Page 16 - The Road from Babylon to Zion

Zion, however, is not seeking to build anything of her own will and initiative. Zion is
a people of faith. Zion knows that salvation is of the Lord, as is sanctification, and as
is glorification. Zion does not labor to build a city, for she seeks a city not built with
hands whose builder and maker is not man, but God. Zion does not seek to work for
the approval of Yahweh, she works because she is approved by Yahweh.

Zion is a city of rest. This does not mean that those who are of Zion are doing nothing,
it means that they are doing nothing of their own initiative. They are doing those
works that God prepared beforehand for them. They are not dreaming up their own
works, nor are they stretching out their hands to labor in fields to which they have not
been sent. Austin Sparks made this very enlightening comment:

Thus it was that we were turned in that dark hour to Romans chapter
six, and, almost as though He spoke in audible language, the Lord said:
‘When I died, you died. When I went to the Cross I not only took your
sins, but I took you. When I took you, I not only took you as the sinner
that you might regard yourself to be, but I took you as being all that you
are by nature; your good (?) as your bad; your abilities as well as your
disabilities; yes, every resource of yours. I took you as a "worker", a
"preacher", an organizer! My Cross means that not even for Me can you
be or do anything out from yourself, but if there is to be anything at all
it must be out from Me, and that means a life of absolute dependence
and faith.’
At this point, therefore, we awoke to the fundamental principle of our
Lord's own life while here, and it became the law of everything for us
from that time. That principle was: "nothing of (out from) Himself", but
"all things of (out from) God".
The Son can do nothing of (out from) Himself, but what He seeth the
Father doing: for what things soever He doeth, then the Son also doeth
in like manner' (John 5:19).
"I can of Myself do nothing: as I hear I judge" (John 5:30).
"My teaching is not Mine, but His that sent Me" (John 7:16).

We saw that this explains so many strange and - naturally - perplexing
things in His behavior: acting and refusing to act; going and refusing to
go; speaking and refusing to speak. Later, we came to see that this is the
whole meaning of life in the Spirit, and that it is an altogether different
life from the natural ways of men, even of Christian men. At the time of
this seeing, it was a matter of this law becoming basic, absolute, and
ultimate, and it was something totally different from what had been in all
our ideas and activities in Christian life and work.

Yes, those who are of Zion are to be emptied of self, both that which they consider bad