T. Austin-Sparks · 1 of 6

The Vocation of the Church

Reading: John 13.

It is necessary for us to look closely into several things that will help us to look into the Divine meaning and the content of this chapter, and of the chapter following. These two chapters constitute one definite section of the Gospel.

Let us underline a few things in this chapter. First of all, let us note the references to the imminent departure of the Lord out of this world: verse 1, "His hour was come that He should depart out of this world..."; verse 3, "...knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He... goeth unto God"; verse 33, "Little children, yet a little while I am with you..."; verse 36, "Simon Peter saith unto Him, Lord, whither goest Thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go...".

If you glance back to chapter 12 at verse 35, you will remember that He had said something quite similar: "Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light among you...".

The second thing to see is the impossibility of following Him now, and the reference to an "afterward": verse 7, "Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know afterward"; verse 36, "Whither I go... thou shalt follow Me afterward."

The third thing to notice is that with which the chapter opens: the feet washing. Keep that in mind as a definite feature of this chapter; the washing of the feet by the Lord, and then the command that they should do the same to one another.

Then another thing to note is the new commandment, and the testimony to the world that is bound up with it: verses 34-35, "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another."

Then in three verses we should note another thing: that is, partnership with Christ and service. Verse 8, "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me" - I regard those last three words as governing the whole of this section: "part with Me". Verses 13-14, "Ye call Me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master..."; verse 16, "The servant is not greater than his lord...".

With those things noted, let us come to the general message of this chapter. It marks a step forward from chapter 12 as to the church.

The Church

Let us again define the church. According to John 12 it is the company of those who are in a living fellowship with the Lord Jesus through His death and resurrection. That is the church, and, so far as that is concerned, this chapter carries us a step forward. In chapter 12 it is resurrection union with the Lord Jesus. In chapters 13 and 14 what is introduced is ascension union with the Lord Jesus. That is why we have noted those four verses in chapter 13 and one in chapter 12 with reference to His imminent departure. That is a governing thing here. It is very much in view.

Chapter 14 is very much taken up with the Lord's going, the Father's house ("I go to prepare a place"), and all that follows in the chapter bears upon the Lord's going to the Father, leaving this world. It is the Lord's going into heaven that is very much in view, and is governing everything here.

This is all set forth to show that the church, the fellowship of believers with Christ, through death and resurrection, is a heavenly thing; and inasmuch as service also comes up in this section, the service of the church has to do with Christ in heaven. The Lord is saying, in other words, that there is a new place for Him and for you, and that new place is outside of this world, it is in heaven. He says, "I am going to heaven, I am going to the Father, I am going out of the world, and you spiritually are going out with Me, you in a spiritual way are going to be united with Me in a new place. So that everything for you henceforth - because I am in that place as your Head, your Lord, your Master - is going to be heavenly, out from heaven."

If you go back to chapter 12 and verse 31, you will recall these words: "...now is the judgement of this world". This world, then, lies under judgement, "I am going out of the world, out of the sphere of judgement, out of the realm of condemnation, I am going out to the Father, and you, My church, will be spiritually joined with Me, taken outside of the realm of judgement, out of the world."

If there is one thing that is true about the church, one thing that is made clear in the subsequent revelation of the New Testament, where the doctrine of these things is developed, it is that the church is outside of the realm of judgement and condemnation. The Lord's people have been translated out of the power of darkness, the kingdom of darkness, into the kingdom of the Son of God's love. He is there, and we are represented as being in Him in the heavenlies, and in Christ Jesus there is no condemnation. "The whole world lieth in the wicked one", and the whole world, therefore, lieth under judgement. But we are not of this world, we are in Christ, taken out. The church is a heavenly thing, having escaped the judgement of the world.

Now that is made incumbent upon the Lord's people. It is impossible to be in the good pleasure of God unless we are spiritually in that position, outside of the world. He that is a friend of the world (that is, he that has heart relationship in any way with the world) is at enmity with God. So that we cannot know the good pleasure of God unless we are spiritually right out of that which is called the world. To put that another way, we must know heaven now as our home, our native air, our resting place, our source of all supplies, in order to enjoy the good pleasure of the Lord, and when we do know heaven in that way, we know the good pleasure of the Father.

Seeking Heavenly Things

Another thing arises out of that; it is that, just in the measure in which our life is in heaven, and we are fulfilling the Word of the Lord in Colossians 3:1,2: "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth..." just in the measure in which our life is a heavenly life, and we are living in heavenly union with Christ and drawing all our resources from Him, there shall we understand heavenly things. To put that another way, voluntary contact, fellowship, life in this world in a spiritual sense is a deadening thing to spiritual knowledge and spiritual understanding. It means that our powers of spiritual perception and apprehension of the things of Christ are deadened, spoiled, arrested, paralysed by the things of this world.

