LIFE OUT OF DEATH
LIFE OUT OF DEATH
Many among us are like Isaac, inheriting all that his father had acquired through faith, but with very little faith himself. There is more acquaintance with the word than with the Lord. They should go together, there is never power otherwise. The word should not be apart from the Person. I feel that many have begun wrongly. To get peace and to break bread seems the aim before them; and not that having found the Lord in glory, they are outside the world, their calling being heavenly. I believe the real difficulty is that there is a deep-seated reluctance to accept all that the death of Christ includes. The man in his perfect state in the Person of Christ has died . If now I live here by Christ, I live here by a man who [p. 182] is not living here as a man in the flesh. He was here, and as I live by Him I live here as He lived here; but He is not living here now. We through grace, by faith, are the continuation of the Man of God who was here. It is the unwillingness to part with the old man that really hinders our entering into the new. “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you”. (John 6: 53)
Death must be entered into in one way or another. If we had perfectly died with Christ, we should be morally severed from everything here: yet we should carry out every duty better than ever, because we should be solely dependent on Christ.
No one can understand eternal life until he is in it, I mean, until he is enjoying it. With most christians what is sought is not to live with Christ where He is, but to obtain His help where we are. Both are true, but while the greater leads to the less, the less does not include the greater.
I remark that some do not accept in faith the death of Christ. They speak of His sufferings, suffering is not in itself death. Death is the termination of that being. “Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more”. (2 Corinthians 5: 16) One who dwells on the “passion” of Christ does not really apprehend the great consequence of His death.