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Manfred
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Joined: 2005/4/4
Posts: 342
Continental Europe

 "Because of the blood of the Lamb"

"Because of the Blood of the Lamb"

by T. Austin-Sparks

Reading: Zechariah 3:1-10; Revelation 12:1-12.

"And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony; and they loved not their life even unto death." (R.V.)

One clause of that verse sums up everything else and is sufficient - "because of the blood of the Lamb."

The Travail for the Man-Child

Now first of all, beloved, I want to gather together several things which I believe represent the significance of that statement, that to which the statement belongs. I am one of those who believe (I do not ask you to believe it because I do, but that you will go to the Lord with open hearts about it) that the man-child of this chapter represents a company of the Lord's people at the end-time who, in a peculiar way, stand in the fullness of the virtue and power of the Blood of the Lord Jesus; and, as we have often said, we believe that it is that people, that company, the man-child, that God in a special way is seeking to secure for Himself at this time; the thing which, in the midst of other things, He is peculiarly, particularly concerned to bring into being. It is a company called into a peculiar relationship to the Lord Himself for the fulfilment of a priestly ministry in relation to the universal kingdom of our God and His Christ - and I use the word "universal" there with care; not just an earthly aspect of that kingdom, but also the heavenly aspect. We must understand that there are two sides to the kingdom; there is the earthly side and there is the heavenly side. There will be those who are in the earthly side who will not be in the heavenly side, but there will not be any in the heavenly side who are not in the earthly side. Get the heavenly side and you get both. This particular company, the man-child company, is, in the purpose of God, to be brought into relation to Him for the fulfilment of a priestly ministry in relation to the universal kingdom of our God and His Christ; a priestly ministry, in relation to the kingdom and the throne, the universal sovereignty of the Lord Jesus; an administrative instrument in heaven, to rule with Him, from the heavens, the whole range of His dominion.

Let us call to mind an Old Testament illustration of this in the person of Samuel. You will remember that the birth of Samuel was impossible of realisation along the ordinary line of nature, but his mother Hannah entered into a spiritual travail concerning him. While in that spiritual travail, while before the Lord in strong crying and tears for this man-child, the other wife of her husband laughed at her, sneered at her, looked down upon her. She had children, Hannah had none, and was despised; and then by a special intervention and act of God that spiritual travail was answered and Samuel was born. Born, on the one hand, out of travail in her soul, on the other hand, born out of a direct act of God in His Divine intervention when man was helpless, and nature was impotent. When Samuel was weaned he was presented in the Temple and we read that "Samuel ministered before the Lord, being a child, girded with a linen ephod" - the priest's garment. You see the stages; he - you might say from birth, from infancy, without a lapse of years - immediately came into a priestly office. He was designed for that, brought into being for that, the travail was unto that. We have noticed that it says of Hannah, that she weaned the child. Speaking of Sarah and Isaac it says "when the child was weaned" - taking its course. Hannah did it as quickly as she could, it did not take its course, she did it to get him into this priestly ministry as soon as could be. So that his very life from its beginning was marked by this priestly ministry, and it was in relation to the throne and the kingdom - Samuel was the king-anointer, Samuel brought in the great king. His priestly ministry was in relation to the kingdom. He was the embodiment of that great phrase "kingdom and priests unto God."

Here is your type, a man-child. We have often said that women in the Bible represent spiritual principles, and Hannah represents the spiritual law of travail unto the specific purpose of God, and when you come to Revelation 12, you have a woman into whom there enters a spirit of travail; a spirit of travail comes in, as I believe, unto the bringing forth of this specific company, this remnant company, the man-child born out of that spirit of travail, that crying-out spirit, that anguish. Against that company the Adversary is set, deadly set. Zech. 3 which we have read introduces these principles again in another historic setting. Joshua the high-priest is in person the embodiment of the priestly ministry of all Israel, that which is to be a "kingdom and priests unto God"; the high-priest simply gathers up the whole priestly nation in his person, and Joshua is there seen as the figure-head of the priesthood in relation to the kingdom. The priesthood, the priestly ministry, the priestly vocation and calling, is in a sorry state in Zechariah's day. You see Joshua clothed in filthy garments. That is the condition of things, and Satan - the Adversary - is seen standing at his right hand to be his adversary. The right hand is the place of power, and Satan is in the place of power because of the filthy garments, and accuses Joshua before God. We will come to that again later - Satan in the place of power as an accuser of that which is meant to fulfil this priestly ministry in relation to the kingdom. Bringing these things together you are getting the background of spiritual principles, and you are seeing exactly what is in view in this chapter in Revelation. "And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb."

The Power of the Blood is Primarily in its Incorruptibility

What is the ground of victory? What is the basis of that ultimate triumph? By what means will God get His end? It says here "because of the blood of the Lamb." That, first of all, and I believe more than anything else, relates to the nature of the Blood of the Lord Jesus. I mean the absolute sinlessness of the Lord Jesus in His essential life, in His essential nature; His absolute sinlessness: that His nature was altogether devoid of the slightest suspicion of corruption, of sin, of defilement, of corruptibility. That is its strength; that is its power; that is its victory. Before you can understand the working of the power of the Blood of the Lord Jesus you have to understand the absolute immunity from any suggestion of sin in the nature of the Lord Jesus. Sin was not found in Him. He was the "Lamb without blemish and without spot", and although He was born of a virgin, of a woman who was a member of Adam's race, by the direct activity and operation of the Holy Spirit there was a complete cutting in between Mary as a member of Adam's race and the Lord Jesus as the Son of God, so that He inherited none of the sin of Adam's race by His birth. It is important to see that. He was born of a member of Adam's race and yet inherited none of its sin in His nature, because of a cutting in of the Holy Ghost, so that it could be said of Him as of no other being ever in this universe, "that holy thing." Essentially, in very substance, He was holy, and His Blood represents His nature, His life without corruption, without sin, without taint of any kind, absolutely sinless and, therefore, Satan has no power over Him; "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me." Because of this He can cast out the prince of this world, and can make a show of him openly, triumphing over him in His Cross. He can vanquish Satan, He can meet sin and deal with it in the mastery of it because it has no ground in Him of crippling and weakening. See Joshua in his place of weakness, a place of impotence, a place where he is not functioning in his holy calling, in a place of defeat, and the Adversary in the place of power, at his right hand to be his adversary! He cannot help himself because of his filthy garments, and before Joshua can ever be established in the place of power, and given ascendancy, before Satan as the accuser can be cast down, these filthy garments have to be removed. In principle and effect the Blood has to take effect. The Blood, the precious sinless Blood, has to come in and deal with sin, the power and ground of satanic activity - the means of accusation on the part of the Adversary. Before that can be destroyed the Blood has to be operative.

