“Thou wilt show me the path of life.” How dependent for everything! He does not say, I will rise up, but “Thou wilt show me.” He passes through death in dependence on His Father (there was the blessed perfectness of a man with God); and, at the close of His career, “knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He was come from God and went to God, He riseth from supper” (John 13.). He could go back unsullied to the throne of God, and take man back with Him into the glory, out of which He came. There is manhood now in the presence of God.
“Thou wilt show we the path of life.” It is most blessed to hear Christ say this. It is the path of death in Psalms 16:1010For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. (Psalm 16:10); how did He find that of life? Adam found the path of death in his fall and his self-will, but back from it never. The tree of life was never to be touched in the garden of Eden; he had taken the other path. Thus we see there are two trees all through the world―that of responsibility, and the gift of God which is life. All man does ends in death (but it is too late to speak of that); he is dead in trespasses and sins; but now Christ came, bringing life into a world that drove Him away, where Satan the prince of it was, and everything was bearing the stamp of its prince.
In this place of death then He makes out a path for us. He is shown by His Father and God the “path of life.” He was the life, but then the path of life had to be tracked through this place of death, where no one thing testifies of God―one wide waste, where there is no way. Christ has tracked the path Himself: it is for the Christian I am speaking now. The gospel chews He gives it to those who believe. He had to make out the path of life through a world of sin and wretchedness, in obedience, up to God. It must be through death for us, because we are sinners. Now He says to us, If any man serve Me, let him follow Me. We must take up the cross. The cross to Him was atonement―that was the path. As He came for us, it must be by the cross. He has gone through it perfectly and absolutely. What is the consequence? The end is, “In Thy presence is fullness of joy.” He would rather die than disobey.
Notice well that death is gone to us―the end is gained; but we have to tread this very same path that He trod up to His presence, where there is “fullness of joy.” Christ is the blessed object for our affections. Alas! how little affection we bear Him. In the wide waste of sin, “a dry and thirsty land where no water is,” He could say, “Thy favor is better than life.” Why all this? It was for His own glory and His Father’s doubtless, but it was for these “excellent of the earth.” “In My Father’s house are many mansions.... I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there ye may be also.”
We have to follow Him. It is not the quantity we do, but the measure of presenting Christ that is the value of our service, in a world where there is nothing of God. “All that is in the world.... is not of the Father.” In that world the Son of the Father has marked out this path of life up to the Father.
Christ is the object of our study when we have righteousness in Him. When brought into blessing, we can study Him who brought us there. It is this searches the thoughts, affections, motives in the path; then we go through the death in taking up His cross; then in the end we are to be like Him. The Lord give us to know the blessedness of being identified with Him, following in the path He has tracked out for us.