LAY HOLD ON ETERNAL LIFE
[p. 519] LAY HOLD ON ETERNAL LIFE
The construction of this passage is remarkable. It is very difficult to translate the force of “live together with him”. It is the same word that you get in 1 Thessalonians 5: 10; “who has died for us, that whether we may be watching or sleep, we may live together with him”. The meaning of the passage is, if you are in company with Him in death, you are in company with Him in life. The entering into this would greatly affect every one of us; historically I believe it tells exactly where we are. I will try presently to trace it to its height, but first I will briefly trace its history in the soul.
I turn first for an illustration of it. Exodus 14 is the first lesson we have in death. In Exodus 12 we have a people sheltered from judgment by blood. It is an immense relief to the sin-burdened soul to believe that when God sees the blood He will pass over. But if you study, not only the history of Israel, but your own history, you will find that it is not only relief that you need, but you want to be delivered from the power of the enemy. Israel, when sheltered by the blood, were not delivered from Pharaoh and the Egyptians; they were not out of Egypt. Egypt is the world under judgment. Now that is the state of many souls. They are saved from the judgment of God and they are sure of safety. This is quite true, and I would not weaken the sense of it; but at the same time they are exposed to the full force of the enemy’s power. Israel was still under the pressure of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. For us it is Satan and the flesh. As another has said, There is now, as there was then, a large company at Pi-hahiroth. How were they relieved? There was a way made for them [p. 520] through the Red Sea; they did not make it; God made it, and the light of God showed it to them, but they walked it.
Now I ask every one in this room, Have you ever walked it? I do not ask are you saved, but have you ever walked through the Sea? Israel walked it, and they saw the water a wall on the right hand and on the left. They did not make the way, but there was a way made for them, and they appropriated it and got through. This was accomplished for us by the death of Christ. It is a type of His death, and we have to appropriate it. Saul of Tarsus learnt it in those three days when he did neither eat nor drink, he was really walking through the Red Sea, appropriating the death of Christ. When Israel came out on the other side of the Red Sea they sang. A young convert cannot sing. A bird sings when it can fly, not before. There are three capabilities which come together in a bird: it flies, it sings, and it feeds, provides for itself. You have to walk through the water to appropriate the death of Christ, to get clear of death. You get clear of the judgment of death by appropriating the death of Christ. That is Exodus 14. Israel are now clear of the power of Pharaoh and the place where Pharaoh is, and they come out in triumph. The death which had opened a way for them and by which they are brought to God, is the destruction of their enemies, “that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil”.
Now we come to chapter 15. Israel are singing. You have the song. They are out of death. How would you know that you are out? There are three great characteristics of those who are out. First, the Lord is before you, He is everything to you. Instead of Pharaoh and the Egyptians being before you, the Lord is before you; you have changed your ground. That is the great mark of a man who has the Holy Spirit; God is before him. “I will sing unto the [p. 521] Lord for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea”. That is the first note. It is really the chorus: the women sang it. The second characteristic is that you have an entirely new interest. The Lord’s interest is before you. It is not only “The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation”, but “I will prepare him an habitation”. I know at once the man who has got really clear, not merely safe; he has a new object; first, the Lord is before him; then the Lord’s interests. The third characteristic is, he knows that the Lord will bring him to His habitation: “thou hast guided them in thy strength unto thy holy habitation”. These are three characteristics of salvation.
Now, beloved brethren, I must touch on the most solemn subject, the journey of the soul from the world of judgment to heaven. To use a figure, we start from the port of salvation, we are clear of judgment, and we shall most surely come to the desired haven at the end, to heaven. For this we are bound; all is secured by the work of Christ. But if I come to my own history (would to God we all remembered and took note of our history; I do not call a diary a history; a history is a record of events, a diary generally of feelings) what sort of person have I been between Egypt and Canaan? That is where every one is proved. It is the moral region which lies between those two places that discloses our real state. All that lies between the Red Sea, the song, and Canaan is a vast howling desert, nothing for them there but God; but we have all generally the same opportunities for self-indulgence after our conversion that we had before it; we have to arm ourselves with Christ’s death, and as we do we suffer in the flesh (1 Peter 4: 1); then the world is a wilderness to us. This is very testing.
I should like to see the man who is truly in the [p. 522] wilderness, one who is consciously in a scene where there is nothing for him but God. We have to remember that God could not minister anything to the man that He had judicially set aside in the cross. That interval between Egypt and Canaan is the test ground for us all. It came out after thirty-nine years of journeying in the wilderness, that they (Israel) were unmendably bad. God leaves us in the wilderness to prove us, to “know what was in thine heart”, Deuteronomy 8. It is a great thing to know what is in your heart. What is disclosed? That we are unmendably bad. Numbers 21 is a picture of our experience. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up”; the man must go in death. Here John’s gospel begins. He begins at our side. Man is gone. Man is irretrievable, there is no recuperative power in him. In Numbers 21 you see in figure Christ made sin. You practically learn it in Romans 7, “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing”. What next? “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord”. You have changed your man now. Not only have you got out of death, but you have changed your man. It is a great thing to get hold of this. If I were to state the gospel in a few words I should say; It is that the Man who has glorified God on earth has displaced the man who has offended against God.
