Books by T. Austin-Sparks

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THE SEAT OF THE SOVEREIGN RULE

But the Church is not only the embodiment of the fruit and triumph of the sovereign rule - it is that in which the immediate power of that rule is centred and then mediated. The sovereign rule of God, of Heaven, is centred in the Church. That is the first great truth about the Church in those early days, as it first comes into being. If you want to know where to find this sovereign rule, government, dominion, authority, of God and of Heaven, you will find it in the Church. There it is in Jerusalem, there it is in Antioch; there it is going everywhere. God has put authority and heavenly power in the Church in a peculiar way.

Oh, that the Church were alive to the meaning of its existence, in this sense - alive to the great deposit with which it has been entrusted, as the very vessel of this sovereign operation, this mighty sovereign activity and rule of God. That deposit is there. When things have been as they should be, that is exactly what has been found in the Church. There were times when unbelievers coming in fell down on their faces, and said, 'God is in the midst of you' (1 Cor. 14:24,25). While joyous, while gladsome, while very blessed in other respects, there ought yet to be something very awful about the Church. "Of the rest durst no man join himself to them" (Acts 5:13). Oh that that forbidding of Divine holiness might be found in the Church! The Church is the seat of this JUDICIAL activity of the Divine sovereignty. So it should be.

THE SOVEREIGN RULE MEDIATED THROUGH THE CHURCH

But then this sovereignty is mediated through the Church. It goes out and says: "In the name of Jesus of Nazareth..." (Acts 3:6). 'In the NAME of Jesus of Nazareth, I command you, I say unto you...' Here is the authority mediated, the Kingdom - poor word again - the sovereign rule, centred in and operating through the Church. That is how it ought to be. The authority of Jesus Christ is in the Church and should be exercised by the Church. Matthew 16 makes that quite clear. "I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matt. 16:19). If that is not authority in Heaven and earth, what is? But it is the authority of Him to whom it was given (Matt. 28:18) through His mighty victory.

THE EXPRESSION OF THE DIVINE AND HEAVENLY ORDER

The Church is, further, that in which the character of the Divine and heavenly order and rule is expressed. If the Kingdom of God and of Heaven has, as one of its essential aspects and components, the nature of Him that rules, then this is not just official, this is not just ecclesiastical - this is spiritual and moral in its very nature. At this point we ought to extend our meditations and go back to those three mighty chapters of Matthew's Gospel, embracing what is called 'the sermon on the mount'; for there is a revolution in ideas there. The whole conception of power is changed. Virtue is pre-eminent, character is predominant. The true values are shown to lie in what you ARE, not in that which is official and organized. "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit..." "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom...".

That opens a very large field, which we cannot touch now. But it is all gathered into this, that the Kingdom is, from one standpoint, the expression of the nature, of the character, of Him who is sovereign, and that that is to be found in the Church. We may think of the Kingdom as a great, general thing, operating and active in the whole world, irrespective of anything and everything that is contrary to it; but it is not going to stop there. It is going to work until it has produced an expression of its own character; it will work, down and down until it has that nucleus that expresses the character of Him who is on the throne. And it is in the Church that the Divine and heavenly nature is found, and it is that nature that is sovereign.

There is perhaps no greater force operating from Heaven than the force of meekness. "He humbled himself, becoming obedient..." (Phil. 2:; but the whole kingdom of Satan was shattered along that line. Men do not like that at all. Here is the revolution. But, you see, it is in the Church that this tremendous power is to be found - this being poor in spirit, this meekness, this being persecuted for righteousness' sake, and all the rest. But therein is power, therein is authority. It is very often not until you get down on your knees, utterly broken as to your own pride, that you get through to God in absolute victory. To be emptied of all self is the way of power, the way of God, the way of Heaven. That is the essence of the Kingdom or sovereignty, and that is all to be taken up by the Church.

THE CHURCH JOINT-HEIR WITH CHRIST

Just one brief word in conclusion. The Church is the joint-heir with Christ of the inheritance, the universal rule, in the ages to come. We know this on the authority of Scripture. The Church is heir to the throne of the world to come - to the administrative place with the Lord Jesus over all that will be extra to itself. For a city presupposes a country, a metropolis presupposes a wider range. The City in the midst of the nations means that government over the nations is THERE, and at the end of the book of the Revelation (21:24, 22:2) that is where the whole matter issues.

[Shammu]

Chapter 4 - The Priority of the Kingdom

"Be not anxious... which of you by being anxious... why are ye anxious? ...Be not therefore anxious... But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matthew 6:25,27,28,31,33).

Let us remind ourselves once again, and keep it clearly before us, that the fundamental meaning of the word which has been translated into our English word 'kingdom' is SOVEREIGN RULE. It will then immediately be apparent that this verse 33 that we have read takes on new meaning and value: 'Seek ye first the sovereign rule of God, and then it follows that all these things will be added.'

You note the context. This verse is found right in the heart of what has come to be called 'the sermon on the mount', which covers three whole chapters, 5, 6 and 7 - one hundred and eleven verses. This is the first of five discourses by the Lord recorded by Matthew. You will notice, further, that what is here was given primarily to His disciples, who were the nucleus of this sovereignty, this rule, this Kingdom. "Seeing the multitudes, he went up into the mountain: and when he had sat down, his disciples came unto him: and he opened his mouth and taught them" (Matt. 5:1,2): so that it is evident that this has to do with those who are immediately and essentially within the compass and meaning of this sovereign rule. Dr. Campbell Morgan calls this section: 'Jesus the King, His Propaganda and Enunciating of Laws'. It is the enunciation of the laws of the King and His Kingdom, of the Ruler and His rule.

THE LAW OF HEART REST UNDER THE SOVEREIGN RULE OF GOD

Here, then, is a law of God's sovereign rule: "Seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." We see, from the context, that it has to do with fretful preoccupation over ways and means in this life, especially the cares of tomorrow - incidentally getting right to the root of many a nervous breakdown, of a good deal of neurosis. But we shall not attempt to deal with that. We are enunciating a law, a law of the sovereign rule, which stands over against this constantly reiterated word - anxious, anxious, anxious. It is therefore the law of heart rest under the sovereign rule of God - heart rest because you are in the Kingdom. Our mentality at once visualises a sphere, a realm; but that comes second. Because you are within the sovereign government of God, "all these things" are there.

A POSITIVE LAW

But note - it is not a passive law. The Lord Jesus does not say, here or anywhere else, what kindly people often say - 'Oh, don't worry, the Lord will take care of you, and will look after that. It will all come out all right.' He no more says that than He would say, on the other hand: 'Substitute an insurance society for God and all is taken care of.' Nor, to bring it into the realm of religion, does He say: 'Hand it over to the priest, and he will take care of that'; or: 'Hand it over to the church, and rid yourself of all responsibility.' I put it in that way, in order that we may get right at what He does say. Somehow or other, we must get to the real heart of this thing, the meaning of this, and so we strip off any mistaken or false ideas, and any wrong courses. There are many people who think that, if only they could adopt some policy (insurance or otherwise!), or some expedient, by which responsibility and liability could be taken off their own shoulders and placed for them somewhere else, they would come to rest - and it does not work that way. You may be the most heavily insured person in creation, and still be the most anxious person, the most worried, the most fretful. There is no guarantee of heart rest along the lines of shelving of responsibility, nor along the line of a false passivity which says, 'Don't worry, it will all come out all right.' The law is not passive.

But notice - it IS positive. The Lord does not say, 'Oh, don't worry.' He says, 'Seek first...' The law is a very positive one, you see. 'Seek first...' and then responsibility will be taken, then the other will be looked after. 'Seek ye first the sovereign rule, the government, of God, and His righteousness.' It is the positive principle of viewing everything in the light of how it serves God's rule. If you will only do that, you come into the good that is here. Our own interests come second or last. His interests come first, and when life is arranged on that basis - ARRANGED on that basis - and kept on that basis, then the other follows; God looks after the other things.

DELIBERATE ARRANGEMENT OF LIFE

I said, when life is ARRANGED on that basis. The fact is that it takes some of us a long time to get life on to that basis. It is only after having lived a long time that we begin to re-arrange life in this way. Well, better late than never! But here is a word for young people and for young Christians - especially to young people who are in a position to arrange their lives in any way. Perhaps you have just started married life together, or are contemplating doing so. Now is the time to arrange it on this principle of the sovereign rule. Now is your opportunity to make it quite unnecessary in after years either to undo much or to regret much. All these laws of the sovereign rule are very practical, as you see, and this is a very practical one. Where shall we live? What kind of a home shall we have? These are practical questions. You must arrange everything on this principle. The thing that matters and governs, and in relation to which everything now has to be arranged, is: How does this serve the interests of the sovereign rule of God?

Put that first, and you will escape many a tragedy, such as we see in many places. Oh, a nice house and a nice home, maybe, but altogether out of relation to the interests of the Lord, both in distance and in other ways. It is going to be an incubus, a hindrance and a limitation; the things of the Lord are going to be made to suffer. And there are many, many spiritual tragedies - lives that have lost out with the Lord, both in spiritual measure and in usefulness to Him, both in service and in a related way in His Church; and so we could spread it out. The whole matter of getting on in the world, of success or ambition - what a range this covers! Now the law and principle of this rule of Heaven is that life must be arranged in the first place in relation to God's interests and God's rule. This must come first, and if it is, you may rest assured that God will look after your interests. You will certainly not suffer in the long run. God will be true to His side of the undertaking.

