AVoice
GOD'S SONS ARE BEGOTTEN
By T. Austin Sparks
The Holy Spirit has really made it His very serious business to keep this fact ever in view; it is made clear in the Old Testament story, and it is brought out in the New Testament more than once and made very emphatic - that Isaac was an impossibility on any natural ground. Oh how God applied Himself to see that was established! The announcement of Isaac itself came at a time when nature could offer nothing toward the realization of the promise. But then, even after the announcement and the promise, God went away and left the matter in abeyance, as it were, for a considerable time, and every moment and every day of that time was putting the whole matter more and more beyond human hope. So that, when at last Isaac was born, he was something which could not be accounted for in all the realm of natural fruitfulness. He was, in very truth, something wholly and utterly of God: he was not the fruit of nature. That is the point to begin with. Now, put it how you will, call it what you will; call it becoming a Christian, becoming a child of God, being saved, call it what you will, the reality that answers to that is altogether beyond the power of nature; you cannot by any resource outside of God Himself become a child of God. I know how elementary that is, and yet perhaps it needs to be said. There is no work that we can do, no fruit that we can provide, nothing possible to all our effort and energy which can bring this about; no struggle, no striving, no wrestling, no crying; nothing of nature can bring it about. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and the meaning of that in the Bible is not that it is that which is born of the body is flesh. It is something more than that: flesh here means natural ability. Therefore you can never reason, or argue, or talk, or persuade, or cajole, or coerce a soul into being a child of God. When you have settled your last argument, when you have broken down every bit of intellectual contradiction, when all the walls of reserve and coldness have been overthrown, and when the human will has been overthrown either by argument or by appeal and under that persuasion, that emotion, that impact, a person has taken a step and decided to become a Christian, such a one may be no nearer to being a Christian than he was before, when all those walls were up. That is not the way. This thing is out from God, and nothing can produce sonship but a begetting by the Holy Ghost. Multitudes of people are in a false position because that fact has not been recognized. They bear the title of Christian because of an assent to certain propositions, because of an emotion, because of a decision which they themselves have made under persuasion or influence.
This is but the following out of what we have been saying about Cain, the worshipper who murdered, whose soul-life went out to God with its own best works, best fruit, best everything, believing that it could get through. It never did. Multitudes of people like that are working on that basis, and thinking they are accepted and children of God. Oh for a mighty undeceiving: and yet what a terrible thing it would be! If all those assumed conversions should be disclosed to be only assumed and not real! We have really to get at the meaning and nature of sonship. We have to know what it is, and you begin by this negative affirmation that sonship is not the fruit of nature. God has put it beyond the power of nature to produce it, as He put Isaac beyond the power of nature altogether. That is where you begin: altogether of God, and only of God.
Well, what is sonship? The human spirit becomes the vessel of a Divine seed, the vessel in which something that is of God Himself is begotten, and the presence of that something constitutes the one in whom the deposit is a different kind of being from all other beings in God's universe. You are, because of some secret, hidden mystery about you, something right at the very center of your being; because of the presence of that, you are something other than all other species of creation. God has begotten His Son in the human spirit. There is that within the child of God upon which the eye of God rests as something belonging to Himself, which has come out from Him and is part of Him, and His eye is upon that as upon a cherished child.
Excerpts from THE LAW OF THE SPIRIT OF LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS
A LIVING SACRIFICE
By Des Walter
Paul challenges us, “I beseech you brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your BODIES a LIVING SACRIFICE, HOLY ACCEPTABLE UNTO GOD which is your Spiritual WORSHIP.” Rom 12:1. Here is the same test that Abraham faced on Mount Moriah. This challenge follows the chapter concerning the grafting in of the Gentiles to become partakers of the root and fatness of the Olive tree. Finally he states the basis for this challenge to present our bodies thus :
“FOR FROM HIM AND THROUGH HIM AND TO HIM ARE ALL THINGS, FOR ALL THINGS ORIGINATE WITH HIM AND COME FROM HIM, AND ALL THINGS LIVE THROUGH HIM, AND ALL THINGS CENTER IN AND TEND TO CONSUMMATE AND TO END IN HIM. TO HIM BE GLORY FOREVER AMEN. "Rom 11:36.
