The Threefold Identification With Christ

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 2 - The Practical Outworking of Identification With Christ

Reading: Lev. 8:14,18,22,24.

In chapter one we looked at these three offerings: the sin offering, the burnt offering, and the ram of consecration.

The Sin Offering

What I want to add now is this. This is the foundation of our being the Lord's, and the Lord takes a very practical attitude towards this foundation. He does not allow it to be merely a matter of doctrine, truth and teaching, rather does He require that we in Christ should stand in the real, living, practical meaning of this threefold foundation, and the Lord will apply Himself to make us understand and know that we have no position at all as Christians except on this foundation. We have sooner or later to come right up against this fact. It will be like a wall before us, and we shall not get on until we have recognized that the Lord requires that we stand intelligently and understandingly upon the ground which He has provided and established.

He will require, and does continually require, that we do know that with Him there is no place for that which has been put outside the camp. And we are being tested continually on that one thing - how much are we bringing in what God has put out? How much are we allowing of ourselves? For it is the self-life that is in alliance with the evil powers. That alliance was formed and that alliance has never been broken in the old creation, the alliance between the evil powers, satan, and the self-life of man.

That phrase 'self-life' goes by different names. It may be the flesh or the sinful body of the flesh, but what it amounts to is that self-life which is alive to the evil powers, and not because of what we are just in ourselves, poor, weak and helpless things, but because of that alliance with something that God will never tolerate. God will never tolerate in His presence as accepted by Him anything that suggests or implies the evil powers. We have to realize that all through the Bible God's attitude of judgment, condemnation, exclusion, does not, in the first place, apply to poor, broken-down humanity. It applies to the forces of evil who are in league with that, who have captured that and operate upon that and through that. God does not see these things apart. He sees in us the working of the enemy through and by our broken-down humanity. It is something definite.

If it were only just ourselves as we are, God would have infinite pity upon us, but He has to take a clear attitude. There is something definite there in us that is evil, and so He has put that outside of the camp in the person of His Son. Sin, as God sees it, is not just negative; sin is positive. Sin always implies the source of sin, the one from whom sin comes, and one who has projected it and who operates upon it. So God never separates between the two. When He judges, He judges the evil powers, and then He calls upon us to repudiate that alliance and be for the other alliance with His Son. But on that side we must remember that God's attitude is one of complete and utter forbidding to the old creation because of its evil alliance, and it has gone out of the camp. He is going to make it very real that He will not have anything in the camp that belongs to that, and that is where we are every day.

Our continuous battle every day is just on that ground. We are being put to the test, and if we did but understand the nature of our reactions, it is, after all, the reaction of the evil forces in our attitude towards the Lord. When He is putting us through the fires of trial, He is saying, "How much of you is coming up in this?" He is very practical. On that side, then, the Lord makes utter demands, and He is working that thing out in us.

So in the case of the outworking, from that standpoint we find constant uprisings of something of the old which is not just the poor reaction of our natural life. There is something sinister about it, something evil, something which is constantly trying to cut in between us and God, to bring a question between us and God: a doubt, unbelief where God is concerned, to bring in something positive to separate us from God. And the whole of our discipline in God's hands is in that very direction. Will we, under test and trial, when we are being put through it, will we allow the old thing to rise up and govern the situation and dictate our course as to what we are going to do? When that happens, then we see all those things that issue. We see people departing from the Lord, throwing it all up, as they say, giving it all up; we see people losing their spirit of triumph. We are under test, and the question is: are we going to simply stand on God's ground and repudiate all that other and not let it in? God is watching for that.

Now we put our hands upon this bullock of sin offering and when we do it, we say, "All that which belongs to that evil alliance - out! No room for that here!" We are tested on that a hundred times every day. Are we going to keep it in? The Lord says, "I have put that out, I can have nothing to do with it, I stand back; it is for you to put it where I put it." When we have recognized this fundamental thing, then we are ready for the next step, the enjoyment of the other side, the positive side.

The Burnt Offering

Here is the whole burnt offering. Here is something which is to the pleasure of God, which God has brought right into the centre of the camp, which He delights to have there and accepts wholly: the whole burnt offering, the Son of His love offered to His perfect satisfaction. That cannot be alongside of the other. The one must be repudiated in order that the other may be apprehended, so that when the right attitude is taken towards the thing which is forbidden of God, put outside by God, then we can take the next step. We can put our hands on the Lord Jesus and say, "Yes, that excluded thing is what I am by nature, but this which is brought in is what I am by the grace of God: not what I am, but what He is. So I lay hands upon the One accepted by God, and I am accepted in Him, and now I find myself not under the frown of God, but under the light of His countenance, and can enjoy the positive side when I have fixed my attitude towards that other." Then from that point, life begins on a new basis - "henceforth unto Him" - the ram of consecration.

The Ram of Consecration

You see, it is utterly impossible, and it would have been utterly impossible for the Lord Jesus to live that life of delight in doing the Father's will if He had not, right at the beginning, taken the position of the bullock, the sin offering. His Jordan baptism into death was a figurative statement that He took the place there of the bullock of the sin offering, that into this realm nothing of that old nature representatively was going to be allowed, and now it was unto the Father. The Father was able to say when He came out of the water (not when He went in), "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." There is your ram of burnt offering.

