In the three articles which preceded this, we have looked at that which the Holy Ghost teaches us, in Scripture, as to the provision, made by God, for meeting all the evil of our old former selves; of ourselves looked at-in fallen nature, and according to our descent from Adam. In Christ there was Life, and Christ's work was such, that by it God could meet (meet and set aside) all the consequences of that which He finds to be in us by nature. Crucified together with Christ; dead together with Christ; buried together with Christ, are three most precious benefits to us of the humiliation of the Lord. What an epitaph, worthy for the God of all grace to put over Saul the persecutor, and such like, when, through grace, they believe, " Crucified, dead and buried together with Christ." Other remedy, other refuge was, is, can there be none for a lost son or daughter of Adam than is here presented. But God thought not to meet us in our evil only, and to deliver us from its awful consequences and results;—the love that looked upon us when we were in our sins (and when we were children of wrath looked upon us and thought to interpose between us and the fruits of our sins, by the work of Christ), that love had a length and a breadth about it which could not measure itself out fully in the limits of our misery,—but having loved us, in spite of what we were, and fully met all the evil at its own cost, that love has taken an arena for itself which is vast enough for it to show its full measure in. The Son of God associated Himself, as Son of Man, with all the circumstances of our misery, was put to shame in our stead upon the cross; died in our stead thereon and was buried. This was His downward path; obedient unto death, the death of the cross. "He died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and—He was buried" (1 Cor. 15:3,4). But He also "rose again from the dead," etc., and, as we shall see, has associated us with Him in all the stages of His upward course of honor and blessing. He, associating Himself with us, had to suffer for us: He, associating us with Himself, in that which followed His suffering for us (as substituted for us),—how rich are the blessings which are ours in Him! These we will now turn to consider.
1.-Quickened Together With Christ.
But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ" (Eph. 2:4,5).
" And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, path he quickened together with Christ" (Col. 2.13).
Observe, first, what we were, as set forth in these two contexts. Dead in trespasses and sins; -having walked in time past according to the course of this world,—which is characterized thus; as being according to the prince of the power of the air,-the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience,—among whom also we all had our conversation in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. Observe it. Death in trespasses and: sins; a walk according to the age of this world (at enmity with God and the Father); an age energized by Satan, whose sway is over rebels; the habitual bearing characterized by lusts of the flesh, desires of the flesh and of the mind; children of wrath:—these were our spots where grace found us, if we can credit Paul's letter to the Ephesians. And the picture is not more favorably drawn when he writes to the Colossians, whether Jew or Gentile be looked at. But, where no answer could be 'found in such a state of things, when it was looked at in r the presence of God,—there God showed an answer in. Himself: He was rich in mercy and in power too. If ' the object which He looked upon was the very contrast of all that He loved and delighted in in Christ Jesus, He could yet show compassion and mercy,—mercy and compassion—to what was in contrast with Himself and with His own moral beauty as expressed in Christ Jesus. He could save the sinner; yet, in the very act which justified Him in doing so, He would give the perfect expression of His own power, and of His mercy toward the sinner, and yet of His hatred against the sin. His Son, His only begotten Son, as Son of Man, should take the place penally due to the sinner, and bear the perfect judgment due to sin in His own body on the tree. Substituted for the sinner,—He (the just one in place and instead of the many unjust) bore sin in His own body on the tree. His doing so was the expression of His perfect sympathy with the divine and heavenly counsel of His Father's mercy,—He became obedient unto death, the death of the cross. The judgment is Past; gone right through by Him, all alone—all that God thought, felt, knew, to be due to sin in His presence. He who passed through those sorrows (which were justly ' due to us, but would have sunk us into hell for eternity), is now alive again. For, if Divine justice perfectly expressed its bearings against me and my sin and sinfulness when Christ stood to be judged in my stead, -Divine justice had also to express itself, if it would be clear, as to both the personal and the essential glory of Him who could do such a work—God raised Him up from the dead and gave Him glory, that our faith and hope might be in God. He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and 'dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come; and hath put all things under His feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all (Eph. 1.20—-23); God hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 11.9-11).
The head of all principality and power (Col. 2.10). Yes, so it is: He who was the Man of sorrows is now seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high, crowned with honor and glory; and, as Lord of all and appointed Judge of quick and dead, He knows how to call a poor sinner, a Saul of Tarsus, or, a John of Bedford, and to set before him and in him the contrast between-
So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many: and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation.
