God dwells with men only in consequence of redemption. He did not dwell with Adam in his innocence, r or 'with Abraham, walking by faith, and called of God; but so soon as Israel was redeemed out of Egypt we learn (Ex. 29; that He brought them up out of the land of Egypt that He might dwell among them. And He did so, sitting between the cherubim.
When eternal redemption was accomplished, the same blessed result took place, as a present characteristic of it, by the coming of the Holy Ghost; nor will it be lost in eternal ages, bat fulfilled in a more glorious and everlasting manner.
Redemption involves two things, perfect glory to God in all that He is, and clearing our sins away according to that glory, so as to bring us out of the condition in which we lay far from God, and with a nature contrary to and at enmity with His, into His own presence, to enjoy it in a nature morally speaking like His, partakers of the divine nature, holy and without blame before Him in love.
But it did more, for the Word having been made flesh, man was in the place of Son, with God; and we are predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Hence, when red emption was accomplished, the risen Lord sends word by Mary Magdalene to the apostles, “Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." The work on which redemption was founded was complete, its results of course as yet not all produced, but every question as to good and evil brought to an issue and solved; every truth as to them proved and made good; man's absolute enmity against God manifested in goodness; Satan's complete power over man; in Christ, man's perfect obedience, and love to His Father; God's holy righteousness against sin in the highest way, and love to sinners. Here, and here only, could God's righteousness as against sin and love to sinners coincide and meet, His majesty be glorified (Heb. 2:10), His truth vindicated.
The double question of life given and secured to man, and responsibility, had been raised from man's creation, but never solved till now. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life in the midst of the garden, involved the two points; and all depended on man's obedience. He fell, and was shut out from the tree of life; he was not to fill this world with undying sinful men. It would have been horrible. The sentence of human death was not to be reversed; judgment would come after. The law raised the same question with men in the flesh, only accomplishment of responsibility came first: “Do this and live." It dealt with man's responsibility as a still open question, testing man with what was a perfect rule for a child of Adam; but he was a sinner and transgressed the law. The coming of Christ not only proved lawlessness and law-breaking; but when these were already there, enmity against God manifested in goodness where they were. Promises withal were rejected as well as law broken.
But then God's blessed work in grace came out in the very act that proved this enmity. Christ on the cross not only (and that in the very place of sin, where it was needed for that glory) glorified God in all that He was, but He met our failure in responsibility, bearing our sins, and became the life of them that believe in Him. His death had a double character. He appeared once in the consummation of ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, and " as it is appointed unto man once to die and after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of m any." The work on which the eternal state was founded, God being perfectly glorified, was accomplished, and the sins of those that believed in Him put away so that they were gone forever. This is a work in which responsibility was met, and in a work whose unchangeable value in the nature of things could not alter, the sure basis of eternal blessedness according to the nature of God.
But there is something more, the purpose of God. Christ by His sacrifice obtained for us, according to God's purpose, that we should be with Himself and in the same glory, though He be the firstborn; that which God ordained before the world for our glory.
If we look at ourselves an inconceivable wonder, but intelligible when we read that in the ages to come He should show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus: the wonderful but blessed mystery, that He that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified are all of one; for which cause He is not ashamed to call us brethren.
Let us see, then, where we stand now, how far the fruit of this great work which stands alone in the history of eternity, and fills it in its counsels, and its knits, is accomplished. The work is done, finished completely, and once for all. But more, it is accepted of God as adequate to His glory, as perfectly glorifying Him, (John 13:31, 32; 17:4, 5), and Jesus the Christ has been raised from the dead, and set as man at the right hand of God in the glory He had with the Father before the world was. Man in righteousness at the right hand of the majesty in the heavens, sits there till His enemies are made His footstool; has overcome and is set down as Son on His Father's throne. Now first this meets perfectly the guilt of him that believes. Christ has borne his sins in His own body on the tree. They that are such are washed from their sins in His blood. All their responsibility as children of Adam—I do not speak of their responsibility to glorify the Lord as saints—but their guilt has been met. “When he had by himself purged our sins he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in the heavens;" "delivered for our offenses, and raised again for our justification." And we, justified by faith, have peace with God. The work that clears us as children of Adam is finished; believing, we are forgiven our sins purged; our conscience purged; we are, as regards our conscience and standing before God, perfect 1 forever by that one offering, and God will remember our sins and iniquities no more. The believer, as man connected with the first Adam, has by the work of Christ on the cross the whole question of his responsibility (that is, of his guilt) settled, through faith, forever. He is justified and knows it, has peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ “who has made peace by the blood of his cross!” God has dealt with his sins there, and never fails to own the work of His Son who appears in the presence of God for us. Christ has said, “Thy sins are forgiven thee," " Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace." The believer is perfectly clear before God.
