CHRISTIANITY
CHRISTIANITY
Christianity began when the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead, but was not established until the Holy Spirit came down from Him glorified at God’s right hand. The nature of it had many foreshadowings, dating from the fall of man, and the beauty and power of it were exhibited by Jesus, the Son of God, on the earth. In order to understand christianity, we must begin with the counsel of God. Before the world was, the blessed God had purposed to head up all things in Him who is the Christ. The first thing for us to apprehend is that God had a Man in His purpose — as we read in Proverbs 8 — “always before him”. The Man, according to this purpose was in His mind before Adam was created, in the likeness and image of God. It is of the utmost importance to be assured that God had a Man in His purpose before Adam was created, or before there was any failure of that order.
Now, this being admitted, we shall see that, as soon as Adam fails, God has a Man to fall back on, not only to repair the ruin effectually, but to “destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil”, by whose instrumentality the ruin of man was caused. It is a very remarkable coincidence that Jesus, in effecting the redemption of man, would utterly annul the power of evil, by which the man had fallen. Hence the words of the Lord God to Adam, after his fall, are of the deepest significance. The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head. In death, in the judgment, when the Man in reserve should have His own heel bruised in the suffering of death, He should bruise the serpent’s head;
[p. 319] and this last was not merely suffering; but the extinction of his power. Hence Adam and Eve were clothed with skins before they were driven out, in figure to assure them that God would clothe them with bodies fashioned according to His own mind, and thus they should not be found naked.
We must bear in mind now, that, during the entire interval of man’s probation, the servant of God, who was in His secret, looked forward to the Man of God’s purpose. Wherein any servant, through the work of the Spirit, acted for God outside, and independently of man on the earth, then, as recorded in Scripture, he was a type of Jesus, the Man who was to come, who was to bear the judgment of the first man — bring him historically to an end in judgment, and institute a man of an entirely new order. You get in Enoch a type of Jesus Christ as He was to God. He walked with God, and “before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God”. This prefigured what He was personally to God; while in Noah there is the judgment of all flesh, and he and his house only saved. That is, you get the other side — man’s ruined state, and grace coming in through one Man. I need not pursue this most interesting study, tracing the features of the coming Man — Christ Jesus — feebly prefigured in every servant of God, according as he was faithful. It is enough to say that the Old Testament abounds with types of the coming One; be it an Isaac received from the dead by Abraham; a Joseph, by Jacob, after having accounted him dead for years. No doubt Moses longed for this Man, when he cried, “Shew me thy glory”. It could not have been shewn then, except the “back parts”, but it was to come in the One in whose FACE it would beam in divine and perennial brilliancy. Solomon, in figure, was this Man to David, and hence from Psalm 16 and Psalm 110, Peter can unfold in Acts 2 the history of this, the second Man. The evidence of His coming is not only conclusive, but overwhelming, as one reads down Scripture; for though the [p. 320] house of Israel may look for Him only as their Messiah, yet it is plain that He was to clear away sin — the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world; and that His personal dignity as Son of God was infinitely beyond that of any created intelligence, as He was the Creator Himself, as recounted in Hebrews 1; but His position as a Man is set forth in Hebrews 2, as beyond everything belonging to the first man. It might seem unnecessary to insist on the sui generis dignity of Jesus as a Man, as well as that He was, without controversy, the Son of God; but we shall never understand christianity unless we apprehend in this divine light the nature and being of Him who introduced it.
The first man had utterly failed under every trial. Innocence, without law, under law, without a king, and with a king — so that the real King was rejected, “and by wicked hands ... crucified and slain”. Now when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law. This blessed One humbles Himself, and becomes a Man. The heavenly host, with the glory of God, which had left the earth from Ezekiel’s day, has now returned, to celebrate the Man of God’s purpose, coming in on the earth to vindicate God, where the first man had failed. In flesh and blood the Son now comes Himself; a “babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger”; “that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God”. The Son of God, the Creator of all things — a Babe! Wonder of wonders! He begins at the weakest point. He introduces into the world what is entirely new and unknown. He is a Babe, but entirely above and beyond any other babe. He derives instruction for everything from God. He says what no other babe could say: “I was cast upon thee from the womb: thou art my God from my mother’s belly”. He taught, instead of being taught. He always had more understanding than all His teachers, yet He has taken a creature’s place, and therefore He never acts according to His own will,
[p. 321] though His will was a perfect one. When, at twelve years of age, He longed to be about His Father’s business, He submitted, and retired when His parents, who had a natural right over Him, required Him to return to their home. Thus He grew “in favour with God and man”. He has come to vindicate God in the very order of man in which the first man had failed; not, indeed, to resuscitate and perpetuate that order, but to remove it, by bearing Himself the judgment resting on it, and then rising out of it, to inaugurate an entirely new order — one that had never existed before.
Before we continue our review of the life of Jesus on the earth, let us try to arrive at the nature and measure of the blessing, through divine grace known to saints previous to the coming of Christ. After we have traced His life on earth, we can seek to arrive at the advance, or measure of grace known to His disciples; and lastly, we shall arrive at christianity itself. Now I feel it very difficult to state the nature and measure of the divine work in souls before the coming of Christ. It is quite clear that there was a divine work in them, but it is easier to determine what they had not, than what they had. It is quite evident they had not peace. Dependence on God was known to them. His goodness and mercy was known to them, and therefore their language was, “Hope thou in God”; He “is the health of my countenance, and my God”; but peace was not known, because it could not be until righteousness was brought in. It was not possible for them to reckon themselves dead to sin, because the old man was not as yet crucified. Therefore the flesh was alive and active; nay, it was right to use it. Abraham was to slay his son; Rahab, to sacrifice her country; Jael, to serve God’s people by being a deceiver, and so on. The weapons of their warfare were carnal, and they not only had not peace, but they had no abiding assurance of future happiness. There was a work of God in their hearts, and they had faith in God, but there was nothing revealed, save in type, of the [p. 322] second Man — the One who was to supplant and replace the old one, which, as yet, held its ground. Though doomed, the day of its judgment had not come. Before Jesus had come, and had finished the work which was given Him to do, the Spirit of God, even though acting on believers, could not assure or acquaint them with what, as yet, had not existed, even peace, and the judicial end of the first man. He could not declare to them what was not, unless prophetically, and that would not constitute a state. A thing cannot be known until it exists. Until the resurrection of Christ, the grain of wheat had not brought forth its fruit, for there could be no one of the new order until the old man was annulled in the cross, and peace established in righteousness. Then righteousness and peace “kissed each other”. Christ was the first-fruits of His own order. The blessed God will make perfect “the spirits of just men”, but they — the saints before Christ came — could not know new creation. They were born again, quickened by the Spirit, but they could not be in a state which had never existed. Until Christ, the Eternal Life, had come, and had finished the work, the new order could not come out, nor could the more abundant life be communicated. They had life, but not of that order which the risen Christ confers, for it had not come in a man until Christ came, and was not conferred on any one until Christ, as the last Adam, conferred it. If anything definitely of the new order had come before Christ, it would be priority to Christ. He must be pre-eminent. There was a divine work in their souls to turn to God, and by the Spirit this was sustained, and acted on, though He did not, and could not, dwell until sins were put away, and the efficacy of the blood had preceded Him in the soul.
We must now return to look at our Lord’s life on the earth. He introduced an entirely new thing among men; not new to Him, but absolutely new to us. After thirty years in private life, He was led “of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil”. He, a full-grown [p. 323] Man, now comes forward to encounter Satan. Hungry, the devil dares to ask Him to use His own power to turn the stones into bread — to leave the place of the dependent Man; but He was not to be moved, nor would He accept of His rights from any one but God, nor exhibit Himself as an object of God’s care for His own credit. Satan cannot divert this second Man from His dependence on God. And now, acknowledged from heaven by the Holy Spirit having descended on Him in the bodily shape of a dove, He enters on His public ministry. He sets forth the heart of God to man, so that He can say, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father”. This ministry culminates in the mount of transfiguration. The second Man is saluted by the glory of God. Now was manifested “the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”. Peter says, “We were eyewitnesses of his majesty”. This unique Man was claimed by the glory — they saw his glory; but He does not accept it. He then comes down to die. He was the solitary grain, and alone He must abide, unless He die; but if He die, He will bring forth much fruit. He has to bring the first man to an end judicially, before He can have brethren after His own order. The Son of man must “be lifted up”; man must go on the one side in Him, that every believer may receive His life — eternal life — on the other side. These must be concurrent. We cannot be for Christ until we are released from the old man under God’s judgment. Both these blessings — the going out of the old, and the bringing in of the new — come to us through Him; blessed be His name. He brings to an utter end man exhibited by Him, in the most beautiful way, from a Babe to the cross. He gives it up in judgment: “In that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God”. The old is judicially removed before the new can come to us. The old man goes in judgment; Jesus rises; and no believer in Him can be in the old man, for he is in Christ risen from among the dead. Christianity is begun.
