(We are now coming near
to the end of these meditations. We have been occupied
with the spiritual journey of the Christian life from the
world, through its various stages, until it reaches the
heart of God, each stage and phase being some further
aspect of union with Christ. Having covered so much
ground, we cannot, of course, go back.
Latterly we arrived at
three phases of this journey: Oneness with God in His
purpose, which purpose we saw to be the securing of a
heavenly people on the basis of sonship, firstly, the
birth of sons, secondly, the training of sons, and
thirdly, the manifestation of sons. We are letting
Abraham be our teacher in this whole matter.)
The two phases to which
we now come are oneness with God in His method, and
oneness with God in His power; and I want that we should
read two fragments of Scripture, each of which touches on
these two phases:
"By faith
Abraham, being tried, offered up Isaac: yea, he that had
gladly received the promises was offering up his only
begotten son, even he to whom it was said, In Isaac shall
thy seed be called; accounting that God is able to raise
up, even from the dead; from whence he did also in a
parable receive him back" (Hebrews 11:17-19).
"That I may
know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the
fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his
death; if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection
from the dead" (Philippians 3:10-11).
We are going to put
these two things together, and you will notice that they
bring us to the sixth phase of this spiritual pilgrimage:
the method and the power of God. The method is
resurrection, and the power is the power of resurrection
life, or the Holy Spirit as the power of resurrection.
When we come to this
matter of resurrection we have to recognize that it is the
crisis in the life of the child of God. In the case
of Isaac, and in the case of every child of God, the
beginning is resurrection. It is the giving of a life
which has already conquered death, and that is what Isaac
stands for, as a type. He was, in a parable, brought back
from the dead, and the life which he lived from that day
onward was a life which had triumphed over death. And so
it is with every true child of God. By the resurrection
of Jesus Christ, every true child of God receives a life
which has conquered death, a life over which death has no
power. It is called 'eternal life' in the New Testament.
Science has proved that
life can only come from life and can never come from
something which is dead. This is true in the spiritual
life. We can only have resurrection life from where that
life comes. The Lord Jesus Christ truly died and was
raised again as a first one of resurrection, and, being
the first one of resurrection, life can only come from
Him. This is a crisis in the experience of a child of
God.
To begin with, it is
not a process, but a definite, precise act. It is so
definite and so precise that at one moment you have not
got it, and the next moment you have it. At one moment
you are what God calls 'dead', and the next moment you
are what He calls 'alive'. It is as definite as that.
Let us take Abraham and
Isaac as an illustration.
Abraham bound Isaac,
his son, and laid him on the altar, and then he raised
the knife to plunge it into Isaac. At the moment that
Abraham raised the knife Isaac was dead, and the moment
that the angel of the Lord got hold of Abraham's hand
Isaac was alive. It was as precise as that.
I do not know why it is
that the Lord is compelling me to speak so much about the
beginning of the Christian life. It is not what I had
thought of for a Conference of Christians, but, against
my own pre-meditation, I was compelled to give that
message last night, and I discovered afterward that there
were a number of unsaved people in the meeting and also a
number of young Christians who do not understand the
meaning of the beginning of the Christian life. Now we
are here again tonight. It may put a big strain upon the
patience of the older Christians, but we must take
nothing for granted. We must not take it for granted that
everyone really understands the nature of the new birth,
so we repeat, the true beginning of a true Christian
life is nothing other than a resurrection from the dead.
It is the receiving of a life which is called
resurrection life.
The next thing is that
resurrection is God's unique act. Resuscitation is not
resurrection. Wonderful things are being done in our
time. We hear of people whose hearts stop beating, and
then by some artificial means they are started again.
People are calling that 'bringing them back to life from
the dead'. Then there are people who are drowned. After
some artificial application there is given what has come
to be called 'the kiss of life', which means that someone
breathes into their mouth and inflates their lungs again,
and they come back to consciousness. Men are calling that
'raising from the dead'. But is it that? Let them stay in
their condition for four days. Let the blood run cold,
and then, after four days, try artificial respiration.
Well, you can work at it for ever and they will not come
back to life. Lazarus was dead and in the grave for four
days, and Jesus refused to go near him during that time,
so that no one would be able to say: 'It was
resuscitation.' It had to be resurrection.
That was why God left
Abraham so long before He gave him Isaac. If we had read
from the fourth chapter of the Letter to the Romans we
would have come to these words: "He (Abraham)
considered his own body now as good as dead (he being
about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah's
womb" (Romans 4:19). God made the promise to
Abraham that he would have a son, and then He went away
and left him for years, until it was absolutely
impossible for him to have a son naturally. What was God
doing? He was demonstrating that this was not going to be
resuscitation but resurrection, that is, life out of
death.
What we are saying is
that resurrection is God's act, and not man's act. It is
something which only God can do, and if the beginning of
the Christian life is a resurrection, then only God can
do it. It is absolutely hopeless for anyone to try to be
a child of God without His help. If this is true - and it
is true! - how foolish for anyone to say: 'Well, I will
become a Christian tomorrow', or 'Later on in my life I
will consider this matter.' If God comes to us at any
time and offers us this life, it is not in our power to
say: 'Not today, but some other day.' We cannot fix times
for God.
We must leave that
there now and go on.