The "Overcomer" Stands on the Ground of the Perfections of Christ, and Meets the "Accuser" by Faith's Appropriation Thereof

What is the meaning of the Blood being applied? It is that which is the absolute sinlessness of the Lord Jesus being the ground upon which we stand. That gives us authority, gives us power. It is the essential perfection of Christ as being the ground of our confidence, our faith, our trust and our testimony. If we stand in ourselves we are defeated. There are no perfections in us, there is nothing in us whatever that can bring Satan to naught and deliver us from his accusations and from his position of power over us. But when we stand in Christ, in all the perfection of His nature, of His being, in the absolute sinlessness of Christ represented in that incorruptible Blood, there is deliverance. And so that Blood poured out becomes active, operative, in motion, and it is a great thing to have the perfections of the Lord in motion on our behalf, flowing, active to meet all the accusations of the enemy. "The accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God day and night." Why? Because they are not standing now on the ground of their own imperfection and sinfulness and weakness and faultiness, but they are now standing on the ground of His absolute perfection, and bearing testimony thereto: "The word of their testimony." "They overcame because of the blood." It is a question of a ground of absolute holiness, absolute holiness not in ourselves but in Him, and our appropriating by faith and apprehending by faith all that the Lord Jesus is in His essential being as the spotless Lamb of God for us to God, from God to us. We can never reiterate that note too often. That is the ground of victory. Give the enemy one little fragment of old Adam, of the flesh, of self, of sin, and he immediately takes the place of power and immediately brings you under accusation and begins to weaken both life and ministry. You know this is true; if you do not you will find it out. But stand continuously in the efficacy of that Blood, stand continuously in your receiving by faith of all that the Lord Jesus is made unto you from God, clear up everything concerning which the Holy Spirit speaks in conviction, clear it up in virtue of that Blood, and the enemy is ruled out, he is not in the place of power.

Satanic Tyranny Through Self-Occupation Broken by a Right Apprehension of the Blood

Oh! if the Lord's people could get this in their hearts. There are so many of the Lord's people today over whom Satan is lording it; lording it along the line of accusation, bringing them under a sense of condemnation and judgment, robbing them of their peace, of their assurance, rest, hope; and you will find these people are everlastingly talking about their own short-comings, their sinfulness; they are for ever circling round themselves, all that they are that they would not be, all that they are not that they would be. Their deliverance from Satan is that they should have a fresh apprehension of the absolute satisfaction of the Father in His Son on their behalf, and that they find their standing before the Father in acceptance. That is the way of deliverance, the way of the Adversary's casting out. This is the way of overcoming him as the Accuser. Yes, the ground of the Blood is sufficient for this full-orbed, many-sided, all-round victory. "They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb", and the first and supreme factor in the virtue of that Blood in all these directions, is its untainted sinlessness, the nature of the Lord Jesus. There has never been another who was such. Oh, I am so glad that it was God that came in Christ, GOD that came in Christ. Can you charge God with sin? Can you lay sin to God's charge, to God's account? It was God in Christ, the absolutely and altogether holy One in whom there was no sin, who came in incarnation; and in virtue of that Divine nature in its perfection Satan in his authority is defeated - on that ground. Blessed be God! We receive by faith the virtue of that precious Blood; that is, the perfection of the Lord Jesus can be put to our account. That is grace - the wonder of the Gospel. If we were to begin to analyse ourselves and take stock of ourselves, that would be a terrible business, a wretched business, and it would be endless - think of it, beloved, with all that we know of ourselves, all that God knows about us - The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart. I try the reins..."

Though all that be a fact, you and I can stand now in the presence of God as sinlessly perfect, not in ourselves, but in Christ, as having absolute sinless perfection put to our account by God. Understand I am not confusing things, I am not saying that any of us ever becomes sinlessly perfect in ourselves here, but those perfections of the Lord Jesus are put to our account before God to satisfy His requirements, to provide the ground where Satan no longer has authority. The defeat of Satan and the victory of the saints is not by their effort, their straining, their groaning, nor by anything they can do; it is the measure of their faith's appropriation of the absolute perfection of Christ for them as a living, working thing of God on their behalf. It is a great thing to be in Christ Jesus.

The Blood Represents Total Separation to God

The second thing, bound up with the first as to the meaning of the Blood, is absolute separation unto God, and that voluntarily; wholly, utterly separated and abandoned to God. There was not at any point in His person a deviation. He was whole. He was one. You cannot find mixture. You never find wool and cotton in His spiritual garments. You never find in Him the counterpart of those things forbidden in the Old Testament as typical of contradictions and deviations and things which do not harmonise. He was one, mind and heart and will, without the slightest reservation, and wholly for God. That was His nature, and that has its very seat in His Blood. His Blood represents that - a life which is sinless, and wholly and utterly given over to God without the slightest deviation in thought or desire, inclination, will. The Blood speaks of that, beloved, absolute separation unto God. Go back to the Old Testament for illustration. In the Book of Joshua, chapter 5, you have the people coming to Gilgal where the Lord, through Joshua, ordered the complete circumcising of Israel. All the males that had been born in the wilderness were circumcised at Gilgal and the Lord's word was this: "This day (when it was done) have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt... wherefore the name of that place was called Gilgal", which is "rolling." "The Lord hath rolled away the reproach of Egypt" - on the day of the circumcising, in the day of that symbolic act in the shedding and encircling of the precious Blood - the whole body of the flesh cut off - so Paul explains it in Col. 2, "the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ." The reproach of Egypt rolls away when that happens. What is "the reproach of Egypt?" What is the meaning of that? I wonder if you have noticed the persistent following of Egypt on the heels of Israel all the days of the wilderness. I do not mean literally, I mean spiritually. They were constantly looking back to Egypt. "Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?" Even when Moses went up into the mount and Aaron made the calf and they danced to the calf and worshipped it, it was Egypt brought out in representation. What is it that Stephen tells us about it - I think he sums it all up in a word in Acts 7:39: "...and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt."

