GOD COMPLETING HIS WORK IN BELIEVERS

D. Spinks

Philippians 1: 6; 1 Corinthians 15: 42–50

I have a simple impression, dear brethren, that the work that God begins He will complete.

God has worked in the soul of every believer to bring out something that will be for His glory and pleasure. I think it is a wonderful thing to see that God works in the first order of man to bring about another order of man that is wholly suitable to Himself. It shows the greatness and glory of who God is, that He has worked in love to bring that which was far away from Him to be near to Him and made suitable to Him. What we are naturally is of the dust, that is what we are born into. But God brings about what is heavenly—a totally different character of man altogether. The work that He begins in each soul He will complete, he never leaves anything incomplete.

So we can take courage, each one in whom there is a work of God, that He will complete it to His own glory; there is that which will be brought into conformity to the heavenly Man. It is a wonderful thing that God can take a natural creature such as you or me and He can sow a seed there and bring about something in that soul so that it comes to feel a need for a Saviour.

God works in new birth to bring about in the soul the feeling of need for a Saviour. The soul feels that it is away from God, that it is a sinner. That is new birth; it is the beginning of the work of God. And then the soul comes to know the Saviour, comes to know Jesus. It is a wonderful moment in a person’s life when he realises that there is a Man in heaven who has died for him and who has set him free from what he is according to nature, what he is according to flesh and in bondage to sin.

That is God’s work, and I feel encouraged that that work is continuing. Each of us needs to see it and lay hold of it, because it is very evident that the work of God stands out in this present age, in the world of corruption and sin and lawlessness and wickedness. That is really the first order of man, but God is bringing out, in a world of corruption and sin, another order of man related to that heavenly Man and taking character from Him. So that when the believer is taken from this scene to be with the Lord Jesus for ever, he will go to his home. He will not be uncomfortable there. He will be in the condition that God meant him to be in. It is a wonderful thing to see and to relate ourselves to the work of God in us.

So I just read these scriptures to show the greatness of the work of God. We are all born of flesh and blood, and subject to death, “For dust thou art; and unto dust shalt thou return”, Genesis 3: 19. But what God is forming now is of a different character of man. It says here,

“Thus also is the resurrection of the dead”. That is the nature of the relationship which the believer has with the Lord Jesus because it is only as knowing that blessed One in that condition that we can relate ourselves to the heavenly Man. The Lord is no longer in this scene. He showed the characteristics of a Man who came from heaven when He was here on this earth, and men took account of them. They could see Jesus as he walked here in this scene and they saw that He was a different character of man from every other man who walked here. But He has gone into death and He has removed that first order of man. It says in Hebrews that He takes away the first that He might establish the second. The second man is of the order of man that is suitable to God and shall be eternally. That is what He is forming in every believer who has the Spirit at the present time.

I think that that is a great encouragement to be in relation to what God is doing, because I feel for myself that it is very easy to be in relation to what I am doing, what is of nature and what is of this world. What is of this world is going to come to an end, but what is of God will go through and will shine in all its glory because it is going to be of the character of Christ. Is that not an encouragement? I believe that it is an encouragement to every one of us—what God is forming in you and me, poor weak feeble creatures according to flesh, but He is forming characteristics of a Man who is able to stand in God’s presence suitably because He is a different character of man altogether. That can only be God’s work, it is only through the grace of God that He has come to meet us and bring us into this area where we know Christ as our Saviour and come into the enjoyment of all that God has in His heart for us.

I think that a person who knows about God’s work would know something about being in relation to God’s purposes, because His purposes relate to what is eternal and are beyond this sphere altogether. So it says that “It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruptibility”. I cannot say much about these things, but it affects me, the wonder of what God can do in a creature man, that He is going to bring about a state that is suitable in every soul who will be in heaven—that is a wonderful thing. “It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body—if there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one. Thus also it is written, the first man Adam became a living soul; the last Adam a quickening spirit”. The last Adam a quickening Spirit is Christ. The quickening is the life that Christ would impart to the believer from where He is in heaven. So the believer who seeks and finds his life in relation to another Man in another world would be conformed to that heavenly Man. He would become characteristically like that One who is in heaven. That is what God desires from us here. The believer here who is in relation to another Man would not regard this world as his home. Sometimes we sing, ‘Yon heaven is our home’ (Hymn 7). That should be the objective of every believer who has their faith and trust in Christ. “But that which is spiritual was not first, but that which is natural, then that which is spiritual”. You might say that God could easily have brought in that which was spiritual, but He brought in a natural man. One application is that it shows the greatness of what God can do with a man. He can turn a man who is naturally in weakness into a man who is pleasurable to Himself, who is in suitability to be in His presence. A spiritual person would be suitable to be in God’s presence. Unless God works in us, we who are of flesh and blood in weakness and of a sinful nature can have no part in God’s presence, before a holy and righteous and sin-hating God. But what God sees in a spiritual person is pleasurable to Him; it gives Him pleasure and satisfaction. God can only have satisfaction in His own work. It is very encouraging to see that what God is forming today is for His own satisfaction and pleasure—and also for our blessing.

“Such as he made of dust, such also those made of dust; and such as the heavenly one, such also the heavenly ones”. So these features are to be characteristic of us—the heavenly one is the Man in heaven. That is where Christ is today. But there are the heavenly ones—that is the characteristic feature of every believer who has his life and soul and finds his energy and objective in Christ. So that we should come out in features like Christ, features which He showed when He was here as a Man. Think of Him being subject to His Father’s will. I think that a believer here who is leading his life in relation to Christ, finding his life in Christ, would be a subject person. He would not be going on seeking to do his own will and doing his own thing; he would be subject to the Man in heaven. We would see the features of a heavenly person coming out in this way—he would be subject to the Man in heaven. He has another Head and another Object, and so he has come under the authority of another Man.

We are no longer under our own authority—we may like to think that—but the believer is to be under the authority of another Man. So it says, “And as we have borne the image of the one made of dust, we shall bear also the image of the heavenly one”. What an objective the believer has! As we have borne the image of the one made of dust, we shall bear the image of that blessed glorious Man, the One in whom God has found His delight, the One whom God has raised from among the dead, the One whom God has set down at His right hand in glory.

Every believer in whom God has begun a work—He shall complete it. His complete work I believe is that we shall bear the image of that blessed Man. We shall come out and we shall be like Him and we shall be with Him in glory. That is a wonderful thing. So it goes on to say that “But this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit God’s kingdom, nor does corruption inherit incorruptibility”. What we are as flesh and blood in the present day, in the scene in which we find ourselves, cannot enter in to these wonderful things which are open to us in the power of the Spirit. What we are according to the first order of man has to be put out of sight. We have to apply the death of Christ to that matter. Another Man in another world becomes the object for the believer. It was a simple impression that I had that we might see the work of God and how it is to be complete in every one of us. May we be encouraged, for His name’s sake.

Word in meeting for ministry, Grangemouth
4 September 2001