I could not be where He was, for He was there just that I might never be there, bearing the wrath of God and drinking that cup of suffering of which, if I had tasted the least drop, it would have been everlasting death. Well, I see the Lord coming down to this place of my deepest misery, and now the power of God comes in there. He has taken my place in grace. Where sin had brought me, grace had brought Him There into that place of death and wrath He came, and now I see power coming in.
Atonement has been made; and where He perfectly glorified God, the power of God comes in and sets Him at His own right hand in heaven. So that I do not merely get God glorified in the cross of Christ, but I see the power of God coming in and taking that very Christ when He was down in the depths of death and setting Him at His own right hand in heaven. Here then I have found a positive, actual deliverance, and so truly was this the case that Christ can celebrate the name of God in association with others. “I will declare thy name unto my brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.” He can celebrate that name, knowing it after all which He Himself has gone through for us, bringing Him into the presence of God His Father in all the full blessedness of the light of His countenance, after He had taken all the full weight of sin upon Him But power had come in, as is said in Psa. 16, “Thou wilt not suffer thine Holy One to see corruption; and He did not see corruption. True, He had there to say, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” but even He trusts Himself to God His Father, and God puts His seal upon Him by raising Him from the dead. There I get in the resurrection of Christ the coming in of divine power in the very place where we were lying in ruin and helplessness, and where Christ was in grace for us, and it takes Him entirely out of it. Now I have got the man Christ Jesus in heaven after atonement has been made, and after the question of sin has been settled in virtue of His having God about it. I get Him in the place of. power as the object of God's counsels. For it is in Christ that all things are to be gathered together in one, and even now God has set Him Head over all things to the Church.
The whole question of sin is thus settled in the resurrection of Christ. “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins But now is Christ risen from the dead;” and we are not in our sins. There I find the heavenly man, that has been down here and borne my sins, in power of resurrection in the presence of God. He is “the Lord from heaven” too. Mark this. Afterward the apostle says in Ephesians that that very same power that wrought in Christ, when God raised Him from the dead, is exercised in. every one that believes. He desires that they may know “what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.” Exactly the same power that wrought when God took Christ from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand, has already wrought in you that believe, and you have got a place with Him there; and, therefore, “As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy, and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.” We are in Christ in God's presence; and now I get not desires only, but the answer to them. I have not merely a new nature, but I have got what the new nature wants, because I have got Christ. I have got not merely cravings after something, but the thing I crave. I want righteousness and holiness, and that is what I have got, because I am in Christ. I want to be without fear in the presence of God, and I am in it, because I am in Christ. I have got now, in a word, full salvation—not merely a new nature, but salvation.
God has come down to me and He has saved me. He has come and by His own power has taken me out of the place in which I was lying, in misery and helplessness, in the first Adam, and has put me in the place of the last Adam, before Himself, without a sin upon me—all sin put away, because all was judged in the person of Christ. Such is the condition into which Christ has thus brought us. After the fall of the first man, after the thorough trial of man as man—tried without law—tried under law, then God comes in with perfect grace and sends His well-beloved Son. So to speak, He says that is the last thing I can try man by; but when they saw Him they said, “This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours.” Man as the first man has been perfectly tried, and has been found wanting. No means can mend him. But what do I find in Christ? He has taken the place of the first Adam down here for us. He has died in it, and there is a total end of the whole state for those that believe. Now I reckon myself dead to sin, because Christ has died. He was treated as being in that place, and He died, and the whole thing is ended—ended for me, under judgment of another's bearing. As a believer I shall still feel the workings of the old nature and have to judge it; but I see Christ taking it for me and judgment executed upon it in His person on the cross, and now He is out of it all, alive again for evermore. That life is wholly gone in which He laid it down, and the old nature to which sin and judgment applied is gone—just as a man who may be in prison, awaiting there the punishment of his crime, and he dies: the life to which the punishment is attached is gone. It is impossible that there can be any longer a question of punishment for the sin: the life is gone to which the sin and its punishment attached. Just so was it with Christ. And therefore the apostle always addresses the believer as dead to sin. “You are dead,” he says to him; “you are not a living man at all.” “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord."
It is never said in Scripture that we are to die to sin, for if that were said, it would be ourselves that would die, and that would be an end of us altogether. But what is stated in Scripture is, that we are dead to sin, through Jesus Christ. Now that Christ has died unto sin once for me, let me reckon myself to be dead to sin, but alive unto God, through Jesus Christ. This is what I get as the principle of the Christian's place:—that while as a fact he is alive, yet as Christ has died, the very nature that God dealt with, as to the question of sin, in the first Adam, is done with, and now a power has come in that has made me alive with Christ. The very nature that had to be dealt with is looked at as a judged and dead thing, and I am brought into the position of Christ, as risen and in the presence of God. When we sit with, Him, we shall be like Him; but as to our real condition before God, even now we are sitting in heavenly places in Christ. Divine love has reached down to the place of sin and death in which we were, and divine righteousness has taken us up and set us in the place of light, where Christ is; for there is no middle place. If I know what sin is, I see that it deserves condemnation. It would not be mercy to leave the sin alone, and pass it by. It must be put away; but how? It must be put away by death, because its merits are condemnation.
(To be continued.)