The Power of the Name

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 6 - The Light of Life

Reading: John 8:12, 26-36; 10:1-18.

"He that follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life".

You will probably be struck in reading these portions of the Word of God, with the references to darkness, or ignorance, or blindness, or not knowing. That note is clearly related to this phrase "the light of life", and it is made perfectly plain in these chapters that knowledge of a spiritual kind, true, spiritual, divine knowledge, rests entirely upon Life, the possession of Life, and the increase of Life.

The Lord Jesus spoke of having come that they might have Life, and that they might have it abundantly, and the connection, as you will see, is that they may begin to know, and that they may go on increasing in knowledge. So that the very beginning of knowledge is bound up with the possession of Life, and the increase of knowledge is by way of more abundant Life. Knowledge, from start to finish, is a matter of Life in the sense in which the Lord Jesus used that word.

We have, from this point in the gospel onward, the matter of Life giving light, producing light, both as a fact and as to the nature of that light of Life; that is, the connection, the kind of light or knowledge, the direction in which we get light and knowledge through Life. We cannot hope to get very far in seeing that at this time, and maybe we shall only say a little on one or two points in which Life produces light.

In John 8 there is the fact of light by Life set forth, and we are shown the steps of light by Life, the progress, the way. In John 8:31-32 the whole thing is intimated: "Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on Him, If ye continue in My word, then are ye My disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free". That is a most comprehensive statement. You see the steps. First, faith - "those Jews which believed", faith abiding in the Word - "If ye continue in My word"; taught ones - "then are ye My disciples indeed", coming to knowledge - "And ye shall know the truth", the issue - "...and the truth shall make you free".

There are five steps in Life unto light. First, faith; second, abiding in the Word; third, being taught, a disciple, a taught one by abiding in the Word; fourth, coming to knowledge of the truth; fifth, the outworking of that knowledge is liberation, emancipation. That is far more comprehensive than it appears, because if you think for a moment, that ranges the whole history of man. It includes the histories of the two races, the Adam race and the Christ race.

The Race of the First Adam and the Race of the Last Adam

The first Adam is secretly referred to in the first words: "those Jews which believed" (had faith). You will remember that the great issue for Adam was Life. The greatest thing for him was the truth of Life. Life was open to him, with truth, so there you have the truth of Life. It was not shut out from him, there was no forbidding while he remained true to God. Life was open before him. He could come to know Life, and it was open to him until he broke down in faith, until he disbelieved. While faith obtained, Life was open.

If he had been a believer right through, if he had believed and not doubted and not disbelieved, he would have come to know the meaning of that Life. You notice that immediately, through unbelief and disobedience, the Lord shut off that truth of Life and said, "Lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life", so that Life was put away from him. He could not come to that as an unbeliever. The first step in our very first relationship to Life, which is going to lead to the true knowledge, is faith. The last Adam reverses the order of the first Adam. The first Adam did not abide in the Lord's word. The Lord had spoken, and he abode not in the word of the Lord, but stepped outside of it through doubt, through questioning, through unbelief; he stepped outside of the word of God and died; Life became impossible. Because of Adam's unbelief and because he abode not in the word of the Lord, he did not go on in that divine instruction.

Adam was on probation and in that probation he was to be taught a great deal; his knowledge of divine things was not perfect, but would have increased, would have grown, he would have been taught much. The devil suggested to him that he could get knowledge in an easy, cheap, quick way, by a royal road: "ye shall be as gods, knowing..." (Gen. 3:5), and God had laid down the possession of knowledge on the basis of faith and obedience, and abiding in the Word of God. That is the divine way of knowledge, but Adam stepped out of the Word, sought knowledge for himself in a direction and in a manner forbidden of God, and lost knowledge. Thus the race in Adam has not the knowledge of God and is alienated from that divine knowledge, is dark in its understanding, for the natural man cannot know the things of the Spirit of God. He would have been taught if he had abode in the word, and then come to the full knowledge of the Lord, and this would have resulted in freedom and liberty, the opposite of that which had come about.

