by T. Austin-Sparks
Reading: Col. 3:1-17.
"And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name" (John 20:30-31).
"In Him was life; and the life was the light of men" (John 1:4).
"For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself" (John 5:26).
To us, in our familiarity with the truth, the statements in the above passages do not come with a very great deal of surprising force, but to stand back from our association with the Word and the truth, and just to allow the implication to fall upon us in a detached position, is to see that there is something quite surprising and very remarkable about these statements.
On the one hand the implication clearly is that man has not life; and there is a very great difference between life as we understand it - the merely biological energy of our human being, the life which we possess as active creatures - and this Life of which the Lord is speaking, which is represented as an altogether different and higher life. On the other hand the implication is that the Life is in God and Christ alone. As the Father has Life, so has He given the Son to have Life.
We cannot evade the issue but must face it squarely, not as some would say, "Well, we all have life, and life comes from God. God is the Giver of life, and by our very being here on this earth as animate creatures we have life from God". On that basis the false teaching of the universal Fatherhood of God is based, but to face such statements honestly is immediately to dispose of that whole thing, because there is brought into view this other question: yes, whatever that life may be which we have by natural birth, and although that life may come from God originally, who is the Giver of life to all, there is evidently another Life which we do not possess by birth, for these words clearly imply, if they do not positively assert, that fact. Our familiarity with the truth takes the edge off that, but we have to begin there in our contemplation of a statement like this: "that ye might have life in His name".
John 20:31 brings before us the great truth of the union between God and man in the person of His Son. It is a valuable, significant and interesting thing to note that through this gospel by John there is the interchange of the terms "Son of God" and "Son of Man" it is that which is gathered up in this final statement: "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (verse 31). You find that John, in quite a large number of occasions, uses the phrase "Son of Man"; that is, he takes up the occasions when the Lord Jesus uses this phrase of Himself. John made a note of that and records it in this gospel. He says some remarkable things in that connection. Yet at the same time the other phrase is constantly being repeated, "Son of God". Some twenty seven or more times the phrase "Son of God" is used in this gospel; and more than ten times, not merely incidentally, but in some tremendously startling connections, the other phrase is used in the same gospel, "Son of Man".
I would advise you to look at the occurrences of the phrase "Son of Man" and see how tremendous are the associations of that phrase in this gospel. For the moment the point is this, that the bringing of these two things together in this one gospel, and the gathering up of them in this last clause: "Jesus (that is the Son of Man) is the Son of God", presents to us the union between God and man in Him. When you have got hold of that firmly as the content, meaning, and substance of the whole gospel, then this second thing is noted. The pre-eminent feature of that presentation is Life, this particular, peculiar Life to which he refers: "and that believing ye might have life through His name"; "in Him was life"; "the Father gave Him to have life in Himself". That is the pre-eminent feature of this union between God and man in Christ.
There are several things that we are going to see as brought out by this gospel in that connection.
Life is declared here to be bound up inseparably and exclusively with the person of Christ as Son of God and Son of Man. It is therefore the true Man with God that is the repository of this Life, this divine Life. In the true Man according to God, and in Him alone, exclusively and inseparably, is this Life made to dwell. Let us emphasise that. That is not only something said about a person, that Life is in Christ; that is, this Life is in a kind of person which represents a type before God, and Life is bound up, not only with a divine person, but with a kind of being who is constituted by certain features and characteristics, some of which we have already considered.
Here you get a Man of a certain order, a certain kind, from whom certain things are eliminated, and in whom certain things are seen which make Him different from all other men that we know. It is in that kind, shall we say in those elements brought together in a person, that the Life is resident, or with which the Life is bound up. You can only have the Life as you have those elements, those constituents, those characteristics, those features; that kind of man. It is not official, but it is nature, it is kind.
