination, our forcefulness, in itself, will get nowhere in eternal things. We admire people who overcome many difficulties, who accomplish great things, and especially who overcome the handicaps of human life, by sheer force of will. Yes, that is heroism, in its own realm to be admired, but never let us think that we are going to accomplish anything of eternal, heavenly value by force of will, by our own energy of mind, soul or body. Not at all! The Lord Jesus had tremendous energy, but He drew it all from above. It was all the energy of the Holy Spirit by whom He was anointed, and that is borne out overwhelmingly by the whole teaching of the New Testament.

Saul, the persecutor, was a man of tremendous will. The driving force of that man was terrific. He was a dynamic force amongst men, and what Saul of Tarsus determined no one would withstand but God. He was a man like that. But what does Paul say about himself, and what did Paul have to learn all through his life? This very thing - "I can do nothing of myself". He came to the point, to the wonderful height of spiritual attainment, where he said, "I will not glory, save in my weaknesses" (2 Cor. 12:5). "Most gladly... will I... glory in my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may tabernacle upon me" (2 Cor. 12:9). That is rising very high. It was one of his life lessons, that, with all his natural drive and force, power of will, of mind, nothing was accomplished in that way, by that means. It had to be something coming down like a tent and then enfolding, enwrapping him, so that he was moving within the sphere of another mighty energy that he called "the power of Christ". He spoke of himself as being insufficient, wholly insufficient, for these things; he cried, "Who is sufficient...?" (2 Cor. 2:16). And he answered, "Our sufficiency is from God; Who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant" (2 Cor. 3:5,6).

The real effectiveness of that man's life, which was by no means a passive or negative life, came from heaven. It was not because Paul was such a forceful man, with such a tremendous will - so energetic that he could never stop going. No. He put it all down to one thing, when he summed it up like this: "according to the power that worketh in us" (Eph. 3:20). Here is another energy which is responsible for all things. There were certainly many times in the life of Paul, as no doubt also in the life of the Lord Jesus, when he could not have gone on, when he would have just had to give up in sheer exhaustion, under a "sentence of death". But how many times did this servant of God rise and go on when it was humanly impossible! The energy is the energy of God, not the driving force of man.

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The Impact Of God

And yet once more the impact of these lives and of all this activity was the impact of heaven, the registration of heaven. We make a mistake when we attribute things to the natural side of servants of God. When we attribute anything to what Paul was himself, we make a big mistake. Men have got into the habit of talking about Paul's wonderful powers of intellect, of Paul's wonderful powers of recuperation, of Paul's wonderful powers of survival and continuance. Paul may have had a wonderful brain, but that wonderful brain did not produce the revelation that we have got through him. The Lord may have had a very useful channel and vessel, but the knowledge, the revelation, was not there until the Lord put it there that is, it was all from heaven. All this purpose, execution, realisation, impact, effectiveness, is because of some incorruptible resource, because there is that 'plus' of energy to draw upon. Thank God for that inexhaustible fountain of spiritual energy! It is a very great reality. You and I need to learn what we have, in the way of resources in Christ, for DOING, for accomplishing and for finishing.

A Practical Life

Now we must come to this very important point. While this is all from God - and it IS all from God, the work and the works, the plan and the procedure, the energy and the accomplishment, and everything in Christ, and for us according to His will; it is all of the LORD - do not let us make this fatal mistake, that we are to wait until the Lord moves us, that we are just to sit down in our armchairs, if you like - literally or metaphorically - and wait until the Spirit stirs us up. What I see about the Lord Jesus is this, that the Holy Spirit moved Him to a great many practical things here on this earth in relation to the needs of others. His was an immensely practical life. He was alive to need, and He was alive to need by the Holy Spirit actuating Him. He was ALIVE to it.

Oh, how much we wait to be told what needs to be done, to have it pointed out to us. And how selective we are. 'Well, that is not spiritual, that is merely temporal, that is secular.' We begin to put things into categories like that, and become - may I use the phrase? - far TOO 'spiritual'! We are up in the clouds somewhere, and men or women governed by the Holy Spirit will never have their feet off this earth. You understand what I mean. We may expand that in the next chapter. But there are Christians who are all the time thinking that a really spiritual life is a life intensely occupied with studying the Scriptures, and with prayer, and with all kinds of spiritual exercises, and any SPIRITUAL work, well, that is all right; but this and that, the menial, the ordinary, the everyday, the things of this life and this earth, no, they belong to another realm.

THEY DO NOT! The Holy Spirit is going to manifest energy for the simplest and for the most difficult tasks down here. The thing does not appeal to our natures at all, that He is for THAT, and in THAT. In these things it can be proved - and He would have it proved - that there is a heavenly resource. Oh, be careful of your selectiveness! Be careful of the dividing between what is called 'spiritual' and something else. I see the Lord Jesus alive to need, and alive by the Holy Spirit to need, not having to be coerced, to be persuaded; 'on the spot', as we would put it; and that is where the testimony is. It is a very practical thing, this testimony of the heavenly life. I am always afraid of using that very phrase 'heavenly', in case people get the idea that somewhere or other we are going to float about on clouds and be out of everything. Not a bit of it! We shall find the Holy Ghost drives us into a wilderness, the Holy Ghost brings us into very practical situations and says, 'Now then, test your resources, test your heavenly resources in that situation, and in that!' We are all the time wanting to come out of business and get into 'spiritual' work, but that is not the way of the Spirit. I believe that really spiritual people are alive to situations and are very practical and active in all manner of things. Much more could be said about that, but no more for the present.

The point is this, when all is said: that in everything, in all sorts of ways, by very many different practical, everyday courses, heaven would insinuate itself, heaven would come in and say, 'Yes, in THIS there is to be the testimony of the Lord Jesus, which is that He has brought life and incorruption to light. In THIS there is something extra to what it is in itself. In THIS there can be a testimony to that other resource that is yours.'

When the Lord Jesus was here, and touching so many of the ordinary things of this life, as we said in our last chapter - a wedding, a funeral, a market-place, a feast that they made for Him - when He came in, something extra always came in with Him. That extra at the marriage of Cana of Galilee; that was no ordinary earthly affair. "This beginning of His signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory" (John 2:11). Something of heaven came in to what otherwise would have been an ordinary affair - that is, viewed from the outside. Perhaps marriages are never ordinary affairs in the case of the people who are concerned! But here was one of a million marriages - yet it was not just 'lost in the crowd'. It was something distinguished; He brought into it His 'plus'.

There is a funeral. Oh, there are many funerals, a daily occurrence, but this was an exceptional funeral. There probably never was a funeral like that one. Jesus came into it, and He brought in something that made all the difference. Then there was that feast that they made for Him. Wherever He was, He touched the situation with something that lived and has gone on and will show its value throughout eternity. This is what the Lord needs, this is the Lord's testimony: that we should be here on this earth, not apart from the everyday things of life, in what we call the 'spiritual' - which really means the 'abstract' - but that here, in this world, heaven should be coming through, something more should be registering; there should be an energy, a vitality, which is more than human, more than natural, which will not just pass when that thing is done, but which will appear again. So it was with Him, so it was with the Apostles, so it was with New Testament Christians. So it is shown to be the mind of God for the Church, and so it should be with you and with me - that we should be here as living embodiments of the fact that there is something all the time coming through which is not of this world, something of heaven that is our resource.

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Chapter 5 - The Crown Of The Incorruptible

"Our Saviour Christ Jesus... abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to light" (2 Timothy 1:10).

"Now unto the King of the ages, incorruptible, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory unto the ages of the ages" (1 Timothy 1:17; R.V. margin).

"But one hath somewhere testified, saying, What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? or the Son of Man, that Thou visitest Him? Thou madest Him a little lower than the angels; Thou crownedst Him with glory and honour" (Hebrews 2:6,7).

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away" (1 Peter 1:3,4).

"Who annulled death and brought life and incorruption to light".

'O loving wisdom of our God!
When all was sin and shame,
A final Adam to the fight
And to the rescue came.
O wisest love! that flesh and blood,
Which did in Adam fail,
Should strive afresh against the foe,
Should strive and should prevail'.

