THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL

Luke 15: 11-24; Romans 5: 1-5, 18, 19; 6: 5-7; Philippians 3: 9

The great thought of God in taking us up in grace is not only to relieve us from all that sin had brought upon us, but to bring us to Himself in the condition of sons; or in other words, to bring us to His house, as we get in figure in Luke 15. While we do not get in this chapter the full truth as to sonship, we do get in the parable the illustration of the journey of the soul on the way to it. In the parable the father met the son when he was afar off, but he did not leave him till he had brought him to his house in all the full liberty and blessing of a son. But that was not brought about all at once; there was a journey to be taken from the far country, where the father first met him, till he reached the father’s house. That represents the journey of the soul, and we have all to take that journey. When God first met with us, we were all in the far-off country. We did not reach the father’s house all at once; it may even be a question whether we have reached it now. That is a question for all of us, even if really converted, and the subjects of God’s grace. Do you know what it is to have reached the house of God as a son, to have reached God’s blessed thought for you; that is, to be before Him in the full liberty and blessedness of a son? The full thought of God is that we should enjoy sonship (Eph 1: 6) in association with Christ; He has gone first and taken up the position of a Man in heaven on the ground of His work, whereby He has accomplished redemption, and removed every barrier on God’s side and ours also; and God is calling us to association with Him beyond death in the place He now occupies as Man. He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; that is how He is revealed and to be known. So if we know what it is to be in Christ, what He is to Christ He is to us, and hence He becomes to us in Christ our God and our Father. We know Him in that character, we address Him as Father; it is our privilege to enjoy that place of liberty, nearness, access, as a son with a father, the same position Christ occupied Himself. It is not the Father’s house—as in John 14, the future abode of the sons, that I am speaking of—we shall reach that another day; He is coming to receive us to Himself in the Father’s house where He is, and we shall be there actually, with Him and like Him, for eternity. But what is set before us in the parable I read, is present access of soul, what the Spirit would bring us to now, our present place and in relationship with God through a risen and living Christ, the Son of God.

What I had before me was to say something about the journey of the soul, the steps which have to be taken after one is first met with in grace, to bring him right home to the house of God. The son coming to himself answers to what we call conversion. He says, “I will arise and go to my father”—and he came to his father; but, first of all, the father came to him. “When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him”. He had got his eye upon him, and I would like to say to every soul here, young or old, that God’s eye is upon you to see if there is any movement in your heart toward Him. He is looking out for you; He is more ready to receive you than you are to turn to Him. So it says, the “father ... ran” he ran to him and embraced him in the far-off country. Just as he was, in all his sins and wretchedness, the Father fell on his neck and kissed him; and our word is not strong enough to convey the force of it, it might be rendered, he “covered him with kisses”. He had the most ample welcome possible. It was the father’s delight to receive him, and it is still the delight of God to receive the soul that turns to Him. He fell on his neck, embraced him, covered him with kisses. That is a great point reached. It is reached in believing the glad tidings of God and receiving the Spirit of God.

I have no doubt there were two great facts involved when the father kissed him, two great facts conveyed to the soul of the son. Suppose you had met that young man just then and said, What does that mean; your father has embraced you and covered you with kisses? He would have said, It means he has blotted out all my sins, he does not bring up my sins against me, there is forgiveness in the heart of my father. There could be no doubt about that point; he was forgiven, justified, cleared from all charge of guilt. He had to confess to the father, “I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight”; but the father had not a word to say about his sins.

I read the first verse or two of Romans 5 because it answers to what the soul gets on meeting God. You cannot meet God without getting the impression that He forgives and justifies. There is no imputation of sin to the believer. To be justified is to be clear from all charge of guilt, and to know God will not impute your sin to you. God is revealed today as the justifier, and to meet the justifier is to be justified. If you have met God, He has justified you, cleared you of all charge. There is nothing in the heart of God in respect of your sins; all the evil you have done, all the hatred against God you have exhibited, God says, I will remember them no more, they are all blotted out; you are justified from all things. I hope we know what that means.