That is a point where there has been a good deal of divergence, because there has been a good deal of mistakenness that officially, by reason of occupying an official position, you can be a representative or a minister of these things, which is not at all true. You must be it before you can minister it. That is why the ministry can never be taken up or entered into. We have to be that in measure before ever we can minister that.
That was where the disciples failed on one occasion which is outstanding in our recollection. When the Lord was up in the Mount a man brought his son possessed of a demon to the disciples, and they attempted to cast out the demon and failed. It was a shameful failure, an exposure of them to all, and the men who looked on saw that they could not do it. Afterwards the disciples asked the Lord, "Why could not we cast him out?" The Lord, in answering their enquiry, made it perfectly clear that this sort of thing does not come into the official realm. The man came to them because they were, in his mind, the official representatives of Christ. In their official relationship they made the attempt and failed. The Lord said that it was not on official grounds at all that it could be done, but that "this kind goes not forth but by prayer and fasting". It is only on living, spiritual grounds that this sort of thing can be done.
An Old Testament illustration of this is Elisha and his servant Gehazi. You remember the story of the woman whose son died, and who came to the prophet. The prophet turned to Gehazi, told him to take his rod and go and lay it on the child. Gehazi took the rod and went off in his official capacity and laid the rod upon the child. We can see this pompous youth in his official pride strutting off with that rod, and going in with a very assured air and thinking this thing is going to work the miracle, that this is going to be a magic rod. He holds the rod of office! But nothing happens, there was no movement, no life. It is not until the prophet comes and stretches himself upon that corpse, hands to his hands, lips to his lips, and there is an identification of the one who has life with the one who has not life, that there is movement.
So it is quite impossible for us to take up the work of God as something objective. We have to possess that which does the work of God. So it becomes perfectly clear that the true man with God is the repository of Life, and that makes the ministry.
This true Man as set before us here is the prototype and example of the new creation in Christ Jesus, and His life on earth was lived according to the laws of divine Life. He lived here in an expression of that Life by conforming to its laws. John sets that forth on several occasions.
The Heavenly Origin of the True Man
The first of these which comes out in this gospel is the heavenly origin of this true Man. We turn back to the gospel of John: "And no man has ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven" (John 3:13). "He that comes from above is above all... He that comes from heaven is above all" (John 3:31).
There you have the origin of the true Man. Notice that it is the Son of Man who has come from heaven and is in heaven, and who is above all. That is a tremendous statement. You would immediately accept that, grasp it, have no question about it if it were the Son of God who came from heaven, and is in heaven, and is above all, but here the Holy Spirit makes no mistake in His language, it is the Son of Man who came from heaven. This is the origin of the true Man from heaven, and at the same time is in heaven, and this is the first law of the Life of the true Man, this particular Life which is ours by gift through faith.
What does it mean? It means this, that the Life of the true Man is something altogether apart from this world. That is a fact. As a fact, of course, we could believe it, we could say that it is a heavenly Life, it is Life from above. We have no difficulty over that. But then we have got to apply it. Note that it is a law which governs, just as it governed Him here, and we must see behind the earthly life of the Lord Jesus to know what was governing Him from behind, because He was here as representing the Life which you and I are called to live, privileged to live, which it is possible for us to live, and which we have got to live. It is a law of Life.
The deepest reality, the innermost truth of our being when we are the Lord's, when we are joined to the Lord, is that we are altogether apart from this world. Now, if you and I at any point, in any way, voluntarily touch this world in a spiritual or a moral way, our Life from above is immediately injured and arrested, and we shall never move into the growing fulness of Christ while at any point we have voluntary relationship with this world in a spiritual or moral way.
A worldly Christian is a contradiction in terms. Worldly-mindedness on the part of a Christian is a denial, and a positive denial, of their Christianity. A child of God living in association with the world or having any kind of fellowship with the world is working against the very term "child of God", nullifying, countering, obstructing the deepest reality of their own life. Heavenly, spiritual-mindedness, is the very nature of this Life, and is therefore essential to progress towards God's end: the full measure of Christ, the fulness of the stature of a man in Christ. It is a law.
