by
T. Austin-Sparks
Chapter 1
Now beloved, the reason we are gathered in this place this
morning is because we believe that the Lord has called us to
bear witness and testimony to a revelation which He has given us
upon the basis of His dealings with us and in us, which is of
very vital account and import for these days. This is not said
in any religious conceit, or spiritual pride, for it represents
a great cost and a considerable conflict and travail and anguish
not to be coveted for an instant by the flesh, but rather ever
and always to be shunned from that side, but accepted as a
stewardship, so that we find ourselves in this, in the presence
of the Lord, unable, though the flesh shrink, to be or do
otherwise.
Now that revelation, which is not, let me emphasize, a mental
apprehension of truth, but that which has sprung out from deep
and drastic handling of us, and is basic to this testimony, is
summed up, I think, almost entirely in its outlines in this
diagram that is before you [click here for
diagram]. I think I need not say how the Lord brought that
to one, other than this, that it was in the hour of the deepest
anguish of spirit, and the hour of deepest death to all but
Himself; but it came, and it made all the other well worth
while. How far we shall be able to deal with the content of this
in these days I do not know. It will be entirely in the Lord's
hands, and by His leading, but if you should be able in your
spirit to apprehend the main outlines of this thing, you will no
longer be in the dark as to what this Centre and Testimony
represents - as we believe - in the will and purpose of God.
This morning we shall only seek to deal with the broad outlines
leaving details for other times.
The theme, as you recognise is
The
Centrality and Universality of the Cross,
and the thing that wants to be re-emphasised (may I say here in
parenthesis that most of this is old ground to many of you, but
it is a statement purely of the whole thing with which we are
more or less familiar) is this, that, inasmuch as the
phraseology or terminology of the Cross is so common to our
testimony, many have come to think that we are stressing one
exclusive line of teaching, and they regard this word of the
Cross, this message of the Cross as some narrow theme, some
phase, some department of truth; that we are very much
restricted in our outlook, and they say we are always talking
about the Cross as though there was nothing else to talk about.
They say, you are always on that line, why don't you get on to
some other lines of revelation? Why are you so unbalanced,
unequal, uneven, emphasising one thing all the time?
Now, beloved, should there be any such conception, or
misconception here this morning, I would that the Lord would
dispel such; and to state the thing accurately, let us once and
for all say that according, not to our revelation, but according
to the revelation of the entire word of God, both in the Old and
New Testaments, the Cross is the hub of everything, and this
diagram really represents a wheel with all its spokes and its
rim, and its wheels within a wheel - but the hub of everything
is the Cross of the Lord Jesus. It is not one of the spokes; it
is not one of the lines of teaching; but it gathers up in itself
everything, and it makes possible everything; and if you fail to
recognise God's place and God's meaning for and in the Cross of
the Lord Jesus Christ, it is then that you become unbalanced; it
is then that you become departmental; it is then that your
perspective is thrown out, and your vision is distorted. For the
right adjustment and regulation and balancing of all truth you
must place the Cross right at the centre and see the
relationship of everything else to the Cross and of the Cross to
everything else.
Now here is a sweeping word, but quite considered: I venture to
say that there is not a theme in all the word of God relative to
the eternal purpose of God which is not rooted in the Cross of
the Lord Jesus, and that works out to minutiae. Your tongue,
your lips, your speech, your conversation, the most common-place
thing has - according to the word of God - to be bound up with
the Cross of the Lord Jesus, and the Cross of the Lord Jesus to
be bound up with it, and from that most common-place thing ever
out in widening circles and a growing number of directions the
Cross has the central place. Of course, you know, that, so far
as we are concerned, and the word of God is concerned, the Cross
does not represent just (and here I do not minimise that) the
death of the Lord Jesus; but the all-inclusive and full sweep of
the eternal work of God from ages to ages, from eternity past to
eternity future, which was centred in the Cross of the Lord
Jesus; and that through the death, burial, resurrection and
ascension to the throne, and sovereign relationship vested now
in Christ for us, as in the word, that also is the Cross and we
never see the throne apart from "the Lamb in the midst thereof
as it had just been slain." That is as much the message of the
Cross as that pertaining to what was done on the green hill far
away outside the city wall. Now that, of course, is all too
commonplace and simple to say, but perhaps necessary in order to
put the Cross into its right realm, its adequate realm.
