T. Austin-Sparks · 1 of 6

The Immense Significance of the Christian Life

The general subject then, is what it means to be a Christian. I think we might be quite safe in dividing this company into three categories generally. One, those who would not claim to have had a definite experience in relation to Christ of what the New Testament calls the new birth, or being born anew. Another group are those who have perhaps more recently had such an experience and are what might be called "young Christians"; not necessarily young in years, but young in Christian life. And the third group: the people who know all about it. Now, it will be necessary for there to be quite a bit of give and take in what is being said. That is, that if there is that being said that does not fit your group, your category, you must remember that it may just be what someone else needs, and in that way be co-operative so that we are working together. And the mature experienced people who know all about it, must realise that I am also speaking to those who have no experience at all in this matter, or whose experience is very immature. Having said that, we can come to our subject: what it means to be a Christian.

There are many misconceptions as to what the Christian life really is. There's quite a bit of confusion, quite a lot of mistaken ideas, and certainly there is a great deal of limited apprehension of what a Christian really is. I am not going to speak about the negative side very much - that is, as to what it is that is either mistaken, confused or inadequate. I think the best way of dealing with all such difficulties is to get right on to the positive line, and seek to state the thing in its fullness, as we are able, and so leave the comparisons to be made by those who hear. The corrective for wrongs or mistakenness is always get on positive lines and not trying to deal with the faults and the weaknesses and imperfections. So we are going to get right away onto the positive side of what it means to be a Christian.

And our first phase of this matter is, as you see:

The Immense Significance of the Christian Life.

When we put it into such a phrase we are saying something of very great importance. It is this: that we shall never really appreciate anything until we see it in its full setting. If it is just something in itself, we miss a great deal. We've got to get its great background and its great setting in order to feel the full impact of its significance. And that is what we are going to seek to do, as we are Divinely enabled - to see something at least, of the immense significance of the Christian life.

I think we shall all be on the ground of common agreement when I say that the Christian life begins with Christ. But that means a great deal more than it sounds. To say that Christianity began with Jesus is true if you put Jesus in His right setting. And it is just at that point that an adjustment may be necessary in order to grasp the immensity of this matter. You see, neither the Christian life nor Christianity did begin with the historic Jesus. They did not begin when Jesus was born, when Jesus lived here, when Jesus died and rose again. It is just there, I say, that we need to make an adjustment. We must know what it is that the Bible shows as to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now you take up your New Testament, and open with the gospels. You find that Matthew traces the genealogy of Jesus back to Abraham. Luke takes Him back still further, to Adam. Mark begins his life of Jesus with Jesus at thirty years of age, at the time of His baptism. But John overreaches them all; back through the thirty years, beyond Bethlehem, back, ever back to Abraham and beyond Abraham, to Adam; and he doesn't stop there, he still goes further back: "In the beginning". Whenever, wherever, that dateless time - "in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God." That is a statement - and it is only a statement, a statement of truth, of fact as to the Person of the Lord Jesus; but that, with one or two other sentences, is all that John gives us.

But we have in the New Testament, through another apostle, a very great deal more concerning Jesus right back there in that dateless time. Through the apostle Paul we are taken back there and we are shown a very great deal about God's Son "before times eternal", not only before He came into this world, but before this present world order came into being.

It is the universal custom to begin a biography with the ancestry of the person in view, leading up to his or her birth, and the whole thing is but an account of the human and earthly history of this person. But the biography of Jesus Christ goes right back not only long before His own birth in this world, into this world, and beyond His human parentage or ancestry. A large section of the biography of Jesus Christ in the Word of God relates to that which is called "the before times eternal". Here are some fragments of Scripture. We hear Him praying. He is praying to His Father, and He is saying: "Father, glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was". That's a bit of His biography, or autobiography - "the glory which I had with Thee before the world was." And then the apostle Paul, in that matchless description of Him, just has this one clause, this one mighty clause of only five words: "He is before all things". "The glory which I had with Thee before the world was" - "He is before all things."

