NEWS Epignosis
This morning I was reading the final issue of T. Austin Sparks' magazine "A Witness and a Testimony," published in November-December 1971. In that issue, TAS has a piece titled, "Loose Him, and Let Him Go." It is a meditation on the Gospel of John - more specifically, a meditation on two verses in John.
I would highly recommend reading the entire piece (click on magazine title above to access). In my post today, I would like to focus on material leading up to the conclusion. I have reprinted the passages below. Before reading them, I would like to make a few comments, since what TAS says in the passages goes directly to the heart of many of the things that I have been writing over the past 6 months.
First off, it is important to note that there is a profound difference between a natural life and a spiritual life. The natural man cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God, and he cannot know them. This explains why arguing with otherwise learned men and women who do not believe in God is fruitless. They are not equipped to understand what you are saying. They do not have the Spirit planted in their hearts. Without the Spirit, one cannot understand God's Word.
Secondly, there are many Christians today that are in bondage to religious tradition and legalism. These are impediments to a spiritual life - a life of abundance (what I call "The Great Life"). TAS observes that Christianity has fallen into the same predicament (peril) as Judaism. Spiritual men and women must let go of tradition and legalism in order to be free in Christ. Until you let go, you cannot be free in Christ. It's that simple. The lives of Peter and Paul are wonderful examples of the awesome power associated with letting go of religious things (tradition and laws) to be completely entangled with the Spirit (Who is the fulfillment of the law).
The third comment is perhaps the most crucial of all. This comment concerns the great importance of having the eyes of our heart open so that we may have full knowledge - what the ancient Greeks called "Epignosis" - of Christ. As TAS states, possessing full spiritual knowledge of the Lord is akin to the process of having a blindfold removed from our eyes. All of the sudden, we can see - we can see Him! There is light! How great it is!
TAS discusses Paul's transformation. The religious Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus - a man steeped in tradition and legalism - was on the road to Damascus to round up followers of Christ (followers of "the Way"). Killing people in the name of God is a great (and tragic) tradition of religious men. Jesus, of course, had other plans for Saul. While riding, Saul was struck by an unknown force - a light. He heard the voice of the Lord. Poor Saul had no idea what was happening (see Acts, Chapter 9, for the details of that glorious event).
Not long after being blinded by the Lord's light, Saul's heart began to undergo a powerful transformation. Saul became Paul. The transformation took many years. Saul had let go of decades of religious tradition and legalism in order to fully embrace Christ. Love - His never-failing love - lit the way.
As TAS says in his article, the blindfold ("the napkin") was taken off and Saul of Tarsus was set free from religious tradition and legalism to walk up and down in the greatness of Jesus Christ. This is liberation! To see fully, and more fully, is to be released. We are free in Christ. The truth - Jesus Christ- set Saul free. It will do the same for you and me, but we must let loose and let go.
With these comments, let us now return to TAS' article. I hope you find the passages below as illuminating as I did this morning.
*******************
THE GRAVE TOUCH
Lazarus came forth and he had life, but at that moment when he came forth he was still in contact with the grave. There was still that about him which spoke of that sepulchre, and the limitations of that sepulchre. Again, what are these limitations? Well, we come over to the Epistles. I am not going right through them all, but I will give you just enough to indicate what is meant.
LOOSING FROM THE NATURAL LIFE
If you turn to the first Letter to the Corinthians, and have any knowledge of what is in that Letter, you will know what we mean by the grave touch still upon born-again Christians. Paul opens that Letter by addressing the Corinthians as "saints", which means those who are the Lord's, but as he writes on and on an awful situation is unfolded, is it not? They have life, but you cannot say that they have it abundantly. The grave clothes are on them, that is, the grave touch is still there, and in the first Letter to the Corinthians it is the grave touch of the limitations of the natural life. They are Christians, yes, but they are bound and limited by the ties of the natural life. That is the word which the Apostle uses specifically: "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ... and he cannot know them" (1 Corinthians 2:14). That is limitation, is it not? You proceed into the Letter and you find that these people are behaving as worldly people behave. In their behaviour, their conduct, their procedure, they go on just exactly as do worldly people. Someone has done a wrong to another believer, and apparently that happened in more than one case at Corinth, and the result was that this believer against whom the wrong was done thought this was criminal and should be set right in the court of law in the world. So he hauled his fellow-believer before the judge in the worldly court to get his rights. That is exactly what the world does, and that is an instance of a whole handful of things that were going on at Corinth. Some were worse than that. 'There are divisions among you, and when there are divisions among you are ye not carnal?' Not spiritual, but carnal.
Well, gather up the whole of that Letter and it is a terrible story of those who are the Lord's and who have the life just behaving as other people do, living in the way that the world does. You find the women behaving as worldly women did in their dress, in their demeanour, in their behaviour, and even in the assembly. I do not want to pick out the women particularly, but I am indicating that there is the spirit of the world amongst believers in Corinth, and (read the Letter again in the light of this) that is keeping them still in this bondage, in this limitation of their spiritual life. It is grave clothes, and you are not surprised that at Corinth the world is not feeling the impact of their testimony, that the church at Corinth is not counting in the world, because the world has got into the church, and into its members individually. In this sense the grave clothes are still on them, by reason of the limitations which come upon the spiritual life when the natural takes charge and governs, controls and directs. It is terrible spiritual limitation. There is life, yes, but not 'life abundantly'. Do you see what I mean? Their testimony is bound. There is still something of the grave, and that Letter to the Corinthians was written in the same spirit and with the same idea, intention and object as the Lord had when He said: "Loose him and let him go." Paul is striving to get these Corinthians loosed as Christians loosed, liberated, set free into the fullness of the life which they had.
LOOSING FROM TRADITION AND LEGALISM
We pass from Corinthians into Galatians, and no one who knows that Letter will dispute the statement that here you are in touch with the grave very truly. You know all that the Letter to the Galatians is about, and you know the two prominent words- Liberty -- "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage" (Galatians 4:1 -- A.V.) -- and sonship. Not servanthood, nor slavery, but sonship; the liberty of sons. They are the two great words of that Letter, but what are the grave bands there in Galatia? They are the grave bands of tradition, of legalism, and all such things. You know, dear friends, it is very easy to get tied up with these grave clothes! The persistent peril through the ages of Christianity is to crystallize itself into something set, something fixed. You have some light, some revelation, something of the immensity of truth, just a fragment of it, and it is not long before [116/117] you begin to form that into a set system and make it the limit, saying that this is what people must believe, they must come within this horizon, and they must behave like this. It becomes a system again: 'You must ... you must not!', and there is no difference between that and the Old Testament 'Thou shalt ... thou shalt not!' Christianity has fallen into that peril, and is continually doing it, circumscribing the great revelation, making Christ smaller than He is, crystallizing truth into something fixed and set: 'This is how ...', and the meaning of that is: 'This is the ultimate.'
Now you notice that when the Spirit did come, as we have the record in the Book of the Acts, the one thing that these old Jewish disciples experienced was a marvellous emancipation from that bondage of Judaism; and how the Holy Spirit was working all along against any fixed barriers! Peter will argue that he is a Jew, born, bred and died-in-the-wool, and that never has anything unclean entered his mouth, according to Leviticus chapter 11. All right, Peter. You are just putting your interpretation upon the Scriptures, and you are putting your limits upon what Christ has done by His Cross, and so he is told: "What God hath cleansed make not thou common" (Acts 10:15). The Holy Spirit reacted to Peter's traditionalism, legalism, limitation and bondage, and made him go and do what he would never have done otherwise. Again and again, right to his death, the words of the Lord Jesus to him, in the last chapter of this Gospel, were made good: "When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not" (John 21:18). That principle was being applied over Cornelius and his house, and Caesarea and the Gentiles. He was made to go whither he would not. He was saying: 'No, Lord', and the Lord was saying: 'Yes, Peter'. "Whither thou wouldest not" is heaven's reaction to this legalistic limitation, these grave clothes on an Apostle. And that was not the only battle that Peter had, but we will not stay with it.
