AS YOUR REDEMPTION.
'Of God are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, both righteousness and sanctification, and REDEMPTION. '—1 Cor. i. 30 (R. V. marg.).
HEKE we have the top of the ladder, reaching into heaven, — the blessed end to which Christ and life in Him is to lead. The word redemption, though sometimes applied to our deliverance from the guilt of sin, here refers to our complete and final deliverance from all its consequences, when the Eedeemer's work shall become fully manifest, even to the redemption of the body itself {comp, Rom, viii. 21-28; Epli. i, IJf.^ iv. SO). The expression points us to the highest glory to be hoped for in the future, and therefore also to the highest blessing to be enjoyed in the present in Christ. We have seen how, as a prophet, Christ is our wisdom, revealing to us God and His love, with the nature and conditions of the salvation that love has prepared. As a priest, He is our righteousness, restoring us to right relations to God, and securing us His favour and friendship. As a king. He is our sanctification, forming and guiding
US into the obedience to the Father's will. As these three offices work out God's one purpose, the grand consummation will be reached, the complete deliverance from sin and all its effects be accomplished, and ransomed humanity regain all that it had ever lost.
Christ is made of God unto us Redemption. The word invites us to look upon Jesus, not only as He lived on earth, teaching us by word and example, as He died, to reconcile us with God, as He lives again, a victorious King, rising to receive His crown, but as, sitting at the right hand of God, He takes again the glory which He had with the Father, before the world began, and holds it there for us. It consists in this, that there His human nature, yea, His human body, freed from all the consequences of sin to which He once had been exposed, is now admitted to share the Divine glory. As Son of man, He dwells on the throne and in the bosom of the Father: the deliverance from what He had to suffer from sin is complete and eternal. The complete redemption is found embodied in His own person: what He as man is and has in heaven is the complete redemption. He is made of God to us redemption.
We are in Him as such. And the more intelligently and believingly we abide in Him as our redemption, the more shall we experience, even here, of 'the powers of the world to come.' As our communion with him becomes more intimate and intense, and we let the Holy Spirit reveal Him to us in His heavenly glory, the more we realize how the life in us is the life of One who sits upon the throne of heaven. We feel the power of an endless life working in us. We taste the eternal life. We have the foretaste of the eternal glory.
The blessings flowing from abiding in Christ as our redemption, are great. The soul is delivered from all fear of death. There was a time when even the Saviour feared death. But now no longer. He has triumphed over death; even His body has entered into the glory. The believer who abides in Christ as his full redemption, realizes even now his spiritual victory over death. It becomes to him the servant that removes the last rags of the old carnal vesture, ere he be clothed upon with the new body of glory. It carries the body to the grave, to lie there as the seed whence the new body will arise the worthy companion of the glorified spirit. The resurrection of the body is no longer a barren doctrine, but a living expectation, and even an incipient experience, because the Spirit of Him that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in the body as the pledge that even our mortal bodies shall be quickened {Eom. viii. 11-28). This faith exercises its sanctifying influence in the willing surrender of the sinful members of the body to be mortified and completely subjected to the dominion of the Spirit, as preparation for the time when the frail body shall be changed and fashioned like to His glorious body.
This full redemption of Christ as extending to the body, has a depth of meaning not easily expressed. It was of man as a whole, soul and body, that it is said that he was made in the image and likeness of God. In the angels, God had created spirits without material bodies; in the creation of the world, there was matter without spirit. Man was to be the highest specimen of Divine art: the combination in one being, of matter and spirit in perfect harmony, as type of the most perfect union between God and His own creation. Sin entered in, and appeared to thwart the Divine plan: the material obtained a fearful supremacy over the spiritual. The Word was made fleshy the Divine fulness received an emhodiment in the humanity of Christ, that the redemption might be a complete and perfect one; that the whole creation, which now groaneth and travaileth in pain together, might be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. God's purpose will not be accomplished and Christ's glory will not be manifested fully, until the body, with that whole of nature of which it is part and head, has been transfigured by the power of the spiritual life, and made the transparent vesture for showing forth the glory of the Infinite Spirit.
Then only shall we understand: * Christ Jesus is made unto us (complete) redemption.'
