WE LIVE TOGETHER WITH HIM
[p. 238] WE LIVE TOGETHER WITH HIM
Jordan, we all know, was a type of the death of Christ. There are two great things connected with it: one is that we know we are over, through His death; and the other is, that being over in Him we have power over the enemies against us. You get it beautifully illustrated in Stephen. He was over, and he comes back in the power of Christ and faces the whole array of satanic power here on earth. It is a wonderful display of what divine power could effect. That was the effect of the death of Christ.
There are four aspects of the death of Christ. They all happened together, but we do not learn them all together. I will just go over them, because it is well to understand a little the history of the soul. Exodus 12 I turn to for the first; verse 13 says, “the blood shall be to you for a token”. Most of you know the chapter. That, I may say, is the first apprehension the soul has of the death of Christ. The blood is that which really shelters from the judge. The mark and characteristic of a person who has learned that, is that he longs to get out of the place of judgment. I call Egypt the place of judgment; not exactly the world. He is longing to get out of it, and therefore he eats the passover in haste, with shoes on his feet and staff in his hand. I do not believe any one has a very deep sense of what the blood of Christ has effected for him, if he does not wish to get out of the place of judgment. He gets out of Egypt, away from Pharaoh. To me it is exactly like a man in the life-boat. The sailors may tell him he is perfectly safe in the life-boat, but he would like to get to land. He wants to get out of the place where he has been exposed to such imminent danger, simply because he knows the tremendous danger he was in. That is the first aspect.
[p. 239] Now turn to Exodus 14 for another aspect. There they are in terrible trouble because of Pharaoh; they are saved from the place of judgment, but not from the Egyptians who exposed them to the judgment. The command to Moses was: Bring them out from the hand of the Egyptians. The Egyptians represent man in enmity against God and therefore under the power of death, and hence what Moses now tells them to comfort them is: “The Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more for ever”. The Red Sea sets forth the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. He entered into death “that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death”. You see, beloved friends, when you take that into account, what a wonderful place we are put into! No one before Christ’s death could say death was abolished. Look at Hezekiah. Death was not gone for him. Death is not before us now, but life. The apostle says “Lay hold on eternal life”. That could not be till Christ had “abolished death”, and “brought life and immortality to light through the gospel”. It is wonderful the difference between them and us. It is all contrast. Death before them, life before us; sin before them, holiness before us. “These things write I unto you, that ye sin not”. I believe the bottom of all imperfection is the light sense there is of sin. I do not speak of sins, but sin. You never learn what sin is in God’s sight but in the cross. It is not the judgment of hell fire that tells us what sin is, but the cross. If you knew what sin is in the sight of God, you would want to have it put away. You cannot tolerate any movement of sin. “Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord”. In verse 27 the Egyptians are gone, to be seen no more for ever. I connect Exodus 12 with Romans 3: 25: “whom God hath set forth a propitiation through faith in his blood”; and I connect Exodus 15 with the ending [p. 240] of Romans 4. What characterises a person who has learned that? The morning has appeared, that wonderful morning of resurrection when all is clear, and the eye of God rests upon that blessed One who has done it all. “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? ... thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” What is the result of victory? A song. Do not imagine anyone can sing till then! People try to make young converts sing; they must get to shore first; they must have the sense that the morning of redemption has appeared, that they are clear of the place and of the man that exposed them to judgment.
There are three great characteristics connected with the song. First, The Lord “hath triumphed gloriously”; you glory in the Person who has achieved the victory. Second, you must provide Him a place: “I will prepare him an habitation”; you could not be happy here without His having a habitation. Third, you go to His habitation. “Thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation”. But He places you in the wilderness here. I think very few people know what the wilderness is. It is entire dependence upon God. The richer a man is, the more he feels the wilderness, if he is dependent upon God, because he has resources, but cannot turn to his resources. Israel had nothing but a bare wilderness; but we are placed where we have the power to gratify ourselves, but we deny ourselves that is Marah.
“When we our tastes deny,
Where we could gratify,
We suffer bitterly,
But sweet is liberty!”
What marks the wilderness is entire dependence upon God. The more resources you have, the more you must be as though you had none. I am not to [p. 241] use my resources one bit more than my blessed Lord did who had all resources. Your whole resource must be in God. That marks a certain stage in your Christian history.
I turn now to the third aspect; Numbers 21. After thirty-nine years, the terrible nature of the people came out; “the people spake against God”. They were bitten of serpents, the source of all evil, and made sensible of the poison in their nature; suffering under it. Moses was told to put a brazen serpent upon a pole; he that looked, lived; he had practically life outside himself. You get the antitype to that in John 3. It is another aspect of the death of Christ. John does not begin with the blood upon the lintel; it is the aspect of the death of Christ Godward; but, for us, the same death. “No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven”. You could not have anything from heaven till some one came out of heaven. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up”. Who is the antitype of the serpent? The Son of man who was lifted up. The brazen serpent never did the wrong; but it was made in the likeness of what did the wrong. Thus, in Romans 8, “God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh “. It is not, He forgave it, but He condemned it. He that looks, lives, and not only lives, but there is the river of God in that same chapter; they sang, “Spring up, O well!” They are outside the wilderness now. It is a heavenly life, but a heavenly life consequent upon a Man being “lifted up”. The Lord says, as it were, I bore the judgment on your side that you might have the blessedness of My side. There is fulfilled what you get in Romans 8: 2: “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death”. I have the life of the [p. 242] One with whom I died. I affectionately ask you to keep that saying often in your mind; I have the life of the One with whom I died. I am not a bit dead myself. Holiness by faith people say, I am dead; that is not truth. I am not a bit dead, but I have died with Him. Other people talk about death to nature. Another novel notion that has come out is, that I must apply the death of Christ to get power over sin. All are wrong. The truth is, I have died with Him, and I am in His life. “If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him”. “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ”. I repeat it, I have the life of the One with whom I died. “I am crucified with Christ”, I have done with the “I”; “nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me”. I am not looking for a feeling. It is not the expulsive power of a new sentiment, but the expulsive power of a new Person. What is gain to me I count loss for a Person. A person has all the qualities of his life about him. It is not mere sentiment; it is what Christ is Himself; we have seen Him. “Christ liveth in me”. It is not simply that I am gone, that the Egyptian is gone, but I have life and liberty in Him. I am free.