The verdict of the 'Long Run' - I think we could gather all that has been said so far into that - the verdict of the long run, that is, what abides as incorruptible when all else has passed, is the verdict upon life and work: How much will be found afterward to the praise and glory of God? That word 'incorruptible', then, is the word which governs all, tests all, is the standard of all.

Glory The Crown Of The Incorruptible

We are going to think for a little while about the crown of the incorruptible. The crown of the incorruptible is glory. That is implicit and explicit in the passages which we have just read. The verdict upon the life of the Lord Jesus is just that verdict. John says, many years afterwards, "We beheld His glory" (John 1:14). That was the issue. Neither John nor any of his fellow-apostles was alive to it, or very much alive to it, while the Lord was with them; nevertheless He was gaining on them all the time, He was overtaking them, He was registering. Eventually they were left with one deep and indelible impression, which stood the test of many years, many experiences, many trials, much suffering; and at last, at the end of that particular phase, the apostolic age, John, the one lonely remaining apostle of the whole group, wrote the verdict: "We beheld His glory" - the glory of the incorruptible.

Peter also, at the end of his life, when he was saying that he was about to be offered up, recorded the same verdict. Referring to that wonderful experience on the Mount of Transfiguration, he wrote, "we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honour and glory" (2 Peter 1:16,17) - the verdict of the incorruptible.

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, whom I always suspect as being Paul, said what we have just read: "We behold Him Who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour" (Heb. 2:9). Whether that was Paul or not, it was someone who passed the same verdict; but Paul did join in as in the words we read from his first letter to Timothy: 'Now unto the King eternal, incorruptible... be honour and glory'. The verdict of the incorruptible is glory.

We have been seeing that the glory of Christ was due to certain incorruptible characteristics. First, His union with His Father, something so deep, so real, so unshakeable, as to abide all tests and go right through, in spite of all the efforts of man and demons and the very devil himself to part the Two, to come between. That union with the Father was uninterrupted; it went through. And we said that the Lord Jesus made it perfectly clear that such a union as existed between Him and His Father could exist between us and Himself, and with the Father; not in Deity, Godhead, but in real, living organic oneness and fellowship; by being born of God; and that union is the basis of glory. It is something incorruptible.

Man Made For Glory

Let us come to this matter of the crown of the incorruptible - glory. I have prefixed two hymn-verses to this chapter. Paul it is who calls Jesus "the second man", "the last Adam." Our hymn-writer made a little slip, and so we correct: not a second Adam, but a LAST Adam; a second MAN, a last Adam. Paul indicates that God takes another step in a second man, and a final and inclusive step in a last Adam. Christ is God's next move, and Christ is God's final move, but Christ comes into the place which the first Adam held as representing the intention of God concerning man. As we are thrown back, by this way in which Paul speaks of Him, to the first man Adam, we are shown by the Scriptures, in particular that passage read from the Letter to the Hebrews, that God's intention for man was that he was to be glorified, to be "crowned with glory". He was made for glory. That is the definite statement of Scripture.

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Glory Conditioned Upon Life

But that glory was conditioned upon life, a peculiar life, the particular life of God, Divine life. The glory was contingent upon man having that life, because the glory was the very essence of that life; that particular Divine life held all the nature and potentiality of glory. So the glory depended upon his having that life, and that life was dependent upon faith and obedience upon whether man would believe God to be true, to be honest, to be faithful, that God meant what He said, that He was to be trusted; and, so believing, would act accordingly, that is, be obedient to God. The life was contingent or dependent upon that.

Man's Falling Short Of God's Glory

But we know that man did not believe God, did not trust God, did not take the attitude that God was to be trusted, believed. He disbelieved, and acted accordingly: he disobeyed. The result was that he brought into his own being, and into all his seed, first corruption and then death. A state of corruption entered into his moral being, and that corruption led to death. Thus, for that man, the prospect of glory ended, the intention of his being came to a full-stop. No glory for that man. Heaven is closed, the glory departs; man is excluded, shut out, with no prospect.

But man strangely did not accept that Divine verdict, so rebellious had he become. This thing had become such a positive factor in his being, this corruption was so active, that he refused to accept the verdict, and set out upon a course of making his own glory, getting glory for himself. The history of man is the history of an effort to get glory without getting it from God. That covers a very great deal. It started very early in the Bible story, and we see it going all the way through; but the glory of man, as we have said earlier, always ends in corruption. However much glory he draws to himself, however much he achieves of that which is called the 'glory of man', it ends in corruption. We who are at the end of the history of this world - and that is no exaggeration, that is no false statement; it is the end of the history of this present world, as it now is - are seeing how the glory of man is bringing his own undoing: the most universal corruption, the threat, as we have put it, of the blotting out of the human race. That is the glory of man. Is that glory? He cannot help himself, he is energized by another power, he is not his own master. He calls it glory, and the thing which is so strange is the blindness of man all the time. He wages a war and calls it a 'war to end war', and he wages a worse war and thinks and believes that this surely is the end of war, and on he goes and still it gets worse and worse; and now it is true that we are in sight of the disintegration of humanity, and the possibility of the wiping out of the human race. We understand today, more than ever it could possibly have been understood in this world's history, the meaning of our Lord's words: "except those days had been shortened, no flesh would have been saved" (Matthew 24:22). Is that not true? There has already been a foretaste, in certain parts of the world, of how easy that would be, were it to spread.

Well, that is our present condition - corruption with false glory.

A Final Adam

But another Adam came.

'A final Adam to the fight
And to the rescue came.'

There are three statements made regarding Him. "The Word was made flesh." That is the incarnation. "In Him was life." That is the incorruption. "We beheld His glory." That is the effect of the life. Glory works out from the life, and this final Adam, this last Adam, retrieves the loss of the first: He secures a life that was missed, secures the incorruptibility that was never known, and secures the glory. That is the story of Christ in three words - life, incorruptibility, glory. In those three words He comes to us and says: 'Have faith in Me, believe in Me, and life, that life, is for you' - hence also that incorruptibility, and further, that glory. The crown of incorruptibility is glory.

Christianity A System Of Glory

Christianity may be described, from one point of view, as a system of glory. God is called "the God of glory" (Acts 7:2). Christianity is a family; its Father is called "the Father of glory". Paul spoke of "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory" (Eph. 1:17). Christ, Who brought this 'Christianity' into being, is called "the Lord of glory" (1 Cor. 2:. The Holy Spirit, the energy of this whole heavenly system, is called "the Spirit of glory" (1 Peter 4:14). So the three Persons of the Divine Trinity are all related to glory, all interested in glory.

The Father produces the whole system of glory: it emanates from Him as Father.

The Son, as the Lord of glory, is governing everything in relation to glory. What a glorious statement that is; how much there is gathered into that - 'governing everything in relation to glory'; "the Lord of glory". So we have in our Bible a whole book containing the record of the activities of the Lord of glory. Situations and positions seem at first sight all the work of the devil, all the work of devil-inspired and energized people - situations so difficult that they look hopeless. And that book contains the verdict of the long run, that every one of those situations was turned to glory, something glorious came out of every hopeless and impossible position. The Lord of glory was seeing to that. Yes, there is much comfort in that title "the Lord of glory".

The Spirit of glory, so called by Peter, if you will look to see the context, is this. Here are believers passing through fiery trial; they are persecuted, they are misunderstood, they are slandered, they are misrepresented. And Peter says, 'It is all right, if you take this humbly, if you take this without bitterness; the Spirit of glory will rest upon you': that is, believers in adversity find that, right in the midst of persecution and opposition, something of inexplicable joy rises up, a deep and wonderful peace. The persecutors hurl their stones, or whatever else they may do, and somehow there is glory in the heart. That is the story of many a martyr, of many a murdered servant and child of God - "the Spirit of glory". Glory is not some place to which we are going presently, although glory may be a sphere in which everything is glorious. Glory is for now. It is a part of the very life that we have now received. It is the essence of Christ as 'in us, the hope of glory'. It is the very nature of what we have received through faith in Jesus Christ. I say again, Christianity is a system of glory, and the Lord wants us to have a life, and to live according to that life, which will produce more and more glory in us. It will again be only as we live according to that incorruptible life that the glory will be manifested.

