The Octave of Redemption (Transcript)

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 8 - The Coming Again of the Lord Jesus

And so we come to the last of the eight octaves of redemption: The Coming Again of the Lord Jesus.

You will realise that no attempt has been made to give a comprehensive presentation of any one of these aspects of redemption, but only to try to focus everything down upon a concise answer to the question asked about every one of them: why this... why that? And impossible as it would have been in any one hour to have comprehended everything in connection with these respective phases of redemption, that is particularly true of the last. And I will not attempt, even for a moment, to cover all the ground of the second coming or the coming again of the Lord in this little time.

Again we ask the question and focus our attention on the eighth: why the coming again of the Lord Jesus? The coming of the Lord is most commonly thought of as an event; something that is going to happen at a given time as an item in a programme; it's just something that will take place. Well, of course, that is quite true, but it is quite important that we should know why it should take place - why He will come again. You see, God could effect all the things associated with His coming without His coming. I mean, if it's a matter of taking Christians to heaven, He could do that without Christ coming to fetch us, and there are many other things like that that God could do directly and quite independently. But the Scriptures show us that they are all bound up with and centred in the personal coming of Christ, and it is that fact which gives point to the question. Why should it be like that? Why should it be a matter of Christ coming back again?

Well, very briefly, let us try to answer that. And really, the answer is found in all that we have been saying in these days, the realisation that the coming again of the Lord is just His own consummation of all that. He said, as He went from them: "I am with you... unto the consummation of the age" - "I am with you with the summing up of the age, in the summing up of the age", that's the meaning of the words, "with the summing up of the age". Then what is it, in the age that will be summed up at the end? It will be all that we have been saying about Him in these days. Let us very hurriedly pass our eye over it, in order to see the summation in His coming.

The first and the final coming are clearly united in purpose and realisation. The first phase of redemption with which we were occupied, was the Incarnation of God's Son - His coming in man-form into this world. And we indicated that there were three purposes in the incarnation. One, the redemption of man by Man. By man sin came: by Man sin must go. By man came the consequences of sin: by Man those consequences must be destroyed and put away. It is the Man [of these] things you see, in the incarnation, the very point of His becoming man: the redemption of man, the re-constituting of man, to make him the kind of man that God intended him to be, but which he had so grievously ceased to be. And the perfecting of man for glory. Those were the three things bound up with His coming in the first instance in man-form. Just hold that there for a minute.

The second phase was His earthly life. We summed up the earthly life by saying that, being here from infancy, from birth to full, mature manhood, through every trial and testing and fiery ordeal, right up to the last moment in the cross when the fires were seven times heated, He presented a body to God without a mark of sin, or failure, or breakdown. "A body hast Thou prepared Me", He said. And He presented that back to God, when He passed through every possible kind of trial, He presented it without any taint, without any loss of spiritual character. He presented it back to God, a whole burnt-offering acceptable, well-pleasing to God. He represented the Man that God is after, living a life absolutely triumphant from end to end over all that which humanity has to meet; He became the advanced Man according to God's heart, the Man that God is after and is going to have: completed.

There was one thing that I had no time to mention in that connection, I would like just to put it in here without dwelling upon it. There was something of very great meaning in the Son of God, as Son of Man, putting His feet on this earth. You take the twenty-fourth Psalm which we quoted the other day, it begins with: "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof..." that first stanza. The second stanza: "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Even that man with a pure heart; who hath not lifted up His soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully." He, He! The third stanza: "Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors: and the King of glory shall come in". Do you see the movement? He's got His feet on the earth, the earth is the Lord's. He has stood on this earth. He has lived His life without defiled hands or heart, He is the one, He and He alone is the only [type] fit to ascend into the hill of the Lord. And because He has come here and so lived and so triumphed, the everlasting doors are flung open: He can enter in.

Now, the point is this: the earth is the Lord's, and He has put His feet down on this earth, and has said: "This earth belongs to this kind of Man, and heaven will attest it!" That's the twenty-fourth Psalm. And that is why He said to His disciples when He had lived the life, gained the victory, and risen triumphant: "Go into all the world. You've got to put your feet down on the earth and claim it, it's My inheritance, by right of creation, by right of redemption. You go and put your feet on it: it belongs to Me". That's all in the course of redemption.

