CHRIST, THE MAN OF GOD'S PLEASURE

CHRIST, THE MAN OF GOD’S PLEASURE

As far as I know, there is not a clear apprehension of Christ as the dependent Man. In the form of a bondman He always pleased the Father. He was ever in His bosom; but He set forth to God’s pleasure what a man should be. Man is God’s purpose. The first man failed, but God has now a Man fully to His pleasure. He was a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”, and He declared the Father. He was in the weakest place and He set forth the greatest, but always as the Servant. If He were not a Man, we could not be saved; if He were not a Man, there would be no mystery, no body for Him — no complement on earth. If He were not a Man, there could be no manna, no grace for us now in our life in the flesh here on earth. In my judgment, there cannot be any true apprehension of the humanity of Christ until you apprehend, in some degree, God’s secret. I quite admit that if the full gospel were known you would get it, because if you believe that man has gone from the eye of God in the cross, you see that a Man was there. Many look at Christ and His work as nothing more than the Paschal lamb — a perfect sacrifice, and they do not in their souls apprehend that the man of the first order was judicially terminated in the cross before God. Christ was put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit.