The Gospel of God Concerning His Son Jesus Christ Our Lord

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 7 - The Issue of Sonship

"Separated unto the gospel of God... concerning His Son... who was declared the Son of God in power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead; Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 1:1,3-4).

"For God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit in the gospel of His Son..." (Rom. 1:9).

"For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life" (Rom. 5:10).

"God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh..." (Rom. 8:3).

"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God" (Rom. 8:14).

"For the earnest expectation of the creation waits for the revealing of the sons of God" (Rom. 8:19).

"For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29).

"It was the good pleasure of God... to reveal His Son in me" (Gal. 1:15-16).

"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me; and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me" (Gal. 2:20).

"When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son... that He might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. So that thou art no longer a bondservant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God" (Gal. 4:4-7).

"Howbeit what says the Scripture? Cast out the handmaid and her son: for the son of the handmaid shall not inherit with the son of the freewoman" (Gal. 4:30).

"Having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will" (Eph. 1:5).

"And there was seen another sign in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads seven diadems. And his tail draws the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stands before the woman that is about to be delivered, that when she is delivered he may devour her child. And she was delivered of a son, a man-child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and unto His throne... And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels going forth to war with the dragon; and the dragon warred and his angels; and they prevailed not, neither was their place found anymore in heaven. And the great dragon was cast down, the old serpent, he that is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world; he was cast down to the earth, and his angels were cast down with him" (Rev. 12:3-5,7-9).

The present emphasis is upon sonship, that ultimate, full realization of God's purpose in His people. It is not just the matter of our being born into God's family as such. If we are born again, we are children of God, but sonship in the New Testament is that which lies beyond childhood. It relates to maturity, and it is the thing which to the Lord is of greatest importance so far as man is concerned. All His interests and all His energies are directed towards the securing of that state - not that relationship in the first place - but that state represented by sonship. In our previous meditation, we saw something of the way in which God develops sonship.

We now move yet more deeply and seriously into the matter of sonship in order to see the great issues which are bound up with it. Three of the greatest things of which we can conceive are bound up with this matter of sonship, and this explains why it is so important to God, and this explains why those who are led by the Spirit find that that leading is so often into the ways of spiritual trial and conflict, and further, it explains why there is so much in the New Testament which is addressed to believers in connection with their giving diligence to go on and ever on.

Satan Defeated and Cast Out

Firstly, it is in sonship that satan is defeated and cast out, and that is no small matter. That is a thing which has got to be done. He is a usurper; he occupies a place which God does not intend that he shall occupy indefinitely. Man has ceded that place to him and in that place he exercises very great power. The passage in Revelation 12 is an almost awe-inspiring passage even in the contemplation of satan. All his titles are gathered up into a very short compass, the red dragon with immense power drawing a third part of the stars of heaven with his tail; the serpent, called satan, the devil. It is all there, he and his angels occupying the heavenlies, exercising terrible power, the object and the occasion of the angelic hosts, marshalled under archangels, coming into operation and conflict. And the thing which has got to be done is to clear the heavens of him and of all his angels, to dispossess him, to leave those heavens cleansed, to be occupied by another hierarchy - a tremendous thing!

How and by what means is that going to be accomplished? By sonship, initiated and potentially consummated in the Son and by the Son, but to be fully carried out in and through sonship in His Body, the man-child, a son caught up to God and to His throne precipitating the final phase of the heavenly battle and emptying heaven of that whole evil system and power. The instrument, the method, the occasion of that, is sonship.

You see it all along in type and in reality and in spiritual history. The battle is all about dominion. Why a battle? Because God has purposed something and God's purposing is contrary to satan's ambition, therefore the instrument and the object of God's eternal purpose becomes the object of satan's most bitter hatred and antagonism, and what is the object? It is sonship, the Son and the sons; the sons sharing that which is sonship: a nature, a character, a likeness, a power, a capacity, a measure of Christ.

