It should have taken Israel 11 days to go from Egypt to Canaan. It took 40 years. Even then most of them didn’t make it in. It should have taken me a few years at most to understand what it has taken nearly 40 years to understand. Good thing God is patient.
When I first heard the gospel I didn’t believe it. I was raised an atheist and even the concept of God, let alone the details of Christ’s coming to save a lost world, seemed not only distant and irrelevant, but to be honest, it sounded like religious fantasy. However, God repeatedly pounded the gospel against my brain from a variety of angles, eventually things began to make sense. I believed and received what believing brings – forgiveness of sins and the indwelling life of Christ.
The pieces of the puzzle came together. At first everything was foreign and unreal. Then it became interesting but still unclear. Eventually knowing the truth of the gospel became a survival issue. My life as an atheist wasn’t working so well and the promise of a Savior sounded increasingly appealing.
A similar process has happened with regard to living the life I entered 38 years ago. The puzzle was complex and the pieces never seemed to fit, but when my desire to understand how this life is to be lived moved beyond the pursuit of a curious theological concept to an issue of personal spiritual survival, the pieces started to fall in place. Had I been more receptive and less self-centered I believe lights would have flashed a lot sooner than they did. If they had, if I’d been more open than I was, I could have saved myself and many other people (including my family) a lot of pain. But I believe that as long as we are still alive, hope is an ever present reality. “Seek and you will find” is absolutely true as long as the seeking is somewhat desperate and we’re open to the possibility that what we find will be our undoing.
To understand what God is after we have to start at the end and work backward. For example, we have a huge advantage over the Old Testament saints in understanding the purpose of the Law because we’re looking back with 20/20 hindsight. We see the Law fulfilled in Christ. In Him it all makes sense. For the Old Testament believers everything was “partial” not full (Hebrews 1:1). They got glimpses but until Christ came, they couldn’t see the totality of God’s plan (John 1:14-17; Hebrews 1:1-2).
The same is true regarding the Christian life. If we try to understand this life simply by reading or hearing information about it our understanding will at best be limited. This was the experience of the disciples prior to the resurrection. They listened to the Lord’s teaching, but what He taught never fully registered until the Spirit came and “led them into all truth” (John 16:13). As Paul said, the early disciples knew Christ “after the flesh” in His humanity, but now that He is resurrected they, “no longer know Him in this way” (2 Corinthians 5:16). The veil has been lifted by the coming of the Holy Spirit and we are able to see Christ in glory – in fullness (2 Corinthians 3:6-18). We now know exactly what God had in mind for the Christian life, because we see that life expressed in the Son of Man. Christ is the Christian life – “for me to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21) but more on that in a minute.
In 1 Corinthians 15 we see Paul’s breakdown of God’s original plan in creation. Humanity is divided into two categories: “In Adam” and “In Christ”. Adam represents the head of a fallen race. “In Adam all die . . . the first man is of the earth” (1 Corinthians 15:22, 47). Christ as the second Man represents the first born of a new race(literally, species) of humanity (Romans 8:28). In Him all shall be made alive; “The second Man is the Lord from heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:22b, 47b). As Jesus said, “You are from beneath, I am from above. . . Marvel not that I said unto you, you must be born again” – i.e “born from above” (John 8:23, 3:7).
Two humanities: one from beneath (in Adam) and one from above (in Christ). When we come to Christ we are removed from the Adamic race (the “old man”), and joined to Christ, the “new man” (Romans 6:3-5; Colossians 3:1-4, 9, 10; Ephesians 2:15). There are two races or species of humanity on this planet. All those in Adam make up the fallen race and all those in Christ comprise the new humanity created in His image. Jesus Himself is the “first born” of this new race which draws it’s life, character, purpose, image and destiny from Him (Romans 8:29-31). Though we still retain the flesh (the hold-over in our “members” of the fallen race, Romans 7:23) we are now a completely new creation. Old things have passed away, all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).
We would not have known Who Christ was had God not directly intervened in our lives and by spiritual revelation shown Him to us (Matthew 11:27). The same is true of who we are in Christ as part of His new humanity. The empirical implications of this come only by spiritual revelation. If it’s just information to us we will not experience its reality, we will only know ‘about it’ in our minds. Once we see by revelation who we are in Christ we can enter empirically into that reality just as we entered into salvation upon seeing by revelation Christ as Savior. All things spiritual are supernatural, they are miracles, whether in the new birth or in living by the Spirit in the Christian life (cp. 1 Corinthians 2:9-14).
Christ Himself has entered our spirit and has given to us His own life. He didn’t come only that we would be forgiven but also that we would have life (and that abundantly) – which presupposes that we did not have life until He gave His life to us (John 17:20-23). “He that has the Son has life, he that does not have the Son does not have life . . . “ (1 John 5:12). Again, it’s wonderfully simple. There are two humanities. One has life, one does not. One is destined for the Second Death (eternal separation from the life of God) and the other already has eternal life within them in the Person of the One Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6).
God’s original intent in the creation of Man was to indwell this newly created humanity and become within them the Source of His own image. Christ, as the second Man, fulfilled this role perfectly. He was the exact image of the indwelling, invisible Father within Him (Hebrews 1:3). The Father literally “communicated” Himself in His Son; “. . . the Word (communication) of God became flesh and we beheld . . .” (Hebrews 1:2; John 1:1; 14). This is why Jesus could make statements like, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father” (John 14:9) and “He that believes on Me, believes not on Me but on the One Who sent Me” (John 12:44). To see the Son living in complete dependence on His Father was to see the Father living in and through the Son, “The Son can do nothing out from Himself” (John 5:19). From the miracle of His birth to the miracle of His resurrection, the Son of God was dependent upon His Father for all things. His life was explained not by His own power, but by the power of the Father in Him. Jesus was a Man “approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and sighs, which GOD DID through Him . . . “(Acts 2:22).
“As the Father sent Me, so now send I you” (John 20:21). We are to be to Jesus what He was to His Father – completely dependent on Him for all things so that He can live His life through us as the Father lived His life through the Son. “For we who live are always being delivered unto death (abandonment of the self-life) for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus might be made manifest through our mortal flesh” (2 Corinthians 4:11). "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27). 'Glory’ is the outward expression of the presence of Christ within us. “For me to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21).
This is the Christian life. Christ living His life in and through us. This is why the “yoke is easy and the burden is light” (Matthew 11:30) and why only those “who have ceased from their own works have entered the rest” (Hebrews 4:10). Only Christ can reproduce His own life. It’s His responsibility, not ours. It’s His life, not ours (“It is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me. . .”).
We need also to consider for a moment the incredible power of failure. Complete personal failure is absolutely indispensible in moving us from Law to Grace; from self-reliance to dependence on Christ. Whether we go all the way back to Abraham, Jacob, and David or jump ahead a few millennia to Peter’s three denials it’s always the same. Until we know in personal experience that we have nothing to contribute to this life but failure, we will never wholly trust in Christ. As along as we think we can help God in living this life we will produce only Ishmaels. God did not need our help in saving us and He doesn’t need our help in living the life He’s brought us into. “Did you receive the Spirit by the works of Laws or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit are you now made perfect by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3).
Faith doesn’t begin until we end; and we won’t ‘end’ until we are convinced in the deepest part of our soul that only Christ can live the Christian life. Fortunately, that is exactly what He has promised to do! He never asked us or expected us to live for Him – His appeal to us has always been that we would trust Him to do for us what we can never do for ourselves. When they asked Him “What shall we do that we might work the works of God”, He responded, “This is the work of God, that you believe on Him Whom He has sent” (John 6:28-29). Ours is meant to be a walk of faith. “The just shall LIVE by faith” (Romans 1:17; Habakkuk 2:4; Galatians 3:11). If you have any doubt as to whether we are to live by faith as over against sharing the load with God, take some time to read through Hebrews 11 and notice how the Spirit cites miracle after miracle to purposefully and emphatically declare our utter helplessness and God’s complete sufficiency. How can we think we can live HIS life?! We can mimic that life and in so doing give the world a picture of noble commitment to the teachings of Jesus (i.e. WWJD), but live His life? Impossible!
There is no other way to salvation than through faith in Christ; there is no other way to live the life we’ve entered than by faith in Christ. We had nothing to do with the first; we have nothing to do with the second. We begin by faith; we walk by faith. “For it is God Who works in you BOTH TO WILL AND TO DO of His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).
Once these things began to register in me, one question that came to mind was: If Christ is to live His life in me and my part is simply to trust Him to do so, then why all the commandments in the Bible addressed to His people?
The commandments in the Old Testament are “a ministry of condemnation” (2 Corinthians 3:9), a burden Peter says that neither we nor our fathers were able to bear (Acts 15:10). The Law simply exposes sin, “. . . by the Law is the knowledge of sin”, (Romans 3:2). It exposes sin and condemns it, but gives no help in overcoming sin. But the “Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus sets us free from the Law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2) so that “. . . the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk . . . after the Spirit” (Romans 8:4). Again, our only hope of righteousness is “not by power, nor by might, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord” (Zechariah 4:6). It’s always been by faith in Him, not faith in us. How could we “rest” if it were up to us?
The commandments are simply instructions to the newly born Christian on how to move forward in the will of God. Though we are born again, we are born as babies and it will take us a lifetime to mature. We learn, we trust, we move by His direction in His power. That’s all we can do. The commandments were not addressed to the flesh but to the seed of Christ in us; “. . . he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:17). Our old man, the flesh, cannot please God(Romans 8:8). But the new creation (which we are) is indwelt and empowered by the Holy Spirit to express the life of its Creator. The commandments are simply a child’s schooling in understanding and expressing the nature of its Source of life. It is in this new man that we are “made partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). This seed is that which is born from above and cannot sin (1 John 3:9), but it is young and lacks maturity of understanding. We are little children before we are young men before we are fathers (1 John 2:12-14). We are to grow in grace and knowledge unto a perfect (mature) man. The Christian life flows and develops perfectly under God’s hand and guidance until that which He has begun is completed. The new man in maturity is “Christ formed in us” (Galatians 4:19).
The breaking of the outer man (the flesh) through failure, suffering and pressure is not meant to harm us but to release the inner man – to bring that which we are in Christ to ascendency over the world, the flesh and the devil. It is child training (Hebrews 12:5-11) and is designed to bring us into the freedom of righteousness, away from the slavery of sin. Just as Paul was given a thorn in the flesh and Jacob was touched in his thigh, pressure keeps us in that position of helplessness and dependence on God that allows Him to sustain us in grace and spiritual ascendency above those things which would pull us away from a walk of faith. Every step Jacob took reminded him of his weakness and great need for God. Prolonged suffering can be a preventative to the resurgence of the flesh – a protection against losing our spiritual momentum through pride or sin. God’s strength is actually perfected in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9-12), “. . . when I am weak, then am I strong”. When the outer man is weakened the inner man is strengthened (see also 2 Corinthians 4:16).
As mentioned earlier, faith can’t begin until we end. God must bring us to the end of our selves, not in theory but in real personal experience so our dependence on Christ also becomes more than mere theory. When our dependence on the Lord becomes complete our confidence in ourselves is nil. He is the only One Who knows what it will take to get us to that position before Him – the place where we can honestly say, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me. . . I live by faith” in Him. I can do nothing out from myself. Complete renunciation of the self-life brings complete faith in God, which allows God access to us so He can “do of His good pleasure” without restriction or controversy on our part.
One of the incredible benefits of realizing our helplessness through weakness is freedom from self-condemnation and guilt. As one author put it, “Nothing marks so decidedly the solid progress of a soul, as that it is enabled to view its own depravity without being disturbed or discouraged . . . peacefully reaping the profit of our humiliation . . . when we have no sense of our need, we have no curative principle within; it is a state of blindness, presumption and insensibility . . . we must not be discouraged by our weakness.” As I’m sure you’ve noticed in the Bible, those who saw God did not have their self-esteem boosted: “I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6) “Woe is me, I am undone, I am a man of unclean lips . . . (Isaiah 6:5), “In me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing” (Romans 7:18). This is not a problem for those who know they have been crucified with Christ and are now new creations in Him. They will become what they have not been – like Christ. It will take a lifetime of learning and walking in complete dependence upon Him for everything; resting in Him to work within us to do all His will.
The glory of this life is that it is His life. If we want we can learn of Him and trust Him for living just as we learned and then trusted upon hearing the gospel. “As you have, therefore, received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him. . .” (Colossians 2:6). “Faithful is He that called you, Who will also do it!” (1 Thessalonians 5:24).
Some people will let Him “do it”; others are determined to help. Some have entered into rest (having ceased from their own works) others through unbelief have not. It always ultimately comes down to who we trust, who we depend on, both for salvation as well as for living post-salvation. He has given us His life, His Spirit, His victory. Why would we choose less than simply taking Him up on His offer? It may take us a great deal of time, experimentation and personal failure to learn all we need to know to walk fully in Him,
But when we end,
faith begins
and the adventure starts!
Monday, August 30, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
The Inward Work of Exchanging Our Life for His
The amount of pressure and trials in and around us is painful to feel and painful to watch. I wanted to try to give some encouragement in this. I’m reading a book called, “The School of Christ” and what I’ve done in this blog is to share some excerpts from it. It’s probably a little disjointed because I’m condensing a whole book into a couple of pages, but hopefully it will help.
