The Gospel of God Concerning His Son Jesus Christ Our Lord

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 1 - The Eternal Purpose

Reading: Rom. 1:1-17,20; 2 Cor. 4:17-18.

The letter to the Romans is usually regarded as the great New Testament document on the subject of justification by faith. I suppose that anyone who has considered the messages of the different books will immediately state that the letter to the Romans was justification by faith. But that is not all. If it is the main thing, this letter goes a long way beyond justification by faith. It really embraces something of everything. Its range goes back a long way before ever the need for justification by faith arose, and it goes a long way beyond the redemptive program. Its range is from eternity to eternity.

Take one of your New Testament passages, from which you have derived so much comfort. "We know that to them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew... He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified" (Rom. 8:28-30). You see the progressive stages. Foreknowledge away back in eternity past, called in time, justified in time, glorified beyond time.

I think the best title for this letter, after all, is found in a fragment read at the commencement. "Separated unto the gospel of God... concerning His Son". The gospel of God concerning His Son. Consider the letter in the light of that fragment. Also consider the whole of the New Testament in the light of that fragment, and you will find that it governs more than one letter, it governs the whole - the gospel of God concerning His Son. This letter is a comprehensive revelation of God's Son and it is a marvellous revelation of what the gospel of God is.

Now, before we go further, I think that most of us are becoming conscious in a deepening and growing way of the limitation of everything, even in relation to God, that is on this earth. Yes, that which is of God, which is here on this earth, is at best a very limited thing. We start off, if it is our blessed experience and privilege, in the Lord's service as young men and women with a good deal of energy and purpose, and we have feelings that at least something is going to be accomplished and something is going to be seen as the result of all our activities. Yes, there is going to be something to show for the Lord by the time we get through.

The longer we live, the more we become aware of the fact that anything adequate or commensurate that is really going to justify all the experience, spiritual history, and sufferings, anything that will really be a sufficient reward or monument for all the labour and the expenditure, is not going to be seen here. That grows upon us.

I do not want to impose anything middle-aged upon young people, but I am just enunciating a truth, and you need not allow anything I say to weaken your hands in your work. I trust that, before we are through, your hands will be greatly strengthened in the work. But the fact is this, that as we go on, we do become conscious of the fact that the real values are not being seen here. If there are values (and we shall often be tempted by reason of their absence from sight) if there are values at all, they are altogether somewhere else, they are not here, and there is a very real reason why the apostle should say such words as these - "Our light affliction, which is for the moment, works for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. 4:17). Why? "We look not at the things which are seen". That is, if we become occupied with the things which are seen, or, to put that in the more correct way, if we become occupied with seeing things, even our affliction will work to our undoing and our disheartenment, and make us bitter in disappointment, and, in the end - shame. "While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." Afflictions, to work an exceeding and eternal weight of glory, must find us in this attitude, with this definite acceptance that we shall see very little here that will justify all that through which we pass of trial and discipline, adversity and suffering.

We shall see very little, but something is going on in the unseen, it is piling up there, more and more exceedingly an eternal weight, superlative upon superlative. It is in the unseen though, and I believe that that goes to the heart of a very great deal for us. Our trouble is to settle that, to get that really settled. We do want to see something as the result of all our labours and our sufferings. Our cry of disappointment is so often this, 'What is there to show for it?' I believe that that subtle snare has overtaken a great many, and they have determined to go in for the thing that will be seen, they are going to have something to show for Christian work and Christian endeavour, and so they are out to have something to show.

May it not be that, very largely because they are governed by that consideration, because they are occupied with the things which are seen, which are temporal, even for God, in the Name of God, when it comes to the day of weighing real values, that which is eternal may be very small.

It is a fundamental matter. We have, sooner or later, to settle, for our own deliverance, our own heart-rest, that the supreme values are those which are going into the unseen, those which are piling up in glory. While all that we see here is weakness, comparative failure and much that, if we allowed our eyes to rest upon it would take the heart out of us. And it seems to me that the nearer we get to glory, the more this will be the prevailing state, the less we shall see of the success of things on the earth as men count success, and the more we shall have to exercise faith that faithfulness to God is not in vain. To spend our strength in the way of the Lord is not to spend our strength for nought - but it is going to become more and more a matter of faith. If I am not mistaken, that is what is happening today in an inclusive way.