He knows, right well, how to set His own wondrous death and sufferings before the soul of a poor sinner who deserves eternal judgment, and, Himself the appointed judge to point out how grace provided Himself as a victim, that whosoever believeth might, accepting the judgment He bore to have been in place of their own, escape the judgment themselves. And what will the poor sinner say? Is God indeed willing to reckon that the Judge has borne the prisoner's penalty; is He, the Judge, waiting, as in an acceptable time, to see what effect such a message has upon the wretched lost one's heart? O the news is but too good! though, blessed be his name I not more good than true. It is finished! I bow to the blessed word of God's grace, through Christ, proclaimed to the chiefest of sinners. Through grace it has reached me; through grace it has bowed down my soul. Be it so: let God be just and the justifier of me a sinner. Let Him have the honor of having reckoned all my sins to Jesus; let Him have the glory of having found the way, through that Son, of reckoning me crucified together with Him, dead together with Him, buried together with Him. God thus sets honor upon the work of His Son, done for us: the work by which He meets and through which He moves out of the way all that belonged to us as in fallen human nature.
The work of Christ while upon earth was for us,-and is reckoned to us. He, the Son of Man, the Lamb of God was crucified, died and was buried. God reckons that the all that a Saul of Tarsus, a John of Bedford, and such like, had and were, meets its answer in the crucifixion, death and burial of the Lord Jesus; that is, when they, chiefest of sinners, come to believe. Yet it is reckoned so. But those parts of the blessing which follow are not merely reckoned, but have a real, essential portion in them. Quickened together with Christ, is more than what is reckoned merely. Christ, in all His perfectness, was crucified, died and was buried. God reckons to me in all my imperfectness and positive evil, the full benefit of this. He, Christ, the Just One, endured all that, according to God's good pleasure, for and instead of me, an unjust one. God so far counts it to me, that it is His epitaph for me, according to what I was. But this epitaph, or inscription on the tomb and final resting-place of the old man in me, is still a perfect Christ,—perfect though He bear (display of His perfectness) the marks of the judgment which He received once for me. He, in the richest grace, was stigmatized in my stead. Yet the I, that deserved to be stigmatized of God, am not actually in Him. What God reckons, faith reckons also; and so, reckoning ourselves to be penally dead to sin, we reckon that we have ceased from (and not only have to cease from), acting in sin. Now in some sense there is a contrast to this in what follows; for "LIFE " is a very positive, actual thing. And life is not merely reckoned to us, but has been absolutely given to us that believe and is positively possessed in Christ, and enjoyed by us in ourselves. A clear view of this difference is important. Let us pause upon it for a moment.
To Christ all that was due to us, as sinners, has been reckoned; and He has borne the punishment of it, and still retains the marks of the judgment so borne. Now just as we see on the walls of chapels and churches, some- times' a tablet erected in memory of some one that fell in a foreign land, and whose body still rests in that foreign land; even so, in one point of view, may the tokens of the passion which still remain, and may be seen by faith in the person of the Lord, be looked at. My wicked self is not in Him. The memory of all my guilt, all that God had against me, did once find its final resting-place in the person of Christ when He drank the cup of wrath upon the cross. And when I now, by faith, look up to Him, I see in Him the record, the remembrances of what He bore in my stead. This, while the question is of how I, a guilty creature in myself can find peace with God, is of all importance. The Just One, who is to judge all, bore on the cross the judgment due to me the unjust. I do not fear or doubt, whether He will or will not remember His own sufferings, whereon He has made my soul to rest. But this is not all. Not only is the penalty and power and being of the old man thus met, but another, a new man, having a being, and power, and liberty, is introduced to supplant the old man. And this is a positive thing, and a new thing altogether. Adam, as set in the Garden of Eden, had not that which the weakest believer in Christ now has: "Born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever (1 Peter 1.23), " The word of the Lord ... the word which by the Gospel is preached " (ver. 25), is the instrumental means of communicating this, but the thing communicated is a new thing itself. Christ is the Giver -" the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life"- such a portion is not of human nature, but of God. Well now, when we come to the Scriptures what do we find as to this Life? First: If Adam was a living soul, Christ is a life-giving Spirit: "The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam a quickening Spirit"(1 Cor. 15:45). Then, again, not only is His glory thus described: "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made," but also another glory is His: " In Him was life; and the life was the light of men" (John 1:1-4). "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear," then' shall ye also appear with Him in glory" (Col. 3:3,4). " God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son" (1 John 5.11) I cite these passages as showing that " Life" is, to us that believe, not merely moral order restored in the elements of the old man, but that it points to something which not only fallen but, which unfallen humanity, as first set in the Garden of Eden, did not possess; to something which fits us, not only for heaven, its native place, but for " fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. Such a fellowship is ours" (1 John 1:4). But many are the lessons Scripture gives us in details connected with the subject.
