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Explanation Of The Nature And History Of This Ministry
by T. A. Sparks
From "A Witness and a Testimony" in 1956
PART 1: THE FULLER MEANING OF THE CROSS
This was the first stage in an altogether new life under an open Heaven. As
we came to see subsequently, the Cross (or its type-the Altar) was ever
God's new starting-point in the realisation of His full thought.
Starting-point, we say: for Calvary is not an end in itself, but the
beginning of everything. As to the objective meaning of the Cross, there
was no need for any adjustment. The great values of the Lamb slain, as
related to the first stage or phase of Christian experience, were there,
thank God. Deliverance from the judgment resting upon the world; deliverance
from condemnation and death; deliverance from the tyranny or the bondage of
an evil conscience--all in virtue of the righteousness which is by faith in
that Righteous One who offered Himself without spot to God for us: this was
where we stood by His grace. What Christ by His Cross was and is for us was
our anchor-ground. The apprehension and appreciation of all that has never
ceased to grow, and is deeper, fuller; stronger to-day than ever.
Moreover. we know quite well that this basic position is an object of
Satan's unending assault and bitter antagonism. And it will be so to the
last. He knows quite well that everything else is jeopardised and frustrated
if he can shake a believer's position as to what Christ is for him or her.
Who is of any use to God or men, in eternal values, who is not settled as
to his or her acceptance in the Beloved? Who can count in any realm
spiritually who has not a settled assurance that in Christ Jesus they
are accounted righteous, whatever they may be in themselves? Every fiery
dart of the evil one will get home if the breastplate of righteousness and
the shield of this faith is not firmly apprehended and appropriated. Yes,
the objective meaning of Calvary--Christ crucified--is of unspeakable
importance in the matter of a believer's standing, and withstanding, and we
can never cease to keep this in full view and hammer it home.
But, when we have taken account of this and have it well settled, it may
only relate to deliverance from "Egypt". For it is clear that all that we
have said and referred to so far is connected with `translation (or
transference) out of the power of darkness into the Kingdom of the Son of
God's love.' It was a mighty thing that happened in Egypt, in virtue of
the slain Lamb and shed and sprinkled blood, and it had abiding elements
and values. But there was much more needed. While an outward bondage was
destroyed, that is, the bondage which meant being involved in the doom
of the world, there still remained an inward bondage. Israel in the
wilderness represents the dominion of the natural life, the self-life, the
"flesh". God's people, yes! Redeemed, yes! In the Kingdom, yes! Heirs of
promise, yes! But not getting very far; ineffective, unfruitful, up-and-
down and round-about: and always at the mercy of the life of sense. They
even, sometimes, imagined that they might have a better time back in Egypt.
A strangely contradictory state for those who, in their better moments, were
so sure that they had heen redeemed by God? This wilderness life
represented much expenditure of energy, much laborious effort, much longing
and aspiration, much service and much religious devotion and activity, but
it never got through, and it was one big circle, coming back, in effect, to
whcre they were before.
Well, it was at some such point that the fuller meaning of the Cross was
made to break upon our greater need. It is a part of the nature of things
that we never learn in a vital way by information. We really only come into
the good of things by being "pressed out of measure". So the Lord has to
take much time to make spiritual history. When at length our eyes are open,
we cry, O, why did I not see it before! But everything else had to prove
insufficient before we could really be shown, and that takes time. Thus it
was that we were turned in that dark hour to Romans, chapter six, and, almost
as though He spoke in audible language the Lord said: `When I died, you died.
When I went to the Cross I not only took your sins, but I took you. When I
took you, I not only took you as the sinner that you might regard yourself
to be, but I took you as being all that you are by nature; your good (?) as
your bad; your abilities as well as your disabilities; yes, every resource
of yours. I took you as a "worker" a "preacher", an organizer! My Cross
means that not even for Me can you be or do anything out from yourself,
but if there is to be anything at all it must be out from Me, and that means
a life of absolute dependence and faith.
At this point, therefore, we awoke to the fundamental principle of our
Lord's own life while here, and it became the law of everything for us from
that time. That principle was: "nothing of (out from) himself", but "all
things of (out from) God".
"The Son can do nothing of (out from) himself, but what he seeth the
Father doing: for what things soever he doeth, these the Son also doeth in
like manner." John 5:l9.
"I can of myself do nothing: as I hear I judge." John 5:30.
" My teaching is not mine, but his that sent me." John 7:l6.
We saw that this explains so many strange and naturally--perplexing things
in His behaviour: acting and refusing to act; going and refusing to go;
speaking and refusing to speak. Later we came to see that this is the
whole meaning of life in the Spirit, and that it is an altogether different
life from the natural ways of men, even of Christian men (more on this
later). At the time of this seeing, it was a matter of this law becoming
basic, absolute, and ultimate, and it was something totally different from
what had been in all our ideas and activities in Christian life and work.
Such a revelation, if it is to be a staggering and breaking thing, so that
there is no strength left in us, requires a background of much vain effort.
But then, it carries with it a great implication. While an end is written
large in the Cross, and while that end is to be accepted as our end indeed,
so that there can be no more of anything so far as we are concerned, JESUS LIVES!
and that means boundless possibilities.
Thus we came to see that the Red Sea and the Jordan are but two sides to
the one Cross. Both symbolize the spiritual death and resurrection of the
believer, but the latter carries it into another realm. Jordan sees the
deliverance from judgment, death, and doom, carried on to deliverance from
self; it is the practical disconnection of what is dead from what is risen.