We pass from the crisis
and the act to the process, because spiritual
resurrection is not only a crisis at the beginning, but
something which is carried on throughout the whole of the
Christian life. The Apostle Paul put it in this way: "Always
bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the
life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body" (2
Corinthians 4:10). That word 'always' spreads itself over
the whole life of the Christian. After the one
fundamental crisis there are many more crises on this
matter. You notice that the Apostle said "Always...
in the body the dying", so that the life of Jesus is
operating over against something that is always in the
body.
Now, it is the
privilege of every child of God to know the power of His
resurrection in the body. We can know it at any time when
we are experiencing something of death in our mortal
bodies, whether it be sickness, weakness or weariness.
There can be a fresh manifestation of His divine life,
and what is true for our bodies is also true for our
spirit. Oh, we may feel so down in spirit today! We may
be suffering from very real spiritual depression and
discouragement and may feel just spiritually dead. Have
any of you ever felt like that? It is a common experience
even of the children of God, but let us get to the Lord
at that time and do what Paul told Timothy to do: "Lay
hold on the life eternal" (1 Timothy
6:12). Now Timothy needed that in two ways. He needed it
physically, for he suffered from stomach trouble - what
Paul called "thine oft infirmities"
(1 Timothy 5:23). Then Timothy needed it spiritually.
He was a young man and was put into considerable
spiritual responsibility for the church at Ephesus, and
the old, wise people said: 'Well, you know, he is so
young.' Paul said: "Let no man despise thy
youth" (1 Timothy 4:12) ... "Lay hold on
the life eternal." Timothy needed eternal life
for body and spirit.
And what is true about
our bodies and our spirits is very true in the work of
the Lord. How often it seems that the work to which we
are called just goes dead! Death invades the people and
the work, and as we look at them we could say: 'Why, it
is dying. It is just going into death.' Some of us who
have been in the work of God for many years know much
about that, but we have seen the work of God raised as
from the dead again and again, and it would seem that God
just allows these experiences of death in order to show
the power of His resurrection. God would not have us
accept death until He accepts it.
Now I must say a little
about the power of God. The method of God is always
resurrection, and the power of God is always the Holy
Spirit as the Spirit of resurrection.
I am going to say
something of which I want everyone to take very careful
notice. The greatest and most comprehensive proof of the
Holy Spirit is resurrection life. We are told that the
proof of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is this and that
- you can put names to them - but the supreme proof
and the most comprehensive proof of the Holy
Spirit's presence is resurrection. There may be various
expressions of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit,
but the supreme proof and expression is in resurrection. "The
power of his resurrection" comprehends
all other expressions. I believe that that chapter of the
Letter to the Philippians sets forth Paul's full
expression of what he wanted. He did not say at the end,
when he was comprehending all: 'That I may know this
expression, or that expression!' or 'That I may know the
expression of the gift of tongues!' or 'That I may know
the expression in the gift of healing!', or any other
particular expression. He said all-inclusively, at the
end: "That I may know the power of his
resurrection."
Paul, who himself had
been used to heal the sick, had infirmities until the end
of his life. That man, who knew the power of healing as
working through him, said: "Trophimus I left at
Miletus sick" (2 Timothy 4:20).
No, resurrection life
is more than healing. You may not be healed, but you can
know resurrection life, and the greatest miracle may be
just how you go on through the years with a weak body. I
am not saying that there is no such thing as healing, but
I am saying out of the Word of God and out of my own
experience that there is a greater thing than healing,
and that greater thing is divine life.
This is the power of
God. If you look through the Word of God, Old Testament
and New Testament, you will see everywhere that the
supreme manifestation of the power of God was in
resurrection. The people of Israel were in a grave in
Egypt. For them Egypt was the house of bondage, and the
bonds were the grave-clothes wound around them. They were
like Lazarus, bound in grave-clothes from head to foot.
And, so far as the Old Testament is concerned, the
deliverance of Israel from Egypt is always referred to as
the greatest act of God's power. When Israel went later
into captivity in Babylon, Babylon was called their
grave, and through the prophet God said: "I will
open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your
graves, O my people" (Ezekiel 37:12). And the
recovery of Israel from Babylon is set forth as the
second greatest demonstration of divine power in the Old
Testament.
Resurrection is the supreme
proof of the power of God. You do not need that I say
much about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. When He
was on that Cross everything was done to make sure that
He was dead. After they had nailed Him, hands and feet,
on to the Cross, to make sure that He was dead they
thrust the spear into His heart. When He was taken down
from the Cross and put into the tomb, the high priest
said: 'Take a guard and make sure', so that great stone
was rolled against the tomb and the official seal was put
on the stone. Then they mounted a guard of soldiers. What
more could be done to make sure that He was dead? Well,
everything that men and devils could do - and then, over
all that, it says: "This Jesus did God raise
up" (Acts 2:32). What an immense thing
resurrection is!
And all the
potentialities of the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus
are given to the child of God. We can go right on to the
end because we have His life. Until the Lord says: 'It is
enough: come up higher!' there is no need for any child
of God to die. Death and life are in the hands of God.
How many wonderful experiences we may have of this divine
life! We may make a lot of other manifestations of the
power of God and they may all be quite wonderful - we
will never take anything from what is of the Holy Spirit
- but when we have said all, the supreme thing is
"the power of his resurrection". That is
the birthright of the child of God and something that you
and I may be knowing now and all the days of our life. "Lay
hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast
called."