But then, in the second place, Paul had his heart and his faith set upon a specific form of its outworking, in what he called uniquely "the out-resurrection from among the dead." It is Paul who brings into view such a thing. His desire and ambition was not just to attain unto the resurrection from the dead. You have to do nothing to attain unto the resurrection from the dead. If you are saved you will enjoy the resurrection from the dead without any attaining whatever. The fact that you have eternal life is the guarantee that you will be raised from the dead. The Lord Jesus made that perfectly clear, that He would give unto as many as He would eternal life and raise them up at the last day. But there is a day which anticipates the last day, and that was the day that Paul was after. He did not speak of the last day resurrection, he spoke of the out-resurrection from among the dead. This for him represented represented rapture, in which not even all those who are the Lord's will participate. If Philippians 3:10 means anything at all, if language is to be taken seriously, it does most definitely indicate that this resurrection is not that general resurrection which comes with the gift of eternal life, but this is a prize. Resurrection from the dead in general is not a prize. It accompanies the free gift of God. A prize is always something worked for, striven after, and which may be missed, as Paul makes perfectly clear. This out-resurrection is a prize which extends him fully.
That is where the first phase of this chapter ends and makes necessary the second phase, because the one arrow must lead to the other arrows.
The Smiting on the Ground With the Arrows
Elisha does not leave things with the releasing of that one arrow, prophetic of full and final deliverance, but he instantly takes another course, by which he would seek to bring the king at once into the full possession of it, to anticipate the end and o secure it in advance. It might have been that Elisha had said when the one arrow was released: "The arrow of the Lord's deliverance! Someday - it may be a long way ahead - there will be full deliverance. This arrow declares it." He might just have left it there, and that would have meant a measure of comfort, the comfort which you get from 1 Thess. 4:16, that ultimately all the saints will be raised, those who have gone and those that remain. The thing will come into the final victory at some time. That is a general statement. What we read in Thessalonians is but a general statement, and you need a great deal more Scripture to get inside of the general statement. Paul there is only making quite a comprehensive statement, he is not giving us anything more. We need much more to break that up. It is not fair to take the general statement, and say that is the beginning and the end of all the doctrine of the rapture, or the resurrection, or the coming of the Lord. It is not by any means!
Elisha does not leave things there. He says to Joash: "Take the arrows ... Smite upon the ground." Anticipate the end, get hold of it now, make it good now. And Joash takes his arrows and smites once, twice, thrice, and stays. And Elisha asks why he has stayed, why he accepts less than he might have, why he does not go the full way now and possess the whole at once - " ... now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice." That will be your measure of glory. Whereas you might have gone right on and ha so much more glory, known so much more ascendancy and victory, you have fixed the measure yourself.
See how wonderfully that fits into Phil. 3. The measure of victory and glory will be the measure of faith's appropriation of the power of His resurrection. We are not dealing with the matter of salvation now, we are dealing with God's full thought as to salvation. And when Paul wrote that letter to the Philippians and came to the part of his letter which is marked by our third chapter, it was as though he smote, and he smote, and he smote, until he had the whole thing - "...(it was the uttermost taking hold of Him and the power of His resurrection) "...that I may know him ... if by any means I may attain unto the out-resurrection ..." There is a man who does not stay short of the whole end of God.
The Lord's people are going to come more or less to the fullness of the glory of Christ, more or less to the place of universal dominion, according to the measure of faith's appropriation now of the power of His resurrection. Paul says in another place that in the resurrection there are differences of degree, that there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars, and that so shall it be in the resurrection. Do you want the glory of the sun, the full-orbed glory of Christ? Well, that demands now a going the whole way in the matter of faith's appropriation of the power of His resurrection - "... that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God," and then, with that basis laid, a pressing on to know Him, and the power of His resurrection.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 34)
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