Our attention is called to much, if we can taste and see it, in these words, "Quickened together with Christ." I have heard expositions of this expression (which while they contained much truth in them, and blessed truth too), were not expositions of what our text contains. For instance, "Quickened together with Christ," does not mean that as He was quickened who lay dead and buried in the grave, in the garden, so our souls which were morally dead become morally alive if we have believed. That, if we substituted " spiritually, as well as morally, alive," for "morally alive," would be true; but it clearly would give no stress to the words together with. And such a truth would have been better expressed by, "have been quickened in soul, as Christ was in body." The text really leads back to the hour in which Christ was quickened, and points out a special glory as attaching to him when so quickened, and a glory which connects itself now with the believer. Having laid down His life as a substitute for sinners, He took it again as the second Adam, life-giving Spirit, Head of a race. In redemption nothing is before God, or will be found to abide, save what comes forth from Christ. He is the Rock. He alone. He was smitten in death. In life—after death—a life which was in itself beyond death, and was shown to be so by His passing through death- the life-giving waters flowed forth, token of the Life which was in Him, which He was. It was necessary for Divine glory and for the conscience of the sinner, that the insults to God offered by sin, and the sin itself should be fully met by Him who alone could meet it. This he did by His death. But everything as to sin, past, present or to come, having had provision made for it in His death,-His life anew was with the avowal of Headship. No life ever flowed save from Him. Whence else could it flow? Quickened together with Christ! Then I am to go back in thought, as to this life which I know I have in the Son, to Him in whom is life; and to go back to Him, not only as one of whom this was true as the Word of God,-but as the one of whom this is declared by Scripture to be shown out as true—in the very hour when he was quickened as Son of Man, who was dead but could see no corruption. A simple view of this changes everything to a soul that believes; because it brings the mind down upon the very point of time and circumstances in time which God had arranged as the testimony to man. He knew who His Son was, and what His Son was and would do: He needed not, in His infiniteness, in order that He might see what He could know and understand, the developed accomplishment of His plans and counsels. But, in grace, He has presented, in time and in circumstances which are suited to man, great overt facts, such as appeal to man as man, and such as man, when under grace and in the light, can understand. The crucifixion, the death, the burial of the Christ were awful overt acts. Wrought by man and in grace and mercy's sake permitted by God, and endured by the Christ for our sakes, they, first, told out man's wickedness, and the end thereof to the believer through God's grace. The quickening, raising up, elevation and glorification of Christ are great overt facts also, acts wrought by God to the confusion of sinful man, and for the salvation of the believer. And they tell out (oh how blessedly) the wellspring of God's providing, full of every blessing.
Have I eternal life? Yes: in the Son. How do I know it? 1St. Because God identifies faith and life together inseparably; and, 2ndly, I through faith, know those things which the word declares cannot be known save where there is life—Divine life. In the Son and from the Son is this life. But to what point, to what circumstances does the word of God point me as the birth-place, as the scene of the coming forth into light, first, of this my life? To the quickening and raising from the dead of the God-honored, though man-rejected, Christ of God. He was quickened, and He was quickened as a Head. Directly I believe and understand the word,—the tomb of Christ, bursts into light, not now closed and dark as the resting-place of Him that was buried, but open and full of light (for the Son of God, the Word, and the Jesus of Nazareth were there, just proved to be but one and the same)—that-that is the scene to which the word leads me back. I fear few of us go back simply enough to that scene, as the scene from which our new life has its date and the manifestation of its origin. Man (we ourselves according to what we were) would not have Him on any terms. God would have Him, and would have Him as the second Adam-with Headship and relationship to man found upon Him both for Heaven and for earth. I need not say my old man was not quickened- it was crucified, dead and buried together with Him. No, but God communicates 6, new nature to me, the Divine nature; and gave with it, power to become a son of God, power to enter, not only into the enjoyment of the things and circumstances of God, but into His own thoughts and affections, and to enter into them, according to the mode of the revelation of them, as displayed by God manifest in the flesh—by the Son of Man; by Him who though God over all blessed forever and Jehovah's fellow was once, in deed and in truth, the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief- crucified through weakness.