If we have our life in this world (we are not speaking physically, and by reason of the obligations to move among men; we mean that inner life in this world) or a heart relationship with this world, then we shall move in its darkness. That is why the Lord says that union with Him is Light, and unless we go out with Him we shall be left to walk in darkness: "Walk in the light while ye have the light...". He is not saying to His disciples that they are going to be left without the Light; they are going to be able to walk all the time in the Light in a dark world, because of their heavenly union with Him. But if we are left here in this world without that union, then it is darkness. Any touch with this world in a spiritual way is a paralyzing of our spiritual faculties. If we want understanding in heavenly things, then we must have a heavenly life, and our understanding of the things of the Lord depends entirely upon the measure in which we are living in heavenly union with the Lord Himself.

The Place of Testing

There is yet another thing. It is our place which is always the ground of our testing; that is, we are tested by the place in which we live. That is illustrated for us in the case of Israel. They had been used to a certain kind of life in Egypt. It may have been a hard life, there may have been difficulties about it, but there were some things about it which were not so difficult. They did know where their food was coming from; their life was one of sense. It was fairly certain and fairly regular, and there was not very much to test them in the matter of faith. They knew pretty well what sort of a life they would be called upon to live, and it was a routine which was fairly fixed, and there was not much uncertainty about it; therefore there was not much test of faith. But when they came out into the wilderness, then they found themselves tested very much by the place in which they were.

How often the test was too much for them, and they harked back to Egypt. "Out here we are never sure of anything, we never know where our next meal is coming from; everything out here is uncertain, it seems to be so indefinite, we cannot see, we cannot do anything. Nothing that we can do will secure for us what we need. We are simply out here, and we are dependent upon God!" Ah, yes, it depends on how you say that, what that means. You can say it in a tone which implies that it is a terrible thing, or you can say, "Well, I have the surest and most certain of all sources - I have God". But the flesh does not look at things like that. The natural man thinks it is an awful thing to be dependent upon God and not upon his own effort, knowledge, wisdom, strength and understanding. To the natural man it is an awful position to be in a place where your own understanding, ability, strength and you yourself altogether are perfectly useless and altogether dependent upon Someone outside of yourself.

We are brought out of the world into heavenly union with the Lord, and there everything is out from Him, not out from ourselves, not out from the world. It is a life of utter dependence, but what a test it is! You find you can do nothing. There is nothing in yourself with which to cope with this situation. The disciples simply clung to the Lord as long as they could, to hold Him within the realm of their senses, for they felt that if He went back to the Father the bottom would fall out of their world.

The real testimony of the church is just in that direction, the absolute reality of Christ as in heaven, manifested by the church's life. You take it up at the beginning with the Acts, and right on, and the testimony of the church is the testimony that Jesus, though in heaven, is more real, wonderful and glorious than ever we knew Him to be, or ever He was to us when He was here in the days of His flesh! The church was given this testimony on that very ground. Take the case of the apostles, and then the case of the great apostle Paul, and you see that the whole testimony of the church as represented by them is the testimony to the wonderful reality of the ascended Christ, the risen Lord. It was all secured. The Lord was seeking to make clear to His disciples that it was expedient for them that He went away, for they were going to make discoveries of Him when He was gone which they had never been able to make before.

What a change there was between John 13 and Acts 9. In John 12 the Lord Jesus is in humiliation, rejected, set at naught. Acts 9 reveals a light from heaven above, the brightness of the sun, with all the power and authority in His hands, so that Saul of Tarsus met far more than his match in the ascended Christ, and the whole system of Judaism as gathered up in its intensest form in that one man met more than its match in the ascended Christ. What no other thing in this universe could have done in changing such a man as Saul of Tarsus from the position which he had held, into a devoted servant of the despised Jesus, was accomplished by a revelation of Jesus as in heaven. That was the thing that startled and broke him, that was the thing that accomplished this miracle. "I am Jesus." We can never imagine the impact that that announcement made upon Saul of Tarsus.

Saul had thought of Jesus of Nazareth as some imposter, false teacher, blasphemer of God, and who had died under the curse of God, for "cursed is every one that hangeth upon a tree". Jesus of Nazareth was, to Saul of Tarsus, the most miserable object of contempt and hatred. Now hear the announcement out of such transcendent glory that cannot be borne, that is intolerable and blinding - "I am Jesus"!

The church has its testimony in the value of that, and its ministry is all to do with what the Lord Jesus is, not in a historic sense but in His heavenly, glorified, exalted Person. It is the Son of Man at God's right hand that gives the ministry to the church, what it means that God has got a Man in the glory. That is the church's ministry.

You see how this links with that which we said at the beginning. God's eternal purpose is to display Himself in the universe through a creation, the centre of which creation is man, and the centre of which corporate man is the Man Christ Jesus. Power over the world and power over Satan is only - but is surely - on the ground of heavenly union with Christ.