The Cup and the Fire # 21

The Testing of the Fire (continued)

The Fire Discriminating

The fire is cast upon the earth, and, as we go through this book of Acts, we can see all these things happening; they are happening all the time. The fire is doing it: the fire is finding out, is testing, is discriminating, is relegating. The end of the story is that you have got two realms set apart, and shown for what they are and what they belong to.

There is very much more, of course, that could be said on this matter of spiritual discrimination; the things that belong to the different categories, that essential spiritual difference. But I think we can sum everything up by saying this: that if we are really governed by the Holy Spirit, we shall all belong to one category. That is the point. There will not be so many different categories, or realms, in which we live; there will not be two - there will only be one. The Holy Spirit seeks to secure one category of people, and that is a people wholly governed and led by Himself. And if you have to say: 'I fundamentally disagree with you' on anything, then one of us is not in the Spirit. It is up to us to find out where the wrong is, because the Holy Spirit is not fundamentally of two different minds. He never can be that. To be really in the Spirit means, I repeat, to be of one category, of one kind.

And so the Apostle wrote so much to these churches about this oneness of mind, of heart, of spirit, this 'all speaking the one thing' (1 Corinthians 1:10). He said it again, he asked for it again, he was pleading for it (Phil. 1:27; 4:2); there it is possible. The solution to all those problems and difficulties is life in the Spirit. And that, of course, is based on the Cross, where we find an infinite capacity for letting go to the Lord. If we forget all the rest, let us remember that.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(The End)

(Next: "God's Reactions to Man's Defections)