So, it's right back there that we travel to find the meaning of a Christian, the Christian life, and Christianity. Let us contemplate Him back there, from the standpoint of definite statements in the Scriptures as to His Person - what He was like, then. Here it is: "God hath... spoken unto us in His Son... who being the effulgence of His glory, and the very image of His substance..." that certainly does not belong to the days of His humiliation. That goes right back, as we shall see in a moment, in the very connection or context of those words - "the express image of His substance", "the effulgence of His glory". That's what He was like before the world was.

What was His position then? Here it is: "Though He was equal with God, He counted it not as something to be grasped at" to be on an equality with God, equal with God, on equality with God - that was His position then.

Then as to His appointment. Here again is the Scripture and the context of the words we quoted just now, "hath... spoken unto us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things". "Appointed heir of all things". When did that happen? That was not done in time, that was not at the time of His birth or subsequently. That was right away back there in the eternity past. There was something done in the counsels of the Godhead, whereby the Son of God was appointed Heir of all things, when it was determined that all things should be the heritage of God's Son, His rightful inheritance as God's Heir. Not to come into it, of course, on the demise of God, but God bound up all things with His Son, and made Him their Inheritor. These are things that we know through the Scriptures. How the men who stated them come to know? Well, they tell us. Paul, who says most about this, tells us quite definitely that it was given to him by revelation: God made it known to him. Well, there it is.

That, then, as to the "before times eternal". And out of that relationship with God, out of that fellowship with God, and out of that appointment of God, came the next move: the creation of the present world, not the creation of the present world condition, but the present cosmic order; and again we are given a lot of information and light as to the relationship of Christ with the creation of this present world order.

We are told in the first place that He was the Agent of it, God's Agent in the creation. Here is the statement: "All things were made through Him; and without Him was not anything made that hath been made". Or again another statement: "For in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and unto Him" - the Agent. And if it needs another word to bear that out, here it is: "There is... one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things". Through whom are all things - the Agent in creation.

The Object of Creation

"In Him were all things created". He is before all things. "All things were created through Him, and unto Him". All things created unto Him, and another statement: "For of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things". And then a further movement is indicated, or a further constituent of this creative activity and purpose and it is found in the little clause which completes what we have just read: "He is before all things, and in Him all things consist". The Agent, the Object, the Integrator. "In Him all things hold together" - integrated. He is therefore the very reason for the creation. And remove Him, and the creation will disintegrate. When they crucified Him and He committed His Spirit to God, "Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit", there was a great earthquake, and the sun was hidden, and darkness over the face of the earth. The very Object of the creation has been put out of His place by man. The creation knows that its very Integrator has been rejected. These are but tokens of a great fact. Jesus Christ is the meaning of this creation: and without Him the creation has no meaning.

Perhaps some of you who are a thinking people are saying, "Well, these are tremendous statements; they are ideas, they may be a wonderful theory, a system of teaching, but are they facts? How can you prove them?" My dear friends, you are all yourselves the proof of them! You see, we are moving toward the meaning of the Christian life. You have no meaning in your own creation until you find Jesus Christ. And the first thing that is livingly true about anybody who finds Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour is that they are conscious of having found the meaning of their very being - why they are alive! Life then takes on its meaning, and these are not just great wonderful truths, suspended in an abstract way for our contemplation, acceptance or rejection. They are borne out in the creation, and you and I are a part of it. There is no unification of our own individual lives until Jesus becomes the centre, there's a marvelous integration when that happens; until then we are divided, scattered people; life is not an order at all - it's a chaos. But as a statement we have, of course, got to come back to that presently, but we are at the moment occupied with Jesus Christ, and away back firstly before the world was, and then as the Agent, Object and Integrator of the creation. "Through Him... all things being created".