In the Old Testament you have much to illustrate this, but in the "much", you remember Jacob, Jacob who became Israel, a prince with God, destined to an earthly kingdom, the dominion of this earth. Twelve thrones set up over this earth to govern it in the millennial age, during which time satan would be bound for a thousand years and unable to function. Well, that is an earthly aspect of things, but even so, satan objects even on that side. Here is a prince with God with princely sons to govern the earth. Here is one who is the prince of this world for the time being, and if those sons are going to govern, he cannot govern. If the prince with God is going to govern through his sons, then the prince of this world cannot govern through his sons. So the battle is joined, and the twelve sons of Israel, the sons of the prince with God are, in the course of time, found locked up in Egypt, oppressed, and every movement for their emancipation is bitterly contested. The birth of the deliverer - in type the man-child himself - a goodly child, is the signal for the outburst of satanic malice: slay all the male children to get that one! Every movement for the emancipation of that ruler nation over the earth is met with the most venomous onslaught of satan. And there is more than the hatred and malice of man against Israel in Israel's oppression. Whatever we may have to say on the natural ground about Israel, Israel is destined to a great destiny and satan knows it. But that is only the earthly side of things.

It is the prince of this world against the Prince with God and His sons. The object is the throne of government. There is the throne of the Son, the Prince, so infinitely transcending Israel, and there are these sons in relation to whom He is the firstborn among many brethren, and these sons, the many sons whom He is bringing to glory, are destined with a far more glorious destiny than Israel and Israel's sons - a heavenly kingdom, a heavenly throne, a universal reign and dominion. They who have suffered with Him are to reign with Him. Satan knows what that means, that, not only is he losing his earthly dominion, but he is losing universal dominion and something very much greater, his place in heaven. It is all wrapped up in sonship.

That is a great vista of truth! Let it come back to us now in this moment of our trial, of our suffering, of our pain, and all that we are going through, and let us ask, 'What is the meaning of this?' These onslaughts of satan, these attempted frustrations in our spiritual life and growth, all this agony and all this conflict - what is the meaning of it? God on the one hand is bringing out sonship, and on the other hand satan knows what the issue of that means, and he is going, if possible, to frustrate that. And yet it is necessary that the Holy Spirit should lead us into that and use the very antagonism of satan to produce the thing that he is trying to hinder! That is the manifold wisdom of God in the church!

Sonship is God's triumph over the enemy with his own weapons! You have got a lot of that in the Bible: using satan's own power to accomplish the thing against which that power is set. Oh, what a story will lie behind sonship in its consummation, a story of divine power, divine wisdom, divine grace, and divine glory. So, we find that satan uses every means against sonship because therein is his kingdom so seriously imperilled. We will see a little more of that presently perhaps. But for the moment as we pass on, let us note that it is in sonship that satan is defeated and cast out, and that is progressive in spiritual experience, and that is consummated in the hour of the manifestation of the sons of God. Oh! There's a great deal more than I could have any time to indicate, but that is a big issue bound up with spiritual growth, spiritual development, the conformity to the image of God's Son which the Holy Spirit is seeking to bring about in us.

All this Holy Spirit travail in us to bring about sonship is bound up with God's eternal purpose and the realization of that requires that satan, the prince of this world and all his kingdom, should be cast out. There is tremendous, inherent power in spiritual growth and satan knows it. Then how much will he seek to prevent it!

Now the next thing before we mention more in that connection.

The Adamic Order Reversed

It is in sonship that the Adamic order is reversed. All that has come about through Adam's failure, so far as the race is concerned, this order, this Adamic order, man being other than God made him and other than God intended him to be, everything that has come in with the change in man: death, suffering, sickness, sorrow, strife and all the rest. All that which goes to make up the present lot of mankind, both as to his state and as to his destiny - all that has to be reversed. God has to get right back again and have the man that He intended and have the conditions which He intended through and for that man, and to have the destiny of that man reached and realized. The whole Adamic order has got to be reversed if God is to have what He intended to have from the beginning, so far as man is concerned in his vocation and in his destiny, and that is in sonship. God has got to do something which will make it possible for all the conditions of man's life to be changed and to be according to His own thought, His own mind, for man. And it is in and by sonship that that will be brought about, firstly, of course, in His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, the last Adam.

