Divine Life

T. Austin-Sparks beautifully expresses the working of Divine Life in our lives in his book Discipleship in the School of Christ. The entire book is available at:

http://www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/discipleship_in_the_school_of_christ.html

Here are some excerpts from it:

"When we say so much about this divine life, we are not just thinking about it as some abstract element, but in its true relationship to the Lord Jesus. Jesus Himself is this life and we cannot have the life without having Him. It is not something separate from the person of the Lord Jesus, and I would be very sorry if there should be any thought that we are speaking of some thing called life as apart from the person of Jesus Christ. The life is the way in which the Lord Jesus manifests His person--it is the expression of the divine person.

"That is a very important thing, for it would be quite easy for some people who want to find fault to say: 'You put life in the place of the person.' Well, we have safeguarded ourselves against that accusation. It is the person of the Lord Jesus who is in view, but we can only know that person by the Spirit of life, and the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Jesus, is the Spirit of life. It is not that some abstract element called life is Christ, but Christ personally is the life.

". . . You remember that the Letter to the Hebrews always speaks of the land of promise as 'God's rest'. It says of that first generation that they never entered into 'His rest', and that 'there remaineth therefore a sabbath rest for the people of God' (Hebrews 4:9). Now the land of promise is shown to be a type of Christ in heaven: Christ risen from the dead. You see, Israel had to go through the Jordan when it overflowed all its banks. The swellings of Jordan were a type of death, and they had to go through death on to resurrection ground. Then the word to Joshua was that he should go up and possess the land. It is resurrection and ascension. It is Christ in heaven, victorious over death, and His people with Him there. As Paul says: "And raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:6).

". . . Jesus stood and cried: 'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden' (Matthew 11:28). What did He mean? The burden of the law was upon the people, indeed, it was a heavy burden for them. The Pharisees gave more than two thousand interpretations to the law of Moses, and said: 'The law of Moses does not mean that you have only to keep ten commandments; it means that you have to keep two thousand.' There was not a point in all their human life where this law was not applied and made their lives difficult. And all this was gathered up into the Sabbath: 'You must not make your bed on the Sabbath! You must not carry your bed on the Sabbath! You must not poke your fire on the Sabbath! You must do nothing on the Sabbath--you may not even walk more than three miles.' Two thousand regulations for their lives! The one thing that they were meeting every day, and especially on the Sabbath, was 'You may not'.

"'Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest' (Matthew 11:28). What has happened? Jesus has appropriated the Sabbath to Himself. It is no longer a day of the week--it is a divine person. (If the Seventh Day Adventists saw that, the whole of their system would go in five minutes!) No, Jesus is God's Sabbath. He is the end of God's works, and in Him God has entered into His rest. This is the 'rest which remaineth for the children of God'--not a day of the week or on the calendar, but a divine person, the Son of God. In Him we come to rest, and that which was our bondage is now our servant. In Him that against which we were always struggling is now our victory. Oh yes, Jesus is the Sabbath, and if we live in Him we shall not spoil the Sabbath. Every day should be a day of rest to our souls. Oh, this is a mighty thing that the Lord Jesus has done!

". . . We need never, never come to an end when we have this life, for it is an inexhaustible life. There is always something more. We may be filled today, but there is more for tomorrow.

"Now that is very practical. If you go back to your own life, you know that every day will make demands upon you, and sometimes the demands may seem too big for you, and you may say: 'I wonder how I am going to get through! I wonder how I am going to meet this situation!' Remember, you have the Lord of Life in you, and He is inexhaustible in His life. You may have fullness for today and then for tomorrow when it comes, and right to the end.

"I am asking that at the end the Lord Jesus will be glorified in this way--that I have more than when I started. That is the kind of life that has come to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

"May we learn to live by Him! And when I say 'live', I do not mean just exist. I mean live, in a way that naturally we could never live."