And then there is the maintaining of the arrangement, the remaining on that basis. It is so easy to be drawn out by a thousand and one things. In fine points, all the way along, the enemy is trying somehow or other to divert, to draw away, to put something in that takes the place of the interests of the Lord. This is a serious and earnest business, calling for all diligence and watchfulness and stedfastness. It is, as I have said, not passive by any means. It will not just happen willy-nilly. "SEEK ye first..."

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SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM

Now that word 'seek' is emphatic. "Seek, and ye shall find", said the Lord elsewhere, "for... he that seeketh findeth" (Matt. 7:7,8). Here is the picture of someone applying themselves with diligence. SEEK: set yourself upon this thing, make it your business and keep at it. Seek FIRST - and keep on seeking first - the sovereign rule of God. Take the alternative course - put your own affairs and interests first - and the inference is perfectly clear though the Lord does not say so explicitly. For He is saying: 'You are anxious. WHY are you anxious?' He is dealing with people who are 'up against things', and the inference is that, if you adopt the alternative of putting your own interests first, then you must take responsibility for the consequences. You have to reckon with life without the sovereign rule of God. It is a terrible thing never to be able to appeal in the court of God, never to find that the Lord is really working everything for good, never to know that there is no need at all to be anxious. Take the burden, carry the weight yourself, work life out yourself, and sooner or later you will come up against some tremendous situation with which you cannot cope, and that is the alternative which many have so grievously found.

"BUT" - on that word there is a turnover, a turn round, a change of position - "BUT seek ye first..." It is just the question of God's sovereign rule in our affairs, in our life, which we may know and enjoy and prove and find to be real. It is a wonderful thing at long last to find that it has been real, even when we thought that it was not working that way, and that God was not at work in things in our interest, to find at long last that where He seemed to be least active He still had the situation in hand. Yes - to live long enough with God to be able to look back upon situations which at the time seemed to deny that the Lord was governing, was ruling, and to be able to see that those were the very things which worked out to good. It is true. Perhaps you who read these words find yourself today in a situation where it is difficult to trace the sovereign hand of God; but God's word stands and God's undertaking is sure. He says: 'You put first My interests, My rule, and I will look after the rest - all these things shall be added'.

Let us make sure that this has got home. We have to make this a personal matter - for anxiety, is a personal matter, is it not? It is OUR anxiety, it is OUR troubles and bothers, it is OUR complications and difficulties. It is all just OURS. May it not be that a lot of it is unnecessary? - unnecessary because, as we go here or there, proceed on some errand, some purpose, to transact something, or carry out some project we do not stop to ask: 'Now, what interest of the Lord can be served in this?' Impulse, whim, fleshly desire - what WE would like - all these things arise and govern the course of our lives, and the Lord says, 'Stop! The first thing is: Where do I come in? How are My interests going to be served?' Perhaps that might seem very exacting, even legal; but it is not so - it is the way into this beneficent rule of God.

'Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness.' Here are two things. First the kingdom - the sovereign rule of God. Seek ye first, in other words, that which relates to God's place in life: that is, His sovereign rule. He is Lord, He is Sovereign: then seek first that which relates to His place. It sounds very simple and elementary, but God's place is a most important thing. What place has God in this? Where does He come in? His place is as Sovereign. His sovereign rule is His right.

SEEK FIRST HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS

And then His righteousness - that which relates to God's character. Seek ye first that which is like God - God-like. The whole Bible is taken up with this matter of righteousness and unrighteousness, and righteousness is what God is like, what belongs to God. "Righteousness and judgment are the foundation of his throne" (Ps. 97:2). Unrighteousness is that which is against God, against which prophet and seer pronounce God's displeasure and God's wrath. So when we are told that what we are to seek, as a first priority, is (1) His rightful place in our lives, and (2) that which is God-like, we are getting to the very heart of this law. It means that you and I are to seek in the first place and at all times to be Christ-like, God-like - which is only an extension of 'godly'; to bring the likeness, the nature and character of God into the situation; to seek that there shall be found here some expression of what God is like as He has been revealed in Jesus Christ. It means that it is our first and primary business to see to it that our home shall be a place where God is known in truth, a place characterized by what God is like; and it means that all our interests are to bring Him, as to what He truly is, into every situation in life.

That is not exaggerating this word. His righteousness, His character, His likeness, what He is in Himself: make it your business to bring THAT in first, and then you find the Lord right there in all His sovereign rule on your behalf. Forgive the simplicity of this, but we are accustomed to quoting this passage so glibly - 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.' Yes, but what does it mean? It is applied teaching, and that is one reason why the Lord Jesus kept it for the disciples. It is sheer nonsense to call upon unsaved men to live up to the Sermon on the Mount. This is not a rule of life for the unconverted. It is an impossible thing to present to them. This is a practical basis of everyday life for the children of the Kingdom.

GOD'S KINGDOM AGAINST THE ENEMY'S KINGDOM

But there is always lurking in the near vicinity another kingdom, another government, another rule, another god, and the object of that other kingdom is to bring the people of God into servitude, into bondage, to hold them in toilsome labour. Your mind will have immediately darted back to Egypt. You remember that it says that ISRAEL was in Egypt. Think for a moment. Isra-el - a prince with God. The nation were the sons of Israel, and they were in bondage, in servitude, in toilsome, wearisome labour in Egypt. It is a picture. The laws of the rule of God are intended for our emancipation, our deliverance, our freedom, our rest, our prosperity, and there is the shadow of this other rule always near. Not satisfied with bringing the poor world under its abominable rule, it seeks above all things to impinge upon the sons of God and to bring them into toilsome bondage.

Many, many a child of God is there, in the toils of anxiety, in the awful grip of this other kingdom that would rob God of His glory in His people, that would malign God in the very looks of His children - anxious, burdened, worried, fretful - sons of God! What a contradiction! It seems that some children of God have entered into a terrible conspiracy with themselves never to smile, afraid that they would be giving away some spirituality. It is a very grievous matter. God's thought for His people is that they shall be an emancipated and free people, and that does not only mean freedom from judgment and condemnation and the penalty of sin, but freedom from this tyranny of the anxious heart and melancholy face.

You see what the Devil is after. This law of the sovereignty is of deep, deep meaning and far-reaching effect. This other is another kingdom, another rule, so different. One of the chief objects of that other kingdom and rule is to bring God's own blood-bought children into anxious care, to deny the very redemption which God has wrought for them in Christ. And so, in order to defeat the Devil himself, to destroy the power of his rule - 'Seek ye first the sovereign rule of God, and His righteousness', and He will take responsibility and relieve you of your unnecessary care. Is that practical? Is that important? Well, Jesus came to bring in this Kingdom - this rule and this regime - and to undo the other kingdom.

So it comes surely with the backing of tremendous meaning: 'Seek ye first - give priority to - the sovereign rule of God, and His righteousness - His character, nature - and all these things shall be added unto you.'

[Shammu]

Chapter 5 - The Proclamation of the Kingdom

"And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then shall the end come" (Matthew 24:14).

Let us first analyse this verse, noticing its particular words.

"This Gospel [literally, 'good news'] of the Kingdom [literally, 'the royal reign'] shall be preached [this particular word means 'proclaimed', 'announced', 'heralded'] in the whole world [=the whole inhabited or habitable earth] for a testimony [=for a witness: Dr. Weymouth in his version translates that phrase - 'to set the evidence'].

Now with that analysis, let us build it all up into its full literal statement:

'This good news of the royal reign shall be heralded in the whole inhabited earth, to set the evidence before all the nations; and then shall the end come.'

That is a remarkable verse, for it comprehends nothing less than the whole mission, work, meaning and purpose of the person, incarnation, life, death, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus Christ, and it carries that through as the very meaning and business of His Church. It is a very comprehensive verse indeed.

But we must get behind this tremendous statement, try to get inside it. It is then to be noticed that what is called the Gospel, the good news - everything that Christianity has to say and to give - is defined in terms of a Kingdom, a sovereign rule, the outworking of a Kingship. Of course, we are so familiar with the language and with the idea that perhaps we have never really stopped to think what that means. Why is Christianity not spoken of as something else - 'this gospel of the communal state', 'this gospel of the social state', or some other designation? It is called 'the gospel of the sovereign rule, the royal reign'; in other words, the gospel of the Kingship of Jesus Christ. It is that, and nothing less and nothing other than that.

CHRIST'S KINGSHIP OF HEAVENLY ORIGIN

And that leads us to a further enquiry and investigation. Where did that idea originate and come from? Now it is very difficult for us to trace back the idea of kingship so far as man is concerned. We do not know who was the first person to hold the title of king. We can see the idea in its primitive form evolving, developing, until it reached the full status of monarchy; we will return to that in a moment. But what we do know from the Bible is that this did not begin with man at all. It began in Heaven with God. The idea of royal reign, sovereign rule, was with God, and was transmitted to His Son Jesus Christ before ever this world was created, and before there ever was such a thing as kingship on this earth, either in principle or in actuality. The Bible tells us that God appointed His Son Jesus Christ as the Heir of all things (Heb. 1:2), and that God speaks of His Son as His King. It comes out in one of the psalms, where God is speaking: "I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion" (Ps. 2:6). That is a prophetic utterance concerning the Lord Jesus, as you well know. The idea of kingship originated with God and was centred in His Son Jesus Christ.

