The Octave of Redemption (Transcript)
by T. Austin-Sparks
With the octave of redemption, this evening we come to the third: the Cross. And we are approaching each one of these aspects of redemption with the question: why? Why the incarnation? Why the earthly life, thirty-three years and a bit? This evening: why the Cross?
We have said that these eight notes or aspects follow one another in a harmonious sequence, each one leading to the other and following the other. Our answer to the first question, why the incarnation, was threefold: the redemption of man, the reconstitution of man, and the perfection and glorifying of man. In that we saw mainly the need of redemption, and the need of reconstitution.
In the afternoon in seeking to answer the second question, why the earthly life, we sought to show that unto which redemption and reconstitution, perfecting and glorifying is to be brought; that is, in the earthly life of our Lord as Son of Man - the model - unto which redemption, in the first place, is needed; unto which reconstitution, in the second place, is needed; and unto which perfecting and glorifying is needed in the third place. The earthly life being, in the purpose of God, so fully lived under every test to set forth the different kind of person that God had in view through redemption and through reconstitution and through perfecting unto glorification.
It is necessary for us to take up the inclusive issue of all these phases (seeing how one leads to the other) and at what each one does represent.
And let me say here, before I go further, the point is that God has put right down into this world, into the midst of man, a kind of Man, not only better, more or less, than other men, but different altogether from other men; and has, in effect, said, "That is the Man that I have in view, and eternally it has been My purpose to conform to that image". How important it is, therefore, for us to understand the real nature and meaning of the life of our Lord Jesus as lived here on this earth. It is not just a beautiful story, of a country somewhere in this world, and a man living in it and working in it and teaching in it, far away and long ago, but right up to date, a Man presented to us as altogether different from us in constitution and yet as God's pattern for His working in us. That's the important thing.
Now, that leads us, those two lead us to the third: why the Cross?
Why the Cross?
Let us move up to this by looking for a moment at the record, and trying to get into the very atmosphere, evil as it was, of what took place on that day which is being commemorated today [Good Friday].
I want to read two verses. They are in Peter's discourse on the day of Pentecost. The second chapter of the book of the Acts, verses 22 and 23: "Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God unto you by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did by Him in the midst of you, even as ye yourselves know; Him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye by the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay". That is where we stop today.
If we could get inside of those words, and really grasp their significance, we should have the answer to our question: why the Cross?
Now let us try to sense what was happening. I don't know if you have been reading today or recently the records and accounts of the crucifixion. I wish that we had been able to read them here this evening, but perhaps you will be able to recall. On one side it is impossible, taking everything into account, to fail to recognise a tremendous on-drive with this matter of crucifying Jesus. This is not just human. There is something here of an impelling force, an impelling, evil force behind it. No argument will stem it, no appeal will weaken it; no consideration whatever will influence it.
It is as though there was a determination which was going to carry this thing through - no matter what it means - to the last, the very last thing when they cry, "His blood be on us and on our children". I say from that side, there's a fierce, awful, and terrible on-drive of the evil powers to do Him to death, and nothing whatever can stem that tidal wave of evil.
On the other side, there's Pilate - Pilate by every recourse conceivable by him, seeking both personally to get out of this and officially, to avoid it, to stop it. And see how much there is that comes in to give him a case, to make his position a strong one, even to the message from his wife: "Have thou nothing to do with that just Man". "Look here Pilate, it's just no good. Wriggle, argue, say and do what you like - it's no good: it's going to happen. You may be held responsible from one standpoint, but you can't help yourself." The on-drive of evil forces, the helplessness of man and office and temporal powers, and so many other factors might have come, might have come in to weigh in this issue. But no! No.
Yes the devil may be blindly forging on, and man may be helplessly trying to counter; but behind the devil and man is the "determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God". The Cross is God's crisis in which He says: "We are going to have this thing out, we are going to settle this issue at long last, once and for all. And nothing is going to either misconstrue it or prevent it. The devil may mean murder; I know what I mean by this. The devil may be blindly driving on to destroy Him, but I know what I mean by it. I will take that up in relation to eternal counsels and foreknowledge. Man may try to stop it, prevent it: but no - the hour has come, and we are going to settle this thing. We're going to settle this thing! This is the Crisis of the Ages; the whole issue is going to be settled today."
But what issue? What issue? Of course, the whole thing is far, far too great and many-sided for us to cover. It reaches so far back and so far down, so far up and so far on. And all that we know about the Cross is only a little compared with what we are going to know through eternity. We can only say a very little about this, and crowd it into one or two things which answer the question: why the Cross? The answer, I have said, is inherent in the words which we have read from Acts 2.
What is the issue? What is the crisis? Why the Cross? Whenever you are in the presence of the Cross, whether in type in the Old Testament - the altar, the sacrifice, the fire, and so on - or in reality in the New Testament, you are always in the presence of three things: sin, righteousness and judgment.