Paul uses the word “THEREFORE” which means, in view of what I have just said, I want you to present your bodies. What exactly does this mean to us today? OUR BODY was made to be a receptacle to contain the divine image and likeness. According to Paul everything found its origin in God, and everything depends upon God for its existence, and finally everything finds its fulfillment and consummation by returning to God.
The presenting of our Bodies to God as a living sacrifice is an acknowledgement of our origin and the purpose of our being. However it goes far beyond this. Most Christians are looking for immortality for this physical body. Did Abraham want his natural son to LIVE FOREVER, NO! If immortalizing Isaac’s physical life was all that he desired then Abraham could never have birthed the CHRIST through Isaac his seed. BUT Abraham saw beyond the physical and so was willing to sacrifice his natural son Isaac as a LIVING SACRIFICE, because the reality of his existence in Abraham’s understanding was not the physical body he had, BUT THE CHRIST he represented.
In exactly the same way we must see ourselves not from the point of view of our physical BODY fulfilling God’s will and purpose, but by the SPIRIT to see our INCORPORATION in the CHRIST BODY. So as we present our bodies to God as a LIVING SACRIFICE it is HOLY and ACCEPTABLE unto the Lord. This is OUR “Mount of Olives” experience, where Christ himself was drawn by the Father to present HIS body as a LIVING SACRIFICE. In the spiritual “suffering” of that offering he sweat as it were great drops of blood. In terms of REALITY it was there, alone, while the disciples were sleeping, that the real SPIRITUAL sacrifice was made and not at Calvary. Jesus had warned the disciples to pray that they enter not into temptation. This is the testing to ascertain the quality of their integrity or their commitment to Christ.
The disciples were not yet ready for such a test as the NATURAL still dominated the Spiritual, and Jesus knew that. The fact that they slept through that ONE vital experience showed they still needed a spiritual awakening. The cross was the physical outworking of a completed SPIRITUAL SACRIFICE.
Christians today have so majored on the PHYSICAL SUFFERINGS AND THE LITERAL CROSS on which the body of Jesus died, that the true SPIRITUAL SACRIFICE that brings LIFE TO MANKIND has been largely ignored. That Spiritual sacrifice was THE OFFERING OF THE BODY OF JESUS AS THE WILL OF GOD, ONCE FOR ALL, BY WHICH OFFERING WE ARE SANCTIFIED. Heb 10:10.
Beloved it is not the wooden cross or the DEAD BODY that hung upon it that gives LIFE TO THE WORLD. It is what that cross represents in putting to death the OLD MAN in that Spiritual sacrifice that Christ made on behalf of all mankind. In 2 Cor 4:18 Paul states , “The things that are SEEN (physical) are only temporary, BUT THE THINGS THAT ARE UNSEEN spiritual) THESE ARE ETERNAL. (The REALITIES).”
The bread and the wine are just symbols being visible and physical, which DO REPRESENT a SPIRITUAL REALITY. But understand it is not the SYMBOLS that minister LIFE but the REALITY they represent. The Body and BLOOD of Christ is the SPIRIT AND SUBSTANCE OF HIS BEING, which we must EAT or assimilate into our being so that it becomes what we are. Jesus said, if we “EAT” his flesh and drink his blood it would imparts to us EVERLASTING LIFE, being a quality of LIFE enjoyed by Jesus Christ on this earth. Spirituality, is the ability to see into the REALITY OF THINGS, no longer considering the VISIBLE to be the REALITY
Excerpts from THE WILL And PURPOSE Of GOD
THE KINGDOM GOSPEL & GOOD SOIL
By Stacy R. Wood, Jr.
"What was sown on good soil is the man of the noble and good heart, who hears, accepts, and understands the Word. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times the amount of seed sown." (Mt. 13:23, Mk. 4:20, Lu. 8:15).
Let us take a look at the seed as it falls into the fertile ground of a noble and good heart. This area of the field speaks of the spiritual mind that God gives to his chosen. In First Corinthians 2:9-16 we read, "It is written: 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.' However God revealed it to us through his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God. This is because they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment: For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ."