Their hearts were in Egypt, and it was because their hearts were more than half in Egypt all the forty years, that there is such a sorry story; up and down; one day brighter, and the next day murmuring and complaining again. What a story it is. Whenever, you read the account it seems that the bright patches are almost overlooked and the dark thing is kept in view. It is referred to in the New Testament. Paul writes to the Hebrews about it - their "carcases fell in the wilderness", reminding them of the day of provocation in the wilderness when "your fathers tempted me..."; always coming back to this wretched failure. Why did they fail? Because their hearts were not wholly out of Egypt; because they had not recognised sufficiently nor apprehended adequately the meaning of the type of that precious Blood of the Lamb that was slain. It was not until they came into the land, through the Jordan (which is typically what Christ has done for them in His Cross) to Gilgal (the place of circumcision where the thing is made real in them, - that which was "for" is now made "in"), not until they reach the place of cutting (that Cross entering into their flesh, "the cutting off of the whole body of the flesh" symbolically), that the reproach of Egypt is rolled away. What is the reproach of Egypt? The prophet Zephaniah says, "I have heard the reproach of Moab, and the revilings of the children of Ammon..." - what are they doing? They are looking down upon the Lord's people, despising them because of their weakness, because they are not getting through to their goal, because from their standpoint, as they judge things, the whole thing is a fiasco - "You left Egypt to get to Canaan and you have been forty years at it!" Weakness, failure of realisation, helplessness and the enemy in the place of strength! Reproach is upon them because they had not recognised that the Blood fundamentally meant an utter cutting off from Egypt; whole-hearted and complete abandonment to God; standing over on God's side with God, not standing over on this side questioning God, but, on God's side with Him. When you get there, in the full meaning of the Cross - a total cutting off from Egypt; a total cutting off from the fleshly will, the fleshly mind, the fleshly heart, and you are with God wholly - then there is victory; until you get there Satan is in the place of power, but when you get there the reproach of Egypt is rolled away, you come into the land in the place of authority and go from strength to strength in ascendancy. It is so clear in the Old Testament illustration. That is Revelation 12:11 in principle. "They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony; and they loved not their life even unto death: Therefore rejoice, O heavens..."

The Paralysis of a Divided Heart

Now, beloved, the trouble with a good many of us has been this divided heart. We are not sure, not absolutely sure about the Lord, about our own position, about the testimony that we are perhaps standing for and talking about; we are not sure about it, we have secret questionings. It does not matter what we say in public and to others about it, God knows the secret of our hearts, whether we are absolutely true in secret with Him over this matter; and there is no way of victory, no way to ascendancy, no way through to the realisation of the Divine end - a people to fulfil a priestly ministry in the universal sovereignty and kingdom of our God and His Christ - until we are on the ground of an absolute undividedness of heart for God in the matter of His testimony. The challenge to our hearts is, Are we utterly in or are we only partly in; half in; three-quarters in? Is there some lurking fascination of Egypt? How Egypt had fascinated and held part of their hearts when they were in the wilderness! Out here everything is uncertain; we never know from one day to another whether we are going to have our food! In Egypt there was at least certainty; we did know what our programme was; we were sure that things would be pretty substantial, that while we had our work we got our food! Out here you are forced to depend upon God, and that is a precarious business. Is it? God is more certain than Egypt. There are Christians who feel that this walk of faith is such an uncertain thing. You do not know what the Lord is going to bring you into next, what is going to happen to you. In the world you at least have solid ground under your feet. This flesh wants a basis of evidence for itself; solid earth. This heavenly life - you never know - ah! but do you know the Heavenly ONE?

Let me ask you - Do you believe, beloved, that when, having committed yourself to God, having been consecrated to the Lord, having had an understanding with the Lord, and having been obedient to Him up to all the light He has given you, do you believe that when you get to the glory you will be able to say to the Lord: You let me be deceived, my life has been ruined, I have gone wrong? Is that possible? I do not believe it! I believe that whatever the Accuser may try to bring upon us, and whatever others may say about us, if before God in the secret we are honest with Him, if we are cut off by the precious Blood from our own will, our own way, our own schemes, our life interest, and are putting our trust in Him and following the light that He gives, I believe that when we get there, beloved, we shall not have been deceived, but we shall have to say: Lord, You were good to our trust and You led us by a right way that we might come to a city of habitation! The Lord will accept a charge on His honour when we are cut off from ourselves and from all personal and worldly interests, and are wholly for Him.

Losing the Crown

Egypt for some is the ground of bondage and defeat. Even though we may be the Lord's children, may be Blood-bought, may have come out on redemption ground, yet we may be defeated because of an inadequate apprehension of the meaning of that precious Blood. I believe that there will be many who will lose that thing that God has in view as a special vocation in His heavenly kingdom, because they are not wholly devoted to God now. I do not believe that we will be brought into that willy-nilly. If you want the world, even as a believer, want a little of it - well, you may have it at this cost, the loss of that for which God has preeminently called you, the heavenly kingdom in a marvellous vocation, you will lose that. Paul was after that. Paul strained every nerve, spiritually, for that; left the things which were behind for that, to be preserved unto His heavenly kingdom. There are many Christians who will lose that because they do not go all the way with the Lord; not lose their salvation, but that specific vocation in glory and honour; they will lose it because they did not recognise and honour the full virtue of the Blood in the totality of their consecration and abandonment to the Lord. Yes, in that sense they will be left behind. But those who go through, who overcome in trial, are they that overcome because of the Blood of the Lamb in this second meaning, the absolute abandonment of the Lord Jesus to the will of His Father even unto death; who are standing in the virtue of His consecration, and making their consecration, by His grace, as utter as was His. We shall never have to let go what He let go in His obedience to the will of God. We have not got it to let go, but what the Lord is looking for, beloved, is a people who are with Him completely, with undivided heart, and that is the ground of our victory and of Satan's defeat.