He fell into bondage, but the full knowledge of the Lord would have meant an emancipation, a deliverance from that bondage. It would have brought him out into a larger place in the Lord. It would have brought him to the place of sonship in the fuller sense. He lost sonship, the liberty of sonship, which is the grand goal of this universe, which has never yet been reached by anyone but the Lord Jesus. You see the steps to that are here marked, and it is a universal story. It embraces the whole history of things in Adam and in Christ. You may not understand, but God has spoken and God has not told you why He has said certain things. He has not said what will be the outworking in detail of our abiding in these specific things said, but has made it clear that our abiding in His Word will bring us to the knowledge of that outworking, and that knowledge will be our liberation.

You see the reversing of things from Adam to Christ. In Adam - unbelief, departure from the Word of the Lord, loss of instruction by the Lord, and therefore missing the knowledge which the Lord intended, and as a result: bondage. In Christ - faith, abiding in the Word, being taught, coming to knowledge and liberty. "If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed".

All we have time to say in that particular connection is this simple fact, that Life leads to knowledge, and knowledge leads to Life. It is the light of Life, the light out of Life, and the way to that enlargement of Life is the obedience of faith to what the Lord has said. That is simple, but the Lord has said quite a lot of things to us, and we have to take an attitude of faith toward what the Lord has said.

Think of some of the things the Lord has been saying to us as to His mind for His own: the great truth that the Lord wills that we should live by His Life, out from above, live by His knowledge out from above. We say, "That is a very elevated life, it is too high". Is that putting it on one side, or is that the attitude of faith? "The word profited them nothing, not being mingled with faith in them that heard". Are we going to be like that, or are we going to mingle faith with what the Lord says? That is where it begins, and that means that faith will hold us into the Word. "Oh, I do not understand that! It is beyond me!" That means you will not abide in it. Without understanding it, we can take the attitude, "If this is God's Word, I am going to hold on to that, I am going to stand on that, I am going to stand in that; I do not understand it, but I am going to stand in it". My attitude is, "Lord, if that is Your Word - and I believe it is - I stand into it. I am not going to push it aside, and because I do not understand, just depart from it. I stand in it." If that positive attitude is taken toward anything that the Lord has revealed to us, we are His disciples indeed, and He will begin to teach us the thing which we have by faith accepted and stood into, but did not understand. He will begin to teach us the meaning of that.

The Lord must have men and women like that to teach. The Lord does not give teaching to those who have not taken the positive attitude of faith to stand into and hold on to what He has said. It is so easy to be put aside from the Lord's things because we do not understand. The Lord wants to see men and women who take this attitude: I believe that to be God's Word, and without understanding anything of it, I stand into it because it is God's Word, and I wait for God to reveal the meaning of that to me. God has said it, and I hold onto it. When the Lord has a people in His school like that, who have come in saying, "Now here is something of the Lord; I do not know anything about it, but I see that it is of the Lord, it is the Lord's word, and I stand here to know and wait until the Lord shows me what it is". When He has people in His school like that, they are His disciples indeed. The Lord wants positive disciples. The Lord's people are too easily put off. They say, "Oh, well, that is high-flown, and is beyond me; I do not understand it, and that is all there is to it". They abide not in the Word, simply because they do not understand, but to abide in it, disciples indeed, being taught, the result will be: "Ye shall know...", and the knowledge is emancipating knowledge.

That is very practical, and it is quite true. Some of us know exactly what that means in experience where the Lord said something to us that was of tremendous significance, but we did not understand it; nevertheless, we saw that the Lord said it, and we had to take this position, "Well, Lord, that being Your Word, and I not understanding it, I nevertheless stand for it and stand in it". We went on for a time and nothing seemed to be happening at all, and it seemed to have passed like a crisis, and then we come back again to it. We say, "But, Lord, we took a position over that, and we are still holding on to know Your meaning, to open the thing". Then the Lord begins to open the thing, and in the end it was our emancipation.

It is the obedience of faith which, because we possess Life, is going to bring through that Life into light and then into liberation, and that means more Life, Life more abundant.

So we pass from that particular phase with that word, that we have got to take a definite attitude toward what God has said, not wait until we know all that it means. How many people have said, "If only I had known what I know today when I took such-and-such a step of obedience! Do you not think that I ought to repeat that now with my present knowledge?" No, you have got to be obedient to anything that the Lord has said, and stand into it, because the Lord has said it. If you stand into it you will get more light, emancipation, and enlargement in Christ of Life, and it will all relate back to that one step. It was all there in germ form, and out of it has come the greater fulness. If you had never taken that one step - whatever it may have been, as to anything that the Lord has said - you would never have come to the knowledge and the enlargement and liberation that is bound up with it.

