Christ - All, and In All # 7

5. The Explanation of All Services (continued)

Somehow we have got caught up into this thing and think the Lord can only come into His own if we are the instrument. The rivalry on platform and in pulpit; sensitiveness because one is put before another, because the address of one is given more attention than that of another; the favorable remarks all made in one direction, etc! I know all about it. After all, what are we after? Are we seeking to impress our audience by our cleverness or to make known our Lord? A great difference! Sometimes the Lord gets more out of our bad times than we think, and it may be that when we have had good times He has not got the most. Therein is the necessity for our being set aside, kept weak and humble, that He might have the preeminence.

The challenge of service according to God's thought is just this - What are we doing it for? Do we want to be in the work, because we like to be busy? Or is it utterly and only that, by any means, He may come into His own, that God's end may be realized? If He can be all, and in all, by our death as well as by our life, have we come to the place where we truly desire "that ... Christ may be magnified in my body, whether by life, or by death"? (Phil. 1:20). That is the explanation of service from God's standpoint.

Of course, this is the explanation of many other things. It is -

6. The Explanation of the Whole of the Old Testament

We will not tarry to examine in detail how this is, but just indicate and pass on. What is the Old Testament? It is all gathered up in great representations of Jesus Christ. Take the two main ones, the Tabernacle and the Temple. These are comprehensive representations of the Lord Jesus both in His person and in His work, and these occupy, as such, the central place in the life of a chosen people, whose life is bound up with them. The two are one, and while that elect people are in right relationship to that central object, the Tabernacle or Temple: while they give it its place of honor and reverence, and maintain it in its place of highest holiness: while they are true to its spirit, and its laws, and its testimony: though they are among all the peoples of the earth the least capable, naturally, of looking after their interests, yet they are the supreme people of the earth; there is not a nation or a people in the earth able to stand before them. They have never been trained in the art of war, they have no long history behind them of arms and military strategy, and are in themselves a defenseless people: yet they take the ascendancy not only over individual nations greater and mightier than themselves, bu over a combination of nations; and though all unite against them, while true to that central object they are supreme. That central object is a representation of the Lord Jesus in His person and work. The spiritual interpretation of it is that when the Lord Jesus has His place there is supremacy; there is absolute supremacy when He in all things has the preeminence in and through and by His people. "Christ is all, and in all." When that is true in His people there are no forces capable of withstanding them. The secret of absolute supremacy and sovereignty is the Lord Jesus having His place in the lives and in the hearts, in all the affairs and relationships, of His own people; and the gates of Hades cannot prevail then.

Further, it is - 

7. The Explanation of the New Testament

and the New Testament brings in little companies, small among the peoples of the earth, despised, cast out, hardly allowed to speak without being bitterly molested, and upon whom eventually comes the organized wrath and hatred of the nations of this world until all the resources of a great iron empire are exploited and put into operation to blot out the remembrance of these humble, despised people. The story is just this, that the empires have broken, the world powers have ceased to be. We go around the world now looking at the relics and ruins of those great empires; but where is that people of the Way of the despised Nazarene? A great multitude that no man can number! Heaven is full of them, and here on earth there are tens of thousands who know and love the Lord Jesus, who are of this Way. The explanation is that God determined that His Son should be all, and in all things should have the preeminence. Come into living relationship with God's Son, and men and hell may do what they will - God will reach His end and such a people will be triumphant.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 8