Now I think I must close there for the present. Oh, let it be seen that the Blood of the Lamb in its absolute perfection of holiness and sinlessness as representing His being, His substance, His essence, His nature and His complete surrender, His capitulation to the will of His Father, is the ground to stand on; something to be appropriated by faith and held on to. More, it is something to be taken up as a weapon against the enemy.

The Blood is a Weapon to be Wielded

The Dragon is the adversary. We are up against the Devourer. All truly spiritual people know that today; some more than others, perhaps. If he can swallow us up, he will. I believe he is out to strike us with death if he can, to strike our bodies with death, to strike our souls with death. Let me say this word to those who are more intimately associated with things, that the more we come to stand in relation to the Lord concerning the heavenly kingdom and that priestly ministry in the heavenly kingdom in relation to the throne, the more shall we be aware of the immediate proximity of the Dragon, of him who would strike with death, strike our minds with death, strike these bodies with death. That will explain a good deal for some. The nearer we get to the vocation of the man-child, the closer we come to the Dragon, the more shall we be conscious of the encompassing and encircling of death, and shall cry to get out of it, and say, This is not life, it is death! Are we going to accept it? It is death; but where is the virtue of the Blood? Do we refuse it on the ground of that mighty shed Blood? "They overcame him because of the blood..." and we are not going to accept death, because of that Blood. Perhaps some might misunderstand that. We are not saying that we are not going to the grave if the Lord tarries long; but that is not accepting death. We can die, and go to the grave in the physical sense, but that can be victory; not defeat, but triumph! We do not accept death. You may know it spiritually, you know it mentally, you know it round you and playing upon you when you come into close touch with that ultimate end of God in the testimony of Jesus Christ. Look after that explanation; hold on to it. It calls, beloved, for standing up against the adversary, the engulfer, the swallower-up. Blessed be God, there is going to be a greater swallower-up than he. Death is going to be swallowed up. There is one who will swallow up if he can. Against the Dragon, against the Adversary, against the Accuser, against the Deceiver, the Blood is adequate, sufficient; but there must be a positive, active appropriation of the full power and meaning of that Blood and a standing upon it; a taking of it up as an active instrument. Oh! to get a company like that here and now who know and appropriate the power of the Blood; not in the strength of the flesh, but emptied of self, and in all humility, nothingness, weakness, standing in HIS virtue, the power of His Blood, and standing up and using that mighty weapon against the operation of death now, all round, to get through to that end which God has in view. That is what is needed now, a people like that.

May the Lord bring this home to our heart, that this may not be an address but an appeal, an urge of the Spirit of Christ - bringing us into that thing actively by prayer. Remember your ground, remember your weapon, remember that all the emptying of self, the weakening, the bringing down, the chastening, the discipline, is to bring you to an effective place. Pride has no standing here; self-sufficiency has no standing here; self-strength comes not into this; naught but the precious Blood.

Weakness is not helplessness. Helplessness on our part is not despair. No, it is the open way for the mighty efficacy of the Blood to come into operation.

 2005/5/15 1:25Profile
Manfred
Member



Joined: 2005/4/4
Posts: 342
Continental Europe

 Re: "Because of the blood of the Lamb"

The Testimony of the Blood

by T. Austin-Sparks

"And the Lord said to the serpent... I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: He shall bruise thy head...", (Genesis 3:15)

"...the old serpent... and they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they loved not their life even unto death.", (Revelation 12:9,11)

The Testimony of Jesus is first mentioned in the Scripture by the Lord Himself in the above words (Genesis 3:15). It is all gathered up in that one clause: "He shall bruise thy head". The two things combine in that clause: "He", the Person, and "shall bruise thy head", the work; and that with a certain special significance: "thy head", which is "thy dominion, thy government, thy sovereignty, thy crown". Then we have the Cross introduced immediately as the scene and centre of the establishing fully and finally in Him of this Testimony, the central element of the Cross being the Blood of the Lord Jesus. The Blood; that is the central factor in the Testimony of Jesus - the Blood of the Lord Jesus. I want to remind you of the inclusiveness of the Blood of the Lord Jesus, that in the first place it has to do with sin. It is immediately related in that passage in Genesis to what had taken place and to what had entered into the world. Sin, and sin in all its aspects; sin as transgression, overstepping the mark; sin as lawlessness, revolt against God; sin as shortcoming, coming short of the Glory of God; sin in every form in every way. The Blood of the Lord Jesus has to do with sin in the meeting of it, the destroying of it, and ultimately in the wiping of it from the universe. The Blood of Jesus Christ is directed against sin.

Then, in the second place, it is related to all that is meant by that symbolic word: "the flesh". And the flesh here does not mean merely the principle of sin, but it means the kind of person man is when he has fallen into sin. That is, the fallen race, the species which came into existence when sin entered in - an entirely different type of being from that intended by God. "He is become flesh", (Genesis 6:3). The Blood of Jesus Christ has to do, not only with the sin as the principle and the law of the fallen race, but with the race itself; not only to wipe sin from the universe, but to wipe that race from the universe; to put away that kind and type of man and make possible and secure a new creation, a man, not after the flesh type, but the Man after the Spirit type, such as Christ in resurrection.

The Blood, in the third place, is related to the consequences immediately following upon sin and the race becoming what it did when sin entered. That is death. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." "And," says the Spirit through Paul "as by one man's disobedience... death passed upon all for that all have sinned", and death is the universal and immediate consequence upon sin and the sentence concerning the race. Death in all its range and depth; death in every realm, spirit, soul and body. The Blood testifies concerning death and has a work to do in that realm.

Then, in the fourth place, the Blood of Jesus Christ not only deals with the consequence and the fruit, but with the cause and the root, and Satan himself is involved in this mighty issue in the Blood of Jesus Christ. He is taken up in the Testimony of Jesus, and taken up in two capacities:

Firstly, he is taken up as "the prince of this world" - "The prince of this world cometh"; "Now shall the prince of this world be cast out".

Secondly, to Satan as "him that had the power of death, that is the devil". It is not only the death, but him that had the power of death, and the word "power" there is neither the familiar word: "dunamis" - force, nor: "exousia" - authority, but it is the other word: "kratos", which means "to hold". It is the grip of death; the one who holds in his hands death, the one who has the hold of death; and in that connection the Blood speaks concerning him, that through death - and the Lord Jesus getting for a moment into the hold, the grip of death - He should destroy him that had the hold of death, that is the devil.

