OH 11:25The person of the blessed Lord, the words and works that flow from that person, and the teaching or doctrine Of the written word about Him-what He is and what He has done-are three different ways in which the Holy Spirit has shown to man the truth of God.
It is blessed to see how, before His words were spoken, or His works were wrought, the Lord, knowing who and 'what He was and is, and ever will be, presented Himself as the one in whom, as a person, all that God had to give and all that man stood in need of was found.
Was the time come that God would make sons of God? In the first chapter of John we get, first, the setting forth of the glories, of this Co.: of the Father who had come to give power to as many as received Him, or believed in His name, to become sons of God (Ver. 1-28); then, secondly (ver. 29-34), the two great offices which devolved on Him-" the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world," and " He that baptiseth with the Holy Ghost." Then, thirdly, there is the account of His taking the place-His alone of right-of drawing people after Himself. Andrew and Peter and Philip and Nathanael are, each one of them, drawn to and drawn after Him, each one under the attracting power of His person-made to get into His wake as One sent to draw after Himself.
See, again, in Matt. 11 Doubted of by John, rejected by the people, He takes the place, openly, of being the only One, down here, who can give rest to the weary. " Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (28-30). What a speech!
Who but God Himself could know His bosom large enough to receive all the weary and heavy laden to it! Who but He could will to open such a receptacle for the afflicted! But how exquisitely consistent with His Person-God manifest in flesh-the Man of Sorrows! His burden is as the wings to a dove-power and means to mount up and flee away and be at rest.
That place and position He took and stood in, in the midst of this world of sin and sorrow. See how be takes another when the world is turning its back upon Him; and, in love to His disciples, He looks forward for them into another world.
Read John 11, and you will see this, and the various bearings of that truth which He knew essentially and distinctively attached to His own self. " I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." I am the resurrection and the life I Himself the fountain of existence for another world, and the one in whom the virtue of resurrection dwells! The disciples that came with Him, the pious Jews who sympathized and sought to comfort Martha and Mary, and Martha and Mary themselves were all at fault here, in this His light now shining out. Martha, shut up in circumstances and by sorrow, had just reproached Him: " Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." Reproached Him even while owning to His power over sickness and death! She then goes on to hint that He should use the power which was more than power over the circumstances and her sorrow -an appeal to God. "But I know that even now, what- soever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee." The Lord's answer is simple;, yet, for her ken, too full: " Thy brother shall rise again." [When? In the fullest sense, surely in the first resurrection, out from among the dead. This she sees not; but] she says: " I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day, [for the general judgment of the great white throne.] What a difference that from what was in His mind: " am-the resurrection and the life." A glory, inseparable from His person; a glory twofold in character-" resurrection and life" -yet multiform in its development, as to the fruits of it. Destruction and death were the characteristics of Satan, and widely had he spread them all around in various ways. In contrast with Satan, here was One whose characteristics were resurrection and life, and who had a world beyond, in which His glory in the full expression of these glories should be seen in poor sinners saved by grace. He had given to the poor. Samaritan woman water, which opened within her a well of water springing up to everlasting life; on the surface of whose transparent life His own blessed face was seen reflected, as " the man that told me all things that ever I did, is not this the Christ?"-the soul-searcher who searched for sin to save the sinner from it, with whom a poor adulteress could find refuge! There also was seen reflected the Father seeking those that could worship Him in spirit and in truth. Water, which not only could bubble up, onward into heaven and eternity, but which could flow forth rivers of refreshing, from the inward parts, gladdened withal by it.
Death's doings were around that scene: hearts which were ready to seek to put both Him and Lazarus to death, when He had raised him from the grave-hearts dull and slow to look beyond things present-death, the wages of sin (illustrated in Lazarus), and the Lord's own death close at hand, the fruit of perfect obedience. What has He to give? Life eternal-a life not of human nature, but of the divine nature, which, when given to a soul, brings it up out of a death in trespasses and sins. And see the condition upon which the virtue which He knew to be in Himself personally flows out to man, and the form it takes of blessing in them.