Meantime we are taught to believe: Of God are ye in Christ, as your redemption. This is not meant as a revelation, to be left to the future; for the full development of the Christian life, our present abiding in Christ must seek to enter into and appropriate it. We do this as we learn to triumph over death. We do it as we learn to look upon Christ as the Lord of our body, claiming its entire consecration, securing even here, if faith will claim it (Mark xvL 17, 18), victory over the terrible dominion sin hath had in the body. We do this as we learn to look on all nature as part of the kingdom of Christ, destined, even though it be tbrough a baptism of fire, to partake in His redemption. We do it as we allow the powers of the coming world to possess us, and to lift us up into a life in the heavenly places, to enlarge our hearts and our views, to anticipate, even here, the things which have never entered into the heart of man to conceive.
Believer, abide in Christ as thy redemption. Let this be the crown of thy Christian life. Seek it not first or only, apart from the knowledge of Christ in His other relations. But seek it truly as that to which they are meant to lead thee up. Abide in Christ as thy redemption. Nothing will fit thee for this but faithfulness in the previous steps of the
Christian life. Abide in Him as thy wisdom, the perfect revelation of all that God is and has for thee. Follow, in the daily ordering of the inner and the outer life, with meek docility His teaching, and thou shalt be counted worthy to have secrets revealed to thee which to most disciples are a sealed book. The wisdom will lead thee into the mysteries of complete redemption. Abide in Him as thy righteousness, and dwell clothed upon with Him in that inner sanctuary of the Father's favour and presence to which His righteousness gives thee access. As thou rejoicest in thy reconciliation, thou shalt understand how it includes all things, and how they too wait the full redemption; *for it pleased the Father by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things on earth or things in heaven. ' And abide in Him as thy sanctification; the experience of His power to make thee holy, spirit and soul and body, will quicken thy faith in a holiness that shall not cease its work until the bells of the horses and every pot in Jerusalem shall be Holiness to the Lord. Abide in Him as thy redemption, and live, even here, as the heir of the future glory. And as thou seekest to experience in thyself to the full, the power of His saving grace, thy heart shall be enlarged to realize the position man has been destined to occupy in the universe, as having all things made subject to him, and thou shalt for thy part be fitted to live worthy of that high and heavenly calling.
THE CRUCIFIED ONE.
' We have been planted together in the likeness of His death. '—Rom. vi. 5.
' T AM crucified with Christ:' Thus the apostle ex- J- presses his assurance of his fellowship with Christ in His sufferings and death, and his full participation in all the power and the blessing of that death. And so really did he mean what, he said, and know that he was now indeed dead, that he adds: 'It is no longer 1 that live^ but Christ that liveth in me. ' How blessed must be the experience of such a union with the Lord Jesus! To be able to look upon His death as mine, just as really as it was His, — upon His perfect obedience to God, His victory over sin, and complete deliverance from its power, as mine; and to realize that the power of that death does by faith work daily with a Divine energy in mortifying the flesh, and renewing the whole life into the perfect conformity to the resurrection life of Jesus! Abiding in Jesus, the Crucified One, is the secret of the growth of that new life which is ever begotten of the death of nature.
Let us try to understand this. The suggestive expression, 'Planted into the likeness of His death,' will teach us what the abiding in the Crucilied One means. When a graft is united with the stock on which it is to grow, we know that it must be kept fixed, it must abide in the place where the stock has been cut, been wounded, to make an opening to receive the graft. No graft without wounding, — the laying bare and opening up of the inner life of the tree to receive the stranger branch. It is only through such wounding that access can be obtained to the fellowship of the sap and the growth and the life of the stronger stem. Even so with Jesus and the sinner. Only when we are planted into the likeness of His death shall we also be in the likeness of His resurrection, partakers of the life and the power there are in Him. In the death of the cross Christ was wounded, and in His opened wounds a place prepared where we might be grafted in. And just as one might say to a graft, and does practically say as it is fixed in its place, 'Abide here in the wound of the stem, that is now to bear thee;' so to the believing soul the message comes, 'Abide in the wounds of Jesus; there is the place of union, and life, and growth. There thou shalt see how His heart was opened to receive thee; how His flesh was rent that the way might be opened for thy being made one with Him, and having access to all the blessings flowing from His Divine nature.'
You have also noticed how the graft has to be torn away from the tree where it by nature grew, and to be cut into conformity to the place prepared for it in the wounded stem. Even so the believer has to be made conformable to Christ's death,— to be crucified and to die with Him. The wounded stem and the wounded graft are cut to fit into each other, into each other's likeness. There is a fellowship between Christ's sufferings and thy sufferings. His experiences must become thine. The disposition He manifested in choosing and bearing the cross must be thine. Like Him, thou wilt have to give full assent to the righteous judgment and curse of a holy God against sin. Like Him, thou hast to consent to yield thy life, as laden with sin and curse, to death, and through it to pass to the new life. Like Him, thou shalt experience that it is only through the self-sacrifice of Gethsemane and Calvary that the path is to be found to the joy and the fruit-bearing of the resurrection life. The more clear the resemblance between the wounded stem and the wounded graft, the more exactly their wounds fit into each other, the surer and the easier, and the more complete will be the union and the growth.