Then John says that when the Lord Jesus said those words to Peter He was signifying "by what manner of death he should glorify God". Years afterwards Peter wrote: "Knowing that the putting off of my tabernacle cometh swiftly, even as our Lord Jesus Christ signified unto me" (2 Peter 1:14). We do not know the manner of his death, but tradition says that Peter was crucified. Only Jews could be crucified by Gentiles, for Gentiles dared not crucify one of their own. So Peter went that way, but because Paul had Roman citizenship they could not crucify him, so they beheaded him. Peter was selected for the same kind of death as His Lord's, and he knew it for he said: "As our Lord Jesus Christ signified unto me." He was girded by another and carried the way he would not choose to go, but the way of the Spirit is the way that goes against our limitations, our grave clothes, and takes us along ways of which we would never have thought. Indeed, our theology would not accept that way, our doctrine might be against it, our tradition would forbid it, but the Holy Spirit says: 'This is the way. Loose him, and let him go.' That is Galatians, is it not? I said that we need the Epistles to explain the Gospels, and just one verse in the Gospel by John contains all this!
LOOSING UNTO FULL SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE
I close with one other thing. Look into the Letter to the Ephesians, and you, having come through the loosing of the hands in Corinth, and the loosing of the feet in Galatia to walk in the Spirit and stand fast in liberty, now move to the head. In Ephesians Paul takes the napkin from the head and does it thoroughly. Ephesians has to do with the napkin around the head. What do we mean? Well, Paul hardly begins that Letter before he says: 'I bow my knees unto the Father of glory, that He would grant unto you Ephesian Christians that you should have the whole counsel of God given to you, to grant unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, Christ, that the eyes of your heart be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling, the riches of His inheritance in the saints, the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe.' 'That you may know ... the eyes of your heart being enlightened' -- there is the napkin off the head! This Letter to the Ephesians is a wonderful revelation as to the eyes of the heart being unveiled, unbound, as to the greatness of our calling and vocation, as to the immensity of that for which we have been brought into union with His Son. How great it is! Beyond all our grasping, dear friends. Believe me, it is no exaggeration, and Paul says: "that you may know ".
There is one little prefix missing in our translation which is the key to the whole thing. The Apostle says: 'That you may know ... that you may know', and in the New Testament we have that word given to us in part and in whole. It is not given to us in our translation, but it is just this: Knowing, in itself, is applied to our beginning [117/118] knowledge of the Lord. To quote John again: "And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ" (John 17:3). That is the entering into life, the receiving of divine life but when Paul speaks here about 'knowing', he is using a compound Greek word which we do not have in our translation. It is 'epignosis ', full knowledge. 'You know', he says to these Ephesians, 'that in the space of two years I ceased not to preach unto you the whole counsel of God.' They knew, and on that initial knowledge they had come to the Lord, but now he is praying, at the end of his life from his prison: 'that you may come unto full knowledge.' It is more than life; it is life abundant. It is more than seeing; it is seeing with a great range of divine purpose and meaning for our calling and our having life.
Will you tell me that all Christians are like that? Are there not many around whose heads there is a napkin, which obscures their spiritual vision, limits their spiritual sight, and narrows down the range of their comprehension of the great purpose of their calling? Real revelation, dear friends, is not just information. It is liberation. To see fully, and more fully, is to be released.
We have often said about this man Paul that there was nothing on earth or in hell, or in a combination of both, that would have changed the rabid, fanatical Pharisee into the greatest friend that ever Jesus Christ had except light from heaven. Nothing could have done it -- but light from heaven did it. The napkin was taken off and the man was set free to walk up and down in the greatness of Jesus Christ.
