T. Austin-Sparks · 1 of 2

The Cross, the Essential Foundation of the Church

Having had in view God's thought concerning the church, we are going to consider, as the Lord enables us, that which is the essential foundation of the church, and that is the Cross. So that we begin this morning with the foundation of the church, of Christ's church, the Cross. In a previous message one of the things which we emphasized was that the church is the object, as well as the subject of redemption; that redemption in the thought and intention of God, always pointed to the church, that redemption was not just the matter of the salvation of individual souls, howsoever many they might be, but redemption in the thought of God is always a collective thing in His intention, the church being in view. "The church of God which He has purchased with His own blood". That includes the individuals, but represents what God's main object was. That is looking on then, from redemption to the church, not as a matter of time or distance, but as the meaning of redemption.

Now we take the other view, the view from the opposite standpoint, and see that the church looks back to the Cross as the absolute necessity, the indispensable requirement for its existence. There can be no church, that is, the church of which the Lord Jesus spoke, "My church", without the Cross. The Cross is the foundation and no one can ever come into the church only on the ground of what the Cross means. We can see this principle throughout the Scripture. It is illustrated in the Old Testament. We might go back even as far as Adam and see in the type again, the slumbering man and the bride, the wife taken from his riven side, and fellowship in the church which is Christ's Body, is identification with Him in the Cross. And to bring Thomas into the fellowship from which he has been excluding himself while the Lord has been assembling with them, there must be a reaching forward of the hand and a putting it into the side, signifying identification with Christ crucified is basic to fellowship in the Body of Christ. It would take too long to cover all the Old Testament ground of illustration. We may just touch on points here and there.

Pass on to Jacob. We know that with Jacob the house of God came in Bethel. Bethel was introduced to the thought, to the mind of Jacob as he fled from his brother Esau. Bethel, "the house of God", came into view then, but for twenty years Jacob must be so disciplined under the hand of God that he is made fit for the house of God, and then at length when God said: "I am the God of Bethel... arise get thee out from this land, and return unto the land of thy kindred", he must go by way of Jabbok. And the Jabbok experience is where the strength of nature is broken, and for ever he goes leaning upon his staff, and that staff was the testimony of the Cross to his dying day: "By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph, and worshipped leaning upon the top of his staff", a man whose personal, natural strength has been broken. That is the Cross leading on to the house of God, to Bethel.

You pass over many years and you come to Israel of course. As we saw yesterday, in God's thought it was straight from Egypt by redemption to His holy habitation. The song of Moses brought immediately the sanctuary into view, but that sanctuary was not reached until man was tested through that specified period of probation, forty years, and proved in himself utterly incapable of dwelling in the sanctuary, unfit for the house of God. And then by the Jordan - a type of Calvary - was set aside and a new generation which came through that Cross triumphantly in the energy of the Spirit (that is Joshua) entered into the holy habitation. It is important to recognise that the forty years of Israel in the wilderness is God's abiding testimony to the fact that the flesh cannot come into His holy habitation.

You pass over another considerable period and you come to recovery from captivity, the remnant returning, the days of Ezra the scribe. And we are told that in the return of that remnant to rebuild the destroyed sanctuary, the first thing that they did before ever they touched the sanctuary was to put the altar in its place, and then after that they gave themselves to build again the House of the Lord. It is the Cross always before the House.

You pass to the New Testament. Is God going to tabernacle among men and have here on the earth a temple in which He dwells? He truly was in Christ from His birth, but when the Lord Jesus is taking up His official work to officially and representatively show what the tabernacle of God is, and God comes in a symbolic way to take up residence in Him, it is at Jordan, in type dead and buried and raised, and the heavens open and God delighting to dwell in Him: "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased". It is the Cross again leading on to the Sanctuary, the Sanctuary of which the Lord Jesus spoke later when He said: "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up."