Therefore, I repeat, the Holy Spirit’s first object is to acquaint us with what is in view (the goal) in our spiritual education; namely, that He is to reveal Christ in us and then to get to work to conform us to Christ.
Learn of Me and you will find rest for your souls. That is the end. But we shall never find rest until we have first of all learned the utter difference between Christ and ourselves, and then the utter impossibility of our ever being like Him by anything that we can find in ourselves, produce or do. So we had better despair our last despair with regard to ourselves. This is basic.
Then the next thing the Holy Spirit will do will be to begin to show us how it is accomplished.
What do you think those men felt when He was crucified and they had all run away – and left Him alone and one had denied Him? Do you not think dark despair entered into their souls, not only over their lost expectations, but over themselves? Yes, and He had to allow it. It was necessary. And you and I will go the same way if we are in the same school. It is essential. No constructive work can be done until that has gotten settled in us. Well, that sounds terrible, but it ought to be encouraging. After all, it is all constructive. What is the Lord doing with me? He is clearing a way for His Son, to bring the fullness of Christ into me.
Firstly, the Holy Spirit takes pains to make all who are in discipleship know in their experience, in an inward way in their own hearts, the altogether “otherness” of Christ than themselves. Then He works to bring us to the place where we realize how impossible the situation is apart from the miracle of God. The person who really begins to move forward is the person who has had his final despair over himself, and has come to see that it is no longer I, but Christ . Not what I am, but what Thou art. Nothing of me, all things from You. That is the essential foundation of spiritual growth, spiritual knowledge.
We need to be very sure of where we are in this; to have done with all our unreality, to finish forever with anything that is not genuine and utterly true about us. How helpless we are but how willing He is to complete what He’s begun. So great are the consequences that we cannot afford to be in false position about this. We will be brought to the place where we are perfectly adjustable before God, where there is all responsiveness to the Holy Spirit, and nothing in us that resists or refuses Him, but where we are open and ready for the biggest consequence of the Holy Spirit putting His finger upon anything in our lives needing to be dealt with and adjusted. He is here for that.
If you take the position, “Yes, that is how I feel today, that is my infirmity today, but Lord Jesus, You are other than I am, and I just rest on You, hold on to You, make You my life and hope". You will find that there is peace along that line, and rest, and although you may still be feeling bad in the outer part of you, in the inner part there is rest.
The Holy Spirit is going to expose our true selves. He is going to uncover us and show us thoroughly there is nothing sound in us, nothing to be relied upon in us, in order that He may make it equally clear that it is only in Christ that there is security, safety and life.
Faith is an abiding thing for the duration of this life. We will never cease to need to utterly depend on Him for everything. Faith (helplessness, dependence) is the great factor of sanctification, of glorification, of salvation; everything. And faith simply means that we are put into the position where we have not got it in ourselves, we only have it in Another. I no longer live . . . the life I now live, I live by faith.
You and I can never get revelation of this life, of Christ, other than in connection with some necessity. We cannot get it simply as a matter of information. That is information, not revelation. The apostles got their revelation for the Church in practical situations – often in crisis. They never met around a table to draw up a scheme of doctrine and practice for the churches. They went out into the business and suffering of ministry and came up against the desperate situation, and in the situation which pressed them, oft-time to desperation, they had to get before God and get revelation. The Bible is born out of pressing situations. The revelation of Christ in emergencies is the way to keep Christ alive, and the only way in which Christ really does live to His own.
He has said, The difference between you and Christ is so utter and final that it’s the width and depth of a grave; the cross. It is nothing less than the fullness of death. There is no passing by this. Death and the grave are the end on one side; the end of what you are, and if there is to be anything afterward at all, that death must stand between, and anything subsequent can only be by resurrection; a passing out of yourself (expectation, reliance, etc.) and into Him as through a death and resurrection. So that in that death you are regarded as having passed out of the realm of what you are, even at your best, and as having passed into the realm of what He is. He is so utterly different than us, there is no other way. He must take us into, through, and out to the other side. This is a lifetime process. As Pauls said, I die daily . . . we are always being delivered unto death so the life of the Lord Jesus can be manifest through our mortal flesh.
We have not to die; we are dead. What we have to do is accept our death. That is the daily outworking of an already established position. Failing to see that, we shall all the time be struggling to bring ourselves to death. This is God’s work, not ours, and He has accomplished it in Christ and will work the full implications of it into our lives. That is the meaning of reckoning yourselves dead. It is taking the place God has appointed for us, stepping into it, and saying, I accept the position which God has fixed with regard to myself; the Holy Spirit’s business is to deal with the rest, but I accept the end.