So the Blood deals with him in both those capacities. That is the Testimony of Jesus as in the Blood of the Lord Jesus.

The issue is that of Life and Death

Now we see that the main issue in the Testimony of Jesus, in and through and by His Blood, is the issue of life and death, or death and life. That is the main issue. Oh, do follow me closely, for you will see in a moment some of the great content of this thing. The main issue in the Testimony of Jesus as by the Blood of Jesus is the issue of LIFE AND DEATH. If the Lord's people recognized that enough, they would have their ground set and fixed, they would know exactly what their business is in the world, and they would have a full explanation of all that which they meet in the spiritual realm when they become related to the Testimony of Jesus. IT IS THE ISSUE OF LIFE AND DEATH. It is not only of sin and sanctification, and it is not only the issue of an old man and a new man, but in all that, and over all that, and around all that is the far bigger issue, the issue of life and death. And until this main issue is recognized the whole question of sin, and of the new man, and the new race, and the bringing in of the new creation, and of the escape of men and women from the power of Satan unto God could never be. You will be held up until you recognize the main issue. Where does the whole question of sanctification begin? Where does the whole question of a new creation begin? Where does the whole question of the emancipation of souls from the grip of Satan begin? It all begins at the place where the power of death is met. It is not sins with which you and I are contending, nor merely with the old creation. We can be locked up and bound and tied by the absorption and obsession with our old man and never get anywhere. We can be locked up and tied hand and foot with all kinds of truth and teaching about sanctification, the question of sins or sin specifically, and get nowhere because we are not recognizing the main issue. The main issue is death, the power of death, and we have got to come to that central issue of the Blood of the Lord Jesus - the question of life and death. That is the Cross at its heart. Unless the Lord had settled that issue once and for all in His Blood in the Cross then all other matters would have failed entirely and there would have been no complete Gospel.

Then, that being the Cross and the content of the Cross, we see what the Testimony of Jesus is in essence. It is the Testimony to life, making possible a new creation. That Testimony, when it really is recognized at its centre, is a Testimony concerning life which is brought into being upon the basis of death being destroyed, death having its power broken, and him that had the power of death being nullified. When that Testimony comes into being, and it is recognized, and anyone enters into that Testimony and makes that their testimony, what happens? Immediately the murderer is brought out.

The Enemy of Life Comes out

He who, as the Lord Himself said, was a "murderer from the beginning", always has acted in that capacity towards any who were called into the Testimony of Jesus, whether in the Old Testament or in the New.

Abel was the first to take up the Testimony in history. What was Abel's testimony? The Blood! Whether Abel understood all the content of that symbolic thing or not is not our concern for the moment, but God understood what it meant. He had established it, and it was His way through all history. That fragment in the Hebrew Letter has governed all sacrifice in the mind of God: "without shedding of blood there is no remission". The Blood was the key from the first movement of sin in this world in the mind of God, and Abel himself stepped into that Testimony of the Blood with all its significance concerning sin, death, the race, and him that had the power of death - and immediately the murderer came out and Abel was murdered, not by Cain, but through Cain; and so it has always been! When later Abram set up his altar and divided his sacrifice, the conflict commenced. You read about it in Genesis 15. The vultures descending, the beating off until the sun went down, the horror of great darkness - and then the coming through of the Lord. What is it linked with? It is linked with the revelation of the Lamb and the Blood of the Lamb by which his seed, after four hundred years in Egyptian bondage, was going to be emancipated. The Lord gave him the revelation of His method in the earth. What was that for? To get a people who should be in the nations apart from the nations, for the Testimony of Jehovah. Israel was to be God's corporate testimony in the earth, amongst the nations, and be constituted and sustained upon a principle of blood, the shed Blood. And when the Lord would come forth to reveal the nature of the Testimony in the earth as corporate in His people, Abram meets the impact of the horror of great darkness, and there is set up in the very atmosphere a state of conflict. You carry it on in the case of Moses himself: the conflict in Egypt, and the continual conflict through his life.

This is the explanation of the attack upon Elijah, when he had erected his altar and stood for the maintenance of the Testimony of the Lord in Israel. When he stood on Carmel for that Testimony by his altar, and that Testimony had been established and vindicated against the false prophets, nay, against all that produced the false prophets and their system - the power behind - THEN JEZEBEL THREATENS HIS LIFE. Satan anticipated Moses by the slaughter of all the innocents to get one, as he anticipated Calvary in the Lord Jesus by the slaughter of the innocents to get One. And here, in the case of Elijah, because he is standing for the Testimony in Israel, the best and most suited instrument to Satan, Jezebel, is taken up, and Elijah's life is threatened. This is the key to all those murderous attempts in the Old Testament upon individuals and upon companies of the Lord's people. It is the explanation of the Book of Esther, when Haman would have all the Jews massacred. Why? Because they were God's instruments in the earth. The devil is against the Testimony in that people; they are the target because they are the testimony. Stand in this true Testimony of the Lord Jesus, in the power of the Holy Ghost and not in the theory of the thing; stand in it truly, and as sure as anything is certain the enemy of life will come out, and that is the explanation of all your experience in the work of God, and in your own personal life, in body mind and spirit. I am saying one of the most tremendous and solemn, and yet one of the truest things when I say this.

The Testimony of Life Triumphant Over Death

Now we take up the whole thing when we take up a part, because there is no part. You are in it or you are out of it, and you cannot have a bit of it. Immediately, by faith and in the Holy Spirit, you become really, vitally related to the Testimony of Jesus, you are in that great issue, that supreme issue of the Blood - the conflict between life and death, death and life. You are in it, and in that realm there is only one thing, and that is

The Warring Faith of the Son of God

There can be no passivity nor generalities in that realm. You cannot afford to take recreation in that realm. The praying has to be fighting prayer, and, oh, there is need for a revival of fighting prayer! The ceasing to say prayers, pray prayers, to take these jaunts in prayer all over the place, and come right to the mighty issues and battle through in the Name of the Lord. There needs to come more real fighting prayer into the Lord's people. You ask the Lord to give you the warring faith of the Son of God in prayer! It means that there has to be a very strong stand taken in that warring faith, and a refusal to be diverted by circumstances and appearances. Is the Testimony to you something which, if it were taken away and you have nothing left, you go with it, or is it something you have taken on and that you can change as you change your clothes? Will you be stripped of everything if that Testimony of the Lord Jesus is taken from you? If it is like that, you will say: "Well, there is one thing which for me is a matter of life or death, and that is the Testimony in which I stand, the Testimony of the Lord Jesus."

