T. Austin-Sparks Quotes

The quotes of T. Austin-Sparks below are from a variety of articles he wrote throughout his life. The line below each quote is the name of the article it came from.

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All that the Lord Jesus taught and did is vindicated by the Holy Spirit inworking into the life of the believer the victory of that resurrection life of the Lord Jesus.

The Abiding Meaning of Pentecost

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The New Testament brings the Lamb of God into view and calls for beholding. That word means more than 'take a look', 'glance your eyes toward Him'. It means, 'fasten your gaze upon Him.'

Beholding

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For us there is but one definite and conclusive explanation of the universe, and that explanation is a Person - the Lord Jesus Christ, with all that is eternally related to Him.

Christ - All, And In All

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Sin is the dethroning of God from His true place: righteousness is the bringing of God back into His place. That is what the cross has done.

The Coming of the Crowning Day

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Nine-tenths of the trouble with both the individual child of God and the fellowship (or arrested fellowship) of the Lord's people is traceable to the workings of the unrenewed mind in which there is carnality still or the mind unguarded becoming the playground of "The prince of the power of the air."

The Cross and the Deliverance of the Mind

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It does not require a great deal of intelligence in order to recognise that, throughout the history of God's work, the master-stroke of the great perverter has been confusion.

The Danger of Coming Short

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The very heart of suffering, the very heart of co-heirship with Christ, is this wonderful sense of inward relationship to the object in view, inward relationship to the inheritance, inward relationship to the result, the reward. And that is the explanation of suffering, of labour, of conflict.

The Eternal Reward of Labour and Suffering

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There are sufferings which are peculiarly and most deeply the lot of those who have paid a great price in their abandonment to a Divinely given vision and purpose. The pain of this kind of trial was, and is, suffered most in secret.

"The Fellowship of His Sufferings"

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The Lord's glory and honour are expressed in perennial youth, but the new generation cannot succeed just because of youth, any more than it can be officially appointed; it must take up the succession in an inward way, and that means by spirituality.

God Needs Gideons

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"...the greatest need of the times is a movement of God to bring His people to know the fullness of Christ!"

The Greatest Need of the Times

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GOD had broken into this world in the Person of His Son, the Lord Jesus. He had intervened in the course of the history of this world with one main intention—to assert the fact of His rights, to bring in His prerogatives in this world; these had been disputed, challenged and refused.

The Heavens Do Rule

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In the New Testament, not only in statements but in many ways, experience has a very high place indeed in the work of God and is of very great importance and value in God's sight. Experience really is the quality or essence of stature, of maturity.

The Importance and Value of Experience

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And when the Lord brought again out of captivity a people, be they but a small people, a despised and weakened people, nevertheless, a people whose heart was set upon His satisfaction, the Lord had something that gave Him joy, and turned His sorrow away.

The Joy of the Lord is Your Strength

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The Lord may know of a day not far away when that will spread and all those things which are the externals of Christianity, upon which Christians depend, will be swept away and no longer available. We’ve had a little touch of it in our lifetime, many Christians have in this very country, and it could be very much more so and very quickly, that crisis may be looming upon the near horizon.

Let Us Go On

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One thing is particularly and jealously guarded by God in the case of the earthly life of the Lord Jesus. It is this, that whatever Christ was it was spiritual; there was nothing from cradle to grave which made Him anything naturally or temporally.

The Meaning of Christ

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The Jews of Paul's day were totally incapable of believing that a man could separate himself from their tradition and, at the same time, be devoted to their wellbeing.

The Need For Positive Ground

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It is a perfectly obvious fact that wherever the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ has been most faithfully preached and presented - while bringing hope and new life to many - it has almost invariably been the cause of trouble.

The Offence of the Cross

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When principles are contravened He cannot stand by the people concerned. Sooner or later it will be manifested that, while the Lord loves the people, He cannot support the wrong principles which are governing their lives.

The Peril of Divided Loyalties

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The heavens do rule now by grace. It is grace that governs the Throne. The power of God in this age is grace. I hope the day never comes when I stand before that Throne and know any other power than grace. The covenant in grace is the covenant in His blood, and we need never know the awfulness of divine power but may know the beauty of divine power - the love of God.

The Rainbow

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What is the mystery of Christ? The mystery of Christ is God veiled in this Representative. Here is God in representation, but how many saw Him? ''He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.'' But I think that word ''seen'' means something very much more than just looking upon Him as a man. Peter said, ''Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." And He said, ''Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father Who is in heaven'' (Matt 16:13-17). That is what it means to see; it is by revelation. It is that which is the mystery. The fact is there, the true representation or representative of God in person, yet unrecognized, unseen.

Seeing Christ by Revelation

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So remember that, and if sometimes it seems too big for you, just say: That is a very good thing; I would not have it as small as I am; there needs to be something very big to get me anywhere! For the bigger it is, the mightier is the dynamic and the motive for the Christian life.

A Talk to Young Christians on the Nature of the Christian Life

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In the Body of Christ the Holy Spirit is the great nervous system, and only as there is an immediate response to every intimation of the will of the Head, and the life unbrokenly in correspondence with His mind, can there be an expression of the unity of which the New Testament speaks.

The Unity of the Spirit

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"... my disturbing fear is that there will be a movement, or some movements, toward the formation of another undenominational or interdenominational denomination, this coming about also by policy, expediency, or seeming necessity. Such a movement would only be another tragedy and incipient sectarian calamity, which history would show to have been not of God but of man, although with the best of motives. May the Lord save from this so serious mistake!

"A Very Deep Concern..."

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We must remember that the Holy Spirit can never have free course in us and through us if we harbour unloving thoughts concerning other of God's children, let alone put those thoughts into actions. He is the Spirit of fellowship, so that if we fail in that realm then we fail in the matter of love.

The Well Within

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When Jesus said: "Ye are my friends", He was going beyond 'Ye are My disciples' and 'Ye are My followers'. He could have called them by many other names, but when He said: "Ye are my friends" He went beyond anything else. And I think that the Lord Jesus found the most complete satisfaction of His heart in this word. To say "Ye are my friends" was as far as anybody could possibly go. Really, there is nothing beyond it. You reach the end of all relationships when you really come to friendship. How rich and how precious, then, is this title!

"Ye Are My Friends"