THE SUPREME IMPORTANCE OF THE INCORRUPTIBLE
T. Austin-Sparks
"Be not ashamed therefore of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but suffer hardship with the gospel according to the power of God; who saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal, but hath now been manifested by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who abolished death, and brought life and immortality (incorruption) to light through the gospel." (2 Timothy 1:8-10)
GOD is supremely concerned with ultimate and time-outlasting values. He would have those values secured as directly and immediately as possible. The effectiveness of a believer's life, and of the life of God's people together, is all a matter of the measure of intrinsic value; not of comparative or superficial, but of intrinsic value. It is a matter of primary importance that the Lord's people should recognise this and be committed to it. The clause from the above Scripture which we take out as the key to our present consideration is this -- "who abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to light" with special stress on the words: "life and incorruption".
The verses present a statement of the grand issue of the coming into the world of the Lord Jesus; as to His life, His death, His resurrection. The one great issue here is stated to be the bringing to light of life and incorruption. That coming, that living, that dying, that being raised, had secured the substance of the gospel, so the apostle says here; and it was the gospel which brought to [96/97] light that great issue. The whole great matter was brought to light by the gospel. The issue of the preaching of the good news was life and incorruption.
Logically, therefore, the conclusion is that, apart from that coming, that living, that dying, that rising, neither life nor incorruption would be known or be available. Some translations of the passage have the word 'immortality' in place of 'incorruption'; an unfortunate translation for us because 'immortality' has taken on a much more general meaning in the minds of people than the word here allows. It is thought to mean continuance after physical death, survival after the life here; but although the Bible teaches the survival of all after physical death, that all have to stand before the judgment seat after death, that is not what is meant by the word as it is used here and in several other places in the New Testament. The word here is connected with several different matters.
In the first place it is used in connection with God. He is spoken of as: 'the incorruptible God' (Romans 1:23). You recognise in this case that there is some element about incorruptibility that is more, much more, than just eternal existence. He is the incorruptible God.
The word is used in connection with the Lord Jesus: "... neither wilt thou give thy Holy One to see corruption" (Acts 2:27). It is not possible that He should see corruption. The Lord Jesus had an incorruptible nature and life, and that meant that there was something there which conquered death. It was not just death suspended or put aside; there was some element that destroyed death. It was that incorruptible element. The word is also used of the blood of Christ: "Ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold ... but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish" (1 Peter 1:18-19). You see there is an element in incorruption that is extra.
It is also used of the glorified bodies of believers: "... this corruption must put on incorruption" (1 Corinthians 15:53). That is related to glorification. And it is used by the apostle in relation to an incorruptible crown: "Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown" (1 Corinthians 9:25). We know what that means -- something that not merely fades and dies, but completely disintegrates and becomes something very other than glorious. But the incorruptible crown means more than just survival, as of a flower that does not die, an everlasting flower. It is something with an extra element in it.
This, then, is the word we are considering: "Jesus Christ ... brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel". It is the quality of the life, the inherent and intrinsic nature of the life that He has brought to light, that is the incorruptible thing. He annulled death, not just non-existence, by destroying the essential nature of death which is corruption. Incorruption is the nature of the life.
What we are concerned with, then, is the one supremely important thing of being incorruptible. As Christ's concentrated effectiveness depended upon certain spiritual factors, so it will be with us; and the factors upon which that spiritual effectiveness depended were the factors or features of incorruption -- those things in the background or constitution of His life which were incorruptible things. It was those that gave to His life its tremendous, its immense, meaning.
What a great amount of intrinsic value was found in three and a half years. Such a period is not much in a lifetime. But consider again all that those three and a half years contained. It has not only taken two thousand years to touch the very fringe of it: it will take all the ages of the ages to exhaust the content of that small space of time. It is an inexhaustible fullness. From the baptism to the glorification there was a concentrated fullness of value capable of filling eternity. Men through all the centuries have been drinking at the fountain of those three and a half years, and they are still drinking -- all nations, all classes, all languages -- and it is as full as ever. It is still more full than all that has been taken out of it. How pregnant were the values of that brief spell of life here! What a seed plot for the whole universe! How could it be that so much should come out of so little? How could it be that for ever and ever afterward there should be this flowing of the mighty river of inexhaustible divine values?
