(Josh. 5)
If we take the Book of Joshua to be typical of the position of the Church as presented in the Epistle to the Ephesians, made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ," and consequently, in order to the practical enjoyment of the blessings of this position, brought into conflict " with principalities and powers, with the rulers of the darkness of this world, with spiritual wickedness in high places," we shall see how important a place " Gilgal" holds in relation to this.
The children of Israel are not at this time in Egypt, the type of the world or a state of nature; nor in the wilderness, the fitting expression of the believer's life of trial in his passage through the world; nor are they yet quietly established in Canaan, the shadowing forth of heavenly rest. They are entering the land under the guidance of Joshua, not Moses, (for the law cannot give possession of the inheritance) and are about to commence those conflicts, without which the land of promise could not be theirs in possession and enjoyment. For in the Book of Joshua it is to be noted that it is not so much the rest of Canaan that is in prominence, as the conflicts of the people, (" the wars of the Lord,") which were the necessary condition of their possession of the inheritance.
In sovereign mercy God had visited the people in Egypt, breaking the yoke of their bondage, and by the blood of the passover separating them forever both from Egypt and from its judgment. In application this is redemption from a state of sin, and from God's judgment against sin, by faith in the blood-shedding of Christ: for it is said, " Christ our passover is sacrificed for us." So that at the outset of our pilgrimage, and before we have taken a single step in our heavenly journey, trust in the blood of Christ is our full and absolute security against the judgment of our sins-a judgment which will come upon the world on account of sin. Next follows " the salvation of the Lord," as it is expressed, in bringing the people through the Red Sea, with the utter destruction of their enemies in it, and so placing the sea as an impassable barrier between His people and Egypt. To us this is the passage, by faith, of our souls through death in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that His death and resurrection should be placed by God Himself between us and all the power of the enemy, in token of eternal deliverance from it, and giving also the character of that deliverance, as well as final separation from the world that lies in wickedness:-" Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him, through the faith of the operation of him who raised him from the dead." Then comes the wilderness, characteristic of the journeyings of the people, and a figure of the trouble and temptation which the people of God find in the world while passing through it as strangers and pilgrims.
Under Joshua a new scene opens. It is the passage of the Jordan effected for Israel by the ark of the covenant going down into the midst of the river when it overflowed all its banks, so that " all the Israelites passed over on dry ground." A wondrous and blessed picture of Christ in His death exhausting all the power of death, and thus making it the ally of his people, and the means of their entering, now by faith, and finally in person, into their heavenly inheritance.
The Jordan must be crossed before Canaan can be possessed even by the people to whom by God's appointment it belongs. There must be in the Christian not only the faith which associates him with the power of the death of Christ as the ground of his justification before God, and the pledge and security to him of eternal redemption; but there must be an entrance by the power of the Spirit into that death and resurrection as the means of bringing him into his heavenly position, and as the power by which alone it can be realized. " If ye then be risen with Christ," says the apostle, " seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth." This, be it remembered, is not simply laying hold of Christ's death as the power of redemption, and the ground of peace and security; it is an exhortation to the practical entrance of the soul into the death and resurrection of Christ, as participants in it, in order to the affections being placed on the proper objects of the heavenly life and heavenly position into which we have been brought by Christ.
But the Jordan thus passed, what is the first thing that meets us on the Canaan side of it? It is Gilgal; where by means of the circumcision of the people the Lord could say, " This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you." At Gilgal they are delivered from every badge of Egypt and its bondage, to enter as the redeemed people of Jehovah on their inheritance. The obvious lesson to us is, whether we have learned it or not, that every trace of worldliness is a reproach to those who are called to be a heavenly people. However, circumcision in its spiritual application is plain. The apostle says, " We are the circumcision, who worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." But this is in connection with being dead and risen with Christ, as the following part of the chapter shows; where the apostle unfolds how far " confidence in the flesh " extends, and how much it includes; and then shows how all is displaced as " dung " and " loss " by the excellency of the knowledge of a dead and risen Christ. The flesh can have nothing to do with that heavenly life into which we are introduced by Christ. It is that which attaches itself to the things of this world, and cannot rise above it; hence there is nothing left for it but that mortification, of which circumcision is the typical expression.