So then, let us recognise once and for all that the Cross is not
a specific line of teaching, not a department of teaching, not
an isolated message in an unbalanced emphasis, but the
all-comprehending and all-including and all-explaining centre of
the universe. That is the Centrality of the Cross, and you must
put it so. It is the hub of the wheel. To it and from it all the
spokes move through clearly defined circles of divine
instrumentality and activity into the farthest bound of the
universe, in the super-heavenlies, the heavenlies "far above
all:" there the Cross is still. You never get outside the range
of the Cross. Let us put it there - give it its right place. For
some of us this revelation of the centrality of the Cross has
settled everything and made the word of God a living thing in a
new way.
Now having said that, not a line, not a spoke, but the hub,
everything to and everything from, and everything in the light
of it, we want, before we take some of these inner spokes, to
note the next circle, for this is important if the Cross of the
Lord Jesus is at the centre, the first circumference, the first
circle to which it moves, and which moves back to it is "the
Church which is His Body." The Body of Christ. You will notice
in the
diagram that everything moves to that, and then there is
an unbroken line round that which suggests that everything is,
in the first movement of God, shut up to and within the Church
the Body of Christ. We shall see how that is so perhaps
presently, but we want to recognise this fact, that the first
inclusive movement of God through the Cross is to and in the
church which is the Body of Christ. That is the horizon of the
Cross in the first instance. The Cross in this part of the age
stands to secure that, to realise that, to gain that. The end of
God for this part of the age is the church, the Body of Christ,
and the whole revelation which comes through, and on the ground
of the Cross is bound up within the church, and all the other
ranges depend upon the church for their knowledge of the meaning
of the Cross, and all that is included therein. Let that be
perfectly clear.
The nations of the world, the encircling principalities and
powers and world rulers of this darkness and spiritual hosts of
wickedness, and then upward to the uttermost bounds of the
heaven of heavens, all depend for their knowledge and
instruction, whether it be unto jubilation, as in the heavens,
or as to confounding and judgment, as amongst principalities and
powers, they all depend for their knowledge of the full wisdom
and power of God upon the Church in which that is revealed and
manifested. He has - in other words - eternally elected to
display unto the increasing bounds of the universe His wisdom in
and by the Church, and that through the Cross as wrought out and
revealed within the Church, the Body of Christ. The
instrumentality of God for the manifestation of all the infinite
meaning of Calvary is the Church, the Body of Christ. We have
often said it is like the city to the kingdom, the metropolis to
the world, in the light of which the nations shall walk, but the
central thing by the Cross is the church which is His Body, and
revelation is there and only through there - the revelation of
this work of God in the ages and in the universe. When we come
to speak more about the church we shall have to re-emphasise
this with further points: but we want to notice that the first
realisations of Calvary's work are unto the securing of this
eternally elect body, the church, as the instrument for the
divine revelation and manifestation beyond. Now is that
perfectly clear?
One good man a little while ago said that the sublime factor of
this age was the dethronement of the Bible from its place of
infallibility, but what a contrast between that and this, that
the sublime and supreme factor of this part of the age is the
securing of the church, the Body of Christ, out from the nations
to be an instrument and vehicle of the everlasting, the eternal
revelation of the power and glory of God. That is what He is
bent upon now. We can do no less, and God save us from the
despair which will come by our trying to do any more than that -
the realisation of His purpose for now, the gathering out and
together by the Holy Ghost of the Body of Christ unto
completion, unto the coming of the Lord. Now that defines the
limits, but that becomes a large enough outlook for anyone, and
you will find if that is revealed to you by the Holy Ghost, it
will occupy all your moments for the rest of your days, be they
few or many, to give heed to the discerning of the Body unto its
completion and its building up and perfecting in preparation for
the Lord.
Now having seen this innermost centrality of the Cross, and then
the first range of its intention, we are prepared to just note
some of the major truths that are wrapped up with the Cross in
the Body of Christ. Of course much, as you recognise, bears
beyond that for other purposes, but which is the treasure, or
the deposit within the Body of Christ, and you notice that the
first of the four major spokes of this wheel within a wheel is
the Person of the Lord Jesus. Now, beloved, you require the
Person of the Lord Jesus, a revelation of Who Jesus is, in order
to explain the language of the Cross. This is no common cross
upon which any man may die in a kind of vicariousness in human
devotion to the interests of his fellows. This is something more
than that. There is only one Cross in the mind of God to effect
this purpose. It is unique, but you must recognise who Jesus is
before you can discern the true values of Calvary; but Calvary
in its out-working, and this is the experimental wonder of the
Cross, Calvary in its out-working makes you know who Jesus is.
