The All-Governing and Dominating Vision (continued)
The Seeing of Jesus Our Lord (continued)
The four magnitudes which come in with a true Spiritual seeing of Jesus are:
The Place and Destiny of Man In the Economy of God; The Nature and Dynamic of Ministry In this Dispensation; The Nature and Purpose of the Church Now and in the After-Ages; The Immense Significance In that Three-fold Context of Jesus Christ Crucified, Risen, and Exalted,
These are four very big things, and they are all comprehended by "Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?" - "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me"; and when He revealed His Son in me, this is what I began to see. That is what the apostle is saying: "This is what I began to see." He does not tabulate these things like that, but I have just taken these four magnitudes as the content and substance of the New Testament.
This is where we begin; firstly the seeing of Jesus our Lord or God revealing His Son in us, illuminating, unveiling, the place and destiny of man in the Divine Economy. I must say here (though it might get me into controversial ground) I am a firm believer that the Apostle Paul had a very real hand in the writing of the Letter to the Hebrews. Whether he actually wrote it or dictated it, I am certain that Paul had a very definite and direct influence, to say the least, upon the writing of the Letter to the Hebrews; and you will recognize it in what I am going to say. It is there; it comes out of that.
Paul, from the beginning in his First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter fifteen, takes up man from his inception. He says, "The first man, Adam." It starts with man; it goes right back to the beginning of humanity, mankind, and he follows right through mankind on the battleground of the two humanities until he reaches the point of man glorified. How marvelous that chapter is. I have stood back from that chapter many times, and said, "How did any mortal man know that?" It could only be because he had seen Jesus Christ. That is the only answer: -
A New Man in Christ
"There are bodies terrestrial and there are bodies celestial. There are bodies earthy and there are bodies heavenly; and as we have borne the image of the earthly, so we shall bear the image of the heavenly." Here Paul describes something of the nature of this Heavenly body, this Heavenly Body, this Heavenly physical Body, this glorified Manhood. This is an amazing unveiling of the destiny of man in the economy of God.
So Paul takes up manhood first in Adam, and then by the Cross he smites that race in Adam, discredits it, rejects it, and puts it aside, and starts with the New Man, "The Last Adam": "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation," - the old humanity past, all is New. We have the whole history of man in this letter, right from his inception in the heart of God, his inception in the creation of the first Adam and his rejection in this letter; and then we have man created in the New Man, Christ.
Oh, what a Man this is in glory. In this we groan! But what is the groaning about? Oh, for that for which I was created; which God meant for me. In this we groan waiting, "waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body," the putting on of our New Man. "When this corruptible will have put on incorruption." My, do you not groan for that? Incorruption, this mortal dying, "will have put on immortality," eternally living. Now how did Paul get all that? "Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?" "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me."
Paul said: "God has repeated His Divine fiat in me. Over all the world in chaos and darkness God said, "Let light be - and there was light," a fiat of God, and He has done that in me. God has repeated and said, In this darkened humanity, "Let light be"; and when He said that, I - in that Light - saw His Son and in His Son I saw all that God intended and intends for mankind" - man's destiny in the economy of God.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 26)
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