"One New Man"

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 5 - The Witness of the One New Man

"For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:27-28).

You notice that there are really two things said here. One is the individual; "as many of you as were baptized into Christ" - that points to what has taken place in the individual case of the believer. Then the second thing is that all such individuals have, in putting on Christ, become a one Man. It is a double statement as to an individual act resulting in a corporate consequence or realisation - one Man. That one Man made up of all the believers who have been baptized into Christ, that one Man, that Body, takes up all that is true of Christ - "did put on Christ" - and represents it, expresses it or is intended so to do. It is a taking on and then a showing forth.

It seems to me that that is the essence of what the Lord meant when He said to His disciples after His resurrection, "Ye shall receive power, the Holy Spirit coming upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto Me" (Acts 1:8). That is only saying, in other words, "You will express what is true of Me", or "I shall be expressed by you in the power of the Holy Spirit". And when you ask what are the things which are true of Christ which are taken up and expressed by the Holy Spirit through the church, the Body of Christ, those who have been baptized into Christ and have put on Christ, there are very many things.

The things of Christ are countless, but there are several major things; indeed, I think there are four. The four great things which are brought out in the New Testament as the witness of the church by the Holy Spirit are His death, His resurrection, His ascension and His exaltation. And when it is said that we have been baptized into Christ and have put on Christ (which carries with it, of course, the receiving of the Holy Spirit for putting on Christ) it is only another way of saying that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, has become resident, for "if any man hath not the Spirit, he is none of His" (Rom. 8:9), and "Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father" (Gal. 4:6). It is all one and the same thing: putting on Christ and receiving the Holy Spirit as resident within.

When that is true, then in the intention and thought of God, these four things are to become living expressions by the Holy Spirit in us and through us. I just want to say the very briefest word about them. They constitute a challenge as well as a testimony; that is, a declaration of fact resulting in an interrogation as to how far the facts obtain in our case.

Christ Crucified

As to the first then, the Holy Spirit constitutes the Lord's people, the true believer and believers. He is an instrument for the expression of the death of Christ. The death of Christ has many meanings and values. There is only one of them that I intend to mention now, it is the witness of the veiled face.

We may call it the most awful thing that Scripture knows and speaks of, the most terrifying thing to the soul of man, the thing which caused the psalmist the uttermost remorse, was when God hid His face from him. How the psalmist cries, "Hide not Thy face from me". You can contemplate nothing worse than that, than the real consciousness, the real experience, of God hiding His face; to wake up to the fact that God's face is no longer towards you, He has turned His face away and nothing that you can do can persuade Him to turn His face back towards you. That is terrible, the deepest of all agonies, the blackest of all darknesses.

As no one else in history, the Lord Jesus entered into that experience in a fuller sense than it was said historically to Israel in their captivity. In a deeper and more awful sense, it was true of the Lord Jesus. "For a small moment have I forsaken thee" (Isa. 54:7). "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" (Matt. 27:46), He cried, and it was the utterest forsakenness. While He was in the position in which He was at that moment, there was nothing in this universe that could bring back the face of God. It may have been, so far as time is concerned, a moment; we do not know. There was darkness over the face of the earth until the ninth hour. If ever you and I have experienced even a little of what it means to grieve the Lord, to grieve the Spirit, to register the Holy Spirit's grief in our hearts, we know that it is the agony of eternity, we know that at once time loses its significance; it is awful. And the Lord Jesus tasted this death as no man or woman, or accumulation of men or women in all history, have ever tasted it. It was in essence eternal death, the veiled face, the turning away of His countenance, the forsaking.

We know why, and we know from what, that face was turned, for there in representation, in identification, He took the place of that which no longer had any place in the favour of God - a creation, a nature, a state of things in which you and I and all men were involved by nature. And as He entered into that and embodied that in that moment of the Cross, the veiled face said with awful and terrible registration: God is finished with that, that is a realm and system of things which no longer has any approval from God.

All I want to say about it now is this, that the Holy Spirit takes that up in those who have put on Christ. And the witness of the church must ever be in the power of the Holy Spirit against a whole order of things with which God has nothing to do, and it begins in us, for the powerful witness of the Spirit in our hearts is ever to make us know that with which God cannot associate Himself. That is the meaning of every gesture and restraint of the Spirit of God in our hearts if we touch death as opposed to Life.

This is where we need so much more enlarging. The fact is that the Holy Spirit has taken up death and made it His very instrument against death, made death His prisoner and His instrument to witness in us against that which means death. I mean this, that if you and I touch, indulge, associate with that which is not acceptable to the Lord, the Spirit of God in us witnesses by means of death in us against that. We touch something that means death to our spirit. We know we have touched something that is not of the Lord. The Lord is against that, and it has brought its registration of death in us.

So the Spirit of God has taken up death, the death of the Lord Jesus, which is a mighty thing. The death of the Lord Jesus is a powerful witness. The death of the Lord Jesus says, "No", eternally "No" from God to a whole realm and order of things and the Spirit of God registers that "No" in us. When we have put on Christ, we have been baptized into His death. That is not something which happens at some time in our lives and is past, upon which we look back.

The church is here collectively and corporately to say God's "No", and that thing has got to be registered in the heart of every one of us. The death of Christ is a mighty, potent thing. What I would like to do would be to spend a considerable amount of time in showing how the Lord maintains in the life and history of the church His place for the death of Christ, but as something unto Life, as something positive, not to keep us in the realm of death; but the power of the death of Christ is maintained.