That is the question to which, I believe, at least to some extent, the Lord would give us an answer here. It was because during those three and a half years that life was constituted upon incorruptible principles, incorruptible elements. While Jesus was the Son of God, and thus fundamentally [97/98] and infinitely different from us as regards Godhead and Deity, the New Testament makes it unmistakably clear that the features of an incorruptible life are to be reproduced and to reappear in His people; not the features of Deity or Godhead, but these features of His life. Otherwise what is the meaning of this -- that they are 'brought to light by the gospel'?
What is brought to light? Just certain facts? No. Certain values for us, which are to become ours and are to be true of us as of Him, the incorruptible values and characteristics of Jesus Christ as the Son of Man. And so we say again that concentration of effective values depended upon these incorruptible elements; and our effectiveness, our value, will correspond to the measure in which there are incorruptible values in our life. Therefore certain things follow.
Firstly, the standard weights and measures of God, of Christ, of the Holy Spirit, of heaven, of eternity, are the one standard of incorruption; that is, everything is weighed and measured, from the divine standpoint according to its incorruptible characteristics. That is a tremendous statement, but it is very true. Heaven has no other standard of values, God has no other standard of value, the Holy Spirit has no other standard of values, eternity has no other standard of values. Everything is weighed and measured by its incorruptibility. Heaven takes this attitude. How much will reappear and abide throughout eternity? How much will come through when all else has gone? What will be found ultimately as glorified? That is heaven's standard; that is the law of the incorruptible.
Therefore we should judge everything of our lives and in our lives by its incorruptible nature and value. You have to sit down with that and think. Everything that makes up my life, everything in my life, brought to the bar of the incorruptible, i.e. that which can take on glory. How much will stand the test, how much will pass, how much of all that makes up my life will go when times goes, when I leave this world, when all that is here ceases where I am concerned? How much will go on and appear again with eternal glory? It is a very serious challenge; but that is how heaven is viewing things all the time, and that is what heaven is at work upon. All the dealings of the Lord with us are according to that law, that standard -- to make very, very little of the corruptible, the passing, the transient, whatever it is, and to make everything of the incorruptible. What will be the proportion of the incorruptible to the corruptible resultant from our time here? I suggest that very few more solemn and serious questions could be asked or faced than that. Oh, how much there is that makes up life, that we are interested in, that we are dealing with, that we are accumulating that has no future! How much expenditure, how much time, how much worry that will show nothing afterward, will not stand, will not reappear! How much of it is really being turned to account for the incorruptible, or is just being spent on our corruptible?
As I have said, God is primarily concerned with intrinsic value, and that is not with Him a comparative matter -- it is an absolute matter. "The fire ... shall prove each man's work of what sort it is" (1 Corinthians 3:13), the Word says. That is a universal and an imperative dictum. "The fire shall ..." -- that is imperative -- "prove each man's work" -- that is universal; and I think, in the light of the New Testament, we would be right in adding: 'the fire shall try every man' and not only his work. The fire shall try every man. Fire may mean many things. It may mean the personal fiery trials of which Peter speaks, the fiery trial of faith, proving the gold. It may be the ordeal of the Church in persecution and suffering -- and God knows how much more that may be in the near future than it has been in many parts of the world -- the fiery ordeal for the Church. But whatever the fire may mean in its manifold application, it is that which puts things into the categories to which they belong. The fire puts the corruptible into the category of the corruptible, and makes it known that it is corruptible, that it belongs there: the fire declares it. The fire, on the other hand, puts the incorruptible into its category, and shows it has no power over that: that belongs to the incorruptible, and the fire has no power over it. It has defined its nature: either that it is of the perishable and the passing, or that it is of the imperishable and the permanent. The fire does that.