You by faith come to accept all that Calvary means, not knowing
what it means, but by faith apprehending and accepting and
yielding and challenging God in reverence and fear to make
Calvary real in your experience, and as the Holy Spirit begins
to do it, you will discover that this is no common cross, you
will discover that you have come up against the infinitude of
the Christ of Calvary.
The Jews and the Greeks despised the Cross and laughed it to
scorn and waved it aside as the uttermost absurdity,
foolishness, and scorned it as a scandal, an offence. They were
destined to discover that there was something there in that
Cross, as manifested in and through the church, the Body of
Christ, in its nucleus of those days, which was capable of
tearing their empires limb from limb and pulling down all their
vaunted pride of empire, and of wisdom. You notice what we have
read this morning concerning the wisdom of this world. The
princes of this world who crucified the Lord of Glory, and their
wisdom! How they vaunted their wisdom, their academic
achievements, their scholarship, their philosophies! How they
boasted in these things, and Paul goes into one of the centres -
prime centres - of this world's wisdom and tells them,
"Brethren, when I came to you, I had deliberately made up my
mind that it was not going to be in words of man's wisdom, not
in excellency of speech, and was among you in much weakness and
trembling, not knowing anything. I might have known all about
these things. I have a knowledge of these things in which you
boast, but I had deliberately made up my mind that I was going
to be ignorant in these matters, and know only one thing and
that: Jesus Christ and Him crucified." You notice how he goes
on, "we speak God's wisdom!" He is putting this over against the
wisdom of this world in its highest development. "God's wisdom,
but in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden, which
God fore-ordained before the worlds unto our glory, which none
of the princes of this world knoweth." Now what is this wisdom?
Well, go back to the previous chapter. (It is a pity the
chapters are divided.) "For the word of the Cross is
foolishness," and that word there "the word of the Cross," as
you know is the logos of the Cross, and the central meaning of
that very far-reaching and inclusive term the "Logos" is the
wisdom, or reason of God. The wisdom, or the reason back of the
universe by which, on the ground of which, His creative
activities came into operation. He made the worlds with a
reason: He had wisdom directing all His operations bringing into
being the universe. Now God's wisdom, and the apostle says all
that wisdom, that infinite wisdom of God is gathered up in the
cross of the Lord Jesus - "The logos of the cross," the divine
reason, wisdom of the Cross, and he puts that over against all
the wisdom of this world.
"We preach Christ crucified," and, mark you, the world was
destined to discover that there was something infinite in that
Cross as proclaimed and administered in and through the Body of
Christ. They may try to wipe this thing out, to destroy it from
the face of the earth, they may exhaust all their resources of
might and power in the physical realm of force, and in the
intellectual realm of reason and academic genius, and Nero (that
devil incarnate) will massacre thousands of these who stand for
the testimony of Jesus in one full-blooded effort to destroy
that testimony from the earth, but he discovers that it cannot
be done. It cannot be done, and the more the shedding of blood,
the more this thing spreads and grows, and every bit of Satanic
invective launched against this testimony from the first
scattering of the church from Jerusalem, on through all the
persecutions and martyrdoms only recoils upon the Devil to
destroy his own works, and to further this testimony and cause
it to take deeper root. There is something in this Cross,
beloved, that is infinite in its power and in its possibilities;
and it is interesting to note that tiny bit of irony appended in
salutations to one of the apostolic letters, "The saints in
Caesar's household salute you." Upstairs the schemings,
plannings to wipe out this Name, this Testimony, downstairs,
these people cooking his very dinner, these people - saints in
his house - doing his work for him. Why, they are in the
fortress! God is very ingenious, but you see there is something
here that you cannot cope with. It is the Logos of the Cross as
represented in the Person of Christ, who is made unto us wisdom,
the wisdom of God.