But when you have said that (and it seems so apparent) you've got to go further and say we have sinned. Whenever we think of the Cross, or speak of the Cross, we always think of sin. But what do we mean by sin, or what does the Bible mean by sin - this far-reaching thing, multi-sided thing, this octopus with its countless limbs and suckers - this thing called 'sin'?
What Does the Bible Mean by Sin?
If the Cross of the Lord Jesus was the crisis, and God was going to settle this thing once and for all, what was it that had come to the crisis? What was it that He was going to settle? Let us here get away from sins - we are not talking about sins. Sins are only the fruit, or the outcrop of the root: sin. Sin does not begin with the things that we do or do not do. Sin is something far deeper than our commissions or our omissions; our wrong-doings. Sins may be forgiven, sins may be remitted; but sin is another thing. It's another thing.
Now let us trace this thing as far as we can. You see, in the Old Testament, sin, even before Adam's act, centred in God and His "alternative"; God - or an alternative. That's the focal point of sin. There is an inclusive word in the Old Testament, a word which includes and covers all other words used for sin, and that word is 'iniquity'. Iniquity: that covers, that includes such words as 'transgression', 'trespass', and other words. The inclusive, comprehensive word for sin is 'iniquity', and not until we understand that word do we understand really what sin is.
It's not my intention to talk about roots and derivations, but you will believe me when I tell you that this word 'iniquity' at its very root means 'rebellion', 'lawlessness'. Not just the violation of certain laws, you see, but a spirit of rebellion and lawlessness. That found its first expression, so far as the Bible tells us, before Adam sinned. Adam was only caught in something that had already started. The rebellion took place somewhere where God is, in relation to God's purposes and, we have reason to believe, His purposes concerning His Son, Jesus Christ, as Heir, 'appointed heir of all things'. Rebellion was found in the heart of one and then disseminated by that one amongst angels, and a whole rebellious hierarchy was cast out, and we are told that they are reserved in chains unto everlasting judgment.
Rebellion - and that is iniquity, you see - iniquity is rebellion, it is lawlessness. "Ye by the hand of lawless men..." got right to the heart of the thing, you see. This drive is from hell itself: no law. For reason, consideration, argument, sympathy, appeal, wisdom, or anything, not even to the very children's well-being - no, this thing has run amok, it has broken loose, it has come out at last. There has come into the centre of this universe One who is the focal point of it all, and He has drawn it right out. Drawn it right out, no longer can it go masked, no longer can it work secretly; it's out. He's drawn it out, He is the occasion of it. They surge round Him; to use the prophetical words of the Psalm, "they compassed me about like bees, they compassed me about like bees" or to use the apostolic words, "He stripped off principalities and powers". He has drawn them out.
Yes, in the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God the thing is up for decision. This whole matter of basic, fundamental rebellion, which started in satan, spread to a host of angels who entered into complicity with him and came down into this world. And by man opening the door, as we showed this morning, the door of his soul, the thing came into him. And believe it or not, every child of Adam has that deep-rooted thing in his or her nature: rebellion against God. And sooner or later you will discover it, if you never have discovered it, let God put you to some of the tests to which He put His Son and see whether there is any rebellion in your heart, in your nature, against God! We know that under testing, trying, opposition, and suffering, we find that it is there, ready to come up. It's ready to come up. It's in us, it's in us.
Well, that was taken account of by God and He said, "We are going to settle this"; and that's the meaning of the Cross. Firstly, it had to be dragged out in all its ugliness, all its evil, all its sinister character, it's lawlessness. This spirit of rebellion is dragged out and in the Cross, not just the thing itself in abstract, but the person responsible for it was met and dealt with.
Do remember that sin is never looked upon just as something abstract; it is always personal - it is always a matter of satan. Of satan! The whole question is always this: is satan getting an advantage, is satan being given ground?
You see, dear friends, we make light of these things, we think of 'failure', we speak about 'weakness' and 'imperfections'. We get offended, we get upset; we lose love, or something like that happens and perhaps we lose our temper; something like that, and then we say that's our imperfection, that's our weakness, that's our failing, and our faults. Well, it may be, but God always says: "That is ground for satan", and that is what makes it so heinous, so much more evil. Because, you see, it's satan who is trying all the time to work it up and produce it and then come upon it and use it - both as an accusation against us to bring us back into that bondage from which we are redeemed, and to have an accusation to God.
It's this personal thing, always remember that is the matter of iniquity, it's sin. God does not look at sin apart from that one: it's always that one that He has in view. And He would say to us: "Ah yes, but don't forget: if you slipped up, that's not just something in itself, that's very good ground for satan and unless you take it away from him, and get it cleared up and covered, he is going to enlarge that, establish that, consolidate that, and it's going to be very much more difficult presently for you to clear it up. This is not just something like that, an incident, a mistake, a mishap; there is a person, there is a whole evil system at work in relation to that."