May I just ask a simple question? Can we say with truth of heart that we are really concerned to be in God’s purpose; to be found in that purpose? It is a practical matter – deciding whether we want what He wants. Are we prepared to commit to the Lord in relation to that utter transaction of exchanging our life for His? As the Lord’s people, are we ready to just pause and face that? To have a race conformed to the image of Christ – taken away from what we are to become what He is? Submitting to His way of freeing us from the old to bring in the new?
When the grain of wheat falls into the ground what an ugly thing it becomes as the shell is destroyed to make way for the inward life. Do you think it is pleasant? It is losing its own identity. You cannot recognize it. Take it out and have a look. Is this that lovely little grain of wheat I put into the ground? What an ugly thing it has become! It is all falling to pieces. That is what death does. The death of Christ wrought in us breaks up our own natural life. It scatters it, pulls it to pieces, takes all its beauty away. We begin to discover that there is nothing in us but corruption. That is the truth. It is no pleasant thing to fall into the ground and die. That is what happens. But if it die . . then a new life is given, an new form is given; not ours, but His. Expect what I have said, expect that you are going to fall to pieces, expect that the beauty you thought was there will be altogether marred; expect to discover that you are far more corrupt than ever you thought you were; expect that the Lord will bring you to a place where you cry, Woe is me for I am undone! But then the blessing will just be this – O Lord, the best thing that can happen for me is that I shall die. And the Lord will say, That is exactly what I have been working at. This corruptible must put on incorruption and that incorruption is the germ of that Divine life in the seed which yields its own life up, that is transmitted from Him.
He will accomplish this. It is His plan for us. You have not to go to your knees every morning and say, “Oh Lord, get me out of this difficulty!" You are to say, “Lord, if this is the expression of the cross for me, I take it up to follow You". If you face the situation in that way, there will be ultimate victory in co-operation with the Lord, there will be fruit and not barrenness.
If the Lord lifted that which is the expression of the cross for us and took it off our shoulders, it would not be for our good. It would at once clear the way for the uprising and recovery of the natural self. You can see when people begin to get a bit of relief from trials. How they throw their weight about. They are looking down on you; you are wrong, they are right. Pride, self-sufficiency come in. Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus (the taking of that which is Adamic into the grave) so that the life of Jesus (in resurrection) may be manifested in our body.
For His life to be expressed in fullness in us, we must come to the place where the utterness of the setting aside of the self-life has been accomplished: and that takes a whole lifetime. As we move through this process, the glory grows in the measure of our death and resurrection experiences so His life can be(present tense) manifest through us in varying and developing degrees. But blessed be God, there is the glorious climax when He shall come to be glorified in His saints. Having the glory of God in a race of redeemed sinners. It is the consummation of something that has been going on in an inward way.
Therefore, I repeat, the Holy Spirit’s first object is to acquaint us with what is in view (the goal) in our spiritual education; namely, that He is to reveal Christ in us and then to get to work to conform us to Christ.
Learn of Me and you will find rest for your souls. That is the end. But we shall never find rest until we have first of all learned the utter difference between Christ and ourselves, and then the utter impossibility of our ever being like Him by anything that we can find in ourselves, produce or do. So we had better despair our last despair with regard to ourselves. This is basic.
Then the next thing the Holy Spirit will do will be to begin to show us how it is accomplished.
What do you think those men felt when He was crucified and they had all run away – and left Him alone and one had denied Him? Do you not think dark despair entered into their souls, not only over their lost expectations, but over themselves? Yes, and He had to allow it. It was necessary. And you and I will go the same way if we are in the same school. It is essential. No constructive work can be done until that has gotten settled in us. Well, that sounds terrible, but it ought to be encouraging. After all, it is all constructive. What is the Lord doing with me? He is clearing a way for His Son, to bring the fullness of Christ into me.
Firstly, the Holy Spirit takes pains to make all who are in discipleship know in their experience, in an inward way in their own hearts, the altogether “otherness” of Christ than themselves. Then He works to bring us to the place where we realize how impossible the situation is apart from the miracle of God. The person who really begins to move forward is the person who has had his final despair over himself, and has come to see that it is no longer I, but Christ . Not what I am, but what Thou art. Nothing of me, all things from You. That is the essential foundation of spiritual growth, spiritual knowledge.
