ONE BODY IN CHRIST

ONE BODY IN CHRIST

在基督里合一

Before we pass on to our last important subject we will review some of the ground we have covered and summarize the steps taken.

We have sought to make things simple, and to explain clearly some of the experiences which Christians commonly pass through. But it is clear that the new discoveries that we make as we walk with the Lord are many, and we must be careful to avoid the temptation to over-simplify the work of God.

To do so may lead us into serious confusion.

There are children of God who believe that all our salvation, in which they would include the matter of leading a holy life, lies in an appreciation of the value of the precious Blood.

They rightly emphasize the importance of keeping short accounts with God over known specific sins, and the continual efficacy of the Blood to deal with sins committed, but they think of the Blood as doing everything. They believe in a holiness which in fact means only separation of the man from his past;

that, through the up-to-date blotting out of what he has done on the ground of the shed Blood, God separates a man out of the world to be His, and that is holiness; and they stop there.

Thus they stop short of God’s basic demands, and so of the full provision He has made.

I think we have by now seen clearly the inadequacy of this. Then there are those who GO FURTHER and SEE that God has included them in the death of His Son on the Cross, in order to deliver them from sin and the Law by dealing with the old man. These are they who REALLY EXERCISE FAITH in the Lord, for they glory in Christ Jesus and have ceased to put confidence in the flesh (Phil. 3:3). PHILIPPIANS 3:3 TPT

For we have already experienced “heart-circumcision,” and we worship God in the power and freedom of the Holy Spirit, not in laws and religious duties.

We are those who boast in what Jesus Christ has done, and not in what we can accomplish in our own strength. In them God has a clear foundation on which to build.

And from this as starting-point, many have GONE FURTHER still and

• recognized that CONSECRATION (using that word in the right sense)

• means giving themselves WITHOUT RESERVE into HIS hands and FOLLOWING HIM.

All these are first steps, and starting from them we have already touched upon other phases of experience set before us by God and enjoyed by many.

It is always essential for us to remember that, while each of them is a precious fragment of truth, no single one of them is by itself the whole of truth.

All come to us as the fruit of the work of Christ on the Cross, and we cannot afford to ignore any. A GATE AND A PATH

Recognizing a number of such phases in the life and experience of a believer,

we note now a further fact, namely that, though these phases do not necessarily occur always in a fixed and precise order,

they seem to be marked by certain recurring steps or features.

What are these steps?

First there is REVELATION.

As we have seen, this always PRECEDES faith and experience.

Through His Word God opens our EYES to the TRUTH of some fact concerning HIS SON, and

THEN ONLY, as in Faith we ACCEPT that fact for ourselves, does it become actual as experience in our lives.

Thus we have:

1 Revelation (Objective).

2 Experience (Subjective). Then further, we note that such experience usually takes the two-fold form of a crisis leading to a continuous process.

It is most helpful to think of this in terms of John Bunyan’s ‘wicket gate’ through which Christian entered upon a ‘narrow path’.

Our Lord Jesus spoke of such a gate and a path leading unto life (Matt. 7:14), and experience accords with this.

MATTHEW 7:13-14 AMP

“Enter through the narrow gate.

For WIDE is the gate and BROAD and EASY to travel is the path that leads the way to DESTRUCTION and eternal loss, and there are MANY who enter through it.

But SMALL is the gate and NARROW and DIFFICULT to travel is the path that leads the way to [everlasting] LIFE, and there are FEW who find it.

MATTHEW 7:13-14 MSG

“Don’t look for shortcuts to God.

The market is flooded with surefire, easygoing formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time.

Don’t fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do.

The WAY to LIFE—to GOD!—is vigorous and requires total attention.

So now we have:

1 Revelation

2 Experience:

Now let us take some of the subjects we have been dealing with and see how this helps us to understand them. We will take first our justification and new birth.

This begins with a REVELATION of the Lord Jesus in His atoning work for our sins on the Cross;

there follows the crisis of REPENTANCE and FAITH (the wicket gate), whereby we are initially “made nigh” to God (Eph. 2:13);

and this leads us into a WALK of maintained fellowship with Him (the NARROW PATH),

for which the ground of our day-to-day access is still the precious Blood (Heb.10:29,22).

When we come to deliverance from sin, we again have three steps:

• the Holy Spirit’s work of revelation, or ‘KNOWING’ (Rom. 6:6);

• the crisis of faith, or ‘RECKONING’ (Rom. 6:11); and

• The CONTINUING PROCESS of CONSECRATION, or ‘presenting ourselves’ to God (Rom. 6:13)

• on the basis of a WALK in NEWNESS of LIFE.

Consider next the GIFT of the HOLY SPIRIT.

This too begins with a NEW ‘SEEING’ of the Lord Jesus as exalted to the throne,

•which issues in the dual experience of the Spirit outpoured and the Spirit indwelling.

Going a stage further, to the matter of pleasing God,

•we find again the need for spiritual illumination,

•that we may see the values of the Cross in regard to ‘the flesh’—the entire self-life of man.

Our acceptance of this by faith leads at once to a ‘wicket gate’ experience (Rom. 7:25), in which we initially cease from ‘doing’ and accept by faith the mighty working of the life of Christ to satisfy God’s practical demands in us.

ROMANS 7:25 MSG

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does.

He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

This in turn leads us into the ‘narrow path’ of a WALK in OBEDIENCE to the SPIRIT (Rom. 8:4).

ROMANS 8:4 ICB

He did this so that we could be right as the law said we must be.

Now we do not live following our sinful selves, but we live following the Spirit.

The picture is not identical in each case, and we must beware of forcing any rigid pattern upon the Holy Spirit’s working;

but perhaps any new experience will come to us more or less on these lines.

There will CERTAINLY ALWAYS be first an opening of our EYES to some NEW ASPECT of Christ and His finished work,

and then faith will open a gate into a pathway.

Remember, too, that our division of Christian experience into various subjects:

justification, new birth, the gift of the spirit, deliverance, sanctification, etc., is for our clearer understanding only.

It does not mean that these stages must or will always

follow one another in a certain prescribed order.

In fact, if a full presentation of Christ and His Cross is made to us at the very outset, we may well step into a great deal of experience from the first day of our Christian life, even though the full explanation of much of it may follow later.

Would that all Gospel preaching were of such a kind!

One thing is certain, that revelation will always precede faith.

When we SEE something that God has done in Christ our natural response is:

‘Thank you, Lord !’ and faith follows spontaneously.

Revelation is always the work of the Holy Spirit, who is given to come alongside and, by opening the Scriptures to us, to guide us into all the truth (John 16:13).

JOHN 16:13 ICB

But when the Spirit of truth comes he will lead you into all truth.

He will not speak his own words.

He will speak only what he hears and will tell you what is to come.

Count upon Him, for He is here for that very thing; and WHEN such difficulties as lack of understanding or lack of faith confront you,

address those difficulties directly to the Lord:

‘Lord, open my eyes.

Lord, make this new thing clear to me.

Lord, help Thou my unbelief!’

He will not fail you.