But now from that point, the Jordan, He moves, and it is positive again. It is not just passive, it does not just happen, He is challenged immediately by those very evil forces. And from that moment onwards He is pursued, assailed, beset by them all the time, trying to get Him to do something in His own interest, not to refer everything to the Father. From that moment it is a deliberate setting of Himself in conflict. It is not a struggle against sin in Himself now, but it is the conflict with the evil powers who are trying to get an impingement upon Him in some way, and He is resisting every suggestion that would come in between Him and His Father if He were to follow it. But now there is no place for Him: it is the Father's will in all things. That is the ram of consecration. The hands were laid upon it, both hands. The whole man said, "The old natural life is out in Christ. Christ, acceptable to God, is my basis of acceptance, and being on that ground by faith, everything is unto God" - utter consecration.

The Process of Learning

If I were to add one word, it would still be of emphasis that we have to learn one thing. It is this: that the Lord is not going to try and build up a Christian life in our case, if He has His full will, it is simply upon the little child's basis of asking and giving. The little child will go to the parent and ask for something the parent may give. The child goes away and takes the thing with it and comes back and asks for something else. You might say that that is building up a very good understanding in the child of the parents, but I say, no, it is not developing intelligence and understanding, it is not going to make for a strong child; that can only go on for so long. But if the parent has the interests of the child at heart, for that child to be something more than a little child all his life who asks for something and gets it right away, the parents will adopt new measures before long. And if we, in the intention of God, are to be of any account to Him, we shall find that asking and receiving is not just so mechanical as all that.

It does not mean that we shall not receive, but we will receive along another line, in different ways altogether. The thing will happen, but when it happens it will happen in such a way that we wonder if it has happened. There is a mighty mountain; we ask the Lord to remove the mountain, we make a terrific thing out of it. The Lord says, "That mountain is not a problem, it does not exist where I am concerned, but I have some interest where you are concerned. When I have what I am after in that, you will find the mountain is not there any longer, it has gone, the problem has dissolved." You'll say, "Was there ever such a problem? It has been so easily solved!"

Are we in that place where we are looking for some answer on the part of God in some form that will just leave us on the having asked and received basis of a little child? Or are we on this line: "Lord, You may have something tremendous to do in me in answer; there may be something necessary where I am concerned before You can give me the answer; now give me patience and faith to wait for the answer until You have done the thing in me that makes it possible for that answer to be given. I believe then that that huge mountain will pass out of existence, and I shall wonder if it did exist at all."

The thing is, what is God after just now? We feel that an answer in this way is necessary and at once, and we get worked up over this thing, and the whole question of faith in God arises acutely. If we do not get an answer within the time we feel we ought to have it, can we believe the Lord? Can we trust the Lord? And the enemy is there on the spot with his insinuation: "The Lord is not listening to you, He is taking no notice, He is not a bit interested, He is not concerned at all; give it all up, do something else". The enemy is always there during this time of intense testing of faith.

What is the answer? How are you going to meet it? I find it is this: "Lord, there is the problem, there is the situation, I have laid it before You. You know quite well that I mean business, that I am utter as far as I know; but there is evidently something with which this situation is related which has to be dealt with. I have to have a fresh lesson, a deeper work of grace, to come to a new position of stronger faith, so that if You do not answer me, I am not just going to give it up and to lose my confidence. Something evidently is necessary in order that You do answer that; I concentrate upon what is necessary, not upon the answer." And the whole question arises: can we maintain ascendancy of faith when the game is going against us, when the battle seems to be in favour of the enemy? It is so easy to be on top when things are going well, and then to be temperamental when things are a bit difficult and to get under the weather. That is the whole issue. It is all focused upon that.

The Lord is saying, "Well, where are you?" There is a phrase in Scripture which I would never use of myself, nevertheless it is there. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him" (Job 13:15). I do not suppose any of us would boastingly make that declaration; one man said it and meant it. But that is the objective of the Lord. It is in that direction the Lord is working with us.

Will faith hold on to God when it seems that God is against us? How do we want God for us? As a little child – "Give me this; if You do, I shall know You are for me; if You withhold, as a little child I say that You are against me." If I were grown up, I would say, "Perhaps You are more for me in withholding it than You would be if You gave it to me." God is not dealing with us all the time as little children.

Spiritual value, measure, stature and usefulness demands some position with God that is not easily shaken, however He may feel it wise to act towards us. It is rock people that He needs to bear the strain. Oh, do not make any mistake; time is nothing with God in this matter. It is spiritual position that is everything with God. So, while we are not going to be careless and slack and cease to be deeply exercised about it, our attitude is, "Lord, not just that culmination in the definite answer, but what will make possible Your answering? It is far more important to me that You should have ground upon which You can answer." The Lord may think that it is far more important to get us to a rock-like position of faith by withholding and hiding and being silent than by just coming out to us.

We would say, "If only He did it, how it would strengthen our faith!" We would find that was, after all, only superficial. It does not work that way, and having had an immediate answer a few times, we should always be expecting it to be like that, and we would have a terrible time when the Lord changed over and began to withhold. Satan would come in with double force and say, "The Lord used to answer your prayer, you only had to ask, and He gave; there must be something wrong now." The enemy's ground has to be taken from us and we have to come to the place where when the Lord is not answering as we feel necessary, we are before the Lord and say, "Lord, You do the thing that is necessary to make that answer, and when You get where You want to with me, I shall find the answer has already been given." There was really no great trouble about that thing itself, but it was this. God is laying His foundation and is calling upon us to be very practical on these matters which we have regarded as Christian doctrine of identification with Christ.

But here is your threefold identification with Christ: outside for all that is of self; unto God in all that is of Christ; and then day by day, hour by hour, the two things; not that, but this. I delight to do Thy will, and I hate all the other.