A Quote Very Important to Understand

A quote Very Important to Understand

[I am reading an article entitled "Union with Christ" and the below brief passage really enlightened my understanding to the point that I felt compelled to share it with my readers. I pray that it helps all to fully understand the importance, necessity of, and blessedness of our precious Lord and Saviour!]
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The Idea or Nature of All Things

Further, Christ is the Idea or Nature of all things. I think here we only need two brief quotations. "Whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son" (Romans 8:29). The Nature of all things is expressed in those words, "the image of His Son." The other passage which is from Ephesians 4:10, I think bears that out. The object of His ascending up on high was "that He might fill all things." Those two complementary statements answer this Idea or Nature of all things. What is the Idea behind, what is the Divinely intended Nature of all things? Well, just the image of His Son.  Of course, that embraces the whole of that comprehensive teaching of the New Testament of likeness to Christ. It is a far-reaching and all-governing idea in the New Testament, likeness to Christ, or, as it has often been put, Christ-likeness. That is the Idea of the existence of all things; that is the Nature of the being of all things; to be filled with Him and conformed to His image. You never will be conformed to His image unless you are filled with Christ. How much New Testament teaching you can put into that. It is everywhere.

The Final Test Of All Things

Lastly, Christ is the Final Test of all things. In Acts 17:31 we have these words: "He hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead." The literal rendering is not, by a man, but "IN a man whom He hath ordained." The word "ordained" means horizoned. God has made His Son the horizon of everything. Everything has to come within the horizon of this man and be judged according to Him. You see the point. Christ is the criterion, Christ is the standard; Christ is the measure of that great judgment of the world which God has fixed, the final test of all things.

That means that the judgment of the world will be according to how it measures up to Christ, its standing in the light of Christ, as to its attitude toward or relationship with Christ. God will NOT judge on any other ground. That is a very simple formula for judgment. If God had to take us one by one and judge us on the numerous things which belong to us by our inheritance, our birth, our upbringing, by the fortunes or misfortunes of our lives, well, He would have His hands full, speaking after the manner of men, and it would be something that would require a standard of righteousness so infinitesimal, so exhaustive, as to be almost unthinkable. God is NOT going to judge us upon the number of our sins, whether few or many, or upon our temperaments, or upon anything like that at all that comes down to us in the bloodstream. His one simple solution is: What is your attitude toward My Son? How do you stand here in the horizon of Christ, not  just as a person, but in relationship with Him as a kind, what He means in Himself? What is your attitude, relationship, and measure where the Son is concerned? On that all judgment will be based.

And notice, that is a very righteous judgment. It says "He will judge the world in righteousness." Thank God! That takes in the very thing that so many complain of through their lives, the disadvantages of their inheritance, of heredity, of early training and so on. My dear friends, take heart from this, that on none of those matters is God going to judge at all, it would be unrighteous. He brings us all down to the one issue of our relationship to His Son. Where do you stand with Him? What have you done with Him? What are you making of Him? How are you progressing in your conformity to His image? That is the basis of judgment, and the only one. Christ is the criterion, the final test of all things.

[well, I will stop here, but I felt that this brief article would be a blessing for everyone to read and devour!! This is why it is so important that we grow, progress, in our faith; why it is so important that we do indeed become more Christ-like, why (when God looks down upon us) He sees only His Son in us!! And have we stopped to think that this is the way creation was created in the first place - before Adam and Eve sinned? (Don't forget, Christ was BEFORE creation began.) Oh! I could go on and on about this but I won't - not now!!]


~T. Austin Sparks~