The condition is believing in Him. The fullness that is in Him flows not forth into any one who does not believe in Him; but it flows surely into every one that does believe in Him. A heart waiting on Himself; a mind which contemplates Him; a soul that acknowledges not only its need of what can meet death and destruction (both already in itself), but which sees God's provision of resurrection and life presented in Him, the Son of God's love, for the whosoever will take of the fountain
of the waters of life: such an one becomes a channel into and through which the treasures in the Christ Jesus flow. And what the form of blessing? Have they believed in Him, and the body like Lazarus gone to the grave? " Yet shall they all live." Do they still live and believe? They shall never die-never know in them-. selves what the import of death is. How magnificently He speaks!-this One that could say, " 0 death! I will be thy plague. Grave! I will be thy spoiler. Death shall be swallowed up in victory"-this One who, through His own death, meant to nullify him that had the power of death (that is, the devil), and deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage-this leader of captivity captive. It was a wonderful glory that now streamed out from His person What a one did He now, in His person, stand confessed to be, and was so consciously to Himself!-the answer of all death's doings in the mind, heart, soul, and body of ruined man. "What a Lord is He in His person as thus displayed! Then revealed amid the darkness of Judaism, broken hearts, puzzled minds, and all that sort of thing; now alive in honor and glory, where we, amid all our sorrows and trials and tears, yet by faith see Him, and leave and give up all for His sake, while we wait for His appearing.
Let Him that still has a soul unsatisfied see what He gives where He is received-life and resurrection; but not these apart from Himself. Receive Himself, and all is yours.
Resurrection of soul, out from man's world, into God's presence is mine and ours, since He was received; and with Him resurrection from death in trespasses and sins. Eternal life flowing down from Him on high, who was the Rock smitten for our sin-eternal life which brings us into fellowship with the Father and the Son on high, and Himself the better part, better than the gifts, whose best value is that they fit us to be in fellowship with Himself and His Father-is ours. He raised Lazarus from the tomb into a dying, sinful, perishing world, to become the occasion for Jewish spite to put Himself to death. His saved ones now are risen into another world, another state, whereof the model and the fashion is Himself, who is the resurrection and the life. The trial of faith then was, What can He mean? The trial of faith now is, to substantiate such things as that He is ours and we are His, as true of such as we are, in a world of death and dying. And yet we know Himself on high, the first-born from among the dead. Pre-eminent is He. He had power to lay down His life as a man, and power to take it again. The light of Him has shined into the grave of this world, into and amid the death that ruled in our hearts. Satan has been cast out before Him that came in. Life, and life abundantly, is ours. He takes souls, too, from out of bodies, to be absent from the body and present with Himself, the Life, which is far better. How far better! to wait with Him (the Life) above, for the glory, than to wait for it, amid death and sin and dying, down here. And what is it to be with Himself?-to be with Him in paradise, with Him whose glory and graciousness the poor thief discovered when a-dying? It was a freight of blessedness to him. And what the blessedness now, there above, of a Stephen, a Paul, a Peter, a John! What the perfect rest in Him, and with Him, of every departed one who clung to Himself! The grave is no prison-house to a believer. It is the cave in which He, the Prince of Life-He who has pledged Himself to us for resurrection of our bodies -puts away His dead-those that sleep in Him until the hour comes when He will show out openly what the worth is of our clinging to Himself.
And yet a little while, and then Himself, enjoyed now by us while down here-God's remedy and panacea for every evil and every woe-Himself, the rest and solace and gladness of those who have followed Himself and Stephen on high-Himself will appear and gather up the dust and the bodies of those that sleep-Himself the resurrection; and then will He speak the word and fulfill with life the bodies of those that are alive and remain; so that they, without seeing death of the body, shall join the risen ones, and mount up together with them, to be forever with the Lord. What could we do without Him? What want we yet, Himself being ours?