“Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS; for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which, being interpreted, is GOD WITH US."—Matt. 1:20-2320But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. 21And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. 22Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, 23Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. (Matthew 1:20‑23).
“No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, GOD DWELLETH IN us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and HE IN us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, GOD DWELLETH IN HIM, and he in God."—1 John 4:12, 13, 1512No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. 13Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. (1 John 4:12‑13)
15Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. (1 John 4:15).
THE Gospel of Matthew speaks of God being with us; the Epistle to the Romans, of God being for us; the Epistle of John, of God being in us;— with us, in the person of His own Son down here in the world; for us, because of the finished work of that blessed Son; and now God in us,—that is, in every believer,—as the consequence of that wonderful work which the Lord Jesus Christ has accomplished. If a person gets his eyes opened to know God in this threefold way, it can only result in peace with God, and enjoyment of Him forever.
Matthew gives us His name. An Old Testament prophet had said, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa. 7:1414Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)), that is, "God with us." Man was a sinner. Set up by God in innocence, Adam departed from God, disobeyed him, and became a sinner; and man, his offspring, is away from God, without God; and God, in His marvelous grace, is here seen coming to man. All the way along, it is the One who was sinned against who seeks the sinner. Adam puts the trees of the garden between himself and God, and it is God who comes and seeks him. And so it has been all the way through. Man gets so corrupt on the earth, that God sends the deluge; and the deluge is the great testimony that God will judge sin. He must judge sin; but even then He saved eight souls, saved them by His grace.
I know, my careless unsaved reader, that you may laugh at the thought of judgment coming; but the day will come, when there will be no laugh on your face, but the solemn sense of what judgment is will have fallen upon your soul, for you will have begun to taste it. Do not forget that the man who begins to taste it will taste it forever, — it is "eternal judgment." While, therefore, I would present to you the grace of God, I cannot keep back the other side, the holiness and purity, the absolute righteousness of God, and that He must judge sin; and when He judges, it will not be God with you, but you without God; not God for you, but God against you; not God in you, ministering joy and blessing, but His wrath burning its way into your soul forever.
You and I, dear reader, have judged God hardly, and thought Him austere and stern; but the fact is, we are sinners, and have no particle of affection in our hearts for Him. Though His heart is welling over with affection to us, we have no eyes to see it. But this is God,—He sends prophets, and they are refused. Then He says, “I will send my beloved Son; it may be they will reverence him when they see him." It was a wonderful thing when His Son came into the world; but it was a yet more wonderful thing when His Son passed out of the world by death, a death availing to bring the vilest sinner to Himself.
Here, in Matthew, we have the birth of this blessed One. The wonderful moment in the history of the world was come, when— man having had it all his own way, and that way only sin and guilt, for 4000 years—God says, I am now going to have my way, I am coming into the world to save and bless. And He does not come in the manner you would expect, but in lowly guise; and the pride of the Roman emperor, in desiring to know the number of his subjects, is the means used to ensure the fulfillment of Scripture in the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem. No stately equipage, with proud out-riders, accompanies the lowly couple from Nazareth, and therefore there is "no room” for them in the inn. Outside the haunts of man, among the cattle, is born Jehovah, Jesus, the Saviour, and laid in a manger! Ah! He came in this lowly way, that He might affright none, that even the poorest and most wretched beggar might not feel he dared not approach Him. Reputed son of the carpenter was He, yet "God over all.”
What grace!
Angels praised at His birth, for a Saviour was born,—a Saviour for man. And would you not think that man would rejoice? But no; all we read is, that Herod the king " was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him " (Matt. 2:33When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. (Matthew 2:3)). The effect of Jesus' birth was, that the world did not rejoice, but was troubled; and the king, and those with him, are only too anxious to carry out Satan's plan for His extermination. Do you say, “Those must have been very wicked people "? Then how do you feel, my friend, at the thought of God coming by your side, looking into your heart, reading your very thoughts? You do not like it. You shrink from it. Ah! the secret is, we carry within us a heart that distrusts God. When He is known in His holiness and righteousness we fear Him, and we do not believe in His love. We argue, that because we do not love Him, that therefore He does not love us. But His heart is toward us, and He shows it by coming to be among us— God manifest in the flesh.
When Jesus came out in public, after thirty years of retirement, during which. He was known as the carpenter's son, He was baptized of John in Jordan, and saluted from heaven as the Son of God. “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Then He goes forth into the world, Satan tempting Him in the wilderness, only to be overthrown by Him, for God was in Him, yea, He was God. He comes across a deaf man, and He opens his ears; He meets a blind man, and He restores His sight; a poor leper bows before Him, and He puts forth His hand and touches the leper, and his leprosy disappears. Brought into contact with death, His presence banishes it. They bring Him into the chamber where Jairus' little daughter lies, but newly dead, and He says, “She is not dead, but sleepeth." The scorners laugh, and He puts the scorners out; and by-and-bye, when He comes forth in His glory, He will put the scorners out too, into outer darkness. Remember that, my unconverted reader.
