The Cross and Eternal Glory - Part 7 — T. Austin-Sparks

Now we come this evening to the remaining half of the conference, all of which has to be crowded into as short a time as possible. Therefore, not very much detail must be carried with. And I think that the outline which you have before you, on the whole, really does speak for itself.

The Eternal Glory Intended for Creation

It presents what the Bible is all about. And it is all about the eternal glory which God determined and purposed to fill his whole creation. And which should be centered in his Son, and from his Son radiated through a people known to us now in the Scripture as the Church, which is Christ's Body.

We have looked back into the past eternity and with the Word of God seen the eternal Son with the Father in his glory. The glory which he had with him before the world was, to use his own words. We have also, by the Word of God again, been taken back and shown those expanding counsels of God to have a people in fellowship with his Son, sharing that glory and ultimately manifesting it or ministering it.

We have seen the interruption in the divine purpose by sin, the great rift which came in heaven and on earth. All this we have seen by the Word of God. It is not our imagination, something we are making up, but there it is, the Word of God does show these things.

And then with the rift, the action of Satan first, and then the complicity of man with him, the suspended glory and God reacting, the divine thrust in and forward to take all the measures to see that his purpose would not be ultimately destroyed or frustrated.

And so we saw right down the eternity which is yet to be where the glory is in fullness, unclouded, unshadowed. The light is thrown along the ages right to the beginning and by means of that light, a shadow, a shadow, the shadow of a man.

The light of the eternal glory, the shadow of the man Christ Jesus to be discerned all the way through right from that point where the glory was interrupted. God introduced, shall we say in shadow form, but everything was a shadow of him, introduced his man, the capital and the very big capital M, and with him the cross to show that in and by that man the glory was going to be secured, but by the cross because upon eternity it would be the cross as the instrument by which God would do it.

The Cross in the Old Testament: Mediation, Authority, and Representation

And we have seen the two great aspects of the cross in this connection, in connection with the glory, the mediatorial aspect, mediation, that is the altar, the sacrifice, the priest. Filling the Old Testament and especially as introduced in the first section of the Old Testament as laying the foundation for everything else.

And then in the second large section the whole principle of authority introduced, the kingship, because it was not only corruption that came in, pollution and defilement, it was positive animosity, antagonism, rebellion.

The only way to deal with that is by a centralized supreme authority. That principle then was introduced at a point known to us as the book of Joshua and running right through to the book of Esther, a large section of the Old Testament.

And then the third section we call the prophets, bringing in the principle of representation or re-presentation, bringing back into clear view God's full intention. And standing so powerfully, so mightily against all that's against that intention of God.

Well the Old Testament is summed up in that way, the priest, the mediator, the king, the authority, the prophets, the representation of God's thought. But as we have seen in every case nothing was made perfect indeed.

Overall, at a point, failure was written. While there was a deposit to be carried on, thing was not. Final in its effecting of God's purpose, bringing in the full glory, only in hints and in types and in figures and in symbols.

Jesus Christ as the Fulfillment of God's Purpose

And so we come at last to the point where it is all brought to perfection. And we come to the man himself. The man himself, the man, Christ Jesus. He is brought to us in full view in those four books known to us as the four Gospels, Matthew to John.

It is the man himself, he has come at last. Not now in type or figure or symbol, but in personal reality and actuality. The shadow has now become the substance. That pointed tool has been reached. And here he is on the scene.

And that will, that will, having made known unto us the mystery of his will, that we should be unto the praise of his glory. That big capital WILL is embodied in this man. You know the words of Scripture about that, don't you?

Let me read them to you. Wherefore, when he cometh into the world, he saith, A body didst thou prepare for me? Then said I, Lo, I am come, in the roll of the book it is written of me, to do thy will, O God.

A body to do thy will according to what has been said before. A body to do thy will. The man embodies the will. He is the embodiment of God's will. If you can put Jesus Christ out of God's universe, then you have defeated utterly God's eternal purpose, made glory impossible.

But if you cannot put him out, and a good many have tried and are trying, you cannot put him out, then God's purpose is going most certainly to be realized. It's embodied in one who cannot be put out, as we shall see as we go along.