The Cross was the making effective of that redemption, the purpose of the Incarnation, making effective that redemption of the earth upon which He put His feet and lived His triumphant life. He took it out of the hands of the prince of this world by His Cross, He took the kingdom by His Cross. "Now is the prince of this world cast out. Now is the prince of this world cast out."

In the resurrection He is in possession of that. He is establishing for forty days the great fact that He is alive. He is alive! He "became dead": He is "alive for evermore": He has "the keys of death and of Hades" and He is establishing that in the very being of the nucleus of His Church for all time.

And then He goes to glory in their presence and the whole thing - the Incarnation with its meaning, the life with its glorious triumph, the Cross with its wonderful destruction of the work of the devil - the whole thing is taken and put beyond the reach of anything here, men or devil, to touch it or alter it. It is put in Heaven. You remember what He Himself says to us about Heaven. "No more," says the apostle, "doth rust" - about heaven - "neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, nor thief break through nor steal". It is beyond. "Your life is hid with Christ in God," it is up there; nothing here can interfere with it.

Yes, there's the ascension. The Spirit came to bring all that back - potentially - out of heaven, to pick up the work of making good in believers for this dispensation. And the Church was born as the vessel, the "one new man". I'm always afraid of using language like this because it's just here, you see, that people get hold of things. You speak about the Church being Christ incarnate again. But the Spirit came to indwell the Church: to make the Church as the Body of Christ, His counterpart, for expressing all the work that He Himself had done and taken to glory. The Church was born; we'll dwell on that this afternoon.

At last He is coming again! What for? To finish it all! To complete all that He came to do in the first place, in every realm. To complete the redemption of man! The eighth chapter of the letter to the Romans deals with this consummation of redemption in two respects.

The manifestation of the sons of God; they have been secret, they have been hidden and they are. Only the Father, only the Son knows who are His; but they are going to be manifest. That is the consummation of redemption: the bringing of them out and manifesting them; making them known, displaying them in glory.

I think it's very wonderful, you know, that word of the apostle, of the apostle Paul to the Thessalonians, on this very point: "When He shall come to be glorified in His saints, and to be marvelled at in all them that believed...". There is the completion of the purpose of the Incarnation: redemption, reconstituting, perfecting, glorifying, all brought to fulness in His coming. "Marvelled at in all them that believed": that phrase always fascinates me. What does it mean? Why, all onlookers, all intelligences looking on, looking at the saints saying: "Isn't He marvellous? Look at them!" "Marvelled at in all them that believe... when He shall come". The consummation of the work and purpose of the Incarnation, and the consummation of the earthly life in believers.

But then Romans 8 touches the other aspect of redemption. "The whole of creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now", waiting, waiting, waiting. What for? Redemption. "The creation itself", says the apostle, "shall be delivered...". He put His foot, His feet upon the earth and said: "It is Mine". He has come here and lived on it and triumphed on it, and won the victory for it and over it; and now at His coming it is revealed: the consummation of the creation. "The creation itself" is "delivered from the bondage of corruption".

And then Romans 8 puts its finger upon the third aspect. Now our bodies; we shall be "delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glory of liberty". The physical bodies of believers "delivered from the bondage of corruption". You see, this is all that He came to do, all that He wrought in Himself, all that was true of Him, He is now making good in believers!

And although I know quite well that the words primarily apply to His Deity, yet there is a secondary application of them: "It was not possible that He should be holden of death... Thou wilt not suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption". It was not possible that He, because He was the Holy One, should be holden of death, which is, which is the penalty of sin. As I say, primarily that relates to Him as the Divine Son of God, incorruptible and sinless; but now He delivers believers from sin and corruption, and therefore from death, and makes good in them the thing that was true in Himself! Not making them into Deity, but conferring through grace upon them all the values of His own triumph: physical redemption.

Do you see why the coming? To make good all that He came for and all that He has done. And that's not all, although that statement comprehends it all, we haven't broken it up into all its parts. We have said that in the Cross, while He was there dealing with the whole sin question - and He dealt with it fully and finally in Himself - He was, even more than that, dealing with the whole satan question. We have sought to specially emphasize this in this conference, that the real, the real battle of the Cross was in that cosmic realm of principalities and powers. That's where the real battle went on; and it was a terrific battle. A terrific battle with every evil, sinister, dark thing of the kingdom of satan. And it was there that the full triumph of the Lord Jesus was won. His coming again, it is to make that absolute, final and good so far as the Church is concerned.

