Spiritual Pioneers

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The whole history of vessels Divinely chosen and apprehended for the testimony of God, whether they be individual or corporate, is the history of pioneers breaking a way, cleaving a way through, doing something which was new so far as this world was concerned, breaking fresh ground, making fresh discoveries in relation to heaven – pioneers of a heavenly realm.

 

Within the spirit of the pioneer there is this sense of conflict with what is here, of being at variance with it and unable to accept it.

All pioneering is fraught with great cost and suffering, and this being a spiritual course or way, the cost of this pioneering is mainly inward.

 

Perplexity. Yes, perplexity.

What does perplexity imply? It implies a need for capacity or comprehension in some realm in which at present there is none. There is a realm that is beyond you. It does not mean that you will always be perplexed in the same measure over the same thing. You will grow out of your perplexity on this matter, and you will finally understand; but to the end there will be perplexity, in some measure – simply because heaven is bigger than this world, vaster than this natural life, and we have to grow and grow. Perplexity is the lot of pioneers.

 

It is the way of pioneers: To come to a wisdom which is beyond us and which for the time being means perplexity! To come to a strength which is beyond us and which for the time being means weakness in ourselves.

 

Let us turn to Abraham – a true representative pioneer of the heavenly way. We begin by reiterating one thing which was so true of Abraham, but which must be true, and is always true, of every spiritual pioneer, of every one who is moving on to explore and exploit the heavenly kingdom: that is, his sense, his deep inborn sense, of destiny.

 

Stephen has told us, concerning Abraham, that “The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham” (Acts 3:2) when he was in Ur of the Chaldees. We do not know how the God of glory appeared unto him. But we do know from his whole life that they effect of it was to bring to birth in him this tremendous sense of destiny which uprooted him from the whole of his past life, and which created in him a deep unrest, unrest of a right kind, a deep and a holy discontent.

 

Think again about Joshua and Caleb. These were most certainly men who had been in the heavenly school. If they had not been, they would never have taken the next generation into the land. God only knows what those men went through.

 

You see, the story is told in so few verses, about the spies going out, and the minority report, and the proposal to stone these men and kill them. But you have got to add to that long, long years while that whole generation was dying out, with only two men holding on to the heavenly vision. That is a hard school.

 

They might easily have lost heart and given up and said, “It is a hopeless outlook,” but they did not; the heavenly had got a grip upon them in their innermost being and held them. It held them, even in the greatest adversity, and they came through; they “overcame the world.”

Centrality of Christ # 04

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EVERYTHING TESTED BY THIS INWARDNESS

 

“… that I might preach him.” Everything hangs on that. “It pleased God… to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him,” or proclaim Him; underline the last word “Him,” that goes to the heart of everything, that interrogates everything, that weighs up the value of everything, Him!

 

Since Paul’s day so very much of Christian activity has been the furthering of a movement, the propagating of a teaching, the furthering of the interests of an institution. It is not a movement, nor to establish a movement in the earth and to get followers, adherents, members, support. It is not an institution, even though we might call that institution the Church.

 

The Church has no existence in the thought of God apart from the revelation of Jesus Christ, and it is judged according to the measure in which Christ the Son of God’s love is in evidence by its existence. It is not a testimony, if by that you mean a specific form of teaching, a systematized doctrine. No, it is not a testimony. Let us be careful what we mean when we speak about “the testimony”.

 

We may have in our minds some arrangement of truth, and that truth couched in certain phraseology, form of words, and thus speak about “the testimony”; it is not the testimony in that sense. It is not a denomination, and it is not an “undenomination,” and it is not an “interdenomination”. It is not Christianity.

 

It is not “the work” – oh, we are always talking about “the work”: “How is the work getting on?” – we are giving ourselves to the work, we are interested in the work, we are out in the work. It is not a mission. It is Christ. “… that I might preach HIM.” If that had remained central and pre-eminent all these horrible disintegrating jealousies would never have had a chance. All the wretched mess that exists in the organization of Christianity today would never have come about.

Centrality of Christ # 03

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Now beloved, for ourselves that principle holds true as it did for Paul, that everything hangs upon an inward revelation of Jesus Christ.

Our lives as children of God are constituted by that, and all that we are and all that we do in relation to Him rests upon that inward revelation which has resulted in His centrality and supremacy so far as our lives are concerned. It is so, even for religious people, for Saul was an exceeding religious man.

