UNION WITH CHRIST SO LITTLE REALISED

^[p. 69] UNION WITH CHRIST SO LITTLE REALISED

As to your fear that brethren might now relax into indifference, there is this danger with some but though I feel that in a marvellous way we have been delivered out of a rut in which some are still stuck fast, yet I am weighed down under the sense of the small and imperfect measure in which we have realised union with Christ. The lamentable part to me is that men who have spoken so much on church truth have, as far as I see, never touched the reality of union with Christ, and therefore have not the consequences of it. The sovereign power of God in raising us together with Christ is regarded more as confirmatory of the gospel, than of the great fact that while the gospel confers untold blessings on us on the earth as heirs of heaven, we cannot enter on, or realise union with Christ unless we are at the other side of Jordan in the sphere where He is. In the gospel you cross over Jordan when you leave this earth; in the church you must cross over Jordan before you can realise union. Do you understand this? I do not find it easy to explain where the ministry of the gospel ends and where the ministry of the church begins. Of course, if you have not the first fully you cannot enter into the other.

I have lately been struck with seeing how much more the gospel is used by the generality of preachers as a passport to heaven than as the power of God to set us in a new character here for Him on the earth, and it is remarkable that those who dwell exclusively on the passport, least enjoy it when they need it; whereas the one living Christ here would have the conscious enjoyment of life out of death before death supervened.