The Gospel According to Paul # 18

The Gospel According to Paul # 18

The Answer To The Situation

Now, it was to meet this whole situation, to answer all these serious questions and issues, that Paul wrote this letter to confirm the Christians, to establish them, to sustain them, to encourage them, and he calls it "good tidings", and it is. If you can give something to answer all that, it is indeed good tidings, is it not? That is "gospel" indeed! You see, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ touches the uttermost bounds of this universe, and covers everything within those bounds, including human history, human happenings, world events, the course of things, the design in things, the end of things. The gospel touches it all at every point.

So Paul answers it, and he answers the whole of it in one word. His answer is CHRIST. Christ is the answer. That answer is found inclusively in those words in chapter three, verse eleven, the last clause: "Christ is all, and in all." And what an immense "all" Christ is if He covers the whole of that ground! If He reaches out an embraces all those mighty issues, what a Christ He is! The all-comprehending fact is emphatically and categorically stated by the Apostle in this letter. He states it in many sentences, but in this one statement he gathers it all up. The answer to all this is Christ. Christ is the explanation of all the happenings in human history. Christ explains this universe, Christ gives character  to this universe, Christ stands behind all the course of the events in this universe. Christ is the integrating Person of everything, the One in whom all things hold together.

'Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning;
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.'

The Evidence That The Answer Is Satisfactory

But perhaps you may say, 'It is all very well for Paul to make a categorical statement like that, but what is the evidence? Well, the evidence is quite real. And it must be said that, if we are asking for the evidence, something has gone wrong with us! We ought to be the answer,we ought to be the evidence: because the witness to this is first of all the personal,spiritual experience of the child of God. You can leave the vast universe for the moment, if you like, and come to the little universe of your own life - for, after all, what is true in the microcosm is only a reflection of what is true in the great cosmic realm. God brings down His evidence from the circumferential to the very center of the individual Christian life, and the answer is there. What is the experience of a truly born-again child of God?

Now you can test whether you are born again by this, and, thank God, I know that many of you will be able to say, 'Yes, that is true to my experience'. But I ask you: What is your experience as truly born-again child of God? When you really came to the Lord Jesus - however you may put it: when you let Jesus come into your heart or into your life, or when you handed over your life to Him; when there was a transaction with Him, a new birth, by which you became a child of God - not by any sacrament applied to you, but by the inward operation of His Spirit: when you became a child of God in a living, conscious way, what was the first consciousness that came to you, and has remained with you ever since?

Was it not, and is it not, this: "There is now a purpose in life, of which I never knew before; there is a purpose in things. Now I have the sense - indeed I know - that I was not just born into this world and grew up, but there was a purpose behind it." There is a design in things; a sense - you may not be able to explain it all, what it all means - but you have the sense now that you have arrived at, or at least begun to realize, the very purpose of your existence. Is that true? When the Lord Jesus at last has His place in our hearts, the big question of life is answered - the big question as to the "why" of our existence. Till then, you wander about, you do all sorts of things, you fill up time, you employ heart and mind and hand, but you do not know what it is all for. You may have a very full life, a very full life indeed, outside of Christ, and yet come to the end without being able to answer the question, What is it all about?

One man, who had enjoyed such a full life, who had become well-known in the schools of learning, a great figure in the intellectual realm, in his dying moment cried: 'I am taking an awful leap into the dark.' He had no answer to the question. But the simple child of God, immediately they come to the Lord, has the answer in consciousness, if not in explanation, in his or her heart,and that is what is called "rest." "Come unto Me", said Jesus, "and I will give you "rest". (Matt. 11:28). Rest is in this: 'Well, I have been a wanderer, but now I have come home; I have been searching - I have found; I have been in quest of something - I did not know what it was - but now I have it.' There is purpose in this universe, and when Jesus Christ comes into His place, as this letter says, then you know there is purpose in your universe, and there will be purpose in the universe of everybody else, if only they will come that way.

And not only purpose, but more - control. The child of God very soon begins to realize that he or she has been taken under control, brought under a mastery; that there is a law of government set up in the consciousness, which is directive which, on the one hand, says, "Yes", the glorious "Yes" of many liberties: on the other hand, "No - careful, steady, watch!" We all know that. We do not hear those words, but we know that that is what is being said to us in our hearts. The Spirit of God within is just saying, "Look to your steps - be careful, be watchful." We have come under control. That is extended in many ways over the whole life, but it is a great reality. This universe is under control, it is under government. The evidence of it is found within our own experience when Christ comes to His place. And you can extend that into the future ages, when the whole universe will be like that, under Christ's control.

And then again: "in Whom all things hold together". The wonderful thing about the Christian life is its integration, or, if you prefer another word, its unification. How scattered, how divided, we were before Christ got His place. We were a"all over the place", as we say - one thing after another, looking this way and looking that; hearts divided, lives divided, we in ourselves divided, a conflict within our own persons. When the Lord Jesus really gets His place as Lord within, the life is unified. We are just gathered up, poised, concentrated upon one thing. We have only one thing in view. What Paul said of himself becomes true: "but one thing I do..." (Phil. 3:13). We are people of "one thing". Christ unified the life.

What about life itself, the life of the life of the child of God? When the Lord Jesus is in His right place, the life of the child of God is secured, is established, is confirmed, and grows; there is spiritual growth and maturity. It is a wonderful thing. If, in some Christian lives, it is not realized as a fact, it is for very good reasons - or for bad reasons! - but if the Lord Jesus really is "all, and in all", in the life, if He "in all things has the preeminence", it is wonderful to see the spiritual growth. Those who have much association with, or experience in dealing with, young Christians, have found this one of the most impressive things - how, where the Lord Jesus just gets His way, they go ahead spiritually, they grow. They come to understanding and knowledge which so many of the scholars seem to have missed. They have come to a real spiritual understanding. While other people are trying to get on along other lines - intellectually and so on - these young ones, who have not many of them, the background of intellectual or scholastic training - they are just simple people - just leaping ahead spiritually.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 19)