It is in Jesus, the Crucified One, I must abide. I must learn to look upon the Cross as not only an atonement to God, but also a victory over the devil, — not only a deliverance from the guilt, but also from the power of sin. I must gaze on Him on the Cross as wholly mine, offering Himself to receive me into the closest union and fellowship, and to make me partaker of the full power of His death to sin, and the new life of victory to which it is but the gateway. I must yield myself to Him in an undivided surrender, with much prayer and strong desire, imploring to be admitted into the ever closer fellowship and conformity of His death, of the Spirit in which He died that death.
Let me try and understand why the Cross is thus the place of union. O71 the Cross the Son of God enters into the fullest union with man — enters into the fullest experience of what it says to have become a son of man, a member of a race under the curse. It is in death that the Prince of life conquers the power of death; it is in death alone that He can make me partaker of that victory. The life He imparts is a life from the dead; each new experience of the power of that life depends upon the fellowship of the death. The death and the life are inseparable. All the grace which Jesus the Saving One gives is given only in the pafch of fellowship with Jesus the Crucified One. Christ came and took my place; I must put myself in His place, and abide there. And there is but one place which is both His and mine, — that place is the Cross. His in virtue of His free choice; mine by reason of the curse of sin. He came there to seek me; there alone I can find Him. When He found me there, it was the place of cursing; this He experienced, for * cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.' He made it a place of blessing; this I experience, for Christ hath delivered us from the curse, being made a curse for us. When Christ comes in my place. He remains what He was, the beloved of the Father; but in the fellowship with me He shares my curse and dies my death. When I stand in His place, which is still always mine, I am still what I was by nature, the accursed one, who deserves to die; but as united to Him, I share His blessing, and receive His life. When He came to be one with me He could not avoid the Cross, for the curse always points to the Cross as its end and fruit. And when I seek to be one with Him, I cannot avoid the Cross either^ for nowhere but on the Cross are life and deliverance to be found. As inevitably as my curse pointed Him to the Cross as the only place where He could be fully united to me. His blessing points me to the Cross too as the only place where I can be united to Him. He took my cross for His own; I must take His Cross as my own; I must be crucified with Him. It is as I abide daily, deeply in Jesus the Crucified One, that I shall taste the sweet- ness of His love, the power of His life, the completeness of His salvation.
Beloved believer! it is a deep mystery, this of the Cross of Christ. I fear there are many Christians who are content to look upon the Cross, with Christ on it dying for their sins, who have little heart for fellowship with the Crucified One. They hardly know that He invites them to it. Or they are content to consider the ordinary afflictions of life, which the children of the world often have as much as they, as their share of Christ's Cross. They have no conception of what it is to be crucified with Christ, that bearing the cross means likeness to Christ in the principles which animated Him in His path of obedience. The entire surrender of all self-will, the complete denial to the flesh of its every desire and pleasure, the perfect separation from the world in all its ways of thinking and acting, the losing and hating of one's life, the giving up of self and its interests for the sake of others, — this is the disposition which marks him who has taken up Christ's Cross, who seeks to say, *I am crucified with Christ; I abide in Christ, the Crucified One. '
Wouldest thou in very deed please thy Lord, and live in as close fellowship with Him as His grace could maintain thee in, 0 pray that His Spirit lead thee into this blessed truth: this secret of the Lord for them that fear Him. We know how Peter knew and confessed Christ as the Son of the living God while the Cross was still an offence (Matt, xvi, 16, 17, 21, 28). The faith that believes in the blood that pardons, and the life that renews, can only reach its perfect growth as it abides beneath the Cross, and in living fellowship with Him seeks for perfect conformity with Jesus the Crucified.
0 Jesus, our crucified Kedeemer, teach ns not only to believe on Thee, but to abide in Thee, to take Thy Cross not only as the ground of our pardon, but also as the law of our life. 0 teach us to love it not only because on it Thou didst bear our curse, but because on it we enter into the closest fellowship with Thyself, and are crucified with Thee. And teach us, that as we yield ourselves wholly to be possessed of the Spirit in which Thou didst bear the Cross, we shall be made partakers of the power and the blessing to which the Cross alone gives access.