Editors’ Note: To understand our present identification with Christ is to understand our present place with respect to government.
Our place here upon the earth is connected with Christ. Just, indeed, as we are identified with Christ before God as to standing, so also are we identified with Christ before the world. In other words, we are put in His place down here just as we are in Him before God, and I am sure that it would be very helpful to us all to have this truth continually before our souls.
The Lord Jesus, speaking to the Jews, said, “Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world” (John 8:2323And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. (John 8:23)). Afterwards, when presenting His own before the Father, He said, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:1616They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. (John 17:16)). You will see that from verse 14 to verse 19, He essentially puts His disciples in His own place in the world, just as from verse 6 to verse 13 He puts them into His own place before the Father. And they have His place in the world, be it remarked, because they are not of it, even as He was not of it, for having been born again they are no longer of the world. Hence He speaks continually of their having to encounter the same hatred and the same persecution as befell Him. Thus, to cite an example, He says, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept My saying, they will keep yours also” (John 15:18-2018If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. 19If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. 20Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. (John 15:18‑20)). The Apostle John in like manner indicates the utter contrast between believers and the world, when he says, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness” — or “the wicked one” (1 John 5:1919Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. (John 5:19)).
Every believer is regarded by God as having died and been raised together with Christ (Rom. 6; Col. 3:1313Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. (Colossians 3:13)). He has thus been brought, through the death and resurrection of Christ, as completely, in the view of God, out of the world as Israel was brought out of Egypt through the Red Sea. Hence he is no longer of it, though he is sent back into it (John 17:1818As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. (John 17:18)) to be for Christ in the midst of it. Paul therefore could say, while active in service for Christ in the world, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom [or whereby] the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal. 6:1414But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. (Galatians 6:14)). By the cross of Christ he saw that the world was already judged (John 12:3131Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. (John 12:31)), and by the application of the cross to himself he regarded himself as dead — crucified to the world —so that there was separation between the two as complete as death could make it.
E. Dennett, adapted from Twelve Letters