THE LIFEBOAT AND THE SHORE
THE LIFEBOAT AND THE SHORE
I must send you a short review of the state of Christians in general, or rather of the measure in which Christianity is known. I do not refer to mere professors: I confine my remarks to really converted souls.
No one has any hope of safety who does not believe in the efficacy of the blood of Christ in the eye of God, as we read in Exodus 12: 13, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you”; and Romans 3: 25. “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God”.
[p. 12] This is the first step. Thus you have assurance that you will not be lost; you are like one in a lifeboat, saved from drowning, but you are still in the water, or in the place where all the danger is. From Abel down this step or state was known to the man of faith.
The next step is the new state, never known until Christ was raised from the dead. There was no resurrection of any sacrifice until Christ rose. Until the resurrection of Christ is apprehended as it is in the sight of God, you are not out of the lifeboat; no happy place, be assured, though there be a sure hope of safety. But no one who had been rescued from a watery grave would like to remain in the place where death stared him in the face; he longs for the shore, and however he may be assured of his safety, his hopes, his thoughts, his enjoyment never rise beyond safety. Safety is the only bright prospect before him. Now through the resurrection of Christ you reach the shore — the new, the Christian ground. In type Israel (see Exodus 14) found a way through the Red Sea. God’s light showed them the way; they walked it; they appropriated the way made for them through the sea. By faith the Christian appropriates the way made through death, through Christ’s death and resurrection, so that like Israel he can sing, “I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he cast into the sea”. See Exodus 15: 1. So can you, when you believe that God raised Christ from the dead, for “being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5: 1). All our enemies have sunk like lead in the mighty waters. Until the value of the resurrection is seen, there cannot be any Christian progress.
It is here the divergence of one Christian from another begins. Christ was delivered for our offences and raised for our justification. You cannot enjoy justification until you believe in your heart that God hath raised Christ from the dead. It is seeing a Man, who had borne the death due to you, raised out of death, which obtains peace for you. The man (Adam) under the judgment of death has been judicially ended in the cross of Christ, and “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead” (1 Corinthians 15: 21). God now can “be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3: 26). The man under judgment has borne the judgment in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ; hence, as you believe on Him risen, you are entirely on new ground; you are on the shore; you are in the cloudless favour of God. God has effected your reconciliation; He can receive the returning prodigal with open arms. Adam, the first man, has for every believer, to the eye of God, disappeared in judgment in the cross; hence the Christian can say, ‘I did belong to the man under the judgment of God, but I am through grace freed of that man in the death of Christ; I have passed out of death into life’. “If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him” (Romans 6: 8). If you believe in the resurrection of Christ, and therefore see that you are seen by God as now belonging to another Man — the Man risen from the dead — you begin to progress as a Christian. You are freed from the old man in the sight of God, but if you truly enjoy this, you will seek to be freed from sin as to yourself, “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6: 11). It could not be otherwise. If the blessed God sees you to His heart’s delight in all the acceptance of Christ, surely, when you know this, the next step must be that you should be practically as clear of the old man, and this is made true to you as you “walk in the Spirit”, for then you would not “fulfil the lusts of the flesh”. See Galatians 6: 16.