The present position of Christ in heaven apprehended by faith determines our
(3) New standing and state in Him.— “That I may be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.” (vs. 9.) All his former supposed gains had been given up for Christ—to have Him as gain; and, instead of Saul figuring before the Jewish Sanhedrin and displaying himself as the leading legalist invested with his own righteousness which had its source in the law, his self-abnegating aim is,—sinking Saul,—to “be found in Him” whom he had seen as the risen Lord of glory; and if “found in Christ” then Saul was gone and only Christ appeared to faith instead of him; and he made Him appear before others, as the only One in whom he trusted and boasted as giving him a standing before God and being the cause of his investiture with the righteousness issuing from God and which is apprehended by faith in Christ, and solely on the ground of faith, and not on the principle of law, or on the ground of works of law. He is in a new place where “all old things” have passed away; and all things are become new, and all things there are “of God who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ.” Seeing Christ in glory—he recognized his standing and righteousness as complete in Him before God. His former state was what his own righteousness had made him; but he had seen Christ in the glory of God in God’s righteousness, and he will have none of his “own righteousness which is of the law but that which through the faith of Christ the righteousness which is of God by faith.” If you seek for the great ritualist leader and legalist Saul of Tarsus he cannot be found within the entire domain of the law; for he has abandoned all as loss to have Christ as gain; and be “found in Him.” He has been justified and sanctified in Christ, and has had Christ Jesus made on the part of God, wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption that he may glory in the Lord: and now, here, he glories in Him as giving him a share in the new moral estate of man in Christ in heaven.
His uniform testimony is that, flowing from revelation and his own experience, salvation and a place before God in Christ are not from works of righteousness of law done by us (Titus 3:4-74But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, 5Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; 6Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; 7That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:4‑7)), (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)), (Gal. 2:16-2116Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. 17But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid. 18For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. 19For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. 20I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. 21I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. (Galatians 2:16‑21)). How he delights to contrast what he had in virtue of his faith in Christ with what he had before He revealed Himself to Him and was revealed by God in him. “Found in Him,” not in self; “not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is by the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith,” Whether it be objective and judicial as in Romans, or subjective and of the new creation, “having put on the new man which according to God is created in righteousness and holiness of truth,” as in Ephesians; or the whole new and future moral state of man in glory as here, it is most certainly “of God.” The language is that which the apostle frequently employs when he is giving our standing and our state as in Romans and Galatians, and it is of the new and future position of man in Christ and of the fundamental things attaching to it he speaks here antedating, by faith and the Spirit, that day when we shall be revealed in glory and be.so identified with Him, in bodies of glory, that we shall be “glorified together.” But for faith and the Spirit he is “found in Him” now as in the very source and element of his spirit’s life as well as divine righteousness. Let “in him” mean only what it does in “Romans;” yet that connects him with the dead and risen One— “the last Adam the second man” in whom as the Head of a new race we have life and righteousness “for as by the disobedience of the one man the many have been constituted sinners; so also by the obedience of the one the many will be constituted righteous” (Rom. 5): and closely bound up with this is our subjective state (Rom. 6) in which we reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin but alive unto God in Christ Jesus; we yield ourselves unto God as alive from the dead and our members instruments of righteousness unto God. There is certainly also the molding of life corresponding to the gaining of Christ. God is working in us both to will and to do: the Christ, who humbled himself and became obedient even unto death, when here in grace and graciousness being our pattern: and that same One highly exalted at God’s right hand and having a name above every name, in life and righteousness, our object; and the Holy Ghost giving us discovery of our place in Him where He is and working in us, in association with Him, we get “strengthened with all might by His Spirit in the inner man that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith”; and “strengthened also with all power according to the might of his glory unto all endurance and long suffering with joy.”
There are three things the apostle said at the close of his life that he had done: (1) “I have fought a good fight; (2) I have finished the race; (3) I have kept the faith;” (2 Tim. 4:77I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: (2 Timothy 4:7)). Here we find him occupied with all the three; but that which stands out most prominently is his energy in pressing on in the race. He saw the glorious Man in whom, as risen from the dead, (for he knew Him not otherwise), He wished to be found in God’s sight, the righteousness of God in Him, and be with Him in glory where He is, cost what it may. But while on the road he has (4) A new occupation: “that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed unto His death, if any way I arrive at the resurrection from among the dead.” (vs. 10). Paul is looking “to be found in Him” having not his own righteousness but that which is through the faith of Christ—the righteousness which is of God by faith, to know Him, &c.
Nothing keeps men so effectually from the knowledge of Christ and Christianity as a mixture of religious observances and legal righteousness. The Hebrew Christians were kept back by it:—became “unskillful in the word of righteousness” “needing milk and not strong meat.” (Heb. 5). The Galatians too, who were taught, by those ritualists who troubled them, to add circumcision to faith in Christ in order to help them in the Christian life, were warned by the apostle that it was “another gospel,” and “not the gospel of Christ:”
and he tells them that he stood in doubt of them, and travailed in birth for them that Christ might be formed in them. And in the epistle to the Colossians, he sets distinctly before the saints who were in danger of being made a spoil of, and “not holding the head” by means of philosophy and vain deceit and the ritualism that presented the ordinances of men—that “Christ is all; and in all”: “all,” as an object; “in all,” as their life; and they needed nothing else and none but Christ.
