IT is delightful thus to find our salvation and security in God Himself, and all He has done for us in His own peculiar love in Christ Jesus our Lord. We are thus safe for eternity, so that we have nothing left us to do but be giving " thanks unto the Father who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light." But, as I have been saying already, it is Time, and not Eternity, that is our chief trouble.
We, who know ourselves a little, wish that we were as safe for Time as for Eternity. Our salvation and our security are in God's hands, and cannot fail; but, though saved by God's grace, and thus as completely delivered and brought out from beneath all our responsibilities as fallen children of Adam, as if we had never had any connection with Him; yet, now that all our sins have been forgiven, that we are justified from all things, and as to our consciences, so perfectly cleansed from dead works, to serve the living God that we have no longer to think of ourselves as sinners, but as characteristically saints-"Them that are sanctified," yet we are set up afresh in a new position, and with a new life in Christ, and are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ; are sealed with the holy Spirit of God who dwells in us, sheds abroad God's love in our hearts, causes Christ to dwell in our hearts by faith, is the power of the new life for endurance of trial, power in conflict, service, and prayer, is the Spirit of adoption and the earnest of the inheritance; and our new responsibility is to live, walk, work, and worship according to the place and portion we have in Christ, and the epistle of Christ written by the Spirit of God, seen and read as such by all men. Living by the faith of the Son of God walking in the Spirit, it is our new responsibility to be an expression of the grace, goodness, and holiness of God, in a world that is without God " or mortifying the deeds of the body by the Spirit, and walking in newness of life, having put off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ in having put off the old man, which is corrupt, and being renewed in the spirit of our mind, and having put on the new man which is created in righteousness and holiness of truth. Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, even as the Christ loved us, and delivered himself up for us an offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor." "Risen with Christ, seek the things above, where the Christ is sitting at the right hand of God; have your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on the earth: for ye have died, and your life is hid with the Christ in God."
Our whole business is to fill all our relationships with the beauty and fragrance of the heavenly things, and enjoy the place, portion, and life we have in Christ “who is gone into heaven." The display of a heavenly life in the Spirit in this earthly sphere, where Christ is not, is now the privilege and requirement of our new responsibility, as those who have life in Christ glorified, and are blessed in Him with all spiritual blessings. It is the magnitude of our privileges, blessings, and prospects that render the discharge of our new responsibilities a matter of such grave solicitude. And the chief cause of our failure, perhaps, may be similar to our failure as already described, when struggling to do good under law, and without having a due sense of the necessity of God's interference and divine deliverance. God did not only see His people's sorrows in Egypt, and come down to deliver them, but He joined Himself to them as their Director, Guide, Protector, and Provider, taking them out of Egypt and into Canaan. He charged Himself in grace to do everything for them, and in the desert, for forty years, He led them about, gave them food from heaven, and water from the smitten rock, and when He took them miraculously across the Jordan and into the promised land, He appeared to Joshua, as the Captain of the Lord's host, with a drawn sword in His hand, and He led them on to victory, and gave the land to them for a possession. “This people have I formed for myself: They shall show forth my praise." And just as really are believers of the present dispensation in their different position, as heavenly, taken in hand by God, not only for the deliverance which He gives in redemption and salvation, but for the life of faith, the conflict with wicked spirits, their testimony in the world, their service, walk, and worship. They are privileged to reckon upon God, and lean upon His grace in faith and prayer. This is God's mind concerning us: " Ye are a chosen race, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a people for a possession, that ye might set forth the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness to his marvelous light: who once were not a people, but now God's people; who were not enjoying mercy, but now have found mercy." Out of His fullness have all we received and grace for grace. He was manifested in flesh full of grace and truth. We now in Him are left here as His representatives, and to display the same excellencies that He exhibited when on earth. For this we have the Holy Ghost enabling us, by abiding in Christ, to bring forth fruit. “Hereby is my Father glorified that ye bring forth much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples." “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, self-control." God's Spirit, in conscious union with Christ, is the source of this fruit-bearing. By His in-dwelling He not only acts in repression of the evil of the flesh (Rom. 8:1313For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. (Romans 8:13); Gal. 5:16,1716This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. 17For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. (Galatians 5:16‑17)), but as the expression of Christ in His goodness, grace, and holiness (2 Cor. 3; Phil. 2:1515That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; (Philippians 2:15); Eph. 5 '2). The Christian epistles generally give us, in the beginning, a statement of the grace and privileges in which we have been set by God, and then follows a statement of the duties flowing from our new place of blessing. “It is God who worketh in you to will and to do of his good pleasure." “Grieve not the holy spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption." “Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation?" “For the grace of God that carries with it salvation to all men hath appeared, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and piously in the present course of things, awaiting the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our God and Savior Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all lawlessness, and purify to himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works."