ANOTHER KING

The next thing that the Bible makes known to us is that someone was jealous of that. The highest created being among the angelic hosts found in his heart jealousy of God's Son and allowed that jealousy to take such a hold upon him that he projected a device and a scheme and a movement to supplant God's Son and to secure that rule in himself and for himself. That revolt against God's determination concerning His Son took place somewhere outside of this world, before the present order of creation was brought into being; but God proceeded according to plan and according to purpose, and through the instrumentality of His Son created this world to be the realm of His Son's dominion; and in it He placed man.

The next thing was that that being who had by his revolt, his rebellion, been cast out of Heaven, made his way forthwith to the realm of God's appointed and pre-destined King. The story is known how, for the time being, he gained his point through a subtle, deeply laid plan of deception - his appeal to man's soul-life. He gained his point by winning man over to his side; and thus he became, for the time being - as even Jesus recognised and acknowledged him to be - "the prince of this world" (John 12:31, etc.) although illegitimately so. There you have the root of the whole matter, the background of our passage of Scripture.

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THE VICTORY OF GOD'S KING

Of course, God is not going to tolerate that for ever. God is not going to be spoiled of His intention, neither is His Son going to be deprived of His inheritance. The story of the incarnation finds its explanation there: it was the coming of God's Son into this world in the flesh to take up this whole matter of God's intention, and of His own (the Son's) inheritance, and of man's place in that inheritance, and to fight it out to a final, glorious triumphant issue. And seeing that it was not something official, but a spiritual and moral matter, it went right to the depths of things - of the very nature of sin and wickedness, out of which it all came. It focused upon and dealt with all that evil, as personified in the Evil One himself. Jesus met it, He took up the battle of the eternal rule, the royal reign, and fought out all its implicates to a victorious issue. 'By His Cross He triumphed', and in His Cross He 'stripped off the principalities and the powers, made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it' (Col. 2:15). He plucked the sceptre from the hand of the usurper, and cast out, as He said, the prince of this world (John 12:31); and, rising triumphant from death and the grave, received at the hands of His Father the Kingdom, together with 'all authority in Heaven and in earth' (Matt. 28:18), 'the Name which is above every name' (Phil. 2:9), and the place 'far above all rule and authority, every name that is named' (Eph. 1:21). That is the great drama that the Bible contains and sets forth; and out of that issues what is called the Gospel, the good news - the good news of His royal reign in virtue of all that He has done.

THE NEED FOR HUMAN KINGSHIP

Now we come back to the human side, the history of kingship, rulership. It is quite clear that it commenced in a very simple way. First of all the principle was found in expression in a family. Trouble in the family has a very long and remote history. It seems that almost immediately the family existed there was trouble, and somebody in the family had to take authority. The first kings, although they were not called that, were heads over families. Thence their authority extended to the tribe, and from the tribe to the tribes, and from the tribes to the nation. And then, as far as they could, they tried to get kingship over a number of nations, and finally over all the nations.

But our point is this. This situation was brought about by reason of circumstances and man's need. A ruler or governor - a king in principle or in name - was a necessity, for somebody had to adjudicate in man's troubles and decide in matters of strife, whether in families or tribes or nations; somebody had to give the verdict of right or wrong. Because of the further circumstances of conflict in the world, antagonism setting people against people, tribe against tribe, nation against nation, somebody must take up the cause and lead out in warfare to victory. Because peace was not the normal state of things, but 'dispeace' - anything but peace - somebody must assume the responsibility of trying to provide man with peace, of trying to secure peace and establish peace.

Thus kingship has as its components these ideas of adjudicating, of judging, of determining the right and the wrong, of leading against that which threatens man's well-being, and the very integration of man, and of establishing peace. These are the constituents of kingship, as we find it in its development. The kingship exists because of the existent conditions, as something set over against them. This gives us the background and the principle of the matter.

KING OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

In a far, far greater realm than the temporal and the earthly, the Lord Jesus, as God's King, has taken up those very issues. These are components of His Kingship. In this world everything has gone wrong; a state of anarchy and iniquity - of 'inequity', unfairness, wrong from man to man - prevails. It is what the Bible sums up in one word: unrighteousness. It affects all man's dealings with man, all human relationships and transactions. The whole system of human relationships just is not right; it is not straight, it is not 'fair and square' - it is unrighteous. The whole question of unrighteousness is bound up with this matter of Kingship; and it is therefore very significant that, in a day when, in that marked-out nation of Israel, the Kingship, the sovereign rule, the royal rule of God was intended to be displayed, the worst state of unrighteousness existed.

But in the midst of it all - all this unrighteousness, yes, even of the kings themselves - a prophet rises up and shouts: "A king shall reign in righteousness"! (Isa. 22:1). A beam of light is thrown right forward to this One who was coming. We know that the Lord Jesus, in His life and death, took up this whole question of righteousness - in the first place as relating to the rights of God. His first aim, His first task, was to bring God His rights, His due, to put things straight with God where man is concerned. How much Gospel is contained in that! Paul's whole wonderful letter to the Romans is really gathered into that idea of God requiring righteousness, of man being unable to provide Him with it, and Jesus Christ stepping into the breach and satisfying God in this matter on man's behalf. And having done that Godward, he proceeds to do it amongst men, and where this royal reign of Jesus Christ is found in men's hearts you have justice and truth and equity, 'fairness and squareness' and rightness - all that is meant by righteousness. He 'reigns in righteousness.'

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KING OF PEACE

Then, as to this matter of conflict. It goes far beyond the wars amongst men. Whence come all these wars? They emanate from that Evil One who has struck this universe through with conflict, contention, strife, hatred, malice. This great warfare in the universe is first of all spiritual before it becomes temporal, and it was from Satan that it came. We know quite well that it is here. We know that in our hearts; before Christ takes them as His throne, there is no peace, and there is no peace there apart from Him. We know all about contention and strife within ourselves; we know, too, that it is the most difficult thing to live with other people for long without finding some contention, some strife, some antagonism. In the realm where Christ is not Lord, it is there. Perhaps Christians, more than anyone else, sense the antagonisms that are abroad. Satan has concentrated his forces and attention especially upon Christians, to destroy the testimony of what Jesus has done; to spoil this royal rule by undercutting and undermining its meaning of oneness, fellowship, unity. Fellowship and unity is a real battle in any realm, but perhaps more among Christians than anywhere.

But there is a King to lead out to that battle. This royal rule means that there need not be this state of things, that there can be victory over human strife and contentions and divisions and antagonisms and malice and all this. He has gained the victory over Satan's terrible work of rending this universe asunder and making it one mighty realm of conflict. Christ, we are told, has "made peace through the blood of his cross" (Col. 1:20). The idea of a King was, as far as possible, to keep and establish peace. No king has ever done that for very long, or within more than a limited realm, but Christ has entered that hostile kingdom, led forth into battle, and secured peace.

Here, too, while we know naturally, in our own hearts, the elements of strife and contention and warfare, in Christ we know the other side. We know that He has brought His reign of peace into our hearts. "We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5:1), and the peace of God passing all understanding garrisons our hearts (Phil. 4:7), but while there is so much more needed, and we have always to be on our guard and always to be standing into His victory in this matter, nevertheless there is the glorious fact that we do know something of a fellowship, a blessed and wonderful fellowship amongst ourselves as God's people, which is unique, which is not known after its kind anywhere else in all the universe. The most precious and blessed thing that Christians have inherited through the sovereign Lordship of Jesus Christ in their hearts is their fellowship with one another. How much is bound up with that! How much we owe to one another in Christ, how necessary we are to one another, how impossible it is to get on without one another simply because God is against our getting on without one another. We find that to try and get on without one another simply brings the Lord into controversy with us.

Righteousness and peace - these are the elements of His reign. The enemy is overthrown, his captives and victims are released, peace is established; whilst the guardian within attends to the question of the establishment of righteousness. All this is our need, as it ever was man's need, and He has met it completely, fully. Now, that is all framed by this wonderful word 'Gospel' - good news. But there are multitudes - perhaps there is even one reading these lines - who do not know this wonderful work that Jesus Christ has done, who are not in the good and enjoyment of the peace with God, and peace in their own hearts, that we know. This all seems to them so strange, although perhaps they look on us wistfully and enviously. This fellowship among Christians is an impressive thing; it is not something feigned, put on or made up. We have known of unsaved people coming into Christian gatherings, and going away, if not actually saved, yet saying to one another, 'There is a wonderful atmosphere there. You feel that these people have got something that others have not got.' They speak of the impression made upon them by the wonderful fellowship of God's people, and that constitutes a testimony. It is, in fact THE testimony; it is the evidence.

SETTING THE EVIDENCE

So I follow on at once. This good news of the royal rule or reign, in these terms of spiritual values - inward life, blessed fellowship, strife overcome, righteousness established - this good news is committed to the Church and to the heralds to take into all the nations. But note that it is not just somebody going out and announcing it as a theory. We need to get hold of this quite strongly. There would be a very, very different situation in the world today, as the result of Christianity and evangelization, if this one point had been more firmly and clearly grasped. While it is the work of the herald to make the announcement, the passage we have been considering does not just stop there, with 'This good news of the royal reign shall be proclaimed in the whole inhabited earth'. It does not stop there, and that is just where the failure and weakness lies. It continues: 'shall be proclaimed... FOR A WITNESS'. Weymouth's translation, which I quoted earlier, gives us the very heart of the matter. He says: 'to set the evidence'. The herald is not just announcing some abstract theory, or even fact, objectively. He is there actually to set or provide the evidence that it is so.

