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, where unto thou wast called."
Oneness With God in His Passion
Genesis 22:1,2; John 3:16; Hebrews 11:17; Colossians 1:24
During these meditations we have been moving along the line which leads into the heart of God. We have been letting Abraham be our teacher in this matter and have seen how he moved step by step toward that place where God could speak of him as "My Friend". No more glorious crown could be put on the head of anyone than that!
I want now as quickly as possible to dwell upon the last step into the heart of God, which is oneness with God in His passion - one with God in His suffering and in His joy. All the other aspects of oneness with Him meet at the Cross, and the deepest fellowship that can be had with Him is found in fellowship with His sufferings. When Abraham was obedient to the Lord's command: "Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest", he certainly did reach the point of absolute fellowship with God, who Himself gave His only begotten Son.
Abraham had been called upon to make many offerings in his life; many sacrifices had to be made from the day that he left his own country, but there was no sacrifice like this one, which touched him at the point where it cost him more than anything else. This was more than all the other sacrifices, and so, at last, he stepped right into the heart of God.
That Scripture which we read from the Letter to the Colossians - with many others like it - makes it very clear to us that we are called into the fellowship of Christ's sufferings This is not His sufferings which were atonement for sin; there is never any atonement about our sufferings. But leaving that aspect out, it is quite clear in the Word that we are called into the fellowship of His sufferings. The sufferings of Christ are a gift to His people. The apostle Paul says: "To you it hath been granted in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer in his behalf" (Philippians 1:29).
Jesus offers us the cup and says: "Will you drink of My cup?" While it is the cup of remission of sins - and we would grasp that with both hands - He also says: "This cup is fellowship in My sufferings", and too often our hand is very slow to take that cup.
Fellowship in the sufferings of Christ is something that is offered to us as a gift, and it is always fruitful. The sufferings of Christ are always fruitful sufferings. At the conference in which this message was originally spoken, the packed room was testimony to the fact that the sufferings of Jesus are fruitful sufferings, and we know that this could be repeated thousands of times all over the world today. And we have a picture in the Word of God of how it will be in the end: "Ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands 0 a great multitude, which no man could remember" (Revelation 5:11; 7:9). Indeed, the sufferings of Christ are fruitful sufferings.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 21)
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