[p. 324] Let us now briefly see the measure of the grace known to His disciples up to His resurrection, and then we can the more apprehend what they acquired after His resurrection. The power of God had drawn the disciples to Jesus. A Man come from God laid hold of their hearts. They were bound to Him. His very company charmed them, and they could say of their time with Him in all His penury and temptations what was said of Solomon’s brightest day — that they lacked nothing. They felt they could not live without Him. It was no empty boast of Peter when he said, “I will lay down my life for thy sake”. Love begets superhuman acts for its object. Mary can say, “Tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away”. Love is never weak. But what was their measure spiritually at this time? The prayer, commonly called the Lord’s prayer, furnishes us with the answer. No one is ever beyond his prayers. I cannot be beyond what I am to God, or rather what I know of Him to myself. The blessed Lord surely taught them a prayer that fully expressed their present measure, and from it we can gather that though they said “our Father”, there was no sense of adoption. They ought to say “Father”, because they had seen Him in Jesus, but they have no assured hope. The forgiveness of their sins is only conditional, and they are here seeking for the kingdom, greatly tried by their own state and circumstances.
They were drawn in heart to Jesus, personally and divinely attached to Him. “To whom shall we go?” they could say, “Thou hast the words of eternal life”. The controlling power of God in the person of Christ kept them “in thy name”. But He anticipated their condition on His leaving them, when He warned them, “he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one”; so utterly unprotected they should be. They did not understand His death, nor His resurrection, and certainly not the effects which would flow from either. Hence, when He rose from the dead, He at once introduces [p. 325] them into the new relationship which now for the first time subsists between them and Him, in community of relationship with His Father and His God, and which never before could have been the portion of any believer, simply because it did not exist. God as He pleases can foretell a thing, but He would not lead a soul to accept as a fact what was not a fact. God knew all of His people who were “under tutors and governors”, but while He opened hearts to delight in His mercy and goodness, and gave them real joy in foreseeing things and days to come, they could not be led into peace until peace was accomplished; nor, until the first man was ended in judgment by the Man of God’s purpose, could the breath of eternal life be breathed into them by the risen Christ. “The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit”. No believer before that time could have possessed what the disciples were given in John 20; though, as I have said, they were born again, but they could not be acquainted with a thing that was not done. The Spirit of God could foretell that it would be done, but He could not place a soul in the actual position consequent on an accomplished work, before the work was accomplished; and if it were possible, which I deny, it would have given the first man a priority over the second Man. The great thing, the all-important truth that is insidiously, but doubtless unintentionally, set aside in the attempt to give the saints before Christ’s resurrection a position similar to christians, is that when the second Man takes His place after His own order, it is completely new. When Jesus rose from the dead, He said, “Touch me not”. He was apart from everything with which, because of the children being partakers of flesh and blood, He had connected Himself. He was always from a Babe an entirely new thing here, entirely divine in every detail; but now “though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more”. The Lord Jesus Christ is the same in nature and life risen from the dead [p. 326] as He was before it, but (though He has flesh and bones) He is no longer after the flesh. He is now no longer straitened, no longer in humiliation. He is glorified, raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. All power is given unto Him in heaven and on earth, and authority over all flesh that He might “give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him”. Hence every believer now is a “new creation; the old things have passed away; behold all things have become new”; he is of the second Man through whom he was severed in the cross from the first man. And now in the life of Christ risen, and in the power of the Spirit, sent down from the glorified Christ, he enters on a new history here, though still encompassed with this earthly tabernacle; but as he walks in the Spirit, he is superior to its influence; and so far, he is walking here as Christ walked. We are before God according to His glory, so that glory is now His measure for everything in relation to us. It is impossible to convey the greatness of our position as being according to His glory. No angel nor archangel can ever rise to it. All God’s nature and attributes are displayed and concentrated in His Son, our Saviour, so that as we behold His glory we are transformed into the same image; we who once had “come short of the glory of God” are now metamorphosed into it. We are in it through our Saviour; even to be to the satisfaction of God according to His nature and attributes. Thus it is that we here tread our way, ‘through scenes of strife’, indeed, ‘and desert life’; for He left “us an example, that ye should follow his steps”.
And not this alone, great and glorious as it is. As individuals we are here on earth walking in the Spirit, and learning the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, but it is when we enter into our new place in heaven, as members of His body, that we sensibly enter into the actualities of the new man; and here there is a new order of works and the practical life of a heavenly man, entirely apart from flesh and blood. Everything is of a new order,
[p. 327] and of a heavenly character, derived from our Head, the exalted Man in heaven — (and here christianity is fully displayed) an order unknown, save in the church. May we have grace to walk according to it.