Go back to your New Testament, and what do you have? You have the heralds going into the inhabited earth, right enough: but what are they doing? Are they just walking into some city and getting up onto a platform and making an announcement, and then going off? Do they make the announcement, and then go on to the next place and the next place and the next place, till they cover the whole inhabited earth with the announcement? Did they do that? They certainly did not. They had a better apprehension of their business, and of what the Lord meant, than that. The meaning that was in their hearts and minds of being in any place was this: 'Something has got to be established in this place which will be concrete evidence that Jesus is on the throne!' Whereas the announcement of some teaching, some objective truth, might never have bothered anybody, when they went in on that ground and with that idea and motive, all Hell rose up to say, 'We will quench that thing here if we can!'

So you have an apostle going into a city and making the proclamation, and Hell rising up and stirring up men to stone him, drag him out of the city, and leave him for dead. When they have withdrawn, he rises; and what does he say? 'I have made my announcement in this city - I will go to the next one'? He goes back again into the city, right back there. Why? He says, 'We have not got the concrete evidence here yet. We have not got that which is the embodiment of this testimony; until we have, we hold on. The Devil is not going to have his way about this matter.'

And so in every place they left behind something that was concrete. It was not just a word thrown out into the air. There was something there which was the embodiment of the truth that Jesus is Lord, and that Satan's kingdom is not universal. It has been broken into here and here, and in that which is left behind is the evidence. Read about those churches again, those vessels of the evidence; read about them. There they were in that place, persecuted, assailed, going through a terrible time, and yet - and yet - holding the ground: because they knew that if they did not, Satan would have it, and they were not allowing that. They were committed to this royal rule. And so the proclamation was more than a proclamation. It had in view a setting of the evidence, the establishment of a witness there. It is good to hear local companies of the Lord's people speaking of themselves like this: 'We are here to have a witness in this place.'

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Now, THAT is the purpose of the heralds, THAT is the function of the churches. That is why we are here on this earth, as Christians - namely, that wherever we are, at home, in business, or anywhere, we may provide the evidence that Jesus is Lord. That will be the explanation of the suffering and the opposition, and all the efforts of the Devil to quench us and drive us out. We are there as evidence of something. As I said a little while back, if only this had been grasped and held and understood from the beginning, what a different situation there would be. The preaching of the Gospel seems to have so largely resolved itself into giving out the truths, the doctrines, of Christianity; but there has to be something far more than that. There is need that everyone who felt themselves so called should say: 'Yes, but there has to be concrete evidence that this is true. There must be proof positive about this matter, embodied in something here that declares that Jesus is Lord.'

Have you set the evidence? Are you standing for that? That is the challenge in the proclamation of the Gospel. It is good news, but that good news has to be embodied in something that constitutes its very evidence and proof.

A CHALLENGE TO CHRISTIANS

It is a challenge to us as Christians, it is also a blessed, helpful explanation of very much. It does explain why the Devil hates us so intensely. It explains all the pressure that is brought to bear upon us by him. It explains that stirring up, that terrible stirring up, which is always the prelude to some activity of the enemy, 'If only we can prevent that, spoil that, in some way upset that - !' So it is an explanation and a help to know that. And it is a challenge to us Christians that we are not going to be moved until the Lord moves us. Yes, the Lord may move us, the Lord may take us up, the Lord may lead us away, but by the grace of God the Devil never shall. We are not standing where we are just for our own interests, to get something that we want. We are standing in far more serious issues than that - in nothing less than this great cosmic conflict between the two princes, the two kings. We are there to set the evidence. It is a very great challenge to us.

A CHALLENGE TO THE UNSAVED

But it is also a challenge to anyone reading these lines who is not the Lord's. The challenge is this: There are only two kings in this universe. There is no neutral zone in this matter, there is no 'no man's land' here. There are only two rules, two kingdoms; Christ, God's eternally appointed King, and the Devil, the usurper from of old. We make the declaration, the announcement to you that "Jesus Christ is Lord" (Phil. 2:11). God has appointed Him Lord, and He is Lord by right of His own conquest of the Devil. It is for you to decide in which of the two kingdoms, realms and governments you are. That is the challenge which has to go into the whole inhabited earth, and you cannot get out of it.

If you do not believe that you are in the kingdom and rule of Satan, if you are not definitely committed and given to Jesus Christ, I can give you the most perfect and complete proof of it, if you will accept it. Try to get out of Satan's kingdom! Try to become a Christian! You will find that it does not happen and go through automatically. You will at once discover that spiritual forces rise up, and the thing becomes full of complications and difficulties. They rise up from within you - either revolt or antagonism at the idea, or questions and doubts about it, or fears concerning it. Immediately you move in this matter you find that other things begin to move - not that you have moved them, but that they begin to move of themselves.

The Old Testament illustration of this is Israel, God's people, in Egypt. They were in bondage, but things were fairly quiet until the idea of their going out of Egypt was mooted. But immediately this thought of an exodus from Egypt began to take shape, then things began to happen. It seemed that the whole kingdom was in a ferment, working itself up to the final furore to prevent this. Now, you go on quietly without thinking of coming to the Lord Jesus, and, while you may have questions and may not be having an altogether lovely time, nevertheless your life may be comparatively easy. But when you begin to contemplate coming to the Lord Jesus and entering into His reign and kingdom, then you discover, without your doing anything at all, that things begin to work, things are happening to stop that. They come up from within, and they come from without. No one is born into the Kingdom of Heaven without conflict, without a fight; and what a fight it is for some souls - a long-drawn-out fight until they are through. As I said, you can put this to the test. You make a gesture toward Jesus Christ, and you will find that you are in a bondage that you did not know of before. It is there, it is a fact. But, blessed be God, there is victory for you with the Lord Jesus Christ, to get you out of that bondage, right through into His victory.

But my immediate point is this. We are declaring that Jesus Christ is God's King, and that the final rule of this universe is vested in Him. By nature we are born into the other kingdom, the kingdom of the Evil One, to whom we belong. The Bible says that we are 'children of darkness' and 'children of wrath'. We are children of the Devil by birth, for Adam put us all into his power and into his hand. Jesus came to rescue us, to get us out, to bring us into His own reign. Where are you? That is the issue presented. It is announced, declared. It is a tremendous thing, for eternal destiny hangs upon your response to this.

And it is a solemn thing - oh, that men realised it - to have in any neighbourhood a testimony, to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The whole of such an area is going to be judged one day because that company was there with this testimony. Yes, it will mean judgment. The indictment will be: 'But you knew it was there: Your house was visited, you were told, you were invited; Jesus Christ was right there in the midst of that people. You would not have it. You either ignored it or rebelled against it or repudiated it. But it was there in evidence. You cannot say that you did not know.' It is a tremendous thing for God to plant in a district a living testimony to the Lordship of His Son. All in that district are going to be judged by their attitude to that.

Do not misunderstand or misinterpret this. It is a spiritual matter. This is God's method, to put down in the nations something which is a set evidence to the great fact of the Lordship of His Son, and to judge everything by it. It sounds stern, but we must be faithful, and we must warn as well as entreat. In love for your soul we would say, Do not abide under the flag of the usurper. Here is God's King, and we proclaim to you this good news of His sovereign rule.

And when the evidence for it has been set, says this word in Matthew, "in the whole inhabited earth", God's time will come for winding up the dispensation. I will not go further into that, but there is very much bound up with it. The dispensation waits for that, and therefore there is an urgency about things, because we never know, in a day like this, when the testimony will have found its last declaration in this world. Whereas the kingdom of Satan is ousting the personal messengers, they cannot close down the air. This Gospel of the sovereignty, is getting through, for it is, in truth, sovereign.

May the Lord help us as His people to meet the challenge as to the real meaning and purpose of our being here on this earth. And if you do not belong to the Lord Jesus, if you are not in His Kingdom, may He help you to meet the other challenge - to forsake the false usurper's flag and dominion, and seek citizenship in the Kingdom of our Lord.

The End

Up next, The Great Transition From One Humanity to Another

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

The Great Transition From One Humanity To Another
by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 1 - The New Testament: The Great Transition

Our Father, our God, we ask Thee now that Thou, Who didst say “Let light be,” will shine into our hearts at this time “To give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” It is that face we together have said we are seeking now. We seek Thy Face. We thank Thee that the veil is taken away. We thank Thee that the heaven is open. We thank Thee that the Holy Spirit has come. What we pray for is our need—so deeply conscious we are of it—our own impotence and helplessness, our inability to do anything, to say anything worthy of Thyself. O Lord, we confess utter dependence upon Thee, but we say to Thee, Lord, we trust Thee. Now make this then a time of entering into the good of that opened heaven, that anointing Spirit, that revelation in the Face of Jesus Christ. We ask it in His Name, Amen.

I want to lay the foundation for our meditation in this morning session, the first session of this week, by asking you to turn to several passages of Scripture from the Old Testament and from the New. Beginning in the Book of Genesis at chapter five, verse two, it states: “Male and female created He them, and blessed them, and called their name, man” (A.S.V.). Now come over to the New Testament in the First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter fifteen, verses 45–49: “So also it is written, the first man became a living soul. The last Adam a life-giving Spirit. Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; then that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second Man is of heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall (or let us) also bear the image of the heavenly” (A.S.V.).

And then, please, in the Letter to the Colossians, chapter three at verse nine: “Lie not one to another; seeing that ye have put off the old man with his doings, and have put on the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him That created him; where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman; but Christ is all, and in all” (A.S.V.).