Why am I saying this? It might be just a little homily, hopefully of some help. But there is something so much more bound up with it than that. This is not just to try and encourage us to go on. This is to lead us to the greatest consideration that has ever been presented to men - the thing God is doing, the thing which is the peculiar characteristic of this very dispensation. There was a dispensation when God was doing things on the earth, and it required very little faithfulness to God to get an immediate reaction from God to do it, [it was] something that could be seen. We are amazed, as we read the Old Testament, how quickly a little repentance brought at once a palpable response from God. But we are not in that age now. This is another dispensation. This dispensation is the dispensation which is marked pre-eminently by what God is doing in heaven and what God is gathering in heaven and drawing to heaven. Everything in this dispensation is upward to heaven at once. No sooner is a soul born again, than that name is written in heaven, and from that moment everything for that life is in heaven: from heaven, back to heaven. Why? Because everything is concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is at His right hand.

What is the gospel of God, the good news of God concerning His Son? Oh, justification by faith is only a fragment of that gospel. The gospel of God concerning His Son is gathered up into one familiar fragment, "the purpose which He purposed in Christ" (Eph. 3:11). The gospel of God concerning His Son is the eternal purpose as a whole concerning His Son, and if you want to know what that purpose is, it is "in the fulness of the times to sum up all things in Christ". In the fulness of the times - that has not yet come. That will not have come when the church is raptured; that will not have come in the millennial kingdom. There is a fulness of the times beyond the thousand years, when God's great eighth day comes. The end of the sixth, whenever it is (and I can never tell you and I do not believe anybody else can), will not see that. The seventh, the millennial day, will be glorious, it will be great, it will be wonderful, but it is not that. The fulness of the times is yet to come.

You and I are not going to be satisfied with anything less than the fulness of the times. I, for one, am not going to be satisfied with the millennium. There are lots of things about the millennium that I do not like and I cannot accept. Satan will not yet have been destroyed, he will only be locked up - and I do not like that. Sin will not yet be destroyed; it will only be suppressed. The evil heart of man will not have been changed inherently; it will only be under the rod of iron. At the end of the thousand years, there will be a universal revolt against God's Son again. That inherent evil in man will break out and satan will be loosed, deceive the nations again - I do not like any of that. But there is something after that; the fulness of the times to sum up in Christ not this earth alone.

I come into these letters of Paul, and I find here things in heaven, things in earth, things under the earth: above all principality, power, rule and dominion, in every realm; all summed up in Christ, Christ as universal Lord in every realm, and no satan to dispute that Lordship and no sin to mar the peace of the kingdom of the Son of His love. Oh, the millennial kingdom is not the kingdom that I am looking for, it is not the kingdom to which I belong. I may see it, I may enjoy it, but it is only a bit of things, a very imperfect bit, but when you come here to the gospel of God concerning His Son, you have got something much better than the gospel of the millennial kingdom. You have got the kingdom of the Son of His love, that kingdom in which all things in heaven and earth and under the earth are summed up in Christ. I say justification by faith is a very necessary, important fragment, but only a fragment, a stepping stone towards that. Oh, the music of that phrase - "the eternal purpose". You see, that is the key to everything.

I want you to notice how the Lord, through His apostle, brings in that kingdom in these letters of His and then marvellously reveals our relationship thereto. You have got these three wonderful letters of Paul: Colossians, Philippians and Ephesians.

You know that in Colossians we are translated out of the power of darkness into the kingdom of the Son of His love. Let us read the whole of that fragment in Colossians 1.

"Who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love" (Col. 1:13).

"And He is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the pre-eminence. For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell; and through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens" (Col. 1:18-20).

That takes you a long way ahead. That is not just earthly expression, that reaches out to the edge of the universe.

So, here in Colossians we have the Lord Jesus set forth (as you see in the first chapter) in terms of creatorship. Unto Him were all things created. He is the source of everything, He is the instrument of everything. He is the object of everything that has been created, and then He is Head of the Body, the church, because He is the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He might have the pre-eminence. We will not follow the link between those two things now. That will come again shortly. But here what you have is Christ set forth in His creatorship as its source, its instrument and its object, the object of all created things, and it looks on to the purpose of the creation. All things were created by Him, through Him, unto Him, that in all things He might have the pre-eminence.

Now, the creation is not like that now. It cannot be said to be fulfilling the purpose of its being now - that in everything in the creation He should have the pre-eminence. No, the creation has failed concerning its very object, concerning its eternal purpose. (We are only letting these other letters expound Romans for us). The creation has failed concerning the eternal purpose that in Him all things should be summed up and in all He should have the pre-eminence.