And do not let us think merely objectively. Are you in the fire now? Is the fire not at work in your life now -- the fiery trial of testing, of adversity? How many words could define the work of the fire in us? Yes, it is a burning in our experience. [98/99] We know already the individual ordeal of fire. What is the fire doing? Why the fire? For one thing only, under the hand and in the intent of God -- to put things into their place, to make us think ever more lightly of the corruptible and to lay store by the incorruptible; to make the incorruptible the transcendent in our standard of values. The fire shall try every man's work and every man.
Therefore this law of the incorruptible must be applied to everything. It must be applied firstly to ourselves. When we have lived our lives and gone hence, what will go on as the substance of the incorruptible resultant from our having been here at all? This is a universal question, though a difficult one. What will there be that defeats time, defeats decay, defeats death, defeats the whole realm of corruption, and appears again in glory for ever, as the outcome of our having been on this brief journey on the earth? We have to apply this question of the incorruptible to ourselves.
What about our Christian knowledge -- all the teaching we have had, all the truth we possess? We have to apply the question here. How much of that great store of teaching and truth, doctrine and knowledge, is producing the incorruptible in us, is going to appear again in eternity? We have been, perhaps, to many conferences, we have had a great deal of teaching by one means and another. Well what is the upshot of it for eternity, when the fire tests our teaching, when the fire tests our knowledge, perhaps in this life? A great deal of teaching has been given in some lands, and now the fire is testing the incorruptible value of that teaching. What can survive and triumph over the fire? In all that we know, in our Christian profession, as we bear the name of Christ embodied in the title: 'Christian', Christ's one, how much of that very profession is more than a profession? Is it a possession, an intrinsic value, incorruptible reality? All our Christian tradition handed down from our fathers, all that we inherit through the centuries of Christianity; how much of it now is of this particular quality, this essential value, this essence of Christ, and how much is just form, habit, an established and recognised and accepted thing? How much of it in our case is incorruptible? All our emotions, our excitability, our noisiness -- is there behind all that substantial element that will stand up against the fury of Satan, the hatred of hell?
As to ourselves, this matter of the incorruptible is a very pertinent thing and, if I mistake not, this is going to be the kind of thing that will be pressed home by God to the nth degree at the end-time, If, therefore, we are in the end-time, and it is not easy to doubt that, such a word is of importance. If we were to turn aside to consider the matter, we should find that never before was there so much in the Scriptures that was never understood, even by its writers, which today is intelligible with a mere modicum of intelligence. The very language of Scripture which could not possibly have been understood at the time when it was written is as patent as anything can be patent today. At such a time God would gather those who really mean business with Him, and He would begin to say: 'That is good, but there is something very much more than that: this is the thing that matters -- the intrinsic value, the essential value'. He would put His finger upon the absolute essentials. How much of the very essence of Christ is wrought into us? That is the point.
This question of the incorruptible has to be applied, of course, to Christian work and works, and everything must be tested by it. It is all very well -- size, appearance, seeming, immediate effects, the trappings and the means -- but what about the essential, intrinsic value? God does not judge by the size of a thing as it appears, by the seeming of things, nor by the immediate effects produced by man's means and methods. God is looking through. His eyes are the eyes as of a flame, and He looks right in to find the measure of the incorruptible that will not be gone in a week, a month, a year or a few years, but will go right on and appear again. He is looking for that.
There are two kinds of starting point -- man's and God's. Man usually starts with big frameworks, with a big plant, machinery, publicity, structures and so on. That is how man usually starts when He is going to do something for God. It is a propensity: it is our way. We may argue that God is worthy of something big. That is man's way. God's way is never like that -- it never was. You search in vain to find any instance of God beginning like that. Pentecost came out of very deep and drastic dealings with twelve men. God's starting-point is always the intrinsic. God has always begun with life, with the inherent, with the potential. Man's beginnings usually end in only a small percentage of lasting value.
God's [99/100] beginnings always end in a very great percentage of lasting value. But God's beginnings seem so small, they appear so little. But so does a seed: it is a small thing, a little thing. Yet look at the potentialities in one seed, in one grain of wheat. It is the intrinsic with God. That is where God begins. That is why everything really of God has a long and hidden history of deep dealings on His part.
