We Beheld His Glory # 8

The Link of Faith

When you realize that, you get these eternal elements, the light, life, joy, fullness, you see that spirituality is one of John's main features all the way through; that is, that  believers, those linked with Christ, are brought into a realm of spiritual fellowship with Him, spiritual understanding, spiritual intelligence. And then faith has its place, "Filled with water." True! but it had not become wine yet. It did not become wine until it was on its way to the master of the feast. Think of those men taking to the master of the feast water for wine. But Mary had said: "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it," and their hesitancy had been forestalled, faith had come into operation to draw out wine that was yet water, and on the way it changed, and when it reached the master of the feast it was best wine. There is a challenge of faith. I only wish we could get into the fullness of this; faith's relationship to the fullness of God in Christ for us, apprehended by faith; faith's relationship to what Christ is in fullness, life, joy, glory. You and I are in the state of this feast when it broke down; by nature we are in that state. There is a cloud over us, there is a sense of need, emptiness, spiritual death, despair. We are conscious that we are in something but we are not getting anywhere; this thing has broken down, it is in a state of suspense. The whole thing wants changing. There needs to be life in the place of death, fullness in the place of emptiness, joy in the place of despair, glory in the place of shame. Are we not there by nature? Is that not our place? Yes, this broken down marriage feast is just a good picture of our state; those waterpots, before the word of the Lord Jesus came to them, represent our condition. The general atmosphere of this kind of dilemma is the state of our lives until the Lord comes in in relation to His Christ. "Mine hour"; and when we see what He is, God's fullness for our emptiness, God's joy for our joylessness, God's life for our death, God's hope for our despair; it is all what Christ is. Not something He is going to give us, it is Himself. "(... We beheld His glory ...) full of grace and truth."  "... of his fullness we all received, and grace upon grace." And then the link between all is the obedience of faith. It is the faith rising up and acting in apprehending Christ, taking Christ, appropriating Christ, subjecting our whole life to Christ. "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it"; making Christ the Master of the feast. That is why I said this man was not the master of ceremonies. The Lord Jesus was the Master of Ceremonies; the other man was only tasting things. When the Lord Jesus is the Master all things are subject to Him. This is the issue. The trouble which holds things up very often is that we still have a way of our own, and thoughts of our own. Those men might have stopped and said: You are going to get us into a fine mess telling us to take water to the ruler of the feast. We might argue and say: What is the good? I do not see the good of this, I do not see how this is going to work out. We are not subject to Christ. We have to come down to the place where our wills, our likes, our preferences, our sympathies and antipathies, all of ourselves must go and He has to be LORD, and when He is Lord and we have come under the impact of His Cross the issue will be this fullness, joy, glory, life.

I do trust that we shall grasp one thing, whether we are able to grasp the hidden significance or not - Christ everything. He is everything, He can be everything to us, changing things as He changed things here from what they were not to what they ought to have been. He can make that change for us.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 9 - Great Truths and their Laws")