Such is the way in which the great apostle, once Saul of Tarsus, expresses by the Holy Ghost the testimony committed to him, and which he elsewhere calls “My Gospel” (2 Tim. 2:88Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel: (2 Timothy 2:8)).
The meaning of the expression, gospel or good news of the glory of Christ, is of the deepest moment for every soul, and I am assured before the Lord that if the truth as to the Second Man being now in glory, is either denied or unperceived, there will be a corresponding defect as to peace with God in the scriptural sense of the term, as well as in the power and object which is given in this good news, for heavenly walk and witness here.
I would seek to trace a little, by God’s help, the good news which the glory of Christ sets before us.
1.What blessed cheer and comfort are carried to us in the fact that Himself, God over all, blessed evermore, who was pleased to become man (“the Word became flesh”) is now as man in His own place in heaven, the Second Man and last Adam in the glory of God; further, that in glory in heaven He cares, and shows He cares, that poor rebel sinners who care not about Him or His glory should not perish through the blinding power of the god of this age. How blessedly does He not thus in glory stand out in striking contrast with all that is seen of man and his ways in this poor scene?
2. The good news of the glory of Christ brings before us in very blessed reality the great fact that all the work of redemption had been fully and entirely finished, for He who had come as the sent One of the Father, as well as in His great love given by God, having now accomplished all, has been (as man) received up in glory. It is not only that the sins of which we were guilty as sinners have been forgiven, but in the cross we see the end of man, as man was; the old man has been crucified with Christ. How blessed to see in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ the end of man driven out of Paradise, His resurrection the beginning of the new state of man according to the counsels of God, and His place as man in glory, the new place of man.
3. What good news is conveyed to us in the glory of Christ, of the fact that judgment has been inflicted by the death of Christ upon the first man, and that He who in His blessed love to His Father and the objects of His donation to Him, having passed through death and judgement when He was made sin for us, has begun again His life of man in an entirely new state beyond death and judgment.
4. We have said that the gospel of the glory of Christ brings to us the proof of the sin Christ had borne being utterly put away. But it also tells us of victory over death, and the introduction of man into the presence of God in glory, according to the eternal counsels of God’s love.
Further, to use the beautiful words of another: “It was withal the full display of divine glory in man according to grace, which the Holy Ghost takes to show us, in order to form us after the same likeness. It was the glorious ministration of righteousness and the Spirit which opened the free way for man to God even into the holiest in entire liberty.”
Now it is important to see that what the apostle terms, “the gospel of the glory of Christ,” and elsewhere “my gospel,” had reached him when a blasphemer, persecutor and injurious; on the road to Damascus, armed with full credentials to express his hatred and violence toward Jesus of Nazareth, the light of the glory of Christ had been kindled in his soul, in order that it might shine before men. How truly it was the power of God which had wrought in Saul of Tarsus, in the same way as when of old God had said, “Let light be, and light was.”
Let it be borne in mind that Paul was to be both a minister and witness of the things which he had been. What had he seen? Had he not seen Christ in glory? And did not that light eclipse for him all else beside? How did man, and earth and all in it, look as seen in the “light above the brightness of the sun, shining from heaven”? What, I ask, could be more beautiful or wonderful than this blessed good news, beginning and consummated in the bright and beautiful circle of God’s presence in glory?
Further observe how much is conveyed to us in the announcement of the Spirit, that the subject of Paul’s first preaching was that—“Jesus was the Son of God.”
How blessed to know that the Savior, who is in glory, is the Son of God. It is this which conducts the soul outside all that belongs to man and earth. Alas, how few there are who in soul and heart have been laid hold of by that which shone in the apostle’s heart! Beloved reader permit me to ask, have you?
It is the gospel of the glory of Christ alone that can assure the heart of how entirely the first man has come to an end judicially before God. I desire with all my soul to emphasize judicially as it is now denied and refused. The second man, risen out of the death and judgment, which He voluntarily underwent for God’s glory, is now a man in the glory of God; as seen there by faith, all of man and earth is distanced. It is this and this alone which conducts the soul into what I may call the heavenly eclipse, and leads to such an expression as is thus set forth, admired by all, but made good alas, in so few of us—
“Marvel not that Christ in glory
All my inmost heart hath won;
Not a star to cheer my darkness,
But a light beyond the sun.”
“All below is dark and shadowed,
Nothing there to claim my heart,
Save the lonely track of sorrow,
Where of old He walked apart.”
Yes beloved reader, the Savior in the glory of God, seen by faith, is the true heavenly starting point; but He is also, as seen in glory, the true gauge of all else beside, and He is as well the center for the soul to rest in. It is this heavenly object which turns this world into an inn with its “guest chamber” for those whose eyes have rested upon it; the tendency of our poor hearts is to make a nest in this world, but the gospel of the glory of Christ takes us into the scene where the Savior is in glory, and then it is not a sad thing, but a happy thing to be a heavenly stranger where Christ is not.