The great thing in these ways and works of God in the gospel is to bring us to Himself. Groaning, burdened, if you like, still we are brought to Himself through infinite grace—grace reigning through righteousness—brought into the presence of God with a full sense of divine favor resting upon us. We are “reconciled to God,” and that is a large word. Being reconciled to God in all that He is in the full revelation of Himself through Christ, our hearts at ease with Himself, else we surely are not reconciled. We are going through the wilderness as regards these bodies, with all the government of God over His children; but there is no question of our place with Him, that in which the perfect revelation of His grace has set us with Himself. Christianity brings us into a new life-makes us partakers of a divine nature.
In Israel it was all an outward deliverance, but all written “for our admonition.” They were brought out of Egypt, their whole state and condition changed; they were brought into the wilderness, but brought to God there. And we have been brought out of the flesh and our place in the world as Adam's children, and are now sitting in heavenly places brought to God, with a nature capable of enjoying God.
It is not at all now whether a man is a righteous man according to the law: that is not the question now. The law was of course all right, and what is more, a perfect rule for a child of Adam; for it took up all the relationships, in which we stand, forbidding every breach of any in which God has set us. But Christianity, while putting its seal upon what man ought to be, and giving its highest sanction to the law, comes in behind all that and is another thing altogether; it shows that the law was just man's righteousness, which never could be wrought out, and brings in a distinct testimony as to the condition of man, proving “both Jews and Gentiles that they are both under sin.” “They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Then comes in the dealing of God with men when they were proved to be such, and this very dealing of God demonstrates fully what man was.
When God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, the world would not have Him: “He sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But they caught him and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.” Man has been fully proved, as He says: “What could I have done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it?” They rejected His mercy when He came into the world in goodness, and with the manifestation of a power which was sufficient to heal man of all his diseases: all the effects of what sin and Satan had brought in, a single word from Christ was sufficient to set aside. But “for my love” says the Lord, “I had hatred.” “Now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father.” They had not merely sinned against God, but when God was there in full manifestation of goodness, they rejected Him. Therefore “now is the judgment of this world.”
If you would walk with God in the comfort of His love, you must get it distinctly before you that you are lost as well as guilty— “dead in trespasses and sins.” It is a question of the state we are in by nature as well as the guilt that we have incurred. But when I see that the old man is hopelessly bad and condemned, when I understand that my whole history as a man in Adam is closed, then I get Christ instead of myself before God.
Guilt is brought out by the cross of the blessed Lord: “He hath made him sin for us, who knew no sin.” But besides that, there is a new place and condition brought in for the believer; a new creation, in the midst of weakness and infirmity, yet in which we walk with God fully reconciled. God is fully revealed; nothing so revealed Him in His righteousness and in His love as the cross. There it is that all that I need He has met. But He has done more, though I have the treasure in the poor earthen vessel. It is an entirely new thing that He has brought me into. I am redeemed out of the condition of the fallen first Adam into the condition of the glorified last Adam; I am brought into the condition in which Christ stands before God as man; I am “made the righteousness of God in him.” All that He is thus is mine. And this is how Christ says He gives—not as the world gives. When the world gives, it gives away—it has no more the thing that it has given; but when Christ gives, He gives nothing away, He brings us into everything that He has Himself. The peace that He gives us is “my peace;” the words that He has given us are “the words which thou gavest me;” the joy is “my joy;” the glory is “the glory which thou gavest me;” and the love is “the love wherewith thou hast loved me.” He brings us into the enjoyment of all that He enjoys Himself. It is a wonderful thing this; it is set before us as the object of hope.
There are two ways in which happy thoughts and feelings are wrought out. One is by living in the midst of happy relationships, as in a family. The other thing that gives energy and joy is having an object before us that we are pursuing in hope. Now God would use both of these means to produce the happiness of the Christian state in us. As to the place of relationship He has brought us into, we have in it “fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” God has given us the same place with His Son. As the actual glory, of course we have not got it yet; but we have got the place and relationship now, and the joy also, and the object, and the hope of knowing that we shall be with Him and like Him in the glory.