So, then, if the creation was intended for that, for Christ, that in all things He should have the pre-eminence and that all things should be summed up in Him, and things are not like that now, there has to be a new creation, a new "all things" to come back to the original purpose, so that this Colossian letter, in presenting Christ as the centre and the circumference of all created things in heaven and in earth, looks towards a great day when it will be like that.

Then you notice that some very practical exhortations follow very quickly. All that glimpse of the great creator work of Christ, that vision of the Son of God's love being the instrument and the source and object of the whole creation in heaven and in earth, that glimpse is just brought down to our experience here. Why must this and that be let go? Why this very difficult gospel of: "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye died and your life is hid with Christ in God"? That is a difficult gospel for young people, and it is there that so many of the trials and battles come. Why such demands, why any of the trials and difficulties to this flesh? Why the suffering? Oh, in view of that gospel: the good news concerning His Son!

Beloved, the gospel of God concerning His Son is not just, "repent and believe". It is not just, "if you believe you shall be saved", not just, "you shall be saved from hell and you shall go to heaven". Oh, how infinitely wonderful is the gospel! It is a universe filled with the glory of God's Son for whom it was created, and you and I are called through the gospel to have a place in all the meaning of the fulness of the times: the summing up of all things in Christ.

Now what the Lord is doing with us is bringing about, even now in an unseen way, that preparedness, that fitness for the kingdom; not the millennial kingdom, not some abstract, nebulous kind of kingdom, unreal and visionary, but the kingdom of the Son of His love, when this universe will be filled from centre to circumference by Christ glorified. You remember that part of the calling in the eternal purpose is unto His glory; He has called us unto His glory. Colossians brings that glorious new creation into view inasmuch as the one which was created by Him, through Him, for Him, has failed concerning the eternal purpose.

So, the gospel concerning His Son, according to Colossians, is the universal pre-eminence of Christ, not only the earthly, but the heavenly; in heaven and upon the earth - dominions, thrones, principalities, powers - the vast range. Without special revelation, it would be but speculation on the part of anyone to go beyond the range of this earth in the purpose of God, but we have enough to go upon to show that God's eternal purpose has a range far beyond this little world.

If you think about it, it will take a great deal more than this earth to realize God's eternal purpose. Take the space question alone. If all God's eternal purpose is going to be realized, this earth will not contain the people concerned. We have had two thousand years now of this dispensation; generation after generation of those who have known the Lord have all to come back again. Oh, it will require something more than this earth on that score alone, and may we not believe that all those problems of science as to other worlds are answered in the creative purpose of God? If God created them, may He not be reserving them for His eternal purpose? That may be speculation, it may sound like that. But here you have so much that points to the fact that there is a universe involved in the divine purpose, not just things on the earth, and that we are called according to purpose to something infinitely greater than the kingdom of Israel on this earth for a thousand years.

Look at those repetitions of "all things" in this Colossian letter.

"In Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and unto Him; and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist" (Col. 1:16-17).

So you go on. That is a vast "all things", is it not? Just sit down again with the "all things" and see if you can tie them to the earth. You cannot, they go far beyond: thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, things in heaven, things on the earth, visible, invisible, and then it is all in that majestic last utterance, "that in all things" (all that) "He might have the pre-eminence". That is the kingdom of the Son of His love, and we are translated into that kingdom. We belong to that kingdom. That is the gospel. Look at verse 23. "If so be that ye continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel which ye heard". That is the hope of the gospel.

Now I suggest to you that, in the light of that, we can afford at least to reconsider the question of things visible and invisible. I mean that we can afford to settle the matter quite definitely and finally, that it is not of so great account after all, whether we see the fruit of our suffering and labour now; that what we see as the result of our faithfulness to God is not the criterion, is not to be the thing that really governs, dominates or obsesses us.

We in this soul-life so inveterately gravitate towards the things of men. What do you have to show, what is the proof of your position? Where is the evidence that you are right? You and I cannot answer those questions, but the Lord has cut the ground from under our feet absolutely in such matters, and has said to us in many other words, what we might just put quite bluntly, "Look here, the evidence is not to be sought for here; the proof is not to be looked for on this earth. The proof is with Me. Your business is not to see or to demand to see. Your business is to go on with Me, even if you die, as those of old died, not having received the promise." Only by a settled attitude of that kind (and I speak to you out of a good deal of heart conflict and secret history with God on this matter) are we delivered from a great deal of the worry, stress and heartbreak which come from not seeing what we feel we ought to see as the result of our devotion to the Lord. Oh, we are translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love, and that is a vast thing, and our gospel takes us far beyond temporal things, the seen things; it takes us to the unseen, the eternal, and they are to be the dominating things of life.

