The Cross and the Person of Christ # 29

The Cross and the satanic Kingdom (continued)

The Church is a heavenly Body; which means that it is out of satan's domain spiritually and morally. Delivered ... out of the authority of darkness, and translated ... into the kingdom of the Son of his love" (Col. 1:13). For its spiritual authority the Church must stand in all the good of the Cross as a separating and sanctifying power. satan's one aim is to corrupt the Church.  The wrestling against principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12) is not physical, it is not to obtain a position of ascendency, it is against the "wiles of the devil." These wiles are twofold; to obtain a lodgment for darts of accusation - that is a denial of our justification and righteousness by faith: and, or, to corrupt and seduce on to earthly, carnal, and unholy ground. This explains the spiritual and moral nature of the armor provided.

The Church does not carry the Gospel of salvation and atonement to the kingdom of satan itself, but only to those who are his prisoners, to give them the option of deliverance or remaining with him. To the evil powers the Church stands to express the moral Lordship of Jesus Christ in virtue of His Cross, and to exercise that authority in virtue of its own standing in Him.

The position is this. Before the world was, God purposed to gather under one Head all the creation. That Head was His Son. It was irrevocably and unalterably settled in the eternal counsels. Knowing that it could never be its best by mere compulsion or as a mechanical order and that faith, love, and positive holiness (not passive innocence) were essential to that best, and foreseeing the advent of veil, a working of a subversive system, He provided against the ultimate triumph of the system in "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." All that was foreseen, and the Lamb cam out of eternity into time, was literally - not potentially - slain, the ground of the evil power was taken in that slaying, and the link-up renewed with the original purpose - "all things". The Church - the elect Body - was brought into being on the ground of the Cross. He was given to be "head over all things to (not merely of) the Church which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all" (Ephesians 1:22-23). The Church moved out and registered His rights behind the temporal and sentient world, in the spiritual kingdom of satan, and it worked! - until the Church declined from its spiritual and heavenly position. The Cross is still the moral battle-axe of the Church, and the evil system can still feel its overthrowing power. It rests with the Church to adjust to

1. The meaning of the Cross;
2. The place into which the Cross puts the Church;
3. Positive aggression in its whole armor.

Our object has not been to deal at any length with the connected matters. Each one of them could easily fill a book to itself. We have aimed at indicating the place which the Cross has in all things related to God's eternal and universal purpose in Christ.

There remains but one realm. But before we pass to consider that, we would add something to this chapter with the object of doubly emphasizing that power is a matter of position.

Position and Power

Undoubtedly the word which occurs most often in religion - and especially evangelical - circles today is the word "power." In addresses and prayers it is the keynote from which and to which there is constant movement. All the world over it is the same.

Listening to speakers and prayers in languages  with which one is not conversant, a certain word occurs with almost monotonous reiteration, and on inquiry one is not surprised to learn that it is this word. The absence of power and the necessity for it is betrayed or confessed in many ways; not only directly and humbly by the more spiritually minded among God's people, but by the loud display of ingenious resourcefulness in advertisement, "stunts," organization, drives, etc., which are a more sad giving away of the case than what is meant to be implied by them, viz: - that there is no life.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 30)