The Underlying Truth of the Prodigal Son
"Thy speech betrayeth thee" may be applied in many ways, for whether one lives in the flesh or in the spirit, in the natural man or in the spiritual man will always be made manifest by how we speak and the spiritual effect of the fruit of our lips.
O, for crucified lips among God's people, and O for lips among God's prophets touched with the blood-soaked fire-charged coal from that one great altar of Calvary!
Having at some length dealt with the difference, nature, and characteristics of the inner and the outer man, we must now come to some specific emphasis. The first of these is all inclusive, and relates to
THE ASCENDENCY OF THE SPIRITUAL MAN OVER THE NATURAL MAN
There is marked the creation of man in his tripartite being, with his spirit as the sphere of his union with God for all Divine purposes. The nature of this union is set forth below, and is fivefold. In the "fall", the soul was allowed to take the ascendancy over the spirit; the spirit with conscience, communion, and intuition being subjected to the soul with its reason, desire, and volition (will). This ascendancy of the soul made man what he is afterward called: the "natural," i.e., soulish (Greek "pskikos") man, and in as much as the reasoning and desiring and choosing were inspired and prompted by the devil, and the capitulation was to him, and the spirit union with God was rejected and violated in all its claims, the result is that man is not only separated from God but in his natural state is horizoned by a lower life than was intended. But more, he is then called "flesh," this is the active law of his fallen condition. It is not something in him, it is himself, the real principle of his being, and is always set over against "spirit" which is the real principle of life re-united with God by regeneration. Further, as he capitulated, not only to the soul life, but to the devil, he is ever after, until delivered by Christ, actuated and influenced by "the god of this age," whose methods are not always manifestly against God, but are always in the place of God, even to the extent of projecting a counterfeit religion, with similar phraseology and means. The result of all this, as we have seen, is spirit or spiritual death, and the nature of death in the Bible is primarily the separation of the spirit from God. All else that is called death results from this. Lost likeness, fellowship, knowledge, cooperation, dominion, with all that God meant and intended by them - this is the foundation of death. So thus "in Adam all died" "death passed upon all." This movement indicates how through the Old Testament age God by types and figures is ever preaching the fact that death is His sentence and must be carried out. Man refuses the Divine verdict and believing and preaching a gospel f the inherent goodness of human nature seeks to develop a system of improvement by all manner of means. For him salvation is in himself, and civilization, education, social reconstruction, mutual improvement, etc., will at length bring in a golden age. He refutes the Word of God which demands new birth. He makes sin and evil a negative thing, and so on. Thus man's estimate of himself is ever growing, and the opposite of the mind of God.
In the center of history God places the Cross and in the representative Person of Christ gathers the whole race under His own sentence and takes it into the full outworking thereof in death. Until there is a settled judgment concerning the natural man, God has nothing to do with man only on the ground of that life which is begotten from the dead (Revelation 1:5). He demands that there shall be both an acceptance of and a witness born to the fact that when Christ died we died, that we were "crucified with Christ," (Romans 6:3-6; Colossians 2:12). Then comes the new man - the inner man - the spiritual man. He is "begotten again by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). Here begins that spiritual life, walk, knowledge, etc., of which we have spoken, and here therefore begins that life process by which the new or spiritual man takes the ascendancy over the old or natural man by the power of the Cross.
As we "walk in the spirit" we cease to "fulfill the lusts of the flesh." Thus in the spirit by the indwelling of God's Spirit there is, through Calvary, a restoration f the lost likeness, fellowship, knowledge, cooperation, and spiritual dominion.
As the spiritual and inner man is renewed, strengthened, educated, the natural and outer man is brought into subjection and robbed of his dominance, until slowly the soul is made the servant of the renewed spirit, and the body is harnessed as the instrument for doing what the soul has come to understand as the will of the spirit, which in its turn has been "joined to the Lord One Spirit."
There is no time limit to this process or progress. Some have more to unlearn than others. The spirits of many are not as pure as some because they have been muffled and beclouded by much mental and emotional apprehension. One often sees people in a meeting to whose spirit very little gets through because they are judging with their heads according to some accepted tenets, or they are prejudiced, suspicious, biased, or the slaves of a system and not at liberty in the spirit. It is a joy to meet a pure and open spirit. In this sense we have to "turn and become as little children." How pure the spirit of a child is! Therefore how true its intuitions or discernment. Some of us remember now the judgment we passed upon certain people when we were quite young. Our conclusions were quite clear and definite, although we could never have stated them, but looking back with the larger understanding, how perfectly right we were, and time has only corroborated our "feelings." We did not arrive at these by reasoning, or knowledge, or even studied observation, we could never have given our reasons or explained ourselves in the matter. There were the pure intuitions of an unbeclouded spirit. Such is to be our state, not in the natural but in the Divine realm. Lord, make us in this matter to have the spirit of a child, for of such is the realm of the heavenlies!
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 8)
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