In Christ Jesus there is a new creation. In Christ Jesus, all the work of Satan and the first Adam is undone, in Christ Jesus a new state according to God is realized. In that Man transfigured and glorified, we see God's thought concerning man and God's intention. But then, we are to be glorified together with Him. We are to be constituted according to Him; we are to be conformed to His image; we are, in seeing Him, to be like Him. And there are going to be multitudes who are going to come into the good of that because it has been done perfectly in a man-child, in a company.

I said in a previous meditation a thing which could have been misunderstood - that the church will not be the only company saved. It might have been thought that I meant that in this present age that is so. That was not in my mind at all. I was thinking on into the book of the Revelation, thinking of the heavenly Jerusalem, and then the nations walking in the light thereof. I was thinking of that bridal company following the Lamb whithersoever He goes and having right to the Tree of Life, and that the leaves of the tree are for the health of the nations. And I was thinking also of the kings of the earth who bring their glory into the city, and these represent those beyond the church to be saved: many, many more, but they are going to derive their good, their blessing, through this central instrument: Christ and His own, His Bride, His City, His Body. You may change the metaphor, and only see in the change of the metaphor a different aspect of truth, but the thing is one, and it represents that which has come right up to God's full thought from the beginning, and He, having that, can make it the city, the centre, the medium, the vehicle, of His good and His glory to the ends of the universe. But that central thing is what is represented by the word 'sonship': formed to the image of His Son according to the good pleasure of His will foreordained unto the adoption of sons.

Do you see what a lot hangs upon sonship? It's the reversing of the whole Adamic order. God is seeking to do that in a spiritual way in us by emptying us of the old Adam and filling us with the new Adam; dealing with the old man, divesting us of him, and clothing us with the new; changing us.

But as we go on with God, and if we go on with God, allowing Him to do it and trusting Him in the matter and co-operating with Him in it, and letting go continually that other old Adam, old man state of things in will, in mind, in heart, and all the time embracing His Son in what He is in mind and heart and will, and God's thoughts in Him, if we go on (and I use that word 'if' in the New Testament sense so often repeated), if we go on, there will come a glorious moment when the sons shall be manifested and the creation itself shall be delivered from its bondage. The Adamic order is reversed in sonship! The hour of adoption!

What a lot is bound up with what God is doing with you and me in these days of dark trial! Oh, if once we see our trials as set in the light of God's eternal purpose, what an inspiration it would be to go through trial! I can only believe that when Paul said that he glorified in infirmity and so on, it was because he had seen everything in the light of heaven. May the Lord give us more of that light!

The Glory of God Brought in

Then the third thing. Satan is defeated and cast out in sonship, the Adamic order is reversed in sonship, and then: the glory of God is brought in in sonship.

In a previous chapter, we were speaking about Luke 9, the Son of Man coming in His kingdom; "coming in His own glory", is the phrase, "and the glory of God and the glory of the holy angels", and then the Mount of Transfiguration immediately follows in the narrative. The glory of God comes in with a Manhood that is perfect. That is sonship. You know the illustration from the Word of God, the tabernacle, when all things have been made according to the pattern in the Mount, and then the Shekinah glory fills the sanctuary. What is that representation? It is the Man, Christ Jesus. Walk about and you see everything speaking of the Man, Christ Jesus. Yes, the Son of God, true; but there He is in incarnation on the earth. The tabernacle is but a representation of Christ, a Man wholly and perfectly constituted according to heaven's thought of a Man, God's thought, the pattern shown in the Mount, and when the last touch has been put to that forming, that formation, the glory of God fills the sanctuary.

It is the same with the temple. The account of the building of the temple by Solomon is full of significance. The magnificence of it! Every detail was a glorious thing, watched with closest precision, until it says when Solomon had finished all the work of the house of the Lord and the priests stood round and the testimony was brought in, the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord, and the priests could not go in to minister for the glory of the Lord. Man has to stand back. It is the Lord who is present. The glory of the Lord has come in. All that points to Pentecost.

