AT 1:21-23 OM 8:23 JO 3:24THESE passages are linked together naturally for all our hearts, and I may say divinely. We find in them, God with us, God for us, and God in us; lastly, we get the fullest, deepest result of all this manifestation of God in privilege-where we are brought by it: we dwell in God.
First, there is Emmanuel, God with us; a more wonderful sight than that which attracted Moses in the wilderness, when he turned aside to see the bush that burned with fire, and yet was not consumed, and when God called to him out of the midst of the bush—.a sight infinitely more wonderful, and yet the world passes on unmoved, indifferent to such a Presence; the same world to-day that had no room for Him in its inn-His first resting-place a manger, His last a sepulcher; and what came in between " God was in Christ," sheaving forth all His grace, the manner of His coming into it so characteristic of the grace in which He came, the only answer of our hearts to all, " Away with him; crucify him, crucify him." The deliberate choice of men was, " Not this man, but Barabbas," the name signifying " Son of Abba," Satan's counterfeit, a robber and a murderer; that is what suited the world. But how wonderful to think of it! How blessed the grace of God should come into it knowing it to be such! Was ever an ambassage of peace more manifestly declared in the way He came? He might have shone into the rebel world in all the majesty of His glory. Who could have borne His presence? It would have been our destruction. But no! He veils the glory of His Person in the lower garb of humanity. In human weakness He is born into the world. What more perfect expression of it than a babe? Yet it is thus we see this wonderful manifestation of God-nay, God Himself manifested: " the Word was God," " the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us;" ".God was manifest in the flesh." All the fullness of the Godhead was pleased to dwell in that lowly Babe.
But there were two sides to this wonderful coming in of Emmanuel. We may look at His presence here, as the last of a long series of tests to which man (in Israel) had been subjected, to bring out to himself, that is to us each, the full truth of our condition.
God had given promises; they were despised. Then the law was given by the disposition of angels; it was broken before ever it was brought into the camp. Prophets were raised up; they were persecuted and slain who " showed before the coming of the Just One, of whom " (as Stephen tells us, who gives us this inspired summary of God's ways) " ye have been now the betrayers and murderers." Or, as it is in the Lord's parable that brings us to the same point, " Having yet, therefore, one son, his well-beloved, he sent him also last unto them saying, They will reverence my son. But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him. And they took him and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard "-the last answer of our hearts to the last test God had to apply to them-the solemn proof, not merely of individual acts by which we were guilty, but of a condition in which we were all alike involved, and were lost. This is one aspect of the presence of Emmanuel, and more especially brought before us in the first three Gospels, needed as it is to bring into our souls the full conviction of our total ruin. But there is another side of the truth: it comes before us fully in the Gospel of John. It opens with the result of all the previous testing. " He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not; he came unto his own, and his own received him not." God Himself has come into the world, and " God is love." If He is here, then, we shall find perfect love. But He is light also, so that we shall find perfect light in His presence, too. Yes, the full light of all that God is in love revealed and shining. But " the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." Morally, there is found what is physically impossible; the tiniest ray of morning light dispels the
darkness of the night. But here the shining of the light has no effect whatever; it shines in darkness. The darkness remains as profound, as intense as ever, totally unaffected by it. But what brought in the light but infinite love? Then it has not come simply to shine, showing out the full character of the darkness. As surely as divine love has come into this lost world it has come to work, to bring in the light to transpierce the conscience, to lay bare the heart, to reveal us to ourselves, and thus to reveal God to us.
We see a beautiful illustration of this wonderful work of divine love in John 4 Who sits by the side of the well, wearied with His journey? God had stooped down to human weariness, weakness, and even thirst. And now He becomes beholden (at least He asks-for we do not know that He ever got it) to a poor creature for a drink of water, Himself the Creator of every spring and source in this world. Why was He there? That He might reveal her to herself, and shine on in the revelation of God Himself to her soul. But, having set her at ease in His presence by asking a drink of her, He goes on to open out what He came to give. "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith unto thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." (John 4:1010Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. (John 4:10).) But no ray of spiritual intelligence is there to answer to such communications; " the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God." (1 Cor. 2:1414But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:14).) She talks of the well, its depth, of how Jacob gave it to them and drank thereof himself, his children, and his cattle. That is all she makes of these richest divine and heavenly things of His grace. Patiently He waits upon her ignorance, and goes on to unfold more fully to her the living water that He gives, but with as little effect. We can see, indeed, that she is attracted by the lowly condescension of the supposed Jew in speaking to her, a woman of Samaria; and in spite of seeming impossibility His word carries authority, and is not discredited. " Sir, give me this water." Solemn it is to see that there may be all this and no real divine work in the soul. What then must still be done if this heart is to be won for God? He turns the light in upon her conscience. " Go, call thy husband, and come hither." How intelligent she becomes all in a moment. " Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet." She is herself searched out in the presence of One who knows her life, her sin-stained history; nothing in her heart is hid from the One with whom she has to do; God is present in perfect love to bring it out, as perfectly as it would have had to come out in the day of judgment. She does not go away from Him, like Adam, to seek a hiding-place in the trees of the garden, Light is doing its own solemn work, convicting her of nothing but sin; but love that makes the light binds her to the spot where she is convicted, that He may reveal Himself as nothing but love to the poor sinner. She makes one little effort to parry the blow that was telling in her conscience. If she had no religion of her own to boast in, at least " Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and ye say that at Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." How natural it is-how often to be met with! That when truth is working, this question of a place of worship is raised by the soul, ill at ease tinder the effect of it. But how unreal! What did He want with her worship? He had come to seek, not hers, but her. When sought and found, and infinitely blessed, and all the need of conscience and heart met and satisfied, then would be the time for worship; not till then. Jesus delivers her from this blind of Satan, and judges all the hollow, false religion of the flesh's effort by one little word, " Woman, believe me, the hour corned' when ye shall neither, in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father." Worship flows from the formed relationship of children. " The Father seeketh such to worship him." Well may He have it then! He never sought aught from us until He had given all that His love could give, and we had our place before Him according to the perfection of what He gave.
