Union with Christ # 17

Eternal Union with Christ (continued)

The Holy Spirit the Custodian of the Eternal Purpose

The Holy Spirit is eternal; He is related to purpose; He is the link with Christ; and He is the earnest of the inheritance. That is to say, when we receive the Holy Spirit, we are at once joined to Christ: therefore we are joined at once with God's purpose concerning Christ. We are therefore linked with eternity and have left time. Is that too fine a way of arguing? We are linked with eternity, for the Spirit is eternal. The Spirit has not just come to be here with us for the little while of our life here, just a temporary guest staying for a night and departing. The presence of the Holy Spirit within at once links us with timelessness, and in that timelessness with the eternal purpose of God concerning His Son, and in that purpose with the Son Himself as governing all; and when we receive the Spirit we receive the earnest, the token, the security, of the inheritance of Christ. That is wonderful. That is where we come back to what we were saying. We have been secured by the indwelling Spirit as Christ's, as belonging to Christ, and Christ is secured to us for ever. The Spirit is the earnest of the inheritance. This is the inspiring answer of God to all questions about election. Have you received the Spirit? If you have not, you have no answer to any questions. If you have, you have the answer to every question, and particularly to this one, Union with Christ is the answer to all our questions.

Union with Christ is a crisis, a definite act, instantly giving a sense of - This is the answer to everything: all my questions are answered, not in my brain but in my heart; to everything that I have tried to understand and grasp and comprehend I have the answer inside. It is like that. Yet note this. The receiving of the Holy Spirit, while bringing that immediately - "The Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ" (Romans 8:16, 17) - while that is true at the inception of the Christian life in union with Christ, note this: that a life in the Spirit and with the Spirit is a continuous course, or succession, of proofs of election.

Perhaps you have never thought of that. If we do really walk with the Holy Spirit, we find that He is leading us into things that we never thought of, never intended - but, as He does it, we have to say, This is not something that has just arisen, this is something that was intended by God; I am just coming into a program; the Lord has not shown me the whole program, but this is like item after item on the program. Is that not the story of the book of Acts? The Holy Spirit has a program. He has not revealed it, but as they move in the Spirit, how the whole thing is a mosaic. How wonderful it is! This thing was ordained from eternity. You could not avoid it. God is working to it and holding us to it. "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10).

You look back on your life. You may be disappointed in many ways with your part in the business. You may be able to see many falterings and blunderings and mistakes that you on your side made. You may have sometimes felt that you were not the person for that  job; God had made a mistake. Some of us have felt like that. And yet, as we look more deeply into God's  ways with us and know God's principles, we see a wonderful logic in it all. You and I are called for something, laid hold of by God for something, put by God into something, and we feel, God has made a mistake: I am not the person for this, I ought never to have come into this, I have no qualifications for this, I am altogether the wrong person here! And yet, somehow or other, God does it. He enables you, He carries you through, He accomplishes the work to your own surprise and wonder. As you lay hold of the Holy Spirit, it is done - that is, if you do not sink down into yourself and give up and draw out because of what you are - but lay hold of the Holy Spirit and you get through and marvel that you have got through, that the Lord has done this thing through you, through me.

That is very consistent with God's principles, that is no contradiction. It is most consistent with the deepest principles of God. No flesh shall glory in His presence. It is all coming back to Him. God - mark you - elected "the foolish things of the world ... the weak things ... the thing that are not" (1 Corinthians 1:27, 28). It is the same word: He has elected. It is quite consistent.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 18)