In the first it is my sins; in the second it is myself. At the crossing of
the Jordan a monument of twelve stones, a type of the Israelites themselves,
was left buried in the bed of the river, as if to signify that the self-life
of the wilderness was to be henceforth reckoned as judged and ended as
absolutely as was the bondage to Pharaoh. And then another memorial of
twelve stones was taken from the bed of the river and placed on the Canaan
shore, as a type of themselves, as risen not only to newness of life, but
also to a perpetual and practical separation from their dead and buried
selves. All this is as by union with Christ crucified and risen: for the
priests stood in mid-stream with the Ark and its blood-stained Mercy-seat
on their shoulders, type of Christ as in death, yet triumphing over death
in virtue of His Blood: for the first set of stones were laid in the exact
spot where the priests' feet had stood.
Israel after the flesh in the wilderness, and Israel after the Spirit
in Canaan, while both having known the blessing of salvation from judgment,
are like two different peoples. So it was with us. The difference is
unspeakably great. Someone who had been prominently in Christian work for
many years described the difference--when at length he knew it--as even
greater than when he first knew salvation, and that was great. We will not
attempt to set down all the differences, but there is one phrase that puts
so much of it all into expression --'an open heaven'. How the life of
nature blocks the way to the life of the Spirit! How doing, or attempting
to do, work for God in our own natural energy closes the way to the
energies of the Spirit! How our mental strivings and intellectual labors
to apprehend spiritual truth lock the door to illumination by the Spirit!
Yes, we know something of this, but, blessed be God, we know something of
having that "natural man" put away, and Christ in greater risen and
ascended fulness taking his place.
There is a double tragedy that may be associated with this subjective or
experimental meaning of the Cross. On the one side, there is the tragedy
of the ignorance of so many of the Lord's people, leading to or resulting
in a wilderness history in life and service. A tremendous amount of energy,
expenditure, effort, and strain, with spiritual results so incommensurate.
The wilderness is ever a bounded place; limited by thc horizons of sense;
never characterized by the realization of the limitless fulnesses of the
heavenly emancipation from nature.
On the other hand, there is the tragedy that this meaning or application
of the Cross is positively refused and rejected by so many of the Lord's
people. There is a very large body of Christians who just will not have the
Cross on its subjective or experimental side. This amazes us, but it
explains very much. If the "natural" man (not the unregenerate man,
necessarily) still exerts an influence in the realm of Divine things, there
is bound to ensue a static system of teaching, a fixed horizon of vision,
a legal bondage to tradition, a fear of man, a deadening domination of the
"letter" as separated from the "spirit", and many other unhappy situations
of spiritual death, endless divisions, and spiritual pride. Paul's remedy
for traditionalism and legalism in relation to Christians, was Christ
Crucified, as see 'Romans' and 'Galatians'. The same remedy was resorted
to for all the painful fruits of carnality amongst believers, as see
'Corinthians'.
Perhaps the repudiation of this application of the Cross is due to the
fear of a too great subjectivity: that is, a turning of people in upon
themselves. It is true that introspection is a sign of weakness and can lead
to certain paralysis--indeed, it can breed very many evil things; but
introspection is a misapprehension of the subjective side of the Cross. It
would indeed be unsafe and disastrous for anyone to `take up' such `teaching',
were they not already settled and established in that objective aspect,
which settles once and for all the question of "all righteousness" and
acceptance in Christ through faith in His perfections as for us. No; Israel
in Canaan did not represent introspective self-occupation and morbid
engagement with how much more they personally had to be crucified. They
were free and free to do the Lord's business. The `Jordan' meaning
of the cross, carrying, as it does, the 'Red Sea' aspect into the realm of
self-life, means freedom from self, and it is only a contradiction of the
Cross to he still engrossed with self-crucifixion. But 'Jordan' is a big
crisis, with an abiding application and progressive outworking.
The crisis is like the touch upon the sinew of Jacob's thigh. The
strength of nature is definitely and permanently crippled, so that
"Jacob" will carry that veto to his last day when he will still be "leaning
upon the top of his staft". The progressive outworking will be in the
discovery of how much there is that we cannot do-are not allowed to do--of
ourselves because of that basic forbidding of the Cross. This may take us
as far as it took Paul, who in one unparalleled experience said: "We were
weighed down exceedingly, beyond our power, insomuch that we despaired even
of life " ("despaired" here means `there seemed no way out for life'): " yea,
we...had the sentence of death within ourselves, that we should not trust
ourselves, but in (upon)God which raiseth the dead" (II Cor.1:8-9).
The working of the Cross here is a subjective-objective matter and has
nothing to do with our standing or acceptance, but rather with the
fulness of Christ. Because the importance of this crisis and process has
to he emphasized to Christians, many have allowed it to enter into the wrong
realm and almost carry them back into `Egyptian' bondage. If the Lord
brings us to the despair of Kadesh-Barnea and then shows us Romans 6 or
Galatians 2:20, we must capitulate to our death position with Christ as to
ourselves just as we did as to our sins: and we must have a
faith understanding with the Lord, firstly that the thing is so,
whether we immediately realise it or not; and then that He is going to
take us by the way that will reveal what the new position is and implies.
We shall undoubtedly discover that there was far more included in the `death'
than we had any idea of: but the new position will mean enablement to
acquiesce.
We have said that this 'Jordan' experience of the Cross is a crisis--and
what a crisis it is! It is not only the end of one realm, it is the opening
up of and entering upon a new one. So it proved to be with us, as with
Israel. Through this experience we entered into a great expanse of spiritual
life, light, and liberty. But then several major things began to come into
view. Of course the first of these was--
| Introduction |
Part 1 |
Part 2 |
Part 3 |
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