EXTRACT – COMMUNION WITH GOD

According to the energy of spiritual life, and the power of the Spirit of God, they were by grace to build themselves up, and to keep themselves in the communion of God. The faith is, to the believer, a most holy faith; he loves it, because it is so; it puts him into relationship and communion with God Himself. That which he has to do in the painful circumstances of which the apostle speaks (whatever may be the measure of their development), is to build himself up in this most holy faith. He cultivates communion with God, and profits through grace by the revelations of His love. The Christian has his own proper sphere of thought, in which he hides himself from the evil that surrounds him, and grows in the knowledge of God from whom nothing can separate him. His own portion is always the more evident to him, the more the evil increases. His communion with God is in the Holy Spirit, in whose power he prays, and who is the link between God and his soul; and his prayers are according to the intimacy of this relationship, and animated by the intelligence and energy of the Spirit of God.

… It is important to observe the way in which the Spirit of God speaks in the epistles of a power that can keep us from every fall, and unblameable; so that a thought only of sin is never excusable. It is not that the flesh is not in us, but that, with the Holy Spirit acting in the new man, it is never necessary that the flesh should act or influence our life (compare 1 Thess.5:22). We are united to Jesus: He represents us before God, He is our righteousness. But at the same time, He who in His perfection is our righteousness is also our life; so that the Spirit aims at the manifestation of this same perfection, practical perfection, in the daily life. He who says "I abide in Him", ought to walk as He walked. The Lord also says, "Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father which is in heaven is perfect".

There is progress in this. It is Christ risen who is the source of this life in us, which ascends again towards its source, and which views the risen and glorified Christ, to whom we shall be conformed in glory, as its end and aim (see Phil.3). But the effect of this is, that we have no other aim: "this one thing I do". Thus, whatever may be the degree of realisation, the motive is always perfect. The flesh does not come in at all as a motive, and in this sense we are blameless.

The Spirit then – since Christ who is our righteousness is our life – links our life to the final result of an unblameable condition before God. The conscience knows by grace that absolute perfection is ours, because Christ is our righteousness; but the soul which rejoices in this before God is conscious of union with Him, and seeks the realisation of that perfection according to the power of the Spirit, by whom we are thus united to the Head. To Him who can accomplish this, preserving us from every kind of fall, our epistle [Jude] ascribes all glory and dominion throughout all ages.

J.N. Darby Synopsis Col. – Rev. pp.364-366