During the whole of their wanderings in the wilderness, the people were not circumcised. And in truth, it is not in the sorrows and trials of a life of pilgrimage, nor in its mercies either, however it may be the result of redemption, that we get the power to put aside all that attaches us to the world. This life must be lived, it is true, and there must be faithfulness in it; but where this is the case, it leaves the traces of Egypt still upon us, and does not rise to the sphere which is proper to the heavenly life, to which redemption brings us. It is in practically entering by God's Spirit into the truth that we are dead and risen with Christ, that we get this power. In Col. 3:11If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. (Colossians 3:1), we have the exhortation, " If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above," &c., founded on the statement in the previous chapter in which the true force of circumcision is given. " Ye are complete in him which is the head of all principality and power. In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ. Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him," &c. (Col. 2:10-1210And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power: 11In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: 12Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. (Colossians 2:10‑12).) " If ye then be risen with Christ," it will be seen, is in immediate sequence with this. Moreover the following exhortation, " Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth," &c., is founded on the statement, " Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." This, then, is our " Gilgal." All enjoyment of our special portion in Christ, all spiritual power to overcome our enemies, hangs on this.
But this is not all that Gilgal presented. It was there that they kept the passover, as it is said, " in the plains of Jericho." The passover, as observed in Egypt, was the symbol of deliverance from surrounding judgment, while the people eat it in haste with girded loins, -ready to depart on the morrow from the land of their bondage, to which they were never again to return. Before Jericho, it was God's table prepared for His people in the presence of their enemies. It was at the same moment the commemoration of their redemption from Egypt, and of all the mercy that had resulted from it in the displays of divine power and goodness at the Red Sea, and in the forty years of the wilderness, and which had now planted them in Canaan. Redemption from Egypt and the rest of Canaan are brought together by it. For us, it is the heart turning back again to the cross to see the linking together by it of redemption and heavenly glory; to learn how that wondrous death of Christ which at first met us as deliverance from wrath and condemnation, is the groundwork of all those after' displays of divine mercy, which are involved in being " quickened together with Christ, and raised up together, and made sit together in the heavenly places in Christ."
But conjoined with the passover, they " eat of the old corn of the land," and the manna, the bread of the wilderness ceases. Before a single city is taken, and the enemy apparently remaining in unbroken strength, the people are quietly enjoying the fruit of the land of Canaan. Thus Christ, when the soul is in the power of its heavenly place and portion, is fed upon in another character than that in which He was presented in His path with us here on earth. As incarnate, " the bread which came down from heaven," the soul finds the preciousness of seeing Him, whom it is called to follow in his course of subjection and divine perfectness, as a man on earth. It is its stay and strength, amidst the trials and difficulties of the way, to see how Christ, as a man, was found in every sorrow and circumstance into which the believer can be brought in his path, in the world, of faithfulness to the Lord. But as " risen with Christ," a risen Christ in heaven becomes the necessity of the position in which we are set. He must now be fed upon in His proper character of a heavenly Christ, and in heaven; and as having brought us there too. " If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God."
In Egypt the view of Israel was bounded by the deliverance of the pass-over. At the Red Sea their horizon was enlarged; and a song of triumph was raised when from its shores they saw the salvation of the Lord. In the wilderness they saw still further, and proved the exhaustless resources and the patient goodness of their God. But at Gilgal, when the Jordan was passed and their feet pressed the promised land, all was brought together in one grand panorama, as they " kept the passover" and " did eat of the old corn of the land." And surely it is not to dismiss the cross from oar sight, or to lightly esteem the bread which came down from heaven, when we speak of being in heavenly places and feeding upon a heavenly Christ. No. It is from this point, and from this point alone, that what Christ has done for us, and the way in which he has been presented to us, can be seen in their proper elevation and their due significance.
But there is still something further which characterizes a Gilgal." The twelve stones which were taken up out of the midst of Jordan, where the priest's feet stood with the ark, were pitched in Gilgal. For the people were brought into the land and the memorial of their passage through the Jordan was set up before their circumcision. But if their title to the land was thus made good by divine power, their enjoyment of it was inseparable from their passing through the land in self-appropriation and the ejectment of their enemies by the victorious power of God. So every believer, as a divine truth, is dead and risen with Christ, through faith in Him cc who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." But this is a very different thing from its practical realization through the power of the Holy Ghost. The entrance of the heart in joy into the place to which the wondrous death of Christ gives us a title is inseparable from the use of that death, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in the mortification of the flesh and of all that is contrary to a heavenly life. And this again cannot be dissociated from those conflicts with spiritual enemies, of which the wars of Joshua are but a type. Gilgal must be our camp, as it was Israel's, where we must " put on the whole armor of God." God was there in all His strength against the enemies of the people. And so the apostle urges, in connection with putting on the armor, " Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might." And he closes the exhortation by the words, " Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints." Because prayer is the acknowledgment of dependence and weakness; but it is the direct means of bringing in the strength of God.