You can see it right through the life of Israel in type and here it is in the New Testament. You find it again and again brought in and introduced in the experience of the church and in the experience of God's servants in the New Testament. "Death worketh in us", says the apostle, "we... are always delivered unto death" (2 Cor. 4:11,12). "But I thought when we came to the Lord and received Life and were joined with Him in resurrection, that that was the end of death!" In the matter of condemnation and judgment and separation from God, yes, but not the end of death as a means to keep us straight, to educate us, and to make us know the way of Life, for we do not know the way of Life experimentally except by means of death. We learn the way of Life so often by the pathway of death. We just say this and pass on, that the Holy Spirit takes up this matter of the death of Christ and makes it a mighty power of witness against what is not of God. It is the Spirit's witness of the hidden or the veiled face of God, God's 'No'! Most of us have experience of that in some way, in some measure, the Spirit's saying "No!" and when He says "No" in us, it has a deadening effect, it is something of death. Go that way and you go in the way of death, and the Spirit witnesses by keeping death alive. Do you understand what I mean? Keeping the death of Christ as a powerful thing. Well, that is the first thing.

Christ Risen

And then the second thing about the Lord Jesus which is to be by the Spirit witnessed to in us and witnessed to through us, is His resurrection. These two go together. The church is here, the Lord's people are here, having put on Christ, to be an expression of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. We are so familiar with that that we could hardly say anything fresh and perhaps very little need be said. But let it be understood, for it needs to be brought home to us continually, that the Lord's object is always Life. Whatever way He may take us through, whatever path and experience, His end is Life and this Life is the resurrection Life of His Son. Let us comfort our hearts with this.

We pass through very many dark and terrible experiences which seem like the overflowing of death, but the end, in the will and purpose of God, is always Life. We talk about "ups and downs" but with the true children of God it should always be the "downs and ups", for God's end is up and not down, God's end is Life and not death. We may taste death, know death's fight, but the final thing for the child of God is Life. That is the testimony of the Spirit, that is the expression of the Lord Jesus - Life, and Life out of death.

The next thing is ascension. He was "received up into glory" (1 Tim. 3:16). This is the Holy Spirit's testimony.

Now you see the witness of the veiled or hidden face - the witness of the unveiled face - that is, the resurrection, for towards this Man, this resurrection Man, the Lord looks. He is no longer the man under judgment and condemnation, being made a curse for us, bearing our sin from which the face of God must be hidden, but that is all done, the veil has gone, the cloud has rolled away and the face is turned again. The light of the countenance is lifted upon Him and He dwells forever in the light. The resurrection is the light of His countenance. It is the unveiled face.

Christ Ascended

Then the third thing is ascension, the witness of the opened heaven. The fact that He was received up into glory declares forever that the heavens are no longer closed.

The first Adam had Paradise closed and locked and barred to him and he was driven out. The Last Adam has the Paradise of God opened to Him; the heavens are opened, He is received up into glory and the witness of the Holy Spirit now is that everything for, and in, and of those who have put on Christ, is of that heavenly order and nature. The church throughout is clothed in blue; it is a heavenly thing, it takes its character from Christ in heaven. It is, to use a phrase not very much liked, it is other-worldly. The Lord's people who have put on Christ have put on a heavenly Christ and are a heavenly people. They are other than what is here. They are different - and let us be very careful that we do not try to evade or avoid that difference. There are a lot who seek to cover it up, who are afraid of it, who would avoid its being recognised, but it is in this fact of Christ in heaven with its meaning for His people here on this earth that the real power of their witness is found. When He was here on the earth the thing that struck home, the thing that upset things so much, the thing that irritated, the thing that drew out the honest and condemned, the dishonest, was that He was so different, so other; He was outside, He was not of this order. It was that that struck home, it was that that affected things and people. There was something about Him mysterious and strange; He was different.

That is how it has to be with every Christian. We try by our manners and our language and in many other ways, not to let it be seen and felt that we are different. We think that we are going to get an advantage or have influence if we can hide that and be as others in this world, talk and act as they talk and act, not let the contrast be felt too much. It does not work that way. It is that mystic difference of Christ in heaven whom you have put on, which is the very power of your witness of the Holy Spirit's fact. It will only be people who for the time being are not concerned at all about eternal things, who have no reason for the moment in their experience to be distressed, who would be in any way affected by your hiding it. I mean, you could win them, but what is the good of winning them to your side if they are not concerned about spiritual things?

If a man or woman is really in need, in soul distress, the person they want is another person, not a man or woman of this world, but someone who has something this world cannot give. Then is your advantage, then is your hour, then is the Holy Spirit's opportunity, and we must live for those moments and not allow ourselves to be ensnared into hiding our light and compromising our testimony by trying to be even with people here. Let us be careful that we do not destroy one of the very features of our relationship with the Lord Jesus, which is this mystic other-worldliness, this fact that we belong to a heavenly order and do not belong to this order. Let it come out, for it is the powerful thing that is going to have the effect.

And, finally, Christ exalted.

Christ Exalted

You will see that the four things were the witness of the church at the beginning: His death - God's No; His resurrection - God's Yes; His ascension - the witness of another world, the impact of another nature, the opened heaven; His exaltation - to put it in other words, Jesus Christ is Lord, "At the right hand of God exalted, a Prince and a Saviour" (Acts 5:31). "We preach... Jesus Christ as Lord" (2 Cor. 4:5). The Spirit's witness is to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The church is here to express His Lordship, that He is Lord, that He has dominion: His Name is above every name.

May the Lord use this hurried, incomplete word to revive in us the sense of our calling and of what we are here for: to be an effective fourfold testimony in the power of the Spirit, to Christ crucified, Christ risen, Christ ascended, and Christ exalted; and, if you want a fifth thing: Christ coming again.