So we have to look again at the One Who has set for us the pattern, shown the way, indicated the principles of the incorruptible which result in glory; to look at what was true of Him, as this incorruptible One, that resulted in God giving Him glory. One or two things I will indicate because they are very important.

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Inward Separation From Sin

Firstly, it was His inward separation from sin. There was a great gap between Him and sin. It is said of Him that He "knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21), that He was "separated from sinners" (Heb. 7:26). That is, in His nature He was separate from the rest of men; there was an inward separation. Now, we are not constituted as He was, as sinless, but we are told and made to understand, in the New Testament, that that inward separation which was so true of Him, which was so real in His case, can be made true in us. Paul has a way of putting it. He calls it the "circumcision of Christ" (Col. 2:11), and he says that it is a thing of the heart, an inward separating between what we are in ourselves and what we are in Christ, the putting of a gap between the two. And then the New Testament says that by the Holy Spirit's enablement, by the Holy Spirit's power, you need not live on the ground of what you are in yourself, you can live on the ground of Christ, and living on the ground of Christ you need not be the slave of yourself and your sinfulness, you are delivered. There is something that has separated inside, and if you live on the ground of what Christ is and not on the ground of what you are in yourself, you are on the ground of the incorruptible and you are on the ground of the glory.

That sounds very technical, I know, doctrinal or theological, whatever you may call it, but it is very practical. We know it very well. You and I who are Christians, who are the Lord's born-again children, know that a cleavage has been made in us, and that we are now two people. There is that side which is our new life, our new relationship, which is our Christ-connection. There is that other side which is still our old relationship with the old Adam. It is there; it is not cauterized, it is not annihilated. It is there; and we know now that it is for us to take continually the power of the Holy Spirit, in virtue of that separating Cross, to keep on the Christ side, on the new side; and if we do, we KNOW IT IS GLORY. Very often we know more of the meaning of the glory by a touch of the other. Step over on to the other side and give way to the old Adam, and you know quite well there is no glory there.

Now that very thing existed perfectly, fully and finally, in the case of the Lord Jesus; but the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of that glory has come into us to make the divide, and the Christian who has the most glory is the Christian who is walking most on the Christ side of the line. There was the Divine in Him, of course; there were no two natures, there was no need for dividing between a sinful nature and a Divine nature in Him; but there was a constant gap between Him and sinful man. The enemy, the great enemy of the glory, was ever seeking to contaminate Him, involve Him, pollute Him, corrupt Him. Do not let us think that He never had to resist anything, that He never had to say No to another. That matter of how a sinless one could be tempted is of course an old theological problem, but there is no doubt about it that He fought our battle, in all reality.

So that is the first thing - an inward separation, a divide, and on the one side the new life, the ground of the incorruptible, which is the ground of glory. "This mystery", says Paul, "which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27).

Outward Separation From The World

Then next, an outward separation from the world. The inward separation had its outward effect or outworking in separation from the world, and no one will think for a moment that I am speaking about physical separation from the world. No, He was here right in it, in its throng and press, in its affairs, with everything pressing upon Him; never seeking to live the life of a hermit, a monk, detached from the world, but right in it - and yet, while in it, rubbing shoulder to shoulder with the world, having all the contacts of this world in every form, there was that distinctiveness about Him that He was not a part of it, but apart from it, a wonderful outward separation. While being able to talk with the grossest and the most defiled and the most involved people in this world, He was yet by no means a part of them, their system, their order, their life, their nature, but outwardly separate from the world. I think you will agree with me when I say the most unhappy people in this world are Christians who try to have both worlds. It is my experience that if you want to find a miserable Christian, find what is called a worldly 'Christian', in whom a constant civil war goes on between two worlds, two kingdoms. Yes, a CHRISTIAN involved in this world, a CHRISTIAN trying to get something out of this world - of course a contradiction in name - is a miserable creature. I used to illustrate it by the old Border battles between Scotland and England, the Picts and the Scots. The people who lived in the Border country never had a day's rest all their lives. One day it would be the overrunning from one side, the next day from the other side, and these poor people on the Border line had the most miserable existence possible, and it is like that. You try to live a border-line or border-land Christian life, and you will be a miserable person, without rest or peace or joy or anything else. You will never know exactly where you are, who is your master, which way you are going, to whom you belong. It is a miserable existence.

The Lord Jesus was not like that. He was on one side, and absolutely on one side. The border line was a very wide one for Him. Indeed, there was no border line. He was attached to heaven, and He maintained that attachment. You and I, if we are going to know glory now and glory afterward, will have to be on the same ground as He was in this matter - no compromise or trucking with this world; in it, having to do our work here, having to meet people, having to be friendly in a way, yet not one with their nature, their realm, their way. It is a difficult thing - it is not as easy to do as it is to say - it is truly a difficult thing to be in it and not to be of it, and you know quite well what I mean. You know that in practical ways it works out like that, that you must not allow yourself to be involved or you involve the glory of your Christian life. Christ was wholly for God, that is the point; and because He was wholly for God, His Father was the Father of glory, and the Spirit of glory, rested upon Him, and the Father could give Him glory.

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Christ's Humanity Was Glorifiable

Now one brief word on a matter that needs very much more time, and is perhaps the most difficult matter in all the realm of Christian things to make clear - this whole matter of Christ's humanity as becoming glorified. His humanity was a glorifiable humanity. Of course, that is a statement that requires explanation; but it is a statement worth making because not all humanity, indeed no other humanity, is glorifiable, as we have seen. His was a unique humanity, capable of being glorified, and it was glorified. Paul speaks of His body as a glorified body. He said that we are to be "conformed to the body of His glory" or "His glorious" or "glorified body" (Phil. 3:21). He was capable of being glorified, and that actually took place on the Mount of Transfiguration. He had fought through all those tests and trials, all those efforts to compromise Him, to make Him let go and become involved. He had fought them right through to the pinnacle of that mount. There was nothing more for Him to do, so far as He Himself was concerned; anything more was for us. At that point He had proved Himself worthy of being glorified, and, as Peter says, on that mount God gave Him glory. In the transfiguration of the Lord Jesus, God is showing in a representative Man what He intends for you and for me and for all - that we shall be transfigured, glorified, "made like unto His glorious body". His was a glorifiable humanity. His humanity as glorified is the standard in heaven to which God is working for every believer in Jesus Christ. It is a Man in glory glorified, and He is there as the last Adam, the second Man. Those very titles have no significance apart from other men of the same kind. What does 'Adam' mean? What does 'man' mean, if it is not an inclusive and comprehensive and representative designation? The Scripture states that quite clearly. "The firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29) He was to be. Many Scriptures could be quoted to prove that.

I believe that was the secret of the Apostle Paul's life, from the very day of his conversion, right up to the end, when, after so many years, and after seeing and knowing so much, he was still found aspiring, still stretched out. He had seen Jesus of Nazareth glorified, and he said, 'That is the on-high calling!' And that is so much in keeping with what we have read in the Letter to the Hebrews: "We behold... Jesus... crowned with glory and honour". And then the writer goes on: "Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling..." (Heb. 3:1). What is it? It is Jesus crowned with glory, as the Man according to God's eternal intention for man. God is calling "unto His eternal glory in Christ Jesus" (1 Peter 5:10). Christ in a glorified humanity is the model, the pattern, the stature, the representation of God's intention for all who believe in the Lord Jesus.

So then, if we have received that eternal life, if Christ is in us, 'dwelling in our hearts', as the Apostle puts it, 'through faith', our destiny is that. We have the basis of an incorruptible life, which will eventually emerge in the fullness of that glory which He as our representative now knows. Faith not only believes for the forgiveness of sins, not only for pardon, not only for remission, not only for atonement, not only for justification and redemption. Faith in Jesus Christ apprehends Him as the very humanity to which we are to be conformed. Faith takes hold of Him as He is now, and says, 'He is as He is because God wants me like that'; and, if we did but know, the Spirit of glory is operating for us on that basis every day, to make us like Him, to transform us that we may be transfigured, to conform us to His image. All the meaning of the activities and methods of the Spirit of God in our lives is to lay a foundation for glory.

