"The Rights of God" # 23

God's Rights In His House (continued)

The connection, which the Lord Jesus Christ makes between Himself and the ministry of the prophets, shows us:

Firstly, that the prophets and the Son of God stand in a very specific relationship to each other as far as the will of God is concerned. They were sent in view of the rights of God; they were killed because of the rights of God.

Secondly: The church as the house of God is there where the rights of God are recognized and given to Him.

But is there something more disputed than His church? Where is she? Is she there, where people that call themselves Christians come together? Yes and no. Fellowship is one of the characteristics of His church. But not fellowship outwardly, but oneness in spirit. Spiritual fellowship cannot be made. It is foolish to think that one could join the church, because one agrees with the message or structure of an assembly. The church is more than the union of religious people. The church consists of those to whom the Lord has brought new life, in whose hearts He has become Lord, of those who have learned to worship Him in Spirit and in truth. The church is not "our" house. It is "His" house. He, however, is the Lord of heaven, Who has judged this world and has done away with it forever. How could we serve Him with that which has been judged through the Cross? How long will it take until the eyes of the children of God are opened to the fact that the church of our Lord Jesus Christ must be heavenly through and through, that the church has nothing at all in common with this world? If we did not take into account the power of the Holy Spirit, we would despair. The natural man cannot understand that his role is finished, that the new birth is an absolutely new life, in which all our natural opinions and will have ceased. The soulish and the spiritual are so mixed up even in advanced believers, that only the Holy Spirit is able to divide them. But a division "must" come. In God's house there is no room for anything of man. Any so-called goodness of man, his religious disposition and his seemingly unselfish efforts are all a big deception. If God's rights are to be of account, then all our rights, however skillfully covered, had to come to an end.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 24)