We pass for a few moments to John 10, which teaches another aspect of light and Life. This has to do with:

Our Responsibility.

When we speak of responsibility we move into the realm of service. It is not now our own spiritual growth or enlightenment or increase, but it is the advantage of that to others, and that is the right order of things.

We first of all move with the Lord to a position of enlarged understanding and knowledge, and then, as a consequence, as the outcome of that, others are benefitted. John 10 brings in the matter of responsibility by which others come into the good of our going on with the Lord. This is set forth in this model or pattern by way of the Shepherd and the sheep. "He that enters not by the door into the sheep-fold, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber". We want to know the meaning of that word. The Jews did not understand this parable. "This parable spoke Jesus unto them; but they understood not what things they were which He spoke unto them". We need light, therefore, to understand the meaning of service, the nature of service, for this is what He is speaking about.

He is serving the sheep. Service to the sheep is in view. What does He mean by these words? To begin with it is simply a matter of having sheep. Here are various people represented as seeking to be in possession of sheep. It is not just the thought of a robber climbing over the wall and snatching a sheep. That is what a wolf does, but here what is before us is other shepherds, men assuming to be shepherds. "Hirelings" is their true name, but in their own eyes they regard themselves as shepherds, and what they are after is to possess a flock of sheep. So the first thing is a matter of having sheep, or being a shepherd of a flock, being in a position of authority and responsibility. That is the whole point that the Lord has in view.

Then He draws the contrast, and says that there are those who would assume this position to possess sheep, to have sheep for themselves, who do not go the same way as the sheep go, but climb up some other way, "enter not in by the door", but take a different course from the sheep. It is a tremendously keen insight which the Lord has. It is just wonderful to recognise this point that the Lord is making. He gives the explanation. They did not understand what He said to them, therefore He said: "I am the door of the sheep... I am the door; by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture". Oh, I see! The sheep go the way of the Lord; the sheep go by the way of Christ. That is their way, their ground, their course. Then there are some who would assume to be shepherds of sheep, who would assume this position, who would possess sheep, but who do not go the way of the Lord, who do not go the way of Christ. They try to be what He is as a Shepherd without going the way that He goes.

Do you see the point? A shepherd, a true servant of the Lord, has to come right down on to the ground as the sheep, and go the same way as the sheep, to be one with the sheep in their experience of the Lord. It is so possible to assume the position of a servant of the Lord and then have a congregation, have a flock, but never to have gone the way that that flock has gone or has to go. The sheep cannot climb up some other way; the hireling can. They can do things the sheep can never do, they are very clever.

The Lord is saying quite clearly here that true service to the flock means that you have got to be one with the flock in the way that the flock has to take, you have got to know Christ in order to serve these others, you have got to know Christ in exactly the same way as all those others have to know Christ whom you are trying to serve. It is oneness with the sheep by the same experience. It is a matter of vital union with the sheep in the sheep's knowledge of Christ. That is a very simple principle, but a very fundamental law.

It can be put in different ways. That is how it is put here, that a true shepherd is not one who takes a course other than the sheep have to take in relation to the Lord. You cannot perch upon a pedestal and tell the sheep which way they must go, not having gone that way yourself. You must have gone that way yourself before you can lead the sheep that way. If you have not gone that way yourself and you seek to tell the sheep which way they must go, you are a false shepherd, you have stolen those sheep, you have no right to them. You have no right to have a flock unless you have gone the way that the flock must go, unless you have taken the course that you would tell them to take, or that they, in order to have Life, must take. The Lord makes that very clear.

We said that that could be put in many ways. It means this in principle: that you and I have to take the way, or must have taken the way, that we seek that others should take, if light and the life of usefulness in service are to be ours. We must take exactly the same course that we see others should take to know Life. That is a law.

That brings us back to this point, which is perhaps just the enlarging of that, that the Lord makes His under-shepherds those who are living signs of His truth for others to follow. He does not make His under-shepherds mere talkers, speakers, preachers, or retailers of Bible truth. He takes them in hand and takes them through things in order that others may see in them the living embodiment of Christ.