And it is on these principles of the incorruptible. May the Lord teach us how to keep clear of this corrupted world, how to keep clear of that wretched, corrupt old man. You remember that magnificent, though so very simple, picture that Bunyan has given us - the man with the muck rake, with the crown of glory over his head, but so occupied with his rake and obsessed with what is down there in the mud, that he sees not the glory, he misses it all. That muck is our old man, and we are always turning him over to see if we can find something good in him, some glory. We are seemingly incapable of learning this one lesson, that there is no glory there and we had better finish all the investigations in that realm. Do write that old man off altogether, and do not get turning him over again, looking into him, or having anything to do with him. Lift up your eyes from him to the Lord of glory - and you will find the way of glory.

We are "called... unto His eternal glory" (1 Peter 5:10), we are begotten again "by the resurrection of Jesus Christ... to an inheritance incorruptible... that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven" (1 Peter 1:3,4). How great is the wonder of this calling, of this life, of what we have through faith in Jesus Christ, and of how it is all going to work out! But be sure, as a dear old servant of God now gone to be with Him always used to say, to 'keep on the glory line'; do not touch that other. Get in the way of the glory, and keep in the way of the glory, for you are called unto glory.

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Chapter 6 - Manhood In Relation To The Lord's Testimony

Reading: 2 Corinthians 12

In pursuing this matter of life and incorruption, we shall now consider particularly a little phrase used by the Apostle Paul about himself, occurring in 2 Corinthians 12:2: "I know a man in Christ". "A man in Christ." I want to link with that one very small and simple clause, which occurs in different connections at different places. We begin right at the end of the Book of the Revelation.

"I JESUS have sent Mine angel to testify unto you these things for the churches" (Rev. 22:16).

It is just that single clause at the beginning - "I Jesus". Then working backwards, we have

"I JOHN, your brother and partaker with you in the tribulation and kingdom and patience which are in Jesus" (Rev. 1:9).

"Now I PAUL myself entreat you" (2 Cor. 10:1). "Behold, I PAUL say unto you" (Gal. 5:2). "I DANIEL, understood by the books..." (Dan. 9:2).

"I Jesus", "I John", "I Paul", "I Daniel"; and that is not only permitted but evidently inspired by the Holy Spirit, a fact which carries its own significance.

The object of our consideration, then, is "a man in Christ", or manhood in relation to the Lord's testimony.

We have already said that man-hood, or humanity, is a Divine conception, something taking its origin in the mind of God. Being, then, in the eternal thought of God, it has come to stay. There is nothing in all the Scriptures to indicate that God at some time, at some point, is going to finish that order of things and replace it with another order - an angelic order or some other conception of His mind as to the inhabitant or occupant of His creation. No, manhood has come to stay. It is of the substance of incorruption, the undying, the permanent, and in God's thought therefore manhood or humanity must take a very high place - higher than the angelic order, so the Scripture makes clear. In the Divine thought, manhood is a very noble thing with a very great and high destiny. Hence God is greatly concerned with our humanity.

The Dignity Of Man In God's Thought

Now in this chapter we shall be largely occupied with the correcting of faulty ideas in order to get at the true. Our ideas about man have become a little confused; there are many defects in our conception of man. Evangelical Christianity has placed a very great deal of emphasis upon the total depravity of man. It is a fundamental doctrine of the Evangelical position. I have nothing to take from that; we can support that quite strongly; but we need to remember that every truth runs so very close to a peril and an error. It is just as true on the other side, that man is a very wonderful creation, "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14). Humanity is something very, very complex and very wonderful. We are constantly discovering new factors and realms within the human soul, and it is the soul of man which is the very core of humanity. I am not going to embark upon an analysis of the human soul; but are we not sometimes ourselves surprised at what there is in us, all unsuspected, of capability and capacity, of unsuspected forces at work? There are two sides to this matter of humanity, the one, which is perfectly true, man's total depravity; the other, the wonderful dignity of man, the dignity of the human idea in the mind of God; and these two things have somehow got to be balanced, or many other evils will result.

So there is a faulty idea which must be corrected before we can get to the real thought of God about man. Let us be careful.

Our Individuality Not Annihilated By The Cross

Now running closely alongside of what is so often our unbalanced and one-sided conception of man, there is our conception of the meaning of the Cross as to man. We place a great deal of emphasis upon that side of the Cross which relates to our identification with Christ in His death: not only the removal in that death, by that Cross, of our sins, but of ourselves, the putting away of one kind of man wholly and utterly; and there is nothing to take from that. That stands, and we can add nothing to it; it is true. But again, there is a very great peril running immediately alongside of that fact. Our individuality is not annihilated by the Cross. We as human beings do not go out in the Cross. The Cross does not destroy our entity. It deals with the basis of our humanity upon which we are living now in relation to Adam, but it does not destroy us, and we have to be very careful how we carry the Cross into realms where it is never supposed to be carried. Some people seem to think that the apprehension of the meaning of the Cross, as our identification with Christ in death and burial, means that somehow or other we have to disappear from the universe and never in any way be seen or known or recognised or felt. There is to be a kind of vacuum between our very existence and this world. We have to walk as - well, not existing at all! The Cross is not meant to create or minister to asceticism. You can carry this matter into a realm which is wrong. Let me repeat, our personality and our individuality is not touched by the Cross in the way of destroying it. Now you will have to sit down and think about how these things are to be balanced. I am making these statements because we are getting at a very important matter.

Our Individuality Not Lost In The Body Of Christ

Then we must correct another faulty conception. I have referred to the Cross. Now I refer to the Body of Christ. Well, a great truth, a great reality, a wonderful thing, is the Body of Christ. There is nothing that we need to take away from all the revelation and truth and doctrine of the Body of Christ. But we must be very careful how that affects our thoughts, because a false conception of the Body, "the Church, which is His body", may result in our having the idea that individual distinctiveness is destroyed and that we all merge as it were into a general lump; that all the identification of us passes out, and we lose any personal form, in some thing called the Body. Now Paul himself was very careful to point out the fault in any such idea. "If the whole body were an eye... If the whole were hearing..." (1 Cor. 12:17). That was his way of approaching this peril - the peril of supposing that the Body involves generalisation, leading to the loss of individual distinctiveness.

And again we have only to consider our bodies, both inside and out, and we will find that down to the smallest part, the smallest organ, there is something absolutely distinctive. Each has a distinct form and a distinct function, something that belongs to it and is quite distinctive. One of the effects of disease is to destroy the distinctiveness of an organ, so that it loses its own particular and peculiar function and characteristics. That is disease in the human body. We must therefore adjust our minds about this matter of the Body. We confuse INDIVIDUALITY with INDIVIDUALISM, and that is just where we go wrong. Yes, individualism has got to go out; but individuality - never!

Need we pursue that to the creation? Why this vast and inexhaustible variety in God's creation? It is one of the wonders of creation, its endless variety. And yet the whole of creation is interdependent: every branch depends on another branch - the flower on the bee, and the bee on the flower, and so on. This principle is shot through the creation, one form, one department, one organism, being absolutely dependent upon another for the justification of its existence and the realisation of its destiny.

And what is true in the whole creation is peculiarly true in our bodies. When the body is taken as a figure of the Church, it is like that, a vast variety. There is at the same time a wonderful unity, but each part has its distinctiveness of contribution and function, as something which belongs to it, which is indispensable, and this is the argument of Paul to the Corinthians. 'We cannot say that we have no need of this, we cannot dispense with that.' The whole depends upon and demands that, because it is something in itself of value to the Lord.