We are in the battle; we are in the battle and it is very true that the more you stand on the ground of Calvary, the more you stand on the ground of the Cross, the more fierce the battle becomes. Satan hates that Cross, hates that Cross. If you really, really spiritually stand on the ground of the meaning of the Cross, then you are in for a battle: he will do anything to move you off that ground. He's coming back just to finish that whole conflict for the Church as He did it in Himself or in the Church as He did it for the Church. When He comes, that will finish or consummate the reign of satan, the kingdom of darkness. That's why He is coming.

Why the coming? Well, all that, all that. Well, I could say so many more things, but I'm not going to, but I want to bring it all to this point again: it is, it is the "coming of the Son of Man". That's how He put it: "the coming of the Son of Man". I am sorry they changed those words in that hymn we were singing just now, I wouldn't have had it if I'd known. If I'd been alive to it I'd have had the other version:

'Oh, glorious morning,
When the Son of Man shall come'.

That's how He put it, that's how the Scriptures put it, not "the Son of God". It's true it is the Son of God, but understand the very real point here: it was Man for man, as man, all the way through; and it will be that at the end. The Incarnation has no significance, if it is not Man for man. The earthly life has no meaning if it is not Man for man. The Cross has no meaning if it is not Man for man. The same of the resurrection, the same of the ascension and enthronement: it is the Man in the glory. "We see... Jesus" - Jesus, that's His human title, "crowned with glory and honour". It is Man for man in heaven.

The Church is the birth of the "one new man" by the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. And the coming again is Man for man: it's Man consummating this whole thing in relation to man, and man entering into it: his inheritance in Christ. All this marvellous thing is for man - for you and for me! He is coming as the Son of Man.

There's a tremendous, tremendous amount bound up with that title. It's His relationship to the human race and all His work for the human race, and His representation in heaven of the human race. The present, the present appeal, the present appeal to men is on the basis of all that, on the basis of all that.

Oh, what a caricature of it all has come about with Christmas. Christmas! Think of it, think of it. Think of it in the light of what we have said about the Incarnation, the redemption, the re-constituting and the perfecting and glorifying of man. Where does that come in, in the common Christmas of our time? The devil has just switched the whole thing over, and made it a contradiction of its real meaning. He has drawn out the other man, the old man by this very means, to glut himself for his own gratification. And so in everything else, the thing has been given a wrong turn. In the coming of the Lord Jesus it will all be put right.

But, in the meantime, in the meantime His appeal to us - to man, to man, to us - is on the ground of this: He came, He came for our redemption. He came to make us different, to reconstitute us: He came to perfect us after His own image: He came to glorify us. He has shown in His own life here that it can be done. It has been done in a man. It can be done, He has done it. He came, for He said: "The Son of Man, the Son of God is manifested, to destroy the works of the devil". And to destroy the works of the devil, He has done it in His Cross. He is appealing to us on a very, very large ground. This is all redemption: redemption is a tremendous thing, all the way round like this. We have a great redemption, because we have a Great Redeemer.

And tonight we have been thinking of the time when He is coming to just put the last great touches to it all, to give the final, final touch to all this wonderful redemption - of man, of the earth, of the whole creation: "when He shall come to be glorified in His saints".

Now, dear friends, we never embark upon prophecies over this matter, indulge in date fixing or anything like that, but I think I speak for more than myself, when I say that there's something in the air that seems to say His coming must be near. Does it seem it to you that's it's not far off? The creation groans more than ever, and we groan more than ever. The travail in this creation is becoming almost unbearable. This earth needs redeeming; God only knows what will happen to it, if it isn't redeemed, this creation.

All this may be a portent, but whatever that may be, there's something in the spirit of the true child of God which says His coming is drawing nigh. It's the only hope, it is the only hope, there is no hope in any other direction. Everybody recognises that, saved and unsaved; unless God Almighty intervenes, there is no hope.

Ah, but He is going to intervene, in His Son! And there is the hope. And so the apostle speaks of the "blessed hope" - the blessed hope of the coming of the Lord. The Lord fill us with new joy in the very contemplation of His near coming, to complete all that which He has begun.