But there was something more than that. Have you got anything more than that in your soul? Yes, he says, not only is there not any charge in my father’s heart against me, no feeling of reserve on account of my sins, but my father loves me in spite of all my evil course, my wayward ways. That is the positive side of the case. Forgiveness is what I might call the negative side; it is the first thing and very important, for till that is settled there can be no thought of entering into the love of God. You could not go on to know the love of God if you did not know the question of sins eternally settled. But do not stop there, do not stop on the negative side, there is always the positive side to go on to. Hence the apostle says we stand in God’s favour and “rejoice in hope of the glory of God”. It is a hope that “maketh not ashamed”—it will never disappoint us—“because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us”. The soul that turns to God in faith receives the Holy Ghost. If you are a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, God has given you His Spirit; you have received the Holy Ghost, and the ministry of the Holy Ghost is to shed abroad in your heart the love of God; not to declare the love of God, nor to manifest it; that has been already done by His beloved Son. The love of God shone out in its fulness in the death of Jesus, “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”. Now the Holy Ghost is given to shed it abroad in our hearts. It is one thing to see it in Christ, to believe it in the testimony of God brought to us in the Gospel, and another to have it shed abroad in our hearts. The Spirit is given to make us conscious that we are the objects of God’s love, that He loves us with a present, perfect, unalterable love, and that in spite of all that we are and all that we have done. It is the real spring of everything in our souls, and one of the weak points with us is that we are so feeble in our apprehension of the love of God. The Spirit has so little His own way with us in shedding abroad and keeping alive, not once for all, but every day, the sense of the love of God in our hearts; not in our minds as doctrine, but in our hearts, so that it is a known conscious thing that we live in. Our privilege is to dwell in love. “He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him”, 1 John 4: 16. Those two things are the great blessings of the new covenant God speaks of. He speaks of making a new covenant with the house of Israel, and the spirit of it is ministered to us today in the gospel. One side is “their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more”, and the positive side is “all shall know me, from the least to the greatest” (Heb 8: 11, 12), and that is made good to us in our hearts by the Spirit. That is a very great point reached in the soul, and I would press that thought, that everyone here may weigh it for himself, as to whether you have reached that point in the history of your soul? Can you say, I know God has blotted out all my sins, and I know He loves me with a present and perfect love, as He loves Christ? The man who has got the Holy Ghost, and in whose heart the Holy Ghost has shed abroad God’s love, can say with Paul, “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”, Rom 8: 38, 39. Everything is in relation to Christ Jesus, the love that rests on Him rests on us. In that way the soul appreciates Christ as the One in whom God can pardon him, and justify him, and in whom the love of God can rest upon him.

How do we move on in the journey of the soul? Just by the appreciation of Christ. When you come to appreciate Christ in a new way, you have made a fresh move and are ready for a further one. The next thing we read in the parable is, the father says, “Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him”. He is not far from the house then; they had moved on from the time the father met him, and I have no doubt during that move the impression he first got on meeting the father became deeper in his heart. Now he is prepared for the next great move; that is the best robe, what Scripture speaks of as the ministry of reconciliation. First there is the ministry of the new covenant, which we have spoken of; then next we come under the ministry of reconciliation. Having the best robe put on him made him suitable for the house. But why is it the best robe? Why not a good robe, or a new robe? Why must it be the best? Well, because the father is acting now not to meet the need of the son, but to meet his own thoughts and satisfaction, and for his own pleasure. And He says, My pleasure is to see him in the very best robe; not only to have him brought home to me, but to have him in my presence suited to my house and to my heart. So he said, “Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him”. Apart from that he could not have been happy in the house. Suppose the father had received him, kissed him, and brought him in as he was in all his tatters and rags, would he have been at liberty there? No, he would always have been thinking of himself, of his rags and tatters. He might say, I have a good father, but I am not fit to be here. Many Christians are like that; they know God has received them and shown grace to them; they know their sins are blotted out, and that they are justified, and they have had some sense of the love of God; and yet whenever they think of drawing near to God, and being in His presence, there is a lingering sense that something is wanting, they are not quite fit.