We need to be very sure of where we are in this; to have done with all our unreality, to finish forever with anything that is not genuine and utterly true about us. How helpless we are but how willing He is to complete what He’s begun. So great are the consequences that we cannot afford to be in false position about this. We will be brought to the place where we are perfectly adjustable before God, where there is all responsiveness to the Holy Spirit, and nothing in us that resists or refuses Him, but where we are open and ready for the biggest consequence of the Holy Spirit putting His finger upon anything in our lives needing to be dealt with and adjusted. He is here for that.
If you take the position, “Yes, that is how I feel today, that is my infirmity today, but Lord Jesus, You are other than I am, and I just rest on You, hold on to You, make You my life and hope". You will find that there is peace along that line, and rest, and although you may still be feeling bad in the outer part of you, in the inner part there is rest.
The Holy Spirit is going to expose our true selves. He is going to uncover us and show us thoroughly there is nothing sound in us, nothing to be relied upon in us, in order that He may make it equally clear that it is only in Christ that there is security, safety and life.
Faith is an abiding thing for the duration of this life. We will never cease to need to utterly depend on Him for everything. Faith (helplessness, dependence) is the great factor of sanctification, of glorification, of salvation; everything. And faith simply means that we are put into the position where we have not got it in ourselves, we only have it in Another. I no longer live . . . the life I now live, I live by faith.
You and I can never get revelation of this life, of Christ, other than in connection with some necessity. We cannot get it simply as a matter of information. That is information, not revelation. The apostles got their revelation for the Church in practical situations – often in crisis. They never met around a table to draw up a scheme of doctrine and practice for the churches. They went out into the business and suffering of ministry and came up against the desperate situation, and in the situation which pressed them, oft-time to desperation, they had to get before God and get revelation. The Bible is born out of pressing situations. The revelation of Christ in emergencies is the way to keep Christ alive, and the only way in which Christ really does live to His own.
He has said, The difference between you and Christ is so utter and final that it’s the width and depth of a grave; the cross. It is nothing less than the fullness of death. There is no passing by this. Death and the grave are the end on one side; the end of what you are, and if there is to be anything afterward at all, that death must stand between, and anything subsequent can only be by resurrection; a passing out of yourself (expectation, reliance, etc.) and into Him as through a death and resurrection. So that in that death you are regarded as having passed out of the realm of what you are, even at your best, and as having passed into the realm of what He is. He is so utterly different than us, there is no other way. He must take us into, through, and out to the other side. This is a lifetime process. As Pauls said, I die daily . . . we are always being delivered unto death so the life of the Lord Jesus can be manifest through our mortal flesh.
We have not to die; we are dead. What we have to do is accept our death. That is the daily outworking of an already established position. Failing to see that, we shall all the time be struggling to bring ourselves to death. This is God’s work, not ours, and He has accomplished it in Christ and will work the full implications of it into our lives. That is the meaning of reckoning yourselves dead. It is taking the place God has appointed for us, stepping into it, and saying, I accept the position which God has fixed with regard to myself; the Holy Spirit’s business is to deal with the rest, but I accept the end.
May I just ask a simple question? Can we say with truth of heart that we are really concerned to be in God’s purpose; to be found in that purpose? It is a practical matter – deciding whether we want what He wants. Are we prepared to commit to the Lord in relation to that utter transaction of exchanging our life for His? As the Lord’s people, are we ready to just pause and face that? To have a race conformed to the image of Christ – taken away from what we are to become what He is? Submitting to His way of freeing us from the old to bring in the new?
When the grain of wheat falls into the ground what an ugly thing it becomes as the shell is destroyed to make way for the inward life. Do you think it is pleasant? It is losing its own identity. You cannot recognize it. Take it out and have a look. Is this that lovely little grain of wheat I put into the ground? What an ugly thing it has become! It is all falling to pieces. That is what death does. The death of Christ wrought in us breaks up our own natural life. It scatters it, pulls it to pieces, takes all its beauty away. We begin to discover that there is nothing in us but corruption. That is the truth. It is no pleasant thing to fall into the ground and die. That is what happens. But if it die . . then a new life is given, an new form is given; not ours, but His. Expect what I have said, expect that you are going to fall to pieces, expect that the beauty you thought was there will be altogether marred; expect to discover that you are far more corrupt than ever you thought you were; expect that the Lord will bring you to a place where you cry, Woe is me for I am undone! But then the blessing will just be this – O Lord, the best thing that can happen for me is that I shall die. And the Lord will say, That is exactly what I have been working at. This corruptible must put on incorruption and that incorruption is the germ of that Divine life in the seed which yields its own life up, that is transmitted from Him.
