The Nature of the Strength of the Church (continued)
Faith is the gift of God, and being the gift of God has in it the germ of "the exceeding greatness of His power ... the strength of His might which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead" - raised Him from the abyss to the Throne by "the all else excelling power of God's almightiness."
And there is the tremendous emphasis on what the Lord must do in the Church; it is that the Church may receive from the Lord by the Holy Spirit a revelation of the calling, a revelation of Him, and then receive by the same Spirit a strengthening in all might into the inner man according to that working (inward energizing) of the strength of His Might, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead. In both causes it is to be an expression of the same exceeding greatness of His power, that was seen in the raising of the Lord Jesus from the dead, the all else excelling power of God's almightiness.
We must remember the Lord Jesus was not the first one to be raised from the dead; there was Lazarus; the widow's son, Jairus's daughter; and in the Old Testament times the Shunammite's son, and the man thrown into Elisha's sepulcher; these all rose from the dead, but had to go back again to the grave, it was only a temporary thing, and at length they had to surrender to death. But the raising from the dead of the Lord Jesus was other than that, when He rose something happened that made it impossible for death to have any more claim upon Him, and that something was the all excelling power of God's almightiness to destroy, bring to nought him that had the power of death.
Death and the Disintegration of the Creation
Right away at the beginning, when death entered through sin, everything broke up, chaos everywhere, disintegration, nay, more, decomposition; the very component character of creation was lost, fallen apart in death. Then came upon that a moving of God and out of it an ordered creation, arose, the cosmos; then when sin again entered and death by sin, a further disruption, disintegration; all relationships break up by death.
Here is a body; while there is life it is held together by and under a controlling living head, all the separate members are brought into order and coordinate functioning in subjection to a government of life from the head, making it one whole body: life passes out of that body, there is now no central controlling force, all organs cease to function, and there is disintegration - it has lost its life-controlling power. That's death in a body or a whole creation. There is one responsible for that. satan achieved his object which was to break creation away from its Headship, and get in between the government of life of the Head and the Members. Death is separation of anything from its base of government and life. The cosmos demanded a head to hold it into ordered creation; by sin came severance from its government of life, and it fell into unrelated parts, into disintegration and decomposition. Man himself became a chaos, the earth ran riot and became chaos.
Christ Unifies a Disintegrated Creation In Himself as Head
It may have been upsetting the order of the universe this earth as a planet fell out of the ordering of God and chaos was brought about through him who had the power of death.
The Lord Jesus comes into the chaos and takes the nature of flesh and blood and through death destroys him who had the power of death.
And God hath made this same Jesus Head over the Body, His new creation; and you have the new creation under its divinely appointed Head, and so a bringing about of spiritual order in the fullness of His power (Eph. 1:22, 23). The Church is not just a congregation of units, the Church is a body with all its members and organs brought into a functioning relationship of coordination under the controlling life of its Head, partaking in that life and governed by that life. This new creation, this Church which is His Body is God's answer to what happened back in Genesis.
Now we begin to see what the Church really is, and what the Church is a product of and what the resource of the Church is.
At the beginning of the letter to the Ephesians you have manifested the nature of the Church, and at the end of the letter, the nature of the Church's warfare, it is the same conflict as away back in Genesis, but we are not up against it in the old creation, but against it in the strength of the New Adam, in the exceeding greatness of His might.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 10)
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