It is wonderful how the soul travels. When you have reached resurrection, the morning has appeared indeed! But what troubles? The working of sin in yourself. It does work, no doubt. But I have liberty in His life. “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free”. That is not forgiveness. I am free. I am now travelling in a new life. “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life”. That is the antitype of the well of Numbers 21. I am really brought now by the Spirit of God into an entirely new kind of life. What kind? A heavenly one; therefore, when John speaks [p. 243] of eternal life, he starts with the brazen serpent; you start in the liberty of life.
I turn now to Colossians 2: 20 for a moment: “dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world”. I remember I said at a reading, Many a person is clear of Romans 7 who is not experimentally over Jordan; an objection was made to it, but it was overcome. But still I do not think now there is a complete deliverance until you are over Jordan. There is the same expression in Romans and in Colossians. In Romans you are dead with Christ to sin; in Colossians you are dead with Christ to the rudiments of the world. Romans only goes so far as to say, dead to sin. What would you like next? I would like to leave the place where it is. Then I find, “dead with Christ to the rudiments of the world”, Colossians 2: 20. When I am in eternal life I am in the sphere where Christ is, and I have parted company with the sphere where natural life is, yet the very power that has carried me over and made my heart know that I am in a new sphere, where Christ is, enables me to fulfil here upon earth all the duties and ordinances of this life in a new power and in an excellency which I never knew before. Thus, for instance, Ephesians is the only epistle where you get the education of your children: you are told to bring them up in “the nurture and admonition of the Lord”. The nearer I get to God, the better I can carry out the ordinances of God. In Ephesians I get, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church”. In Colossians (where I am only going into possession, not in it, though possession is ours) I find, “Husbands, love your wives, and be not bitter against them”.
I go back now to Joshua 3 and just look at what it is to be over. I believe a great many people are over Jordan who have never accepted Jordan. Many have enjoyed the scene where Christ is, who have never [p. 244] accepted the place. I am in the sphere where Christ is, tasting the actual nature of eternal life. “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent”. I know what a solemn thing it is. The Lord brings the reality oftentimes before us. Would you pass over and leave everything here behind you? That is what I call accepting Jordan. It is all clear, the moment I see that all belongs to me. I am just as much entitled to be over Jordan as I am to be out of Egypt. Thus the Lord says to the thief on the cross, You go all the way today. We can hardly believe in the wonderful magnitude of divine grace to transfer a man from the deepest degradation to the highest place in paradise, in company with the Lord Jesus Himself; brought into the enjoyment of it that day, He got rid of the encumbrance. How? By learning, I have the life of the One who has obtained heaven for me.
A man who has only learned the shelter of the blood is occupied with relief; but the man who knows the place Christ has obtained for him, is occupied with his boundless resource in the blessed God; it is this which fills his heart. “That ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Spirit”.
Salvation is not only being saved from, but saved to. Let us look at the chapter a moment. There are two things. You are over; and I trust many of us can say, I have lost sight of everything, I am so happy with the Lord, but that is not accepting Jordan. I had better give you an illustration. I have seen a person apprehending a great trial, ready for it; the trial never came! It is looking death straight in the face, as another has said. What I say is this, I am so sure that is my place, that the death of Christ has obtained it for me, my heart has so realised the power that has brought me there, that if all close here, I have accepted it; that is my right place. What is [p. 245] the actual result of that? You come back, or rather, you resume here by the very power that put you up there. You got up there by the power of life out of death; the very same power that put you there, outside of all this sphere, enables you to walk in divine superiority to everything here, as Stephen did, victorious in presence of death. “I triumph in thy triumphs, Lord”. I know what the power of Christ is. It is the fulfilment of Joshua 3: 10: “Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you”. How do you practise it? Not, like Samson, by knocking down all your enemies, but, on the contrary, overcoming evil with good. What a wonderful position we can trace our history to! The Lord grant our hearts may know what it is!
I would have you exercise your hearts about it, that you may enter into the wonderful reality. I do not say, Part company with all here and have to do with it; but I say, When you are in the sphere of eternal life you are in the sphere where Christ is, and you are apart from natural things, but you come back to act practically with divine power in them. I turn to the Lord that our hearts may know this wonderful thing in this poor world. I trust we have all tasted of the unspeakable joy of it for a moment; but may we not only taste it, but know that it is our settled place by the death of Christ, and that we have as good a right to know it as our abiding place as we have to be sheltered by the blood in Egypt.
The Lord grant that each may know it, for His name’s sake.