CHRIST AS LORD AND AS HEAD
CHRIST AS LORD AND AS HEAD
There is a great difference between knowing Christ as Lord and as Head. No man can say that Jesus is Lord [p. 75] but by the Holy Ghost. If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, etc. When you believe in Christ risen you own Him as Lord, and as you walk in this faith, whatsoever you do, you do in the name of the Lord Jesus (Colossians 3: 7). Your body is the Lord’s. Your bodies are members of Christ. He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit. Every Christian is joined to the Lord — is a member of Christ. This is not union, it is responsibility. See Romans 12. In everything you should be under the rule of the Lord all the day — in temporal things as well as in spiritual things.
Now as to the Head. You do not know Christ as Head until you are dead with Him from the rudiments of the world. You must be over Jordan, you must be insensible, as if dead, to every influence here before you are in the sphere of Christ’s life. You are when dead with Him, outside and apart from the influence of everything in the world. You might be a young man, as in 1 John 2, strong and the word of God abiding in you, and yet not know Him as Head. It is when you are risen with Him that you enter on the sphere of His life; and thus you practically appropriate the circumcision effected for you in the cross. All has to be removed which God has removed in the cross. As with Elisha when he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces, he rendered them useless, so you practically put off the old man and put on the new. You now so come to Christ that you are in the new man where there is neither Greek nor Jew, &c., no man of any kind, but Christ is everything and in all. Now you know the Head. He is your life, and He directs you as to His pleasure in His own circle. The direction of the Head is confined, as far as I see, to His own circle. As an individual, He is my Lord in everything, I am properly the servant or slave of the Lord Jesus Christ. When I know Him as Head His own life in me is directed by Him. I derive from Him, and in His own circle I am under His dictation.