CHRIST'S WORK ONE GREAT WHOLE - LEARNT IN PARTS

CHRIST’S WORK ONE GREAT WHOLE - LEARNT IN PARTS

May you know well the surpassing greatness of His power! It is a great thing to know the power that put Christ in heaven in that place. It is not only to know the place, but to know the power that put Christ there. If I know the power I know where the power puts Him, or it would not be power. He was raised from the dead, from man’s lowest place, and He is set in the highest. We are to know this power now, a much greater thing to us than knowing the place, because if I knew the place only, I should not be anything when not in it, but when I know the power, I can reach Him in the place wherever I am.

Christ’s work for us is one. By the efficacy of His death, He not only cleared us of all that was against us, but He secured to us the place to which He has been exalted. We have to learn this one great work in parts, but it is one whole work. The same work which saved the thief from impending judgment placed him in paradise; he learned it without a break. You and I must learn it one day without a break; now we are at one or other of the parts of that work.

There are four great parts - two relate to God, and two to ourselves. The blood on the lintel shelters us from the judgment; that was Christ’s death, but the same death that sheltered me from judgment was the Jordan, and opened heaven to me. True, I did not know it when I first found shelter under the blood, yet it was the same work. He supplements nothing, nor is anything supplemented to His work save the Spirit to glorify Him.

Now a very interesting thing occurs. According to the part that I know, I am in practical life. If I am only sheltered, the one great characteristic of my spiritual state will be to get clear of the scene of judgment, though that is typically Egypt; yet I think it is the judgment that the sheltered one is seeking to escape from and not from the world simply as such. When the Red Sea is known - Christ’s death and resurrection, there is a great advance. There is peace; the foe is silenced. The Lord hath triumphed gloriously. The morning of the resurrection is enjoyed. There is justification, and it is the joy of the new position which then characterises the one who has entered into it. The song therefore leads on into God’s habitation. The work Godward is done to secure this.

But now come two other parts of the death of Christ; one, the brazen serpent, in which I learn that I am dead to sin, and in liberty in Christ’s life; and the other, Jordan. Having died with Him, I am dead to the world, and seated in heavenly places in Him. I am ^[p. 354] across the Jordan. In Numbers 21, when the wilderness is over, I am entering on a new start; I learn that I am free from the law of sin and death in the life of Christ; and I have the water, given of God (verse 16) to sustain me in it. This is a great part of the work or death of Christ; for we believe that “if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him” (2 Timothy 2: 11). This is liberty, and the characteristic of the one here is the greatness of life; while, when across the Jordan, it is more using God’s power in testimony, maintaining that you are a heavenly man. Christ’s work assured and effected the last at the same moment that He did the first. I think the third is a very interesting stage. Christ’s life in all its great and beautiful details engrosses us; it is ours; and I suppose it is here that the sympathy of His heart is known; and here your heart is daily more attracted to Him. We do not lose the knowledge and sense of the previous parts by advancing to the others; nay, we are confirmed and deepened in them.