The Living God and the Battle for Life # 2

The Living God and the Battle for Life # 2

God has one thing in view finally, and that is Life. He intended from the beginning that that which issued from Himself, represented Himself, and bore His mark, should be that which lives with His own Life. satan has determined just the opposite, that that which comes from him bears his mark, and that is death, not because he wants to have death to gratify himself, but he wants God to be deprived of that upon which His heart is set. satan's heart is a heart of malicious spite against God. Remember that!  He has, deep in his very being, this spite against God. God has done something to satan which has turned his heart with the bitterest malice and deep abysmal hatred for God and spite against God, and he wants to deprive God of His end - that is, a universe marked by God's own Life. And so anything whatever that has the mark of God upon it or is in the way of having that mark or that seal, is the objective of satan's bitterest hatred. It becomes a sharer with God in the spite of satan. Remember that! Wherever there is Divine Life, then that becomes part and lot with God in the animosity of the devil. The one thing is to bring that Life to an end, to spoil that Life, to bring in death; where Life is, to surround that and try and engulf it in death again. There is only one way in which he can do it and that is to corrupt, but, strangely enough, it is to get the mind or the heart of the believer accepting corruption.

You see, in Christ Jesus, by faith, we are partakers of the very righteousness of God. It is not a goodness of man, but a righteousness of God which is by faith in Jesus Christ. That is what God is. We share in His nature by faith. We are accounted the same as God by faith in another righteousness. A tremendous thing! That is not what we are in ourselves. No man can ever say for a moment, "I am one with God in my nature!" Who can say that? "I am one with God in His very righteousness, in His very holiness, in His sinless perfection! I, in myself, am one with God in that!" What presumption! But yet, by faith in the Lord Jesus, in virtue of His mighty Blood, we are able to say, "In Christ, not in myself, in Christ I am a sharer in the Divine nature, I am accounted one with God in His righteousness, His nature!"

Now, the enemy's objective is not to make us worse than we are. I do not know whether he can do that, if we knew the depths of our own nature. It is not that, but it is always to work upon what we are to try and bring it up as a cloud between us and our faith and God's righteousness, in order that we shall accept in our hearts and in our minds an evil state rather than that state which is ours by faith. And so, accepting in our hearts and in our minds condemnation and accusation on the genuine ground of what we are in ourselves, so destroying faith in what we are in Christ, to bring us under condemnation and so to smite us with death, to bring about death.

There is that wonderful illustration of this in the Old Testament in the case of Balaam and Israel. You remember how Balak hired Balaam to curse Israel. "Come, curse me Israel." Balak took Balaam up into the great high place and showed him Israel and Balaam was unable to curse. And Balak said, "Come round and look at them from another angle, perhaps you will be able to curse them there!" But he found he could not curse them from that angle. Then Balak tried another another angle, "We will get these people somehow!" But Balaam could not curse them, he had to go on blessing. And Balak said, "I called thee to curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast altogether blessed them." What is the explanation? Oh, Balaam's utterance contains one clause! You see, he is being compelled to look down on Israel from God's standpoint, from heaven, not along the level of earth, but what Israel is, what Jacob is. Jacob is used there as a title. But he was compelled to down from above. "He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob." Why? Because Jacob was without iniquity. Not a bit of it. There is another story in the Psalms about what Jacob was, that corporate Jacob, what they were in themselves, but He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob! Why? They are out under the Blood. When they are out under the Blood, God has His own view. "He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob." Therefore it was impossible to bring them under the curse because of the Blood.

Paul says, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?...It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead" (Romans 8:33-34).

Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? Well, satan is always trying to do that with a view to bring under the curse, to death, this great issue of Life and death.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 3)