The Power of His Resurrection # 16

The Waters of Jericho (continued)

Elisha's Means Is Salt (continued)

There is the type so fully, so richly set forth. But what is the spiritual value and spiritual application for ourselves? We turn to Romans 8, and see it there quite clearly. In those later verses, verses 20 to 25, we have the spiritual background of the life of the whole creation. The Apostle there says that the creation itself was subjected to vanity. That is a Divine act. There was a time when, because of certain things, the creation was deliberately made subject to vanity; that is, God put upon it a ban which was of this nature, that the creation should never realize its full and end except on one ground. So that the whole creation is in the grip of that which means the impossibility of its reaching the end intended for it save only on one ground. The Apostle says that in parts of our being we are still involved in that. Our bodies are still involved in that. "We groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." But he says that the creation - and ourselves as involved in the creation - was subjected to vanity in hope. It is not entirely hopeless, not without hope. But where is the hope? If the Lord Jesus has in His own representative Person gathered up the whole creation - for all things were created by Him, and for Him - and this creation, because of its rebellion, has departed from the purposes for which it was brought into being; if the Father gave Him that creation, and now it has failed, will the Father rob Him forever of the gift? No! He will subject it to vanity in hope. Now the Lord Jesus takes the creation representatively in His Own Person, and as man enters vicariously into its state and goes as far as to have the very curse resting upon it, made to rest upon Him. The very thorns upon His brow are symbols of the thorns and the briers which sprang up immediately when God cursed the earth; and that curse is made typically to rest upon His Head. Then He dies as under the curse. The universal death is concentrated upon Him, and He dies as under a curse. When He is dead, where is the hope: Looking at Him naturally there is no hope; but God raised Him from the dead. That is where all the hope is. Paul says: "... in God which raiseth the dead." Christ raised from the dead is the hope, and the Firstfruits of resurrection. The hope is in Christ risen. The hope is resurrection in Christ.

Read again Paul's great chapter, the fifteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, and you have the classic on the subject of what resurrection means. If the dead rise not, we are of all men most miserable: our preaching is vain: your faith is vain: ye are yet in your sins, without God, and without hope. "But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the Firstfruits of them that are asleep," and there is the hope.

Now note: Paul says we have the Firstfruits. Though that is true, there are still realms in our being that are under this regime of vanity; our body is still subject to death. We have not the full redemption yet, but we have the Firstfruits of the Spirit. We have resurrection life by the Spirit already in us. That is the Firstfruits of the Spirit, the ground of hope. And because we have resurrection life already dwelling within, we have the guarantee that our bodies also will be raised.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 17)