God's Reactions to Man's Defections # 71

The Testimony of Jesus (continued)

The Holy Spirit Governing From Heaven (continued)

In order to pass with Him, then, the Holy Spirit requires that everything must be purely spiritual. It has got to be according to the judgment of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit operates in relation to "The Lamb in the Throne". That is the testimony in relation to all our sin, and all our failure: it is the Lamb in the throne. But what we are saying is that the Lord's idea of a Church, in any dispensation, in any age, at any time, in any place, is that it is essentially a spiritual thing, essentially a heavenly thing; it is essentially governed by the Holy Spirit. The headquarters are in the throne, and the Holy Spirit administers the Church from Heaven. If He does not, then man will have to administer it himself, and he will make an awful mess of it, as he has done. Oh, for a people, wherever they are - whether local companies or the Lord's people at large - really to be under this government of the Holy Spirit!

I will close by saying this. Every one of us, and young Christians perhaps especially, need to realize this: that, in coming to the Lord, having received Christ as our Saviour, having become a Christian, having been converted - however you may put it - if you have been truly born again, you are not just a Christian individual. You are a part of an eternally foreseen, chosen Body, you belong to a great spiritual, corporate entity, you belong to every other truly born-again child of God. Yours is a related life and not just an individual life. So much depends upon your realizing that! You have not just 'become a Christian' - you have become something infinitely more than that. You have become a member of this timeless, heavenly thing, conceived "before times eternal", fulfilling its real vocation when time shall be no more. That is what you have come into! And you have come into a tremendous vocation, to be part of that which is to keep alive the testimony of Jesus in this world.

You see, the devil and his vast kingdom of countless hosts of evil spirits, as Paul puts it, is out against one thing, and one thing only. From the beginning, when Jesus Christ was "appointed heir of all things" (Hebrews 1:2), satan has relentlessly and unceasingly set himself to frustrate and spoil and destroy one thing - the testimony of Jesus. And if he divides us up and gets in between us, he has touched the testimony of Jesus, because the testimony of Jesus is so bound up with our united and related life.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 72 - (The Responsibility of the Christian)