It is, therefore, of great importance to our knowing Christ that we have a divine assurance and settled consciousness of our place in Him in heaven where He is and of our being the righteousness of God in Him. Clear as to our standing in a risen and glorified Christ; and as to the righteousness of God in taking Him up from the dead to His own presence in glory, and in giving a place in Him there to all who through faith in Him and the Holy Ghost, become associated with Him as those who have “the righteousness which is of God by faith” and not on the principle of law or by works of law, we are in a state to “know Him.” A standing before God in all holy peacefulness in Him who is our peace, and has made peace by the blood of His cross is essential to our being in that calm state of spiritual restfulness, in which we may be so entirely free from ourselves and have Christ before us so really and continuously that we “may know Him, &c.” He is the one engrossing Object of the truly-delivered Christian who has seen an end both of his sins and of himself in the cross of Christ, and has had a sight by faith’s eye of the glorious One who appeared in such matchless grace to Saul on the road to Damascus, and who thenceforward stood out before Him all his life as the nearest and dearest object to His heart.
The whole of the new moral estate of man is looked at here as in the future, in heavenly glory with Christ; and, being in resurrection, the whole matter in hand is its attainment—for what else is there for a saint to do? The resurrection here is that which enters us into this new state in glory— “the Politeuma in the heavens”—identified with the last Adam, the risen, and accepted and glorified man. But although everything here is in the future, yet by faith, and the revealings of the Spirit of Christ, we enter now, in spirit, into all that it will be by and bye; and our present occupation is to know the very Christ for whose coming to fetch us thither we are waiting, and with whom we are expecting to be in that bright glory forever. We have eternal redemption with the perfect purging of our consciences through the blood of Christ; present reconciliation through the death of Christ; sonship, and the Holy Ghost giving us the consciousness of a new relationship in the Son of God risen from the dead, and the affections of children; and the most magnificent hope set before us “Glory with Christ above:” “Christ who is our hope,” being Himself our present object in the glory of heaven, our whole moral existence is formed by our having the knowledge of Him communicated to us in the living energy of the Holy Ghost who keeps us continuously in spiritual activity, pushing our way through every hindrance to reach Him, be like Him, and with Him in the glory of heaven forever. Said He, “I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am there ye may be also.” And we wait for God’s Son from heaven.
“That I may know Him!” He would know Him as risen, and in the glory of heaven where first he saw Him. Among carnal saints who gloried in men and gifts, and were worldly in their spirits, he said he would know only Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. But in the normal condition of the Christian he can be occupied with Christ Jesus his Lord, glorified. He can contemplate Him in all the honor, power, and glory of His heavenly state. This glorious One is the divine person in whom God’s nature and character were revealed on earth, One in whom all God’s glory had shone out in His life and death and resurrection. His nature and ways had been seen in Him when walking here in divine love and grace, and giving Himself for our sins: all that the Father is was glorified in raising Him from the dead and seating Him with Himself in heavenly glory. It was but holy consistency with Himself to raise and glorify the One who had perfectly revealed Him, and glorified Him on the earth, even when occupied about our sin: this Divine One—this now glorified man set on high and crowned with glory and honor for his suffering of death, is the One he ever sought to know—to know Himself “the person of the Christ, enfolding every grace.”
Then further, he adds “and the power of his resurrection:” not the power of his raising up in the flesh, nor yet the power by which He was raised and rose; but the power and efficacy which flow from His resurrection. Perfect love had been manifested in death and the basis of divine righteousness laid, perfect self-sacrifice displayed, and Christ had passed through death in the power of life, and its perfection was demonstrated in resurrection: and victory too attaches to it. The apostle as one who, in the Spirit, is united to Him who is the source of this perfect, victorious life, desires to know Him thus—and realize that the divine life in which one runs on his course to Christ in glory, (its source and vital energy,) is not life on probation, but life in victory, having already gone through death and risen out of it triumphant over all the power of the enemy. This is to “know Him and the power of His resurrection.” He was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection of the dead. This risen man, Paul had seen in glory,—he knew Him not otherwise than risen,—and he had such a longing to be with Him, and conformed to Him in glory, that whatever might be in the road he would encounter, should it be even death itself. Nothing but Christ’s resurrection power could sustain a man like Paul, who was dying daily.
Suffering was given the apostle by the Lord at his conversion as a special mark of distinction. “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name’s sake.” And, knowing the power flowing from His resurrection in the Holy Spirit of God, he is desirous of knowing (and by this time he had had much of it) “the fellowship of his sufferings.” His first experience and present circumstances gave him a share in this coveted “fellowship;” and should he be “conformed to his death” by being crucified by the Romans, as the issue of his imprisonment, that would be joyfully accepted; for the glorious One is so entirely before him that he says “if by any means I might attain to the resurrection from among the dead.”1 The Lord is seen in resurrection and if he should experience the fellowship of his sufferings by suffering even to death itself, it would be only to assimilate him the more to His Lord in death and resurrection.
By his arriving at “the resurrection from among the dead,” he would share in the last possible feature of conformity with his Lord, save participation in heavenly glory with Him in “a body of glory” like His own. Death, resurrection, and glory were still before him; and his spirit’s fervent aspiration was to know his Lord and Saviour practically in all the three.
That he might get to Him in heaven now, and wait with Him there, for his glorified body made him welcome sufferings, and even death itself – for then he would, by and bye, arrive at the resurrection that is from among the dead. “This is the first resurrection:” and it consists of two parts: “Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming,” (Cor. 15:23). His present condition is peculiar, as raised spiritually from among the “dead in trespasses and sin;” and he aspires to the completion of this privileged peculiarity when he shall share with his Lord in an eclectic resurrection like his own—for He rose “from out among the dead,” leaving the dead in myriads behind Him, and this also shall all his dead saints do.1