May
22
It
pleased God... to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him (Galatians
1:15,16).
Since Paul’s day so very
much of Christian activity has been the furthering of a movement, the
propagating of a teaching, and the furthering of the interests of an
institution. It is not a movement, nor to establish a movement in the Earth and
to get followers, adherents, members, support. It is not an institution, even
though we might call that institution the church. The church has no existence
in the thought of God apart from the revelation of Jesus Christ, and it is
judged according to the measure in which Christ the Son of God’s love is in
evidence by its existence. It is not a testimony, if by that you mean a
specific form of teaching, a systematized doctrine. No, it is not a testimony.
Let us be careful what we mean when we speak about "the testimony."
We may have in our minds some arrangement of truth, and that truth couched in
certain phraseology, form of words, and thus speak about "the testimony";
it is not the testimony in that sense. It is not a denomination, and it is not
a "non-denomination," and it is not an
"inter-denomination." It is not Christianity. It is not "the
work" – oh, we are always talking about "the work": "How is
the work getting on?" – we are giving ourselves to the work, we are
interested in the work, we are out in the work. It is not a mission. It is
Christ! "...That I might preach Him."
If that had remained
central and preeminent all these horrible disintegrating jealousies would never
have had a chance. All the wretched mess that exists in the organization of
Christianity today would never have come about. It is because something
specific in itself, a movement, a mission, a teaching, a testimony, a
fellowship, has taken the place of Christ. People have gone out to further
that, to project that, to establish that. It would not be confessed;
nevertheless it is true, that today it is not so much Christ that is our work.
Now beloved, an inward revelation is the cure of all that. Am I saying too hard
a thing, too sweeping a thing? The existence of all that represents the absence
of an adequate inward revelation of Christ.
By T. Austin-Sparks from: The Centrality and Supremacy
of Christ
This photograph is by Eric Jonas Swensson of Sound Shore Media.
No comments:
Post a Comment