Quickened together with Christ—gives me three vivid truths. 1St. The source of life, presented, according to the form and circumstances in which there was to be communication of life. 2ndly. That the prominent leading feature in the scene is the quickening of Christ Jesus from the grave. In time, in weight of importance, in every respect, when God speaks, Christ must have the pre-eminence, the first place-it must be so. 3rdly. That there was a unity, a something which God and the Spirit of God would not break into two things, in the life so communicated, in the communication of life—1St., to the Christ as Son of Man awaking from the grave into which He had gone in order to clear us from guilt; and, 2ndly, to the believer cleared from guilt; a life in us unto God..
The Son of Man was to be three days in the heart of the earth. See corruption He could not—to know any moral change in Him also was impossible likewise. But He had power to lay down His life (and He did so) and power to take it again (and He did so); for such commandment He had received of the Father. He laid down His life in our stead. He took it up again and made us partakers of it.
That the old man and the new man are not merely different states of one and the same being at different times, is clear; for, 1St, they co-exist—the old man and the new are both in me a believer; and, 2ndly, they are in contrast; the old has no power to know and love God;—the new nature, given us of God, loves God;—the former can never rise higher than the living soul,- the second has been brought into existence in us by Christ.
The expressions, "being in the flesh," and "being in the Spirit "(Rom. 8:9), refer to standing. We are not in the flesh [our standing is not according to the flesh] but in the Spirit [our standing is according to Spirit], if so be that the Spirit of Christ dwell in us. But, then, though our standing be before God, according to Spirit, this, from the context, clearly does not put the flesh, the old man, etc., out of us. It is still in us, but, our standing being before God, according to a relationship formed with Christ by faith, through the Spirit, we are not under guilt, and we are debtors to act against the old nature, from which we received no benefit, and, according to the new nature which has given us, through faith, relationship to, and standing with, Christ. The doctrine of Scripture is very simple, and clear, and plain, though we, from want of simplicity in ourselves, often find it very difficult.
With God there is no difficulty in the perfect Son of God and the Son of Man (in all His perfectness) being one; -for God was manifest in the flesh. With Him also there is no difficulty in that blessed One, as Son of Man, life-giving Spirit, communicating a new nature, the Divine nature, under certain conditions to a poor sinner; no difficulty to Him to provide that which enables both that nature as an incorruptible seed remaining in a poor sinner, or the Spirit of God ministering to it—while sin remains in the body of the sinner. The cross of Christ met the difficulty in one form; the intercession and ministry of the high priest does so in another, and the power of Christ will in a third. But that nature, introduced into us by Christ risen from the grave, through faith, by the Word, can and will supplant, supplant with all its own superiority of nature and character, the old nature; and in the end, finally, when we have seen the Christ, it will leave no trace behind in us of the old nature at all. If, by a constant change, through the acting of natural life, etc., in my natural body, it is, as is said, gradually changed in all its particles; yet I remain ever the same: I see no difficulty, even to my own mind, to comprehend that a new nature, of a higher order, may have been given to me,- a nature introducing other objects, motives, affections and desires; and that this co-existing for a time in me may produce conflict for a time: and yet, in the issue, when I shall have seen Christ, may be so perfected, as to its sole possession of me, in body as well as soul and spirit, as that no element of the old nature, in its former state, should remain; and yet identity and individuality shall be fully preserved. I do not say this as having any theory to establish, but as an answer to questions and difficulties which have been raised by some who (purposing to remain, and to retain their position as merely good men), have refused the testimony of the Word about the Divine nature, with a-How can these things be? I receive what Scripture says, because God says it; but, of a truth, I cannot see any greater difficulties in these things than those difficulties which are found in truths which are in the field of nature and providence; nor so great as human sense and pride would find in the higher subjects of revelation;-such as the incarnation, the atonement, redemption, etc.
According to 1 John 1:1-3, eternal life which was with the Father, was manifested in Christ. But the Son of Man had power to lay down His life and power to take it again (John 10:18). It is important to note the difference between eternal life in the Son of God (as in 1 John 5:11, together with, John 1:4, in Him [the Word] was life)—and the Son of Man having power to lay down His life, to give His life a ransom for many, and power to take His life again for their blessing. The Son of God (the only begotten Son) was given of God; -but the Son of Man was lifted up on the cross. Eternal life was in the Son, in the Word; and was manifested to us in the Son of Man; the life of this man Jesus could be laid down—it was laid down as a ransom for our sins: it could be taken again—it was taken again—and, moreover, the having life and the circumstances of it were different to the Son of Man before death and after resurrection. His birth, as a babe, was, as seed of the woman, by the overshadowing of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Ghost. Such was the Son of Man, the seed of the woman as the Man of sorrows. Therefore that Holy Thing that was born of her, was called Son of the Highest—thus did He become a man, the Son of man, the Seed of the woman, the Man of sorrows. But having laid down His life, Himself giving it up when man with wicked hands was crucifying and slaying Him—His taking life anew was without any such intervention as was found in His birth. It was an act that lay outside of the precincts of the life of Adam the first, who, had he been obedient, would never have died, could never have been in a position to experience resurrection. Not so with Christ -Christ had power to lay down His life and power to take His life again; He was quickened of God: but in taking a life beyond the precincts and sphere of Adam the first He took it, as to form and circumstances, according to the precincts and sphere in which He took it; that is in the precincts and sphere of eternal redemption.
