THE TWO EXPERIENCES CONSEQUENT ON ACCEPTING JORDAN

^[p. 305] THE TWO EXPERIENCES CONSEQUENT ON ACCEPTING JORDAN

In the aspect of Christ’s death which the Red Sea sets forth, the blessed God was relieved of every atom of the offensive man; but in the Jordan aspect of His death, we are freed from every encumbrance connected with flesh and blood; and this is liberation. Now if I accept Jordan - liberation - I have two great experiences: one, how Christ sustains me as a human being here, in my own circumstances, and this is very continual; and secondly, that as I stand for Him here, His power, which I have learned in being associated with Him in heaven, makes me superior to human considerations. In one - the continual - He sustains me in my human condition, as He Himself lived here; in the other, I am for Him here, superhuman. A mother, with very small means and a large family, could enjoy His support and grace all the day long, which is the manna; but if a benefactor came to her, and offered her something worldly, which would be a gain to her humanly, but which would compromise Christ, she would, in Christ’s power - a power hers, because united to Him by the Holy Spirit - refuse, at all cost and loss, the worldly offer; and thus she would be superhuman.

It is necessary that we should be kept in the simple reality of our position on the earth, though enjoying and able to act in consonance with our union with Christ in heaven. After Paul came down from the third heaven, he was, more than ever before, made sensible that he needed hourly grace, because of his position here. It is true that it was the old corn of the land that he fed on above, but it reached down to the manna, the life of Jesus here on earth. Paul seems always to have begun at the top; we begin at the manna; but when we taste of the corn of the land, we do not lose the manna; on the contrary, we look for it all the more in our daily circumstances.