WE HAVE TO ACCEPT ALL THAT THE DEATH OF CHRIST INCLUDES

WE HAVE TO ACCEPT ALL THAT THE DEATH OF CHRIST INCLUDES

Many among us are like Isaac, inheriting all that his father had acquired through faith, but with very little faith himself. There is more acquaintance with the word than with the Lord. They should go together. The word should not be apart from the Person. I feel that many have begun wrongly. To get peace and to break bread seems the aim before them, and not to be outside the world, because of having found the Lord in glory, and ^[p. 244] their calling being heavenly. I believe the real difficulty is that there is a deep-seated reluctance to accept all that the death of Christ includes. Man in his perfect state in the Person of Christ has died. If now I live here by Christ, I live here by a Man who is not living here as a Man in the flesh. He was here, and as I live by Him I live here as He lived here; but He is not living here now. We through grace, by faith, are the reproduction of the Man of God who was here. It is our unwillingness to part with the old man that really hinders our entering into the new. “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you” (John 6: 53).

Death must be entered into in one way or another. If we had truly died with Christ we should be morally severed from everything here; yet we should carry out every duty better than ever, because we should be solely dependent on Christ.

No one can understand eternal life until he is in it, I mean, until he is enjoying it. With most Christians what is sought is not to live with Christ where He is, but to obtain His help where we are. Both are ours, but while the greater leads to the lesser, the lesser does not include the greater.

I remark that some do not accept in faith the death of Christ. They speak of His sufferings; suffering is not in itself death; death is the termination of the being. “Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more” (2 Corinthians 5: 16). One who dwells on the ‘passion’ of Christ does not really apprehend the great consequence of His death.

It is deeply interesting and affecting to notice the different ways by which the Lord leads His people into death. Yet it is to disclose to the heart the light of the resurrection morning. Of ourselves we are entitled to nothing but death hence everything else is pure favour. We are to be always praising. In Christ we are set up again, even here, in an entirely new way. While entitled to nothing on Adam’s side, we are in Christ in the full favour of God, and have therefore the promise of this life, and that which is to come. Eternal life is for us in ^[p. 245] a new sphere and has new joys, and hence the fulness of it is future, but now we “lay hold” on it, and it is ours because we are in Christ and He is in us.

I am in many ways indebted to you, but I like to be indebted to those who love me for the Lord’s sake. I know that your services, however great, do not exhaust your love, but in a way express it.