"And Jesus,
when he was baptized, went up straightway from the water:
and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the
Spirit of God descending as a dove, and coming upon him;
and lo, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt.
3:16-17).
"...it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy
God, and him only shalt thou serve" (Matt. 4:10).
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth." - "Wherefore if any man is in Christ,
there is a new creation: the old things are passed away:
behold, they are become new. But all things are of
God..." (Gen. 1:1 - 2 Cor. 5:17-18).
"And God said, Let there be light: and there was
light." - "Seeing it is God, that said, Light
shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts, to
give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in
the face of Jesus Christ." (Gen. 1:3 - 2 Cor. 4:6).
"And God saw the light, that it was good: and God
divided the light from the darkness." - "Who
delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated
us into the kingdom of the Son of his love." (Gen.
1:4 - Col. 1:13).
"And God said, Let there be a firmament
in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters
from the waters." - "If then ye were raised
together with Christ, seek the things that are above,
where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set
your mind on the things that are above, not on the things
that are upon the earth. For ye died, and your life is
hid with Christ in God." (Gen. 1:6 - Col. 3:1-3).
The
New Creation in Christ
We have read together
in Matthew 3 of the baptism and descent of the Holy
Spirit upon the Lord Jesus, because it is just there that
we have the new creation in Christ introduced. I want you
to take particular note of this quite simple thing, that
the new creation is in Christ; or, in other words, Christ
is God's new creation, and everything that is a part of
God's creative activity and method is to be found in the
Lord Jesus Christ. So that, when He emerges from that
typical death in Jordan and the Spirit comes upon Him, it
is God by His Spirit typically bringing a new order of
things into being, as represented by Christ and as
embodied in Christ, and from that moment, by the Spirit
of God - Who was the executive of the Divine purposes at
the beginning, brooding over the darkness and the chaos -
from that moment by the Spirit governing the life of
Jesus, everything will be a progressive development and
unveiling of what the new creation is. Then, of course,
comes the inclusive statement that it is when we are in
Christ that there is a new creation; that is, the new
creation has its rise, so far as we are concerned, by
that experience of coming into Christ, being made one in
union with Christ, having now our place and our life and
everything in Christ. It is there that all the meaning of
God's new universe in a spiritual way becomes a part of
us. Those are just simple basic facts with which most of
us are familiar.
Now, we just come to
take up the matter in these corresponding words in the
Old and the New Testaments.
"In the beginning
God..."
I do not think there is
any great mystery about that word "beginning".
A very great deal has been made of it. The simple fact is
this, that right at the inception of something called
"the creation" there was God. Everything took
its rise from Him, sprang from Him. The beginning is the
beginning of a new universe, and new order, and there it
is with God. I am being exceedingly simple in the
statement of truth in this meditation. It may not be all
so simple as we go on, but I do want to get this thing
quite clearly before you at the outset. It is God
intervening in a state of things which is chaotic, and
the key to everything, the secret of everything, is the
Lord Himself in a living, personal, active way, coming
into that scene.
What is true here in
the material universe and creation is just as true in the
spiritual experience. It is that God comes into the
scene, into the situation, that there is a living,
personal, active God breaking in upon things as they are:
and most of us know that is true from experience. What is
the remedy for everything, what is the key to all the
problems, the solution of every difficulty. It is the
coming in of God Himself into experience in an active,
personal way.
Now, in the New
Testament where we are dealing with the new creation, the
whole weight of revelation bears down upon this, that it
is God in Christ intervening in the life and state of
things in a living, personal way, coming right in in the
Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in Him is that which
will answer the situation at every point in all its
forms, and the knowledge of Him coming in is the way to
that perfect order, that glorious order, that universe
which expresses at every point the glory of God.
