The Gospel According to Paul # 13

The Gospel According to Paul # 13

A Superlative Vessel and A Superlative Calling

Now this superlative vessel or instrument or people has a superlative or transcendent calling. The Jews had an earthly calling to serve an earthly purpose, a vocation of time on this earth. many believe very strongly that they are yet to serve such a purpose. There are others, and among them outstanding Bible teachers, who believe that the day of the Jew is finished as in the economy of God, and that everything has been transferred to the Church now because of the Jews failure. I am not going go argue that; that does not come into our consideration at all. The fact remains that the Jews were raised up to serve an earthly and temporal purpose in the economy of God. But this Church, eternally saved - eternally chosen, as the Apostle says, in Christ Jesus before the world was - this has a superlative calling to serve the purposes of God in Heaven. It is something timeless, superlative in calling, invocation. It is a tremendous thing that is here.

We have often put it this way, and indeed it is what the Letter to the Ephesians teaches - we have to touch on this in another way presently - that this world, as to its conduct, is influenced by a whole spiritual hierarchy. Even men who have not a great deal of spiritual discernment, men whom we would hardly think of as Christian men, in the essential sense of being born again children of God, have recognized this and admit it: that behind the behavior of this world there is some sinister force, some evil power, some wicked intelligence. They may hesitate to name it, to call it satan, the devil, and so on, but the Bible just calls it that. Behind the course of this world's history, as we know it - behind the wars, the rivalries, the hatred, the bitterness, the cruelty, all the clash and clamor of interests, and everything else - there is an evil intelligence, a power at work, a whole system that is seeking to ruin the glory of God in His creation. And that whole system is here said to be in what is called "the heavenlies", that is, something above the earth, in the very air, if you like, in the very atmosphere. Sometimes you can sense it: sometimes you can almost 'cut the atmosphere with a knife', as we say: sometimes you know there is something in the very air that is wicked, evil. You cannot just put it down to people; there is something behind the people,something about it is very real - sometimes it seems almost tangible, you can almost smell it - something evil and wicked. It is that which is governing this world system and order.

Now what is here in this letter is this, that this Church, eternally conceived, foreknown, chosen, and brought into existence in its beginnings on the day of Pentecost, and growing spiritually through the centuries since - this Church is to take the place of that evil government above this earth. It is to depose it and cast it out of its  domain, and itself take that place to be the influence that governs this world in the ages to come. That is the teaching here: a superlative calling, a superlative vocation, because of a superlative people in their very nature. There is something different about them from other people. That is the
secret of the true Christian life - of the true ones in Christ: there is something about them that is different. To this world, Christians are a problem and a conundrum. You cannot put them into any earthly class. You cannot just pigeon-hole a Christian. Somehow or other, they elude you all the time. You cannot make them out.

Now, in this letter Paul speaks first of all of that superlative calling, and then he says that, because of the greatness of that calling, this Church must behave itself accordingly. "I...beseech you to walk worthily of the calling wherewith ye were called" (Eph. 4:11). Conduct has to be adjusted to calling. Oh, that Christian people behaved correspondingly to their calling - to their great, eternal, heavenly vocation!  But because of this calling, this destiny, this vocation, this position, that mighty evil hierarchy is set to its last ounce to destroy this vessel called the Church, and therefore there is an immense and terrible conflict going on in the air over this thing, and Christians meet it. The more you seek to live according to your calling, the more you realize how difficult it is, and what there is set against you. It is fierce and bitter spiritual conflict.

Superlative Resources

Now, mark you, this is what Paul calls the gospel - all this is the gospel! Did you ever get an idea of the gospel like that? Did you ever think of the gospel in such terms? Yes, it is still the gospel, the same gospel, not another, the same. Now, because all this is true as to the gospel, surely the demands are very great. The reaction of so many, when you say things like this, is" 'Oh, I cannot rise to that - that is altogether beyond me, that is too much for me, that is overpowering, that is overwhelming! Give me the simple gospel!' But I wonder if we realize what we involve ourselves in when we talk like that. For it is just there that the true nature of the gospel comes in, in this whole letter. Yes, the calling is great, is immense; the conduct must be on a high level; the conflict is fierce and bitter. And that makes tremendous demands. If that is the gospel, then how shall we stand up to it, how shall we face it, how shall we rise to it, how shall we get through?

Well, we come back to the phrase to which I am gathering the whole of this letter. It is here: 'goodnews' the unsearchable riches of Christ." It is translated "preach" in our Bibles, but it is the same word, as you know, in the verb form. "To good news the unsearchable riches of Christ." The good news is that the riches are unsearchable! Oh, this is something for us in which to rejoice, being hard pressed, hard put to it; feeling we shall never rise to it, never go through with it. The superlative riches are for a superlative vocation and for a superlative conflict and for superlative conduct.

"Unsearchable riches". Now that is a characteristic word that you find scattered through this letter. Riches! Riches! In chapter one, verse seven, it is "the riches of His grace." That phrase is enlarged in two, verse seven, - "the exceeding riches of His grace." And then in one, verse eighteen, it is the inheritance - "the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints." That just means that the saints are the inheritance of Jesus Christ and in them, in His Church, He has a tremendous wealth. Now, if He is going to have wealth in this Church, it is He who must supply the wealth, and it is "according to the riches of His grace" that He will find "the riches of His inheritance" in the Church. There is much more said about that. In three, verse sixteen, the word is used again - "the riches of His glory". Riches! Riches! Very well: if the demands are great, there is a great supply. If the need is superlative, the resources are superlative. All this sets forth and indicates the basis and the resources of the Church for its calling, for its conduct, and for its conflict.

So what is 'the gospel according to Paul' in the Letter to the Ephesians? It is the gospel of the 'unsearchable riches' for superlative demands, and when you have said that, you are left swimming in a mighty ocean. God to the letter again, read it carefully through, note it. Yes, there is a high standard here, there are big demands here, tremendous things in view here; but there are also the riches of His grace, the unsearchable riches of His grace for it all. There are the riches of His glory:it is put like this - "according to the riches of His glory." Now, if you can explore, fathom, exhaust, God's riches in glory, then you put a certain limit upon possibilities and potentialities. But if, after you have said all that you have tried to say in human language, as the Apostle did here, you find that you have not got enough superlatives at your command when you are talking about the resources that are in God by Christ Jesus, then everything is possible - according to the riches of His grace and of His glory.

That is a gospel, is it not? Surely that is good tidings, that is good news! And, dear friends, we shall get through - and we ought not just to scrape through. If it is like that, we ought to get through superlatively. The Lord bring us into the good of the superlatives of the gospel, of the good news.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 14 - In His Letter to the Philippians