T. Austin-Sparks · 1 of 5

The Image of His Son

Reading: Philippians 3:1-21; Romans 8:29; 1 John 3:2; Galatians 4:19; Philippians 3:12,20.

I have it on my heart, beloved, that these days before us we shall in the will of God, be occupied with "That which is born of the Spirit," or "The New Creation in Christ Jesus"; and this morning, for a little while, we want to set the object in its place, or in His place, and see exactly what it is toward which the Lord is moving; what we might call the pattern in the heavens.

We are familiar with that phrase, we know to what it relates in the Old Testament, and I think by now we know that that pattern in the heavens, according to which all things were made in relation to the tabernacle of old, was but a revelation of Jesus Christ, and that tabernacle was the Lord Jesus in His many-sidedness, right to the very last detail; an expression of the mind of God. We know that in the Letter to the Hebrews that is taken up again, but there this difference is made that, whereas in the Old Testament it was a pattern of things in the heavens, here it is the very things themselves and you are introduced to the very things by the first words of that letter, "God Who in old times spake unto the Fathers in divers portions and divers manners, hath in the end of these times spoken in His Son," and the whole theme of the Letter to the Hebrews is the Lord Jesus Christ as the consummation of the whole of the Old Testament revelation. He in Person gathering up consummately all that God had before spoken, and thus not being a part, or parts, but being the whole; not being a shadow or a type, but being the very thing itself.

So truly, the Lord Jesus is the pattern and the reality toward which God is working; and we want now, immediately, to get that Object into its, or His place, because until that is so we shall be held to something less; we shall have an inadequate objective and dynamic for our lives here on earth. You recognise how true that was in the case of the Apostle himself. You remember that in Acts 9 he suddenly was met on the Damascus Road by the Lord in Glory. To his own consternation and amazement he discovered that that light above the brightness of the sun was Jesus of Nazareth, now exalted to the Right Hand of the Majesty on high, now glorified. That was Paul's first view of the Lord Jesus so far as we know. It was Christ in the glory. Philippians 3 is the practical consequence of that. That is "Things which were gain to me those I counted loss, yea, and I do count them but stuff to be flung to the dogs, that I might be found in Him." Tremendous statements - to gain Christ. The Lord Jesus is given to the sinner on the ground of repentance and faith; given, but Paul had come to a position where he saw that that which had been given had now got to be gained. Two realms of things, equally true. There was a gain of Christ far beyond the gift of Christ. The gift of Christ unto salvation; the gain of Christ unto glorification in the fullest Witness - That which is born of the Spirit. Philippians 3 is the practical outworking of Acts 9.

So many honestly think that all that matters is that you should be saved, and if you are saved you are done forever and you can get on with saving others. It is important to be saved, but the Word of the Lord makes it quite clear that to be saved from hell, saved from sin, to be saved from judgment, is only the beginning of things and that you may have that and miss the very great purpose for which you were saved. So that out of twenty-seven books in the New Testament, twenty-one are given up to leading believers into the fullness of Christ. A striking fact. There is this little parabolic element in the truth that we have just noted about Paul seeing Christ on the Damascus Road, when he saw the Lord Jesus in glory; in that moment he lost his natural sight and was blind and they led him by the hand into the City.

Beloved, that is a very good thing. Probably, it meant much infirmity to Paul for the rest of his life; we have traces that eye trouble followed him right through. But, spiritually, that is a very good thing, that we should get such a vision of the Lord Jesus in glory as to lose our natural sight. To have no eyes from that moment onward for anything but Him. To lose our eyes for things of the world, of the earth, for all that is less than Himself, and that you should gain spiritual vision which far transcends all the vision of the natural man, and those who have had a little bit of the revelation of the Christ glorified know how true this is, that they have no taste for anything else, that He fills their vision, and it is true that "things of earth have grown strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace."

We need to get the object fixed then immediately, Christ in glory, and Christ in glory as the pattern man according to God's heart. That brings in another factor, that while He is there as very God in the Godhead, and having all the fullness of the Godhead dwelling in Him in bodily form, and while He occupies that place with the Name of Jehovah upon Him, it is equally true that He is there as man. He is the Man in the glory. He is the glorified man, He is the first born of many brethren. God has taken a man into the glory, and He has there consummated in the very person of the Lord Jesus man according to His own heart. We see what was God's thought before ever man was created and before the world was; when He contemplated bringing man into being He had a thought, a conception, a mind for that Being and that mind is revealed in the Lord Jesus when you see Him in the glory. That is man according to the original thought and intention of God, and the Lord Jesus is there as the pattern man according to God's heart, and unto that pattern God is working in and with all those who have come into His Hands for His pattern. It is a tremendous thing, and were the Scripture not here to prove it, it is far too big a thing for a man to dare to say. Here it is "whom He foreknew, them He foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son." That is a positive statement; and then literally "we shall be like Him for we shall see Him" - not as He was but - "as He is." Not conformity to Jesus of Nazareth as on earth, it is conformity to Jesus in the glory glorified with the Father, as He is.

