FIRMLY ATTACHED TO CHRIST (ADDRESS)
[p. 360] FIRMLY ATTACHED TO CHRIST (ADDRESS)
There is a fulness in these verses which it is impossible to exhaust. Everything is “Yea” in Christ; in coming to Him we come to perfection. When the Holy Spirit says, “Let us go on to perfection”, He means Christ as the risen and heavenly One. The Hebrew believers were to leave the rudiments as found in judaism and go on to the fulness of everything in Christ. An old divine said that in the Old Testament God was teaching His people their letters; in the New Testament He is teaching them that those letters always spell Christ, and in the world to come He will make manifest what Christ is. The Hebrews were in danger of stopping at the letters and not learning what they spelt. In coming to Christ we have come to perfection and in Him all the promises of God are yea and amen; they are affirmed and confirmed in Him. The pleasure of God and the blessing of man are established in the fullest way in Christ.
I want to bring before you tonight the statement at the end of verse 20, “For glory to God by us”. God has established wonderful things in Christ, but how is He going to get the glory of it? “By us”. The saints are taken up as vessels of mercy prepared for glory. A diamond is a good illustration of a saint, for in itself it is only a bit of carbon. Its value lies in the wonderful power it has to refract and reflect light. Without light a diamond would be a worthless thing. Without divine light how worthless [p. 361] should we be! But through infinite grace we have been made capable of receiving divine light in such a way that God gets glory by us. If a ray of sunlight passes through a dark room from a hole in the shutter, every speck of dust that floats in the sunbeam shines like a star. God shines upon us in the glory of all that He has established in Christ that He may illuminate us and thus get glory by us. Is it not a wonderful thing to be illuminated by the grace and purpose of God established in Christ?
But this necessitates a work of God in us. If God is to have the glory of all that He has established in Christ by us, we must be brought into it and formed by it. Hence we have in verse 21, “he that establishes us with you in Christ”, or, as it reads literally, ‘firmly attaches us with you to Christ’. God’s great object is to firmly attach us to Christ. The moon is firmly attached to the earth, and the earth to the sun. The spiritual law of gravitation is attachment to Christ. I should like to show how this comes into action.
Let us look first at a man who was unattached. A negative sometimes helps to show by contrast the true character of the positive; read Job 29: 11 - 16. There are about fifty ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ and ‘my’s’ in that chapter. It is the language of an unattached and self-centred man, though not an unconverted man but a true saint of God. Job was taking the fruits of divine goodness and grace and clothing himself with them, so that all was tending to make self big and important. It is possible to use even the blessings of christianity in this way, to make man more important and satisfied than ever. This is really the spirit of the Pharisee.
But look at Job in chapter 42, verses 5 and 6. When he sees God in all His greatness, purity and holiness, he says, “I abhor myself and repent”. That is what I call detachment. There cannot be attachment to Christ without [p. 362] detachment from self and from the world to which self belongs. Job found out that the beautiful self about which he had so much to say in chapter 29 would not do for God, and when he saw God he found that it would not do for him either. Many believers are on the line of self-improvement rather than on the line of God’s work in them. They would like to be more intelligent, more devoted or more useful, but their desires really centre round self. But God has no intention of making you great in this way; what He wants is to build up the knowledge of Christ in your heart, and that will give you a great sense of your own nothingness. On our side there is imperfection in everything, and yet how soon vanity and self-satisfaction come in if we do anything, as we may think, pretty well! At the end of forty-one chapters job comes to “dust and ashes”. Then we get forty-one Psalms which give the history of another Man, and the first book of Psalms ends with, “But as for me, thou upholdest me in mine integrity, and settest me before thy face for ever”. That is Christ. The man made of dust goes back to dust; he is vanity. But Christ came down from heaven and glorified God, and is now upheld in His integrity and set before God’s face for ever. It is a blessed thing to be detached from the man who comes to dust and ashes and attached to the Man who is set before God’s face for ever.
In Psalm 42 we find the language of one who has done with self and is looking for satisfaction in God. All his desires are going out to God. Someone has said that desires are the wings of the soul. There is hardly attachment here but there is detachment and desire. But in Psalm 45 there is attachment. It is a poor thing to say, “I abhor myself” unless you come to see a Person better than yourself. For that you must look at Christ. He is “fairer than the sons of men”. Every moral beauty resides in Him. All through Scripture everything that is [p. 363] pure and lovely and of good report is of Christ. If you think of Noah as a righteous man, or of Enoch as walking with God and pleasing Him, it is a ray of Christ coming out in those saints, and so it is all through Scripture. Have you come to view the moral beauty of the One fairer than the sons of men? Do you love Him and follow Him? Do you own His claim over you? That is attachment. A new law of moral gravitation has begun to act upon you. You are held by Christ.
Then “grace is poured into thy lips”, Psalm 45: 2. The One in whom every moral perfection is found is the bringer in of the all-blessing grace of God. He comes, not to demand that we should be like Him, but to bring us infinite blessing from God; His feet were beautiful as He brought good tidings and published peace. How could we bear to look at all His perfections if He did not bring supreme grace to us? God presents His grace to us in that blessed One. People often think of the grace of God as if it were something in themselves, and when they find that in themselves which is quite contrary to grace they get into doubts and fears. But Christ is the blessed Vessel of grace. The grace that secures my blessing is not the grace that is in me but the grace that is in Him. How many fluctuations there are in us but there is an abiding fulness of grace and truth in Christ. We have been drawn to Christ to find fulness of grace in Him.