It may help the older folk, and I am quite sure it is a word to be laid to heart by those who have life before them, who feel so much more strongly those throbbings of natural zeal in expectation that they are going to see something great - oh, do not be deterred from devotion to the Lord because we do not see a great deal as the result! It may be that your experience will be the experience of many others, which was (and let it comfort us) the experience of the man who saw these things as no other man outside of Jesus Christ Himself has ever seen them, that, as you go on in life, so far as the earthly realization of the kingdom is concerned, it becomes more and more disappointing. But if you walk with God in faith, you will have the deepening assurance that it is not all wrong, all false, or all in vain. You will have the spiritual evidence in your own heart that the kingdom of the Son of His love is a very real thing, and the greatest evidence is that the King Himself is within. We will come to that later - "Christ in you the hope of glory".

You turn next to Philippians, and you find here only another aspect of the same wonderful truth. Of course, you know I am going to turn to Philippians 2. Here is universal supremacy again in view. You know that matchless statement: "Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and gave unto Him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:9-11).

That is universal supremacy. That carries you to the fulness of the times. There is nothing left outside of that, but here in Philippians the object of bringing that into view is slightly different. It is in order to show the course by which that universal supremacy is reached. It is the course downwards, and then downwards again, and then upwards and still upwards: equality with God. Down to Bethlehem's manger, from Bethlehem's manger down to the cross. And in the cross down to the depths, and then God's touch raised Him and He begins to climb up through all realms, from beneath the earth where He has touched things, the earth, and then the heavens and all principalities and powers, different ranges in the heavens, and up beyond all - the highest heaven. It is the circuit of universal supremacy, and the point of bringing that in in the Philippian letter is to show that this universal supremacy is His by right of redemption.

You know in John 17 you have two statements made by the Lord. First, "Glorify thou Me... with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was" (John 17:5). That is one statement. The next statement is, "The glory which Thou hast given Me I have given unto them" (John 17:22). Do you think that refers to "the glory which I had with Thee before the world was"? No, it cannot be that; not the glory of equality with God, the glory of Deity before the world was. No, that is His glory, His unique glory, by right of His place in the Godhead. But He has been given a glory, "Wherefore God... has given unto Him the name above every name." God has given Him a glory, not now as His Son in the Godhead, but now as the Son of Man glorified. The second glory brings Him into relationship with ourselves, and brings us into relationship with Him and "the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given them". You see, the circuit was not to get the glory which He had, but to get the glory which He could give. He cannot give Deity, He cannot give Godhead, He cannot give that unique glory which is inherent in God, but He can give another glory, the glory of a glorified Manhood, a reflection of that glory in nature - the same and yet not possessing that peculiar thing which is God, unique, isolated, but a glory to be imparted.

This is the gospel concerning His Son, that He has made the great circuit in order to get a glory that He could give to them and to us. For that He went to the lowest depths, "yes, the death of the cross". The apostle underlines that. "Yes, the death of the cross". God only knows what depth that was. A glory that He could impart, "the glory which Thou hast given Me".

So, we come to Ephesians. Here in Ephesians, we have similar language: "Having made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth; in Him, I say, in whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His will; to the end that we should be unto the praise of His glory" (Eph. 1:9-12).

Now you see the third aspect which gathers up the rest is just this.

First, in Colossians we have all things in Christ and Christ pre-eminent in all things: the creative purpose.

In Philippians, the recovery of all things by redemption, and reconciliation through His cross and the glory possessed for sharing.

Now in Ephesians, unto that glory, according to that purpose: the church, the Body of Christ. Oh, mystery indeed, bewildering thought, that all this was not to be for Him in isolated person, but in the counsels of God's will it was also purposed concerning His Body, the church, and we were chosen in Him, so that it is the Christ; not Christ alone, but the Christ. You know the significance of the article. Head and members one Christ, for purposes of universal expression.

The gospel concerning His Son brings us into such a relationship with His Son that the glory which is His is to be shared and transmitted to this universe through His Body. It seems to me that it was something like that that Paul had seen, which he could never fully express, whether in the body or out of the body, he did not know. He had seen a corporate Christ, Christ the head, an elect Body, His members and the universal purpose of God realized in and through that Body.

There we must stop for the moment and remind ourselves of how the apostle brings that up to a point and says, "Unto Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus...". When? Throughout the millennial kingdom? No! "Throughout all generations for ever and ever." That is the gospel concerning God's Son!