And finally, in the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter two at verse five, it says: “For not unto angels did He subject the world to come, whereof we speak. But one has somewhere testified, saying, ‘What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? Or the Son of Man, that Thou visitest Him?’ ”

As I have said, in this morning session we are laying the foundation for our meditations. We shall be somewhat general and comprehensive and later work inward to get to the real heart of things; however, first it is necessary for us to have a comprehensive view and vision of what is before us.

I have no doubt that not a few of you who are here at this time have come with problems, and I find that Christians everywhere the world over are full of problems in our time. If it is not problems about their own spiritual life and themselves (as it is in many cases), it is problems about other Christians; or it is problems about the Church generally and, perhaps, locally. Also, there are problems about the world. These problems are manifold, and they are apt to drain our spiritual life and get us very much locked up and held up in our spiritual progress. It is like that. A lot of Christians are doing that today. They are missing the glory because their eyes are either turned inward or earthward: that is their problem.

You remember when the people of Israel were going over the Jordan into the promised land: the Word to them was this, “You shall set the ark, a space between you and the ark, of two thousand cubits, because you have not passed this way heretofore” (Josh. 3:3–4, paraphrased). There is a wealth, a mine of profound wisdom, in that simple prescription: “a space of two thousand cubits between you and the ark, because you have not passed this way heretofore.” If you get too close to things, you will lose your perspective and you will lose your way. Do not get too near. Keep things in proportion, in perspective.

Now do you not agree with me that we have got too near things, and we have made things the everything? Is that true? Yes, even our Christian doctrine—and it is precious and important and vital and essential—yet, we have isolated our doctrines and made them the everything. We can make even the doctrine of the Cross the everything, and I can mention many other things which are like a circumscribed circle for many Christians today. They cannot see beyond that, and they cannot see anything more than that. If you talk to them, they have no interest in anything but that. They come back to it every time and hold you to it. This loss of proportion and perspective and vision in its entirety is the cause of many of our problems and much of our arrested spiritual life.

Now why am I saying this? For two reasons. You will have to get a larger vision than your personal problems and see them in a related way. I do not know very much about the science of relativity, but I come down very strongly on the principle of relatedness or relativity. We must see everything in its relatedness to everything else, and not just things as an end in themselves. I want to share with you this morning what is on my heart, and what is so much alive to me now is this comprehensive setting of the spiritual life, getting it in its greatness, its vastness, its immensity.

Now immensity can, of course, be awe-inspiring to the point of making you stand still and hold your breath. But immensity can also be an emancipating thing. You see the greatness of that into which we have been called in Christ! The Greatness of Christ! Oh, if we could this week get a new apprehension, grasp, of the infinitudes of our Christian calling, we would go away an emancipated people. And in that setting then, let us begin.

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Humanity Is God’s End

This morning we have read many passages in the Bible, and I would have liked to have added many more of the same kind, but these are enough as a starting point. Do you recognize what they are all about? From Genesis, the beginning, right through the Scriptures, it is one thing: man. No, it is two men, and what we are going to be occupied with is this double humanity, or two humanities, for they are the subject matter of the whole Bible. The Bible is the story of God and man, and everything is gathered into that; nothing is in the Bible but what relates to that.

Of course, the Bible begins with God: “In the beginning God....” First we have the fact of God. This is where you start, and you are not far along before you come upon man. Human history begins with God, God as a fact—God initiating everything, taking the initiative; God at work—God’s mind working out in action, in what He does. Remember that is a Bible principle. If you want to know the mind of God, you will come to know it by what God does and not always by what He says to do. More often, God’s mind is revealed by how He deals with you than by what He says in words in your ear.

God is speaking in His actions, speaking very loudly in His works. God’s mind is being revealed in His actions; God is at work, at work preparing everything for man. When He has made that preparation and brought man in, God says: “There is nothing more to do; at this stage, We can rest.” And God is at rest when He has man introduced into his prepared place and scene.

That man Adam, the New Testament tells us, is a figure of Him that was to come, in Whom God will ultimately find His full rest. Man constituted; the man conditioned; the man environed; the man probationed. All God’s interests are centered in humanity; not in things, as such. No thing is an end with God. Man is God’s end. Humanity is God’s end.

With this thought, we are right back there in the very center of the interests of God, humanity. But that man Adam disappointed God, failed Him, and was rejected by God. And at that point, God re-acted, re-acted with the intimation of Another One, Another Man. A Representative Man, Whom God had foreordained before the foundation of the world. This Man is foreordained and then forecast, foreshadowed; and that line of the reaction of God toward the Man, against this other man, runs all the way through like a red line through the Old Testament. In figure, in type, in prophecy, in the spiritual history of an elect line, all moving on toward that Other Man, that Other Humanity, the different Humanity, until we reach the New Testament.

The New Testament is the crisis of humanity. Have you thought of Christianity like that? Or have you thought of Christianity only in its parts, its fragments, such as the Atonement for a man’s sin, man’s personal salvation, man’s securing of eternal hope and glory. These are all the parts of salvation, and we have made so much of them. Well, you cannot make too much of the parts, of course, until you reach the point where the parts become less than the whole; and, dear friends, we have got to readjust our conception and idea of Christianity at this point to see that with the coming of the Lord Jesus, a crisis in the whole history of humanity is reached. It is the crisis of the final word of rejection of a humanity, a kind of man, and the introduction of an entirely different kind of Humanity with the Person of Jesus Christ. When you grasp that, your whole Bible is going to come alive; it will come alive.

What have we come into? What is regeneration? You call it conversion, being “born again,” or you call it regeneration. What is it that we have come into?—It is generation into Another Humanity altogether different as a member of a different race of creatures, a different species of Humanity. With the New Testament, this immense crisis in human history is introduced, a crisis of humanity. Another Humanity is introduced with our New Testament, the full and final type of Humanity that God is going to have; and, the tremendous thing is, all that belongs to the perfection of man is found in this Representative One. That is introduced with our New Testament.

Jesus stands in a unique relation to the human race, and do you not see how rays of light focus upon this great fact? What is it that God is doing?—with you, with me, as a bit of this humanity. What is He doing? What is He after? What is the explanation of our experience under the hand of God?

When we get under the hand of God, we are going through it. What are you expecting this week? When you go away from here, you will meet friends and they will say, “Have you had a happy time?” I think I told you before of a conference I was at once. At the end, testimonies were asked for from the ministers as to what the conference had meant to them; one and another got up and said, “Oh, I have had a wonderful time; I have had a glorious time; this has been the best time of my life...,” and so on. And then one man got up, his eyes were red, his face was strained; he said, “I do not understand this; I have had an awful time. This week has meant devastation to me. Everything that I held as important is gone. I am left with a necessity for a new Christ, a bigger Christ than ever I have known.” What are you expecting this week? Well, I hope you have a good time! But your “good time,” dear friends, in the light of eternity may be a very bad time. When it comes to seeing the real fruit, it may come out of a devastation.

What is God doing?—He is devastating one kind of humanity. We are going to see that as we go on from day to day. He is doing it. I do not know what your experience is, but I know it is mine. I know it is the experience of many of the most used and blessed servants of God—that they are going through a terrible time. Spiritually they have come to the place, where if the Lord, the Lord does not really stand by and take over and see them through, it is an end even of their long spiritual experience. All the past will not stand unless the Lord comes in in a new way. Is not that true with many? Yes, that is what He is doing. He is working on this very ground of the two humanities—one being that which we are by nature; and the Other, that which we are in Christ.

So, what we are to be occupied with at this time is first of all, to behold the Man, to behold The Man. And I would pray, and do pray, that when this week is finished, we shall be able to truly express our hearts in those wonderful words of a poet known to many of you. These are some lines from that wonderful poem,

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“Christ”

I am Christ’s, and let that Name suffice me.
Aye, and for me He greatly hath sufficed.
Yea, through life, through death, through sorrow,
and through sinning,
He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed.
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning.
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.

Those words express what we would all like to be the issue of this time—Christ.

A New Captivation Of Christ.

A New, Wonderful Appreciation Of Christ.

A New Seeing Of The Significance Of Christ In God’s Universe.

Now for these remaining few minutes of the introduction, I want to just pinpoint this one thing. Have you recognized, (perhaps you have without putting it in these words) have you recognized that the very heart and pivot of our Bible is an immense transition? The heart of the Bible is where the Old Testament ends and the New Testament begins, for here are two halves of human history, of humanity. Right there, at that point we come on this great immense transition. The New Testament is wholly taken up with the meaning and the nature, the fact of this transition, this movement from one thing to Another in humanity.

You will recall so much in your New Testament when I just mention these things. First of all it is a transition from one man to Another, from Adam to Christ. We read that in 1 Corinthians 15: “the first man,” He called “him”...? No, He called “them” man (Gen. 5:2). That is racial; that is humanity. He called them. That is very simple—the first man, Adam. It is the same thing, “Adam” and “man,” as you noticed in the margin of Genesis 5. “He called them ‘man’.” And the New Testament wholly bears upon this transition from one humanity to Another, from one racial head and inclusive person to Another. It is a New Humanity, going beyond transition then, which is a racial one, from Adam to Christ, from the first man to the last Man.

Secondly, there is a transition from one nation to Another. I know there is room for a lot of controversy there about Israel; nevertheless, the New Testament and Christ Himself came down on this quite emphatically: “The kingdom of God shall be taken away from you (that is, Israel), and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.” Heavenly Fruit, not earthly. Transition from one nation to Another.

