COMMUNION OF CHRIST'S DEATH

COMMUNION OF CHRIST’S DEATH

When the Lord was on earth, there was nothing ever enjoined on man by God that He did not scrupulously fulfil. He respected fully every ordinance of His with regard to the first creation, as He was called in it. But He died out of it. He gave His body to be broken, and His blood to be shed, and though He will hereafter resume connection with this old creation, yet never again as being in the flesh or of that order. We now, as His body on earth, enter into communion with Him as He left the earth. We as it were find ourselves in spirit apart from everything here with Him, in communion, calling Him to remembrance at the moment in which He died for us. In this communion we are outside ourselves as men; and we present our union, as His body, in the one loaf, on earth, where He died for us. It becomes the highest and dearest place to our hearts, to be here as He left it; to be the continuation in memory of Himself; and by communion of His blood, we discern His body, because His death occurred here. Thus we remember Him, and find it the moment when our souls pass away from all here, in company and association with Him; not in His life in glory, but we recall Him on earth, as He left it, and died out of it for us. This is our grand expression here. But on earth, in our course here, we go on respecting every ordinance of God, and from God. We, through grace, make the old creation to answer to every divine ordinance, which it never had done before because of the weakness of the flesh. The believer’s body is now the temple of the Holy Spirit, and every relationship or position enjoined by God on the first man is maintained according to God through the grace of God in us, which necessarily respects what is required of God in every vessel in which it is deposited.