If we are really living on the basis of this fact that our origin is heavenly, then our very life is heavenly. If we are living on that basis we shall be very sensitive to worldly influences, because we shall know that the very Life in us is being touched, hurt, damaged, checked, resisted. It is not a question of option at all, as to whether we abandon the world. We have started at the wrong point when we begin to talk about giving up the world, giving up the things of the world. That is not the point where we start.
The very fact that any child of God has received divine Life means that the world is finished with, because that Life is altogether apart from this world, has nothing to do with it. It is from heaven, and characterised by heaven. Christ in His life here was entirely governed in the first place by that law. The law of that divine Life separated Him from this world and kept Him in the truest, deepest relationship of His being, apart from this world. Spiritually and morally He was outside of it. While He had come out from heaven, He was still in heaven in the deepest reality of His being. We know that the later teaching of the Lord makes that perfectly clear: in the world but not of it; outside of it while here.
It is very important for us to recognise that this is a law which governs. You and I have to be very careful that we are not drawn into the realm of this world, touched by it and touching it. If we do, that Life is injured at once, is contradicted, is set back. To put this in another way, if you and I are truly living according to the first reality of our being as children of God, that is, the Life which is heavenly, we shall spontaneously move away from the world. It will not be a case of struggling to give up, we shall move out, and we shall find in ourselves, in the very nature of things, moving further and further away from the world. It is a test of the genuineness of our relationship with the Lord.
Look at the case of Daniel and his three companions. They are a fine illustration of this very truth. These four in the beginning refused to eat of the dainties from the king's table, and refused to be involved in this world system. On the one hand they were a testimony to Life which was something more than the life of nature. When their countenances were looked upon they were finer than all the others. They were a testimony to something outside of this world. Then, of course, they came under the impact of the scorn of men, the hatred of the devil, and were cast into the fire and into the den; the devil's attempt to quench that testimony of a Life which is outside of his domain. Satan is not going to have anything in his domain which he cannot govern, which is not subject to him. That, of course, is quite natural as well as satanic. In any kingdom, those who are there have got to be subject to the government of that kingdom. Now here was something which was outside of satan's kingdom, and at the same time within; therefore he must crush it, destroy it.
That is exactly what is happening in our own case. Here is a Life which is something more, and which is outside, and it becomes the very object of the hatred and malice of the devil, the envy of men, and the scorn of men; so that we also are cast into the fiery furnace of the scorn of men and the hatred of the devil, simply because of the testimony which is altogether outside.
The Heavenly Birth of the True Man
The second thing which comes out is in John 3:5-8: "Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee. Except a man be born again ("born from above" the margin says), he cannot see the kingdom of God". "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it comes, and whither it goes; so is every one that is born of the Spirit".
If the heavenly origin of the true man becomes the law, and means that the life of the true man is altogether apart from this world; the heavenly birth of the true man means that the life of the true man is apart from nature. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh (that is nature), and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit (that is not nature)". Christ, the true Man, was born of the Spirit and not of nature, not of the flesh, and from the very depths of my being I repudiate every suggestion that Christ inherited the nature of fallen man by His birth. I say, not of nature, but of the Spirit. The birth of the true Man means that the Life which is His is the essential Life, is altogether apart from nature. (You can, if you like, call "nature" by another word: "flesh").
This, again, is a law (not only a fact) which has to govern our whole course in relation to Christ. These two things are distinct (nature and spirit, flesh and spirit) and they must not at any point overlap or touch one another. Their distinctiveness and separateness must be maintained throughout. It was here that Satan laid his deepest plots and snares to entrap the Lord Jesus, to get an overlapping, to get Him to touch the life of nature at some point, to get on to natural ground, to live by some natural means. The answer which He gave to the devil was; "Man shall not live by bread alone (that is natural ground), but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God shall man live (that is spiritual ground)". We will touch that again in another connection presently.
