The Spiritual Background of the Word of God
by
T. Austin-Sparks
Chapter 3 - The Testimony of Jesus
We have seen that on God's side the basic factor in His success is
putting Christ into the constitution of things; but there is man's
side, and on man's side there are two laws of God's success, they
are faith and obedience.
Two Laws of Divine Success - Faith and
Obedience
Now these two laws should be traced in the life and history of every
instrument in relation to God's purpose. That is something with
which to pause. Let our minds run over the means used by the Lord
throughout the ages in the direction of His purpose and we shall see
that from the beginning invariably these laws governed every
instrumentality. On the other hand it should be noticed what the
consequences have invariably been of the breakdown of these laws. We
are not going to stay with that. It is mentioned and left for your
fuller consideration, but it is tremendously important to recognise
it. There are, therefore, two sides to God's success. His Own side,
in getting His Son into man and into things; and there is man's side
also; and man's side has to do with this dual law of faith and
obedience. God can only get His Son into things as faith and
obedience are granted Him. They open the way for the Lord, for His
success. Where faith and obedience are reserved, God is rendered
incapable of realising His end.
Now I want to take another wide sweep of the whole ground, coming
right back to the beginning and tracing the course of things which
seems to be apparent as back of the Word of God.
The Eternal Counsels of the Godhead
1. We might have as our foundation, the fact that there has been
from the beginning a cosmic struggle for the mastery of this
universe. I think few of us will doubt that; very few of us will
fail to recognise that. But it is not only a fact stated, it is
something which implies a good deal, and it is the implications of
that fact which will largely govern our further consideration. We
follow the apparent course of things and begin at a dateless period
with the Godhead in the eternal counsels. It is mainly through the
Apostle Paul that we are introduced to those eternal counsels of the
Godhead. By the utterances which have come from him we are taken
back into the times eternal before the world was, and are told
certain things about God foreordaining, predestinating, foreknowing,
and then doing certain things according to His foreknowledge, and
these are what we term "the eternal counsels of the Godhead."
Christ Appointed Heir of all Things
2. Out of those eternal counsels of the Godhead, the one pre-eminent
thing which issues is the appointment of God's Son Heir of all
things. "God hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his
Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made
the ages" (Heb. 1:2). This refers to some definite act, some precise
issue from the eternal counsels in the Godhead; the appointment of
the Son as Heir of all things.
Lucifer Enters the Scene
3. We are introduced by the Word of God in the same period (at what
point in that period we do not know, but at some point) to another
whose name is Lucifer, the Anointed Cherub that covereth (Lucifer,
as we know, simply means luminary), who was an angelic being. Three
things seem to be quite clear about him.
(1) He occupied a very high position, but yet he was a servant.
(2) He seems to have had a specific and particular relationship to
this world, a relationship which most probably existed before this
present creation in a previous order of this world; and he is
recognised as the prince of this world, and almost all the
relationships which the Scriptures mention where he is concerned are
with this world. His interests are all represented as focussed here,
both by what the Scriptures tell us and by deduction from the main
revelations of Scripture which probably we shall see more fully
presently. We may be quite right in concluding that this world was
the special sphere of his relationship from eternity, and of his
office.
(3) Iniquity was, at a given point, found in him. That iniquity was
firstly the iniquity of pride leading secondly, to jealousy or envy.
His heart was lifted up with pride and he became dissatisfied with
his position as a servant and essayed to occupy a higher position
which had not been given to him, coveting that position - jealousy
and envy; and thirdly, as the active outcome - rebellion.
Lucifer Cast Out
4. Lucifer is shown to have been cast out with the angels who had
entered into rebellion with him, the angels "which kept not their
first estate."
A Parenthesis on the Mortality of the Body
A question arises here, by way of parenthesis which may be a little
speculative but is not altogether without reason; the question as to
whether the bodies of Lucifer and his angels which were spiritual
bodies, became mortal by their sin and perished, and both Satan and
his angels became houseless. Satan and his angels are now
disembodied spirits, and that their one craving is for a body. We
have no record at all of them appearing in bodies of their own, but
they are always seeking to take possession of bodies. Satan was
unable to come in in his own body at the beginning, he had to assume
the body of the serpent, and ever since that has been, so far as the
Scriptures are concerned, his method of manifestation when he has
really manifested himself. And this question as to whether the
bodies of these angels (for angels have bodies) by reason of their
sin became mortal arises. Mortality, of course, is death, and the
history of this present creation is the history of sin resulting in
mortality and death. We have very little indeed to go upon that
would give us a ground of argument that Adam's body was an immortal
body before the fall, or that a change took place physically at the
fall, but if we argue inductively or deductively we know quite well
that the mortality of the body is the result of sin, and that the
redemption of the body is the final destruction of sin in the body.
Therefore the destruction of death in the body, and the consummation
of the redemptive work of Calvary is this mortal putting on
immortality, this corruptible putting on incorruption.
Then, again, that is an inheritance. We inherit a spiritual body, an
incorruptible body. We inherit it by our spirits first of all being
born of incorruptible life, and the spirit becoming possessed of
incorruptible life in new birth is the seed of an incorruptible body
which it will inherit. That is not just going to be a mechanical
procedure. It is going to be the reward of saints, that spiritual
body, that incorruptible, resurrection body. It is the completing,
the complement of their new birth, or shall I say of the Spirit of
sonship (I am coming to that more fully presently, but it rises here
in connection with Lucifer). As to these facts, that evil spirits
have not bodies and that their craving is always to occupy a body,
that angels have spiritual bodies and have been seen again and again
of men, there is no question. Lucifer was an angel. His spirits were
angels. They have lost their body. How did they lose it? Is it that
of which things later, in the case of all lost ones, are a
repetition? Well, we just put the question in there by way of
parenthesis because it does arise, and it may help us presently.
Lucifer's World Destroyed
5. Then the world of Lucifer was involved and destroyed; how soon
after his rebellion and being cast out we do not know. A previous
creation existed; there is no doubt about that. This world in its
present creative order has not been so for a hundred thousand years.
There was a time when some of us used to be fearful for "Genesis,"
when we heard of skulls and skeletons being found which were more
than six thousand years back, etc., etc.. But there was a previous
creation. That creation suffered in a way which resulted in things
being as we find them at the beginning of the book of Genesis. The
previous world was involved and destroyed. It was the world of
Lucifer if our deductions are right. God has done that more than
once with this world. We have a phrase now on record as to this
present world order: "the world that then was, being overflowed with
water, perished." Well, it is but a repetition.
A Question on the Third Creation
Now here another question arises, and I raise it simply for its
interest; I am not basing anything dogmatic upon it. Is this new
creation which eventually comes in with Christ through His
resurrection, the third? Does the third day relate to the history of
this world? We know the stamp of number three in everything; we saw
it in all parts of the creation. I have always had some difficulty
in understanding the real value of "the third day" as related to
Christ's resurrection. How emphatic it is; how precise. "Today...
tomorrow... and the third day I am perfected." Why this emphasis?
What is the necessity? It is not just putting three on things;
surely there is something back of it, because all things which are
of God are not petty and small and local; they are universal and
they are eternal. They relate to the whole range of things in
principle; they are vast. And I just raise the question: Is this new
creation which comes in with Christ in resurrection the third? And
inasmuch as it comes in now with Christ in resurrection, it is the
last. It is in the power of a life that is indestructible. You carry
the principle of indestructible life through the very universe
eventually through Christ. I just mention that because we are
getting to the spiritual background of everything and it may be of
help. There again it is but one fragment added to our progress
toward the end that we have in view.
A New World
6. A new world. I am not now speaking of this new-creation-world in
Christ through the cross; I am speaking of this world order from the
beginning of Genesis. A new world, and three things in relation to
it:
(1) Out of the eternal counsels, Christ is its Prince. Mark you,
Lucifer is deposed from the princedom. In this new world Christ is
appointed Heir of all things. He is its prince in the appointment of
God. Now note, a difference has taken place. This Prince is not a
member of the household as a servant, as was Lucifer, this Prince is
the Son.
(2) Christ's identification with the creation before the fall. That
was mentioned before, you remember, and I said that we should come
on it again. We must remember that the Christ of the New Testament
is the Jehovah of the Old Testament. And we said that before the
fall God walked and talked with man on the earth, and that implied
thought and intent. Now He identifies Himself with the world of
which He is Prince and comes to it and walks and talks.
(3) The fall. He is separated from it by the fall, yet retains a
link with it and a testimony in it. The link and the testimony from
Abel onward is the Testimony of Jesus; it is Christ implied.
It is so patent that everywhere from Abel on through the whole
Scriptures Christ is in evidence in that specific relationship. All
the types whether they be personal or whether they be symbols, are
types of Christ. They are here on this earth, they are virtually
Christ here, and everything in relation to them has to do with His
supremacy, His sovereignty, His Lordship. As we have pointed out,
that when there is a right adjustment and relationship to those
types of Christ in the Old Testament, and when they are given their
right place in the life of God's people, the issue is absolute
pre-eminence all the time. Lordship, Sovereignty, Dominion. The
Tabernacle, the Ark of the Testimony: these are centres, which, when
occupying their right place spiritually in the life of God's people,
produce amongst those people the mighty powers of absolute victory
and triumph all the time, and they are the testimony of Jesus. (What
I have in view is to get you to the heart of the testimony of Jesus,
to see what it is.) You see He is by the fall separated from His
world, yet He retains His link with it along the line of
sovereignty, dominion. Christ is everywhere in evidence through the
Old Testament dispensation.
The Incarnation
7. The Incarnation. The Son comes in the flesh personally. Three
things:
(1) Identification with, and at the same time separation from, the
world. On the one side He identifies Himself with this world and
with its race by His incarnation. Yet at the same time, on the other
side. He is distinct from it. He is not of it, He is separate from
it. United with it, yet separated from it. Identification and
separation in the incarnation.
(2) Redemption. The redemption of the race and the potential
redemption of the world, the cosmos, and the casting out of the
prince of this world. Now we must retrace. Lucifer was cast out. The
Son was made Prince. The cast-out Lucifer returns to the domain of
God's appointed Prince and recovers a kingdom in this world morally.
What was before geographical afterwards became moral. Now you get
your order of Christ's redemption. Christ comes, redeems the world
and casts out the prince of this world anew, but this time he is
cast out morally. Satan is now set at nought on a moral ground, and
the success of the Lord Jesus was because the prince of this world
came to Him and had nothing in Him. It was a moral victory, a moral
power which was his undoing. Well, there in the Cross: redemption
was secured for the whole race - and more than that; for the whole
creation potentially. That is in Christ's victory at Calvary, and
Satan cast out. He is still here, but morally cast out. Thus we have
identification and separation; redemption, and the casting out of
the prince of this world.
(3) The malignity of Satan from the beginning of the life of Christ.
He has recognised the Son, and he has recognised what the issue will
be of the Son having come. Therefore, at His very birth he will
stand at nothing in cruelty, downright wickedness, to destroy the
Son. Having failed there, the Son being under a special protection
from the Father, in the wilderness he will try other methods. His
point of attack is: "If Thou be the Son...." You see that is the
point. And he persisted along that line to the end, seeking to get
in between Christ and the Father with a human reasoning and judgment
which would make Him doubt His Sonship. God has said through an
opened heaven: "This is my beloved Son." "This is a poor plight for
a Son to be in; do you think it is true? Do you believe that if you
were the Son of God...." You see? And the human side being stirred,
provoked, worked upon to thrust itself between what was true of Him
in His spirit in relation to the Father. It is our temptation all
the time. The human side of our life is in suffering, in affliction,
and by reason of the suffering is worked upon by the Enemy to bring
about doubt as to whether after all, in the deepest reality of our
being, we do belong to the Lord, we are joined to the Lord, that God
is our Father. We understand it. It is an attempt through the
channel of the human in its time of suffering, to question sonship.
That malignity against the Son is seen from the beginning; set
against His life and the coming through with His work; eventually
working upon men to influence Him out of His work. God's charge
against Israel was that they killed the Prince of Life. They cast
the Prince of Life out of His Own world.
But that is only point seven, you cannot complete the circle without
point eight; and eight is always the resurrection number.
Resurrection and Ascension
8. Resurrection and ascension. Five things:
(1) A Spiritual Prince enthroned. "God hath made Him a Prince and a
Saviour." Now this is not just a physical, geographical thing; there
is a sense in which without any of the work of Calvary at all the
Godhead is absolute Sovereign in this universe though there be fifty
thousand Lucifers. It is a moral thing through and through. The
whole drama of Calvary is a moral drama; so that Christ's
enthronement now is not the enthronement of God as God over His
universe because He had been pulled out of His place as God of the
universe. The enthronement of Christ is a spiritual and moral
enthronement. It is literally until all His enemies shall be made
the footstool of His feet, but He reigns now in virtue of a moral
victory: "Wherefore God hath highly exalted him..." and that
"wherefore" relates to the specific character of the work of His
Cross, His death.
(2) From a spiritual Prince there begins a spiritual people. He the
Firstborn from among the dead, then a spiritual people begotten in
resurrection; a new creation in Christ. Not a physical or literal
thing yet, but spiritual.
(3) The Day of Grace. Given, allowed for man to make a choice under
the proclamation of the truth concerning Christ. What He has done,
and where He is. During that Day of Grace there is a dual growth. On
the one side a development with the false prince, the cast out
prince; on the other side a development with the enthroned and true
Prince.
(4) After the Day of Grace the effected universal separation. (We
are not filling in all the stages and movements; we are taking the
broad development.) The universal separation between these two
things which have been growing, developing, is effected; then the
Day of Judgment.
(5) The new heavens and the new earth; Christ universally Sovereign.
Now that is the cycle of things, but there are one or two things of
which I want us to take special account as arising out of that. So
far we have covered broad stretches; we want now to get specific
values.
The Testimony of Jesus
The first is as to the Testimony of Jesus. What is "The Testimony of
Jesus." Usually the testimony of Jesus has been considered to be
that concerning His Godhead. That is, Who He is as a Member of the
Godhead as differing from His being just a Man, a good Man, the best
of men, the super-man. The Deity of Christ, the Godhead of Christ,
that has been considered to be the pre-eminent factor and feature of
the testimony of Jesus. I am not coming down from that, but I am
going to say that that is not all. The Testimony of Jesus is that,
but what that means. It is not only the Divine Sonship of Christ; it
is that as Son He is Heir of all things, and God's universal Prince.
It is not upon the Deity of Christ that the Devil rages. The Devil
rages upon the truth that, being the Son He is Heir of all things.
And it is not just that you can teach and preach Christ as God that
provokes the Enemy, but it is the implication of that which stirs
the satanic animus; that being the Son of God He is destined to the
Princedom of this universe.
The testimony of
Jesus is not "Jesus is God" alone; the testimony of Jesus is this:
Jesus, being Son of God, is Lord. Now the apostolic message is
that. It was the exaltation of the Son of God, not the fact of His
Sonship only, but the exaltation of the Son of God to the right
hand of the Majesty on high, with what that means; because that
stands right over against the original position of Lucifer. That
represents forever the doom of Lucifer. He recognises that if that
becomes recognised and accepted, he has lost everything and if
that acceptance grows apace his time is shortened; that every
fresh one who accepts that shortens his time that much. He knows
that it is only a matter of time. Does he? "What have we to do
with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? Art thou come hither to torment
before the time?" They know the time factor. They know that their
eternal torment in that specific sense is bound up with His Coming
and His work. You reach out to lead men and women spiritually into
the truth of the absolute sovereignty of the Lord Jesus and you
are shortening the Devil's time, and you are provoking him. It is
not a cold theology, or even a fundamentalism of the Deity of
Christ that stirs the kingdom of darkness. It is, in the power of
the Holy Ghost, Christ declared as Lord, Son of God but Lord, Heir
of all things. And the testimony of Jesus is something more than
the doctrine of the Deity of Christ. It is the Holy Ghost making
the Lordship of Christ a reality.