You see, the statement
in 2 Cor. 4:6 is this - "...the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God": the knowledge of
the glory of God. Break the statement up into its parts -
The glory of God; the knowledge of the glory of God; the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God. That is what is in view. It is God desiring to make
Himself known in terms of glory - over against the
situation as we find it typically in Gen. 1:2. "The
earth was waste and void, and darkness was upon the face
of the deep". This, as we know, was but typical of a
yet deeper spiritual darkness that had overtaken the
creation. So that this awful chaos and darkness and
disorder, this state of things which we know to be true
of the human heart, of the broken down creation of human
nature, shall be resolved into, or give place to, a
revelation of the glory of God: and we shall know the
glory of God - how? By what He does. You never can know
anyone really apart from what they do. It may be the most
able, clever person in this world, but if that person
should happen to be away in some remote place out of
touch with the rest of the world, you would never know
anything about their ability. It is only as they come
into touch with the world and express their ability in
their actions that you know what they are. And God
desires that the glory which is true of Him, which He
has, should be known, should be displayed, and that by
what He does as over against the situation that exists.
In the beginning God -
and now, in New Testament terms, In the beginning God in
Christ. You may think that does not get you very far, but
I want you to be quite sure of my point, which is this,
that the coming in of the Lord Jesus upon the scene is
the full embodiment of everything that is going to end in
a new universe for us expressive of the glory of God.
Beloved, if the Lord Jesus is in us and if we are in
Christ, there is the sum total of all Divine glory. Now
it is a matter of progressive working out, discovering
and knowing; but it is all there. God was no bigger on
the sixth or seventh day than He was on the first. May I
put it like that? It was all there in Him before He
started, and the Lord Jesus, God in Christ, being on the
scene, existing in the midst of a situation, means that
all the fulness of Divine possibility is there present
and the glorious end is already here. The Lord Jesus will
be no greater when this whole universe is transfigured
into His likeness than He is today, no bigger than He is
in your heart. If He is there, you have a new universe
and my desire at this point in emphasizing this is to
point out that it is all a matter of having the Lord
Himself and not things. We want this and that and
something else which we think to be parts of the new
creation. We are wanting sanctification, holiness and all
sorts of things, and so we are reaching out for things
which to us are things which make up the new creation,
and there are any number of things after which people go.
Let me say that if you have the Lord Jesus, you have all
the things, and what is necessary now is to discover what
Christ is, what is in Christ, and it is all a matter, not
of making new discovery of things, but of making
progressive discovery of the Lord.
You see, the first day
represents a revelation of the Lord. The second day -
why, it is some fuller revelation of the Lord, a
discovery of the Lord in a fuller way; not things, but
the Lord. It is all coming back to the Lord, and, as you
make progress through the days right on to the end of the
creation, what is happening is this - "Oh, what a
wonderful Lord this is! On the first, day, I thought He
was wonderful, but on the second day, I thought he was
more wonderful; and, as the days have gone on, I have
found He is infinitely more wonderful than I knew He
was." That is the point, and that is all true in the
case of the Lord Jesus: wherefore Peter says, "Grow
in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus
Christ" (2 Pet. 3:18); and Paul also says that we
grow up thus unto God, and for us now that is God in
Christ - "The light of the knowledge of the glory of
God in the face of Jesus Christ."
"In the beginning
God created..." - "If any man be in Christ
there is a new creation." God's intention and
thought and idea in creation was specifically and
entirely with a view to having Himself in universal
expression, that, by reason of what He brought into
being, the result of His activity, He should be seen.
"The invisible things of him", says the
Apostle, "are clearly seen, being perceived through
the things that are made", showing God's idea that
things which otherwise would be altogether hidden from
His intelligent universe should be seen by His creative
activity; God putting Himself out to be known along the
line of creation. If that be the case in the material
creation, how very much more is it so in the new
creation. If the new creation is in Christ Jesus, then
all that God is which cannot be known otherwise is to be
known in Christ. God has brought the sum total of what He
is in Himself within the range of our spiritual knowledge
by breaking in upon the scene in the form of Jesus
Christ. A new creation! "He that hath seen me hath
seen the Father". But how few have seen Him. Hence
the importance of seeing Him, and with other than natural
eyes. What a difference it makes!
Some
Features of the New Creation
(1)
Light
"God said, Let
there be light: and there was light" - "God who
said, Light shall shine out of darkness" (or God who
said, Let there be light) "hath shined into our
hearts". It is the same creative activity. God said,
Let there be light! God hath shined. In the matter of
light, the new creation is in Christ. "I am the
light of the world", said He: "he that
followeth me shall not walk in darkness but shall have
the light of life." You see, God brings in light in
order that what He is going to do may be done in the
light, may be carried on and seen. There may be a sense
in which God works in the dark. God often does work in
secret, in a hidden way, but really all God's works are
in the light. He carries on His works, His purposes, in
the light. Now, with regard to the new creation in
Christ, the first feature in the movement forward is
light. The Lord Jesus is the Light in which, or in whom,
God proceeds with the unfolding of His purposes. A
knowledge of the Lord Jesus by revelation of the Holy
Spirit is a knowledge in the light of which God is able
to fulfil all that is in His mind. That is not very well
put. I will try to put it more clearly.