It is the Christ mind that gives exclusive consideration and acceptance to the Word of the kingdom. This is where the seed finds the room to root deeply within the personal life and understanding of the hearer. The union that takes place between the Christ seed and the Christ mind generates more than just a hearing of kingdom dogma. This joining takes two distinctly different things, the Word of life and the regenerated soul of mankind and produces a new creation man.
The experience produces a doer of the kingdom Word. If what he receives is truly the revealed Word of the kingdom, it produces the faith necessary to bring forth The Substance of the seed. The seed deposited in the good soil of the hearer and cultivated with true expectation will bring forth the convicting evidence of the invisible kingdom. There is a response needed when we hear and truly understand the Word that God discloses concerning his kingdom. The commitment to walk it out, by putting into action all we know to be correct, rests within us. Remember. "To whom much is given, of him shall much be required." (Lu. 12:48).
The purpose of the seed planted within the life of the hearer is to bring forth kingdom fruit to the glory of the Father for all the earth to see. In the process of growing to maturity, changes and transformations continually occur in the recipient's heart and character. The death and bare earthen carnality of the first Adam can never inherit the kingdom of God. The seed works within the earth swallowing up death while transforming it into victory and life. Hallelujah!
What Must We Do to Give Formation to Our Salvation? Let us become aware of our accountability to the implanted Word of the kingdom that is able to save the soul. The apostle Paul wrote to the Church saying, "Continue to give form to your salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who enables you to will and to act according to his good purpose." By this he meant we are to cultivate and advance the life of the seed by willing and functioning out of God's energizing. We are to endeavor earnestly to press on to full maturity and salvation, with godly reverence, awe and trembling. Doing all we know to stand righteously, taking serious thought of what we hear, putting no confidence in human capability. Becoming watchful as to the temptations that come because of the Word, while avoiding all that discredits godliness and scandalizes the name of Christ Jesus (Phil 2:17-13).
We must consider that we cannot accomplish any of this in our own strength. It is the seed of promise that is all the while effectually at work in us. It creates and makes the power and desire of God, that is necessary to overcome the flesh and grow up into maturity, active within us. It is the seed of Christ that produces the fruit of the kingdom. The ability is in the seed and not in ourselves. It is Christ in us that will enable us to accomplish the good pleasure, satisfaction and delight of the Father. There is more to seeing a seed grow to a mature fruit bearing stage than just getting it into the ground. It is also necessary to cultivate, fertilize and irrigate the ground that holds the seed. It is God who accomplishes all these necessary things within our lives in their proper seasons. We only need to respond to him and walk faithfully in that which he entrusts to us.
What Is The Fruit of The Kingdom Seed? This glorious fruit of the kingdom is but one fruit, yet its expression is multifaceted. The fruit of the kingdom and the fruit of the Spirit are the same. The fruit that qualifies the seed of God's kingdom is love. Love that is Gentle, yet disciplines to bring forth the best from every son. Love so full of joy that it produces the Lord's strength in times of weakness and doubt. Love that superabounds in peace that passes all understanding. Love with transcending patience that takes full possession of the soul. Love that teems and runs over with kindness that manifests in mercy. Love so generously filled with goodness that it demonstrates by overcoming evil. Love so devoutly steadfast it results in the possession of great authority. Love so genuinely meek that it allows one to find the true rest of God and complete satisfaction with life's circumstances. Love that is principled in self-control resulting in a new creation man who becomes renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. Love that excels in righteousness that proves the wisdom of peace in those that make peace. Love that moves in truth and reality revealing the fullness of Deity within the life of the believer.
RECONCILIATION NOT SUSPICION
By Wayne Jacobsen
Our God is a God of reconciliation. Jesus died on the cross so that he could reconcile all things to himself (2 Corinthians 5). Those who grasp that purpose will also share his passion to see the family brought together in him, not divided by institutions or differences in how we view church. We have had enough broken relationships, enough division, enough of those who worry more about defining their distinctions than sharing the life we hold in common.
How do we do that, by encouraging our institutions and denominations to work together for greater unity? As if that has ever worked! Those who lead such things may talk about it from time to time, but denominations are about dividing and few at the top of those institutions will ever give up the power, money or prestige necessary for them to appreciate the true unity of this incredible family.
