The Sign of the Prophet Jonah # 3

This Man Must Go Overboard

This type must be brought to an end. He inevitably meets the billows of Jehovah's wrath and judgment. He does not represent God truly. He only brings men's lives into jeopardy. It is not in him to truly do God's will. The commandments of God to him are not joyous, but grievous. When the will or way of God runs counter to his own interests, reputation, judgments, or common acceptances, it is not true of him that he delights always  to do God's will. If his creed, or institutions, or traditions, are broken in upon and God seeks to do a new thing, these thing fetter him, and God comes up against a padlocked mind and a stiff neck. The Lord is not free to do as He likes with such a one. This introduces all that Calvary means to the race in Adam, and in Abraham after the flesh; also in Christ other than by resurrection. "Romans" speaks to every branch and age of the race and gathers all up into Chapter 6 for death in Christ, and then shows that that only is acceptable to God which is alive in the Spirit (Chapter 8).

In a day of many delusions along spiritual lines the only safe place is in Romans 6 through Romans 8, where the natural (psychical) man has given place to the man who knows the Lord after the Spirit.

Let this man go then. Throw him over. It is God's way for him. God is able to secure the survival of that which will serve His ends. In other words, let him recognize that as him and for him the Lord Jesus has gone into the depths of the Divine billows of judgment, and taken him to death. Henceforth, anything the is not Christ is a denial of Calvary and a setting aside of Christ's work on the Cross. Henceforth, a life not in the flesh but in the spirit is the only one recognized by and favorable to God. This brings us at least to be able to consider that sign which is the ground of standing before God, and effectual witness in His Name.

Having spoken of Jonah as a sign of that which is not acceptable to God, and which has to be cast into the depth of the sea, we now proceed to regard him in the light of that which is for the Lord.

When the Lord Jesus told the unbelieving people of His day that no sign should be given them save the sign of the Prophet Jonah, He was introducing that which for the rest of the age should be the one ultimate basis of relationship to Himself both as to faith and experience. In fact, He was setting forth that which changed the character of the dispensation and marked the passing from one age to another. This "sign" we know to be the Death and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus. That which it signified was and is that He is the Son of God.

Let us at the outset make one all-inclusive and fundamental statement which is the cumulative testimony and declaration of the Word of God. It is this: that the abiding attestation of the Sonship, Saviourhood and Sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ is found in the meditation, impact, experience or challenge of the power of His resurrection by the Holy Spirit wherever the forces of spiritual death are encountered. This is the ultimate test and issue for everything that ostensibly represents Him on the earth.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 4 - "Secondary Lines")