But all this refers to his place as a responsible man, a sinner before God. But much more is involved in it. First, God's infinite love. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." And " hereby know we love, that he laid down his life for us." But more, He has obtained glory for us, is entered as our forerunner. The glory which the Father has given Him as man, He has given us. We are to be conformed to His image; we have borne the image of the heavenly, and while we are before God even our Father as sons, shall reign, as joint-heirs with Christ of all that He has created, and inherits as man, with Him whom God has appointed heir of all things.
Of this double character of blessing we have testimony in Luke's gospel. In the transfiguration, Moses and Elias were on earth in the same glory as, and with, Christ, and there was the cloud whence the Father's voice came, the excellent glory into which they entered also. So in Luke 12, there is the table spread in heaven for these who had watched for His coming, and rule over all for those who had served Him according to His will while away. But this is not fulfilled. In 1 Peter 1:11, 13, we get the order of these things at least as far as their development of this world goes. The Spirit of Christ in the prophets testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories which should follow. They found it was not for their day; then the things are reported, not brought in, by those who had preached the gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, and Christians have to be sober and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought to them at the revelation of Jesus Christ. The prophetic dealings of God before the sufferings and glories; the gospel, when the sufferings were complete, and Christ glorified on high, though the results were not yet produced, but reported, leading to sober hoping to the end for what was to be brought at the revelation of Jesus Christ. It is true this does not present to us our portion within the cloud—the Father's house—still it gives us very definitely the progress and order of God's ways; the time of the gospel being the time of the Holy Ghost being sent down from heaven, and the appearing of Jesus Christ being the time locked forward to in hope.
Nothing can be more definite, and the prophecy in which holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, distinguished as quite another epoch from the Holy Ghost being sent down from heaven; they have learned in their study of their own inspired prophecies, that they did not minister what they prophesied of for their own time. We get then, now, the sufferings accomplished and over, the glories which should follow not yet manifested, but the Holy Ghost sent down meanwhile, teaching us to wait for these glories, for the revelation of Jesus Christ. Nothing can be clearer or more definite. The coming of the Holy Ghost already fulfilled, and His abiding presence, and the waiting for the revelation of Jesus Christ, constitute and characterize the Christian position. One, the fact which has taken place, the other, what we are exhorted to expect and wait for, while they throw back the strongest light on the efficacy of the sufferings.
After, as we have seen, God had tried in every way the first man, and his responsibility had been fully put to the proof; first as innocent, then by all the means which God could use for his recovery, and, failure in man having resulted in manifested enmity, God did His work through the man of His purpose and counsels, fully tested indeed, but by it His perfectness proved, the work of redemption, in which God was perfectly glorified, and what we needed according to that glory perfectly accomplished, and man, according to the value of that work, raised by God, sat down in glory at the right hand of the majesty in the heavens; the blessed and eternal proof of the value of the work which He had wrought. A new estate to which the Lord often refers, man raised from the dead after the question of sin had been settled, death brought in by it overcome and left behind, Satan's power annulled, a state founded on God's righteousness, now fully revealed. Not a state of happiness dependent on man's not failing, but a state of glory according to the whole nature and character of God who had been glorified in that nature and character, and that in the very place of sin (Christ made sin for us). Nothing remained to be done as to this; God put His seal of acceptance of the work in raising Christ, and showed the effect of it to faith in setting Him who had done it in His own glory, entered into the glory as our forerunner; the whole basis of eternal glory according to God's purpose in man, and of the new heavens and the new earth, laid, and God Himself glorified and known as revealed in redemption and love.