(5) A new race. Our connection is with a risen and glorified Christ. Even those in apostolic times who had known Christ after the flesh, knew Him no more so (2 Cor. 5:16): No longer were they around him on earth as branches in the vine, but livingly associated with him where he now is in heaven itself by the Holy Ghost come down from him for that end. On earth, such was His grace, it might have been said, “He liveth unto men;” but now, they having rejected Him, “He liveth unto God” (Prov. 8:31), (Rom. 6;10). He, having both glorified God in His life and vindicated God in His death, and having given Himself for us, has been raised by the glory of the Father and seated in heaven, and God is now working in the person of the Holy Ghost to glorify Him by taking of His and showing it unto His saints.
The most beautiful and perfect life was cut off in death; but on His part in love to us which led Him to give Himself for us; and on God’s part as bearing the full judgment of God as a propitiation for our sins before God as our substitute to have them borne away and washed, cleansed, forgiven; and now God, working in righteousness for the One who has so loved His God and Father as to glorify Him even about sin, at all costs to Himself, even laying down His life, when He so loved us as to drink the dreadful “cup,” which, had we drunk it, would have proved to us the cup of unmitigated and eternal wrath—has given us to Christ and in the new life in Him, in resurrection and the Spirit, associated us with Him in the glory of heaven itself in a new creation of which He is Head, as well as being a new race of men in Christ, of which He is the last Adam; a new state of which He is Lord; a new “House,” over which He, as “Jesus the Son of God,” who is passed, through the heavens into the presence of God, is set; a new body, the church to which He, as First-born from the dead, and set over all in heaven and earth, in this world and the world to come, has been given as Head.
The blessed Lord who died for us, being in heaven, has made all this world a blank and a wilderness to us who are here without Christ. Christ’s absence, when felt in the Spirit, makes this world an empty and unsatisfying place; for, like Mary of Bethany, all that we reckoned fairest and best in this sad scene has gone with Him to the grave; and “He is not here, he is risen:” and as “risen with Christ,” as to our spiritual place and state, we cannot but press on to reach Him where He is now seated, crowned and glorified. Not only have we a new object, but to gain this object we are set in the energy of the Spirit to run a new race.
If believers only saw their place in and part and portion with a glorified Christ, the surpassing excellence of the knowledge of Him would set them energetically on their course with the bright beams of the glory of Christ irradiating their souls in such a way that they should have their spirits so stirred by the power of Christ in the Spirit, with a sense of having Himself, that they should get outside of everything of earth and man and Satan’s world, and press on to the glorified Jesus in the heavens whom it is God’s delight to honor.
The text illustrated by Philippians 3 is the precious word of Christ: “And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth” (John 17;19). He has set Himself apart for His God and Father and us in that bright glory of heaven; also, just as we see His surpassing excellence and glory and holy love we will be sanctified to Him from everything in this world, both good and bad. What joy it gives in the Holy Ghost to have Him occupying the whole vision of the soul! Who that knows aim does not feel his heart stirred with bounding affections to reach Him in glory!
“From various cares my heart retires,
Though deep and boundless its desires,
I’ve now to please but One.”
“But one thing”: “I’ve now to please but One.” Living Christ: pleasing Him; reaching on to know Him and have Him in glory; perfectly conformed to Him; this is the one person and the “one thing” for the free loving heart that can sing:
“Tis the treasure I’ve found in His love
That has made me a pilgrim below,
And tis there when I reach Him above,
As I’m known, all His fullness I’ll know.”
[NOTE.-These lines, “I’ve now to please but One,” and “Tis the treasure I’ve found in His love, that has made me a pilgrim below,” we believe have been blessed as hardly any detached lines of hymns have been. Fully a dozen of years ago, when the former was sung at a conference in a certain city,—in the time of their morning freshness and childlike simplicity, when the saints attending it knew nothing else and when Christ in His risen and ascended glory, beauty, and attractiveness was just beginning to shine into their hearts, this line—
“I’VE NOW TO PLEASE BUT ONE,”
captivated the heart of one who was present with a marvelous spiritual power, and filled him with an experience of the Person and Presence of Christ Himself—so spirit-filling, ecstatic, and commanding, that when he addressed a meeting on his return, the entire audience seemed as if one by one and altogether to give an immediate response to it; and when afterward he put the line in his paper and wrote about it as one sitting at a heavenly feast, thousands felt the strange, unearthly influence of it, as light above the brightness of the sun; and some live to tell of the further blessed thing that that one line first placed them soul to soul, in the spirit, with the all-attractive “Person of the Christ” in the heavenly glory; and proved it had done so by separating them practically to Him in this world—the scene of His sorrows, rejection, and death.. And, O beloved, if
“I’ve now to please but One,”
were felt in power and in the Holy Ghost by every one of us, would it not rouse every sleeping virgin and send all “forth unto Him without the camp,” their hearts bathed in the heavenly radiance of His wondrous love, and at the cry “Behold the Bridegroom” springing forward to meet Him with lamps trimmed and burning, and “oil in their vessels with their lamps?”
“TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST.” “I’ve now to please BUT ONE.” Any word that tells of Him in His personal excellency, His finished work, and His surpassing glory as he now is in the Father’s presence, may form the “eye salve” to enable souls who have a desire after Him to see “how great is His beauty, and how great is His glory,” and to become a willing people in a day of heavenly power.
Such was once the effect of the reading of a little paper of wonderful energy on the words “Jesus only” in a prayer-meeting twenty-five years ago, that (we were told by one of them) about thirty men were linked at once with Christ in heaven, taken possession of and were delivered simultaneously from self and their fellow-men, and got on their feet to go forth with Christ’s Gospel as the Lord’s free men to tell of the glory of His Person and the perfection of His sinbearing work. Grand work this of the Holy Spirit making His Word a divine “eye salve” to let men see the glorious Person of the ascended Christ in the midst of His own circumstances, for then comes into view the all-satisfying sight—an accomplished work for the conscience and a perfect object for the heart.]
Nothing but Christ
Nothing but Christ, as on we tread,
The Gift unpriced-God’s living Bread;
With staff in hand and feet well shod,
Nothing but Christ-the Christ of God.
Everything loss for Him below,
Taking the cross where’er we go;
Showing to all, where once He trod,
Nothing but Christ-the Christ of God.
Nothing save Him, in all our ways,
Giving the theme for ceaseless praise;
Our whole resource along the road,
Nothing but Christ-the Christ of God.