No, reconciliation happens simply by you loving each and every believer God allows to cross your path and look for ways to encourage them to know him better. We have to live as if the divisions don’t exist, recognizing Father’s fingerprints in each other’s lives, even if we don’t see eye to eye on every issue. This is where the unity of the body of Christ is celebrated. It is the stuff of grass roots actions, not organizational decrees.
Wherever you find believers near you get to know them. Celebrate Jesus together and see where the relationship might lead. Don’t feel you have to convince them about your idea of church, rather fan the flames of their passion for Jesus. You’ll find some amazing things happen in relationships that institutions can never touch.
When Paul traveled back through the people he’d help establish in the faith during his journey in Macedonia, Luke says that he “gave constant encouragement, lifting their spirits and charging them with fresh hope.” (Acts 20:2). Can you imagine a better description of fellowship? Paul was able to love them so freely, not because he wanted something from them, but because he wanted to encourage them where they were and make their journey lighter.
The Great Gathering
It is the nature of the Shepherd to gather—first to himself and then alongside others who belong to him as well. That’s what I see happening in the world today. Jesus is gathering people to himself and letting them link up with each other. When you find his heart in this, you too will have a heart for the great gathering that is going on among all his followers. Whether or not people are in a traditional congregation is an irrelevant question. What matters is whether or not they are growing to know him and find life in him. That’s the real question on which the family is based.
A few years ago a friend of mine was on a flight home. He discovered he was sitting next to a believer from his own city whom he didn’t know. For an hour they shared about their life in Jesus, how they had come to know him, what he was doing in them and what they were learning about him. As they approached their destination the other man asked my friend, “Where do you go to church, anyway?”
My friend thought for a moment and then answered, “For the last hour we’ve been talking about the most unifying person in all of history and have had a marvelous time. Do we really want to trade that conversation to discuss the most divisive question the body of Christ has ever known?”
His seatmate thought a minute, smiled and agreed, “Let’s not!”
What a perspective! Trading congregational brand names or models only takes the focus off of Jesus and leads us to assumptions about people that are rarely valid. We join this great gathering by loving those God puts in front of us every day. We won’t then seek for the like-minded, but the like-hearted, and then we’ll be closer to his truth for doing so. And once we’ve a connection with others that shows our love for them and our respect for Jesus’ work in them, then we will be able to discuss those things we see differently in ways that will draw the family together, not tear it apart.
As a father of older children, nothing brings me greater joy than watching my children love and laugh together even in the face of their differences. I can’t imagine that the Father of all doesn’t enjoy that as well.
There was an interesting juxtaposition in our local paper this past Sunday. I don’t know how many of you saw Sunday’s Garfield comic but it made a great point. Garfield, for those that don’t know is an overweight cat with food always on his mind. In Sunday’s strip he is sitting at a table with a bear that is exhilarated having just escaped from the zoo. He throws his arms up in the air shouting, “I’m free!” A “Yahoo” and a “Yippee” later he is already looking a bit unsettled. Finally in the last panel he says, “Well gotta get back its feeding time.”
Sound familiar? That’s what the children of Israel wanted to do. They had been delivered from bondage in Egypt and were on their way to the promised land eating manna every morning. They soon grew bored with it and complained that they were better off as slaves in Egypt with three meals every day than depending on God to provide each meal for them. I guess that’s why bondage works so well. At least you get fed!
A section or two over from our comics on Sunday was an article about pet myths. One of the myths they debunked is that cats can survive in the wild. The article said once wild animals have been domesticated they lose their ability to survive in the wild.
The comic strip and the article said a mouthful. We’ll never really be free until we learn how to feed from Jesus ourselves (John 6) and not think we’re dependent on anyone else. Abusive religious institutions through history have maintained their captive audience by convincing people that they are the place where believers ‘get fed.’ Regrettably they have convinced many that is so and instead of learning the joy of freedom that can only come when Jesus becomes our soul source of life and provision for things spiritual as well as physical. Over the years on this journey I’ve met many people who wanted to leave an abusive system but couldn’t, because they don’t know how they will be fed spiritually. And I’ve known many pastors who wanted to leave such systems but couldn’t because they didn’t know how else they could make a living.
I guess this much is true. Until we learn to feed on Jesus himself, we’ll be the captive of anyone who pretends to do it for us.