Revealing Himself to Saul, He revealed a glory in Himself, who is Son of God and Son of Man and upon the throne of the Father,—a glory which communicates an incorruptible seed to every one into whom it shines. Now this blessing is from Him as Son of Man risen from among the dead, and gone up to the throne of the Father; but seated and owned there as Son of Man. Many lose themselves in thought here, by not seeing that the glory of the Son to usward is to act as " the Second Adam the life-giving Spirit." Now the incorruptible seed which I receive, is received from the Son Himself-it is fitted, in the order in which it is given (as given from Him who bore my judgment before He took the formal place of being Quickener, and is now waiting at God's right hand until the time come for Him to be displayed as the Power of God), to meet every difficulty connected with me as a mere man in ruin and in ruined circumstances; to meet, I say, all the questions arising from the form and mode of life of ruined man. It is a life which is in itself as fitted to enter into God's things and man's, as is the life of the Son of Man, who is now glorified upon the throne of the Father with the glory which as Son of God He had with God before the world was. It is His life in me, even as He Himself is my life. He as my life and His life in me, is both according to Himself, and not according to my fallen ruined self, and it is according to Him, according to what He now is risen from the dead among whom He lay by reason of what I was and, in my ruined nature, still am. This new nature is in us in contrast with the old. The former will supplant the latter. There may, there must, be conflict now between the two. I, a creature, upon the ground and under the condition of creatureship, having to do with God as Creator in a ruined world, where Satan knows how to use the flesh against God; and the new nature, put into me by the Spirit of Christ through faith, having a world of its own, and motives and objects peculiar to itself, cannot but be in conflict. But the former may be reckoned by us dead, because God reckons it so as to them that believe, and we may walk in newness of life. The old is not turned into the new; nor does the new (like leaven) work out to fill the old. The old has yet to be changed. Mercy and grace would not suffice, that is, without Divine power, and that wisdom which knows how to change this body of humiliation that it may be fashioned like unto His (Christ's) body of glory.
There are two errors to be guarded against on this subject at the present time, if we would hold the truth with soundness. For the truth of Scripture seems to lie on this subject between two extremes which error has marked for itself.
On the one hand, the religion of the schools has worn down the statements of Scripture—so that the blessed truth of being quickened together with Christ, is reduced to a mere humanizing of fallen nature. In this theory, the new birth is but a putting right of the old nature; and the most that is aimed at, or thought of, is to recover in heart, mind and life, that which Adam possessed in Eden.
According to it, redemption may be redemption from sin and hell, but it is not redemption unto fellowship with God through the Divine nature given to us of God by faith.
On the other hand, there is another error, most fearful, which, if it breaks through the trammels of system, breaks out into the wildest fanaticism. According to it the redeemed are to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent: and instead of one God (Father, Son and Holy Ghost) there are to be God's many. For each of the redeemed is to be God; Omnipotent; Omniscient, Omnipresent. Alas! what is man? Corruptor of everything he touches. Our privilege, our portion, our blessing, as redeemed, is neither according to the Eden that is passed, nor according to the glory proper to and sustainable only by God. The Son of God, He is God, essentially and eternally god, and is as such Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent. But He has wrought a salvation as Son of Man, and, according to the glory of that name, as the Second Adam, the Lord from heaven, He has opened a place, and a sphere, and a glory fitted for the nature which as such He has communicated to us—a nature which, while able to taste the things, thoughts, feelings of God Himself, ever owns Him from whom it has flowed to us, as God over all blessed forever, and ourselves the recipients and partakers of His grace as, however near to Himself, absolutely and eternally dependent upon Him as worshippers and servants. If we have life, eternal life, it is according to its avowed, displayed source, viz. the quickening of the Christ, Son of Man from heaven—from the grave: and the saint has this word for his shelter—Quickened together with Christ.