We must recognize the significance of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus, God's Son in bodily form. It is nothing less than the taking up of the eternal will, the will of God before the world was, the determination of God then as to how things should be, taking that up in his own person and making himself responsible for its realization.

And he's done it. The will is embodied. The will is done to do thy will. And that passage from which we've just read goes on to say that that will has been done by which will he has perfected forever, once for all, perfectly done.

He's done the will of God. It's a great thing, dear friends, for you and for me, if only we can grasp it, not as a statement of truth or doctrine, but if really we can grasp it by faith to our hearts, that the Christ whom we have received within us as God's children, who is within us, is there as the one who has perfectly done all God's will.

And God looks upon him in that way. He has done God's will. He has perfected God's will. God's will is perfected in man in this universe. When we tonight partake of this note, in symbol, not in reality, but in symbol, we are testifying to the fact that we have taken into our very being one who has perfected the will of God and as we eat, he is becoming a part of us in that way.

I know the danger associated with making such a statement. Perhaps it wants safeguarding. It's not a literal, of course a literal, feeding and making Christ a part of us, but in faith. Our union with the Lord Jesus inwardly, spiritually, means that we are linked with the accomplished will of God and our lives rest upon that.

All the rest, all the rest of our training, our discipline, springs out of something that is already done. We have a perfected salvation to rest upon. Perhaps the greatest difficulty for many Christians to believe, they still think that something's got to be done in order that they should be saved.

Well, it hasn't. It's all done. The rest is only the working out of what has been done. We ought to rest upon this. The will has been perfectly done and the statement of scripture is, by which will, by which will, we are sanctified once for all.

Christ's Glory and the Promise of Conformity

So because the will has been embodied and the will has been done, the glory has been recovered in him. The glory has been recovered in him. He said, I have glorified thee on the earth. He said it to the Father.

I have glorified thee on the earth. And there was a point in his time on the earth when in the presence of three disciples, unannouncing, he was transferred before them. He was glorified. The glory came upon him, spirit, soul and body.

As we have often pointed out, so far as he was concerned, he was fit to go to heaven right away and be there in the matchless, eternal glory of God and of heaven. Nothing more, so far as he was concerned, needed to be done.

God glorified him because in him God saw a perfect man, morally and spiritually. For you, for me, he said. He came down the mountain in order that what is true of him might be made true of us and that by way of the cross.

It's very wonderful that God, having perfected him in that way as man, has done it as the guarantee that you and I will be like him. The guarantee that you and I will be like him. And when we shall see him, says the word, we shall be like him.

Christ's Authority in Acts and the Exalted Lordship

We shall be like him. That is the mediator, the mediator of the glory, the authority, the authority. That which answers to the next section of the Old Testament, this is in the book of Acts. He said on his resurrection, Matthew 28, 18,.

All authority has just been given to me in heaven and on earth. The authority, the kingship, received at the hands of the Father. Again, because he was obedient unto death, the death of the cross, God has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow.

The authority has been given to him. That is where we begin the book of Acts. The authority received and vested in him. The kingship, the lordship, the sovereign headship. That authority is instated in heaven, in heaven.

Luke 24, 51,. When he had given commandment to his disciples, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. And while they were looking, he was received up into heaven. And they were as miserable as people could be and went back saying, We've lost everything.

Not at all, it says. And they returned glorifying God. Glory was instated in heaven. I'm very glad about that. It might be in danger down here, but it can't be in danger up there. As I meant just now, it's instated where it is unreachable and untouchable by all adverse forces.

It is in heaven. It's in heaven. The authority is in heaven. And no power against it can get there to touch it, to interfere with it anymore. Well, I'd like to stay with that because the scriptures have something to say about the very purging of the heavens by the virtue of the blood and the cross of the Lord Jesus.

They have been purged. They have come under the mighty effect of his work on the cross. And no corruption can get there anymore. No interference with this authority. Everything is there. Blessed be God, it is out of reach of anything or anyone against it.

That's all we say about the fact that Jesus is in heaven glorified. The authority is there. The headquarters of everything is in heaven and the authority exercised. Say, yes, those are beautiful ideas, wonderful teaching, but how about the proof, the evidence?

Well, read the book of the Acts, that's all. Read it. Here is a book with 28 chapters just crammed full of the exercise of that heavenly authority by the heavenly man Jesus Christ. The first expression of that authority, as we noted in the Old Testament, was the unifying of disrupted and disintegrated elements.