He will accomplish this. It is His plan for us. You have not to go to your knees every morning and say, “Oh Lord, get me out of this difficulty!" You are to say, “Lord, if this is the expression of the cross for me, I take it up to follow You". If you face the situation in that way, there will be ultimate victory in co-operation with the Lord, there will be fruit and not barrenness.
If the Lord lifted that which is the expression of the cross for us and took it off our shoulders, it would not be for our good. It would at once clear the way for the uprising and recovery of the natural self. You can see when people begin to get a bit of relief from trials. How they throw their weight about. They are looking down on you; you are wrong, they are right. Pride, self-sufficiency come in. Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus (the taking of that which is Adamic into the grave) so that the life of Jesus (in resurrection) may be manifested in our body.
For His life to be expressed in fullness in us, we must come to the place where the utterness of the setting aside of the self-life has been accomplished: and that takes a whole lifetime. As we move through this process, the glory grows in the measure of our death and resurrection experiences so His life can be(present tense) manifest through us in varying and developing degrees. But blessed be God, there is the glorious climax when He shall come to be glorified in His saints. Having the glory of God in a race of redeemed sinners. It is the consummation of something that has been going on in an inward way.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Knowing Christ After The Resurrection
Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him this way no longer . . . old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
(2 Corinthians 5:16-17)
The disciples were bound by terrible limitations in themselves during their time with the Lord on earth. As to understanding Him, either His sayings or His doing; as to seeing through to His meaning, they were simply defeated all the time. They could not do it. They were completely off base concerning His person, His life, His words and His actions.
Their relationship (and often ours) with the Lord was purely ‘historical’. That has to go. We have to stand on a new ground where we know that even our Christian doctrine as simply information is no good to us. All the mighty package of received teaching is useless to us, it does not work, it has not saved us in the hour of real need, it has not come to our rescue in the time of deepest trial. It is not working.
We may even be teaching others what we are learning, yet the real working power and life, energy and fullness, and spontaneity and joy of all that may be lacking. You may be in an earthly system of the Christian religion, for instance; that is, you may be in the traditional realm of things, and everything there may be, so far as the Bible is concerned, quite sound – accurate. The Bible may be taught, it may be quite scriptural in its form of expression and practice, and yet it may all be such a burden, such a strain. You have the truth in a way, but you have no expression of it in life. There are things constantly contradicting it until the whole thing breaks you.
Then the Lord works to deliver you out of that whole realm of things, at great personal cost perhaps, and constitutes a simple, pure, open fellowship of living believers. The old order is gone, and now it is on the simple basis of fellowship with the Lord Himself. What happens then? You do not learn things that you never knew before; it’s not a matter of learning new things, but there is a difference, the Word lives, you have gotten a new understanding spiritually. You are on resurrection ground.
We cannot take New Testament teaching into just any realm and have it living. You have to be where it has its required conditions for it to live. There must be a resurrection position for resurrection life. The resurrection position is the entire cutting off and sealing up of all our natural (though very religious and devout) dealings with the Lord and His teachings, and a coming to the place where, knowing our utter inability to understand Him, to know Him, and to move with Him in a living way, the Lord has a new position for coming in and making all things new.
Many people have made the mistake of thinking that to be fundamental or evangelical is all that is required, and that secures all that is needed. Not at all. The true Christ, the Christ of God, the Christ of the scriptures, the Christ of eternity, of the incarnation, of the cross, of the resurrections and ascension, may be present in an intellectual way. We may have that kind of Christ, but we only have Him in an intellectual way. It is possible to be like that. The church is not that which is Christ present in this way. It is that in which Christ is spiritually, livingly present in Person.
Christ must be here in a spiritual way. That which is spiritual demands that something is done in our very constitution. For spiritual fellowship with Christ, something has got to be done in us, something that was not there has to be made to function.
You probably know in your heart and experience the difference between the intellectual and the spiritual, between one period in your life when it was teaching out of the Bible, and the other part of your life when – not teaching other than out of the Bible – but with some other feature; that element of divine unveiling; that it is not just teaching concerning things as from a manual of truth, but is speaking these things in a living way.
No one knew Him, understood Him, before the cross. But after the resurrection, these men through the forty days knew that they knew from Pentecost onward, because one realm of impossibility (the natural) was finished, and now there was the new realm of the Spirit. We know what it is to be able to receive the Lord in a spiritual way. We may not be able to define it, but we know it. This is Life, this is health, this is strength to have Christ ministered.
