The Cross and the Name of the Lord (continued)
I sometimes think and I am going to say a rather serious thing. I sometimes think that satan can energize to do what looks like the work of God. satan is always far-seeing and if he can get a false movement in the name of the Lord, a false movement which is ostensibly a Christian movement but which is false and is drawing upon other resources than the Holy Spirit of God. He sees quite clearly that the time will come when it will be far more difficult to touch "things" in that direction than it was before. The "thing" will have become hardened, so hard as to be almost impregnable. You may speak about the Lord there. "Oh, no we have had some, we have seen how that works out, that does not last, we are no going to have any more of that." That is a state at last worse than the first.
Well, if you do not understand me and agree with that, leave it. But there it is, there is a subtle working to get his kingdom in the place of the kingdom of God, and he will do it by any means. The Cross, the Cross does represent the undoing of that kingdom and therefore the Church must be a Cross-governed Church. The Cross must be its foundation and its basis, not in doctrine only, not in theory alone. You may have all the doctrine, it may be most accurate and sound as to the atonement and as to the Cross, the life, death, resurrection of the Lord Jesus, all that, and it may count for nothing, spiritually in effect. We can be outright fundamentalists and spiritual, real spiritual life and power may be utterly absent. It is not that; it is that the Cross is there as an actuality, a reality, undercutting all the kingdom and nature of satan's kingdom, it must be there. The Church will know nothing of that first power unless it is so, or shall I say, will only know power, in so far as it is so. That is the meaning of the Name. When we use the Name we ought to be in our own hearts meaning the bringing in of all the potency of the Cross of the Lord Jesus over against the kingdom of satan in its nature and in its objective.
You know quite well that without understanding all this, without having had it explained and interpreted to you, when you rally have come as we put it, "to the Cross," that is, when you have received by faith the values of Christ's death and resurrection, you know that the very first thing that springs up in your consciousness is: "Somehow, I cannot explain it, but I feel nearer to God, and God feels nearer to me." That is the most elementary way of putting it, is it not? Just the language of a little child, "I feel that God is nearer to me and I am nearer to God than ever before. Somehow or other God and I have been brought together." There is fellowship with God, no longer enmity. There is a consciousness of union, no longer separation. Ah, but more, there is a consciousness of love and no longer bitterness or hatred or independence. But it comes to this, this is my life and if ever I lose this, I lose everything. "God has become in Christ everything". That's the first consciousness, isn't it?
Well here you are, that is the work of the Cross, that is the proof, the simple elementary proof that the Lord Jesus in His Cross went right for the heart of this whole thing, this separation between God and man. He went right there and fought that out. And so in Him risen we are brought to and joined with God. If that sounds too simple, too elementary for you wonderful advanced Christians, do not brush it aside, it is the most beautiful thing, but the most costly thing. Oh, what a cost, what it cost our Lord just to fight out that battle, to overthrow that tremendous force and power to get in between God and man, He fought out our battle.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 33)
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