As I have already said, grace sets us in a place of unspeakable blessing in Christ, but it also enables us in the happy liberty of grace, to discharge all our functions in all spheres, relationships, and circumstances, from new motives, with newness of spirit, and is newness of life; and with a new power, the Holy Spirit of God. We find ourselves here as members of Christ, and we have consequently our ecclesiastical responsibilities to " walk, worthy of the vocation wherewith we are called, with all lowliness and meekness. With long-suffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." In the end of this same chapter, and in chapter v., we have personal and social godliness carried on, by the Spirit whom sin would grieve, on the model shown us of God Christ as Love (Eph. 5.1 2), and as Light (Eph. 5:8,9,148For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: 9(For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) (Ephesians 5:8‑9)
14Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. (Ephesians 5:14)). And in the end of Eph. 5 and beginning of Eph. 6, we have Christians addresses in reference to their relative duties as wives and husbands, parents and children, masters and servants; the relationship of the Church to Christ lending weight to them all. There are earthly duties to be performed by the heavenly family, and these duties are to be discharged in the liberty of Spirit, and in the power of our new relationship to God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. There is also the divine armor in chapter vi., all of which is moral, showing us that good state of soul is required to maintain the Christian warfare which is with wicked spirits in the heavenlies—and this, too, is done as being in Christ and filled with the Spirit. If Satan finds the whole armor of God not put on he gains an advantage over us, for he would bring before us our bad moral state to make us doubt the goodness of our spiritual position and blessing in Christ Jesus. " Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the panoply of God that ye may be able to stand against all the artifices of the devil." This is a specimen of the way the Spirit speaks of us, and to us, in the epistles. Our responsibilities as forgiven, justified, saved, and heavenly men, flow from our new and unvarying position and relationship, and we are also empowered by the Holy Ghost to discharge the duties of the abiding relationships of nature as new creatures in Christ Jesus. They are, thus, the privilege 3 and blessings in Christ, and the responsibilities which flow from them with the grace, power, and motives for the discharge of them: and whether it be ecclesiastical or personal godliness, as we have in Eph. 4, or social and relative godliness, as in chapters v. and vi., the duties to be performed are to be discharged by persons set in the highest sphere, and blessed in the richest manner, by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and who have been under the workmanship of God, created in Christ Jesus, and united to Christ and made members of His body, the Church, and also an habitation of God in Spirit—and by the same Spirit having Christ Jesus dwelling in the heart by faith, rooted and grounded in love to enter into all our portion in Christ, and to enjoy according to the power that worketh in us our connection with all the fullness of God. Thus we have the grace and truth which was in its fullness in Christ (John 1:1414And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)) reproduced and expressed in the midst of the darkness of this world, and in the midst of the evil where the god of this world seems well-nigh triumphant. In our new state, sphere, and circumstances with the Holy Ghost in us as our living power, we are set down to glorify God in our body: and although it is desirable for our own happiness that we perform all our duties in the Christian life in the enjoyment of liberty and sunshine, yet it is a happy thing that the whole range of responsibility can be met and answered by us as honestly serving the Lord Christ, let the day be bright or cloudy, wet or dry, hot or cold; and whatever may be the state of joy or sorrow in which we find ourselves.