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God's Idea Is A Man

Then there is a further matter that needs to be corrected - a faulty idea that has to do with being a thing rather than a person - and when I say a 'thing', people who bear the designations that I am going to mention will need, of course, to be very forbearing. It is possible for some people to be 'teachers' and 'missionaries' and 'ministers' and 'Christian workers' and 'helpers' - designations, titles - and they become just that: a preacher, a Christian worker, or what not, falling under one or another of the many possible titles or designations. They cease to be persons, and become things, and when you meet them you meet the teacher, you meet the preacher, you meet the minister, you meet the Christian worker. That has in many cases resulted in wearing special kinds of clothes, both men and women. You meet the minister, the clergyman, the deaconess. You are meeting some THING; it is so easy for us to become a thing, something that belongs to a platform or a class, and that thing wipes out our personality. That is to say, we are not met as persons, and we do not meet people as persons, as men: we meet them as that or that or that - some THING - and this is a faulty conception that needs to be adjusted and corrected, because God's idea is a man. God's idea is not a preacher, not a teacher, a Christian worker, a missionary. God has never yet sent out a MISSIONARY. God has sent out a man and He always sends out a man. If God has His way, He will see to it that it is a man He sends, not a missionary. You understand what I mean. Men with their organizations send out missionaries, send out preachers, send out workers. God always sends out people, and He is very particular that it is people, not things. Occupations can become more than persons, and that is always a danger. The thing with which we are most occupied becomes the thing which veils the person, stands in front of the person.

God Wants Originality

Then again as to the matter of originality. Here is a very important point - and you will recognise that here we are getting more closely to business. This matter of originality - of course it is quite true that there is nothing in itself original. But while that is true as Solomon said, "There is nothing new under the sun" - yet God can do that IN US which makes "all things new". Things may have existed for long, many others may have known and wondered at them, but not until there is a touch of the Divine hand upon our eyes or hearts do they spring into real being for us, and are as though they had never been. We exclaim - "I never saw THAT before!'' So it may be with the Word of God which was written centuries ago. It might only have been written today when that touch of God's hand rests upon our eyes. That is what I mean by originality. For all its value it might not have existed at all. But now, from mere existence, things become experience.

How is that? It is not because someone has thrown some new light upon it, but because the Lord has done something. The Lord has done something in us, so that out from the realm of the long-existent there has come something that might never have existed before. There must be something in us which makes everything original. We cannot take these things at their face value, merely as things. We are not supposed to be like tape-recorders. When I speak into the microphone, it all goes on to the tape. Presently, if occasion requires, I can just turn it back and it will all come through again. You would hear my voice and every word that is said, but that is not a personality. It has got it all, all the message, all the truth; in a sense it knows it all, it contains it all; but there is no personality there, and there is no originality there - it is mechanical.

The Lord does not want us to be machines; He wants nothing mechanical, no kind of tape-recording of truth. He wants originality, and originality relates to ourselves and not to our matter. You may have all the information in your notebooks, just as the tape has it; but until it gets somewhere else it is of no use to you - there is no real value about it. It has to get into you, to become you. Something has to happen, so that you are able to say, 'Well, I have all that; I know the words, the phrases, the sentences, the ideas; but I have something much more that has become a part of my being, something on which I live.'

The Principle Of Spiritual Authority

This is the very principle of spiritual authority. When it was said of the Lord that He spoke with authority and not as the scribes (Matt. 7:29), that did not mean that He had more ordinary knowledge than the scribes. Probably they had a great deal more knowledge - school knowledge - than He had. He did not have the knowledge of the schools. They had all that. Their authority was academic or technical authority. When they made His authority superior to that of the scribes, what they meant was: 'This man is talking out of his experience, he is talking out of what he knows in himself, this is coming from him, not from books; this is not the latest address he has heard, the latest book he has read, not something that has caught on with him, that he has got from someone else, that he thought was a bright idea and developed. No, this is the result of something God has done in him, and it comes from Him.'

This is all getting down to this whole matter of manhood in relation to the testimony of the Lord, a man in Christ.

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God Demands History Behind Everything

Now because the Lord is so concerned about this, that we will call the HUMAN factor in His testimony; because this is His own Divine idea, and therefore has in it the element of the incorruptible, that is, that which is to be eternal, because God made man for incorruption and for glory, and that eternal thought is bound up with man: because it is so, HE DEMANDS HISTORY behind everything else. That is, He demands history behind all that we say. If we are giving out truth, if we are teaching or preaching or working or in any way seeking to influence other lives, if we are here in relation to the whole purpose of God in relation to other lives, our part, our place, our influence must have a history behind it. We are not here just to stand as a kind of middle man and to take from a store and pass on to others in that mechanical way, to study up subjects from the Bible and pass them on, retailing Divine products. God demands history behind everything, and only as there is a history will there be a real value. The testimony is constituted not by words, ideas, truths, but by history in relation to them. God is very careful about this and very intent upon it, that you and I shall never go beyond ourselves in truth, that we are never found talking beyond ourselves, because, if only we knew it, we ourselves are the measure of the truth that we are uttering. There is something there behind the truth which gives to that truth its incorruptible nature, that makes that truth living and permanent and effective. It is not the truth itself - it is knowing the truth; the knowing is the knowledge of experience. The real value in all our teaching and speaking and trying, as we say, to further the testimony, to stand for the testimony - I do not know that I like the phraseology, but that is how we talk or what we mean - is that everything has to have spiritual history behind it.

It is, as I have said before, spiritual history which makes authority, and nothing else can make authority. And it is spiritual history which creates originality. Do not forget that originality is essential. Everything has got to begin with us before we can give it to others with any effect or value. The words of the Lord to Pilate might very often be addressed to us: "Sayest thou this of thyself, or did others tell it thee concerning Me?" (John 18:34). "Sayest thou this of thyself?" It has to begin there, it has to come up out of our own history. The fact is that thousands and thousands may have gone the same way as we are going under the hand of God, but for all practical purposes no one might ever have gone this way before. We just cannot live on the experience of others, though there be thousands of them. When God gets us into His hands it is as though no one had ever gone this way before. We are alone in this, this is something original. For us the sense is that no one HAS ever experienced this before, they cannot have done - 'I am the only one who has ever had anything like this!' - and yet thousands have gone this way. You see the point of originality. The Lord makes spiritual experience to be to us as though no one had ever had it before.

"I Jesus." Does it not impress you, that right at the end of the Bible the last utterance of the Lord Jesus, speaking to the churches, should be couched in that Name? Not 'I the Lord', but "I Jesus". You Bible students know quite well that the Name 'Jesus' invariably belongs in the New Testament to Him in the days of His humiliation. After His exaltation they called Him 'Lord', 'the Lord Jesus', 'the Lord Jesus Christ', 'Jesus Christ our Lord', but when 'Jesus' is used by itself it always in some way relates to, refers back to, His life of humiliation when He took the form of a man. He was "found in fashion as a man" (Phil. 2:7). The word 'fashion' is an interesting word there. It means that in all outward appearance, according to all outward judgments, He was like other men. There is another word used of what He was inside; that was something other. But here He is having taken outwardly the form of a man, and in so doing He took the Name Jesus, the name which was the most common name in Palestine, Jesus, Jeshua; so that Name carries back to the day when He was going through all that which made spiritual history in Himself - tried, tested, tempted in all points like as we (Heb. 4:15); so that, strangely enough, it could be said of Him that He was made "perfect through sufferings" (Heb. 2:10). "Though He was a Son, yet learned [He] obedience by the things which He suffered" (Heb. 5:. History was being made in His humanity. It was a man learning. No one will think that I set aside His Deity; yet here is a man, a human being - God incarnate, true, but here in the form of a human being - knowing all about human life, having spiritual history made, out of which, as we have sought to point out so much in these pages, should come those intrinsic values that should be for all the ages of the ages. That was all being done in manhood, and now at last He presents Himself to the churches - "I Jesus" - the sum of spiritual history in a man's life, something completed in humanity.

"I John". Yes, John is permitted to say - on a much smaller scale, it is true - 'What I am writing, what I am going to write, is not just something that has mechanically come to me, but things which our eyes saw, our hands handled, something that has come into vital relationship with ourselves, become a part of us, so that we are now in a position where we are allowed to mention ourselves in relation to the testimony of Jesus.' "I John... for the testimony of Jesus."

