Oneness with God in His Method and In His Power
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 he lived from that day onward was a life which triumphed over death. And so it is with every true child of God. By the resurrection of Jesus Christ, every true child of God received a life which has conquered death, a life over which death has no power. It is called "eternal life" in the New Testament.
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.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 18)
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