You see these two things are altogether distinct, and they must not touch one another. That Life in us which constitutes us members of Christ, parts of this new Man, must not be touched in any way by the life of nature, and it must not confer with the life of nature, it must not come under the influence or direction of the life of nature. These two things are set apart by God.
You and I must not consult our own reason in relation to the things of God, nor our own feelings. Not in any part of our being must we consult our interests. If we consult our physical feelings, we may do a great deal more than the Lord would have us to do, if we are walking on the basis of the life of nature. If we consult our physical feelings, we may feel we cannot, and we shall not, but we know that there is another Life to energise even our physical beings in relation to the interests of the Lord, a Life which can be proved superior to all physical weaknesses and infirmities. On the other hand, because we have an extra spurt of physical energy and are feeling better, that is no reason why we should fling ourselves with that amount of energy into doing things for God. We have to consult the Lord in every case, and not resort to the life of nature.
The Lord Jesus lived on that basis. See Him at the well of Sychar: "Jesus therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the well" (John 4:6). He was hungry and His disciples went away into the town to buy food. He was wearied and hungry, and there came a woman to draw water. He might have said, "I am too tired to talk to this woman; let Me have a rest and something to eat, and then..." that would be reference to nature. His disciples came back and found Him talking with the woman, with no sign of weariness, no sign of hunger, and when He said: "I have meat to eat that ye know not of", they said: "Hath any man brought Him aught to eat?". Had He consulted the life of nature He would not have done that service for God; but He did not. His Life was apart from the life of nature, and upon that He lived and was able to do more than nature would have allowed. His very birth, you see, is of the Spirit and not of the flesh, is of God not of man. It means that the true Man is altogether apart from the life of nature in the innermost reality of His being.
The point we must watch is that we move into this progressively. He was in it in an absoluteness and a fulness so far beyond us that we must not be discouraged and disconcerted if we sometimes are overtaken by the other, but the point for us is this, that the deepest reality of our being as children of God is that. We have to learn how to live on that basis, and we have got to grow according to the laws of this Life.
The Heavenly Government of the True Man
The third thing comes out in John's gospel, and it is this in John 5:17-27, 30-32. All that is in those verses contains a fresh law of the true man. It is the law of his government, and it meant that the true man is not governed by any other than God.
Firstly, "the Son can do nothing out from Himself" (John 5:19). That must have put alongside of it: "I seek not Mine own will" (John 5:30). The true Man is not governed by His own will, His own self-consideration. He is not governed by the god of this age, the prince of this world, nor by His own will. He is utterly under the government of God, it is all coming from above, from the Father.
That is a law of His life, and if you and I are going to live more and more; that is, if Life more abundantly is to be ours, this is the law: that our government in all things must be from above. This world, its ways, its policies, its judgements, its appraisements, its standard of values, and its whole system, has not to dictate for one moment our course. We are not to be influenced by its counsels, its frowns, or any of its attitudes. Our law is from above.
The same applies to ourselves; anything coming out from the inside of us as ourselves, anything influencing our lives which originates in us, has its rise in us. To live, to have Life in His Name, is to have government from above absolute in all matters. That is a law. We cannot get away from it. Consult men, consult self, consult any other quarter, and we at once suspend the progress of Life. Life only goes on, is renewed, released, continues, when we forsake that ground and come back where the Lord governs us; we take our government from the Lord. It is very true. It is going to prove more and more true as we go on.
We are going to find, shall we say, the bondage of this. We are going to find this thing is pressed upon us more and more. These four men in Babylon (Daniel and his three friends) could have consulted personal interests and have compromised, and could have argued very well for doing it: "Of course, inside I will keep true, but outside there is no reason why I should not give way and in so doing I shall live all the longer for God, and having my days prolonged will give me a greater opportunity of influencing men God-ward!" You know how the flesh reasons in a very 'spiritual' way. But that is consulting with flesh, it is not the government of God; and it is always a costly way, it is a way of painfulness, and a way of desperate loneliness for those who take it.