I say that because so often there is a kind of a mental kick back when we speak of Paul’s conversion and the radical nature of it, and the attitude is mentally taken – “Yes, well, we have never had such an experience; God has never done to us what He did to Saul of Tarsus, therefore the same thing cannot be expected of us, and cannot be basic to our lives.”

Now in spite of such a mental reaction, we want to reaffirm that the law holds good and that you and I will never be Christians, or servants of the Lord, in real spiritual life and effectiveness beyond the measure of our inward apprehension of the Lord Jesus. That is basic to everything.

 

TAS

The Centrality and Supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ

Centrality of Christ # 02

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Let us look at that word again – “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” You will notice in the context that the first chapter of the Colossian letter carries us right back into the mind and heart of God before the world was, and we are shown what was going on in the mind and heart of the Father concerning His Son. It is called “the mystery,” that is, the Divine secret.

 

Read it again, every fragment of it, what God’s secret was. It is all gathered up, every fragment of it, in this: “That in all things he might have the pre-eminence.” “In ALL things”; and then – and this seems to me to be the wonder of it, this is a thing which is so far beyond our comprehending – that all that, the eternal heart secret of God in its mighty meaning and outworking, was to have its beginning of realization within the individual heart of a believer. So far as the actual and practical realization of the mystery, the secret of God, is concerned, its beginning is within the heart of the individual believers.

 

This mystery is: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” This secret of God, this thing that God has had in His heart from eternity is: “Christ in you”. I want to emphasize that once more. That which was in God’s heart from eternity, for its realization has to be put into our hearts in time. That which was in the mind of God from before the foundation of the world, has its commencement in the receiving of Christ into the heart by faith on the part of the believer, the individual believer. That is not the end, that is the beginning.

 

What will follow will be the Church which is His Body. That has been foreseen and is complete in the eternal thought, but it will follow the individual believer’s reception of Christ. The Church which is His Body is not the end. It will be the centre of another sphere, the kingdoms of this world, the nations will walk in the light thereof. And then again, that will not be the end, it will expand to the universe. Not only glorified humanity but the celestial forces and hosts will be in the light of that. But we come back to the individual.

 

TAS

The Centrality and Supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ

Positive Ground of the Church

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There is one thing that is giving me a good deal of anxiety and apprehension. In this time when a twofold movement is taking place on a wide scale: that is, on the one hand the great movement towards union (not unity), as in the World Council of Churches, on the policy of the combine and monopoly, with all the necessary compromises and sacrifice of distinctiveness of message; and on the other hand the unrest, dissatisfaction, and loosening of ties with the established system of churches and institutions, resulting in many leaving their old associations and either meeting in groups or drifting without anchorage in their disappointment – my disturbing fear is that there will be a movement, or some movements, towards the formation of another undenominational or interdenominational denomination, this coming about also by policy, expediency or seeming necessity.

 

Such a movement would only be another tragedy and incipient sectarian calamity, which history would show had not been of God but of man, although with the best of motives. May the Lord save us from this so serious mistake! It would be a starting at the wrong end; a trying to form something instead of an organic growth from a living illumination, a revolutionary encounter with an unveiling of the true nature of the Church. For this latter God would have to lay an apprehending hand on a man or body of men, and by a devastating showing of the true, universal, and spiritual significance of Christ, as effectively emancipating them from all the historic accretions of Christianity as the Apostle Paul was emancipated from historic Judaism. The growth of this organism would be as other emancipated men sprang from the essential root, and not just adhered or sponsored. The power of such an organism would be the all-conquering life of resurrection: “the power that worketh in us.” There is nothing artificial, imitation or manufactured about this, and it requires no propaganda. The Holy Spirit is the great Propagandist of what is of heaven.

 

The above is written out of a very deep concern; a longing and a fear. It should be remembered that when God made His “new thing”, His “new cruse” as the foundation of this dispensation of the Spirit and the Church, He did so with a nucleus of men who had been broken by the Cross and reunited by the Resurrection. These two things were wrought deeply into their very constitution and were the ground upon which the Holy Spirit built in every place. This is the only positive ground for the Church and churches. Anything other will be negative. They were men who had seen! It may be that if the Lord is to have such a spiritual impact as was then made on the world, it will be necessary to sift down to that basis the conglomeration of the man-made and start – or go on – with the small but intrinsic seed plot.

