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Saturday, October 12, 2013

The Cross and the Person of Christ # 24

Christ Spiritually Expressed

When we turn to see how Christ was here spiritually, we find that it was mainly in terms of three great forces and impacts - life, light, love. Just to say this is, for the average reader of the New Testament, to bring up no small material which bears it out.

"In Him Was Life"

Life is the supreme issue of the Bible, and therefore of creation. The Bible opens with the Tree of Life and it closes with the same. Everything between, as covering the whole history of creation, is focused upon this issue. It is one long continuous conflict concerned with this  one question. If the Old Testament is, as Christ said it was, a testifying to Him in all its parts, the issue is found in Christ risen, triumphant over death. The Church's preaching in the book of the Acts is little more than a proclamation of the resurrection of the Christ. Thus Christ is the comprehensive and all inclusive embodiment of death's destruction and life victorious. The Church as His Body takes up this testimony, not firstly doctrinally or verbally, but actually and factually. It is intended to be the carry-on of Christ in this respect.  Not to historic events nor to New Testament teaching does the first bear her witness, but she is to be the very embodiment of Christ in terms of life.

There are three ways in which life is manifested.

1. Life is Generic

The Divine principle of the creation is biological. Life is the key to everything. When God put life into things He not only set a course in motion which would work itself out apart from outside stimulants and direction, but He introduced the potentialities of perfect development according to the particular kingdom to which the organism belonged - human, animal, vegetable, etc. Life produced after its own kind, but life produced. The battle for life and of life started when sin entered; but life and of life started when sin entered; but whatever the changes, life still forces on and keeps the creation going. So in the spiritual realm, life is the key to everything, and the only justification for the continuance of this creation. The Church, for which all things are  summed up in Christ, takes its origin from His resurrection, and therefore the implanting of His triumphant life. She is His new creation, and He is her new creation life. Her very existence rests upon His risen life. She will eventually be judged by Him Who stands before her and says, "I am ... the Living one; and I became dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore." Not sound doctrine alone; not much activity; not a high standard of moral integrity; but life, death-conquering, hell-vanquishing life, will be the test.

2. Life is Energic

The driving force of the Church is the power of life. In Ezekiel's vision of the Cherubim and the wheels, a symbol of Christ and the Church, the driving force was the Spirit of life. It is a picture of energy. Going, going, ever going, ceasing not, and straight forward. It is the Living Ones (not "beasts" or "creatures") in corporate expression. It is not difficult  to see the correspondence between this as a symbol and the actual spiritual counterpart in the Church at the beginning. Life took charge, or the Spirit as the Spirit of life took charge and the goings were with much energy. Testimony, evangelism, mutual concern, and many other things betokened life. It was NOT man-made zest, enthusiasm, emotion, drive, or momentum. It was accounted for by no external stimulant being administered. Such would need to be kept up by outside means, but this was spontaneous and transcended all obstacles.

When we read of "the power that worketh in us," or "working in us that which is well-pleasing," or "His working, which worketh in me mightily," the word in the Greek is "energy," "energizeth," "energizing." It is the energy of Divine life by the Holy Spirit, and is so frequently set over against much human frailty and infirmity, thus constituting a mighty testimony to "the power of his resurrection." There is nothing to account for the persistence and accomplishments of the Church but the supernatural energy of the Divine life in her, and this is the testimony for which she exists. You have to look deeper into the Jesus of Nazareth, the Man of Galilee, for an explanation of His impact upon this world through so long a time, and you will find the secret in the life which was in Him and which he imparts in new birth. In the same way the Church's secret should always be deeper than her outward form; it should be the energy of nothing less than the very life of God in her.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 25 - "Life is Reproductive")

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