The thirty years of our Lord's hidden life had a great bearing on the three and a half. The forty years of Moses away back there in the desert, looking after those sheep of his father-in law, had a great bearing on the rest of his life. They were not lost, wasted, futile years. And so we could take up one after another -- Abraham, David, and others, who had a long deep, secret hidden history; it was out of that that the effectiveness came. Very often more is done, when God has been at work, in the last few years of a life than in all the years previously. That does not mean that all the previous years have been of no account, having no place. It means that God has been at work to get intrinsic values, and now at last these values are coming out. Young people must be careful not to write off older saints as back numbers. It may be a violation of the very principle of their own life -- that of intrinsic value. But God have mercy on the older man or woman who has no intrinsic values! As we get older we ought to be the substance for the generation to follow. Everything must be judged not by time, but by the incorruptible.
God's greatest things are coming out of intrinsic values to make themselves known. Therefore He takes a lot of time and a lot of pains in secret history with that one object. It may be that, though you are thinking the years are going, soon life will be past, all over, and you have missed the way, everything being a problem, an enigma, yet it may be that in a few years an infinitude of spiritual value will come out of the time through which you are going, out of this which you think is lost time. You must adjust yourself to this, that God is not careful at all about our standards of values, either in time or in method or in any other way. What God is careful about is to have the inherent, the potential, the essential, the intrinsic. Lay that up in your hearts and cherish it and let it be a real governing factor with you. God works for depths. God works for solidity. God works for intensity. Therefore He works through testing, through hiddenness, and with very little appeal to our natural pleasure. Incorruption is therefore a very testing thing, and may demand a complete adjustment of our whole mentality.
Having reached this point, we are committed to an enquiry into the nature of the incorruptible. If all that we have said was true of the Lord Jesus, and if it is true that the Word of God teaches us that, Deity and Godhead apart, what was true of Him in this way is to be reproduced in His people, then we want to know what were the incorruptible things that constituted such a life, and we shall go on to look at these, for it is in this way that we shall have the best explanation of the matter under consideration.
INCORRUPTIBLE CHARACTERISTICS
OF THE LIFE OF THE LORD JESUS
T. Austin-Sparks
Reading: 2 Timothy 1:8-10
THE Lord Jesus was the embodiment of the incorruptible. Life and incorruption were embodied in Him in terms of manhood, as the true Man. We leave out of our present consideration His Deity, for very God of very God leaves no room for discussion or argument concerning incorruption. We will consider Him in His capacity as Son of Man, by which He makes the whole question and issue of the incorruptible a human question.
Man, or manhood, is a big and specific thought of God. The idea of Man, humanity, was born in the mind of God. He is a peculiar creation intended for a special purpose. When the writer of the letter to the Hebrews asserts that "Not unto angels did he subject the world to come", he proceeds to ask: "What is man?" (Hebrews 2:5-6). 'Not unto angels ... but man ...' This, then, is not a matter which concerns angels and it is certainly not a matter of abstract and unrelated ideas. There is a testimony which has to be found in the concrete expression of man and manhood. The Bible makes it perfectly clear from beginning to end that the idea connected with man or manhood is that of representation. "In the image of God", in the likeness of God -- that is representation. The question running all through the Bible is as to whether man does or does not fulfil the purpose of his being, which is to represent God, to express God.
Now man was made for incorruption, for incorruptible life issuing eventually in his glorification. I am not going to argue that from the Scripture, for those who know their Bibles will be able to support the statement. But man missed the purpose of his creation, he missed the incorruptible life, by his disobedience and unbelief, by his rebellion against God, his self-will, his pride. He is no longer a candidate for glory in his natural condition. Glory is not possible for man as he is found outside of Christ. But Christ came, and in His coming fulfilled a work by which the destiny and purpose of man was recovered and secured. In Christ, incorruptible life is recovered for man, for He was a Man who could not be corrupted, and therefore corruption was kept out of the very stream of His life. It was not possible that He should see corruption even in the grave. "He whom God raised up saw no corruption" (Acts 13:37). He was incorruptible in His life and therefore triumphant over corruption in His death. So Christ was constituted of incorruptible characteristics, and we are now going to ask what these were.