 

This may be like a “voice crying in the wilderness”, but perhaps some wind of God would carry it as a guide or warning where it is needed… as things are, it is becoming more and more evident that God must “do a new thing” if His full end is to be reached. May He raise up His Prophets to “show the House to the house of Israel”, that they may be ashamed, and may some Josiah, personal or corporate, arise to lead to such a taste of the real thing as to result in the leaving of all that is false. We can only resort to prayer!

 

TAS

The Otherness of Christ

 

Dear friends, what is the Lord doing with us? That is what we want to know. What is He doing with you and me, and with those who are really in His hands? Is He not doing with us that which He has done with all who have come completely under His hands; that is, leading in a way and realm where human understanding and ability are completely confounded and exhausted, where it is totally impossible to cope mentally with His ways, or to explain Him? We cannot see, we cannot understand; neither is it in us to do, to achieve. We are learning that all our resources are of no avail and that everything depends upon the Lord Himself – His wisdom, His strength, His grace.

 

Well now, if it is your experience so far and at this time, understand that it is quite right, it is not all a mistake. True, it is very painful, it is testing. It is testing up to that point where your feet have to touch the very brink before you prove God. You have to come to an utter end of one way and to a beginning that is a beginning even to the point of lifting your feet to take a step to prove God, for God to come in. You say that is very utter. Yes, but it is this utterness of the difference between the Lord and ourselves that we have to learn, and that is going to set us over against the colossus of false doctrine, of the iniquitous lie which is being built upon this earth up to heaven, the lie of humanism.

 

That is the greatest lie that has been brought into this universe, that it is in man to be his own savior, that it is in man to rise to perfection, it is in man to be God; it is all in man, the roots are in himself. I say that is Satan’s colossus of iniquitous untruth, and God is working out the contradiction of that in a company, in His Church. It is being wrought, worked out, in the unseen; and while it is so difficult to accept it in the day of suffering, weakness, and darkness and inability to understand, if we knew the truth the probability is that it is just this: God is doing with Satan in and through the Church what He did with Satan in and through Job, answering his challenge and his lie. Here is a broken, shattered, helpless little vessel of saints, bewildered, stripped, thrown back upon their God, unable to do or to understand, clinging to Him and seeking to prove Him, and through that the greatest iniquity in this universe is being assailed by God and answered.

 

The lie! There never was a time when that lie has reached greater proportion than it has today. But in you and in me, poor broken ones, God has His answer, and it does mean something to the Lord that we have been emptied out to the last drop, thrown back upon Him where He is our wisdom, He is our strength, He is our life, He is our very breath. That means something to Him.

 

Karl Barth has coined for us a phrase which has gained a great deal of strength and place, and it is a very useful one – “the altogether other-ness of Christ.” Oh, that goes much further than we realize, certainly much further than most people are prepared to believe. Even yet in evangelical Christianity there is a clinging to the idea that we transfer everything to Christ and to Christianity when we are born again. We transfer all our faculties and our powers over to the interests of Christ and then, instead of using them for ourselves and for the world, we use them for Christ. That is the meaning of consecration, of surrender, as the terms are used so largely today in evangelical Christianity – the consecration of ourselves, our gifts, our faculties, our everything, to the Lord and to His service.

 

But that falls short of something. It is not the transference and the consecration of everything that we are to the Lord to be used straightway as it is over on His side – for His interests instead of in the world. Christ is other yet, Christ is still different yet from consecrated natural life; oh, so other! Something has to happen, our entire mentality has to be changed, transformed. The mind has to be renewed; we have to have an altogether different kind of outlook, even about the things of God. It is a constitutional matter, not merely a directional one.

 

This is the meaning of the Lord’s dealings with us; namely, to get a new mentality, a new conception; another, not our old one transferred, but another; and the distance is not the distance of time or geography necessarily, it is the distance of difference; and we make faster or slower progress spiritually according to how we learn this lesson. What is the secret of spiritual progress? It is the letting go of our own will and mind to the fact, to the truth, that after all, though Christians at our best, wanting to be a hundred per cent for the Lord, it is not in us either to be or do.

