Let me say, with what force does the Spirit of God in Scripture teach us the mystery of life. With what an intense sense of it would He impress our souls, that we have lost it, but that Christ has it for us.
The flaming sword in the hand of the Cherubim keeping every way the way of the Tree of Life, was the expression of this, as soon as ever sin was committed and death brought in. That sight let Adam learn, and all of us through Adam, that the life which we have lost we never can regain.
The ordinance which forbad the eating of blood, set up as. soon as ever the flesh of animals was given for food, and continued and repeated jealously in the law, was a witness of the same, a standing witness which spoke to the heart and conscience of man from the days of Noah to the times of the Gospel-and perhaps indeed to this present time. (Acts 15)
The Gospel teaches the same great truth abundantly. None are left with any power to question it-that man is dead, dead in trespasses and sins, and that he is without strength,. and can never recover or revive himself.
In this intense, emphatic way does Scripture, from beginning to end, let man know that he has lost life, and lost it irrecoverably.
With equal intenseness is the other great mystery unfolded -that life is in Christ, the Son of God, and in Him for us.
Peter was given to know this, that life was in Jesus—that. He was none less than the Son of the living God. And upon his confession, the Lord goes on at once to reveal the further truth, that that life, thus owned to be in Him, was a victorious life that should be used for the Church. (Matthew 16)
I stop not to give the beautiful proofs which the Lord’s. ministry affords us of this eternal life, this victorious life, this life of the “quickening Spirit” being in Jesus all through His time here, but we see it gloriously displayed after His death. The empty sepulcher as seen in John 20:5-7, is the peculiar witness that a Conqueror had been in the regions of death. And He was then, as we know, seen of the chosen witnesses, for forty days after He had risen. But I want to meditate a little over the great fact, that this victorious life in Jesus the Son of God is for us. I turn to the first three chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
There, He that was dead is alive again. His death is shown to have been for us. He did not die simply to exhibit in the house of the Strong One His victory, to show that He was the Stronger man, though in death He is declared to have been for us. It tells us, as Matthew 16:18 had pledged, that His victorious life the Son uses for the Church.
He died as the Purger of our sins. He, by the grace of God, tasted death for us. He, by death, met him who was keeping us through fear of him all our life-time in bondage. These are the interpretations of His death. which we find in the first two chapters.
At the opening of the third, we are commanded to consider Him who has been faithful—faithful after this manner—faithful to Him who appointed Him thus to undertake to gain life through death for us. We are to consider Him, for the establishing of our faith and for the comfort of our souls, acquainting ourselves with this great mystery, that the Son of the living. God has been in conflict with death, and in the place of death, that He might bring back life to us who had lost it, and lost it irrecoverably.
And as we are exhorted to consider Him, so are we further exhorted to hold Him fast, and firm, and steadfast, as this same chapter proceeds.
And what is the warning? What must be the warning, after such teaching as this? “ Take heed lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.”‘ How simple, and yet how needful, and yet how blessed! None less than “the living God” Himself has been made ours in Christ, and therefore it is easy to say, our all depends on. holding to Him.