Christ the only channel of blessing to man.
If the heart of God is the native fountain of redeeming love, Christ is its only channel, as the Holy Ghost is its only power. We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. For our joy in God—which is the highest that can ever be attained or enjoyed even throughout eternity—with all the unspeakable blessings enumerated from the first to the eleventh verse, we are debtors to Jesus. Oh, how this should bind our hearts to Him in unreserved, undivided devotedness! Oh! what can I do for Him who has done so much for me? should be the natural cry of every saved soul.
How dreadful the thought that we can forget our Savior and Lord; that we can object to do His will; that we can leave His presence, and do our own; that we can shut Him out, and entertain His enemies; that we can take the most serious and important step in life in direct opposition to His revealed word. Nevertheless He loves on, loves on. What a mercy, His love, though slighted, is not weakened, is not turned away from us! He knew from the beginning what we would be. At the same time we must not forget that He is our Lord as well as our Savior, and that He will take His own time and way to bring us back, but that may be with a humiliation that will cleave to us through life.
May the Lord enable every believer who reads these pages to realize his position as one with Christ in resurrection. There could be no link between a sinless Christ and sinful flesh; but there is a real union between the Christian and the risen Christ. In a new life, by the Holy Ghost, he is united to Him who is in the presence of God for us; and we are in Him, and as He is in heavenly places. Christ’s death writes death on the old man; all are dead. “ If one died for all, then were all dead.” Obviously the moral history of man closes here. But the believer has the privilege of knowing that he not only died in Christ’s death, but that he rose again in His resurrection. “ Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.” Rom. 6:6; Gal. 5:24.
This is the true and only principle of christian life and christian position; dead to the world, and alive unto God in Christ. And being thus united to Christ in heaven, this life must be one with Him, and its true character will be displayed by living to Him before men. Seeing, then, that this is the Christian’s position, can he have one single principle in common with the world? Not one. He is one with Christ, and as He is before God, therefore he ought to be the living display of what Christ is here in this world before men. “I am crucified with Christ,” said Paul; “nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Gal. 2:20.
Here we may close our papers on the history of the first and the Second man. God has been fully revealed. Where? In Christ; in His life, and in His death. He was a true witness for God in grace. He might wither the self-righteous Pharisee with His rebuke, who was only adding the sin of hypocrisy to his other sins; but to the penitent at His feet He was all grace, nothing but grace and love. God’s righteous wrath against sin was fully expressed on the cross; there the believer sees the burning wrath of God against his sin spent on the holy Sufferer; so that the judgment of God against sin, which we naturally fear and dread, has become our salvation. He put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. The Savior died, having borne the judgment, is risen again, and stands in living righteousness before God. The first man had no righteousness for God, but Christ is of God, made righteousness unto all who believe.
the reign of grace.
This is the new order of things, and the summing up of the great principles and ways of God’s dealings with man through Christ, the last Adam. God is righteous, and God is gracious, therefore grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord. Where sin abounded, grace much more abounds. Now the sinner knows what the God is with whom he has to do. What a mercy! Look, my fellow-sinner, at the reception of the prodigal son, and see what God is. And follow the footsteps of Him who is the revelation and testimony of God to man. Whenever there is reality before Him, no mere pretense to be something that is good, but true humility, a loathing of self, He takes the place of perfect grace, and lavishes the full blessings of His love on the penitent soul, without ever uttering one upbraiding word. This is God—God in Christ to every penitent sinner, though he may be the vilest of the human race—a robber, an outcast, or one who was covered with the darkest sin of woman; yet she may find a refuge in that heart—which only loves—from the cruel rage of her fellow-sinners. And another, whom the Pharisee would not have touched with his staff, draws forth, in sweetest tenderness, a plenary pardon, salvation and peace with God. His lips dropped words of grace, as sweet-smelling myrrh, in the presence of the chiefs of Israel. There divine love found its repast, not on the lordly dish of the Pharisee, but in the broken heart that lay bleeding at His feet; and she carries off the noblest prize of infinite love, while the self-righteous Pharisee, who had no appreciation for the lowly Jesus, is left to wither under the blighting curse of divine righteousness.
Learn then, Ο my fellow-sinner, from these lovely scenes how to meet God. Meet Him thou must; but how? On the ground of grace or righteousness? This meeting, remember, cannot be avoided. We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ. Now is the time to come to Him—to come as a penitent, as that woman did—and all, all, is well. There thou seest the heart of God bowed down in loveliest grace to meet her every need. And we may be bold, yet free to say, that the heart of Jesus was never more gladdened in this world, and He will be equally gladdened to meet all thy need on the same plea—as a sinner, melted, broken down, at His feet. Grace has no respect of persons, as thou seest, but thou must come to Him by faith, There is no salvation but through faith in Him. In His death there is the full answer to thy whole condition as a man and a sinner; in resurrection He has taken His place in the power of a new life; and thus He is the Head of a new race which belong to Him by faith, righteous in Him, as we were sinners in the first Adam.
But, oh! forget not, again, I pray thee, that outside of this heaven-born race, through faith in Jesus Christ, is no salvation. All, all, is lost—lost forever, and lost within arm’s-length of the gates of heaven. Thou art bound to believe the result of thine own history, as summed up in the death of Christ; and thou art equally bound to believe that there, through His death and resurrection, a new life only is to be found. Do, then, I beseech thee, come to Jesus. He is disappointed at the slowness of man’s heart to believe. Hear His own touching complaint: “ Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.” Better far, my friend, spend thy eternity with Jesus and all His ransomed ones, within the golden gates of everlasting glory, than be shut within the gloomy gates of hell, in the dark and murky regions of everlasting woe. It must be in the one place or the other; there is no middle place. Oh! break with the world; decide for Christ; give thy heart to Him, so shall thy blessing be great in this life, and as age after age rolls on, unfolding the ever increasing wonders of redeeming love, and the ever-deepening mysteries of that precious blood which lusters the throne of God, so shall thy blessing continue to abound throughout a glorious eternity.