Sonship
in the Saints
The Testimony of
Jesus has as much to do with His perfect humanity as it has with
His deity.
Secondly, the
nature of Christ's cosmos will be that of sonship in the saints.
Now you get to the heart of things if you recognise that. You see
we pointed out that when God moved after Lucifer's fall, in
relation to His eternal counsels, it was not a member of the
household whom He appointed in the second place, it was the Son
over God's House, and it was on the principle of sonship that He
was going to establish His order ultimately and eventually rid the
universe of that evil thing that had come into it. It was by
sonship. Now, if it is a spiritual and moral thing this redemption
and this establishment of God's eternal intention, that is going
to be a principle in God's cosmos eventually, sonship; not
servants but sons. So that sonship means, carries with it
inherently, inheritance and dominion. The letter to the Hebrews
teaches that throughout; that sonship carries with it inseparably
inheritance and dominion. The nature of Christ's cosmos is going
to be sonship in the saints. It is "Christ in you." "...But ye
have received the Spirit of
adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." That is the spirit of
sonship in us that is pointing on to the nature of Christ's
universal dominion.
We are not to be servants in the House of God, we are to be sons.
The House of God, beloved, is a very big thing. It is not the local
assembly, nor all the local assemblies on this earth; they are of
the House of God, but the House of God when it is fully manifested
will be universal. There may be differences of position in the House
of God, there may be degrees of glory and honour in the House of
God, but it is going to be the House of God and the principle is
going to be that the Spirit of sonship was introduced into everyone
who came into it. Everyone born from above by the Spirit of God has
the Spirit of sonship. They may be children for a time, they may,
many of them, remain little more than children, but potentially the
spirit of sonship is there, or the spirit of sonship is there with
all the potentialities; the measure of inheritance will depend upon
the measure of growth in sonship, but to get into the House does not
require full growth in sonship. Sonship is implicit in the babe, and
there is no membership of the family without the implicit sonship.
So that the nature of Christ's cosmos, the redeemed cosmos will be
that of sonship in the saints.
Sons of God in this World, and the Challenge
Thirdly, what sonship carried with it in Christ when He came into
the world applies to every believer. That is, it means
identification and separation. We are here related to this world in
a very real and positive way for the Lord. At the same time there is
a true separation from it. That is what Christ's sonship meant in
incarnation, and that is true in our case. We are here for real
purposes. It is not only for our training and discipline. That is a
part of it. We are here in relation to the testimony of Jesus. If
our lives are wholly ordered and governed by the Holy Spirit, and
the Lord has His full way, He will put us down on this earth in some
place, some sphere, with the intention that there, that place, shall
represent the absolute Lordship of His Son because we are there. Our
being there will raise hell to get us out because of the implication
of our being there. The Enemy regards us as intruders and would
force us out, but we are here in a very close identification with
what is Christ's by right and what is Christ's potentially by His
Cross. And yet there is another sense and realm in which we are
absolutely separate from it. That is the nature of sonship. Sonship
is eventually related to this earth for eternity as Christ's
inheritance. It may have a larger sphere, or door of operations. It
may not be earth bound and earth limited, but it is related to this
earth and when the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our
God and His Christ we shall have some relationship to this world.
We have got to take that position for the Lord here where He puts
us, and see that we never move out of it other than by the Lord. We
have got to be where the Lord puts us and go where the Lord takes
us, because just there, for eternity something is represented, and
we shall only defeat the Lord's ends in our lives if we begin to
make our own programmes.