God has a great, an
extensive, a many-sided thing on hand, but God cannot
realize all that is in His heart save as there is light
in which to do it; and you and I, beloved, who are a part
of His creation, need light, need illumination, need
revelation, need the darkness to be dismissed, in order
that God shall reach His full end in us. Therefore you
have so much in the New Testament, both in the Gospels by
way of illustration, and in the Epistles by way of direct
teaching, which points out that, in order to reach God's
full end, you have to have light, you have to have
revelation. There must be a state of illumination, a
state of enlightenment. We are not talking about specific
illumination now, but there must be an enlightenment of
the eyes. Now, what does this mean? It just means,
beloved, that God will not go on with His work apart from
illumination. God cannot. You cannot take it for granted
that you are going to come into all that is in God's mind
willy nilly, drift into it just automatically, or
mechanically come to it. It is not done that way. The
very first step in new creation is a matter of the eyes
being opened, and every successive step has to be the
outcome of illumination. God must work on the basis of
illumination, and all true experience bears that out. You
and I do make progress immediately we see something, and
we do not make progress until we see. Is that not true?
For a long time maybe we are held up about something and
we are conscious that we are not moving, not making
progress, and there is something we need to know; and
then, under the Spirit's operation, there is
illumination, and as soon as we get that illumination, we
are free, we are released, we move on, we gain ground:
and it must be like that, and it is always like that. It
is a fresh revelation of the Lord Jesus which is the
basis of progress towards God's full end.
Now, the Lord Jesus is
the light, the full light, and it is only in Him, in His
light, in the light of what He is, that you and I can
come to know the glory of God. Oh, how true this is to
the Word! "Said I not unto thee, that, if thou
wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of
God?" There is nothing more blinding than unbelief,
and there is nothing more illuminating than faith. Poor
Tennyson was very wide of the mark when he said,
"We have but
faith, we cannot know,
For knowledge is of things we see."
We are outside of the
New Testament when we begin to make poetry like that. No,
there is nothing which is more the key to knowing than
faith, and the Lord has established that quite
definitely. Believest thou that I am able to do this
thing? It is always the Lord's challenge before opening
eyes, before doing a work which is to result in a new
fulness of spiritual life. It is the knowledge of God in
the face of Jesus Christ. It is light in Christ you and I
need for spiritual growth, for spiritual fulness, and so
we must ask the Lord to maintain us in the way of
continuous and progressive revelation; for immediately
that ceases, our growth ceases. We do not mean we should
seek revelation to come in a direct way apart from what
He has given us in the Scriptures. We are not talking of
extra-Biblical revelation, but the revelation of God's
fulness which lies within what He has already given us in
His Word. We know quite well, any fragment of the Word of
God, under the Holy Spirit's illumining, can reveal
things ever new and ever fresh and ever more wonderful.
We today are using the Scriptures which have been in use
for long centuries and still there is fresh light to
break forth from them. To be kept in that way is new
creation, and that is spiritual growth, that is moving on
to fulness. That is how it should be in the new creation.
Just for the moment, our point is this, that there is no
progress in God's purposes where we are concerned apart
from light, spiritual light by the Holy Spirit.
(2)
Discernment
"And God saw the
light, that it was good: and God divided the light from
the darkness."
God made a distinction,
and said, This is darkness and this is light; and in the
later covenant, you remember, it was said that, as long
as the earth remained, there should be day and night,
summer and winter, seedtime and harvest; these things
should be divided up and put in their place under an
irrevocable covenant or ordinance of God. These things
stand apart; light and darkness stand apart: and that
points on so much to the new creation. We quoted Col.
1:13 - "hath translated us out of the kingdom of
darkness (or the power of darkness) into the kingdom of
the Son of his love": and, says the Apostle,
"Ye are all the children of light, and the children
of the day": we are not of the night, nor of
darkness. The distinction is made.
