My relationship with God and the Father is all settled and settled forever. I am a child, and my relations with God flow from that. It is important for us all to get hold of this, that we are not in flesh at all. Then where are we? In Christ; put into this totally new place, where Adam innocent was not, as to our life and course here. “The calling above,” this is the one thing; the pressing forward, the pursuing; but the very pursuit gives a consciousness that it is not attained. I am a son with Christ, but I am not yet glorified with Christ, this is clear; but I am wrought for it, and I “look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.” We try to be more like Him every day; we are chastened for it, if need be, in our course; but we are wrought for it, and we shall be it when He appears. The moment my mind descends below what Christ in glory is now, that moment my mind descends below what is my proper object as a Christian. If you look for perfection down here, you have lowered your standard.
You say, But am I not to be like Christ? Yes, but not down here. He was a perfectly sinless being; so born into this world, as it is said, “That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” But we are born sinful, “By nature children of wrath.” And if I say, How can I have a ground for such a wondrous hope as that I should be made like to Christ? the answer is at once, I know the blessed Son of God has been made sin for me. “He made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was found in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” The moment I really believe this, I can believe anything as the result; nothing is too great for Him to do for me. He is to receive the fruit of the travail of His soul; what is the fruit? That He shall have sons with Him in glory. If I am “made the righteousness of God in him,” may I not expect anything? We have got these two great parts of the intervention of God for us: God in Christ in this world in grace to reconcile it, and our being made the righteousness of God.
I will say one word here on “the righteousness of God,” as many find great difficulty in understanding what it is. The question is, How can a righteous God justify sinners? Well, the proof and testimony of God's righteousness is, that He has set Christ at His own right hand. When Christ had perfectly glorified God, and that as made sin on the cross, God places Him at His own right hand in heaven: there only do I see righteousness. But this work, though perfectly to God's glory, was done for us, so that it is God's righteousness to give us a place with Him. In Christ we are thus made God s righteousness. So it is said “He is righteous and just to forgive.” But Christ is gone there as man, and I am united to Him, and with this righteousness I get Christ my life in which I am capable of enjoying all the blessedness of that which I am brought into. I have power to enjoy it, because Christ is my life.
The apostle, having considered the purpose of God, now turns to the side of man's responsibility. That place, as sinners, is death and judgment; where is the Christian as to these? If I die, he says, I am absent from the body, and present with the Lord. In dying for us He has made death, which closed our path in darkness, the way (as with Israel at the Red Sea and Jordan) of getting out of all the ruin here, and the way of getting into blessedness with Christ. When I take up, not the purpose of God, but that which lies on me in my responsibility as a child of Adam, death becomes a positive gain. I have done with trial, temptation, sin, the world; and I have begun with Christ in heaven: “present with the Lord.”
But judgment must be considered also. We cannot say this is gain, nor that it is ours, as we can of death; but we see here the way it works upon the Christian. All will be manifest before the judgment-seat of Christ: “That every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” We must all give an account of ourselves; nor does the apostle seek to conceal the solemnity of this: he calls it the terror of the Lord. But does he tremble? He does not think of himself in any such aspect. The love of Christ constraining him, he persuades other people, the unconverted, who have reason to tremble at the thought of judgment. This is the effect it has upon Paul; he presses upon others that, if their sins are not gone, they cannot carry them to heaven.
But it has also another effect upon the Christian—a sanctifying effect upon the conscience: and this is, that we “are” manifest now, not merely shall be. “We are made manifest unto God.” This is a present thing for the heart and conscience. The effect of the judgment in this way is most useful; there is no fear as to the result of the judgment, but the sense of that judgment acts in sanctifying power on the heart. Whilst Christ has put away our sins once and forever, yet I am manifest to God now; and I am before God estimating things that I do and say as they will be manifest before Him in the day of judgment. How many things would be judged and done with if we were now truly before God as we shall be in the day of judgment!
These two things are quite distinct: the purpose of God in putting us into the glory of God; and, that He has wrought us for it and has given us the earnest of the Spirit. I know that many think it is only presumption in such as on earth profess to know that they are saved; but it is not presumption to know God's thoughts when He has revealed them. It is real presumption to call in question what God has said. There is no such thing in the New Testament, after the day of Pentecost, as a Christian being uncertain about his salvation. Not that there is not exercise in getting into such a place, but there is no such thing as uncertainty as to our standing when in it. If I see that His blood cleanses from all sin, and that the salvation wrought through that bloodshedding belongs to the believer, it is no good saying, I do not know whether it is for me. If you believe in that work, God seals you with His Spirit; and if you have got the Holy Ghost, you will know it is yours. The Lord expressly declares “at that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” Nothing else is owned as the Christian place. How can I doubt, if the Spirit of God dwelling in me makes me know? and this Christ has positively declared. How can I doubt with the earnest of glory and seal in my own heart? “We have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father,” and I know God is my Father.