 

Our will can never do it, our reason can never accomplish it, our impulses and desires can never get us there. We have to come to a brokenness and yieldedness where nature is laid low in the dust and all our treasure is with the stones of the brook and the Almighty becomes our treasure (Job 22:24-25); the Lord alone our wisdom, our strength and vision, our desire. Until you and I have learned the lesson of that utter brokenness and yieldedness and letting go to the Lord, spiritual progress is delayed.

 

May the Lord show us the great distance that lies between ourselves as Christians and Christ, and give us a heart that yields to the Spirit’s work in teaching that lesson and making it good and bringing us more and more to the measure of His Son.

 

TAS

Centrality of Christ # 01

 

 

THE CENTRALITY AND SUPREMACY OF THE LORD JESUS IS THE PIVOT AND THE KEY TO ALL THE SCRIPTURES

 

Of course the Lord Jesus Himself has told us as much. We know from Luke 24 that that is so. There we find Him taking Moses, the Psalms, and all the Prophets, and in them all speaking of the things concerning Himself.

 

So that in our reading of the Word of God, wherever we happen to be reading, the question that should always be in our minds is “What has this to do with Christ?”; and if you bring that question to your reading of the Word of God, wherever you may read (and that is not said without thought) you will at once get a new understanding of the Word, you will have a new value in your reading; for the Scriptures, and ALL the Scriptures, are they which speak of Him; although you may have difficulty sometimes in tracing Him, yet He is there.

 

The cumulative effect of all parts of the Word of God is to bring you to Christ. You must not read the Word of God as history, narrative, prophecy, or as anything else as a theme in itself, but always ask the question: “What has this to do with Christ?” and until you can find what it has to do with Christ you have not found the key. You will probably be thinking of certain portions of Scripture which will be difficult.

 

You will think of such books as the Book of Proverbs, and you will say: “What has this to do with Christ?” One little suggestion will at once illuminate that book for you. Wherever you read the word Wisdom, put Christ in the place of Wisdom and you have transformed the book and you have got its essence – and that is quite legitimate, quite proper, quite right, as your reading will prove to you. He is the Wisdom of God, the Eternal Logos.

 

Well, just in passing we mention that because what we are after is to see the centrality and universality of the Lord Jesus, and He is by Divine appointment at the centre of everything in this universe, every phase and every aspect, and He is its explanation.

 

 

From:

The Centrality and Supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ

TAS

The Lord’s Recovery Movement

 

On the whole today, the Lord’s full thought and conception is not the general thing among His people. The testimony of the Lord has largely broken down, and the great multitude called by His name are governed and manipulated and controlled by something that is religiously of the earth and not of the heavens – of man and not of the Holy Ghost; and there needs to be seen the impossibility of accepting that state of things.

 

It is one thing to recognize that. . . and quite another thing to be in relation with the Lord’s movement to recover for Himself that which is according to His mind.

 

One can be occupied all the time with the bad state of things, bemoan it, make people feel miserable. . . yet never get anywhere. That is not sufficient. It is quite easy to do that and to be, in a sense, religious malcontents; but that is not being active in the Lord’s recovery movement. The Lord would act in relation to this thing. . . and He is acting.

 

God must have a vessel – an instrument brought into such sympathetic fellowship with HIM that the conditions around of breakdown and failure become acute suffering—an agony. Paul knew something of that “suffering for His Body’s sake”. . . “filling up that which was lacking of the sufferings of Christ.” We must face that! The thing that is going to count for God is the sharing in His travail.

 

There is all the romance of Christian work, but that is mere glamour. . . all the enthusiasm and interest of organized Christian activity—all that. But it is not what we are before men in this matter, but what we are before God in the secret place – having heart concern for the Lord’s testimony. We shall never get anywhere till in measure we enter into His travail. Ministry in its real, abiding, eternal value will depend upon the measure in which the travail is entered into.

 

This is a day for travail. Whether it be a travail for unsaved or for the Lord’s people, every true spiritual activity is born out of travail; and those who have been most used of God in every time have been men and women who had this travail in their soul – in their secret life with God; who carried on their hearts a burden which led them to a point where their interests became quite secondary. . . and they took their life in their hand and held everything in relation to the Lord’s own interest and His testimony, willing to let all go for God.

 

This becomes a heart burden. . . to be carried all the time, not merely a ministry burden. This is necessary to any real ministry.