Here are men. In the closest proximity to him while he is here in the flesh, but there are 12 units, 12 fragments without any kind of organic relatedness or oneness. Indeed, they bear all the marks of this disruption in the natural realm.

They're quarreling. They're contentious. They're envious of one another. They're trying to outdo one another. There's nothing about them that speaks of a oneness of heart and mind and spirit. But see, when the Holy Spirit came on Christ being exalted to heaven, these men, these men, they're a unit.

They're bound in a wonderful oneness of spirit. Unification basic by this authority of Christ being exercised. Uniting a disintegrated body, bringing it together. See, it's an essential that to all the followers, this kind of kingship, this kind of lordship, this kind of sovereign headship, Jesus as Lord, absolutely Lord, within and without, is essential to all the work which follows.

Pointed out that in the King of the Old Testament, in David, in Solomon, by the unification of the nation, they came into a wonderful wealth, wonderful richness, wonderful power, wonderful dominion over all forces against.

It was their solid unity because of one reigning, governing head that led to that glorious reign of Solomon. And a greater than Solomon is here. So much came out of this unity. See, we cannot make too much of spiritual oneness.

How important, essential it is to all that follows in the book of the Acts. And you can see that immediately Satan got to work to try to counter that oneness. He made some people complain that they were not being looked after.

What not? At once he is seeking to break up again, to destroy the oneness because he sees what a potent factor that is. It is a testimony to the absolute triumph of Jesus over the work of the devil. It opens the way for the glory, whereas all this other state of things is so shameful and such, such a denial of the triumph of his cross.

Oh, you and I ought to make very, very much more of this matter of spiritual oneness, of fellowship, of unity, than we do. God mark you, it is the realm of a tremendous battle. The enemy is out against it, unifying, and I must say with all the detail of this lordship, this authority, coordinating.

You can see it in the book of the Acts, can't you? A wonderful coordinating, causing the various parts to work together harmoniously to one end. It's just romantic, this book of how the Holy Spirit in the authority of Jesus Christ is making this work in with that.

A country without a country, there's a man who really does want spiritual help and he's praying for it, for guidance and for life. How he can come into God's full mind, he senses that there's something very much more that he should come into and he's praying about it and the way right down country, the Holy Spirit touches and takes hold of the very man to meet that need and coordinates this thing.

You see, and it's like that through this book, isn't it? It's the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus being exercised in coordinating things, in administering the matters of his church and seeing that all the needs are met, wonderfully met and then overruling even the adversities and the works of the enemy.

It was one thing more than another in this book that is impressive. It is the way in which the Sovereign Lord overruled evil, overruled the works of the devil, overruled the works of evil men and caused all these things which were intended to be a game just to fulfill the very end that they wanted to stop.

This is a book of the authority secured in Christ and who can read the book without saying it's the book of glory. It's the book of glory. You want to say glory be to God as you go on from chapter to chapter, don't you?

Just like that. Oh, glory be to God for that. It's glorious all the way along and it's simply because Jesus is on the throne. The authority has been established in him. A word about the third section, representation, that of course is found in those many books of the New Testament from the letter to the Romans to the letter of Jews, many letters between, but what really they amount to and please do recognize this, you take up Romans or Corinthians or Galatians or any of these letters, you're not just reading them as letters in themselves, they're all a part of one whole and the one inclusive all governing object of them is to bring this man into view as God's model.

Conformity to Christ Through the New Testament Letters

And from many angles, from many angles, the Holy Spirit is working to make that model good, to fulfill it in the church. So you take this out, this letter is only an aspect of Christ and if the Holy Spirit can get us according to that, he has got us according to Christ.

Christ is there in heaven as the model, the pattern, and the Holy Spirit has come and is now saying this and this and this through these letters, bearing upon the whole matter of conformity to Christ.

For we are told that that was in the mind of God before man was created, we were foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son. That's the declaration of Scripture. Now, with the Son instated as the model, the pattern, the Holy Spirit comes and by means of instruction and exhortation and warning and all that is in these letters, the Holy Spirit is saying this is the way in which to be conformed to Christ.