He goes a little further, and at the entrance to the city called Nain, He meets a man carried forth from the city on a bier,—a dead man on his way to burial,—the only son of his mother, and she a widow. Most touching of sights, a widow's only son, and brought out of Hain, which means “beautiful." What a solemn mockery I But He stops the bearers of that bier, His own hand touching it, raises the dead man, and gives him back to his mother.
But watch this blessed One still further, and now it is not a man going out to be buried, but one who had been dead four days that He restores to life. His word, "Lazarus, come forth," brings the dead man from the tomb; for He is the Resurrection and the Life. He meets death, only to overcome it; He meets sin, to pardon it; He meets broken hearts, to bind them up; meets misery and wretchedness of every kind, only to put it all away. And yet the end of the pathway of God with us is this,—sold by one who had been with Him for three and-a-half years for thirty pieces of silver, brought before a mock tribunal and crowned with thorns, He who had life in Himself is condemned to die. Hooted and derided, the Creator stands before the creature's Judgment-seat; and when a robber and a murderer is brought out of his condemned cell and put side by side with Jesus,—this God with us,— and Pilate says "Which shall I release unto you?" they say, “Barabbas." They refuse Jesus; they prefer a robber and a murderer, rather than the One who was God with us, and they lead Him away to die.
They murder the One who had gone about doing only good.
And now, would you not think God would come in condign judgment, for guilt so atrocious? come forth and avenge the death of His Son? But no, God waits still to be gracious.
Through that very poured-out blood of His Son He washes away the sin that slew Him!
But not only does Jesus bear the suffering that man in his wickedness heaps upon Him on the cross, but God Himself forsakes Him when He hangs there. For He has sin upon Him, —sin not His own, I need not say. When the world put Jesus upon the cross, it was the expression of man's hatred to God; but when God dealt with His Son upon the cross on account of man's sin, that is the expression of God's love to us. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” God was against His Son once, and once only, and that enables Him to be for me in righteousness.
There are three solemn witnesses of the judgment of God against sin: He "spared not the angels that sinned "He" spared not the old world,... bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly "; and He" turned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes,... making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly." But this is far more solemn than all: He spared not His own Son. He judged a holy, spotless, innocent man, and that one His own Son, that he might be for you and me. He judged your sin in the person of His Son, that He might righteously spare you. He is able in righteousness to be for me now, because he was once against His Son on the cross.
I need not say that there never was a moment when that Son was more infinitely precious to the Father's heart, than the moment when the holy righteous judgment of God was against the Sin-bearer, that He might be for the poor sinner who believes in Him who died and rose again. When the soul sees that, it sets it at liberty, it says, I see God is for me now, I want to be for God.
“If God be for us, who can be against us?" He is for me in righteousness, for me in the holiness of His nature, as well as for me in the love of His heart. Then who would not trust Him? If God be for you, can you not trust Him, my reader?
Do you say, What about the judgment day? I ask you, Who is to wield the sword of judgment by-and-bye? The One into whose blessed side the sword was plunged eighteen hundred years ago, that you might be saved. Will He judge the one for whom He died? Though Satan may argue, “But he has been such a sinner." "True," says God, “but my Son bore His guilt on the cross, and it is He who is to condemn the guilty.”
Now comes the blessed truth of God in us, the grand present truth of Christianity. He is no longer with us, in the sense of walking this earth,— that has gone bye; but He is still for us, and more, He dwells in every believer.
God is a giving God, He gave his Son; He is a forgiving God, He forgives our sins by the death of His Son; “and hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us." He does not dwell with us in the sense of Immanuel, because He has gone up to heaven; but now it is God in us, that is, the one who knows his sins are blotted out by the blood of Christ gets the Holy Ghost. “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him and he in God." He who gets hold of the wonderful truth of who Jesus is and what He has done, he has God dwelling in him. The Lord Himself says this, and all we have to do is to believe it.
The believer on the Lord Jesus Christ is brought into association with Christ, and can look up and use these nine beautiful monosyllables, “As He is, so are we, in this world.”
Where is He? The other side of death and judgment. So am I. What is He? Accepted of God. So am I. Had man dared to pen this, he would have been thought a blasphemer; but God Himself has penned it. We are linked now with Christ, we have the pardon of our sins; and the place of the risen Son of Man who is the other side of death and judgment, is our place before God now, and His perfect love to us casts out all fear.
Oh, what a gracious God, and how the heart is led to simply rest on Him when we see what He is If the day has gone bye when God is with us, thank God the day has not gone bye when He is for us; and it is still the day when He is (not in every one, that is not true, but) in every believer, giving him the enjoyment even now of the place in which He has put him.
The Lord give you to know what this is, my reader, if you have never known it before, from this day forward. It is only when we know that God is for us, that we can be in any little way for Him, and that, surely, is what every true heart would desire to be. W. T. P. W.