And Paul - "I Paul": he is allowed to bring himself into view with the authority of a man who has history behind him. "I know a man... caught up even to the third heaven. And... he... heard unspeakable words" (2 Cor. 12:2-4). 'This has become the substance of my very being. I am not talking to you about abstract truths; I am talking to you about something that has happened to me. I have been taken into it and it has been taken into me. In effect that has become me and I have become it: therefore I am allowed to say "I Paul say unto you".'

Was that not true of Daniel? "O MAN greatly beloved" (Dan.10:19). Not 'O prophet greatly beloved', 'O servant of the Lord greatly beloved', 'O exponent of Divine truth greatly beloved', but "O MAN greatly beloved". "I Daniel": you see the man - it is the man of God, the man in the Lord, the man in Christ.

When I use the word 'man', I am of course speaking of humanity - that includes the woman. It is what God was after. These were all human beings. John was a human being. Paul was a human being. Daniel was a human being. Christ had been a human being; He was a human being plus - the mighty plus of Deity. It is where God makes something of Himself a part of a human life, and in so doing constitutes the testimony of Jesus.

Well, you see what God is after. God is not after making you a Bible teacher, a preacher, a missionary, a Christian worker. Those things may emerge, that may be just a form which the other will take, but before, over and through and after all, it is us, ourselves, that the Lord is after, and therefore He takes infinite pains with us. Do understand that, because you will misunderstand the Lord unless you recognise that. You are after your work all the time, you are after your job, you are after your function; you are troubled about things. The Lord is troubled about YOU, and if the Lord is suspending the things, do not just get worked up into a terrible state about it and get upset with the Lord. He is after you. He is more concerned with your humanity than with anything else. If He has that in Christ, according to Christ, the other will spontaneously flow. You will not have to don any uniform, take any title or name; you will not have to be called by any particular designation. You will be that, and what does the other matter? It does not matter at all. Oh, let us see the emptiness of names - minister, pastor, teacher and all that - if there is not there the thing that it means. But if that is there then the other is unnecessary.

"I Jesus", and then standing alongside Him as the great Head, "I John", "I Paul", "I Daniel", and 'I-' - you may put your name there if this is true.

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Chapter 7 - The Full Stature Of Manhood

"I know a man in Christ..." (2 Corinthians 12:2)

"...till we all attain unto... a full-grown man... the stature of... Christ" (Ephesians 4:13)

"Not unto angels did He subject the world to come, whereof we speak. But one hath somewhere testified, saying, What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? or the Son of Man, that Thou visitest Him?" (Heb. 2:5,6)

We are now going to consider one particular aspect of this matter of manhood, namely, the full stature of manhood and how it is reached.

The Great Universe Of Man

We begin by a word about the creation of man, in which, through the incarnation of Christ, all the wonderful thoughts and realities of God, Deity apart, are intended to be expressed in mankind. The creation of man, and the subsequent incarnation of Christ, represented the carrying into effect of that great mind of God to express Himself 'manwise'. It is a wonderful thing to think that God chose to make a peculiar kind of creature called 'man', bring into being something that is called 'humanity', in order that by that means He might write for the revelation to the universe, the education of the universe, His own thoughts, His own mind. The knowledge of man is still in a very imperfect stage, after all the time that man has been on the earth. On the side of potential evil it is sometimes beyond human comprehension what man is capable of. Under grace and in union with God through Jesus Christ the potentialities of redeemed humanity are correspondingly high and beyond comprehension. It was this incomprehensible destiny of man in Christ that exhausted all the superlatives of language of which the Apostle Paul was capable.

Take some of the departments of the science of man. I am not going to give them their scientific names; you can quote the names to yourself, if you wish, but here are five distinct sciences of man. There is, firstly, that which has to do with the functions and phenomena of his physical being, the thing with which physicians and surgeons and all in that realm are trying to cope. After all the centuries of man's existence on the earth, they are still finding that there are new complexes and complications and depths and difficulties which are beyond them, just beyond them; always new situations arising in the physical bodies of people, causing considerable concern and perplexity, even to those who know most about it and, as we say, know all that there is to know about it; and so it goes on. The additional names that are accumulating to the maladies and the disorders of the human frame are very significant. In the realm of man's human body there is still, after all this time, with all this study, research and knowledge, a depth unfathomed, that is beyond the experts. They are so often at a standstill, at a loss what to do about it, and the whole question of reconstructing this human body, this physical life, and making it perfect, is as far from its realisation as ever it was. It breaks down just when it is thought that we are getting on.

Then there is that science of the human mind, so very largely developed in recent years, in our own lifetime. A new name has sprung up in this connection, and it is a world which is finding many giving themselves wholly to its study, to its exploration; a wonderful world and kingdom - the human mind being probed, analysed, investigated - you know that whole realm of things; and still the human mind is beyond the grasp of the experts. It still defeats and defies the best efforts to solve its problems, to put it right.

Further, there is the third realm of humanity, the realm of human relationships: human beings living together, whether it be two or whether it be communities or nations. It is what is called 'society', or human relationships. That again is a department of study and investigation, and much hard work, which is the whole-time, and whole lifetime, occupation, of a vast number of people - and what a complex world it is! You know it if it is only two people, and when you have to deal with a larger number, you understand what a burden it was that rested upon Paul when it made him refer, almost with a groan, to "that which presseth upon me daily, anxiety for all the churches" (2 Cor. 11:28). It is the problem of people living together, getting on together, and, as I have said, when you expand that to nations the problem of human relationships is a tremendous thing. It has killed many of our greatest statesmen, trying to solve this problem of getting people and nations to go on together in amity, in good relationship.

Again expanding, there is that great science which has to do with human races, the races of people; not only the nations, but the races. We cannot go into that now, but you know how much time and money has been expended in the attempt to get down to the peculiar constitution of different races, with a view to solving human problems. This race is characterized by certain things and that race by another set of things, and this creates a great world problem of racial life and relationships, and demands constantly an immense amount of work and anxious thought; yet the racial problem today is as great as ever it was.

And finally, there is that whole realm, which again is a complete science in itself, which has to do with human nature, and particularly with sin or evil in human nature. That goes by a name of its own. Well, that has occupied man from the beginning: this sin in human nature - this evil, this wicked, human nature. What a world it is - what an ocean, what a depth!

There you have five great worlds, a constellation of worlds, forming a very universe, all related to man himself, to mankind. All this came in when man came in; all this is bound up with humanity, with this being called man. How vast and far from fully explored is this whole question of man!

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Christ The Embodiment Of God - Intended Humanity

Now, why all this? It is not just a point of interest, some matter to throw in. This leads to something.

Christ is the comprehensive embodiment of all this in a new kind of humanity, in the God-intended kind of humanity. He affects the whole of those five realms pertaining to mankind.

He relates to the whole problem of this physical life of man, and the whole problem of the physical life of man is going to be solved in the humanity of Jesus Christ, "when this corruptible shall... put on incorruption, and this mortal... put on immortality" (1 Cor. 15:54). When this body of our corruption is made like unto His body of glory (Phil. 3:21), the whole problem of man's physical world will be finally solved. And that is not just a statement of fact concerning some future time. He has given us that life to indwell us NOW, so that even now, in a body of corruption, we may know the power of His resurrection, we may know a life which triumphs over that corruption until God has finished with us here. We have that very life given to us NOW, so that our mortal, our dying, bodies can be quickened by the Divine Spirit to fulfil a work of God here on this earth contrary to all human possibilities. When we ought to be dead - ought, indeed, to have died a good many times! - it is not so because there is a life in us which is triumphing until our work is done. He has solved the whole problem of that world of the physical, and in giving us eternal life has already given us the earnest of that solution, and on the basis of that this body will be conformed to the body of His glory. "Then shall come to pass the saying that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory"' (1 Cor. 15:54).