“Therefore God hath blessed thee for ever”; Christ is the accepted and exalted Man at the right hand of God, and now He has companions. He is anointed with the oil of gladness above His companions. In Psalm 42 we have the enquiry, “When shall I come and appear before God?” The answer is that we appear before God as the companions of Christ, the blessed Man who is set before God’s face for ever. God firmly attaches us to Him. It is not that I am made anything in myself but I am attached [p. 364] to the Man in whom everything is established for God. Beloved friends, do we know anything about this? Do the meditations and joys of our secret hours alone with God bear witness to our delight in Christ? It is possible to seem bright in the meetings and to be active in service without really being filled with joy in Christ when we are alone. You may have to deplore your own failure and weakness, but where do you find the rest and joy of your heart?
“He must increase, but I must decrease”, said John the baptist. He was coming into attachment to that blessed Person who was from heaven and who was above all. He rejoiced that the Bridegroom should have the bride, though it made nothing of himself; his own followers left him to follow Christ and he rejoiced in it.
In Galatians 2: 19, 20 we see a man firmly attached to Christ. If you get alongside job in self-abhorrence, and then see all the perfection of the blessed Man who is set before God’s face for ever, you may well ask, ‘Where can there be a meeting place between what He is and what I am?’ You will find that meeting place at the cross. That holy One came into the dust of death; He came into that which was our due on account of sin. If we go down into dust in the sense that death is upon us, how blessed it is to see Him go down into the dust of death to deliver us and to bring the love of God to us! Then “ashes” speak of exhausted judgment. Christ came into death and has exhausted the fire of judgment, and now as risen and at the right hand of God He is the righteousness and life of those who believe on His name. We were ended sacrificially in His death. Paul was in the light and power of this and could say, “I am crucified with Christ”, but, more than this, he could speak of Christ living in him. If you could have got into the apostle’s heart you would have found that self had no place there but that Christ lived in [p. 365] his affections. It is as Christ is in our affections that we live to God. Living to God is not our conduct in this world, but our delight in Christ as He lives in our affections. If Christ really lives in my affections I live to God, not otherwise. Many are trying to live for God before they have learned how to live to God. It is by being firmly attached to Christ that we live to God and for His pleasure. God has established all His pleasure in Christ and He would now so attach us to Christ that we might be practically detached from self and the world.
“And has anointed us”: I think the idea of anointing is that one is made capable of occupying the position in which he is set by God. Of old the king and the priest were anointed; in figure they were given divine competency for the positions they occupied. The Lord Jesus was anointed for His blessed ministry of grace with the Holy Spirit and with power (see Luke 4: 18 and Acts 10: 38). We are anointed that we may abide in Christ (1 John 2: 27). God would firmly attach us to Christ and then we are anointed that we may stand fast in Christ. We do not abide in Christ by will or effort but in the power of that anointing which we have received. It is a great thing to abide in Christ. There are many seducers seeking to draw us away from Christ, but in the power of the anointing we can withstand them (Colossians 2: 8 - 10). If we are filled full in Christ what do we want with anything else?
“Who also has sealed us”: there is moral order in the way these things are put. God first firmly attaches us to Christ and then we are anointed that we may abide in Him; then we get the sealing; we come out here as carrying God’s mark in this world. It is said of the Son of Man, “For him has the Father sealed, even God”, John 6: 27. There was a blessed Man in this world who carried the Father’s mark in every act and word. The Father’s seal [p. 366] was upon everything He said or did; there was the fullest evidence that the Father had sent Him and that all that He said and did was of the Father.
It is a wonderful thing for us to go through this world carrying God’s mark. The mark is that the presence of the Spirit becomes characteristic of the christian. If we allow anything inconsistent with the Holy Spirit to that extent we deface the seal. We are sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise that He may bring out in us His own holy fruits, and thus give us the character of Christ. It is as Christ is formed in us and comes out of us that we really appear in this world as carrying God’s mark. It is a wonderful thing that we should carry God’s mark before the day of redemption. All that is of God will be in glorious display then, but we are sealed that we may carry God’s mark morally till the day of redemption. To do so necessitates that we should disallow everything that grieves the Holy Spirit (see Ephesians 4: 22 - 30). We have not the Spirit as a mere deposit but to give character to our whole state and to form us after God. How serious it is, then, if we allow that which grieves Him and hinders His blessed work in us!
Then finally, God has “given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts”. That looks on to the future. We have a bit of our eternal portion. That portion is to be with Christ and like Christ (see 2 Corinthians 5: 1 - 5). God has wrought us for glory with Christ above and we have the earnest and foretaste of it by the Spirit. We have obtained an inheritance in Christ. God has brought about a universe of bliss which finds its moral centre and Head in Christ. God will put us in possession of that inheritance very shortly but in the meantime we have the Spirit as the earnest of it; so we may have now as heavenly light what soon shall be our part. May God help us to receive heavenly light. We ought not to be unintelligent in the [p. 367] ways and purposes of God; neither should we be if we did not so much grieve and hinder His Holy Spirit.