Are you waiting for something to happen? It is not a matter of time at all; it is a matter of Him. If Christ is present (which means nothing else than that God is present) anything is possible at any moment. He says, “I am time and eternity all in a moment, and you need not accept anything in the matter of time; you accept Me, and you may be nearly dead in the morning and be very much alive before the day is over.” “I am the resurrection and the life”. Mary said, “I know my brother will rise again in the last day”. For her, resurrection was matter of time. Oh no. Resurrection was right there! Eternity dwells in any moment when He is present. Never surrender to the inevitable from the standpoint of the human, but say, ‘We have Him; He is our future, our circumstance.’ Anything can be at any moment with the Lord present.
T.A.Sparks
(2 Corinthians 5:16-17)
The disciples were bound by terrible limitations in themselves during their time with the Lord on earth. As to understanding Him, either His sayings or His doing; as to seeing through to His meaning, they were simply defeated all the time. They could not do it. They were completely off base concerning His person, His life, His words and His actions.
Their relationship (and often ours) with the Lord was purely ‘historical’. That has to go. We have to stand on a new ground where we know that even our Christian doctrine as simply information is no good to us. All the mighty package of received teaching is useless to us, it does not work, it has not saved us in the hour of real need, it has not come to our rescue in the time of deepest trial. It is not working.
We may even be teaching others what we are learning, yet the real working power and life, energy and fullness, and spontaneity and joy of all that may be lacking. You may be in an earthly system of the Christian religion, for instance; that is, you may be in the traditional realm of things, and everything there may be, so far as the Bible is concerned, quite sound – accurate. The Bible may be taught, it may be quite scriptural in its form of expression and practice, and yet it may all be such a burden, such a strain. You have the truth in a way, but you have no expression of it in life. There are things constantly contradicting it until the whole thing breaks you.
Then the Lord works to deliver you out of that whole realm of things, at great personal cost perhaps, and constitutes a simple, pure, open fellowship of living believers. The old order is gone, and now it is on the simple basis of fellowship with the Lord Himself. What happens then? You do not learn things that you never knew before; it’s not a matter of learning new things, but there is a difference, the Word lives, you have gotten a new understanding spiritually. You are on resurrection ground.
We cannot take New Testament teaching into just any realm and have it living. You have to be where it has its required conditions for it to live. There must be a resurrection position for resurrection life. The resurrection position is the entire cutting off and sealing up of all our natural (though very religious and devout) dealings with the Lord and His teachings, and a coming to the place where, knowing our utter inability to understand Him, to know Him, and to move with Him in a living way, the Lord has a new position for coming in and making all things new.
Many people have made the mistake of thinking that to be fundamental or evangelical is all that is required, and that secures all that is needed. Not at all. The true Christ, the Christ of God, the Christ of the scriptures, the Christ of eternity, of the incarnation, of the cross, of the resurrections and ascension, may be present in an intellectual way. We may have that kind of Christ, but we only have Him in an intellectual way. It is possible to be like that. The church is not that which is Christ present in this way. It is that in which Christ is spiritually, livingly present in Person.
Christ must be here in a spiritual way. That which is spiritual demands that something is done in our very constitution. For spiritual fellowship with Christ, something has got to be done in us, something that was not there has to be made to function.
You probably know in your heart and experience the difference between the intellectual and the spiritual, between one period in your life when it was teaching out of the Bible, and the other part of your life when – not teaching other than out of the Bible – but with some other feature; that element of divine unveiling; that it is not just teaching concerning things as from a manual of truth, but is speaking these things in a living way.
No one knew Him, understood Him, before the cross. But after the resurrection, these men through the forty days knew that they knew from Pentecost onward, because one realm of impossibility (the natural) was finished, and now there was the new realm of the Spirit. We know what it is to be able to receive the Lord in a spiritual way. We may not be able to define it, but we know it. This is Life, this is health, this is strength to have Christ ministered.
Are you waiting for something to happen? It is not a matter of time at all; it is a matter of Him. If Christ is present (which means nothing else than that God is present) anything is possible at any moment. He says, “I am time and eternity all in a moment, and you need not accept anything in the matter of time; you accept Me, and you may be nearly dead in the morning and be very much alive before the day is over.” “I am the resurrection and the life”. Mary said, “I know my brother will rise again in the last day”. For her, resurrection was matter of time. Oh no. Resurrection was right there! Eternity dwells in any moment when He is present. Never surrender to the inevitable from the standpoint of the human, but say, ‘We have Him; He is our future, our circumstance.’ Anything can be at any moment with the Lord present.
T.A.Sparks
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