*****************************
May you have epignosis of Christ.
Agape,
Steve
I would highly recommend reading the entire piece (click on magazine title above to access). In my post today, I would like to focus on material leading up to the conclusion. I have reprinted the passages below. Before reading them, I would like to make a few comments, since what TAS says in the passages goes directly to the heart of many of the things that I have been writing over the past 6 months.
First off, it is important to note that there is a profound difference between a natural life and a spiritual life. The natural man cannot understand the things of the Spirit of God, and he cannot know them. This explains why arguing with otherwise learned men and women who do not believe in God is fruitless. They are not equipped to understand what you are saying. They do not have the Spirit planted in their hearts. Without the Spirit, one cannot understand God's Word.
Secondly, there are many Christians today that are in bondage to religious tradition and legalism. These are impediments to a spiritual life - a life of abundance (what I call "The Great Life"). TAS observes that Christianity has fallen into the same predicament (peril) as Judaism. Spiritual men and women must let go of tradition and legalism in order to be free in Christ. Until you let go, you cannot be free in Christ. It's that simple. The lives of Peter and Paul are wonderful examples of the awesome power associated with letting go of religious things (tradition and laws) to be completely entangled with the Spirit (Who is the fulfillment of the law).
The third comment is perhaps the most crucial of all. This comment concerns the great importance of having the eyes of our heart open so that we may have full knowledge - what the ancient Greeks called "Epignosis" - of Christ. As TAS states, possessing full spiritual knowledge of the Lord is akin to the process of having a blindfold removed from our eyes. All of the sudden, we can see - we can see Him! There is light! How great it is!
TAS discusses Paul's transformation. The religious Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus - a man steeped in tradition and legalism - was on the road to Damascus to round up followers of Christ (followers of "the Way"). Killing people in the name of God is a great (and tragic) tradition of religious men. Jesus, of course, had other plans for Saul. While riding, Saul was struck by an unknown force - a light. He heard the voice of the Lord. Poor Saul had no idea what was happening (see Acts, Chapter 9, for the details of that glorious event).
Not long after being blinded by the Lord's light, Saul's heart began to undergo a powerful transformation. Saul became Paul. The transformation took many years. Saul had let go of decades of religious tradition and legalism in order to fully embrace Christ. Love - His never-failing love - lit the way.
As TAS says in his article, the blindfold ("the napkin") was taken off and Saul of Tarsus was set free from religious tradition and legalism to walk up and down in the greatness of Jesus Christ. This is liberation! To see fully, and more fully, is to be released. We are free in Christ. The truth - Jesus Christ- set Saul free. It will do the same for you and me, but we must let loose and let go.
With these comments, let us now return to TAS' article. I hope you find the passages below as illuminating as I did this morning.
*******************
THE GRAVE TOUCH
Lazarus came forth and he had life, but at that moment when he came forth he was still in contact with the grave. There was still that about him which spoke of that sepulchre, and the limitations of that sepulchre. Again, what are these limitations? Well, we come over to the Epistles. I am not going right through them all, but I will give you just enough to indicate what is meant.
LOOSING FROM THE NATURAL LIFE
If you turn to the first Letter to the Corinthians, and have any knowledge of what is in that Letter, you will know what we mean by the grave touch still upon born-again Christians. Paul opens that Letter by addressing the Corinthians as "saints", which means those who are the Lord's, but as he writes on and on an awful situation is unfolded, is it not? They have life, but you cannot say that they have it abundantly. The grave clothes are on them, that is, the grave touch is still there, and in the first Letter to the Corinthians it is the grave touch of the limitations of the natural life. They are Christians, yes, but they are bound and limited by the ties of the natural life. That is the word which the Apostle uses specifically: "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God ... and he cannot know them" (1 Corinthians 2:14). That is limitation, is it not? You proceed into the Letter and you find that these people are behaving as worldly people behave. In their behaviour, their conduct, their procedure, they go on just exactly as do worldly people. Someone has done a wrong to another believer, and apparently that happened in more than one case at Corinth, and the result was that this believer against whom the wrong was done thought this was criminal and should be set right in the court of law in the world. So he hauled his fellow-believer before the judge in the worldly court to get his rights. That is exactly what the world does, and that is an instance of a whole handful of things that were going on at Corinth. Some were worse than that. 'There are divisions among you, and when there are divisions among you are ye not carnal?' Not spiritual, but carnal.
