Chapter 1: The Rights of God
By T. Austin Sparks
This article was first published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazines, 1939
There are three short series of passages of Scripture in connection with each of these to which I would direct you at the outset.
The Christ
Colossians 1:13-18; Hebrews 2:5-10,16; Ephesians 1:22; 4:10.
The Church
Ephesians 1:22; 2:14-16; 3:20-21.
The Antichrist
1 John 2:18-22; 4:2-3; 2 Thessalonians 2:3-10.
There is a preliminary word that I want to say before I come directly to the matter of the Christ, the Antichrist, and the church. The apostle John by the Holy Spirit, at the opening of his Gospel, calls Jesus, Son of God, the "Logos". The apostle Paul calls Jesus "the wisdom of God" and "the power of God". Those titles have a special significance. That significance is that Jesus is the embodiment of divine reason, divine ideas. Behind everything in this universe, as we know it, there are occasions, causes, reasons, explanations, meanings, things which demand answers, and the Holy Spirit’s work, among other things, and one of His primary works, is to reveal those meanings, those reasons, those explanations, and lead us to the why and wherefore of things in the mind of God. All that explanation is bound up in the very Person of the Lord Jesus. He is the personification of God’s reason, the explanation and the answer to the things which lie behind this universe. God’s answers are not verbal answers, God’s explanations are not in words. God’s full answer is in a Person, and it is therefore the revelation of Jesus Christ which gets behind everything and gives us the key to everything; that answers every question and imparts all the knowledge that is necessary for us to have in order that we may come into perfect oneness with God.
Now, you may ask why I say this. Well, the answer is that, in the development of sonship, God wants His own children to be intelligent; not just to have intelligence and knowledge for the sake of having, but because this spiritual intelligence is life and is power. The knowledge of Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit is life, and it is power. The revelation of Jesus Christ is a thing before which all the power of evil is destined and doomed to go down, and it is likewise that which is to bring in, in a final way, the condition which is wholly according to God’s original thought. When He is fully and finally manifested, there is something which will happen in the realm of evil, on the one hand, so that it is nullified, its end is reached, while, on the other hand, there will come in that condition which God intended should be.
Now you see the importance of having explanations, the importance of recognising that there is a reason for everything, a meaning in everything, and that the Lord Jesus has come to bring, in His own Person, the meaning of things to light. God does not want us just to accept the acts of God; He wants us to know the meaning of His acts. He does not want us just to see the events; He wants us to have the explanation of those events. The all-inclusive act and event of God is Jesus Christ, and we are not to accept Jesus Christ just as a fact. We have to know what He means, and that in every direction, in every realm. This knowledge is purely of a spiritual kind, and, as I have said, is going to operate tremendously in two directions, one against evil, the other to bring in the state which expresses God’s own thought. Now, that may all seem very high-flown and difficult, but what I am wanting to get at, and what I want you to grasp before we go on, is that there is something which lies behind all that we read in the Word of God. There is something which lies behind the fact of Christ, an immense thing which lies behind Him, a reason.
There is that which lies behind the church. The church is the answer to something, the explanation of something. The church is the embodiment of a divine reason. We have to know what that is. Now that applies to everything that we have in God’s Word. We have not just to see that there is something said, stated, presented; we have to ask the question, What is it, as great as the mind of God, which lies behind that? What is it? Therein lies the realm of our spiritual education, illumination, instruction. That is the sphere of the Holy Spirit’s function, to make that known, and when God has a people in full intelligence in that spiritual way, He has got something which to Him is of tremendous importance and value. Now you will see how it bears upon what follows.
We go on, then, towards some consideration of the Christ, the Antichrist, and the church. I want to condense those vast things into as small a compass as I can. So, to begin with, I would say that there are three things which are common features in each of these.
1) A type of creation
Firstly, a type of creation. It goes by the name of man. Jesus Christ is a type of creation; Antichrist is a type (I am going to vary the word) of creature. Antichrist is not created as Antichrist, but is a type of creature, now as existing, of course, in the more general sense, a type of creation, of being. Then the church, the Body of Christ, is a type of creation, "one new man." a new creation. So you see that first thing is characteristic of all three.