Now, you see, God is
not satisfied with the simple bringing in of light in
order to go on with His great work and purpose. God makes
an ordinance of this; that light is light and darkness is
darkness. You have to discriminate between the two, and a
feature of progress, whether in the progressive activity
of God in the creation or in the new creation, is that
there is a distinction which is to be observed, to be
noted, to be taken account of, and that we are not to go
on as though this thing did not exist. In nature, for
instance, if you violate that distinction, you are going
to suffer. The turning of day into night and night into
day is costing the race a good deal. You have not, after
a time, the same stored up energies. Your energies are
not repaired in the same way as if you were working by
day and resting by night; for night sees a suspension of
certain vital forces in nature so that you should rest,
whereas there are energies let loose in the day in order
to enable you to work. While there are natural forces
that are at work to vitalize unto labour during the day,
you have, in contrast, that terrible zero hour in the
very early hours before daybreak - sick people know it,
sufferers know it - the zero hour, that desperately
perilous hour for someone who is very low in vitality.
You see, God has ordered His creation with principles and
laws, and these obtain with even greater force in the
spiritual and new creation; and God says, "You must
not ignore a distinction that I have made. This is
darkness and this is light, and you belong to the light
and to the day. You do not belong to the night and the
darkness. You have been translated, and you must have
intelligence to discriminate between what belongs to the
darkness and what belongs to the light, and to keep these
things apart". It is a mark of spiritual growth to
be able to do that; it is spiritual progress.
By reason of being now
in the new creation, you have a faculty given to you for
appreciating the differences, appreciating what is of the
Lord and what is not of the Lord; what is of the light
and what is of the darkness; what is of the day and what
is of the night. You have a power of discerning in the
new creation, and you have to use it. This is exactly
what the Apostle meant when, writing to the Hebrews, he
said that strong meat was for fully grown men who, by
reason of exercise, have their senses developed. That is
maturity, that is growth, that is the attaining of a
point of spiritual advancement, that you have your senses
exercised to discern. It is a mark of growth when you can
discern what belongs to this realm and what to that.
God fulfilled all these
things in the creation at the beginning through the
executive instrumentality of the Holy Spirit. It is the
Spirit of God who is dividing and setting things in their
place. In the new creation the Spirit of God becomes the
intelligence within us, to make us know what belongs to
light and what belongs to darkness and where the divide
comes. That is what life in the Spirit means. It is very
practical. Thus we are told about the sword of the
Spirit, which is the Word of God, sharper than any
two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of soul
and spirit, and we have experience of the Spirit of God
through the Word, saying, in effect, Now this belongs to
that realm and that belongs to that realm; and you must
take account of the different realms and these two things
must not be confused. A life in the Spirit means that we
come to be able to discern what belongs to soul and what
belongs to spirit, or that which is natural and that
which is Spirit. It is a real creation, it is a living
creation, it is an intelligent creation. God has not
designed a creation of chairs and tables without sense,
just things which He has made. He has made men and women
to form His new creation, and they are to have sense and
intelligently understand God. Mark that it is the
knowledge of God that is spoken of, the knowledge of the
glory of God, and the knowledge of the glory of God means
knowing how to discern what is of God and what is not of
God, and, as we know what is of God and keep to it, so we
move on in the glory of God. But when you and I fail to
discern what is of God and come into something that is
not of God, the glory of God fades from our hearts. We
know there is no glory. "God divided the light from
the darkness".
(3)
Heavenliness
"And God said,
Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters,
and let it divide the waters from the waters."
(More literally, the waters above from the waters
beneath).
Let there be a
firmament between the waters above and the waters below.
In other words, Let there be that which determines what
belongs above and what belongs below. This is only an
extension of what we have just been saying, but it is a
phase with a particular point because it brings in the
whole matter of where rule and government are to be
seated. The government, is to be above. There is a
distinction and a gap, and the New Testament passage
which we have used to correspond to this is Col. 3:1-3.
"If then ye
were raised together with Christ, seek the things
that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right
hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are
above, not on the things that are upon the earth. For
ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in
God."
To what did you die?
