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
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