Yes, and what is the effect that he is seeking to bring about? Something antagonistic to God: rebellion! Rebellion and lawlessness. The Lord Jesus, while He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, was the Lamb of God that took away the sin of the world. Don't you think it's very wonderful that seeing sin, iniquity, its rebellion, its lawlessness, is this thing that is always breaking away and running riot against God, that a Lamb should deal with that? What is a lamb? A lamb is the very symbol of yieldedness, of yieldedness. "He was led, led as a lamb to the slaughter": no rebellion there, no lawlessness there. "Led as a lamb, led as a lamb to the slaughter": exactly the other extreme from this lawless, rebellious thing.
The Lamb of God that taketh away the sin by the utterness of His yieldedness to God. He undid the unyieldedness of satan. I think it's impressive. You see the principles that are at work, mighty principles embodied in two persons: the principle of lawlessness in satan, and the principle of yieldedness in Christ. And these two things are in mortal combat, and the Lamb overcomes. See?
Doesn't it say much for the work of the Cross, the effect of the Cross? Do you see why the Cross, and why the Cross in you and in me? What we are to inherit from the Cross? What it means as an abiding principle of activity in us?
If, if the Cross really does work in us, we shall to God become more and more and ever more yielded, unresisting, compliant - of the Spirit of the Lamb. What a conflict that was! It was the conflict between two natures: the conflict between sin in this particular sense: iniquity, rebellion and lawlessness, between that and "Lo, I am come to do Thy will, O God", and "a body, a body hast Thou given Me", by which on the tree He dealt with that other thing. By that He dealt with the embodied iniquity of this universe in satan. "Now, now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out". I say it's hopeless to try and cope with this matter of the Cross, but it's an immense thing that happened then.
I come back to this: God said, "We will settle this here and now, once and for all." Sin, in the sense in which we have spoken of it, was met in its full tide, in its full tide: 'Jordan overflowing all its banks' - what a tide! What a tide, yes, it was met there, it was met there and fully and finally met there in righteousness.
Now, if we said that righteousness is just the opposite of sin, then we should have said in a word nearly all that could be said about it, but then we must look at that matter of:
Righteousness.
We begin with the word. iIt's an inclusive word, just as 'iniquity' is inclusive of other words for sin, so 'righteousness' is inclusive of other words. There is the word 'holiness', for instance; there is the word 'sanctify'; there is the word 'consecrate'. All those are gathered into this word: 'righteousness'. What does it mean?
I do hope you will be able to grasp this, and retain it, I am sure you won't forget sin. It's written in deep, dark, black letters now: sin. Sin is rebellion; sin is lawlessness; sin is that which throws off the government of God and puts Him out of His place and makes choice of the alternative to God. While we don't mean that, it's not thought out and intended, but that's what is implied and that is what is involved. When you come to righteousness, to better understand that word, you have to truly understand that word 'iniquity' or 'sin'.
And what, is the very essence of this word 'righteousness'? Righteousness, my dear friends, is that nature of God which is perfectly consistent, perfectly pure, perfectly transparent. Different symbols are used for the nature of God: the crystal, the jasper. It is that in which there is absolutely no mixture, no two things which are contrary to each other. That, the Bible makes perfectly clear, is what is most abhorrent to God. If you want to find out what God abhors more than anything else, it is mixture: two contrary elements brought together, two different realms brought into association, the two being different in constitution. You know some of the Old Testament types of that: "Thou shalt not plough with the ox and the ass yoked together. Thou shalt not wear cotton and wool together in thy garment". You see, these are two different realms. Cotton is supposed to suppress fleshly heat; wool draws it out: so you've got conflict in the two things. Do you see what I mean?
And these are only simple illustrations or figures of something very deep. God hates mixture. His very nature is against contrary elements. His nature is absolutely transparent, consistent, pure - find me more words for that, you understand. And that is righteousness. It was for that that the prophets were always appealing. Unrighteousness was found in dealings; that is, people were being robbed by deceivable methods. It wasn't straight, it wasn't square, it wasn't fair - you see all these ideas come into this matter. And this is righteous. Satan is the great mixer, the great deceiver, the great corrupter, the great polluter. There is nothing transparent about him, nothing straight about him; he has always come round, in some way, to get an advantage by unfairness, by cowardice.
Now, the Cross of the Lord Jesus was the crisis of this matter of righteousness. It was the other side. "He offered Himself without spot unto God". Here is something: there's no mixture here, no blemish here, no two things here; this is all straight, this is all clear, this is all one thing, this is all absolutely pure and transparent. You cannot find anything in Him that's blemish or corruption. There is no [clouding] film and in Him there is no darkness.