I want it to come home to you, it is no good to think of things merely in a doctrinal and abstract way, so let me ask you, How is it with you when you approach God? Do you do so with freedom and liberty? or is there a sense that there is something wanting with you? Do you say, I am not fit for God’s holy eye? for God’s house? Then you have not reached this step of the journey; as to your apprehension you have not got the best robe on yet; you have not received the ministry of reconciliation yet. I want to show what that involves, and to make it plain to you. To put it in the words of another, which I will explain, it means that you change your man; that is, you exchange Adam for Christ. I will try and show you what that means. Let me say first what it does not mean. It is a common notion, but a very wrong one, that Christ kept the law for our sakes; He was obedient in every sense, and magnified the law, and now that is reckoned to us for our righteousness, so that we are clothed upon with the righteousness of Christ. Now it is not in the Bible at all that Christ’s law-keeping is placed on me like a beautiful robe to cover up my sin and unfitness, so that you have in result a bad man clothed with a beautiful robe, and supposed to be made fit for God’s presence in that way. There is no change of man in that idea. The same man morally, that squandered all his father’s goods, could not be brought into the father’s house. That never could be. A prodigal as a prodigal never gets into the father’s house; the man who had been a prodigal was received there, but he was in figure another man before he got there. He had got the best robe on, the ring on his hand, and the shoes on his feet; he was not like a prodigal, but a different sort of man in figure. You will have to give up the idea of the imputed righteousness of Christ. Any thinking person would see that that would never do for God—that I, a bad man, a man of sin and shame, should be covered over with a beautiful robe, and go to heaven like that. If I am not fit to go to heaven, I am not fit to draw near to God. Now if I can go into the holiest of all, as the apostle says in Hebrews, I can go to heaven; but the man of sin and shame cannot go to heaven, there must be a change of man. It must be in the life of another man we draw near to God or go to heaven.

In the end of Romans 5, the apostle speaks of two men: the man of sin and shame, Adam, who brought in sin, death, and condemnation on himself and on all his race. Then he speaks of another Man, a Man of righteousness, of obedience, a Man who has brought in righteousness and life; that is Christ. What a contrast between the two men! There is the man of sin, death, and condemnation, Adam; and the Man of obedience, righteousness, and life, that is Christ. People think the Adam man can be made fit, and that the object of the gospel and religion is to improve the Adam man and make him good. That is utterly impossible, there is no such thought in Scripture, it is antagonistic to the truth of Scripture. What is the truth? That God has brought in another Man in the Person of Christ, a Man after His own mind, heart, and will, a Man perfectly according to His pleasure, the righteous One, who accomplished one perfect righteousness. His obedience unto death according to the will of God, was the accomplishment of perfect righteousness. So we have the man of sin and the Man of righteousness.

Now all of us by nature stood linked up with Adam; we were born of Adam, we derived our life and nature from him as fallen; so by the disobedience of one the many were constituted sinners. We were all sinners before we sinned, we were born sinners; we stood in relation to that man in his state, driven out from God.

Now we have to get free of that condition, of our link with that man and the condition in which it involved us, and we have to come into relationship with the last Adam, and to partake of the life and nature of Christ, the second Man, and so come into the position in which Christ is; or in other words, pass out of Adam into Christ,

The first verse of the 8th of Romans says, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus”. That is the contrast to being in Adam; we were once in Adam, in the state and position of a fallen man; now the believer, by receiving the Spirit, is in Christ Jesus; instead of being in Adam, he has changed from Adam to Christ. I stand in relation to Christ, and God sees me and takes account of me as in Christ, in the state and life of that Man, in the position in which Christ is as a Man with God. It is in Christ we become God’s righteousness, it is as being in Christ we have on the best robe. That is what the best robe means, being God’s righteousness in Christ. How do we get free of the one and enter into the other? That we find in the 6th chapter of Romans; it is by our identification with Christ’s death. The apostle speaks of baptism as a figure of our identification with the death of Christ—“So many of us as were baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised into his death” (Rom 6: 3); so if you have been baptised, you have in figure been identified with Christ’s death. It is based upon the fact we get in the 6th verse of the 6th chapter. Read that verse and think about it, and pray to God to make you understand it. There is the secret really of how the soul passes from Adam to Christ, how he gets free of the one state and enters into the other. The apostle says, “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin”, Rom 6: 6. Not from sins, but from sin, the state in which we were born in Adam. That is the meaning of Christ’s death; that is what took place when Christ died.