Here is a Man who has, in a sense, been formed. Sonship has been in process of development. He who was the eternal Son of God, now Son of Man, has to be made perfect through sufferings. Not perfect from sin, for that was never necessary, but being tried and tested in faith, and in all those perfect verities that were in Him, sonship which is there implicitly, inherently, potentially, now coming out, the formation going on under fire, under stress. And the perfect Man has been produced and heaven opens to receive Him and God has a Man wholly and utterly answering to His fullest thought. What happens? The glory fills the house; Pentecost is the testimony to the fact that God has filled a Man with glory.

But that is not the end. There is another day coming when the new Jerusalem will come down from God out of heaven, having the glory of God. That New Jerusalem is Christ and His own, the church in final conformity to the image of His Son. The glory of God comes in along the line of sonship perfected.

What a lot is bound up with sonship! These are not beautiful ideas; they are the basic truths of revelation. If so much is bound up with sonship, and if you and I are called unto that, the fellowship of His Son, to be conformed to the image of God's Son, foreordained unto adoption as sons by Jesus Christ unto Himself, if that is what God is doing now, as Hebrews 12 makes so clear - "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord... if ye endure chastening God deals with you as with sons" - if that is all true of us, we can understand, in the light of what it means, what it means ultimately to God, to us, to this universe, to all men, we can understand why satan is so set against sonship, and that by any means he will seek to hinder it.

So you find in the New Testament on one side a whole realm of things which were set against sonship. You come to Corinth, and you find that spiritual growth, which is development of sonship, is withstood by carnality in believers. Paul says to them, "I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, as unto babes in Christ" (1 Cor. 3:1). That is not growing, that is not maturity, and why? Because of carnal elements shown in so many ways. Most of that first letter is showing how carnality works out, human preferences even among the servants of God: "I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas" - selectiveness on the basis of what we like and what we do not like, even among the Lord's ministers - carnality. I am not going through the first letter to the Corinthians, but we see carnality working out in all sorts of ways, upsetting relationships. Well, we dare not start on the enumeration of these things, but the point is: carnality. It is a great means in the hands of satan of keeping the Lord's people in undue infancy, from the maturity, the spiritual growth, that ought to be taking place - the development of sonship.

It might be as well for us to recognize this, that there can be even a carnal interest in spiritual things which represents spiritual limitation, for when you come further on in 1 Corinthians, you light upon the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and an occupation with the gifts as such can be a carnal occupation. And you must recognize this, that being possessed of gifts of the Holy Spirit, tongues and healings and all these things, does not necessarily carry with it spiritual maturity. 1 Corinthians proves that beyond question.

The apostle had to teach those who had these gifts the Headship of Christ, the nature of the Body of Christ, the true meaning of the Lord's table. When you have got to be taught those things, you have not got very far. It is possible to have all the gifts and not get very far. These gifts are not marks of spiritual maturity. They may be for the babes. You find it in foreign countries especially. The Lord does help the faith of those who come out of heathenism with marvellous miracles, gifts and manifestations early in their spiritual experiences. It is not a mark of spiritual maturity. Not at all. Let us see what God is after, more than those things, God is after sonship, and carnality in any connection or direction is satan's way of preventing the ultimate purpose of God in a company in the throne, spelling satan's undoing. Let us take that to heart. Every bit of carnality in you and in me is a blow at the throne. That is what it means. Oh, God deliver us then from our carnality if that is what it means!

We find in the New Testament another very favourite means satan uses against sonship and that is legality. If Paul had a sorry affair at Corinth over carnality, he had a very painful affair in Galatia over legality. What is it that is behind these people who are tracking him down and hot on his trail from city to city, scenting his going all the time and swiftly following up? The Judaizers, who say, "You must be circumcised to be saved", and so on. What is behind all that? You can see this sinister hand; you can see the devil in it. It is wicked, and what Paul suffered at the hands of the Judaizers, the legalizers, what travail! So over the Galatians we hear him crying, "My little children, on whose behalf I am again in travail till Christ be fully formed in you." Legality was frustrating sonship.