You died to your old creation which as we pointed out in
our previous meditation, belonged to the first man who
was of the earth, earthy, and you rose to the last Adam,
the second Man, who is from heaven or 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" (1 Cor. 15:48).
Two men, two orders.
Now then, there is to be a space between, and we are to
be governed entirely by what is above the firmament. That
opens up a tremendous field. It carries us right into
Ezekiel at once. We see that the whole of Ezekiel is the
outworking of one statement, that above the firmament was
the Throne and the likeness of a Man. All the rest that
follows is the result of that - A Man in the Throne above
the firmament. Is that not true in the new creation,
exactly where the new creation commenced in the second
chapter of the Book of the Acts? The mighty coming in of
the new creation, so far as the Church is concerned, is
because there is a Man above the firmament. All is
governed out from heaven and by the Holy Ghost sent down
from heaven: all is of heaven now. God has made a divide,
and here is another step forward, a big step forward,
toward God's full end, and progress, development and
fulness is a matter of our being heavenly in life and
government and interest, and being separate from what is
merely earthy. Here is the principle of progress, God
going on with His work.
But how does God go on
with His work? What are the principles of His being able
to go right through to make a full end in His new
creation? It is that there are these differences, and
that we who are of and in the new creation are governed
by these differences; that is, that we are now in the
place where there is a divide between what is earthy and
what is heavenly as governing our lives. What is
influencing you, what is governing you, controlling you,
directing you? What is it that is affecting you in your
life? Are earthly interests the controlling things or are
heavenly things? Is there a distinction and definite
space between these things where you are concerned, so
that everything is not a jumble, earthly things all mixed
up with heavenly things. That is a way of spiritual
progress.
So, then, we have to
know by the Holy Spirit in us that there is a firmament.
Has the Holy Spirit definitely constituted a firmament
within you? Can you say that in your heart, in your
spirit, there is a firmament; that is, God has put a
space between what is heavenly and what is earthly, and
you know it, and that space is there as a real thing? It
means that your interests, your resources, your
well-springs are all above. Your life is hid with Christ
in God. It is a way of spiritual fulness, moving unto
God's end.
(4)
Fruitfulness
"And God said,
Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together
unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it
was so."
You see, up to this
point, there was no distinguishing between the land and
the sea. Waters were general, waters were all pervading:
and when you look for the symbolic meaning of waters, you
find that they are the lawless elements in the universe.
Of course, if you have been to sea when the waters are
stirring themselves up, you know that to be a very good
simile; lawless elements indeed they are! Here is the
thought of something that has got the law into its own
hands and is all pervading. Now God says, we are going to
break in upon that universal reign of lawlessness, that
anarchy, and we are going to bring all that within a
limit and bind it to a fixed compass, to a place and a
space of its own, and, in so doing, we shall make
possible the bringing up and out from it of that upon
which we are going to develop the revelation of the glory
of God. Thus the next thing is the dry land, and then all
that comes on the dry land; the verdure, the beauty, the
fruitfulness. But you can never have dry land, you can
never have that beauty and fruitfulness which comes on
the dry land, until you have broken the reign of
lawlessness. There is no prospect of trees and shrubs and
fruits, the earth bringing forth its splendour for us and
for God, a revelation of the glory of God; there is no
prospect of that until lawlessness has been harnessed,
its reign broken, and it has been brought within limits
and bounds.
That is
the new creation; that is the work of the Spirit of God
in the new creation. How much Scripture we could cite at
once about that. "They that are Christ's have
crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts"
(Gal. 5:24). That is only one of a large number of
passages which bear upon this thing, that spiritual
progress under the government of the Holy Spirit toward
God's end means that all that running riot of our fallen
nature has been brought under arrest and put within
limits. It may still make itself known; but there is the
check of the Spirit of God at a point which says, So far,
and no further! to the sea. You and I know there are
still those wild, lawless elements in regions of our
humanity. We know it, and those things do trouble us. It
is part of the infirmity of our broken down creation. You
have only to suffer from a nervous complaint to know the
awful distress that comes to you through irritability. It
is in our broken down humanity. But, blessed be God, that
is not all, that is not universal.
