CHRIST IN DEATH AND CHRIST IN GLORY
Christ in death was the expression of man’s state and position as a sinner before God; that is, His death proved the state in which all men were: “one died for all, then all have died”. It is the expression of God’s estimate of man and what he deserves. On the other side, Christ in glory is the expression of God’s purpose for man, and what He intends to bring men to in Christ.
It is not a question of any particular class of men, Jew or heathen, it is universal, “all have died”; all were in the same state, all were under the same penalty of death. Christ died because He took man’s place, represented man as a sinner, “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us”. Having taken man’s place He must bear the judgment resting on men. He “died for all”. If any live it is because He died for them. “That they who live”. All do not live, only those who believe on Him who died and rose again. It is the more striking when we consider who it was that died. The One whom God the Father sealed as the One in whom He found all His pleasure, the righteous One, the One who devoted Himself to the will of God and did always the things that pleased God, becoming obedient even unto death, the Holy One of God, His well-beloved Son. Why should He die? Death had no claim upon Him. Think of Him there, on the cross forsaken of God, tasting death as God’s judgment on sin, enduring the wrath of God against sin in depths of sorrow which no human thought can ever fathom. “He should taste death for every thing”, Heb 2: 9. “He died for all”.
There I see what sin is, what I was as a sinner and what I deserved, nothing better than that which Christ suffered on that cross. There I see what God’s estimate of man is, fully expressed. How important that we should arrive at his judgment, as the apostle says, “We thus judge”. Can we say this? Have we arrived at God’s judgment of ourselves? If I think of myself in the light of the suffering and death of Christ it must banish all pride and self-satisfaction from my mind; I can never think well of myself, I can never say, “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men”, Luke 18: 11. I fear very few have, with the apostle, arrived at this judgment. Each one must answer for himself. Until we do accept this judgment of ourselves we shall know little or nothing of the other side of the story.
The apostle adds, “So that we henceforth know no one according to flesh; but if even we have known Christ according to flesh, yet now we know him thus no longer”. This does not mean that we do not recognise natural relationships; they are of God and we take them up in a new way, namely, in the Lord. But in connection with the divine system we do not take any account of ourselves or of any other man according to the flesh. Nothing of that which is according to the flesh comes into the new creation order of things. God does not now recognise man after the flesh, and we have to come to be of one mind with God. In this divine system everything is new, and all things are of God. He has begun anew in Christ risen and glorified. We do not know Christ after the flesh, we can only know Him in the condition in which He now is, namely, as a living Man in glory.
When we have accepted God’s judgment of ourselves as expressed in the cross, it is a relief to know that there all was condemned and for ever removed from the eye of God, all was brought to an end in the death of Christ. So that it is the privilege of the believer to know that God does not identify him with that which He has judged in the death of Christ. He is a new creation in Christ, old things have passed away, new things have come to pass, and in this new creation all things are of God. On the ground that, in Christ made sin for us, sin has been judged and put away, God is free to take up the believer and make him the subject of His work in new creation, creating him anew in Christ Jesus and thus making him suitable for His glory.
“If any one be in Christ, there is a new creation”. “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works”, Eph 2: 10.
Now we come to the other side of the truth, man is in glory in the Person of Christ. God has displayed His righteousness in raising up Christ and exalting Him to glory. He has expressed His righteous appreciation of the perfection and excellence of Christ as Man, and of the work He accomplished for God’s glory. But more, in setting Him there as Man, He has displayed His good pleasure for men. He is bringing many sons to glory, Christ is there as the Firstborn among many brethren. He has predestined that we should be conformed to the image of His Son. In carrying out this purpose He will display His righteousness in regard to us, so that we become God’s righteousness in Him.
We must distinguish between the righteousness of God in Romans 3 and that presented in this chapter. In the tabernacle there were two types of the righteousness of God, the brass and the gold. Outside all was brass, inside all was gold. The former represented the righteousness of God in the judgment of sin, excluding all that was unsuitable to Himself and establishing a righteous ground on which He could act in mercy toward a sinful people. The gold set forth that righteousness which is inherent in God, namely, His righteous appreciation of that which in itself is excellent and perfect, as found in Christ, all that was suited to God in a man.
In 2 Corinthians 5: 21 we have the gold, as seen in the place He has given Christ in glory. Nothing less would have been an adequate expression of His righteous appreciation of the Man in whom was all His delight, in whom He found perfection of obedience, and devotion to His glory. Such an One was in every way suited to the glory of God. “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God also shall glorify him in himself, and shall glorify him immediately”, John 13: 31, 32.
But how can this apply to us? Will our being in the same glory with Christ be the display of God’s righteous appreciation of that which is perfect and suited to the glory of God? It must be so or we could not be there. We are reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, that we may be presented holy and unblameable and irreproachable before the Godhead, see Col 1: 21, 22. According to 2 Corinthians 5, we are presented in a new creation state, which is the workmanship of God. “If any one be in Christ, there is a new creation; the old things have passed away; behold all things have become new” (or ‘new things have come to pass’). All that pertained to our state in the flesh has been judged, and has passed away in the death of Christ. New things have come to pass in Christ risen and glorified, a new order of manhood, new conditions of life for man, a new place for man, and new relationships. All this subsists in Christ. He is the beginning and pattern of this new creation order of things, all emanates from Him. By the work of God we are being morally transformed into the image of Christ.
Then finally He will transform our bodies into conformity to His body of glory, so that when we are taken up into glory we shall in every way be conformed to the image of God’s Son, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. God will display His righteousness in glorifying what is of Himself, and therefore suited to His glory. Thus we become God’s righteousness in Christ to His everlasting praise and glory. It is on this ground that we stand before God now.
It is important that we should understand that God is carrying on a work in us at the present time to this great end. “We all, looking on the glory of the Lord, with unveiled face, are transformed according to the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord the Spirit”, 2 Cor 3: 18.
In conclusion I would earnestly exhort every saint to seriously consider the question whether in your own mind you have arrived at the judgment of the apostle, that is, God’s judgment of what man is as expressed in the death of Christ. If “one died for all, then all have died”.
Until this is reached, it is impossible to know anything of the other side of the story, namely, what it is to be on the ground of God’s righteousness in Christ, and being before Him in suitability. Without this it is impossible to enjoy approach with boldness and liberty.
The more we enter into these things, the more we shall desire that nothing may hinder the present work of transformation being carried on in us by the Holy Spirit. “Every one that has this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure”, 1 John 3: 3.
From The Believer’s Friend vol 14 (1922)