The Matter Which is of Supreme Importance Is: "Christ Fully Formed in You"
Then another difference between the child and the son is this: A little child has to have everything done for it by someone else. You have to do everything for the little child, whatever that child needs you provide it and you do it. You provide food. You provide clothes. You provide the family. You provide the home. You provide everything for the little child. The little child provides nothing for himself. The grown up son is different. The grown up son takes responsibility. The father knows that he can have confidence in that son. He does not have to be worrying all the time as to whether that son will do the right or the wrong thing. He is at rest about the son, and he says, 'I know I can trust him. I can put the responsibility on him, he is capable of taking the responsibility.'
Do you see from the history of Israel in the Old Testament, how irresponsible they were? Just look again over their history in the wilderness, and their history after the wilderness. They are having to have everything done and provided for them. They are having to be told everything that they ought to do. It is the law, and the law is written on tables of stone. It is not written on their hearts. They are a very irresponsible people, and neither the servant of God nor God Himself could trust them. Leave them by themselves for one day and they go all wrong. They are like horses. You have to put a bit and bridle on to keep them straight.
You know that is one of the illustrations used in the Scripture. Now growing up in Christ is just altogether different from that. SONSHIP MEANS SPIRITUAL RESPONSIBILITY. Because the Holy Spirit is inside, you are able to say, 'I know that they can be trusted, I know that the Lord is with them. I know that they know that the Lord is in them. And I can trust the Lord in them.' Do not you wish that all thee people were like that? This is the difference between little children and sons. When the apostle says here, that because ye are sons, the Spirit has been given you as the Spirit of sonship. "God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts." He was not contradicting this truth of the difference between children and sons. He says when you received the Holy Spirit you received sonship potentially. That is, the Holy Spirit makes the fullness of Christ possible. All the fullness of Christ is in the Holy Spirit in you. But the question is: Are you going to continue as children, or are you going to live in the Spirit and grow up to be full grown sons?
Now the Apostle Paul makes another contrast in this letter. He contrasts sons with servants. And here he is not so much in the first place teaching of Israel and Christianity. He is taking an illustration from Greek life. In the Greek system a servant is one who took the little child of the family by the hand. And took him to the school master. He steered him down the road through all the traffic. He took him across the road and all the dangerous points. He took care of the little child, and did everything for him. And then he delivered him to the one who would educate him. He delivered him into the hands of the principle of spiritual education.
Now Paul says, The law was the servant - intended to take us by the hand and lead us to Christ. As you see, the law has to do with little children. The law does everything for the little child. The law was intended to hand us over to the Holy Spirit, and then the Holy Spirit would bring us to sonship. So Paul makes the difference between the servant and the son. The servant does everything for us on the outside. But the Holy Spirit does everything for us on the inside. So Paul put his emphasis on this, "Until Christ be fully formed in you." The whole character of this new dispensation is Christ in us.
So we are back to chapter two, verse twenty again: "It is no longer I, but Christ liveth in me." The Holy Spirit in us, is with us, in order to make us capable of understanding the things of the Lord. The Spirit is bringing into us spiritual intelligence about the things of the Lord. In another place the apostle will say, "Let the Word of God dwell in you richly in all wisdom and spiritual understanding." Before you can have the wisdom and the spiritual understanding, you have go to have the Word dwelling in you richly. It is the foundation of the Holy Spirit's work that the Word of the Lord should be in us richly. We must have a good and thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. It is the foundation of the Holy Spirit's work. The Holy Spirit is never going to do anything apart from the Word of God.
I cannot tell you how glad I am, that before I ever had a great spiritual crisis, I had very thoroughly studied the Bible. I had studied the Bible systematically right through. I could put on a big blackboard the outline and analysis of every book in the Bible. And I could give Bible lectures, but it was not until I had a real spiritual crisis, that I came to understand the Bible which I knew so well in my head. Then the Bible that I knew became a living Book!
You see that is what happened to the apostles on the day of Pentecost. They were Jews and they knew Jewish Scripture very thoroughly. That is, they knew what was written in the Old Testament. They could have told you all that Moses had written. They could have told you all that David had written. And they could have told you all the prophets had written. But on the day of Pentecost their Bible became alive. They inherited, in a spiritual way, all that they knew in only a mental way. But the Holy Spirit could not have done His work, had they not had the foundation in the Word of God. Do you remember that. Are you reading your Bible thoroughly? Are you really studying the Word of God? Can it be said of you that the Word of God dwells in you richly? (Colossians 3:16). If it is dwelling in you, then you have the foundation for spiritual wisdom and understanding.
Do you notice that was the difference between Jesus and the scribes? Now the scribes were the authority on the Bible. They were the people who had committed the Bible to memory. They knew everything that was in the Bible, which was the Old Testament. And if anybody wanted to have an explanation of any part of the Old Testament, they went to the scribes, because the scribe was supposed to know all about it. Now when Jesus spoke to the multitudes, the verdict upon His teaching was this? "He talked as One having authority, and not as the scribes" (Matthew 7:29). And yet, the people thought the scribes were the authority. But they said of Jesus, "He taught as One having authority and not as the scribes." What was the difference between Jesus and the scribes? He had the spiritual understanding of the Scripture. And they only had the letter of the Scripture. The apostle says, "The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life" (2 Corinthians 3:6).
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 17)
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