by T. Austin-Sparks
"He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:22-23).
"But speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him, who is the head, even Christ; from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love... and that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind" (Eph. 4:15-16, 23).
"And He is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things He might have the preeminence... And not holding fast the Head, from whom all the body, being supplied and knit together through the joints and bands, increaseth with the increase of God" (Col. 1:18; 2:19).
"Wherefore I make known unto you, that no man speaking in the Spirit of God saith, Jesus is anathema; and no man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:3).
(4) The One Body, the One Object of the Spirit's Operation
The Holy Spirit's work is to constitute such a union between believers and Christ Himself as to be in the nature of one Body. The Lord Jesus remains Himself apart, but for all practical purposes through this dispensation, and for great practical purposes in the ages to come, Christ and His members form one Body. The value of that is that where the church is in true Holy Spirit representation, there Jesus is as the glorified Son of God in all the values of His having been glorified.
When two or three men full of the Holy Spirit visit a place and come into any situation as guided by Him, it should be as though Jesus Christ in all the fulness of His having been glorified, has come there. When the apostles went from place to place, men spoke of them as the men who had turned the world upside down, but there was another intelligence behind those men who recognised that it was Jesus that had come there. To break new ground as led by the Holy Spirit means that hell takes account; not of you, but of the fact that Christ has come in the power of the Holy Spirit. And the movement of hell is on such a scale and with such intensity as is not at all necessary to overthrow poor mortals such as we, but it is a movement from the depths to meet Jesus Christ glorified. The Holy Spirit has come to make the church like that.
(a) The Government of Jesus Christ
"And gave Him to be head over all things to the church which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all". Headship means government and administration in the hands of the Lord Jesus, to be expressed in the church by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the Holy Spirit must bring the absolute supremacy of Christ into the church; that is, we must be filled with the Spirit in order to have the government and administration of Christ in the Church. Being filled with the Spirit means that everything else is put under, made completely subject to the Holy Spirit.
Human judgements, calculations, ideas, reasons, ambitions, motives, impulses; everything that comes from ourselves has to be made subject to the Holy Spirit. That is not an easy matter. Jonah was a prophet, and God spoke to him; but Jonah, man of God, prophet, had a prejudice which rose up in the presence of a divine commission and caused a deadlock, almost a disaster. Peter was an apostle, a man who had the Spirit, yet he said, "Not so, Lord". He had the book of Leviticus before him which spoke of clean and unclean things, and he could have said, "I stand here upon the Word of God". He had failed to see the change of dispensation. He needed the illumination of the Holy Spirit upon his religious tradition, to be delivered from it as an earth-binding thing.
(b) The Unity of the Saints
The Headship of Jesus Christ means unity. A terrific battle goes on over unity, or fellowship. It is well to notice that when the disciples were not filled with the Spirit, they did not continue in fellowship. That is the story of the letter to the Corinthians. "How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity" (Psalm 133). Fellowship, or unity, is the expression of Christ glorified. The enemy will do anything to frustrate an expression of that along the line of unity.
A Holy Spirit filled church, even though it be in representation by a few members of Christ, is a mighty spiritual force. The power of Christ glorified is present. That is why the enemy does not want a footing for this vessel of testimony in any new territory, and is always seeking to break its testimony where it is.
Spiritual power is not feelings; very often when it is most in operation it is not recognised by the senses. Deeper than human perception something is going on which is terrific in this universe. We want the power, to use the power, to make our work a success. That is why God weakens, empties, breaks, and pulverizes His vessels before He can use them most. God so hides His work sometimes that we do not know anything has happened until a very long time afterward; but where God has Holy Spirit filled vessels, His power is there.
The fulness of spiritual life, growth, increase, enlargement is a fellowship matter, not an individual matter. "Building itself up in love". Fellowship is the basis of building up and increase. It is not congregations of Christian people, but something very much more positive.
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