The Ultimate Issue of the Universe # 9

The Relatedness of Christian Life (continued)

My point is this, that salvation, in its initial sense as well as in its continuous enjoyment, justification, righteousness by faith, is bound up with this ultimate issue of God having an unquestioned place, getting all His rights. Salvation is not an end in itself, getting people saved, converted, signing cards and so on. That is small; it is good, it is right, it works, but it is so small in the light on the immense issue that is involved. You understand why souls are so hardly won, why such a battle rages around the securing of one true believer. satan will do anything to put them in a  false faith, in an assumed conversion, and he will fight tremendously against the reality of a real, down-right, central regeneration, because he stands to lose all his ground, and God to get all His. It is a big thing that is bound up with the salvation of a single soul. This is a conflict. We are drawn into it when we have a concern for men's souls. They are not just going to be handed over by asking, if they are worth anything to the Lord.

And what is true of salvation is true in the matter of sanctification, or its alternative word - consecration. What is it? It is being set apart for the Lord and it is connected with worship; consecrated, sanctified, set apart for the Lord. You know quite well that in the Old Testament, worship and service always went together. It is everything for the Lord, the whole for the Lord. Why preach sanctification, why be concerned about consecration to the Lord? For this very reason, that the ultimate issue of the universe is bound up with that. The opposite of real consecration, real sanctification, is a defeated life, satan having a part and God having a part, things belonging to one kingdom and things belonging to the other being mixed up, and God says you cannot. "Ye cannot serve God and mammon" (Luke 16:13). "Ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and of the table of demons" (1 Corinthians 10:21). It cannot be done. It is not just the things, it is what lies behind, the god of this world holding away from God by the things of the world. That is obvious, too obvious even to mention.

The Relatedness of Christian Experience

Come to the matter of Christian experience; being in the hands of the Lord, under the government of the Holy Spirit; being trained, being educated; through training, discipline, spiritual education, being perfected; being brought to the place of cooperation with God. What lies behind spiritual education? Look at every fragment and phase of your spiritual education, the way the Lord deals with you, and leads you; the history that is with God lying behind. What is the outcome of it all? Suffering, trial, perplexity, adversity, and all that which goes to make up our Christian experience - and there is so much of it - what is the outcome of it all - God has His way? Let us look at ourselves, the way we have with God, the way He has taken us through the depths: through suffering, affliction, trial and difficulty, sometimes to the point almost of despair, like Paul, despairing of life, having the sentence of death. But what is the result? If the Lord has His way, is it not that He has a larger place, and the enemy a much smaller place through it all? That is the marvel of it all. Sometimes when you are going through it, you come to a rock-bottom experience, as you think, and you feel the devil is going to gain, the Lord is losing. But when you come up out of it, the Lord has much more ground, He has something more that He can work upon. What He has done is to get rid  of a lot that was in His way. Suffering is a great purger. Christian experience is all with one object in view, where the Lord is concerned, in His dealing with us as He does. It is worship, worship in this sense, that God is coming into His own and satan is losing ground. We have often feared that it would be just the opposite, while we were going through it, but God is faithful and it does work out to a larger measure of the Lord.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 10 - (The Relatedness of Christian Service)