T. Austin-Sparks · 1 of 3

"The True God and Eternal Life"

"Life Because of Righteousness"

"And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that has the Son has the life; he that has not the Son of God has not the life. These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God" (1 John 5:11-13).

"And we know that the Son of God is come, and has given us an understanding, that we know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life" (1 John 5:20).

"For if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one; much more shall they that receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one, even Jesus Christ. So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto all men to justification of life" (Rom. 5:17-18).

"That, as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 5:21).

"And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness" (Rom. 8:10).

If we are seeking for a master key with which to unlock the Bible, we can find it in one word - Life, the great issue of all the ages; and we can say that the Bible is altogether occupied with this. The Bible, from beginning to end, is concerned with this matter of Life as over against death. These two things, Life and death, are set forth, as we know, in relation to two persons: Christ the Life, and Satan and death.

We have said that the Bible from beginning to end is occupied with this question of Life, and you will immediately call to mind that the Bible opens and closes with the Tree of Life. You know that in Gen. 2:8-9 the statement is made - "God planted a garden... the tree of life also in the midst of the garden". And you know that the second verse of the last chapter of the book of the Revelation says, "In the midst of the street thereof" (that is, of the city), "and on this side of the river and on that was the tree of life".

But what we want to recognize and fully understand is that this tree represents a Life of a peculiar and unique kind. In Genesis 3 man was already alive, but there is represented a Life available to him which he did not possess. That Life, as symbolised by the tree, was eventually shut off from him, or he was shut off from it, showing that there was a Life which a man who was in a sense alive, did not possess. That unique and peculiar Life is known to us in the Scriptures as "eternal life".

But again let us be quite clear that it does not mean just duration of life. It is a kind of life. I think many Christians have failed to discriminate between duration, extent of life, and immortality. Immortality is a kind of life that goes on and it is that immortal life, not just the continuation of life, not just an interminable life, but that peculiar specific immortal life which is the great subject of the Bible, the great quest of man, and the great purpose of God. So it is in relation to this Divine Life and God's purpose for man to have it that the whole battle of the ages is waged between heaven and hell; and man is at the centre - the object and the occasion of it all.

Having said that, we can come now to the Scriptures and to this incomplete and imperfect summary and outline which is before you. Again may I say that a great mass of detail will have to be ignored and left out.

This is the second message [first message is missing] and what is before you is only a part of the Pentateuch. There is all the rest of the Bible! So it is quite clear that we have to do our best to say all that we can say, and leave the rest.

(1) The Probation of Life

Well now, coming to this outline; it is not my intention to stay to say anything about a number of initial points. We begin with the probation of life under which we see man: Man conceived, Man created, Man conditioned, Man corrupted.

1. Man Conceived

Just a word about the first of those four things. There are several Scriptures which take us back to God's thoughts before ever He engaged in creation. For instance we have this:-

"Whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son" (Rom. 8:29).

"Having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself" (Eph.1:5).

"Having been foreordained according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His will" (Eph. 1:11).

"Who called us with a holy calling... according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal" (2 Tim. 1:9).

Such passages take us back into the thoughts and counsels of God before the world was, and there in those thoughts and counsels we find man conceived.

2. Man Created

And out of the conception of man came the creation, and just as the conceiving, according to those Scriptures, was all in Christ - for everyone states emphatically that it was all in Christ, this foreordaining, this calling - in the same way the creating was in Christ.

"Who created all things by Christ Jesus" (Eph. 3:9).

"For in Him were all things created... all things have been created through Him, and unto Him" (Col. 1:16).

3. Man Conditioned

Conditioned, placed on probation, put into a conditional position with a great 'if' governing that position. If, on the one hand, you take a certain course, the result will be such and such. If you take the other course, the consequences will be such and such. Man conditioned - and the thing which was governing was this whole question of Divine Life. Along one line that Divine Life would be inherited; along the opposite line it would be missed and forfeited.

4. Man Corrupted

Then, finally, man corrupted. How much there is there which ought to hold us for a while as to the nature, the method of the corrupting. But not one of us needs to stay for any argument as to whether man has been corrupted. Some people do argue to the contrary - his fall was a fall upward! But need we stay to discuss it? The horror of that fall, of that corrupting, is more glaring today than ever it has been. Ask any medical man whether he is giving his life to correcting something that has gone wrong or to building up something that is basically right. The answer must be that it is repairing a breakdown which is coming in because things have gone wrong, and what is true physically, is true morally and spiritually.

(2) The Life Missed

1. Unbelief

Man corrupted - and because man chose, exercised his own power of choice in the wrong direction against God, that Life which was God's intention for him was missed and forfeited. Missed firstly because of unbelief, and that was a heart matter, not just a head matter. Many people say they cannot believe because of certain arguments and reasonings. The trouble is much deeper than that. You know that whenever in the Word of God belief is under consideration, it is never related to the head. It is always related to the heart. "If thou... shalt believe in thine heart" (Rom. 10:9) - that is the Word of God, and we get over a very great deal of our difficulty when our heart is in the right direction - that is, if we want to. And that goes right to the very centre of this trouble with Adam. It was not just that Satan propounded a theory which upset the balance of his mind, but it presented something that appealed to his heart and he allowed his heart to go after that. God's trouble all the way through with man has been that his heart went astray, his heart went wrong, and unbelief is a matter of heart desire, heart disposition, heart direction. It is strange how people can believe anything that they want to believe. Is that not true? If they want to believe it, they will believe, it does not matter what it is. It may be the greatest absurdity and the darkest untruth, but if they want to believe it, they will believe it. If you do not want to believe a thing, no one will make you believe. It was man's heart that went wrong and unbelief is always there.