The Lord said to Ezekiel: "I have set thee for a sign", "Say unto the House of Israel, I am your sign". "Thou shalt be a sign unto them, and they shall know that I am the Lord". That is very clear. How shall they know that He is the Lord, the Good Shepherd that gave His life for the sheep? He would make us a sign unto them, that they should know. He would that there should be in us a reproduction and an expression of the truth in Christ.

In laying down His life for the sheep we know that there was a vicariousness into which we do not enter. There is no atoning value about our laying down our life, but apart from the vicariousness or the atoning value of it, the fact remains that there has to be manifested in us the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus before ever we can be of any use to others. There has to be a manifestation of the power of His death and there has to be a manifestation of the power of His resurrection.

That is embodied in the parable of the shepherd and the sheep. The false shepherd, the hireling, is one who is not the personal embodiment of Christ, the Door. Christ is the Door, Christ is the Way, the course, and you and I are not to be pointers, we have to be "ways" in the Lord; that is, there has to be in us that which is true of Him, so that others can see Him in us, know Him, because the thing has been wrought into us. That is the light of Life in relation to service and usefulness.

I do not believe there is any far-reaching service that is not based upon that, and you and I can take it as settled that the real value of our service will be just in the measure in which we have been experimentally wrought into the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and the sufferings of Christ have been wrought in us. The measure in which we know the Lord in a living way will be the measure of our value to others. If the Lord is going really to get servants, under-shepherds of real character, He is going to take us through things, He is going to take us the way that He Himself went. That is how He makes servants, not by giving them information, but by working in them the truths of His own life. That is the life of service, the light of Life in service.

Here things are tabulated, and made perfectly clear:

Life, Sacrifice, Knowledge.

"I am come that they might have life (the sheep), and that they might have it more abundantly". That refers to Life. "The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep". That is sacrifice. "I know My sheep, and am known of mine". That is knowledge.

Paul was a great example of this truth. He could never be satisfied that those whom he shepherded should just have information. His whole travail was that they might have Life, that Christ should be fully formed in them. "My little children, on whose behalf I am again in travail until Christ be fully formed in you". He who said that, and entered into that, was one who went that way himself, and could say: "Follow me, I am your example, I am your sign, I have gone this way"; and he cried right to the end that he might be in that way: "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, being made conformable unto His death". That is the way of a true shepherd.

There is no question about Paul's sacrifice for others. "I fill up that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for His body's sake, which is the church".

What kind of knowledge did Paul have concerning his sheep? "Who is weak, and I suffer not?" That is entering into the experiences in an intelligent way, knowing the sheep, getting into their life, into their state. It is, in effect, saying, "If any of you are in a bad state, I am suffering in your bad state, I am in it, I am so associated with it, I am so one with you, that your state affects me, I know my sheep. When you are weak I know and I suffer; when you are full I rejoice." It is spiritual knowledge.

That is all that I think is meant here in John 10, or at least it is the basic thing here. It is a question of life-union with the Lord unto service, and that life-union means going the way that He went in order to lead others that way. It is being a personal embodiment of Christ to bring others by the way of Christ, and the Lord draws the contrast between such; the true under-shepherds, and these others who would not go that way, who would not allow this to be wrought in them, who would not pay the price, who would climb up some other way and take possession of a flock, and assume the place of a shepherd. As thieves and robbers they have stolen that to which they have no right. No one, says the Lord here in effect, has a right to possess sheep who has not come the way of Christ for the sheep, who has not gone through this way of what Christ is in the interests of the sheep.

We have sought to lay down and point out two further laws of Life. Life is unto knowledge through obedience, which knowledge leads still to fuller Life. Life-union with the Lord leads to effective service, the right kind of spiritual responsibility which is of value. It is life-union with the Lord, and in no other way can the Lord's interests really be served.

The Lord is not going to let us be hirelings if He can help it. He is not going to let us be in an unlawful position. He is going to seek to put us in the right place, where we can be a genuine under-shepherd, one who is a sign.

That is why the Lord has taken us through a great many things that would not be necessary for us to go through in any other direction, in any other connection. We go through quite a lot that we should never go through if the Lord had not designs concerning us as to being useful to Him. The greater the usefulness to the Lord, the deeper the experience of death and resurrection. It is left with us to say whether the Lord is to stop or not, whether we will go any further, or draw the line to our usefulness by resistance of His leading.

May the Lord Himself teach us the way of Life.