He had settled this matter of righteousness in His own Person and body, and established righteousness forever, in type, as He came to His baptism, which was prefiguring His Cross. He said: "Suffer it to be so now: thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness". He satisfied God on this matter of His own nature, of His own name as something absolutely pure. And when Jesus said, "Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness", God responded immediately and said, "My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased - the offering is what I want, the offering is what I seek, the offering satisfies Me." He offered Himself without spot unto God. The question of righteousness is settled in Him, in the Cross.
Sin. Righteousness.
Judgment
What is that? We usually limit the idea of judgment to one thought, that is, penalty. The word 'judgment' is a larger word than that in the Bible. Judgment, we could say, has three parts.
First of all, judgment means bringing everything to have a decision made upon it, as to what it is. What it is. To take an illustration from the book of Daniel, you remember Belshazzar's feast, and the handwriting on the wall, and Daniel brought in to interpret. The first part is: "Thou art weighed in the balances". That's judgment to begin with: being brought to be weighed up. What is this? The determination, the determination of what it is.
Secondly, the putting of it into its proper category. When it has been determined what it is, that's the place to which it belongs.
And thirdly, the carrying out of the sentence.
That's judgment in its threefold meaning. It's a big word. The Cross was that. It was God saying, "We will settle what this thing is in its nature; we will put it into its proper place to which it belongs; and we will deal with it fully and finally." That was judgment. That was the meaning of the Cross. The thing was determined as to what it is: sin. It is not called by other names; it's called lawlessness, by its proper name: rebellion. That's what it is, that's what sin is. It's against God. And all that belongs to a realm that is away from God - the wilderness, the desolation, the place of the scapegoat, the place of the driven-away creature - from the very presence of God to where it belongs.
When He bore our sins, when He was made sin for us, when, in that dire moment He was made a curse for us, He was put in the place to which you and I belong. The thing was settled as to what it was, and driven out from the presence of God; the door closed upon it, and the face of God forever turned away from it. The judgment was carried out.
Yes, there are two sides to the Cross, but that was the one side, the judgment. Of what? No, not the judgment of our sins, that may be included, but the judgment of our sin. Our sin, we know what that is, He was made sin for us, He Who knew no sin, "that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him". That we might be brought to the place where there are no two things, no two things in conflict, no two contradictory elements. Believe me, dear friends, that begins, that begins on the day when we (to use common language) when we come to the Cross, when we come to the Lord Jesus and accept the work of His Cross for ourselves, that begins. There is brought into us that transparent, pure, holy, righteous life of the Lord Jesus. It's given! It's a thing without mixture. We are mixture, but that Life has no mixture.
And then, when we live by that Life (and this is a test as well as a statement of fact) if you and I live by the Life of the Son of God, we are going to become more and more transparent people: absolutely honest, absolutely straightforward, absolutely square. And anything, anything that is not like that about us says somehow or other we are countering or not moving with the Life. The Cross involves us in that.
So the end of the Bible gives us the picture of the City, which is one of the symbols of the Church as we shall see, and its river is the water of Life, free and clear as crystal. It, in its entire constitution is, as it says, like jasper - all clear. That's the end of the work. So this is a very practical thing about true Christians - Christians who are truly crucified with Christ - there ought to be a steady progressiveness in absolute transparency, farther and farther away from duplicity, from deception, from murkiness, from everything of that kind; clear as the light.
That is the answer, oh, so poorly, imperfectly [given], to why the Cross. Why the Cross? Sin, righteousness - the determination as to which is which: judgment determining, judgment placing. "Thou art weighed in the balances", that's the first stage. "Thou art found wanting", that's the second stage. "Thy kingdom is taken away from you", the third stage. It's all judgment. In the Cross the Lord Jesus effected all that.
Well, I don't want to leave a heaviness, I hope I don't close with any heaviness in the atmosphere, you know it's a wonderful deliverance that the Lord Jesus has wrought for us by His Cross. Just think, just think of what we were involved in! We were involved in satan's sin. We were involved in his rebellion; our very natures are involved in it! But by His Cross He has saved us, "translated us out of the authority of darkness, bringing us into the kingdom of the Son of His love" - set us free, given us another nature, set us on the way, shall I say, to the City of God? Yes, if you understand it's not geography, but spiritual condition; it is not an objective thing, but an inward, subjective state; that condition.
Oh, what a day it will be when we are like that - absolutely free of the last trace and remnant of satan's touch upon our human nature, the trace of the serpent in us! What a great day that will be! But He started us on that way the day in which we came to the Cross. And "He Who hath commenced this good work, will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ". Now I must [stay] there, although it's so all incomplete, the Lord give us understanding.