And Peter, oh, Peter! I am amazed at Peter, are you not?! That erstwhile Judaistic traditionalist who had a battle with the Lord over Gentiles in Cæsarea, going to the house of Cornelius and even saying in a contradiction of terms to the Lord, “Not so, Lord.” You cannot put those words together —“Lord” and “Not so.” The other man, Paul, you remember when he met Christ, said: “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” But Peter has not got out of his tradition quite yet; and even at Antioch—dissimulation. When James and the elders came down from Jerusalem, Peter withdrew himself from eating with the Gentiles. He has still got a little bit of grave clothes left on him, but marvel of marvels, when you come to his letters he is out. “Ye are an elect race.” Who?—The saints scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, and Bithynia. An elect race. He is out of the one nation, now into the Other. The transition has been consummated in this man. But it was a battle. Always a battle over this old association with the natural man. We are going to see much more of that.

Then it is a transition from one economy to the Other. Your letter to the Hebrews is one solid argument for this transition. I am so impressed with the constant recurrence in the New Testament of one phrase which leads out with linking words: the phrase is “Not, But.” John began that, did he not? Christ said to the woman of Samaria: “Not in this mountain, nor at Jerusalem, but in spirit” (John 4:21, 24 paraphrased). “Not, nor, but”—and you find that occurring again and again.

And here you come to this great transition from one economy to Another, the old economy taking in the great ministry of angels: that is a subject for a morning in itself. The ministry of angels in the old economy. The law was given through angels. Angels came again and again to Gideon, to Daniel. The archangels, marvelous ministry of angels—but the Letter to the Hebrews opens up, “Not unto angels... but”—“Not, But”—what a change! And the following argument is that this New Economy infinitely transcends the ministry of angels.

And as you get on toward the end of that letter to the Hebrews, you have another of these transitory phrases: “You are not come unto a mount, a palpable mount, that burned with fire... but ye are come...” —how vast is this movement from that old economy to the bringing in of the New Economy. There is one thing only in your New Testament, introduced by Christ in the Gospels and followed out by the apostles; and in this letter to the Hebrews, the solid object of the whole letter is the transition from one economy to Another. Oh, read it again and glory in it. Read that letter again to the Hebrews. Glory in this: “My, what a thing we have been brought into.” Tabernacle? Yes, says the writer, there was a tabernacle on this earth, and for the time being... until the time. That is all gone, he says, and now we have come into the True Tabernacle not made with hands, which God has made, a Heavenly Tabernacle. See how wonderful the transition is!—the passing over from one economy to Another.

I must pause to ask, is this where Christendom has gone astray?—

Is it still holding on to the old economy?

Is it still in the grave clothes?

Is it still that old Mosaic economy with its forms and ways?

Is it not emancipated into the Heavenlies?!

That is what the Lord wants to do with us here.

From one nation to Another: Abraham to Christ, Moses to Christ. From one sovereignty to Another: we know how full the New Testament is of David and His Greater Son—full of it. But it shows the transition from one earthly sovereignty to Another Heavenly Sovereignty in Jesus Christ.

And so we could go on marking these aspects of the transition. And if you want a key to the Gospel by John, remember John wrote the whole of that gospel on one thought only. The key to the whole of that gospel is this transition from one to Christ. He has taken over. That is why the many “I Am”s. You notice those “I Am”s have a reflection upon the old. I am not the vine, “I Am the True Vine.” Israel was a vine, but He has taken over as the True Vine. Israel was a false vine—did not bring forth the fruit.

Now, I am not going to start with John’s gospel, but I give you the key. When you move from the introduction of this Other Humanity in the Person of Christ in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, (and this is the key to them all) and come through the desolation of the Cross, you come into Acts, and what are you in? Oh, this marvelous emancipation—transition, transition—in the Book of the Acts. What desolation was made in that whole system because through the desolation of the Cross, there is the emergence into this Other side—this New Humanity. Watch how the Lord is working on this old humanity to wind it up, progressively now bringing it to where He has put it.

[Shammu]

The Climax Of The Full Knowledge Of Christ

You know, friends, God always works backward towards something. Well, in the creation, He was working backward. Read it again. Why have we in the New Testament so many words which begin with the little prefix “re,” regeneration, reconciliation; all have that little prefix “re,” for He is working back.

Things have gone away, gone wrong, got out of God’s way, and God is returning to where they went wrong. God usually does that with us. And so what is God’s beginning?— It is His Son before the foundation of the world. Right back in the Eternal counsels His Son was made the beginning, God’s starting place. Men have all gone astray, because of history, “all of us like sheep have gone astray.”

God gets back to His beginning, His Son. Christendom has gone astray, and the only way of saving Christendom is to get back to God’s beginning, a true and right apprehension of His Son.

I do not want to just go on with material. There is an application of this to us. I am convinced, I know it is true, that what the Lord is doing with so many of us is stripping us, stripping us of the things which we have taken on or we have gotten into; He is stripping them off and bringing us down to the place where it is the Lord Jesus or it is nothing! If the Lord Jesus fails, there is nothing to live for, and some of us have come to the place where we have said to the Lord, “Lord, if You are not going to come in and fill this place, please take us away: there is nothing more to live for.” Is that exaggeration?

I believe the Lord is doing that with many of His people today, taking away their ministry, taking away the fellowships on which they rested so much, taking away the things, even the Christian things—their work, their preaching. When you start preaching there becomes a fascination about preaching; you get over that as you get older... you say, “Lord, don’t let me preach unless You’re going to do the preaching.” The Lord is doing that sort of thing, just stripping us, stripping us of things, even Christian things; and He is going to fill the place Himself.

Now is not that the real climax revealed?! Put it into these words of the Apostle Paul, “Till we all attain unto...” what? Oh, what a pity our translators have not given us an exact translation! They have said, “until we all attain to... the knowledge of the Son of God.” No! it is “to the full knowledge of the Son of God... to the measure of the stature of...” what? A Man. The climax of the knowledge of Christ, the full knowledge of Christ, is our attainment. And what is it?—a kind of a Man which is the reproduction of, if I may put it this way, Jesus Christ the Man. And so we are coming more and more to this—that it is only the Lord: it is Christ.

I Am Christ’s, Let the Name Suffice.
Oh, if only we have got
A large enough apprehension of Him!

Well, now I am going to break off here, and if the Lord wills, continue from that point getting nearer to this tomorrow morning. With all this greatness of setting, of background, in which we are if we are in Christ, does not that very phrase open up to this conception of God’s purpose that in Christ there is Another Humanity?!

This is what the Lord is doing with you, with me, making something different; oh, it is too slow, I know, for us. We do not seem to be making much progress that way, but He is undoing and He is adding.

But, what do we know? But, what do I know? Oh, I feel worse than ever I did in my life in myself. If it were not for Christ, I would not be here today. No, I would have gone out; I would not be here through all the stresses, all the strains, all the experiences, all the devastations, all those times when down in the dust I have simply said, “Lord, You have made a mistake, You’ve made a mistake, I am Your great mistake. You ought never to have brought me into this position.” It always seems like that in our experiences; but here we are. We have survived, and more than survived; we are here. And we believe we are here by the power of God in Jesus Christ. That we do know, and so we can say, “It is Christ, it is Christ, and it is a mighty Christ in our history.”

Well, this is enough for this morning. See what He is doing?! May He show us that He has marvelous thoughts for what He has conceived—Humanity as His crown and His goal. Shall we pray...

Lord, we do beseech Thee, we entreat Thee, to open the eyes of our understanding. Do not let this be so much more talking, teaching—certainly not an end in itself. But Lord, bow us in Thy presence. We know that the real discovery of whether we are in with Thee at this time will not just be in our attending the meetings; it will be in the prayer that is behind, outside of the meetings, in our rooms, in our hearts. Lead us, we pray Thee. Deep exercise about this matter of what Thou art working toward, and why Thou art dealing with us as Thou art. So help us, by Thy grace, in the Name of the Lord Jesus, Amen.

[Shammu]

Chapter 2 - Practical Devastation Of Our Old Humanity

Lord, we know that we have just used the words which one of old, long time ago, used, but did not understand that it was the Lord speaking. He thought it was a man, though a man of God, until he was brought face to face with the fact, no, it is not man that speaks, it is God; and then directly with Thyself he said, “Speak Lord, Thy servant heareth.” We pray that we may have that enablement to discern when the Lord is speaking, when it is not just a man but the Lord. And O how much hangs upon the Lord speaking to us as it did with Samuel. We would be like Samuel, that mighty power amongst the people of God. We ask Thee that we may truly hear Thee through any other voice that may speak, ...that we may hear inwardly the voice of the Lord, ...that we may go down before Thee and receive whatever instructions or commissions Thou wouldst have us receive. So help us, Lord, this morning, for Thy Name’s sake, Amen.

There is a hymn in one of our hymn books; some of you will know it, others may not. And it runs like this:

My goal is God Himself.
Not joy, nor even blessings,
But, Himself, my God.
‘Tis His to lead me there;
Not mine, but His, on earth,
At any cost, dear Lord,
By any road.

Young Christians without much experience sing that with a good deal of enthusiasm. Older, more mature Christians sing it holding their heart. I wonder if you would commit yourself to those last lines: “At any cost, dear Lord, by any road.” You say, “Yes.” If you do, then you are prepared for what is coming, for on that very ground I am quite sure we are going to meet a challenge this morning. It will bring a challenge of a real crisis upon which so very much for us all will hang, far more than we are aware of.

