Union With Christ # 23

Creational and Racial Union (continued)

c. Cautioned (continued)

Now I close by reminding you, as I shall do in other connections, that inheritance is the key to the conflict with Christ and the Church. And heirship has two sides. It has a legal and a spiritual aspect. We are legally heirs when we are born anew. When we are in the new creation we are legally heirs by birth, but there is a very great deal of difference between the state of legal heirship and the act of spiritually inheriting. The Bible makes that distinction clear, in this connection as in the others, as we shall see. The letter to the Galatians is built around this very thought.  "So long as the heir is a child, he ... is under guardians and stewards until the term appointed of the father" (Galatians 4:1, 2). And then the letter goes on - If children, then sons: we are all sons, by faith, that is to say, legally, even if we are not actually and spiritually in possession of the meaning and value of sonship, that is, of the inheritance. We are legally inheritors by birth, but we become actually possessors of the inheritance by spiritual growth.

Is that clear? Well, if it is not clear in teaching, ask yourself whether it is clear in practice and experience. How many Christians are enjoying the inheritance, are possessing their inheritance, are even progressing towards the possession of their inheritance? Many are not, yet they are children of God, legally heirs. Between being a legal heir and becoming a spiritual inheritor, something may happen so that you miss the inheritance. The New Testament is all the time telling us that we have a great inheritance - then do not miss it; we have great rights - then do not let them go; we are called into something from eternity - but be sure you "make your calling and your election sure." It is the difference between our legal status and our spiritual state.

So it is with this new creation. We have to do our learning spiritually; we have got to pass from the one realm to the other progressively; we have got to battle, to enter into the conflict, not for our salvation, but for our inheritance in Christ. We have to be tested, tried, not so that we shall prove ourselves goo Christians, but so that we may learn what spiritual ascendency is, and thus in spiritual ascendency come into the inheritance. You will be calling to mind those seeming paradoxes about receiving as a free gift and then having to inherit. As we have seen, one is a legal position, the other is a spiritual position. We are in a new creation. By far the greater measure of it is beyond; but we are moving on. Indeed, whenever we gather together in Conference, it is simply because we want to go on with the Lord, set upon all the Lord has meant by bringing us into union with Himself. By His grace, we will go through and go on.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 24 - (3. Marital Union)