The Recovery of the Lord's Name In His People # 33

The Cross and the Name of the Lord (continued)

Do you see? That is the meaning of the Name, that is the outworking of the Name. If that is true, if we are in the value of that. Oh, how wonderful the Name, how powerful the Name. It is a great victory isn't it? And do you not see that the object of the enemy all the way, still his object, is to recover that ground. And he persists in trying, not now to keep us away from God but to again get in between us and the Lord by any means whatsoever. It's a terrible thing for one who has really known that fellowship with God to lose the consciousness of it. It is the terror of the Cross again, isn't it? The terror of that moment of forsakeness, casting its shadow over. It is almost as though it were being said "He did not, He did not win that victory, it is as though all that Christ did being nullified." Oh, what a thing it is, this fellowship with God! And therefore our whole New Testament is constructed for believers upon this one thing, "the way", the way of maintained and deepened union with God; only another way of putting, the way of life in the Spirit. It is a battle, it calls for vigilance.

Remember dear friends, that still the prince of this world in his own kingdom, to which thank God we do not belong because we have been translated out of the authority of darkness and into the kingdom of the Son of His Love. He still assails us, he still assails us from without to try to get in between us and the Lord. And if that happens you know where it comes from, that does not come from the Lord. Beware of what interpretation you put upon the shadows between you and the Lord. You know where they come from, you know the remedy. It is Christ and what He has done in His Cross. But do you see the issue of this? Ah, the dishonor in His Name.

We come back to that every time, the motive. What is the motive for our vigilance, for our warring? What is the motive for our watchfulness? What is the motive? The only adequate motive for dealing with everything that comes between us and the Lord, the motive must be the honor of His Name. In the fighting out of that battle in life and death it was the Name of the Father. Oh, how much what we have got to realize of what we know, that marvelous Prayer which is called His High Priestly Prayer as He was just going, so to speak to the altar, as He was going to the Cross, it is the Name, the Name, the Name, and it is the Name involved in these, this company. He is praying, pouring Himself out in His concern for the Name which He has given them. "I have given them Thy Name. Oh, keep them in Thy Name." The honor of the Father's Name is the passion of His soul. He fought the battle of that honor right through the Cross. And you and I must be baptized into that same concern for the honor of His Name, in His people, not something objective and abstract but true in His people, the honor of His Name.

When we go on later, perhaps this afternoon, we shall see that in some very practical ways, but I feel that is enough to challenge us and occupy us this morning. We do not need more than that. Oh, that we should see one thing. When we say "in the Name of the Lord Jesus," we are not just repeating some formal platitude, some habitual way of speaking as Christians, but it really ought to be meaning, "by the Cross of the Lord Jesus and all it means." You can put it that way if you like, this and that and the other, "by the Cross of the Lord Jesus," the ground upon which God intends. But that Cross, in all its values, is embodied in the Name and the Name just means that and it means nothing without that.

The Lord give us to see and understand the meaning of the Name and to be set upon the recovery of its value we pray.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(The End)