Anointed for Battle
by T. Austin-Sparks
A brief word at the close of the Whitsun Conference.
We have been occupied in these days with the nature and effect of the fulfilment of the Promise of the Father. A promise made to the Son,
and then fulfilled through the Son to the Church, which is His Body. Thus the promise was ultimately revealed to be a corporate and not only a personal one as such. We have before pointed out that after His Baptism it is expressly and immediately affirmed that "He was led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." The Baptism was in type His acceptance at the very commencement of His ministry of the Cross — death, burial, resurrection — and all His teaching and working from thenceforward was on that ground and in that light.
It is most significant and suggestive that the first activity under the anointing should be a deliberate encounter with the "Prince of this World." The battle of the ages is joined, the Eternal issue as the ultimate purpose of "The Promise" is taken up at once. The point with which we want to stay is this, that the express purpose and outworking of the anointing with the Holy Spirit is conflict — warfare.
What was true in His personal case has to be made true in His corporate case — that is, in the experience of the Body-instrument of His abiding outworking of victory. No one can ever come into a living spiritual experience and knowledge of the Cross without being immediately precipitated into this conflict. The essential issue of Calvary is the anointing with the Holy Spirit. The primary purpose of the anointing with the Spirit is the establishment of the sovereignty of Christ through His Church over the entire system of spiritual rebellion, revolt, anarchy, and hostility. Let it be a settled thing that identification with Christ implies and involves a warfare of increasing tensity from which there is no discharge in this life. So many there are who think that if only they can receive the Divine anointing they are going to have such a wonderful time; how rich and beautiful their lives will be; what power will be at their command, and what an end of all spiritual trouble.
Truly there is a blessed side to it and with all the conflict it is well worth while. But it will be as well to settle it at the outset that there is a sterner side where personal blessing, enjoyment and comfort become secondary to the great interests of the Body of Christ.
John Bunyan was given wisdom to put Hill Difficulty not far from the Cross. Pilgrim didn't get very far beyond the Cross when he met Hill Difficulty, and there is a suggestiveness to one in that which is full of rich and valuable significance, for it says in effect that the very nature of our Christian life is one of conflict, of battle, of warfare, and that our life absolutely depends upon it.
You take our physical organism and you discover that the whole organism of our bodies is planned and arranged and constituted upon a basis of warfare, and real health and real life in our physical being is simply on the basis of triumphant warfare — a battle going on all the time. Our organism creates its own difficulties which in their overcoming constitute real health and real life. There are those difficulties in our organism which are pathological — that is, disorder — and they work death. Now you take that into the realm of the Body of Christ, and you find it is very like this.
Its very health depends upon its conflicts, and the organism of the Body of Christ is designedly constituted by the Lord Himself upon a basis of conflict, and the Church is never vigorous without warfare.
