UNITED TO CHRIST IN GLORY
UNITED TO CHRIST IN GLORY
Very gladly I address myself to the subject of your letter, and trust that I may make my reply satisfactory to you. Christ is in glory; that is our link to glory. He is there, we are not there personally, but we are united to Him where He is by the Holy Ghost, and hence He in us is the hope of glory. “Glorify thou me”. “Received up into glory” — “Glorified his Son Jesus” are testimonies enough to the fact that Christ is glorified, which no saint would deny. But if He be glorified, and if I am united to Him [p. 98] where He is (and this is by the Spirit of God), when He appears I shall appear with Him in glory. Now seeing Him in glory I am transformed into likeness to Himself, as He is there; not as He was here merely, though if my eye is on Him in glory, my walk down here would be practically similar to His. When the Lord says on the going out of Judas (John 13: 31, 32), “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall glorify him immediately [or straightway]”, He presents to us the new state of man before God, consequent on His suffering and death. The Son of man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him, hence He straightway is glorified. The man here, the first Adam, even in God’s chosen people, had chosen the glory from men instead of the glory from God (John 12: 43), and the blessed One had proved after thirty-three years’ sojourn among men here, that there was no possibility of raising any to His own unique condition before God, unless He died, unless He in Himself bore the judgment resting on the life of the first Adam (John 12: 24). Now if He has to die in order to reinstate man before God, it is plain that the life for which He died cannot be any longer tolerated. Hence in verse 25, as a parenthesis, He adds: “He that loveth his life shall lose it; but he that hateth his life”, etc. The life of the first Adam is no longer to be cherished, but on the contrary, as a moral existence it is to be hated. Thus not only am I freed from the old man ( ) in the cross of Christ (Romans 6: 6), but I am thankful to be delivered from the body of this death (Romans 7: 24). Well, then, here I am, surrounded on all sides by the first man, but I am a new creature in Christ Jesus, who is not here, but who is in glory. The Man who glorified God here is in the glory of God, and I am through the grace of God united to that blessed One where He is, and, through the self-same Spirit, I am instructed in the things (the fatted calf) which God hath prepared for them that love Him. He reveals them to me by His Spirit; consequently when Christ was definitely rejected from the earth, we find in the end of Acts 7, that the present action of the Holy Ghost is then declared or inaugurated. Stephen being full of the Holy [p. 99] Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God and Jesus. The Spirit shews him Jesus and connects him with Jesus in glory. This is the first time that any one was able to survey the glory without fear, or shrinking from it. And why? Because Jesus is the link to it, and the saint here is linked to Him there by the Holy Ghost. Now this is the only true place for the saint today. Christ being rejected from the earth, the grace of God does not cease, as Philip states in Acts 8: 33, “His life is taken from the earth”, which is tantamount to this, your Saviour has no life connected with earth, He is not alive here, but where He is alive is not there added. That link the conversion of Saul of Tarsus supplies. Jesus in the glory is revealed to the chief of sinners. In the case of Stephen the Holy Ghost had connected the saint with the Son in glory; but now the grace of God reveals His Son in glory to the chief of sinners. Man — the first Adam, in his state and condition was repelled by the glory of God. It demanded righteousness, and he had none. But now that the Son of man is glorified, it is the ministry of righteousness and the ministry of the Spirit. Every room of the glory is thrown open to us. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty, and instead of the glory repelling, it now claims us as its own, and transforms us into the image of the glorified Man there.
We are quickened together with Him, and raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ, which is our proper home, and where our life is. Hence it is: “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God” (Colossians 3: 1). I am here still to carry about in my body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus may be made manifest in my mortal body; I am on earth to live Christ, the heavenly Man, who is not here.
In the millennium the saint will live the earthly man, he will enjoy the earth, and rightly, because Christ will then be here reigning and no longer the rejected One. To live the earthly man now is the snare and tendency of the saints in the present day of His rejection. If I am connected with the Man in glory — the Son of God — I must retire from everything that is of the man here, for [p. 100] whom He was crucified; hence the more I live in company with Christ glorified the more am I down here conversant in walk and ways with Christ crucified. If it is a question of my going to God, it is the resurrection of Christ which is the grand point presented, as in Romans. If it is my walk here (as in 1 Corinthians), it is Christ crucified, ending in chapter 15, with my resurrection! The answer to your question is — I am united to Christ in glory by the Spirit, and as I behold Him there, I am transformed into the same image. As He is there so am I in the glory with Him and the power of the glory is in me through Him by the Spirit.