"And they overcame him because of the Blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death." Does that sound like a contradiction? "Unto the death." Abel was killed. But "they" are not dead, and Abel is not dead. Paul, like Jesus, was slain. But they live in "the power of an endless life" because Jesus has conquered death and "him that had the hold on death". By His Cross and by His Blood He conquered!

 2005/5/15 1:38Profile
Manfred
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Joined: 2005/4/4
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 Re: "Because of the blood of the Lamb"

The Blood, the Cross and the Name of the Lord Jesus

by T. Austin-Sparks

Readings: Series 1 - Luke 22:17,18,20. John 6:54,55. Col. 1:20. Heb. 9:12-14,20,22; 10:19; 11:29; 12:24. 1 Peter 1:2. 1 John 1:7. Rev. 5:9, 10; 7:14,15.

Series 2 - Acts 2:38: 3:6; 4:7,12,17,30; 8:12; 16:18; 19:13-15, 1 Cor. 5:4; 6:11. Eph. 1:21,22. Phil. 29-11. Rom. 6:3-8.

Beloved of God, we have read a good many passages of the Word and you will have noticed that there are three distinct matters brought into view by them. They are divided into three and refer to three different things, and I have it on my heart to spend just a little time in considering these three matters; namely, the Blood, the Cross, and the Name of the Lord Jesus.

They are important matters in themselves, each one of them. I trust that we shall see something of that importance; but there is another thing related to them which is also very important, especially for the Lord's people, and that is, to discriminate between them, for there is a good deal of indiscriminate use of these words and terms, and I think that confusion or misuse very often means weakness and failure in getting through to the desired end. It is important when we go into war to know what weapons we need, and to be able to choose and intelligently use those weapons; for to be in a warfare using a certain kind of weapon which we discover is not the one that effects the end is a very embarrassing situation. And so it is important for the Lord's people to be able to understand the peculiar value and meaning of these different things which have so close a relationship to their spiritual victory. It is also very important for unsaved men and women to know the meaning of these terms, these words which are so frequently upon Christian lips: "the Blood of Jesus Christ", "the Cross of the Lord Jesus", "the Name of Jesus". We have no thought of covering the whole of that ground in this short space, we can merely introduce it and touch upon it as the Lord leads.

The Blood

We begin, then, with the Blood of Christ, about which we have read so much in the Word, and yet withal a bare fragment of what there is in the Word concerning it; and we may immediately point out that the Blood of Jesus has specifically and primarily to do with sin, and redemption unto life. I would that you would just take that statement and go to the Word of the Lord with it and investigate and inquire much more fully than we can do now, and you will see how truly that is borne out. The Blood has to do with cleansing and with redemption unto life, that is, it relates to sin and to all Satanic legal ground. When we speak of Satanic legal ground we mean this, that by nature, according to the Word of God, and according to the spiritual experience and knowledge of those who have come to the Lord Jesus, all the creation is in bondage to the Devil. You may dispute that because you do not know it experimentally and personally. I would suggest that you turn to the Lord Jesus and you will soon discover how much you are in bondage to the Devil, for it is only a prisoner who tries to escape who discovers that he is really a prisoner. But the Word of God tells us what is true, and the spiritual experience of all who have really come to Christ proves the Word of God to be true; that the whole of the race, and of creation, by nature is now in bondage to the Devil; but the power, the authority of Satan rests upon a condition, and that condition is sin, and he has legal ground for maintaining his hold where sin is, his hold upon the race is through sin. He grips, and holds, and maintains his hold through sin. You may say that sin is the chain by which the whole race is in the power of Satan, and sin therefore is his legal ground; in so far as he has legal rights to his position, those legal rights are constituted by the condition into which man has fallen by his own sin: sin against God and obedience to Satan. The Blood, therefore, relates to sin and to all Satanic legal ground, and the words which perhaps best represent that ground are condemnation and death. It is with those words that the Apostle sums up his matchless argument through the first three chapters of his letter to the Romans, where, tracing the course of the ages, and running through all realms of life, testing and examining according to the Divine standard, he at length concludes all under sin: "There is none righteous, no, not one" (Rom. 3:10), and he pronounces by the Spirit, the verdict, all are under condemnation and therefore all are under death; and condemnation and death are words which represent the legal ground of Satan in holding the race in bondage.

The First Need of the Sinner

The initial need and appeal of the unsaved sinner is to the Blood of the Lord Jesus. "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission". The unsaved sinner, knowing it or not knowing it, is truly in bondage to the Devil, imprisoned by Satan. The Blood of Jesus Christ relates to condemnation and death unto life; and what the unsaved sinner has to come to as the very first ground of hope is a recognition of the meaning and value of the Blood of Jesus Christ. We shall never get through to God apart from that. We may struggle to break through, to break away, we may adopt Christian practices and Christian ideals, we may associate ourselves with Christians, we may pass off as Christians amongst them, and perhaps before the world, but this one thing is settled beyond any question or doubt or shakeableness, that in the sight of God no one ever comes out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of the Son of God's love except by the way of the shed Blood of Jesus Christ. To ignore that, to overlook that, to fail to see, recognize, accept that means, whatever else may follow, in the sight of God the thing has not been done which makes us a child of God and delivers us from the kingdom of Satan. Oh, it is so necessary, forgive the strength of emphasis, it is so necessary that we should not be deceived, that we should be in a true position that we should have no assumption about this, that ours should not be an assumed relationship to God, but that it should be upon God's foundation, God's basis, for only as it is so are we accepted in the Beloved One, the Lord Jesus, and are brought into fellowship with God. The initial need and appeal of the unsaved sinner is to the Blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, as shed for the remission of sins, by which our redemption has been made, has been secured for us.