The first, then, of these characteristics was His union with God as His Father -- a simple but most profound truth. We are aware of how often He used that word: 'Father', and how often He said: 'My Father' and then: 'The Father and I'. His enemies saw the point; they were not slow to pick on what they thought was blasphemy: "He makes Himself equal with God" (John 5:18). That union between Him and the Father was of such a kind that their relationship was absolute and final. That relationship was established by the Holy Spirit. I am speaking now of Christ as the Son of Man. In his birth He was begotten of the Holy Ghost. In His work, He functioned by reason of the anointing of the Holy Spirit. His walk was always in and by the Spirit. In His cross, He offered Himself up by the eternal Spirit. And we can complete the circle by saying that it was through that eternal Spirit that He was raised. The Holy Spirit initiated, maintained [113/114] and consummated that relationship with the Father. The union with the Father was the governing thing in His whole life. At every point, at all times, He referred and deferred to God as His Father. All His works were out from the Father: "The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me" (John 14:24). Everything for Him was out from the Father, by way of this union, this oneness, and this was the occasion of all the conflict in His life. It was the very point of all the attack and assault of the enemy. The one thing that the Evil One and all the evil powers were ever focusing upon was this oneness and fellowship with the Father, in order to try somehow to drive in a wedge, to get that relationship ruptured. That is very significant. If an enemy concentrates all his attention and all his resources on anyone point, it is clear that he regards that as the point upon which the whole matter can be made to collapse. It did not matter which method the enemy used -- whether open antagonism or friendly suggestion or subtle subterfuge, or any other means -- the point was to try to get between the Father and the Son.
That union, then, that relationship, was the explanation of all His sufferings and testings -- indeed of the whole ordeal of His life. Would He, on any consideration, let go, violate the principle of that union? To maintain and preserve it, to adhere to it, was no small or light thing for Him. For that one thing, the most terrible cost ever paid in the history of the universe was paid, the cost of that dark moment of the cross when everything seemed lost. There was not one glimmer of light, even from the Father's face, while He was under that test. Yes, this was a costly thing. There must have been some very great issue involved in this union. There was nothing superficial about it, but rather something infinitely great. What was it?
It can be answered in one brief sentence. Primarily, it was the issue of providing God with a place. God created the first man in order that He might have a place in that man and in all his seed; and not just a place, but the place. In a sense God's place had been taken from Him. God had been rejected and put out of His place with man. He still remained sovereign Creator, of course. He still remained Ruler and Lord, the original Owner, but there was a difference. Let us look at it like this.
Here is a landlord. He builds a house and he is the owner of that house. In kindness and friendliness he lets that house to some people, and to begin with, the relationship is quite a happy one, so happy that he is able to visit the house and is welcomed and given a place in the family; they are always glad to see him. But someone comes along while he is not there and begins to say things about him that are unworthy and that are scandalous, defaming him and making evil suggestions against him, with a view to getting him out of his place in that home. This evil person succeeds so well that no longer has he a place in the heart of that family. He is still the landlord, the rightful owner, and all the law is on his side, but there is a difference between being a landlord with legal rights and a friend who has a place in the family. That is what I mean. God lost His place. He is still sovereign Owner of this universe. He is still Lord, and one day He will assert His legal rights over His creation. But do you think that is good enough? Within His creation He wants to have a place.
There is all the difference between sovereignty and fellowship. The union between Christ and His Father was not the relationship of a sovereign and a subject. He did not live that life and do that work under the sovereign government of God. No, it was all on a different footing from that. It was fellowship. God can do a lot of things with us and through us in a sovereign way, but that is never, never good enough for Him. He wants us in fellowship; He wants a place, not as sovereign and despot, but as Father. Father ! That is the significance of the word on the lips of the Lord Jesus. He taught them to pray: 'Father'. The significance, then, of the relationship between Christ and God as His Father was that God had a place in the heart of a Man.
