Union With Christ # 43

6. Vital and Organic Union (continued

a. Begetting (continued)

In this begetting, there may be a period of hidden activity, when we do not know what is happening, and perhaps we cannot sense anything happening; but God has spoken, and something has happened: we have answered. For the moment, for the time being, we do not know that anything is taking place, but it will come to light. Presently there will be a sensing that God has done something. That period may be longer or shorter, but it will surely be known that God has said something and God in saying something did something, started something, and His work will be manifested, something will be going on secretly. That is the meaning of being "begotten of God."

b. Birth

That leads us, of course, to the next step. Many people have confused these two things - beginning and birth. They are not the same, either in nature or in grace. Birth - what is birth? Birth is the point at which manifestation begins, when what God has been doing begins to show itself, comes out into manifestation; life manifested now in some Divine organism, a new life, a new order of things.

I wonder if you have followed what I have been saying. You see, it is like this so often in the early part of the Christian life. God says something, and His Spirit is with us in the saying, and we make a response. Then, for the moment, we do not know that anything very much has happened. But something has happened. Sooner or later - it may be very soon, almost simultaneously with the act of God in us, or it may be after a period of secret operation within, and faith is being tested as to whether anything has happened at all - something comes out, and we find that we just cannot do what we did before, and we have now got to do things we never did before, and our way of thinking and speaking is becoming challenged and changed and transformed. We find that some new order has come into being, and it is making all the differences, and we are able more and more clearly and definitely to draw the line between what was and what is now, what we were and what we are now. That is the course of the normal Christian life: that this new thing has now begun to manifest itself, and we are aware that something new has been born, and we just cannot be what we were, we just cannot do what we did; we are behaving in new ways; something has come from another world; a new beginning has been made. It is a new organism altogether. "If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The main point about a constitution of a particular kind is that it begins to manifest its kind. That is birth - something of a particular kind. "Except one be born anew [or "from above"] he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). The kingdom of  God is a kind of order, a nature of things; not just a sphere, a place, but how things are done with God, in God's realm of things; what is fitting to God's realm, suitable to God's realm; how things happen and work in God's realm. And this new organism shows the nature of what is born in God's realm. Well, sometimes a little baby does act like a monkey, but normally it acts like a human being! I mean, it conforms to type. Some baby Christians act very strangely, but it is not long before you begin to realize that they are of another mold, everybody else begins to realize they are of another order, a new kind of being has been brought into manifestation, and now quite spontaneously they act according to their species, a heavenly order. That is being born from God - a manifestation of something, the bringing to light of something. That is very elementary, but it is testing.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 44 - (c. Growth)