Familiar as we are with the thought, it is after all a wonderful thing that the Son of God should come into this world of sinners, and still more wonderful that He should die for them. Into this world the Son of God came, fully bringing out what we are, by the way in which He was received; but at the same time His coming was full of joy and blessing for us. He was the immediate object of the express delight of the Father; then He died and rose again, and so brought us into the same place—into light and blessing with Himself.
It is a wonderful thing in the first place to have God come into the world—grace and truth in the world—and that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not a question of our duties, or of future judgment; but it is into the midst of this world of defilement, violence, corruption, evil, and enmity against God-
Into the Midst of it He Came.
What makes it so especially wonderful is, that He came as a babe (though miraculously born) as one of ourselves, a real, true man in this world of woe. Still there was more: for it is a totally different thing for God to deal with men as children of Adam, as to what they are, and what they can bring to God, and what their righteousness is—there is a great difference between looking at a man as responsible to God, and God dealing with him according to His own thoughts. This is the truth, when grace is rejected. It is not that God overlooks our responsibility; but it is a totally distinct thing for God to reveal and fulfill the thoughts of His own heart, and for Him to investigate those of ours. Dealing with man on the ground of what he is, and what he has done, goes on to judgment. In Christ He is revealing the thoughts of His heart.
Thus we get His own intentions before ever the world was- the purposes and counsels of God which were not in the first Adam at all, but in the last. That runs through the whole of Scripture from the very beginning. As soon as ever man had sinned
Grace Opens the Door
to reveal it; there was the Seed of the woman that was to bruise the serpent's head. Adam was not the seed of the woman. The promise did not refer to the first man at all, nor was it a promise to him; but it was a revelation that there was One coming, the Seed of the woman, who should bruise the serpent's head and destroy his power. Therefore there was ground for faith to lay hold upon. Promises and prophets were always referring to the same thing. "In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed." "To Him give all the prophets witness." Prophets had to deal with men, and bring the law to their consciences; but here is One in whom all the thoughts and counsels of God rest, and in grace to poor sinners—"All the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen, unto the glory of God by us." "All things are for your sakes," though all surely for God's glory.
Another thing in connection with it is, that it is
Only When We Come to Christ,
that we can reconcile the purposes of God in the full blessing of life, and man's responsibility. Heathens and Christians have disputed over it. In the garden of Eden there was the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; life on the one side, responsibility on the other. Man failed, ate of the tree of knowledge, and could not get to the tree of life. Now the law took up the same principle—here again you have responsibility and life—and said, Do this and live. The Lord Jesus Christ, the second Man, comes, does His Father's will in everything, and sovereign grace takes up our responsibilities; He takes the consequences of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and He is the life. He bears the consequences of responsibility in His own body on the tree. It perfectly meets all our need, and a great deal more—God is perfectly glorified—and we get eternal life in Him, and the joy and blessing of it all in the full result of all these counsels of God, to be conformed to the image of His Son—nothing short of this.
Though the responsibility is proved, yet to be like the Son of God in glory has nothing to do with my responsibility. No man could have dared to think of such a thing; but it was the mind and counsel of God in Christ. It did not come out till after the cross, for we could not have had any part in it but by the
cross. Before ever the world was, it was the thought of God to have a
Saved and Redeemed People
brought into the same place as, and associated with, Christ. Of course the pre-eminence is His. "Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows." Who could pretend to be the "fellow" of the Son of God, if it were not the fruit of the work of the Son of God? The mind of God rested on Him in connection with man.
The first Adam is totally set aside, having been tested, tried, and proved, up to the cross; then the second Man is brought in. God never would set up the last Adam along with the first; the first Adam was a fallen man; the last was the Man of God's counsels, and He sets Him up instead, when we had failed in our responsibility. Titus lays down the other principle (Titus 1:1, 2, 31Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness; 2In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began; 3But hath in due times manifested his word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Saviour; (Titus 1:1‑3)). "In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began." Then it was the hope of eternal life. 2 Tim. 1:99Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, (2 Timothy 1:9) gives the same truth: "Who hath saved us,... not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began." These thoughts and purposes of God were given us in Christ Jesus before ever the world was. Now if you look for a moment at Pro. 83She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors. (Proverbs 8:3), you find a remarkable passage connected with this. There I see that before the world was created, Christ was there as wisdom, daily the Father's delight, and having His delights in the sons of men ("delight" is the same thought as "good pleasure").
We have then man put on his responsibility, and the first thing he does is to fall; he distrusts God, and that before there was a lust. He listens to Satan, he questions the love of God, he eats the fruit, and he falls. Then comes the law; man sets up the golden calf, and broke it. Last of all
God Sends His Son-
"It may be that they will reverence My Son"; but "now have they both seen and hated both Me and My Father"; "they cast Him out." That closed the history of responsibility.
It was when man was a sinner and had broken the law, that the Son of man came into this world in grace. "Now once in the end of the world hath He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." He calls it the "end of the world" because man's moral history is ended—grace is not ended. Man is not less intellectual than before; he can invent railroads, telegraphs, and I know not what; but what have these things to do with the moral character of God or man, or with heaven? Death has come in, and this is all over. There are no telegraphs in heaven! Men are blinding themselves; there is not one single link with God, of thought or feeling of heart, but plenty with this world. Remarkable persons there are, but all belongs to the fashion of this world that passeth away; and when man's breath goes forth, his thoughts perish. You may put up a monument to him, but it speaks of death! God has put this world into man's power, and he has invented much; but, are children more obedient, wives more faithful, servants more honest? And since we have had all these developments of intellectual capacity, taking it even on the lowest level, are people happier—more to be trusted? A world in which people cannot trust each other is a miserable world! What is called progress does not give more confidence from man to man, to say nothing of God. There is not a single thing in it connected with the soul.
Man's history was thus closed at the cross. First, lawlessness, then lawbreaking, and then enmity to God; then comes that blessed perfect work of the last Adam who met the need in His own Person and brought in the full accomplishment of the purposes of God. He has brought man into an entirely new sphere by death and resurrection, and eventually glory, and has settled the whole question of responsibility.
But God speaks to our hearts, and says—and I desire that you should take this to your hearts—Now you must understand what I am doing; I want to get your hearts into perfect confidence with Mine, by the testimony of what is in My heart; and as to your sins, I have settled that. This is the blessed truth, that when God could not bear my sins,
Instead of Putting Me Away, He Has Put My Sins Away,
and I stand before Him according to the value of that which was done in putting them away. What I have on my heart to show you is, how God brings us into the consciousness that when this work is done, the bad tree is done with. Not only had I sinned, but I was a sinner; and the question of what I am is perfectly settled. It is not character, for there are no two alike; each one of us has a different character. I may say that this is a humble trait in me; so I may say of a crab tree—the flowers are more beautiful than those on an apple tree—but what do I care for the pretty flowers when the fruit is bad?
I cut the whole thing down! That is what God has done. When
I have a spiritual judgment of the thing in my mind, I do not think of the pretty flowers on the wild tree, but of the fruit. So with man. God has sentenced the whole thing entirely; it is all cut down, and grafted with Christ, and then I expect fruit.