The letter to the Galatians is so full of sonship, and legality is against it. I cannot take time to interpret legality, but there is this glorious truth that sonship means liberty. "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free", but how does the truth make us free? The Son shall make you free and "if the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (John 8:36). The truth is the truth as it is in Jesus, and the principle of all truth is sonship.

Truth is never an abstract thing, truth is never a mere doctrine. Truth is a power to produce Christ in us, and if it does not do that, then there is something wrong somewhere. But sonship is freedom, "Free from the law. Oh, happy condition!" I wish we could stay to talk about the liberty of sonship. It is a thing to be experienced and you know best the meaning of it when you experience it. You do not live constantly under the threat of anything. Your life is not moved by threats, "Thou shalt, and if thou dost not, woe betide you! Thou shalt not, and if you do, look out!" No, none of that in sonship. Blessed emancipation! But legality is satan's means of bringing sons into bondage.

There are many other things. Perhaps I will just mention one. There is that which in principle is meant by natural religiousness, or, if you like, natural religion. If I were asked to define that I should simply come back to a very favourite, and always very important discrimination: the difference between soul and spirit. In the realm of our souls, we can be devoutly religious. Yes, devoutly devoted to God. Saul of Tarsus was that; no one more so. And yet, because it was in his own soul, in his own natural life, because it was in his blood, he had inherited it from his fathers, it was his make-up and he simply was following the strength of his own inclination - a great natural devotion to religious things - there was no revelation in that. There was no true light in that, and it proved to be, after all, that he was on the wrong road. What a significant phrase of his that is, and I always think there is such a depth of meaning in it so far as Paul himself is concerned, when he said "the prophets which they read every Sabbath... who spoke of Him, Him have they crucified. They know all the prophets, and they read them every Sabbath, and they have been doing that for generations, and all these prophets spoke of Him and the very One of whom the prophets spoke, they have crucified". What blindness! It is natural religion, the religion of the human soul.

It is in the spirit that we get revelation and illumination. Sonship is not in our souls, it is in our spirit, and this natural religion, which may, after all, be mysticism and imitation spirituality, can just hold us in spiritual nothingness with all our devoutness, passion and interest - spiritual nothingness. That is not sonship. Sonship is revelation. Sonship is the inward knowledge of God in Christ revealed by the Holy Spirit. Sonship is a life governed by the Spirit of God's Son, and when that is so, you never devoutly and religiously crucify Christ. You see the awful contradiction.

I close now by bringing it all to a head in one statement, a statement which in itself is a challenge to us. If we take the apostle Paul as the one who had the revelation of God's eternal purpose, the revelation of sonship as being the heart of God's eternal purpose, as seeing what sonship means to God and to this universe, then we have got at once the key to true service. What is service in its truest, deepest meaning? Well, listen again to that which I believe to be the first, abiding and all-governing principle of service, "My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed (fully formed) in you" (Gal. 4:19). That is the first principle in service, travail for sonship. Have you got that?

May I take you back to what we were saying in a previous meditation about Ezekiel 9, a man with an inkhorn at his side was commanded to go through Jerusalem and put a mark upon everyone who sighed and cried because of the things that were done there. Then judgment was to follow, and all those upon whom the mark was not found were to be utterly destroyed. God has put His mark upon those who sigh because things are other than God meant them to be, and sigh and groan that they might be according to His mind. And that is only a reflection of the apostle. "I travail again", I sigh, I groan, for what God has intended should really be - Christ fully formed in you - sonship.

Are you of those upon whom the mark of God rests? Has the Man left His mark upon you? Are you marked with the mark of the Man? What is the mark of the Man? The mark of sonship, so far as service is concerned is: "I travail, I sigh, I groan, till Christ be fully formed." I wonder if we all have that cry, that groan, in our hearts? Are you really distressed about the state of things among the Lord's people? Are you really distressed about the maturity of the saints, so long delayed? Are you stretched out in travail till Christ be fully formed in His own? That is a test of whether sonship is proceeding in you. If not, beloved, you may have to consider whether you are not still babes over-long, with maturity deferred.

Oh, may the Lord develop this sonship in us that cries, that sighs, that groans for the full growth of the saints unto the manifestation of the sons of God!