What is it
that makes you and me to some very real extent amazed at
the way men are going on today? Do you not often feel
that you would like to get into touch with some of these
men and reason with them and seek to persuade them along
the line of sweet reasonableness, and really to put
before them a higher, better way. What makes you feel
like that? You see, perhaps once you would have done the
same thing. If you had been provoked or if you had been
mastered by a great ambition, you would have stood at
nothing, you would have gone fiercely on, riding
rough-shod, to gain your end. That is our nature; but
something has happened and there is another side of
things which brings forth the fruit of the Spirit - love,
joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
meekness, self-control. That is the dry land bringing
forth. In Christ, we all have something of that. You may
think it is too little, but in that realm this riotous
thing does not hold the day. No, we know that in Christ
God has broken in and put back into a certain place that
old creation lawlessness of evil nature, and has brought
up something else, and that something else makes us
constantly react against the thing that is still there
somewhere and that makes itself felt from time to time.
Every reaction of ours, every bit of suffering when there
is an uprising of that old thing, declares there is
something else. If it were universal, we should have no
reaction in sorrow, no pain over failure. Blessed be God,
He has - we say it to His glory - He has made a
difference in our natures and constitution, and He has
drawn the line between the waters and the dry land; the
riotous elements of our old nature and the beauteous
elements of His Divine creation. There is a difference.
Well, you see, this is a mark of progress. God is getting
on with His work, and to know that difference is
something for which to thank God. We cannot boast and we
cannot talk about our virtues and goodness, but we do
secretly thank God that a change has come about. Whereas
at one time we were far more governed by self-interest
and passions than by Divine interests, it is becoming
more and more the other way round. The new creation is
growing apace. It is the increase of Christ and what is
happening is that it is more of Christ now and less of
the old Adam in lawlessness against God.
(5)
Resurrection
"And
God said, Let the earth put forth grass, herb
yielding seed, and fruit-tree bearing fruit after its
kind, wherein is the seed thereof, upon the earth:
and it was so."
Now, in
order to get the full value of that, you have to come
over to verses 29 and 30, and 31.
"And
God said, Behold I have given you every herb yielding
seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and
every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding
seed; to you it shall be for food: and to every beast
of the earth, and to every bird of the heavens, and
to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein
there is life, I have given every green herb for
food: and it was so. And God saw everything that he
had made, and, behold, it was very good."
Do you see
the difference? To man God has given that which has seed
in it for food. To the beast, the birds, the living
creatures, He has given the herbs without the seed. What
is the meaning of that? Well, I must go over to John
12:24.
"Except
a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it
abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth
much fruit. He that loveth his life loseth it; and he
that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto
life eternal."
We are
speaking about the knowledge of the glory of God.
"Said I not unto thee that, if thou wouldest
believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?" Do
you remember the connection of those words? Lazarus has
died and fallen into the ground, and the knowledge of the
glory of God is going to come about by resurrection; and
you can only have resurrection when you have seed that
falls into the ground and dies. You and I are controlled
in our knowledge of God by this law. We only know the
glory of God on the principle of resurrection. That is
progress. You are, we are moving on. Yes, the way to know
the Lord in ever growing fulness is on the principle of
resurrection. You will remember that we are shown the
supreme instance of this in the letter to the Ephesians.
"...that ye,
may know... the exceeding greatness of his power to
usward who believe, according to that working of the
strength of his might which he wrought in Christ,
when he raised him from the dead, and made him to sit
at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above
all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and
every name that is named."
There you
have a very full knowledge, but it is by way of the power
of His resurrection. Well then, you and I must know more
and more on the one side of that dying to live, that
going down to be released, that breaking up which means
enlargement, that grave for what is not of heaven in
order that what is of heaven may know emancipation into
fulness. That is the law, the law of the seed.
Is not the
Holy Spirit's way of keeping to spiritual principles
wonderful? The Lord marvellously indicated this very
thing away back there in Genesis 1:11,29-31 - 'You are to
come as the new creation to be a revelation of Myself in
fulness. There shall be a knowledge of Me, My glory, and,
in order that it might be so, you have to feed on
resurrection. Your very sustenance and maintenance has to
be by resurrection, and that is to be the law of your
maintenance'. Resurrection! The whole Bible gathers round
that, does it not?
There is
much more. Ask the Lord to keep it alive and make it of
value. These are not just theories, but very practical
and important things. They are the real things of the new
creation. The Lord teach us in our hearts what they mean.