The time is coming, yes, and has already come, when true worshippers will worship in spirit and in reality. Indeed, the Father looks for men who will worship Him like that. (John 4:23 Phillips)

Jesus said to the woman, "the hour cometh, and now is." Then He dismissed the whole system that had existed up to that time. It was the whole system of Judaism according to the Old Testament. In one sentence, He dismissed the whole dispensation. And He introduced an altogether new order of things.

What did He mean? Because when He said the hour cometh, and now is, He did not mean literally just an hour and so many minutes. He meant that it was the first hour of the new day. With this hour an altogether new day has come. What is the new day? If you would have asked Jesus to put it into a short sentence, He would have said, "Well, I am here." The hour is not just a matter of time but a matter of PERSON. The new dispensation is the dispensation of Jesus Christ. Christ is the new dispensation. "I am here," He said. You go through that Gospel of John. He is centering everything in Himself. "I am the Way; I am the Truth; I am the Life; I am the Shepherd; I am the Vine; I am the Resurrection." It is a Person. It is that which lies behind everything. Christianity is Christ. Christ is Christianity. That is where it all begins and it never departs from HIM. The development of the Christian life is only the development of Jesus Christ in the life.


By T. Austin-Sparks from: "That They May All Be One, Even As We Are One" - Meeting 7

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Mike

"When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory." (Colossians 3:4).

If we ask what is the very essence and heart of Christianity and the Christian life, the answer is that God has summed up and centered all things in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. This means that Christianity is not a number of things as in themselves, such as beliefs, doctrines, dogmas, practices, forms, rites, orders, or virtues. It is not salvation, regeneration, sanctification, power, life, joy, peace, etc, as things; it is just Himself, and Himself as resident within those who have received Him as Who and What He is. He is the total of all that is necessary for God's glory and satisfaction, for which we were created. Nothing can be had or known as an "it", apart from the Person. If we have Him and live by Him, we have all.

Failure to realize this inclusive fact in a living way is the reason for every kind of weakness, failure, and disappointment, both in life and in service. We may be craving for or striving after an "it", whatever that "it" may be, but God will never depart from His position in relation to His Son. Many people have striven with such soul intensity after an it as to have become psychic or occult, and they have got an "it"; but it is not from God, and the end will prove that to be so.


Christ Our Life (1940)by T. Austin-Sparks

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Vern