Thus we see God manifested, not in the majesty of His
glory (that would have repelled us), but bringing near the light even into our own consciences, that He may shine into them in all the fullness of His love. There is no real work of God at all in the soul till the conscience is reached, and I am found out in all I have clone in the presence of God, whose light is shining on me, whose heart is bent upon having me.
We might go from scene to scene in the Gospels and never have exhausted this infinite subject of the ways of divine love, winning the heart to confide in Him, that divine light might search the conscience, and bring us into the truth as to ourselves and as to God. But if the truth be that I am guilty and lost in my sins, how can I be at rest in the presence of a holy God? This brings us to the second great part of our subject, expressed in the verse read in Rom. 8, " God for us." It is the summing up of the work that has been wrought for us, to meet all the need of our condition, as the Epistle unfolds both to us. When the effect of the presence of God has been to bring out in us, in our consciences, that we were only fit to be cast out of His presence forever, we find Him giving His Son to accomplish the work for us, that puts us into the presence of God at perfect rest because in righteousness. And we find God, who we thought was against us, because we were against Him, proved in not sparing His Son, to be for us. True, He had given Himself to carry out this work, as it is written in the volume of the book, " Lo, I come. I delight to do thy will, 0 my God." (Psa.11. 7, 8.) And we have seen Him in the lowly path of its accomplishment when the heavens opened over Him, and the Father's voice declared, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." But " He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all." Nothing short of such a sacrifice could meet the exigencies of our lost condition, according to the glory of God. But see how perfectly this work of Christ has done it.
What words are heard in Paul's—-the chief of sinners—-lips? " Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" What a challenge to all the ingenuity of Satan, to bring up one single sin to charge against the believer. Will Satan take up the challenge? Can anything be found against us before God? Impossible " It is God that justifieth who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died-yea, rather that is risen again." What makes the challenge so unanswerable is, that the God against whom we have sinned is the very One who gave Him thus to answer for all our guilt. As surely as we have been convicted of having nothing but sins, of being nothing but guilty and lost sinners, it is all for us. He " was delivered for our offenses." There He met the charge of them; the Judge Himself came down from the throne of judgment in infinite grace, He took His place at the bar, where we stood as poor, guilty, convicted sinners in conscience. Bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, He met the charge of them, enduring the judgment of divine holiness and righteousness against sin, so as infinitely to glorify God, and to bring out God's character in holiness and righteousness against sin as it never had been manifested before, in perfect love, too. And when the work was done, " He was raised for our justification." Thus we have a risen Christ in the glory of God as our justification. Has the eye that has been opened on self and sins turned away to Jesus? Have we seen Him by faith as the One who endured the judgment of God to the infinite depths of the sorrow expressed in His cry, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" " It is finished." And now God He was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father. We believe on Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; and a risen Christ in the glory of God as our justification fills the eye of faith, instead of sins or self any more.
But the blessedness and security of it all to the soul is the more enhanced, when we see that it is not simply Paul, but God Himself that lays down this challenge-God who, as it were, thus calls attention to the absolute way in which He Himself, against whom all our sins have been, has justified us beyond the possibility of charge. Still, even this does not bring out the full force of the wonderful words. They are quoted from Isa. 1:88And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. (Isaiah 1:8), " He is near that justifieth me... Who is he that shall condemn me?" The preceding verses leave no doubt as to who is the speaker; it is Christ Himself thus in the believer's place to bear his sins and endure their judgment, now stands out of it all to raise the question, Can aught of all that was once laid to His account be now found against Him? God has justified the absolute perfection of His work by raising Him from the dead; who is he that shall condemn Christ? " There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." Faith can take up the very words of Christ—nay, the Holy Ghost makes them our own. If it is impossible that one charge can he brought against Christ, it is impossible that it can be brought against us.
We are in Him who came up out of the depths of the condemnation He went into for us, and where He made an end, not merely of our sins, but of us who sinned-not of the fruit only, but of the root that produced it (Rom. 8:33For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: (Romans 8:3)), and we are in all the impossibility of condemnation for Christ. He once identified Himself in grace with our position in sins and judgment, and now the feeblest believer is identified with Him in the whole of His position as the risen Christ before God; though here in Romans this is mainly applied to the more negative aspects of our forgiveness, and deliverance from sin's power. But how full and complete the answer of divine love to all the need that the light disclosed of our guilt, sins, and state of sin, and in which God has been proved for us, and the only measure of His love that He spared not His own Son. " How shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" and, " If God be for us, who. can be against us?"
(To be continued, the Lord willing.)