And what is true in that whole realm of the physical man, the human physical side, is true of all the others. Take this matter of the mind of man which is such a problem. The New Testament teaches us that there is another mind, the mind of Christ, and "God gave us not a spirit of fearfulness; but of power and love and discipline" ("a sound mind", AN.) (2 Tim. 1:7). It is another mind, a heavenly mind, the mind of Christ; a 'new-mindedness'. You have no need that I gather up the Scriptures on that. The problem of psychology (now I have given it its name!) is solved by the Holy Spirit in the believer. It is part of our inheritance in Christ to have a sound mind, not to be unbalanced. We will go no further with that, because we have so much ground to cover.

Again, in this whole matter of human relationships - what we call society, the relationships of people on this earth - has not Christ solved that? There is a testimony whenever the Lord's children from many lands come together. He has not changed our temperaments, He has not changed our basic individuality. He has not annihilated our varied personalities, He has not put out of existence our different nationalities, but He has made us one. We have one life, we have one language. All those things which separate us humanly, that is, in the old humanity, are touched in Christ. Oh, that we recognised this more! When divisions come, when there is strife and schism and the like, we are in the realm of the old creation, we are not in the realm of Christ. He, in His own humanity, makes a different kind of corporate entity. It is a wonderful thing, this corporate entity, the "one new man" (Eph. 2:15), "where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman" (Col. 3:11); all are one, there is one new man. The problem of society is solved in Christ.

But then there is this question of race, the races on the earth with all the problems of racial differences and conflicts. Oh, I do not understand people who call themselves Christians, with their New Testament in their hands, putting up colour bars! I understand the problems, but I believe there is another way through the problem than the colour bar. I think that is a perfect contradiction of the New Testament: it seems to me to clearly say: 'This New Testament teaching about the oneness of the Body of Christ, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, neither coloured nor white, is an impossible thing. It cannot be; it will not work.' Very well, then; scrap the New Testament and cease calling yourselves Christians. This thing is solved in Christ. It has been proved possible, and it has been and is being proved workable. It only wants the grace of God to get into both sides, the government of the Holy Spirit on both sides - not on one side only, but on both sides - and the problem is solved. It may require patience, instruction, building up, but the basis is there when we are all baptized in one Spirit into one Body, whether bond or free, whether this or that. Christ touches this thing.

Finally, this whole matter of human sin. Well, I need not stop to say much about that - the great problem of sin in human nature, of evil in mankind himself. We need not look beyond ourselves; we know in ourselves that Christ has solved that problem, which is still such an awful problem for the people who are interested in ethics, the problem which is defeating the moral philosophers all the time. That is settled in Christ.

The Greatness Of Christ

Christ affects this whole universe of man on all his sides and aspects. Is not Christ great? He is the comprehensive embodiment of a new type of humanity in which these other things are solved and settled and put away. How great Christ is! And therefore how great the new man is, the man in Christ! Christ is so great that He can give character altogether different from, and altogether higher than, that which we know belonging to humanity. He can give character to a vast multitude, for the Church ultimately is no little thing. We are, I am afraid, inclined, as we look out on the world and take note of how 'few there are that be saved', of the small percentage of real believers in the multitudes, the millions, on this earth, we are inclined to think that the Church must be a very little thing. But when we come to the sum at the end we shall find that the Church is no little thing, but a great multitude, a vast concourse, and that vast concourse, that immense thing, is taking its whole character from one Man. How great Christ is!

Spiritual Full Stature

Having said that - and that is only my introduction - I want to come to this matter of spiritual full stature. The first thing, of course, standing over it all is seeing how great Christ is. How great is this humanity of Christ! And then how wonderful must be the purpose of our being in Christ! To Paul it was an unceasing wonder to be able to say of himself: "I know a man in Christ". It is no little thing to be "a man in Christ". And then of course the meaning of God's work in us comes in here: for it is in the light of this that God is pursuing all His work in us and all His dealings with us. If He is breaking down one humanity in us, it is only to build up another. If He is putting us through fiery testings and trials, and experiences that constitute great difficulties to our own natural humanity, it is only to produce this other humanity. God's dealings with us, His ways with us, are all explained by the great purpose, the great destiny unto which we are called - conformity to the image of His Son.

Now, taking a little phrase which occurs in the Bible in a number of connections, I want to say something about this matter of full stature and how it is reached, and I am going to take some Old Testament illustrations of this.

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The Power Of Resurrection

"And Isaac sowed in that land, and found in the same year a hundredfold: and the Lord blessed him. And the man waxed great, and grew more and more until he became very great" (Genesis 26:12-13).

THE MAN did. Here is a type of manhood come to full stature - Isaac. Now we who are familiar with the typology of the Old Testament know that Isaac is the embodiment of the power of resurrection. I need not go over the ground to prove that. Abraham through faith received him back from the dead, and so Isaac stands out as the great example or type of resurrection power. And then, on resurrection ground, Isaac engages in agriculture, the realm in which, more than in any other realm, resurrection is known. In that realm, where the predominant law is the law of resurrection, he becomes very great. The law of resurrection operates so that he increases more and more and becomes very great.

We lay stress on this. The increase, this greatness of Isaac, is through resurrection - that is the point. He knows in his own person, his own history, his own experience, in his very being, he knows the power of resurrection, and by reason of that very experience, that experimental knowledge, he becomes very great. Through all the demands and processes of agriculture he came to know this: for, although it says only that he sowed and in the same year reaped a hundredfold, there is no sowing without a good deal of ploughing; he had to do the ploughing, and then the sowing and all the other labour, with all the endurance, all the patience, all the courage, all the persistence, all the faith, all the hope. All these things are drawn into the work of agriculture. I think it is a realm in which perhaps heroism lies more deeply than in any other realm. To see all the hard work of ploughing and harrowing and sowing blotted out in a night's storm and then go and start again - that calls for something; it calls for there being something in YOU before there is something in the soil; you are not going to have that from the soil unless that is in yourself; what comes from the soil will be because of what is in you - the power of resurrection. You have to believe in the power of resurrection to be a good farmer, especially in the days of the blight and the adversity and the ruin of everything. The power of resurrection - Isaac knew that.

Concern For Reproduction And Increase

Now what did it amount to in his case? What does it amount to in any man in that particular realm and sphere of life? It amounts to this - a tremendous concern for reproduction and increase. That is the secret of spiritual full-growth - a real and mighty and triumphant concern for increase and reproduction. Whether it be the Church as a whole or a local company or an individual believer, spiritual growth, enlargement, 'greatness', will depend upon a deep concern for reproduction. It used to be said, and it is still said in some circles, that a non-missionary church is a dead church - it never grows; and there is much truth in that. Where there is no concern for reproduction, for the salvation of souls, for the expansion of the church, there is no growth. The kind of spirit that does the ploughing, the sowing, the hard work, the grind; that endures, that exercises patience and courage against adversity and disappointment, and persists because it believes that this thing can be and should be, because the Lord of resurrection dictates it: that kind of spirit is going to lead to much enlargement, spiritually, of the individual, the local church, and the whole Church. So Isaac is not only the embodiment, but the expression, of the power of resurrection, and that is shown by this great concern for increase.

Are you concerned for spiritual increase, or are you just sitting passively, indifferently, a passenger, a parasite, drawing everything to yourself and giving nothing? Are you one being carried all through the years, or are you one who is a true farmer in this spiritual sense, really concerned about increase? This thing must be a hundredfold; nothing less than that can really mark the full blessing of God - a hundredfold in me and in others. Oh, how that would correct a great deal of our attitude toward others. Our attitude is far too often one that would limit other people's spiritual life. We criticize, we talk about them, we point out their faults, what is going on. How do we use our tongues about the Lord's people and His servants? What is going on in our homes in that matter? If it really did touch those people of God directly, would it be to their enlargement or be to their undoing or their limitation? What is our attitude? Are we true Isaacs in this, that we are concerned for their growth, for their increase, and are not going to do anything, by lip or hand or any other way, that would hinder the spiritual growth of other people, whether individuals or the Church? It is a very pertinent thing, this. You may take it as a settled thing that if you are using your tongue detrimentally to the people of God, you are cutting across your own spiritual growth, you are dwarfing your own spiritual stature. These people are little people, contemptible people; they are of small spiritual stature. Oh, may we grow up! - and we shall grow up as we have a heart enlarged for spiritual increase.