"Redeemed by the precious
blood of Jesus,
Nothing else could ever save my soul".

Now that is simple Gospel. It is where everything begins in relationship to God.

The Believer's Conflict with the Accuser

And then the conflict of the saved sinner necessitates the Blood, because the conflict of the saved sinner is so very truly with Satan; not now as his master, his lord; not now as the one to whom he is in captivity, but as the one who would get him back into captivity. Satan must therefore get him back on to a ground where for him the basis of escape has been overlooked, forfeited, let go. I mean this: that the conflict of the saved sinner is very largely with Satan as the Accuser. He is called the Accuser of the brethren - "for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night", (Rev. 12:10). He watches their movements, he seeks to cause them to move in some way that is not wholly according to the will and the mind of the Lord, to prompt a wrong movement, to provoke to a wrong word, to stir up a wrong feeling:

"Christian, dost thou feel them,
How they work within,
Striving, tempting, luring,
Gading into sin?"

And then when you slip, you make the mistake, you stumble in the way, he immediately pounces upon you to accuse you of sin and to bring you under condemnation, to bring upon you a sense of condemnation, to smother you with it and make you feel you have grieved the Lord, and the Lord has forsaken you, the Lord has withdrawn from you, to make you conscious of being out of fellowship with God. And so as the Accuser he is trying to make us sin and then he will pounce upon us with condemnation to drag us back into his grip: and the saved sinner needs the precious Blood of the Lord Jesus as an instrument with which to meet the enemy as the Accuser. Don't ever believe, beloved, that if you slip, if you make a mistake, if you stumble in the way, if you grieve the Lord, that that necessarily severs you from God, that that necessarily means that the Lord forsakes you. What might be the consequences of your willfully, consciously being in the way of sin, violating the will of God, I would not care to follow out; there is no doubt that you would get into darkness, very much into the power of Satan, you would lose the joy of your salvation. Whether you would lose your salvation ultimately or not is not a question for us at this moment, but you would lose all the joy and delight and pleasure of your salvation by persisting in sin. But I am not dealing with persistent sin, I am dealing with the slip, the mistake, the fault, the failure which the enemy immediately having himself brought about, quickly snaps up, takes advantage of, and makes the occasion of accusing us, seeking to bring us under condemnation.

The means to deal with that is the Blood of the Lord Jesus, and the Blood of the Lord Jesus can deal with that instantly. The argument to take to Satan is not: "I am not a sinner; I have not made a mistake; I have not gone wrong". We know we have. The answer is, that in that precious Blood, as we turn to the Lord and confess our failure, humbly repentantly, acknowledge our mistake before the Lord and grieve in exercise of heart that we should have so failed, the Blood of Jesus Christ goes on in its mighty efficacy cleansing from all sin. It stands us in stead to take that ground from the enemy immediately. But remember, you must use your weapon. You must know your weapon, and you must have faith in your weapon; faith in that precious Blood. And faith in the precious Blood of the Lord Jesus is our shield which receives the fiery darts of the Wicked One, and is impervious to them. Oh, the inflamed darts of the Wicked One are so often the darts of accusation and condemnation, and we have a shield of faith given to us by God, but it is faith in the virtue and efficacy of the precious Blood of Jesus, even when we have stumbled and slipped. Victory over the enemy, having been given initially through the Blood, is now maintained by reason of faith in that Blood in the hour of accusation. And so the saved sinner's conflict is very largely with the Accuser who is seeking to bring back on to the old ground of condemnation and death, and deliverance continuously from him, as initially, is by that justification which we have through His Blood; no condemnation; faith in the Blood of the Lord Jesus. It is in this sense that the Blood is a weapon. You see in Rev. 12:11 we are told that: "They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb". Now the Revised Version being more accurate should be noted in its peculiar value. The Authorized Version reads: "They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb". The suggestion is of using the Blood of the Lamb as a kind of weapon with which to slay the enemy; it is a sort of objective thing with which you meet the enemy. If you look more closely you have two things. Firstly, the enemy in Rev. 12 as the Accuser: "The accuser of our brethren is cast down". The Accuser of the brethren is there, it is the enemy in that form. The other thing is: "They overcame him BECAUSE of the blood of the Lamb". That does not necessarily mean that they took up the Blood of the Lamb as some kind of weapon with which to smite him, but they stood upon the ground of that Blood, and the Accuser lost his power. The Blood has to do with sin all the time, and what the enemy is out to do is to bring us under a sense of sin, and thus to defeat and destroy us; but if we are standing on the value and meaning of the precious Blood, and refuse to forsake that ground, the Accuser is cast down from his high place, he is overcome, and we overcome, not by some objective conflict with the Blood, but because we in our hearts stand and refuse to move from the ground of justification through His Blood. "They overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb".

Now a further step. The Blood is one with the Life. We know that quite well. In the Old Testament from Lev. 17 we gather very implicitly that, "the life is in the blood and the blood is the life", and from John 6, which we have read, that same thing comes in: "Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life". So that the Blood is one with the Life, and that means that initially, through the Blood our faith in the Blood of the Lord Jesus, our acceptance of its meaning and value in relation to our sin - the Life is given. The Divine Life, Eternal Life, is given through the Blood of the Lord Jesus. Now both the Blood and the Life speak of the holiness of the Lord, and therefore of cleansing from sin. If sin is fallen into and not instantly repented of, confessed before the Lord and put right, there is an arrest upon the Life. The Life receives a check, and if the Life and the Blood and the Blood and the Life go together, that means that sin allowed, sin not confessed and repented of, checks the Life and the Blood is suspended in its operation of cleansing and we stand touched, spotted, blemished. And so John, in the passage read, says: "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin". There the tense in the Greek is "keeps on cleansing", but there is an "if": "If we walk...". What is it to walk? To go on. If we go on in the light; yes, there may be some dark thing touch us, we may touch a dark thing, we may fail, we may slip, go wrong, but that can be instantly put right before the Lord, and we can go on by putting it right away, we can go on in the light and the Blood of Jesus Christ God's Son goes on cleansing. You arrest the operation of the Life and the operation of the Blood if you willfully harbor sin. If the Holy Spirit shows you wrong and you do not confess it and put it right, if you do not bring it back to the Blood, you have arrested the Divine operation, and you stand there. "If we walk..." So that in failure, confession is necessary, confession to the Lord, and a putting right away is necessary if the Life is to flow. And the Life can only flow as we recognize that that Life is a holy Life, and it cannot go on in its course alongside of sin. The holy Life of the Lord as represented by His incorruptible Blood cannot go hand in hand with known sin: it cannot! Many of us know that in experience.