Well, gather up the whole of that Letter and it is a terrible story of those who are the Lord's and who have the life just behaving as other people do, living in the way that the world does. You find the women behaving as worldly women did in their dress, in their demeanour, in their behaviour, and even in the assembly. I do not want to pick out the women particularly, but I am indicating that there is the spirit of the world amongst believers in Corinth, and (read the Letter again in the light of this) that is keeping them still in this bondage, in this limitation of their spiritual life. It is grave clothes, and you are not surprised that at Corinth the world is not feeling the impact of their testimony, that the church at Corinth is not counting in the world, because the world has got into the church, and into its members individually. In this sense the grave clothes are still on them, by reason of the limitations which come upon the spiritual life when the natural takes charge and governs, controls and directs. It is terrible spiritual limitation. There is life, yes, but not 'life abundantly'. Do you see what I mean? Their testimony is bound. There is still something of the grave, and that Letter to the Corinthians was written in the same spirit and with the same idea, intention and object as the Lord had when He said: "Loose him and let him go." Paul is striving to get these Corinthians loosed as Christians loosed, liberated, set free into the fullness of the life which they had.
LOOSING FROM TRADITION AND LEGALISM
We pass from Corinthians into Galatians, and no one who knows that Letter will dispute the statement that here you are in touch with the grave very truly. You know all that the Letter to the Galatians is about, and you know the two prominent words- Liberty -- "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage" (Galatians 4:1 -- A.V.) -- and sonship. Not servanthood, nor slavery, but sonship; the liberty of sons. They are the two great words of that Letter, but what are the grave bands there in Galatia? They are the grave bands of tradition, of legalism, and all such things. You know, dear friends, it is very easy to get tied up with these grave clothes! The persistent peril through the ages of Christianity is to crystallize itself into something set, something fixed. You have some light, some revelation, something of the immensity of truth, just a fragment of it, and it is not long before [116/117] you begin to form that into a set system and make it the limit, saying that this is what people must believe, they must come within this horizon, and they must behave like this. It becomes a system again: 'You must ... you must not!', and there is no difference between that and the Old Testament 'Thou shalt ... thou shalt not!' Christianity has fallen into that peril, and is continually doing it, circumscribing the great revelation, making Christ smaller than He is, crystallizing truth into something fixed and set: 'This is how ...', and the meaning of that is: 'This is the ultimate.'
Now you notice that when the Spirit did come, as we have the record in the Book of the Acts, the one thing that these old Jewish disciples experienced was a marvellous emancipation from that bondage of Judaism; and how the Holy Spirit was working all along against any fixed barriers! Peter will argue that he is a Jew, born, bred and died-in-the-wool, and that never has anything unclean entered his mouth, according to Leviticus chapter 11. All right, Peter. You are just putting your interpretation upon the Scriptures, and you are putting your limits upon what Christ has done by His Cross, and so he is told: "What God hath cleansed make not thou common" (Acts 10:15). The Holy Spirit reacted to Peter's traditionalism, legalism, limitation and bondage, and made him go and do what he would never have done otherwise. Again and again, right to his death, the words of the Lord Jesus to him, in the last chapter of this Gospel, were made good: "When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not" (John 21:18). That principle was being applied over Cornelius and his house, and Caesarea and the Gentiles. He was made to go whither he would not. He was saying: 'No, Lord', and the Lord was saying: 'Yes, Peter'. "Whither thou wouldest not" is heaven's reaction to this legalistic limitation, these grave clothes on an Apostle. And that was not the only battle that Peter had, but we will not stay with it.
