Austin-Sparks.net

Editor's Letters

by T. Austin-Sparks

November 1927

Beloved of our Lord,

"'Tis life of which our nerves are scant," writes one of our own poets, and to this the scriptures well agree. Said not our Lord, the Great Physician, "I came that they may have life, and have abundance"?

How comes it that of this life we remain so scant, and so dubious even? The Prince of Life has still to declare, perhaps to those who call Him "Lord," - "Ye will not come to Me that ye may have life."

This surely was our attitude as sinners when the lord of death held us in the illusion of that false life, naturally ours, which is spiritual death, "having no hope, and without God in the world." But now, having seen that life (soul) poured out in blood for us on the Cross, a life condemned and sacrificed in our stead, is not the Fountain of His Eternal life opened also for us? Wherefore is our lack?

May it not be that we are still self-centred in our spiritual experience? Are we looking unto Him as the Fountain of that life or seeking to create or to discover one within ourselves? For this Life is in Him; it is the Life of Jesus Ascended, Glorified in the Godhead, and therefore Holy-Ghost-Life, - not a life self-centred even as in our renewed spirit, but life God-centred, proceeding out of that actual Vine of Whom we are branches. "Apart from (that is, severed, or cut-off-from) Me ye can do nothing." Oh, there is a deep distinction here which many failing to discern are impoverished both in life and service. For though I be born again it is not out of myself I live henceforth, but out of God, the Father. And how? By abiding in the Son. And this? By the continual renewings of the Holy Spirit which He desires to shed upon me abundantly, that is, upon my spirit, causing me to know the fulness of God. Life, full, unlimited, and pure thus flows out of the Divine Being into my spirit as I acknowledge the Holy Spirit to be Lord, that is to be the Spirit of the Father and the Son, Who thus make an abode in me.

Beloved, it is the simplicity of that word, "ME." Ye will not come unto Me. We must still and continually come unto Him as by the Spirit. Through Him we have access unto the Father in the fellowship of One Spirit. This is the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus, that as the living Father sent Him into the world, born of the Holy Spirit, and He lived in One Spirit because of the Father, even so we who are now also born of the Holy Spirit through and out of Him, should in like manner live in One Spirit because of Him. Or as He said it, "He that eateth (ruminateth, constantly eateth) Me shall live because, of Me." And so through various homely terms of speech the Lord impresses upon us the reality and the necessity of our partaking of Him.

Let us come unto Him, Jesus, as the Living God, the True God, in Whom and upon Whom by the Eternal Spirit the Invisible Father dwells, - for He says, "Eat, oh friends. Drink, yea, drink abundantly, oh beloved!"

Yours in this desire for Him,
T. Austin-Sparks
T. Madoc-Jeffreys.

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