2) A power, a principle
Secondly, a power, a dynamic, a principle. When we speak of principle, we mean some working thing, some governing thing, and all three of these come under that denominator also. Christ is a power as well as a person; a power, a dynamic, — if you will allow me to say it — a principle. That is not taking anything away from His personality, but He is an embodiment of a principle of God in this universe; a law, if you like; something which governs in a mighty way; He is a power. Antichrist is a power, a force, a principle, an active element. The passage in 2 Thessalonians 2 makes it perfectly clear: "whose coming is after the working (the Greek is "after the energising") of Satan with all power (dunamis). Antichrist is a power.
The church, which is His Body, is a power. It is not only the aggregate of individual members, it is something which registers spiritual force and energy in the spiritual realm. Of course, if the church were only a mere organisation, a congregation, it would not matter to Satan or anybody else, but when constituted by God, it is a power, it is something to be reckoned with in this universe. Would to God it were living more fully up to that divine conception and need. Nevertheless, if there are but two or three gathered into the Name, representing the church in a true Holy Spirit oneness, there is a registration of power in the unseen realm.
3) A kingdom
Thirdly, a kingdom, a dominion. Christ is a type of creation; Christ is a power; Christ is a kingdom. "The kingdom of the Son of his love"; all those passages in which we read of His being put above all, being in pre-eminence, with all things under His feet, all this speaks of His kingdom, His dominion. But the Antichrist also represents a kingdom, a dominion, and the church, the Body of Christ, carries that same significance; in union with Christ, it is a kingdom. "Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom." The church is "the fulness of him that filleth all...". Then what is man? "Thou madest him to have dominion"!
Now these things I think are perfectly plain and perfectly simple, but they only lead to other things. There are other things which are bound up with these. The first of the issues is no less a matter than the rights of God.
The Recovery of the Rights of God
With the Christ, the one all-inclusive issue is the rights of God. He is the very incarnation and embodiment of those rights. You ask now the meaning of Christ? Get back behind the fact of Christ, behind the Person, behind the Christ presented to us, whom we accept personally, whose teaching we accept, whose work we accept and wonder at, the facts of whose life and death, resurrection and ascension we believe in; get back behind it all, and what is the meaning? What does He mean? Why Jesus Christ? The answer is, "The rights of God in this universe". Now that goes to the heart of our first point about Christ, namely, of His being a type of creation; a kind of being, a man, in whom the rights of God take the entire place of concern and devotion. Here you have a Man, "The man Christ Jesus”.
"There is... one mediator... between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5). "What is man... the son of man?" "We see Jesus"! or in the familiar designation of 1 Cor. 15:45, "the last Adam". Here you have a type of creation, and the explanation of that particular type of creation is the rights of God. He is a Man whose spirit, being in living union with God, is governed by God’s Spirit, and all in relation to God’s rights. He is governed by God’s Spirit. He is governed in His mind, His heart, His will, His reason, His desire, His choice, by the Spirit of God in relation to God’s rights.
Now you see the challenge came there right at the beginning. The assault was made upon the first Adam, to get him to use his mind, his reason, his desire, his feelings, his will, his choice, as out of relation to God, apart from consideration for God, in an unrelated and independent way, putting back what God had made known as His mind, and acting apart from and behind that. Of course, the object of the adversary was to rob God of His rights as they were bound up with that man, and from that time onward God’s rights were taken from Him in that creation, in this creation, in this universe.
The whole story of the Old Testament, as of the New Testament, and of all the ages, is the terrible story of the battle for the rights of God. Through seer and prophet, and every divine representative, the conflict was concerning the rights of God in this universe; rights which were being stolen from Him, rights which He was not being ceded; rights which, being His, were not recognised, but were taken and employed for other ends, for another purpose, for another kingdom. Here in the last Adam you have one whose spirit, being in living union with God, brings Him entirely under the government of God’s Spirit, and the whole explanation of Jesus Christ is the rights of God. I am not forgetting His deity. Do not misunderstand me. I am speaking of Him now as the representative Man, the Son of Man. He is the One who gives God the full and final place, whose sole business is that connected with the rights of God; and these, through Adam’s failure, have become a matter of conflict. So that in Him as the last Adam, the representative Man, all has to be perfected through sufferings.