The Cross

Then the Cross. Of course it was in the Cross that the Blood was shed, and the Blood is related to the Cross and the Cross to the Blood, but doctrinally in the New Testament the Cross has its own specific meaning, and as we have seen from the passage read in Romans 6, to which others could be added such as Colossians 2 and elsewhere, the Cross has to do with the flesh and the natural man; and the position to which the Cross brings us is this: not only have our sins been dealt with, but we have been dealt with, and we have been crucified together with Christ. Now you can have contradictions if you are not careful - and there are plenty of contradictions about in this way. There may have been constant failure and breakdown and going wrong, and seeking of forgiveness and cleansing, and then not getting very much beyond that; that may repeat itself again and again and life becomes a matter of failing and regretting, sinning and repenting, going wrong and being sorry for it, and this can stretch out through all your days; up and down, one day in victory, the next in defeat; and so it goes on until in many cases it comes to an acute crisis where the individual says: "Well the Christian life is a tremendously strenuous business; it seems nothing but coming to the Lord and asking to be forgiven, going wrong and repenting; there is very little victory in it". That is not as the Lord would have it and the secret is very largely here, that we have never recognized that in the Cross of the Lord Jesus we have been set aside as to our nature. We have not accepted that position with all that it means, all its implications, all its content, that from that time onward it is no longer I. "I have been crucified with Christ", said the Apostle, "nevertheless I live; yet not I but Christ liveth in me". It is not to choose our own way, our own will, our own desire, to make our own program for life, to project our own schemes for the future; but to have nothing whatever out from ourselves from our will, mind, desire; but that everything now is from the Lord. When we have come to accept that position, that in Christ's crucifixion we were crucified, in His burial we were buried, then raised together with Him, we receive into our hearts the Holy Spirit of Christ for the purpose and object of governing our lives, directing our course, choosing our way. "No longer I... One died for all, therefore all died; and he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again.", and that in the power and energy of the indwelling Spirit. Now that is a very utter, comprehensive, thorough-going thing and the Cross means that. It does not mean that after that we shall not fail; we may make mistakes, but there the Blood applied, but what so many of us have had to learn, and so many more have yet to learn is that the Cross has its own peculiar value. The Cross does not cleanse from sin, the Cross crucifies the flesh.

Now you can have a great deal of phraseology about the Blood, and be always talking about the Blood, and know little of the Cross. The flesh may be there very much in evidence while all the time speaking about the Blood. The basic thing is necessary, the Cross. "Our old man was crucified with Christ". Do you see the difference? What is the good of your going out to meet the Devil with the Blood if your flesh has not been dealt with by the Cross? He will come in the back door and with all your phraseology about the Blood, he will beat you every time if you have not come to that deep work of the Cross where the natural man has been dealt with. So many are preaching the Blood, have much phraseology of the Blood, and yet the flesh is rampant in their lives; the "I" is very much in evidence. You may preach the Blood and still be a very self-assertive person with pride, arrogance, ambition and all that kind of thing. Well, the Cross deals with the man; the Blood with the sin.

The Name

Now one word about the Name, and here also there is a good deal of confusion. Many people plead the Blood when they ought to use the Name. It is the Name which is the mighty thing against the enemy for the believer mainly in the matter of service. The Name goes beyond the Blood, in this sense (do not misunderstand that) that the Name has to do with the authority of Christ over the enemy. The Blood takes the enemy's ground away from accusation and condemnation. The Name of the Lord Jesus is the mighty thing by which the authority of Satan in every realm is dealt with. Oh, you want something more than to have sin put out of the way. You need to be in a position of authority over the works of the enemy, not merely in your own life but all around in situations, as he comes up everywhere on this earth. And so it is in the Name that that power is found. The Name represents the authority of Christ - and in Christ - over the enemy. Acts 16 is a classic instance. What you have there, as you will recall, is Paul, who stood in all the virtue of the precious Blood in relation to sin in his own life; Paul, who stood in the fulness of the meaning of the Cross as to having nothing of himself, but all of Christ - oh, he was in a strong position, a well-crucified man, standing by faith on "no condemnation" ground through the Blood - and now finding the enemy busy at work outside, looking to the Lord for His moment, His time for dealing with the situation, not rushing in from himself, but after "many days", waiting for the Lord's time, then in the Name of Jesus Christ commanding this Satanic work to cease. Paul stood in a position by the Cross and the Blood and the Name, this three-fold strength, but he dealt with the thing in the Name, he did not plead the Blood for it. We sometimes see the work of the Devil objectively and we begin to plead the Blood. That has got to be appropriated, we have to see that that has been applied to our own hearts or else he will turn upon us. Paul did not plead the Blood against the enemy, he came in the Name. There were others, sons of Sceva who did not stand on the ground of the Cross. who were not standing in the virtue of the Blood, but held a mere formula, saying, "We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth", and the demon turned round upon these presumptuous men and answered, "Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are ye?" and these sons of Sceva had the scare of their lives. They discovered that there is nothing in a mere formula, but there is something, there is everything in standing on the ground of the Cross, in the virtue of the Blood, bringing us into the authority of the Name. And the Name has that objective value of authority over the enemy. "God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow.", etc. "He raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenlies, far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come.", (Eph. 1:20,21). The Name represents the exaltation of the Lord Jesus. And so the Blood cuts us off from sin, the Cross cuts us off from ourselves, the Name brings us into union with an exalted, enthroned, authoritative Lord.

Now I trust that we have got some of our difficulties straightened out, at any rate, we are seeing a little more clearly the peculiar value of each of these things and we shall not confuse them; and we shall see how that mighty and precious Name carries with it all the honor and glory of our Christ, and that if He is to be honored and glorified in us it must be that sin is dealt with, we are set aside, and Christ is pre-eminent, enthroned, predominant in all things for us.

 2005/5/15 1:49Profile





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