Well now, having said that, let us go on. In this hour of our sessions, we are occupied with the two humanities, and especially with the great transition from one humanity to Another: the humanity of the first Adam (an inclusive word and term; collective as well as individual) to the last Adam, Who also is individual and collective.

Later in the week we may have something more to say about the collective aspect of the New Humanity, but we have a lot of ground to cover before we get there, to the place where I think a very big adjustment has got to be made in our mentality and conception of that corporate aspect—we call it the Church. I am certain that we have got to make some mental changes over this Church conception; however, we leave that, and this morning we come back to this transition, this passing from one humanity to Another, with which the whole Bible is occupied, and particularly the New Testament.

I weigh my words; I am very careful. I am not a bit concerned with or interested in just passing to you a lot of teaching and information. I am too old for that. Everything has got to contain something vital upon which destiny hangs. So I weigh my words, and I want to repeat this: the New Testament in its entirety is occupied with one thing (there are many things about the one thing contained in it) but this is the one thing: the transition from that one humanity, kind of being—mankind, to Another. The Other being Christ, the First of this New Race and Order of mankind upon which God’s heart has been set from the beginning. This New Order of humanity is of far greater importance, as we said and pointed out yesterday, than even angels. As little children, we used to sing a little hymn: “I want to be an angel.” Do you? Well, God has a far, far greater destiny for you than that of angels. “Angels desire to look into these things”; it says: “they desire to look into this.” “Not unto angels, but unto Man”— this is the supreme conception of God’s heart in this creation of which Christ His Son is the First—the Beginning.

Change-Over: In The Control Of The Holy Spirit

Everything therefore that you will find in your New Testament in one way or another has to do with this change-over, and everything that we shall find in our own spiritual experience, if we are really in the hand of the Holy Spirit, has to do with this. You say: “Oh, I am going through this experience. I am having this difficulty. I am passing this way of sorrow, of perplexity.” Whatever it is, it is all in the control of the Holy Spirit related to this transition, movement from one ground to Another, from one personal kind to Another Personal Kind. The focus is right now upon the situation that you are in, whether it be a good one or a bad one: “by any road, at any cost.”

And here it is that we begin what is not going to be in the first place pleasant to contemplate. What is it? The absolute necessity for the practical devastation of one kind of humanity. I underline the word practical, not doctrinal, not theoretical, not theological, not philosophical, but practical devastation of our old humanity.

I wonder if you have recognized that the Old Testament throughout is occupied on one side with this: the exposure of the inability of that humanity under the most favorable conditions to satisfy God. God took out a people, related them, attached them to Himself. While they remained on His ground, He blessed them with every, not spiritual, but temporal blessing in the earthly. They had only to be obedient to the commandment and blessed was their balm and their store and their basket and their family and their business and their everything prospered on this earth. He gave them a marvelous economy under His sovereignty right through from the garden, through Israel. And what have we when we close our Old Testament? The failure of that kind of humanity under every condition, and every favorable condition that God could give temporally. It is a tragic story, and the Old Testament has to close. No, it has not attained: it has failed. You have to write on that side the big word “Failure” over that whole history of mankind in relation to God.

Now when you come into your New Testament, what do you find happening? This whole issue is being headed up to its climax in the New Testament. God has stepped in with an intervention and along one line said: “We are going to definitely and positively bring this thing to a culmination and a climax; but to do it We must let people see and know, and all history and all time, recognize why it is necessary for Us to bring about this culmination and climax of that humanity.” Oh, note this, while we are not interested just in fascination, there is something fascinating about this. It is gripping, when once you begin to see.

[Shammu]

God’s Kind Of Man: This Other MAN

So, not in the order of time or chronology, we have our four gospels as they are called, and what are these four gospels? They are two things; of course, they are the introduction of God’s kind of Man. He is put there, and then alongside of God’s kind of Man, the other kind of man is arranged. You cannot read these gospels from that standpoint without being shocked. It is the only word for it—shocked—at the exposure of man alongside of this Other Man, this Man that God has put down in the midst. Read your gospels again in this light: the reactions of men to this Man. Are they not terrible? You wonder sometimes how on earth they got the cleverness to note some of the things that they bring up against this Man.

Now steadily moving on in the gospels, moving on in that way and uncovering, exposing, there is a manifestation of that kind of man intensifying. Note the point where it seems a new intensification comes in in this malice, this hatred, this prejudice, this wickedness—against Whom? Why, what has my Lord done? What means this rage and spite? Intensified, until you come right up to the days of the Cross. You remember, of course, He has been moving on the ground of the crucified Man from His baptism onward, and that is a significant fact when you carry it into the unseen realm, where the forces of antagonism are at work.

The Heart Which Says ‘No’ To God

But now we come actually up to the time of the Cross, the hours before the crucifixion, and the hour itself; and you have gathered around that Cross a representation of every aspect of the human race. From the inner circle to the wider circle, they are all there; and the focal point is the Cross of Jesus Christ. And what is that Cross bringing to light? Let us take a few cases and instances of this. We will begin with the highest representation of the highest religious system and order that history has known.

Caiaphas, the high priest of Israel, in whom the race is officially centered and gathered up—he is representative of the nation. You read the story put together from these accounts where Caiaphas is the chief actor on the stage of this drama. No words of mine or of man can describe, really, that man with this Other Man in his presence. I think the only description, the only words that approach the description of this man were long before prophesied by Isaiah. You remember? You are so familiar with them in Isaiah, chapter six, when the prophet has made his response to the Lord’s appeal, “Who will go for Us?...”—said Isaiah, “Here am I. Send me!” What did the Lord say to him? ...and He said (the Lord said): “Go, and tell this people, ‘Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed.’ ” That sounds terrible. “Lest... lest... lest they turn again.” Make it impossible for them to do so, take away their ability to go back upon their course. Is not that terrible?

But what are you dealing with—you are dealing with a hardness of heart which has been hardened and hardened and hardened again against the Word, against the prophets, against all the revelation that God has given, a hardening, a hardening until they have gone beyond the point of no return and God has said: “You have so hardened your heart and said so positively ‘No’ to My Ways, that it is beyond now remedying.” That is Caiaphas and Israel at the Cross; the heart which says “No” to God.

What a heart, what an exposure, what a revelation of human capacity in the Presence of the Highest Privilege. Yes, it is coming out now, what has gone on. It had perhaps a very simple beginning, but it grew and grew—there was no turning back when it was possible—until it reached the point where God said: “Take away their capacity for hearing and seeing.” The judgment of the hard heart of man, even under all those appeals and pleadings and sobs and tears of God, comes out at the Cross—what the Cross reveals about what is possible in our hearts!

You say: “That is Caiaphas, that is not me.” Oh, you do not know the human heart if you say that. You do not know the human heart if you have never had any rebellion in your heart, if you have never had the capacity for saying “No” to the Lord and had to have a battle over it. It is there: it is not Caiaphas, it is Adam: this is Adam following through by coming to development.

What An Opportunity This Man Had

In the high place of religion you come from Caiaphas and move over to Pilate. Pontius Pilate!! What an opportunity this man had. Oh, what has history said about Pilate? We do not think of Pilate without some feeling of disgust. Pilate, who had the opportunity of humanity in his hands, and what is he doing? Well, you say, he is vacillating, he is moving from one foot to the other; he may at times seem to be rocking, but all that speaks of weakness—inability to come right down one hundred percent on one foot and make his full and final decision, trying to pass it over to someone else to make the decision, trying to shed the responsibility... but why? Why? —he represents a time server... “If you let this Man go, you are not Cæsar’s friend.” That is it!—Cæsar’s favor, Cæsar’s ability to further my worldly interest: “If I take this line, then all my worldly interests are in jeopardy; my prosperity in business, my good standing with the authorities, those who have it in their power to further my interest.” He is a time server, and Pilate goes down in history as the man who handed Jesus over to be crucified from his own inability to make a decision in His favor. “Take Him, you take Him; I have said, I find no fault with Him, but you take Him and crucify Him.” The weakness of what?—the awful tragedy of a divided heart, the main feature and factor in which is: “how this is going to effect me and my interest.” That finds us out all the way along.

You see, that was the battle that Jesus Himself fought in the wilderness with the devil. The devil was saying how it would effect You if You go the way that You have decided to go, how it would effect You: “You want the kingdoms of this world, You take the line of compromise.”—That was Pilate . . . what an exposure of what is in man.

[Shammu]

Wanting To Have

We hurry on and come nearer, nearer to the center of the circle, we come to Judas Iscariot. You cannot use that word, that name now, can you, without a frown, almost a sneer. “Judas”—when you want to say the worst thing that you can say about anybody, you say: “—he is a Judas.” It started somewhere in a very simple way, it started in a day when either the Lord Himself (Who knew what He was doing, mark you) or the other disciples, said to Judas: “Look here, people will give us gifts to help us along, we have to have somebody to look after the gifts. Judas, you, you have the bag.”

A simple beginning, but what happened? Being in that position drew out something that was deep down in that humanity. Perhaps not even Judas knew it, but this drew it out. You know the end. A man who again goes beyond the point of return and recognizes at last that he has been betraying the Lord. Everything was put in his way of glory, the heavenly order; and there is nothing else to do but to take his own life.