Now, you require the Cross in experience to make known to you who
Jesus Christ is because His power is vested in the Cross, and as
the Cross is planted in your life you find that you have not
accepted a creed or a symbol. You have accepted nothing less
than the inclusive, infinite power of God to do things. You
require the Cross to be interpreted by the Christ, and you
cannot separate your teaching of the Person of Jesus, the Person
of Christ, or any of your Christologies from the central reality
of the Cross. You will never know Jesus Christ really unless you
know Him crucified in this sense.
Now, much more, as you see, is bound up with that, the Logos,
the Eternal Logos. "In the beginning was the Logos, and the
Logos was with God and the Logos was God, and the Logos became
flesh and tabernacled amongst us," and the Logos of the Cross,
God in Christ on the Cross! That is the supreme reality of
Calvary. It is God in Christ, that is the deepest wonder of the
incarnation right through. We are not going to touch the other
phases at the moment, but "in Him all the fulness of the
Godhead in bodily form" existed, and the transcendent power of
infinite God came into operation in the raising of Him from the
dead - "The exceeding greatness of His power whereby He raised
Jesus from the dead" - but all that is in Calvary.
We come to the second major spoke of this wheel - the Holy
Spirit. Now, we know that there are those who have nothing else
to talk about but the Holy Spirit. All their teaching, their
title and everything else is the Holy Spirit. You may become
unbalanced on the Holy Spirit if you take the teaching as
separate, but you require the Cross to get the balance; it is
relative, it is not isolated. All the advent and activity and
revelation of the Holy Spirit is related at centre to the Cross,
and in the first circumference to the Body of Christ. The Holy
Spirit is to, and for, and in, and by the Church. Have you got
that? In the first instance the Holy Spirit is to the church.
Not the Church as experiencing its salvation at the moment, but
the Church perhaps in its un-regenerate state, for He knows the
eternal counsels of God, the election according to the
foreknowledge, not the especial election of God unto salvation
and damnation, but according to foreknowledge. God knew from
eternity how His supreme gift of freewill would be exercised in
relation to the revelation of Jesus Christ. He cannot help but
know the way that free volition would be exercised toward the
Christ. Whom He foreknew, them He predestinated, He marked out,
but it is only according to the foreknowledge, and not according
to any favouritism. Now it is to the church. There may be a
member of the Body of Christ in this tent this morning still
unsaved, unregenerate. To you and to the sum of the whole Body
of Christ in its members unborn, unborn naturally, literally,
unborn spiritually, the Spirit has come, in the first instance,
to secure complete number of the elect, but by the Cross. He
will do nothing apart from the Cross, and He will bring every
such member to the Cross, and He will keep every such member at
the Cross, and will never never let them for an instant escape
the Cross. He will, in other words, work out the Cross to the
uttermost realms of its meaning in them.
He is to the church, for the church as its supreme gift,
Comforter, the other One along-side. It is in the church that
the Holy Spirit resides, and it is by the church that the Holy
Spirit operates. That is His instrument, and all this because
the church has been secured on the ground of Calvary's work, and
you get the many sided activity of the Holy Spirit, with which
we cannot stay at this time, as He acts, as we have seen, before
conversion, in relation to those who are the heirs of salvation
yet unborn, those who shall be. And after conversion, new
activities, ANOINTING. We are not going to stay now to
specifically define these different terms, but each one is not
synonymous with the other. No two of them are exactly alike in
their meaning. They all have their own specific meaning. The
ANOINTING and the INSPIRATION are not the same. The Inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, Inspiration, Revelation - these two are not
alike. Between REVELATION and ILLUMINATION you might find
difficulty in discriminating. REVELATION is that which is
presented to you. ILLUMINATION is that in your spirit which can
take hold of the revelation, when you are enlightened at the
presentation of Truth. There may be revelation here this
morning, but you need illumination in order to get it. You need
"the eyes of your understanding enlightened," illumined, "in
order that you may be able to apprehend with all saints what is
the height, etc." and here is the revelation of the Spirit, but
illumination is needed by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
And we know the difference between ILLUMINATION and
INTERPRETATION, as we have already mentioned this morning - "As
the Spirit gave them utterance," and Paul besought
fellow-believers to pray for him that he might be given
utterance. Oh, it is one thing to possess revelation and to have
illumination in your spirit, beloved, it is quite another thing
to utter these infinite truths; they may stay there, they may
become an inward burden and anguish to you, until there is the
enablement to utter them. You know something of the groaning
under a revelation and feel it is of such far-reaching account
to the Body of Christ, and not be able to say it, the time has
not yet come for the working of this thing - until the Spirit
gives you utterance. Oh, that all our speaking, our preaching,
and our teaching, were by the utterance which the Holy Ghost
gives! The Lord will bring us there.