Very few understand those who seek to walk with God, whose position is, "Well, I must go the way the Lord has shown me! It may not be the public way, the generally accepted way; it may not be the way that is the acknowledged way, even by Christian people. In this matter it is between the Lord and myself, and I have got to go on." That is a lonely way, and a costly way. We shall be in the fire, and very often it will be the Lord's people who put us into the fire, and make it hot for us. The traditional way, the religious way, the generally accepted way by the religious leaders was one way. For Him the way was of another order, that of walking with God.
No one will use what we have said in a wrong way. No one will think that we should cut ourselves off from everybody else, be up against everybody else if we walk with God. It often means that, but walking with God means that we have to walk alone with God, it is the way of Life where we discover and prove the Life of God, and in the outworking it comes to this: while it may be costly, while it may have cost everything, while it may have created a world of difficulty and trouble all around me, yet because I have come to know God in the deepest reality of my being, for me it is no artificial way. It is not just the result of my own pig-headedness and awkwardness. No, it is Life! You cannot abandon a way which is Life to you. You would not abandon your very life. If it is not that, then you and I can go back on it, or seriously reconsider the whole situation if it has not brought us into a knowledge of God in Life. It is a law of Life to walk with God under heaven's government, and not man's, not our own. That is how the Lord Jesus walked. As John says, we ought to walk as He walked.
The Heavenly Sustenance of the True Man
For the present the last thing that comes out of John's gospel for our consideration is shown in John 6:26-40. Read right on to verse 58, and you will notice that there is this one thing: "I am the bread of life" (verse 48); ''I am the living bread" (verse 51). "I will give... My flesh... for the life of the world" (verse 51). "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you" (verse 53). "As the living Father has sent Me, and I live by the Father: so He that eats Me, even he shall live by Me" (verse 57).
You will notice the contrast here is between food which does, and food which does not, end in death. These people referred to the Manna, and our recollection of the Manna is that it was capable of putrefaction, corruption, in a very short time. It must not be kept, and to keep it would mean that it would immediately breed disease and death. So that in that food there was already the element of death. Now the Lord Jesus is saying that there is that upon which man lives which has in it corruption, producing moral and spiritual disease and ending in death. That is one kind of food. But there is another kind of food which has no basis of corruption, no element of death, which does not, therefore, produce disease but health and life, and that constitutes another law of the true man. It means that the true man is free from corruption, from spiritual disease and death, by living upon something. He escapes, he is outside of the realm of corruption, disease, death, because of the food which he eats, because of that by which he is nourished and sustained.
What is the food of the true man, which means Life, more Life, eternal Life, deathless, incorruptible Life? It is the revealed will of God. Do you notice the strong emphasis in this passage in John 6 upon doing the will of God? "For I came down from heaven," the Lord Jesus said, "not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me" (verse 38). "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me", said He to the disciples at Sychar. The revealed will of God, the law of Life, escaping of spiritual and moral disease, corruption, death, and growing in Life. Revelation is progressive, just as food is progressive. The babe has one kind of food, then after so long a time you change the food, then you change it again, and you are constantly changing it as the child normally grows, until in a normal person the child comes on to a full man's diet. It is progressive. Revelation is progressive. You begin your spiritual life as a babe by obedience to the will of God as it has been revealed to you in those initial stages in the simplest, the elementary things. But, as the apostle has pointed out, we are not to stay with the rudiments, the first principles, we are to go on to full growth, for strong meat is for full-grown men. That is progressive revelation of the will of God by which there is an increase of Life.