What has been exposed? What is it in this humanity that is down there in the root of things and comes up and up if only given an opportunity?! I heard Dr. Campbell Morgan once say in preaching that we are capable of anything if only we have the opportunity for it. That is searching. What is come out? Covetousness, that is all. Wanting to have; and my friends, while you shrink from the name Judas, be careful, this is in us all, even in the work of the Lord. Covetousness to be recognized, to be given opportunities of service, wanting for ourselves even in the things of God. As disciples, the root may be there—this wanting to have, to make ourselves something. Covetousness, which the Word says is idolatry. The Cross will discover what is in us; it will bring it out.—Well, that is Judas.

A Man Who Did Not Know Himself

Now let us come nearer still, perhaps to the innermost circle, Simon Peter. Simon Peter is a man who did not know himself and who thought so differently about himself from what was true: “I will never forsake Thee, I will go with Thee even unto death. Though all men forsake Thee, yet will I not. I will not,”—“I will,”— “I.” Where did that begin? You have heard this before. Blinded by this ego, this selfhood, oh, Simon Peter, you do not know yourself, but the Cross is going to uncover you, find you out, and expose you and devastate you. You will go out in despair of yourself and shed many tears. The Lord will have to send someone searching for you with a special message: “Go to My disciples and to Peter... I know what is happening there, I know where he is and what is happening.”

Poor, poor Simon Peter. What was happening? Well, the Lord told Simon Peter what would happen, and Simon Peter did not understand it until afterwards. “Simon, Simon, Satan has desired to have thee, that he may sift thee as wheat”—strip off that false covering of selfhood that covers. Really, Peter, what is there, you do not know... sift you as wheat.

Simon Peter found that the Cross is a very searching and a very devastating thing to any kind of self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-interest, or anything of self. It is going to simply desolate that kind of humanity.

Men Without Anything Left

Now I take just one other instance after He, Jesus, is crucified, after that part of the drama is completed. Two of them, two of His disciples, went on that day to Emmaus, a village. You know the story in Luke 24. As they talked sadly, this stranger drew near to them (their eyes were holden that they should not recognize Him) and He said: “What manner of conversation is this that you have as you walk, sad? ” They replied: “Are you only a visitor to our city, have you only just arrived, have you not known what has been happening in the last few days?” Then the Lord inquired: “What things?” He is drawing them out—“What things?” They said: “The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth. He was a Prophet mighty in Word and in deed. We hoped that it had been He that should redeem Israel, but our rulers crucified Him.” In other words, they said, “Our hope is all gone, all our expectation is destroyed. We are men without anything left.”

Then this stranger took the Old Testament (I do not think He had it in His hand: they knew it, they had it in their heads) and He started at the beginning and worked His way all through the Scriptures. And as He opened to them the Scriptures, their mouths opened, their eyes opened, and when they arrived... you know the end, they sat down to a meal, He took the bread, the loaf, and blessed it. Eyes were opened; they knew Him, and then He disappeared from their sight.

What has been disclosed? What has been exposed? This—you can have your head absolutely full of the Scriptures and know them up there, and they will never save you in the day of crisis. The very thing that is written by God for our salvation does not save us when the Cross is planted right at the heart of our lives; it is a crisis in which we collapse. That is a terrible thing. You can know all the Scriptures, and yet when it comes to the test of some tremendous experience, some devastating experience, all that we have read and heard and thought we knew is no good to us.

Of course, there is a lot more in this story than that, but this is my point—what a disclosure of the human heart. What an exposure of this other man, how he can be a disciple, how he can go about with the Lord for years, how he can know all that the Lord has said, and seen what the Lord has done and how he can have the teaching in his head and then when it comes to the real test of the man, he cannot stand up to it, he collapses.—We had hoped (with our Bible in our hands) we had hoped, and they are in despair.

[Shammu]

Another Humanity Altogether

The devastation of that one humanity under every kind of test is essential to the Other Humanity which Christ is. How different He Is—Another Humanity altogether, Another kind of Man in Whom there is nothing of this at all, nothing of this. The apostle once said to the believers: “You have not so learned Christ”; in other words, “If you had learned Christ, you would not be doing that, you would not be like that.”

Now let us get hold of the issue before we go further. What is it? Oh, it may not all come at once—it could not, this devastation; it is spread over a whole lifetime, but it has a beginning, mark you, a beginning; and this is the course of a truly spiritual life. You will mark spiritual progress and spiritual growth and spiritual maturity by this one thing: how little the individual thinks of themselves, how little they are in the picture, their own picture and other people’s picture as themselves. Or shall I put it the other way: how much of Christ do you meet in them and not themselves. That is the test—how much the Cross has devastated them in their own natural life. It is the essential and inevitable way to spiritual fulness, to Christ, and the fulness of Christ, which is something altogether different from what we are.

The Tragedy Of The Carry-Over Of The Other Humanity

Well, now having said that, we are going further with this this morning. I want to take you over to that part of the New Testament which focuses this whole issue more than any other part; which brings into view on the one side, the exposure of the one kind of humanity and on the other side, the Other Humanity which the Christ is. I have often been asked the question, for example in Romans 7: “Is that the history of a ‘born again’ man or an unborn again man?” I have had the question asked me since I have been here, and I have proposed to postpone the answer until now.

“The first man is of the earth, earthy...” and so on. Is that an unconverted man, a man before he is born again, or is that a born again man? That is a born again man, make no mistake about it. Paul is writing to born again people in Corinth. He opens his letter with an address to the saints which are in Christ Jesus—saints by standing through faith in Christ Jesus, and all that is in those letters is addressed to Christians; but it is a horrible exposure of something about Christians. I confess to you I have more than once in my life in reading that First Letter to the Corinthians asked myself: “Were these men, these people, really born again? Can we classify them as Christians?” Yes, the address is “to the saints by standing through faith that are in Corinth.”

The tragedy in Corinth was the tragedy of the carry-over of relics and remnants of the other humanity. There is something here of the New Humanity, but there has been a carry-over of the old in the Christian life; the result: confusion—confusion in judgment, confusion in behavior, confusion in relationships. And if you think that word is not justified, I want to remind you that they wrote to the Apostle Paul on one occasion asking him ten elementary questions about the Christian life, about what Christianity is. They were in confusion about the elementary things of Christianity.

I am not going to stay this week with all those questions, but there they are. There is confusion, terrible complications in Corinth. There is weakness—weakness in life, in a living testimony. There is shame, reproach. The apostle has to say some very strong and some very hard things to Christians because of a carry-over of the old humanity into a relationship with the New without the clean cut. Is that why the apostle, after his introduction in the First Letter says: “I made up my mind, I determined, I resolved, to know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” Oh, we are going to meet “Christ crucified” repeatedly through these two letters, at critical points in their spiritual life. “Christ crucified,” Paul says,—“that is the foundation on which we are going to build, you Corinthians, you who have carried-over some of the old humanity into the realm of the New and find that the two things will not go together:—immediately there is confusion and defeat.”

Well, here we are in these letters to the Corinthians, and these more than any other letters in the New Testament represent the battleground of the two humanities. Right there at the beginning of the First Letter as a heading, this is carried right through. The battleground of the two humanities —that is with the Corinthians.

May I mark one thing before I go further. Paul came to this situation to deal with it, in Corinth, and said in doing so: “In coming to you, I made a definite, positive, conclusive resolve ‘to know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.’ ” What did he do when he said that? What does that mean?—“I am not coming to you people who are philosophically-minded and are so interested in philosophy, I am not coming to you with a new philosophy, I am not coming to you with a new religion, I am not coming to you with a new system of teaching. I am not coming to you with a new order and form and technique. I am coming with everything gathered up and focused in a Person, in a Man.”

You see the force of that? It is forceful. In essence, Paul said, “No, I am not interested in any of these other things that you may be interested in. For me it is this Man, Christ Jesus, this different kind of Man and this Man Who is crucified to all the other kind of man: crucified to this world, crucified to old humanity, crucified to all these things that you think so much of, that are so important to you, crucified to the whole realm.”

It is a Man, and a Man only, a kind of a Man, that is the point of this letter; all is focused, gathered into a Man. Now from that point onward, the whole thing develops. There is on the other side that man that they have tried to bring over and are still nursing here at Corinth, and there is on the other side this Other Man. You read right on and find: “If any man be in Christ, there is a New Creation, the old things have passed away; and behold all have become new.” The great divide is at the Cross. Well, this is Corinth, and the old and New Humanity is the real battleground; and what a battleground it is.

If you are thinking objectively and historically, stop, stop at once; come over your two thousand years, bridge that gap, get away from geographical Corinth or historical Corinth, and come right here. We belong to that same humanity by nature; but by grace, we belong to Another Humanity. And this is where Christendom is all in confusion today and in defeat, so that we read in papers, Christianity has had its day, it is not counting, it really does not matter, it is no impact upon world conditions and situations, and so on. That is the conclusion of the natural man because of what he sees in Christendom.

We have to agree to a very large extent, even though we do know something else. Nevertheless, Christendom has got into that terrible plight today for this very reason—it does not understand the cleavage which the Cross of Jesus Christ has made between the two humanities. It does not understand that there is no bridge tolerated by God between these two. The Cross has cut right in between these two humanities; and as I was saying, it may not all happen at once, but through a lifetime, the Holy Spirit will be teaching us, if we are teachable, if we are sensitive, if we are walking in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit will be teaching us: “That is you, that is not Christ—(putting it in a phrase). That is you, that is your way of talking, that is your way of thinking, that is your way of going about, that is just you, that is not Christ.”

Oh, it would take a long time; but, oh, it would be so profitable to study this Other Man as He walked in this world and see the principles which governed His life, which were all heavenly and all spiritual and made Him absolutely incalculable in this world.