And of course within the Body of Christ the Holy Spirit is for
ADMINISTRATION. He is there to administer. He calls upon us to
put aside our programmes, even in the conduct of meetings, not
to arrange our speakers and our order of service and to tie Him
down as to how we think the thing ought to go, but to leave Him
free. And you will notice that wherever the Holy Spirit has
freedom to direct and administer in such a matter (and it is
only one fragmentary point of the whole administration) there is
a wonderful co-ordination, He is of one mind and He is working
to one end. We have ideas as to what we would like done and
achieved, and we try to manipulate and move the pieces on the
board to secure and accomplish some end, but, oh, let the Holy
Spirit administer. It is not for us to say
who is to
speak, and
when so-and-so is to speak; it must come out
of the divine order and appointment, by the leading of the
Spirit, otherwise we shall not get there. But in numerous other
ways the Spirit is in the Church, the Body, to administer, and,
beloved, the final word is this: you can never hope to have the
judicial ministry or administration of the Holy Ghost to deal
with preponderances and disorders, to judge and to rectify,
unless you have given the Holy Spirit full course on all
matters. It is no use getting yourself into a mess and then
asking the Holy Spirit to judge the wrong for which you are
responsible. It may be you will be the judged one; but if, mark
you, the Holy Spirit is in possession, having full sway,
administering in the Body of Christ, woe betide the person who,
like Ananias and Sapphira tries to deceive the Holy Spirit, or
like any other who may touch the Body of Christ with fleshly
hands! The Holy Spirit will meet that. But the blessed
restfulness of the whole business when it is a testimony of the
Lord Jesus according to the Holy Ghost is that you need not
worry, if you are moving and walking in and after the Spirit,
and He has brought the thing into being, and He is carrying it
on, and you are but co-operating with Him.
You need not worry, let anybody get up against you and touch the
Lord's anointed, you will discover you need not say anything,
"they will come up against the thing, or it will come up against
them, and fire will break out from the altar". That is Christ in
His corporate expression - His Body. If you want to be
safeguarded, if you want to be protected, you want to be
vindicated for the sake of Jesus, and the Testimony vindicated,
do not take it in hand yourself. Be sure that the whole thing is
according to the Holy Spirit, and that He is administering, that
your plans and programmes are not in it, and you are
moving as led by the Spirit, then the thing will be safe-guarded
by the Lord because it is His.
And inversely, as we go into it apart from Him and touch it with
natural hands of wisdom, or desire, or motive, we limit the Holy
Spirit, and make it impossible for the thing to be maintained
for the Lord's needs by His own protection. And what is true of
that side - the judicial - is true of every other side of the
administration of the Body of Christ.
How familiar we are with the words - "The Holy Ghost said -
Separate Me Barnabas and Paul unto the work whereto I have
called them." The eternal purpose of God concerns every member
of the Body of Christ and He says in the church to those who are
"ministering to the Lord," "now I have put My hand upon
so-and-so, you put your hands on them for Me," "and when they
had laid their hands upon them they sent them forth." That is
the order of spiritual effectiveness. And then in the goings and
directions and the ministries, "the Spirit suffered them not,"
or they went "bound in the Spirit," and it is one hundred
percent effectiveness whenever the Holy Ghost is in the
ascendency in the administration of the Body of Christ.
But you see how the administration requires the Cross, the
searching of our motives by the Cross, the crucifying of our
flesh in the church (and there seems sometimes to be a great
deal more flesh in the church than out of it) the bringing to
death of our personal interests in the Kingdom of God. Oh, the
Cross must be planted there, ruling us out to rule Him in, so
that "it is no longer I." At every point the Holy Spirit works
by the Cross and the Cross works out to the Holy Spirit. This is
all poorly said, and one is overwhelmed with the enormous amount
that is gathered up in this, but our time is gone, and we will
not stay further. We will consider the other things later, as to
salvation and the second coming, and then the other circles: the
nations of the World, the realm of spiritual hierarchies, of the
super-heavenlies - the celestials.
The Lord hold us to this fragment of His revelation and open the
eyes of our understanding.