Now we have often thought in connection with Christ’s death that He bore our sins: that is perfectly true; Scripture says, “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree”, 1 Pet 2: 24. He put them all away in His death upon the cross, but that is not what the apostle is speaking about here; it is something more than that. He was made sin for us; that is, He identified Himself with us in the state in which we were as sinful men born of Adam. He became a sacrifice for sin, so that in Him God might condemn all that in us which was unfit for Him, which He could not tolerate at all—that is, our old man. Our old man was crucified with Christ. What is our “old man”? What do you understand by it? I understand by it the state, the moral condition, that I derived from Adam, all that I was in the sight of God as a sinful man, all that which I had the experience of in myself as being unsuitable to God—all that was crucified with Christ. The man is gone in God’s sight, the man looked at as in the Adam condition—our old man was crucified with Christ. That is how God has dealt with it; God is not going to make the old man better; if you were to live a thousand years it would never be any better. As long as you are in the body you will carry it about with you. Why does he call it our old man? Because it is not the present man; another Man has come in, that is Christ, and Christ in me is the true I; that is what God identifies the believer with now, not with sin and flesh, and all that—“that the body of sin might be annulled’’—and “he that is dead is freed from sin”. Are you dead? You say, No, I do not feel dead, and I do not feel that sin is dead. Neither do I. You do not feel that the flesh is dead. Nor do I; I know it is ready at any moment to be very much alive, but “he that is dead is freed from sin”. The only way you can be free from that old Adam condition is by dying; it is not that death takes place in you, else you might feel it and realise it, but it is something that has taken place for you in the death of Christ. It is a question of believing it and taking it home to ourselves in faith. “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord”. If I were actually dead, there would be no sense in telling me to reckon myself dead, but because Christ died for me, God takes account of me as being there, and the Spirit of God can say, reckon yourself dead, take account of yourself as if you had actually died. Christ died for you. It was with Christ our old man was crucified. If I am dead, there is an end of me in that condition in which I died.

Now I want you to take account of and remember that death in Scripture never means ceasing to exist. If a man dies actually, what becomes of him? Does he cease to exist? What does it say about the rich man who died in Luke 16? Did he cease to exist? No; it says, “In hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments”, Luke 16: 23. Man will live for ever, he is an immortal being. There is no ceasing to exist, he will exist for ever in a state of eternal blessing or eternal judgment. What death does signify? It is the termination of a previous condition of existence.

If you take that in it will help you very much. It is the termination of a previous condition of existence. What was my previous condition of existence? I existed as a man in Adam, in sin, in condemnation. Now, as having died with Christ, I do not exist in that condition any more; I shall never exist in sin, and in the state of condemnation in which I was in Adam; I am clear from it, I have done with it, I am justified from it once and for ever; and God never takes account of a believer as identified with sin, or as in the flesh. Having condemned it in Christ dying for you, it is impossible for God to take account of you in that which He has already condemned, but He takes account of you now in Christ, in the second Man, not in the first. We have done with the old state in order that we might receive the Spirit, and be formed in another condition, and live now in the life of the last Adam, Christ, the One who is risen from the dead; and now as living in the life of Christ, and being in the nature of the second Man, we are constituted righteous, we are righteous as He is righteous. It is not merely that we are reckoned righteous, but more than that, we are actually constituted righteous in the life and nature of Christ; so it is not the bad man covered, but another kind of man, a righteous man before God in Christ, another kind of man altogether. So in that way the word becomes true which I read in the 3rd of Philippians, and which I will read once more. The apostle speaks of having suffered the loss of all things for Christ, then he says, “And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law”—not wearing a fig leaf apron—“but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith”, Phil 3: 9. Where is that? It is in Christ, He is the righteousness of God, and if I am in Christ I am righteous in Him, in that blessed Man; He is my righteousness, and I am righteous in the life and nature of Christ, so that the believer as identified with Christ is as Christ is—“As he is, so are we in this world”, 1 John 4: 17. That is what is meant by having the best robe on. You have renounced your link with Adam, and you acknowledge the link God has formed between you and Christ. You do not take account of yourself as being in the Adam condition any more, but you take account of yourself now as being in the condition, life, and nature of Christ, you are righteous in Him. If you have the best robe on, you are as fit for the glory of God as Christ is.

The next thing is “bring out” not “bring forth the best robe”. He could not go in till he had got it on; nobody goes in till he has got the best robe on. You could never go consciously into the presence of God as a son till you have the best robe on. Immediately that is on he is inside. “Bring hither the fatted calf”, &c. He did not go back to his old inheritance, he had got a better position, a better birthright, than ever he had before he left the father’s house. He had got the perfect state of a son with the father; and that is his present and abiding place. That is the place of every saint with God, whether we have reached it in the history of our souls or not. God is never satisfied till we accept the full place. He has bestowed on us in Christ His blessed Son, in His abundant grace.

I pray God by His Spirit to make the truth good to you, so that you travel the journey step by step, really to see Christ as your righteousness and life, and to see how you are suited to God, and to have Christ’s place before God, the place of a son in God’s house.