God has glorified Jesus Christ and we are called into His eternal glory. What a prospect! And we who do groan in these bodies, and who know the burden of their weakness and infirmity, and who know so much of the awful havoc that sin and the curse has brought into the physical life of the creation, what a prospect for us when we read Philippians 3:21: "Who shall change, or fashion anew, the body of our humiliation that it might be conformed unto the body of His glory," not the body of His humiliation, the body of His glory - something to dwell upon with joyful anticipation if you know anything about groaning in the body. The body is only a part of this great work. God begins inside now and is going to finish outside later on. Blessed be His Name. In getting down to this thing more closely, we have to see that the Lord Jesus in His history from the Jordan to the Glory is the history of every believer. The Jordan for Him, His life here on earth, His death and burial and resurrection, His being received up into Glory and being anointed with the Holy Spirit, has a counterpart in the history of every Child of God on one side.

I am not now dealing with the great work which He did in the matter of atonement, in His great redemptive activity when He stood as our substitute and took upon Him our sin, bore it in His own body on the tree, coming under all the billows of God's wrath and coming into the full depths of judgment on our behalf. I am not speaking about that, that is a thing which we do not enter or share in; blessed be God! It is not necessary for us to enter into that at all now. We need not know judgment. There is no condemnation. He has taken that side for us, but there is another side, a representative side where His history is the history of every child of God. That, of course, opens up a very wide sphere which can only be very lightly touched upon in these moments, and we are coming, I think, in these coming days to see the content of that, breaking it up into its fragments. One merely intimates it here, that there has to be a beginning where the entire will of man as man has to be cut off and set aside, and the will of God has to take its place absolutely, and be established and enthroned as the governing law of man's life.

That was what happened at Jordan in the case of the Lord Jesus. At that moment, though having a sinless will, He had nevertheless a man's will, the will of the human, and that as something apart from, something in itself detached from the will of God, and that man's will, the will of the human, the natural will which He possessed was, although sinless, set aside for the will of God at Jordan and there from that moment for Him there was the one governing thing of all life in word, and thought, and deed, in goings and in comings, in acting or in refusing to act, speaking or refusing to speak, going or refusing to go, in the timing of things which He did, now or not now; and you will call to mind that on every one of these things you have examples of the acts of the Lord Jesus. In all it was a matter of "not My will but Thy will," and Jordan represented Calvary for Him in the matter of repudiation of the natural will of man and the establishment of the will of God; that He should henceforth not live unto Himself. And so He stepped out and was challenged immediately beyond Jordan on that very question. Challenged upon that matter as to whether He would act out from Himself; upon the most plausible basis that a man could act upon. You know the enemy very rarely puts it up to you to do a thing which he tells you is sin, but he usually tells you to do a thing on very good ground for doing it. He came to the Lord Jesus about bread and said, in fact, necessity knows no law, necessity requires it, it is necessary to do it, it is absolutely essential. If you have been brought to that position at any time you know how difficult it is. What necessity? An earthly interest or a heavenly interest?

That is the question. We have always to look to see if there is any higher necessity than an earthly one and we never discover until we have raised the question as to whether earthly interests are the necessity. If you take an earthly necessity as an argument, you become earthbound and get the thing horizontally - it seems to be necessary that I do this. The Lord may see it in another way. Get a heavenly necessity along that line. The enemy said necessity knows no law; but there is a law not of this earth, a law of heaven. So the Lord Jesus refused to act out from Himself, but always out from God. That was Jordan, and there has to be that crisis when once and for all in every detail of the life it is not going to be a government by the earth, a government by things here, a government by human reason, arguments, necessities, a government by anything that is less than the will of God, to which there is true abandonment. Christ's life from Jordan always was the outworking of that law.

We have to go into that more fully. But those three-and-a-half years from Jordan also have their counterpart in the life of every child of God because there you see a life of absolute dependence upon God for everything, accepted by Him, a voluntary thing but nevertheless very, very real; absolute dependence upon God, and because of that He is revealing what man is here upon earth according to the mind of God. A man who is God-governed and led in a God-consciousness every moment of his life, that is the earthly life of man according to the mind of God. The Lord Jesus reveals that man who walks here on the earth under the government and control of the Holy Spirit, to Whom he brings everything to get His authority; to get the mind of God.

As to Calvary; we do know from much that was subsequently written by the Holy Spirit, especially through one apostle, that Calvary is to have its counterpart in the life of every believer and in a very deep way, and while something to be accepted once and for all, it is to have an abiding meaning for every day. "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in the dying body." That is Calvary on both sides. Then being received up; we have much to say in these coming days about the heavenly life of the believer, but there is the necessity for us to be received up now and come into everything of this from above.