Out of this, three wonderful, though simple things quite clearly arise. Firstly, His likeness to God, His likeness to God - the very image, or "impress", as the word is, of His, God's substance; likeness to God, oneness with God, and agency of God. I want you to hold those things, because they are carried over and they come very much into this matter of the Christian life. With all this, we have to recognise a uniqueness and exclusiveness about Him, and I want to underline that as many times as I can, lest presently it might look as though I am on very dangerous ground. But I want you to extract those three things: likeness to God, oneness with God, and agency of God's purposes and God's work - but in His case something unique and absolutely exclusive, gathered into the word Deity, 'very God of very God'. Having said that we can pass on to what the Bible has to say about man. That in brief, but oh, what a comprehensiveness, what a profundity, what a fullness, in brief is what it says about Jesus Christ before He came into this word. We pass to the next phase of things:

What it Says About Man.

What does the Bible say about man as the very first thing that it says? It says a great deal about man, but what is the first thing that the Bible says about man? "And God said, Let us make man in our own image, and after our own likeness". "Let us make man in our own image, and our own likeness..." that's the conception, the Divine conception, that's the Divine idea. And what does that amount to? Surely it amounts to representation of God. Any image of a thing is supposed to be the representation of that thing, and the idea or conception of man in the Divine mind was that man should represent God. Now, not in that exclusive sense of which I've spoken - Deity - that doesn't come into it with man at all; but this matter of being an expression of God, bearing the likeness of God: so that if you should meet a man who answers to the Divine idea you have a very good idea of what God is like. Oh, that that were more true - but in a very limited way we do know, very limited, far too limited, but in a limited way sometimes we meet what we call a 'godly' man (and 'godly' is only 'God-like' abbreviated), and sometimes we are able to say in a little way, "When you meet that man, you seem to meet the Lord, you seem to find something of the Lord - you seem to touch what you think the Lord would be like."

Now, that was the Divine intention, idea, conception, as to man; but it was the intention that it should be in a full way, that man's being and existence should convey the knowledge of what God is like in His moral character, in the beauty of His personality, that you should touch God, and be led back to God by that expression of God. And therein is a principle, mark you, a principle that we ought to take up, and that is to be carried into this matter of what is a Christian, what it means to be a Christian. All our talking about God or Christ is utterly worthless unless we convey God and Christ - unless our Lord is found in us. That's the best thing, and sometimes that does its work without any talking, whereas a vast amount of talking will do nothing unless there is the touch of the Lord there. The conception of man in the heart of God is just that: that He, HE should be found in a creation and in a manhood. That's the conception then, the relation to God in God's intention was just this: likeness in nature. Likeness in nature, not Deity, not Godhead, but God's nature.

You see, the Lord Jesus when He was here was always trying to convey, by different means, sometimes by stories or parables, an impression of what God is like. He was speaking to people of very small spiritual apprehension. He could not go beyond illustrations, pictures and figures such as (was it a parable, or was it a life-story?) known as 'The Prodigal Son', I think a misnomer, it would be far better to call it "The Story of a Father's Love", and you would get to the heart of what the Lord Jesus was after. What He was saying was that when you have contemplated that man, that father, his broken heart and his marvelous forgiveness and restoration, even smothering confession before it's finished, and lavishing upon that renegade son all that he had, you've got a faint idea of what God is like! And man was intended to be endowed and endued with the Divine nature. Peter even uses those words, "There are given to us exceeding great and precious promises whereby we shall become partakers of the divine nature". Leave Deity out of it; you've got enough when you come to the Divine likeness without aspiring to Deity. Likeness in nature... oneness in life; that was God's thought concerning man, that man should become an inheritor of the very uncreated Life of God. He was put on test, on probation, and missed it. It was there in the symbolic form of the Tree of Life, to be had on condition, but he missed it. And so man, by nature - all the children of Adam right up to our own time and ourselves - never have possessed that Divine Life outside of Jesus Christ. But that is the gift. As we shall see later, perhaps next week if God wills, that is one of the great things that happens when we become a Christian: partakers of God's own, Divine, eternal, uncreated Life. I won't dwell upon that at present, but then again, not only likeness and oneness, but: