The Jealousy of God # 2

The Jealousy of God # 2

The Cross of the Lord Jesus is the scene of the blazing forth of the Divine jealousy. Divine jealousy is represented as a fire: "Our God is a consuming fire." Divine jealousy is not passive; it is a mighty burning; it must have; it will be; it will devour. The Cross of the Lord Jesus is the scene of the work of that jealousy in its intense heat. It reveals how God must, and will, have everything. In the Old Testament it is defined by the whole burnt offering. The fire devours everything. The Lord Jesus is that matchless, universal, representative Person in which there is gathered up everything in this universe. That is saying a tremendous thing, a thing which we have not yet ranged or fathomed; that the whole universe is gathered up and centered in the Person of Jesus Christ. Heaven and earth and all therein bring back to God in the Person of Christ everything which has been taken away from God, everything which has challenged God's supreme position, God's utterness of right. It is all laid hold of in the Person of Jesus Christ; by Him and brought back to Him, in the Cross. So that in the Person of the Lord Jesus, representatively, actually, and yet potentially, all things are restored to God. God, through the Cross, possesses in Christ the place which has from eternity been His by absolute right. The battle of Calvary was the battle for God's rights in His universe, and those rights were secured through the Cross in Christ.

Then what does the Cross mean? We speak much about the Cross. We say that we stand upon the ground of the Cross. We proclaim the Cross. Ours is the message of the Cross. Do we really understand and recognize that the Cross is the place where the Divine jealousy is at white heat, and to come to the Cross means that there is nothing left to ourselves? Nothing whatever remains for us; no place, no position, no personal interests. The Cross says: God is everything. To the very last ounce it is God's. Every kind of personal direction, desire for self is finished in the Cross. Do we recognize then, that having taken the position with Christ crucified, two things must follow.

Firstly, or on the one hand, it is all the Lord; and we shall be tested, tried, on that one single issue at every point of our lives. The Lord will touch us with the meaning of the Cross at every point of these lives of ours, every position, every relationship, everything. No matter what has a place in our lives, He will touch that with the Cross, and say: "Am I all there, or do you have some place there?" The Cross means that. Those who accept the utter or even the fuller meaning of Calvary as a living reality will be brought into the sphere where the Divine jealousy operates and touches everything. God says: "Do I have absolute place?" That will be His interrogation on all matters. There is no place for anything or anyone (when the Cross has been established) which divides with the Lord. The Lord has taken that position all along. His grace may make the operation of that position progressive, so that it does not apply practically all at once, but the Lord's position is that from the beginning. In the long run we shall be brought back to the utterness of God. God does not accept the partiality of our surrender, the dividedness of our consecration. He does not accept it. He never has. He never will. He may be bearing with it, so that we progressively come to the recognition of it and voluntarily accept it, but His position is utter from the beginning.

Secondly, or on the other hand, Divine jealousy is the very nature of hell. That is, the everlasting burnings are the activities of that jealousy, that consuming fire which is against us when, having been presented with the meaning of the Cross, we do not accept it. If we come into the realm of Calvary, into the realm of the meaning of the Cross, where the Cross is not merely a doctrine, a theme, a teaching; not merely something objective, external, but where the Cross is a living reality, where the Cross is in the hands of the Holy Spirit, and not in the hands of man for application; when we come within the compass of the living activity of the Cross and we are not yielding to that Divine jealousy so that God is having all, that Divine jealousy works as a fire against us and consumes. It is a terrible thing, as well as a glorious thing, to come within the compass of Holy Spirit activity in relation to the Cross of the Lord Jesus.

Ananias and Sapphira are early illustrations of how terrible a thing it is. What was the principle? Why, that of God having everything! Calvary was an accomplished thing, the Holy Spirit had come on the ground of that utterness of God having everything in the Cross. The Holy Spirit having His way in the hearts of those people simply meant that they were letting go all to the Lord, and then there came along a man and a woman who kept something back from the Lord; and thus, right in the presence of an activity in relation to the deepest meaning of Calvary, they held something for themselves, and they therefore denied the Cross and came into collision with the Divine jealousy. The Divine jealousy was, on the one hand, bringing these into joy, into gladness, because of God having His place (and there is no more joyous life than when God has His full place - the Divine jealousy works out to great joy, great rest, great peace when it has its way), but to withstand it meant to be consumed. The Divine jealousy works for and it works against.

Go through the Scriptures with that thought. "I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion" (Zech. 1:14); "My jealousy shall burn as a fire." Let Babylon, let Chaldea, let anybody get in the way of that fire, and see what happens. God is for His people with a burning jealousy, and when His people are wholly for Him, that jealousy will stand at nothing for their defence, for their preservation. It is a great thing to stand with the burnings, where the burnings have you utterly. You have all the fury of His jealousy on your side when you are with Him on the ground of the Cross. But you see, if that is not operating to have full, utter, complete place, then the burnings are against and not for.

The whole purpose of this little word is to seek to constrain to a recognition of the fact that the Holy Spirit is still as jealous for God's full rights, for God's full place. In other words, He is still as jealous for the practical operation of the meaning of the Cross of the Lord Jesus as ever He was. The Cross gathers up all that history: "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." "Nothing, no one, in My place, or to divide My place with Me!" The Cross gathers up all that, and settles it as an issue, and now we have to reckon with the Cross of the Lord Jesus as in the hands of no lesser Person than the Holy Spirit Himself.

There are two sides to that. It works both ways in the Scriptures. In the Old Testament it worked historically. In the New Testament it worked spiritually: "For this cause many among you are sick and not a few die." Why? Because they violated the meaning of the Cross! The Holy Spirit is looking after Christ's Cross. That Cross of Calvary is a thing of infinite regard in the eyes and the hands of the Holy Spirit. To come into touch with it is not to come into touch with a teaching. It is to come into touch with the burnings of God, the consuming fire.

I was very impressed in reading through Hebrews 12 in the section of the chapter which says:"We are not come unto a mount that burned with fire (and then all that terrible description of the voice and the thunder, and the stoning should even a beast touch the mount; a scene of terror, of destruction, of judgment and reproach). But ye are come unto mount Zion", and then all the superior blessedness of coming to what we do come to, and yet, the close of that is: "ye are come unto the heavenly Jerusalem...to the... church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven." And it concludes: "Wherefore...let us have grace whereby we may offer service, well-pleasing to God with reverence and awe: for our God is a consuming fire". It does not change the position. It only lifts it into a realm where it says that coming to Christ,and coming to Calvary, is even more than coming to Sinai, and it means greater responsibility, and not less. Grace does not put away responsibility: "Our God is a consuming fire."

We can rejoice while we are working with the jealousy of God, because the jealousy of God is working for us. We can leave our case in the hands of Divine jealousy. He will look after our interests if we are wholly His. On the other hand, it does behoove us to remember that a touch with Calvary, a touch with the Cross, involves us in the utterest  abandonment to the Lord, with nothing whatever that separates us from Him. We must not hold back, for to hold back is to find the jealousy, which would work for us, working against us. The Lord preserve us from that.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(The End)