These are the things which are the things of Christ to be reproduced in you. That's all I can say about that aspect of representation. But do remember that these many letters from Romans to Jude in some way or another bear upon that one thing.

God has got his pattern man and the Holy Spirit has come to conform us to the image of that pattern, to work it out in his people. And so that could become clear if I had time to dwell upon every one of those letters, which I have not.

You would see that every one of them deals with this matter of Christ-likeness in some way or another. What's all about? Christ-likeness. Doing this thing in an inward way in believers with an object.

With an object. First of all, of getting rid of all the ground inwardly that cannot be glorified. All that is contrary to Christ. All that is a contradiction to Christ. It can never be glorified in getting rid of it.

And reproducing Christ and making Christ everything. And steadily increasing the measure of Christ in us unto the great consummation of glory. That's the crown. The crown. It's inward first and then the crown is outward.

We have in this first letter to the Corinthians chapter 15 the statement these very bodies these very bodies of ours this body of corruption shall be made like unto the body of His glory. His glorious body.

It's inward first and then it's crowned outwardly with a glorified body. The body of His glory. And that is what God made man for. To have a body of glory. But it's a moral matter. It's a spiritual matter.

The Church as the Vessel of Christ's Mediation

It's got to begin inside with Christlikeness or the nature of God. The vehicle, the vessel and the vehicle of all this we are saying is the church. The church then becomes the vessel and the vehicle of what is true of Christ.

Not in an atoning way but in another sense mediating. That is taking off that great work that Christ has done by His cross and declaring it to the world. Standing between the Savior and those needing to be saved.

Between the glorified Christ and that whole situation which needs to be changed. The church comes in there. That's the church's vocation. The church's mission. The church's business to stand in the gap between the Savior and the sinner.

And to mediate. To mediate by proclamation, by testimony, by life His salvation to others. He can do it without us but He's chosen to do it through us by means of us. That they should know and only know by means of the church.

That they should see and only see by means of the church. A mediatorial instrument let me say again not in atonement but in this work of making the atonement known and transmitting it. That is not done officially whenever you get down to the long side of a sinner who is seeking the Savior and you pray with and for that one something is given of help.

Something is mediated. You are not the Savior. You can't save any. But Christ comes through you. And they are helped by means of you. And the church is here on this earth as a whole for that purpose. How poor is my setting of this forth tonight.

I can only do this much indicating the church is also here to mediate the authority of Christ. To mediate the authority of Christ because the authority of Christ can only be known in and through the church again in this dispensation.

That Christ is on the throne has got to be made known by the church. Oh, are we failing? Are we failing? Is it true that we are really here registering this sovereign lordship upon this world, upon these situations, upon these works of the enemy?

That's what the church is for. The Lord will recover us to the place of His throne authority not in any official way but in a true spiritual way. And what is true of the mediation and the authority is true of the representation.

The Lord will recover us to the place of His throne authority not in any official way but in a true spiritual way. And what is true of the mediation and the authority is true of the representation. They will not see what the Lord is like only by means of you and me, by means of the church.

The church is here to let them see what the Lord is like. Oh, Lord, help us. How little they see what He's like. But that's what we are here for. We must speak it about Him. They'll not know unless they see Him in His people.

Revelation as the Consummation of God's Purpose

We close then this very hurried, scanty survey with a great triumphant confirmation of all which we have in the book of the Revelation. Wonderful, this book. It gathers everything up right from the beginning of the Bible.

It gathers everything else. All these things are gathered into it and first of all the great person in his threefold capacity is presented and then he overshadows the whole of that book of Revelation.

Here he is, a mediator in terms of the Lamb slain. The Lamb slain and the Lamb in the midst of the throne, that's the great mediatorial capacity of this man, this son of man. But not only there, in the full power of His cross, there in the full authority of His exaltation, that book of Revelation, the book of the authority of Jesus Christ.

Right from the beginning it's just that. He is judging. He is adjudicating. He is deciding. He is passing the sentences. He is gathering everything before His throne. He is testing the nature of everything.

He is in the place of authority in that book at last. And He bears the great pattern by which everything is being tested. Always remember this, that the first chapter of the book of the Revelation is a setting forth of Christ in symbolic terms as the standard by which God judges everything afterwards.