The Bible is occupied with that one concern; that is the issue which arises all the way through. God is seeking to have a place in the heart of man -- somewhere where He can be known in terms of fellowship, of love, in terms of a delight to have Him. The Old Testament is full of that in type and illustration. He seeks some place for Him Name, where His Name is loved, some place [114/115] where He can meet men on the ground of fellowship and love. The New Testament brings that out into bold relief. Its beginnings contain links between the Old and the New. Christ, as Son of Man, is the inclusive link. Here again is the law of incorruptibility. There is that which will go through to eternity, something that Satan cannot destroy, something that death cannot annul. There is something that is so precious to God that it will appear again for ever. When all that is capable of corruption has gone, the love relationship as between Christ and His Father will abide. Oh, what a difference there is between this and the kind of relationship with God that exists in general!
This, of course, is clearly seen to be the idea of the New Testament as to the individual. This is what God is after with us all. It is just that -- to have a place in our hearts on the basis of love and fellowship. "My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him" (John 14:23). That, too, is the idea concerning the nucleus -- that they, even the little companies of the two and three, should give Him a place. "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I" (Matthew 18:20) and: "I come unto you" (John 14:18). And it is the New Testament idea of the whole Church. What does the Church mean in the divine thought? Just a place for God in love relationship, in perfect fellowship. That is the idea of the Church.
So, then, if Christ meant anything, He signified the coming of God into this world in terms of fellowship. And this is an eternal issue. If we could project ourselves into the ages of the ages, the eternal hereafter, and see the nature of things, as it will be then, we should find it was just this: a perfect harmony between God and man, so harmonious that it is all music. There is no discord, no strain, no shadow; there is no suspicion, no prejudice, no fear. All those things have gone with the corruptible: it is the incorruptible which remains. And in this first place the incorruptible is this -- fellowship with God. It is this kind of relationship. It is an eternal issue.
Therefore the test of everything for us will be: How much of God came in by our having been here? That is a fairly thorough-going test. It may sound very exacting, but it is just this -- how much of God came in by your and my having been here? How much, afterward, will it be possible for others to say: 'Well, through that life I came to know God, I came to fellowship with God, to know more of Him'?
Yes, that is testing and discriminating. The test of everything, of all our teaching and all our labours, is how much of it results in more of God -- not more of knowledge, not more of mental apprehension, but how much more of God? As I have talked with others about the life-work and teaching of certain men of God in the past, we have agreed that even though there may have been things in their teaching which we did not feel able to accept, they themselves had left us a heritage, they have given us a deposit of God. There is something of the Lord that has come through them to us, and that is what marks them out to us. It is not just that they were great teachers, great organisers of Christian work, but that somehow they have passed to us a deposit of God; God has come through them to the enrichment and enlargement of our lives.
That is the test of everything. For me, at least, it is a searching test -- one that I wonder whether I can face. Is it going to be like that, that after all the speaking, after all the teaching, there is a heritage of the Lord Himself left behind? The teaching of the truths about the Church as the House of God is important, but we need to beware of putting the emphasis on the truth of the thing, instead of the spiritual reality of how it works out. This issue is this -- that God comes in. His place is provided, He is there. We have many meetings and other Christian activities, but if they do not issue in the people concerned having something more of the Lord Himself, then the whole thing is futile. Yes, with all our exact technique and the rest -- if the Lord is not found there, it is meaningless, valueless. All must be related to this one issue, that of God having His own rightful place. That is the incorruptible element.
This is what the apostle says in our Scripture: "Be not ashamed ... of the testimony of our Lord". What is this testimony of our Lord? It is that He: "annulled death, and brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel". The testimony of our Lord is His incorruptible [115/116] life. In His life here on earth the Lord Jesus provided a place for God, and there was no place in His life for anything else. Oh, that we might be like that! It will be that which will determine the measure of the permanent, the eternal, the intrinsic value of our lives.
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