The great thought of the gospel is a Person, a Man, who supersedes all others. The angel announces to the shepherds; ‘Lo, I bring you good tidings of great joy. For unto you is born this day a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord’. “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth”. Many other passages I could quote to show that it is Christ personally who is presented. John begins with a Person, the Son of man lifted up, not with the blood on the lintel and the Red Sea, which are on God’s side; but he sets forth your state through grace,
[p. 523] which answers to the standing before God. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life”. One man is irretrievable, and the Man Christ Jesus has glorified God where we dishonoured Him. In John, chapters 3, 4 and 5, you get it increasing till you come to chapter 6 . “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you”. You must feed on His death to get it. It is not merely His death for you, every Christian has that; but how you enter into it; you must feed on His death to get it. Now a new course is before you, and instead of looking for anything in the wilderness, like Israel, you are leaving it. You feed on manna, you seek for nothing in the wilderness. Now you cross Jordan — death with Christ — but you find that there is no “water”, no judgment there. The old divines looked upon it as tantamount to the Red Sea. As one of the old hymns puts it:
“Shivering on the brink”;
but the fact is, there is no water in it; the nearer you come to it the less will be your fear; you may notice this at death-beds. The nearer the believer comes to actual dissolution, the less fear there is. There is no water in Jordan. To have crossed Jordan is an immense privilege.
I know this has been refused, but I say that it is a privilege. Would to God every heart in this room could say, Thank God, I see it is a privilege and accept it. It is then that you are undetained by things here. The young men in 1 John 2 are not dead to earthly things. They are clear of Pharaoh; they have overcome the wicked one, but not morally apart from things here. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world”, is the word to them. You might say, Do you want me to be an ascetic?
[p. 524] No; but I want you to be morally outside of everything here. As in Colossians 2, “dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world”, and consequently risen with Him.
If you were morally apart from everything visible, you would be in a wonderful sphere, the sphere of Christ’s life.
If you are not morally outside of everything here, you do not realise Christ’s life in its own sphere. I do not say that you are in heaven, but when you are in Christ’s We you are morally apart from everything here. Your affections are set on things above, not on things on the earth. You seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth. I am sure that any one who is seeking to go on would like to realise it. I have longed for it myself. I would like to be like Paul, for one day even, to see what it is to be morally apart from everything here. You will be so one day actually, and if you are now in the Spirit you enjoy Christ where there is no hindrance to it.
When you come to Colossians you find that Christ who is your life is also your Head, the One who directs you. You not only live, but you live for Him. You may say that we are not in the power of this truth, but I ask are we not to seek it? I want you to accept it. What is the good of having truth presented to us if we do not wait on the Lord and seek to get hold of it experimentally. We have to learn, and it is only as we go on that we do learn it.
When the truth of our being heavenly first came out, what characterised those who accepted it, was renunciation, giving up. I remember thinking that whenever one gave up any earthly thing, one got more heavenly things. Then came more light but less practice. Many saw that their calling was heavenly through God’s grace to them, but they held the truth only objectively, they were not in practical correspondence with it. Jordan was not experimentally crossed over;
[p. 525] death with Christ was not practically accepted. They tried to make their state depend on faith and not on the work of the Spirit. They thought they could be dead to sin “by faith; they had to learn that, if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live”. It is only by the Spirit that you can mortify. What you want is to be in company with Him and you must begin with His company in death in order to be in His company in life. That is what we have to learn and no doubt great blessing will come out of it. Nearly the last words of a beloved servant of God directed us to John’s writings, and it is remarkable that the first error that came to light afterwards was that every one born anew had eternal life. I only speak of it as showing what we have to learn. It is by degrees that we learn. I am surprised at myself, so long on the road, and how slowly I have learnt.
It is not by renunciation that we are morally apart from the world, but by the death with Christ. I ask, would you not like to be free from everything which would detain you or divert you from Him “who is our life”? If your heart enters into the blessedness of being in His life you would rejoice that you are dead with Him from the rudiments of this world, and now risen with Him in His life, you are come into a new order of things, because He is your Head and He directs you in His own circle. I know many do not enter into it, but it is a great thing that the desire to know Christ as Head should be awakened in any heart. May your hearts be so drawn to Him that you may long to be set free from everything here which would divert you from Him. And then you will thankfully own that Jordan is a privilege and your happy answer to the Red Sea. It is not merely that you are out of Egypt and on the road to heaven, but you know that you are so severed from everything here, that you enjoy unhinderedly the sphere of His [p. 526] life. Then you are in communion with Him and when you are in communion with Him you know that you are united to Him, which is the consummation of every blessing. I know many Christians who do not know union. I say it sorrowfully after many years of service. I see Abraham’s steward, and how well he did his work; he conducted Rebekah to Isaac. I should rejoice to be in any degree instrumental in conducting souls to Christ where He is, into the realisation of union with Him. Many know the doctrine of union very well. It is one thing to know that everything has been done for me, but quite another to have it done in me. The Spirit’s work in you is the measure of your realisation. The measure of God’s grace is that all has been done for you, it is unbounded, there is no limit to it, but how much do you realise of it?
The Lord grant that each here may understand what a blessed thing it is to be so detached from everything here by His death, that we may know the great joy and privilege of being in the sphere of His life; and to taste even now what it is to be in that sphere of supreme blessedness, not to wait for it till we die, but now to sit under His shadow with great delight and His fruit sweet to our taste.