“We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” It is all quite settled. “For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house that is from heaven.” It supposes that my heart is with Him. He had said “not looking at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal;” so he goes on, “we know.” It is quite a technical expression in scripture. “We know that the law is spiritual.” “We know that we are of God.” “We know that the Son of God is come.”
“For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened.” I do not want to die as if weary of conflicts, and wishing to get out of the world. But I see in this world of death the power of life come in in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has destroyed the power of him that had the power of death in such sort, that I can look, if the time were come, to not dying at all, that “mortality should be swallowed up of life.” The power of life has come in which can change the living saints into glory without anything more. And so it will be in fact, for those who are alive when Christ comes: “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,” so that not a trace of mortality remains. Ruin and death have come in; but the power of life of the last Adam has come in, and so completely set aside the power of death and Satan, that, if the moment were come, it would be all swallowed up in a moment. It does not make any difference if we do die, for we shall be raised. But one has come in who has gone into death, and spoiled it completely, and who has the keys of death and hell in His hands. The first Adam plunged me in death and ruin; the last Adam has come in and gone into the ruin, and destroyed the power of it. If He were to come now, and close this scene, and the long-suffering of God were to cease we should pass into glory without death at all.
But we have also our present state. Not only the redemption work is accomplished, but we are God's workmanship now for the glory. “He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God.” He has wrought us for it; “We are his workmanship.” God wrought us for that self-same thing, the unseen glory in which Christ is. He predestinated us “to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first-born among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” “As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” Here we are in these poor dying bodies, but He has wrought us for this; it is a new creation. It is not a question of my responsibility as a child of Adam, but of God's intention—what He is going to do with us; He is bringing us into the same place in glory as His Son. It is not the clearing away my sins, though this was needed, and it is done; but it is God has wrought us for it.
Then comes another question for the believer's soul: “Who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.” We have not got the glory yet, but we are sealed for it, and we get the knowledge of it. The great and distinguishing characteristic of the believer is that he has the earnest of the Spirit—he is “sealed with the holy Spirit of promise.” It is most important to see that a believer may not as yet be brought into the Christian's place. But when he is sealed, the Holy Ghost gives him the consciousness of that place. The effect of the presence of the Holy Ghost in the believer is to give him the consciousness that he is in Christ, and Christ in him. His place is settled before God, and settled before the world. What he has to do consequently in the world, is to show forth in it the life of Jesus. As Christ represents us before God, so we represent Him before the world. Here is where we are seen, and this is what is so blessed, and what indeed you should not be satisfied without possessing—the knowledge of this relationship. The babes should cry, Abba, Father.
And mark this, that if we have not got the consciousness of the relationship, we cannot have the affections that belong to it. The consciousness of it is that upon which all holy affections are grounded. I might say, If only such an one were my father, what affection I should have for him, for he is such a good kind father I But if conscious of the relationship, the feelings come out at once. We must know the Father as such, and this is not great growth. It is the babes that know this—the fathers are characterized by being well acquainted with Christ. With Christ in us, we cry, Abba, Father: “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear: but ye have received the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” I insist upon it, not as a special growth, but as the place of the Christian. My responsibility as a Christian is the consequence of my being a child. I am to be a follower of God— “imitators of God as dear children.” Peaceful, blessed, I am now to manifest the life of Jesus in everything—my life showing (out of the reality of the work) the life of the Lord Jesus Christ in me.
Now God has wrought us for the glory. This is the very thing that proves that we never can be perfect here. A Christian is a man who is walking with God now in full consciousness of his relationship, and who is wrought to be like Christ when He shall appear. Well, can I be like Christ in glory, when I am down here? Impossible! But whilst he cannot be like Him here, there is only one object before the Christian, and that is to win Christ, and to be raised to glory—changed into it, if he be alive. But there is no other object: Christ is the object. The only thing that is set before us to attain is a thing that is unattainable in this world, and this is to be like Christ in glory. We cannot have what is set before us until we are there. I am going to be like Him in glory, and I long to be like Him, and I am trying to walk as like Him as ever I can. “Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them dung that I may win Christ and be found in him.” ( To be continued).