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Dignity, Discernment, Authority

"The man, the lord of the land, spake roughly with us, and took us for spies of the country... And the man, the lord of the land, said unto us..." (Genesis 42:30,33).

"And Judah spake unto him, saying, The man did solemnly protest unto us... but if thou wilt not send him, we will not go down; for the man said unto us, Ye shall not see my face, except your brother be with you... And they said, The man asked straitly concerning ourselves... take also your brother, and arise, go again unto the man: and God Almighty give you mercy before the man... And Joseph said unto them, What deed is this that ye have done? Know ye not that such a man as I can indeed divine?" (Gen. 43. Verses 3,5,7,13,14; 44:15).

Here is "the man". What are the features of this man? This is a man of stature. He is a big man, he is a great man. This man is marked by great dignity. That is patent; it lies on the surface of the story. These brothers of his are all aware of the dignity of this man. This man is marked by discernment - "Know ye not that such a man as I can indeed divine?". You remember that that was how he got to his position - Pharaoh had his dream, and Joseph was the only one who could interpret, and the verdict was that the Spirit of God was in him. He could discern, he had power of discernment and interpretation. And he had authority. Everything is in this man's hands. He has them completely in his hands. Those three things are the characteristics of Joseph - dignity, discernment, authority.

That is stature. Those are the things that mark spiritual full-growth. We could spend a lot of time on that. In one who has spiritual dignity there is nothing mean, nothing contemptible, nothing small, nothing petty; he is one who has to be recognised as a man of stature, as one who counts for something. The man who has discernment is one who can see through beyond his own nose, who is far-seeing, 'inseeing', who has what we call vision; he is a man who has a secret knowledge of the meaning of things. And the possession of spiritual authority means that there is something about that man or woman which is more than themselves. They themselves, perhaps, would not command much respect and certainly not command obedience, but there is something about them that you have to take account of. They have got what we were speaking about in the last chapter - history with God. That gives them something that makes itself known and felt in the presence of other people. They have to say, 'They know what they are talking about, you cannot just twist them round your finger; they know where they stand; there is something about them that you are compelled to recognise, acknowledge and bow to'. That is spiritual authority. Let us not interpret these things physically - I was going to say literally. These are spiritual factors, spiritual features, these are the marks of spiritual growth; and here is a big man, a great man, who has reached full stature.

Are not these the features of Christ? Look at Him again. Is there not dignity about Him? There is nothing small, nothing petty, nothing mean or contemptible about Christ. There is dignity right the way through. There is insight, discernment, perception, vision, knowledge beyond the ordinary. As for authority, He was someone to be reckoned with, even in the day of His humiliation. Sometimes when we are in a bad way physically and having a bad time, we lose out. But there He is, in the deepest humiliation, mocked, spat upon, crowned with thorns, suffering - and the great Roman representative is in His hands. It is Pilate in the hands and before the bar of Jesus, not the other way round. He is there in His dignity and His authority, which is a spiritual thing from heaven. These are the features of Christ. Now, those are to be reproduced in us, and these are the things which will appear as we grow. They will be marks of growth.

But how did Joseph come to it? By emptying and suffering, in exactly the same way as Christ. That is how he came to growth; out of this deep and dire distress, out of this anguish, out of all this suffering through which he went, came these very virtues, these very features. You can see Joseph being developed in the fire. In Potiphar's house, in the fiery trial, the dignity develops: 'Should such a one as I do this thing?'. It was in the fire, in the dungeon, that these features were developed. It was through suffering. It will be the same with us; but that is what God is after, to develop these things. It is a wonderful thing that the grace of God just reverses the order of things. Ordinarily in suffering the unregenerate man loses calibre and often loses character; but in the case of the believer, with the grace of God suffering only adds to character and calibre. Something comes up and grows which is fine, which is grand. That is the story of so many a suffering child of God. It is grand to see them, to be with them. Oh, that is not natural, that is not something that they inherit. That is something that has come by the grace of God, something that has come out of the fires.

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Meekness

"Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men that were upon the face of the earth" (Numbers 12:3).

What a verdict! "ABOVE all men"; head and shoulders above all other men! And how was he head and shoulders above all other men? It says it was in meekness, a tremendous summing up of a man's life! You could say about Moses that he was great in many respects, very great, but the Bible does not make a lot of his greatness in other respects. The Bible passes its verdict upon him that he was the meekest man upon the earth. See God's estimate of greatness, what God calls greatness - meekness. We need not stay with it. What is it? Well, meekness is what he thought of himself; it is what a man is in himself and toward himself. When Moses was alone and when Moses had any thought about himself at all, those thoughts about himself were very poor. He never, when thinking about himself, recognised that there was any reason why he should assert himself, that there was any ground on which he could stand up for his rights or could be something, any reason why they ought to take account of what he was in his own inner life. There was none of that - it was the other way. His thoughts about himself were very small thoughts, and he was only in his position because he had great thoughts of God and little thoughts about himself. That is all we need say. That is Meekness. It works, of course, in many ways, it comes out in many ways; but that is the heart of the matter - what we are in our own eyes about ourselves, and therefore how we behave.

Moses was not always meek, as we know from his early life in Egypt; but, under the hand of God, his weakest point became his strongest.

Now look at the Lord Jesus. There did come a Man on the earth greater than Moses, and His greatness was superior greatness even to that of Moses. He was on the same ground. "I am meek and lowly in heart", He said; "learn of Me" (Matt. 11:29). That is the way to grow. Pride is one of the most ruinous things in the realm of spiritual growth.

Devotion To The Lord's Testimony In His People

"Mordecai was great in the king's house, and his fame went forth throughout all the provinces; for the man Mordecai waxed greater and greater" (Esther 9:4).

"The man... waxed greater and greater." You see how this little phrase "the man" in every connection is related to stature, to growth, to greatness. "The man Mordecai waxed and greater." Why? What was the secret of his greatness? Why did God sovereignly act to bring that man right up, in that startling way, from sitting at the door as a kind of eavesdropper and beggar - bring him up and up and up, until at last this could be said of him: "the man Mordecai waxed greater and greater"? Why? There is only one reason. Here was a man who at any cost was devoted to the interests of the Lord's people and to the Lord's testimony as vested in the Lord's people. That is the answer. You know the story of Mordecai and of Esther. Here is a man whose whole story is summed up in this deep, overwhelming concern for the Lord's people, because they embodied the Lord's testimony. We need, of course, to go over that whole ground of how Israel, chosen of God, was chosen as a people in the earth to be the vessel of His testimony, and here these people are at the point of being wiped out to the last child by this cunning, evil work, the devil-inspired device of Haman, "this wicked Haman", the Agagite. This man Mordecai set himself right in the full tide and flood of that iniquity, which was nothing less than the destruction of the life of the people of God in order to carry away the Lord's testimony from the earth. He set himself, and the tide broke on him, and God honoured him and raised him up and saw to it that he became great. His greatness was not the mere turn of fortune in his favour. It was because of what God was in him; and it is ever like that. Whatever other people try to do, however much they try to keep us down and under and out, spiritual greatness will be brought about by the Lord in us, if only we have this overwhelming concern for His interests in His people.

These are the features of greatness, because they are the features of Christ, and it is by these things that we come to the full stature of "a man in Christ". How important it is for us to recognise that all this is to be true in us as men and women - not as glorified saints hereafter, and certainly not as angels, but as men and women on this earth now, as human beings down here. How wonderful to know that it can commence and develop right away, even here and now, through the grace of God.

Thus, I trust we have been helped to see what God is really after; what intrinsic value is; and what will be the nature of incorruption. Man thinks much of Christian WORK. God thinks most of Christian MEN! There is no grander title than "O, man of God" (or woman). This is the Gold of the Sanctuary, and The Final Criterion.

The End

Up next, The Gospel According to Paul