The Lord must have an instrument – a Daniel instrument – whether personal or collective, that moves out toward God for His testimony. He must have a Nehemiah with a heartache over the people because of the breakdown of the testimony. He must have an Ezra who is not for a moment compromising with anything contrary to the mind of God; and the Esther instrument who flings fear to the winds and goes, taking life in hand, to besiege the throne for the life of her people – for the deliverance of the people of God from the threat of the enemy.

 

And, beloved, the burden of the Lord has got to come on our heart in like manner if we are to be effective instruments for the Lord in His End-time activities; we have got to be exercised in a very deep way with the interests of God. We must hold back nothing that will count for the Lord and His interests. You would be surprised how the Lord would come through if you gave Him a chance.

 

The whole thing begins with a recognition of the need. . . and the burden of those things upon our hearts. When we are really in it by the urge of the Holy Spirit, the common features found in these Old Testament instruments will be found inwrought in us. . . and we shall be found a people abandoned unto this ONE THING – the Lord’s burden and heart concern for His testimony in His people.

 

Then when you get into it, you find you are in a realm of opposition. . . and that you are really in a battle. If we are going to stand with God for that which wholly represents His mind, we have got to meet the most fierce antagonism, conflict, and pressure from every quarter; there is going to be no method overlooked by the enemy for frustrating the end in view. Why so much antagonism? Why so much pressure? Each time when something is in view which is to count for God in relation to His End-time purpose, there it is – you meet it all the time.

 

We meet this pressure from within and without when we are in the thing that is counting for God. When it comes, you must recognize that it is related to something which is to count for God. It will come through people; and if we blame the people and focus our attention on them, we have missed the point. We begin to fight people, and all the time it is something deeper than that: “Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies.”

 

People get cross with one another, and that gets on top of us; and we begin to direct our attention to them. We get out with them and there is a situation and a mess. . . and we see afterwards how silly we are in allowing the devil to swing us off into a human track when it is a spiritual issue. It has not really been the fault of persons. . . or just inconsequential happenings; there has been a spiritual issue at stake. And all these other things were brought about by. . . and used of. . . the enemy to occupy us with the lesser and to blind us to the real issue, thus keeping us out of prayer and out of standing with the Lord for His rights which were at some point or other being challenged.

 

It is the realm of unceasing conflict; and we have, it would seem, come into that part of the age when the enemy takes no rest. . . and we find we can take no off-times. Anything you do must be done deliberately with God, and you must never act out of, or apart from, God: such an exposed movement has been watched for by the enemy, and you have to pay for it.

Deliverance from oneself comes along the line of being concerned for the Lord’s interests. You can become tied up with your own spiritual problems, and the way out is to have the burden of all God’s people on your heart. It is that that creates ministry, that means strength, that means praying. It is an emancipating thing to have the Lord’s burden.

 

Things today are terrible spiritually; but there are those who are reaching out for more of God. . . and asking where they can find spiritual food. The Lord would, I believe, do something in our day – a day of small things – and He will begin by having an instrument with a burden – an instrument with whom is deposited the full-orbed revelation of the Lord Jesus, who would step out in faith and trust the Lord. . . and give the Lord a chance to vindicate Himself.

 

Are you dabbling with things – toying with pebbles on the beach – instead of being out in the deep with God in His big thing? Are you just interested. . . or desperately concerned; just having a nice pleasant time, or really carrying God’s need in His people on your heart?

Ask the Lord to bring you into His concern; stretch yourself out before God to be brought into His burden for the time in which you live.

Ask the Lord about this matter; and, if it is true, ask Him to lay it on your heart and bring you into fellowship with HIMSELF in what He would do today.

 

TAS

Stripping Down to Christ Alone

 

We realize, with intense sorrow of heart, that all is not well with that which ostensibly represents the Lord here. . . and that there is a state of things widely prevailing which does not truly accord with the revealed desire of God.

 

“We live in a time of more than usual dearth spiritually – the state of things may well remind us of Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones. We have not merely to cope with evils which have characterized bygone ages, but also with the matured corruption of a time wherein the varied evils of the Gentile world have become connected with, and covered by, the cloak of Christian profession; and when we turn to the state of those whose knowledge of truth and high profession might naturally encourage the expectation of more healthy and vigorous Christian action, we find, alas! in many – yea, in the majority of cases – that the knowledge is but cold and uninfluential theory. . . and the profession but superficial.”

