The Way Out for the Wretched Man

In the talk that's recorded in The Centrality and Supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ T. Austin-Sparks brings out the importance of seeing Christ as our Everything:

"What is it that the Holy Spirit works upon in order to make victory in us actual? It is not our struggles to be better. THE HOLY SPIRIT NEVER HELPS US IN A STRUGGLE TO BE BETTER. We may struggle on for ever, and die struggling, and the Holy Spirit will not help us if that is the way in which we think we are going to be either saved or sanctified. What is it with which the Holy Spirit will cooperate? It is our faith apprehension and appropriation of Christ as our perfection, as our salvation. 'Oh,' you say, 'yes, but we are sinful and there is so much wrong about us; are we to close our eyes to actualities about ourselves?'

"You are to open your eyes to Christ. Stop looking at yourself and your own sin and get your eyes fixed upon the Lord Jesus as perfection for you to God, and from God to you, and as you take Him by faith--'Not what I am, O Lord, but what Thou art'--'I in myself am bad: " . . . in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing," but Lord, You are my salvation, You are my righteousness, You are my holiness, You are my sanctification, I hold on to You for all that' the Holy Spirit makes that good to us. It is our appreciation of Christ that is the Holy Spirit's ground of activity; that is the way of deliverance.

"Hear that wretched man crying out: '. . . for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.' In that up and down life, resolving and failing, at last he cries: 'O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me? . . . I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.' What is the way out for the wretched man? An apprehending of Christ. Not his struggles, his resolutions, his efforts in making up his mind that today he is going to be better, and coming back and having to repent at the end of the day. No, no! It is our faithhold on Christ which is the way out, the positive ground of victory. You try that way. God honours His Son, and God honours our faith in His Son.

"'It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again,' triumphant; and, 'Christ in you' '. . . the head of all principality and power.' This, for the unsaved, is a necessary fact. If we had been converted on the strength of this we would have been stronger believers from the beginning. If only we had known this when first we were saved we would have leaped into something that came to us many years afterward. Oh for the preaching of salvation to the full! You get a different kind of convert altogether when you carry the work of Christ to its full issue; when it is not only preached that your sins will be forgiven and you will go to heaven and not hell--perhaps a little more than that; but it is infinitely more than that, and if only we preached the fullness of Christ's work we would have converts that went ahead, apace, and reached maturity much sooner than the majority are doing, and we should find that most of our conventions are quite unnecessary, for they are mostly to get us to the place where we ought to have come when we were converted."