The Universality of Everything in Christ
Fourthly, we must, therefore, recognise the universal relation of
all testimony and ministry in the Holy Spirit. There is nothing in
the Holy Spirit which is merely local. And there is nothing in the
Holy Spirit which is merely temporary. The Holy Spirit always works
in relation to the universality of Christ, and He is doing so now.
You may, and I may, be in a locality, but immediately we become
insular, local, parochial, water-tight, we have cut ourselves off
from the greater resources of the Holy Ghost. We have got to
recognise that every place in which we may be, though it may be a
small place, is never looked at by the Lord as something in itself.
It is always regarded by Him as being but a point in the universal,
and is always related to all the rest spiritually; all the rest is
affected for good or ill by what goes on there.
The Testimony of the Lord Jesus is one testimony; His Lordship is
one Lordship: and to stand in one place in His victory absolutely is
in itself to be involved in the battle with all the powers of
darkness, not with a local company of them. Do you get that? Not
with a local company, a local assembly of evil spirits. No! They are
all interested in that place and the Devil himself is interested in
that place. It may be one tiny spot on the earth with only two
persons, two saints there, and the whole system of darkness is
interested in that. It is true! And the more clear and positive the
Testimony of Jesus is in a place, the more universal that place
becomes in its significance, in its accountability; the more it
draws the attention of the Adversary. There may be focal points but
they are the focal points of the universal, and we must recognise
this, the universal relationship of all testimony and all ministry
is the Holy Ghost. We must seek to break down every kind of
artificial barrier that localises, and we must seek to recognise,
and operate in line with the recognition of the fact, that from this
point, this small out of the way point on this earth, the whole
range of Christ's interests and of Satan's interests can be touched.
You can touch the whole cosmos spiritually from any point. The Lord
would work that out with His people I believe. It is one of the
wonderful things.
When you get away from the old system of organising Christian work,
which is usually departmentalising, a putting up of that which
constitutes something in itself, technically constituted Christian
work with various kinds of boundaries, human controls and so on -
when you get, by the work of the Holy Spirit, lifted clean out of
the whole system of human organisation into a realm where the Holy
Spirit does the organising, the governing, the running of the whole
thing and you are not trying to bring anything about at all, you are
working in cooperation with the Spirit, not enterprises, but you are
in the Testimony of Jesus in the Holy Ghost, you will find that that
ministry steadily, quietly, extends of itself far beyond your local
boundaries, and reaches out until it reaches the bounds of the earth
and you may have a voice for the whole earth. The testimony of Jesus
is universal; it cannot be local. It has a local application, but it
can never remain local, because in this spiritual realm of His
Lordship and of Satan's attempt to counter that, everything is
universal. It is not only earthbound; it reaches to the encirclement
of the earth unto principalities and powers. That is the range of
this Testimony of Jesus. And the great need for so many of the
Lord's people, the Lord's servants, at this time is to be delivered
from all that which is so much less than universal. They are just in
their own small local circle, their own little kingdom, and that is
the beginning and the end of everything for them; and there is no
recognition of the mighty impact upon the forces of evil in the
universal Testimony of the Lord Jesus.
The Lord make us, in Christ by the Holy Ghost, universal factors.
But it represents a good deal of breaking, smashing up of our ideas.
It does represent a terrific stripping off of a system in which we
have grown up, in which we have been trained; but when the Lord has
done it, it is marvellous. You look back and say: "There was a time
when that, and that, and that was everything to me; it was my
system, my line of things, my very life. I did not see anything
beyond it." But the Lord has done that great emancipating thing, and
you laugh at your utter folly that ever such things should have been
of any account at all. There is emancipation from what is so trivial
and petty and earthly and man-made, all that sort of thing, out into
the universal, and when you get out there, there are no limits to
spiritual possibilities. But of course, you do meet things! You meet
something else which you never met in the same way before. That is
the position and it is there that the Testimony of Jesus counts.
May the Lord make it all profitable to us and lead us out.
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