Now, try to feed a full-grown man on baby's food and see what happens! His life fades out. Life is bound up with the kind of food, and the measure of the value of that food. So is the will of God revealed progressively to those who are going on with Him in a living way, and as there is a compliance with the growing revelation of God's will, so there is an increase in the Life, which is an increase of the position of victory over death, corruption, disease, moving on to that final triumph, where in the Body as in the Head, death is swallowed up in victory.
It is important for the issue of the dispensation that as many of the Lord's people as can be brought there, shall know maturity. It is fatal for the Lord's people to be left in spiritual infancy at the end of the dispensation, because the end of the dispensation is to see in the church, the Body, the trampling upon death, the final overthrow of death. That which has been done in the Head has got to be done in the Body. Just as He bruised Satan's head under His heel, so Satan's head has got to be bruised under the heel of the church; that is the Word of the Lord.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death, and the church, with the Lord, has to conquer death. But that represents maturity, and so it is most important that the Lord's people shall not remain in immaturity, for the issue of the dispensation is bound up with the maturing of a company of the Lord's people. It is not just that the Lord wants them full-grown. It is not just that the Lord has His heart set upon a company fully mature. It is for the purpose of the Lord in the destruction of death, and so Life must increase, Life must abound.
You can see that there is a subtle strategy about the work of the devil in keeping the Lord's people in ignorance of His greater fulnesses, and thereby keeping them in spiritual infancy. There is something devilish about this universal immaturity amongst the Lord's people. There is something altogether wrong, and we not only grieve and are pained in heart about it, but we are indignant. The Lord's people ought not to be there. When the apostle speaks of immaturity which ought not to be, there is always a note which sounds somewhat heated which comes into his voice: "Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing" (Heb. 5:11). There is something very wrong in an unduly prolonged immaturity of the Lord's people. It is the strategy of the devil to defeat that end of the age, the overthrow of death.
These are tremendous issues, and matters of great importance to the Lord, to the church, and in the dispensation. So it all comes to this, that you and I are to know Life as fully as we can know it, and want to know how to know it. The issue is Life all the way through from beginning to end, and the end is the full triumph of Life in the Head and in the Body, the one church, conquering death.
Then how is this Life to be known, to abound? By these laws. They are very practical. You may take it that if the Lord is going to carry on a people to the fulness of His thought, they are going to be taken up this way. And they are going to learn, it may be by painful experiences to the flesh, how to live by the Life of the Lord and have no life of their own. They are going to have their own life smitten so that they come to live on the Lord. Their own judgements are going to be confounded, so that they come to live on heavenly judgement. The Lord is doing it. These are tremendous realities.
If we did not know something of this we would not talk about it, but we know what it is to have the natural side of things smitten, broken, crushed, so that the Lord alone is the hope of a future. It is a matter of Life in its full expression, and for that there are laws, and those are the laws and the Life of the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Head of the church. And what is true of the Head, the prototype, has got to be true of every member of His Body, of His race, of His creation. We have to come by this way: "that ye might have life through His name" (John 20:31). Then, what is Life in His Name? It means being upon the same basis as He was upon. When we come into His Name, or unto His Name, we come on to the basis of the Son of Man, the Son of God.
Please take it to heart. We have been trying to indicate the tremendous importance of a matter like this. If you do not believe it, then we must leave it there, but I am quite sure that if we are going on with the Lord we are going to come up against these facts. Whether we can understand and interpret them is another matter. We are going to discover that we need something which we are not in possession of in ourselves, and something that only God can give us to get us through. If we are going in any way to count for the Lord effectively, and if the Lord is going to get anything like a fuller thing through us, we are going to discover our need of God to the very fullest measure possible. And we shall cry to the Lord for something, and what the Lord will do will be to take us through experiences and those experiences will be the working out of these laws. You will understand the law when you have been through the experience, but it is as well, perhaps to start with, to have a little light as to what the Lord is doing in emptying and weakening us. It is in order to make His Life everything, to bring us to fulness, increase, for supreme divine purposes and ends.
The Lord write His Word in our hearts.
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