But that which gives Gilgal its special practical character is the circumcision of the 'people, by which the reproach of Egypt was rolled away. " The Lord said unto Joshua, This day have I rolled away the reproach of Egypt from off you. Wherefore the name of the place is called Gilgal unto this day." Circumcision took away from the people the last trace of the bondage from which they had been redeemed. They are now manifestly no longer the slaves of Egypt, but the citizens of Canaan, bearing in their own persons the mark and seal of separation to the Lord. In like manner, that which corresponds to a heavenly position is that we put aside all that marks our character as belonging to this world. This does not consist in throwing off all natural affections, or in the negligent discharge of natural obligations, under the pretense of the heart's occupation with higher things. It is not asceticism; though it is the putting aside of the habits and tastes which connect us morally with the world, in order to be under the power of those objects which address themselves to the heavenly life, as risen with Christ into another sphere, where He Himself is.
Gilgal is the place of the enjoyment of accomplished redemption; of feeding upon a heavenly Christ; of the witness of the power of His death and resurrection, as bringing us into heavenly places; as well as the place of strength for spiritual conflicts. The camp of Israel was at Gilgal, to which Joshua and all the people returned after their conquests in Canaan. So, whatever spiritual victories we may gain they will soon cease, or be exchanged for discomfiture and dismay, if there be not the constant, habitual mortification of the flesh.
The consequence of Israel's leaving Gilgal is seen ultimately in the condition of the people in the Book of Judges, where it is said, (Judg. 2:11And an angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I sware unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break my covenant with you. (Judges 2:1),) " The angel of the Lord came from Gilgal to Bochim"-the place of weeping. And how surely has the humbling parallel been brought out in the history of the Church 1 The enjoyment of Canaan exchanged for bondage to the Canaanites i The place of victory and joy surrendered for the place of vanquishment and tears 1 It was not said in the history that the Lord and His strength were linked with Gilgal; but it came out too clearly when, through departure from it and unfaithfulness, His presence and sustainment were lost. And if, in application to a narrower circle, it be asked, How is it that heavenly truths have so little power, in those by whom they are professed, to produce a heavenly life, and are so little accompanied by spiritual power and separation from the world? the reply must be, Because there is so great an estrangement from Gilgal. It is impossible to live a heavenly life, or to enjoy the heavenly portion in which grace has set us, if we neglect to " mortify our members which are on the earth." The Lord Jesus Christ has converted death into an instrument and means by which we may disengage ourselves from the claims of the flesh and all that is a hindrance to our heavenly life. As it is said, "Reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." It is thus practically that the claims of the flesh are to be met and set aside. If I am dead to sin, I shall not be living any longer in it. If I am dead to the world, the world will become dead to me. All that makes its appeal, and makes it successfully too, to one who is " living in the world, becomes powerless in regard to one who is using the death of Christ so as to reckon himself to be dead. But this is common-place, every-day work. It makes no show, and brings no credit. The mortification of the flesh is not outward activity.. Neither is it the display of spiritual energy. But it lies at the basis of all true spiritual strength, and is a sine qua non to all real service for Christ, and all possible enjoyment of our place as risen with Him.
There are two lives, if I may so speak, that the Christian is called to live by virtue of his association with Christ. There is the life of faithfulness here amidst the trying scenes and circumstances of this world, in which he is to walk as Christ also walked. In this he may be doing the same things as other men, but doing them from an entirely different motive and with an entirely different end. No doubt it is by the heavenly life that the true character is impressed upon our life of faithfulness here in the world, For the Lord Jesus was always a heavenly man in circumstances which marked His sojourn here on earth. Still this life, of which we speak, has a necessary con nexion with the world, and its energies are called into action by the circumstances that characterize the world. But there is another life that is specifically and essentially heavenly. This life owes nothing to this world. Its source and origin is heavenly. Its springs of enjoyment, its resources and objects, its sphere and final end are all heavenly. There is nothing of this world that enters into this life. " For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." Now there are a thousand things that the heart may get entangled with, which: are not exactly the evil lusts of the flesh, which, if they do not outwardly mar the faithfulness of our walk in the world, do entirely prevent the realization of that heavenly life to which we are raised, and in the sphere of which we are set by the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
If then we have so by the power of the Spirit passed through death as to have our life in heaven, with the Jordan as our frontier and Canaan as our home, let us not forget that our conflicts must be there too. Gilgal was Israel's camp; but while circumcision stamped its name upon it, and gave it significance, there were grouped around it the stones of memorial out of the midst of Jordan; the keeping of the passover in the plains of Jericho; the eating of the old corn Of the land; and the wondrous presence of " the captain of the- host of the Lord."