 

Christianity has become so largely a matter of doctrine and creed; the test of Christian life is very much a matter of subscribing thereto. Christian experience has become largely limited to a matter of being saved, without the great eternal and universal relative factors and issues. Christian service is resolved far too much into a matter of enthusiasm in a great enterprise, apart from an adequate apprehension of what the Lord is really after. . . and the indispensable energy and equipment of the Holy Ghost. The Christian “Church” is very, largely reduced to earthly institutions, societies, denominations, buildings, activities, and orders; and the spiritual revelation and apprehension of the “one Body” and “one Spirit” is, for the most part by far, lacking. Christian teaching has very largely become – at best – a matter of giving addresses and preaching sermons with a presentation of “the letter of the Word” – a giving forth of truth as truth, but lacking in “revelation in the knowledge of Him”. . . that true inwardness of meaning which reaches the heart and meets the deepest spiritual need of the hungry.

 

The result of all this is that the impact, upon the world. . . and particularly upon “the world rulers of this darkness,” of that which stands for God is almost nil, or a minus quantity.

 

Missionary leaders who are in a position to speak with authority are almost of one mind and voice in saying that the only hope of an adequate movement amongst the heathen lies in the direction of a new spiritual movement amongst God’s people in the home countries.

 

As we get nearer the close of this age, the contact with. . . and impact of. . . the forces of Satan are going to be such that only those who know the full testimony of Jesus and stand experimentally in it will be able to go through without being paralyzed. The aspect of things is fast changing. The past twenty years has seen a movement into a realm where the old methods and means no longer prove effectual. We shall soon find a tremendous pressing down of the powers of darkness upon this earth, using the world-powers to such a degree and in such ways as to eclipse anything which has hitherto been. This is in full accord with the Word of God.

 

There will be one, and only one, hope for God’s people: their knowledge of Him in Christ. . . and the power of His resurrection as a present spiritual reality. Not their activities, enthusiasms, organizations, enterprises, creeds, “churches,” orthodoxy, etc., but HIMSELF. That time, which is now coming upon us – though imperceptible to so many who are preoccupied with plans and programs – will make manifest the principle of the “one Body,” for each of the Lord’s children will feel keenly the need of the fellowship of another, no matter of what connection, so long as that other knows Him.

 

The bringing in of the ministry of the prophets of old had its occasion in the breakdown of the Lord’s true order. Theirs it was to keep before His people what that order was. . . and to call back to it. . . against a day of fire. We are in such a time, and what the Lord needs is that instrument by which He can keep His mind about things in view and call back to it – an instrument which will pay the price of being refused a hearing, of ostracism, of false imputations, slander, and cruel calumny. This needs faith, boldness, and preparedness to leave all vindication with the Lord.

 

Beloved fellow members of Christ, will you have it urged f upon you to seek the Lord for “a Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him” – a pure spiritual unveiling of the Lord Jesus as God’s representation of His thought concerning all these things; and as He gives you light, will you seek grace to stand for Him in the day of His need with all boldness, and whatever the price? All other questions will answer themselves as you do this.

  

TAS

Securing Christ’s Place in this World

  

We need to remember this. We must not put it in other ways; we must not think of it in other terms. ’The Holy Spirit will do this and that’, we say. Yes, He will: but – ’this and that’, and perhaps a hundred or a thousand other things and aspects, are all related to one thing; they are not things in themselves.

 

We must emphasize this here very strongly. The Holy Spirit may give light; the Holy Spirit may give leading; the Holy Spirit may do many many ’things’: but we must remember that everything that the Holy Spirit does is included in one object, it is all to one end. That object is, primarily, to secure Christ’s place in this universe – to secure the place of the Lord Jesus in men, in this world.

 

Our way of speaking may often mislead us. We would say: The work of the Holy Spirit is to save souls. Yes, quite – but why? just to have them saved? No; in order that the Lord Jesus may have His place. Those souls are to be the ’residences’ of the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit may instruct believers and build them up – for what purpose? Just that they should be mature Christians? Not at all; but so that the Lord Jesus shall have a larger place.

 

No matter what the Holy Spirit does, He has one all-inclusive object and end – the glorifying of the Lord Jesus: that is, the giving of the Lord Jesus His place, and then filling all things with Christ. Do not think of the ’being filled with the Spirit’, of the ’fulness of the Spirit’, in any other way than this. The Holy Spirit’s filling is intended to be a filling of all things with Christ.

 

TAS