Then John says that when the Lord Jesus said those words to Peter He was signifying "by what manner of death he should glorify God". Years afterwards Peter wrote: "Knowing that the putting off of my tabernacle cometh swiftly, even as our Lord Jesus Christ signified unto me" (2 Peter 1:14). We do not know the manner of his death, but tradition says that Peter was crucified. Only Jews could be crucified by Gentiles, for Gentiles dared not crucify one of their own. So Peter went that way, but because Paul had Roman citizenship they could not crucify him, so they beheaded him. Peter was selected for the same kind of death as His Lord's, and he knew it for he said: "As our Lord Jesus Christ signified unto me." He was girded by another and carried the way he would not choose to go, but the way of the Spirit is the way that goes against our limitations, our grave clothes, and takes us along ways of which we would never have thought. Indeed, our theology would not accept that way, our doctrine might be against it, our tradition would forbid it, but the Holy Spirit says: 'This is the way. Loose him, and let him go.' That is Galatians, is it not? I said that we need the Epistles to explain the Gospels, and just one verse in the Gospel by John contains all this!
LOOSING UNTO FULL SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE
I close with one other thing. Look into the Letter to the Ephesians, and you, having come through the loosing of the hands in Corinth, and the loosing of the feet in Galatia to walk in the Spirit and stand fast in liberty, now move to the head. In Ephesians Paul takes the napkin from the head and does it thoroughly. Ephesians has to do with the napkin around the head. What do we mean? Well, Paul hardly begins that Letter before he says: 'I bow my knees unto the Father of glory, that He would grant unto you Ephesian Christians that you should have the whole counsel of God given to you, to grant unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, Christ, that the eyes of your heart be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling, the riches of His inheritance in the saints, the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe.' 'That you may know ... the eyes of your heart being enlightened' -- there is the napkin off the head! This Letter to the Ephesians is a wonderful revelation as to the eyes of the heart being unveiled, unbound, as to the greatness of our calling and vocation, as to the immensity of that for which we have been brought into union with His Son. How great it is! Beyond all our grasping, dear friends. Believe me, it is no exaggeration, and Paul says: "that you may know ".
There is one little prefix missing in our translation which is the key to the whole thing. The Apostle says: 'That you may know ... that you may know', and in the New Testament we have that word given to us in part and in whole. It is not given to us in our translation, but it is just this: Knowing, in itself, is applied to our beginning [117/118] knowledge of the Lord. To quote John again: "And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ" (John 17:3). That is the entering into life, the receiving of divine life but when Paul speaks here about 'knowing', he is using a compound Greek word which we do not have in our translation. It is 'epignosis ', full knowledge. 'You know', he says to these Ephesians, 'that in the space of two years I ceased not to preach unto you the whole counsel of God.' They knew, and on that initial knowledge they had come to the Lord, but now he is praying, at the end of his life from his prison: 'that you may come unto full knowledge.' It is more than life; it is life abundant. It is more than seeing; it is seeing with a great range of divine purpose and meaning for our calling and our having life.
Will you tell me that all Christians are like that? Are there not many around whose heads there is a napkin, which obscures their spiritual vision, limits their spiritual sight, and narrows down the range of their comprehension of the great purpose of their calling? Real revelation, dear friends, is not just information. It is liberation. To see fully, and more fully, is to be released.
We have often said about this man Paul that there was nothing on earth or in hell, or in a combination of both, that would have changed the rabid, fanatical Pharisee into the greatest friend that ever Jesus Christ had except light from heaven. Nothing could have done it -- but light from heaven did it. The napkin was taken off and the man was set free to walk up and down in the greatness of Jesus Christ.
*****************************
May you have epignosis of Christ.
Agape,
Steve
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