He begins by judging the churches by the presented standard. All those symbolic things that are said about this one who is presented, that is His hair being spiked and swollen, His eyes the flame of fire, feet like burnished brass, all these things are only symbols of spiritual reality.

His hair as white as wool, for instance, His thoughts, His judgments are absolutely flawless. His mind is without any kind of mixture of good and bad. There is no compromise. There is no diplomacy. There is no policy.

Here is sound, right, fair principle. Divine principle by which He judges. No favoritism. Nothing there. His hair as white as wool, His eyes the flame of fire, He knows everything and by perfect knowledge He can judge.

He is not judging by faulty judgment. He doesn't know all. He doesn't see all. No, He sees right through everything. And so on and on. Here He is presented in this comprehensive, complete, composite way of symbolism as the standard.

And it is as though God was saying to these churches, these seven churches, now then, as you measure up to the standard, as you measure up to the standard, that's the ground of judgment. And then from the churches He moves to the nations.

And then He moves to the great hierarchy of Satan, the very kingdom of the devil himself. And it's all on the basis of this man and on the basis of what He has done by His cross. The Lamb shall overcome.

The strange mixing up of the Lion and the Lamb. One angel said, The Lion of the tribe of Judah hath prevailed, hath overcome. And I turned to see, John might have said, I turned to see this Lion, and being turned I saw a Lamb.

Strange mixture of symbols, but you see the point. It's by the cross that He triumphs. By the cross that He exercises His authority. The cross is the means of His power, His dominion. Here it is then, the authority, the mediation, the representation.

The Bride, the New Jerusalem, and the Return of Glory

And how does it all finish? Well everything has been dealt with now that is foreign, foreign to God, inimical to God. It's all been dealt with. And the glory comes back. The end is, the angel, the great angel said to the apostle, come hither, I'll show you the Lamb's wife, the bride, the Lamb's wife.

And he carried me away into a great high mountain. You know what John was expecting to see? The bride, the Lamb's wife. And he showed me the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, having the glory of God, having the glory of God.

And that's again the symbol of this church. In the night of which, the book goes on to say, the nations will derive their values from this. God has got His end at last. So revelation is linked with Genesis, the long story between laying down the principles by which the end shall be reached.

And here it is, it's reached, it's reached. You say, yes, again, wonderful, wonderful conception of things, presentation of truth. How do we know? Well, I've said it before, it's the simplest thing to say, but it's a very real thing, a very true thing.

New Birth, Spiritual Growth, and Final Glory

Come to the Lord Jesus, in reality, make Him your mediator, your saviour. Make Him your Lord, and let Him be your pattern, to which the Holy Spirit is conforming you, and glory begins, begins in your heart.

Anybody who has had a true new birth, or a true conversion, who has really come to the Lord Jesus and made Him saviour and Lord, knows that glory begins at last. Some of you have had your first day of glory today.

You know, last night, some were saying, you've had your first day, has glory begun? Aren't you happy? Aren't you thanking God? You may not put it in my language or these terms, but what it amounts to is this, oh praise the Lord, oh glory be to God for this.

Glory has begun. And as you go on with the Lord, there will be difficult times, there will be perhaps times when it's hard to get through and to accept, but every time you get clear of those things, you'll find a new uprising of glory.

Every victory brings fresh glory. Every emergence from ourselves, and that's where the glory never is, brings more glory. We are the trouble to the glory, aren't we? We are the ones that get in the way of the glory.

Oh, if only we'd get rid of ourselves, it would be glory. Well, yes, every time we get over a bit more of ourselves, there's still more glory. It's like that. It is like that. This is no fiction. We know it to be so.

And thank God we're moving on to that hour, that moment of the last, the last step and the breaking through into the final glory when He shall come to be glorified in His name and marvel that in all them that believe.

Isn't that wonderful? That's what it says. He's coming to be glorified in His name and to be marveled at. Marvel that. Isn't this marvelous? Would you ever have believed that possible? Of me? Of so-and-so?

It's perfectly marvelous. Marvel that in all that believe. That's the end, the glorious consummation that rests upon the favorableness of Jesus Christ, the lordship of Jesus Christ, formity to His image by the Holy Spirit.

These things made real in us. Bring us back to the glory which He has to give.