And now let me add another word in connection with this which comes farther on in the chapter. “If one died for all, then were all dead.” It does not say “guilty” here; it is “dead,” “dead in trespasses and sins.” Death and judgment came in by sin. We read, the dead shall be judged “according to their works;” and Christ came down into this place of judgment that our sins might be purged and put away. But there is another aspect of man here; one in which he is looked at as “dead” —dead as regards God; not a movement in his heart towards God. Now if dead, can you as such awaken any feelings in him? When I discover that not only I have sinned, but that in nature I am a sinner, I find that I am dead in sins. I am lost as well as guilty.
What is my state before God? It is “enmity against God.” There is not another thing which man will not bear and put up with in one way or another, but he will not bear to have Christ brought in. From the lowest and the grossest society up to the most elegant and refined, Christ cannot be brought in; it spoils everything. It is not so in false religions: men who have a false religion are not ashamed of their religion; it is only Christians who are ashamed of theirs. As a matter of courtesy I will listen to anything any man says; but by nature I cannot listen to him speaking about Christ: conscience cannot bear it. If I look at man as we all are naturally, I find nothing but “enmity against God.”
But now in Christ we find the end of man's history. I read “Now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” Why does He say this, when the end is not come yet? It is because the breach is total at the cross between God and the world. As to the full history of man's probation, the end is come; it was the end before God when once man had rejected God's own Son. I look at myself as man, and am a sinner without law. No less have I broken the law if I take that as my rule. But when all this was already true, God came into the world in grace, and the world rejected Him. And now, if Christ be presented to me—I mean as a natural man—I cannot stand it at all. My moral history is closed; I am a lost sinner. But in Christ I get brought out of this state altogether. “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.” The sins are not only cleared away forever and always through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I stand forever perfect before God through this work, but I am in a perfectly new state.
Where are sins for the believer? Gone in the cross of Christ. Where is righteousness? He is my righteousness at God's right hand. I have got a totally new place; not only are my sins put away, but I am brought into the place of Christ the Second man. Therefore you find it said, not There is no condemnation to those whose sins Christ has borne, true as it may be; but There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” How can you condemn what is in Christ in glory? It is a new creation. The life of God is in us; the righteousness of God ours, and we standing before God in this entirely new place. “It is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
“And all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.” A blessed word! It is the very ground of blessing. Here God fully reveals all His holiness, all His hatred of sin. If His own Son go to the cross, He must bear the consequences. All is righteousness. We are now “after God created in righteousness and true holiness;” our sins forever gone, entirely gone, and we brought to God in the full revelation of Him as He is— “in righteousness and holiness of truth” —knowing Him as thus revealed in Christ. We, as in Christ, are brought to God now according to what God is as perfectly revealed. He will “reconcile all things unto himself—whether things in earth, or things in heaven;” the whole state of things will be reconciled to Him. “And you, that were sometime alienated, and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death.” “He hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ.” Can you say that there, where there was a full revelation of what God is, you see Him as one who has given His Son for you, so that you might be brought back to Himself without a single doubt, without a single question left to settle between your soul and Himself?
“Who reconciled us to himself!” O beloved friends, are you reconciled to God? We have not got the glory now, clearly; but we have the work done, so that Christ is sitting down at the right hand of God, the question of righteousness settled, nothing more to do but all finished. It says of the Jewish priests, that they stood “daily ministering, and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down on the right hand of God.” He has no more to do for this. He has not merely borne my sins; but “when he had by himself purged our sins, he sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” And then the Holy Ghost is sent down from heaven, that I may know it and my part in it.
What I am in Christ is a new creation. It is not what Adam was. He was an innocent creature, just as God made him. But now we have got Christ substituted for what we are, and we are here with the Holy Ghost in us. And if you have not got this, and just think of the day of judgment, you are not at ease, though you may have hope through the cross. But if I know that “by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified;” and if I set myself before the judgment-seat of Christ, it is to have a settled place there. There is no place where the Christian has such a settled peace as standing before the judgment-seat of Christ; for when He shall appear, we shall be like Him. We are raised in glory. What fear can I have if I am like the Judge? God has come in to save, and now sees a totally new thing before Him —the Second man. And though we are here tempted and tried, our place is in Him where He is; we are now in Him and know it by the Holy Ghost.
Israel were not put to pass through the desert till they were clean out of Egypt. We are first reconciled to God. The soul has peace with Him; and then it seeks to glorify Him in everything it does. You are called upon to have no object at all in your life down here but Christ. Of course there are necessary duties in which we serve Him, but no object. The Christian recognizes where God has set him as to things here, but I have no object but Christ in all that I do upon earth. He is the one thing that I am running after—no other object whatever. If I eat, or drink, or do anything, it is to be “to the glory of God,” and “in the name of the Lord Jesus.” A man is characterized by his object; if money, he is avaricious; if power, he is ambitious; and so on; the Christian is a man who has Christ as his object.
Surely he will find temptations here, and snares, and he will have to overcome; all that is true. We have to learn and unlearn a great deal that is humbling to ourselves; but we have got our place, and our duties flow from the place we are in. No duty ever was the means of obtaining a place; if you are my servants, you have your duties because such. But you first get into your place, and then come the duties of it. One first gets into the place, and then comes service for Christ in that place. In these days it is all-important that Christians should understand that they are Christians. You have got your own place and your own relationships, and you are to walk according to them. J. N. D.