Dead In Offences Quickened With The Christ
DEAD IN OFFENCES QUICKENED WITH THE CHRIST
We have been taught that this epistle finishes everything. So it looks as if God wants to impress us that He is finishing things, and that He wants us with Him in the finishing of things. One thing that I think He finishes very thoroughly is ourselves, in the kindest way possible, because you could not have any more absolute statement than this one, that we are “dead in offences”, and at that point God came in in His quickening power. No one would have any knowledge of God, no one would have any desire towards God, no one would have any desire for repentance, if God had not come in in this absolute way from His own side, and when we were dead in offences He has quickened us. In Romans you are not dead in offences, you are very much alive; in fact you are an outlaw in Romans, and you are on the run too, but you will be caught, that is sure! Because you become an outlaw, and you become on the run when God convicts you, for He convicts you of sin. Conscience begins to operate, to condemn you, and then you get on the run; you try to run away from God; but it is an impossibility, because if you have place in the counsels of God, it is an impossibility for you to get away from God and not have to do with Him about the question of your sins.
Ephesians is a great epistle; that is why I read it, because it is a great epistle, and it brings us face to face with God, not God in His judgment, for that was settled on the cross. So you never face God in regard to what is judicial; the only One who could do that was Jesus. He is the only One who could face God judicially in all that it meant; and He knew what it meant too. That is the wonder of redemption, the wonder of atonement, the wonder of the Sin-bearer, that He knew absolutely; He knew, just as much as God did how much sin meant, and what it required too. That is the wonder of the divine work, that God not only knew what sin meant, but a Man knew what sin meant, the Man Christ Jesus. He knew what it meant, He knew what the judgment required, He knew what suffering would be required, He knew the abandonment, the grave, the silence, the awfulness of being abandoned by God. If we had been abandoned by God we would never have known what it required; it would have meant eternal remorse for us. But of Jesus, the blessed God in His Person, but become Man, who undertook the great question of sins and sin and knew what was required. He knew the judgment that was required for sins, He knew what was judicially required in regard to sin too, the affront that it was to God, interfering with His ways and all His counsels; that is in one sense what it did, in another sense it could not, because God has His own resources. What a wonderful thing it is to know God! Every one of us in here, I suppose, knows God, and we would wish that everybody in the street knew God too. We are not in here because we just shut ourselves in; we would like to have all men know our God, know His kindness, and of course, everything in Ephesians is superlative. His attributes are superlative, His character is superlative, and His nature is superlative too. Chapter 1 deals with His nature, and the superlativeness of it; chapter 2 deals with the superlativeness of His attributes and His character, and that He cannot run out of any of these things. However low the human need is, God can reach down and meet it. His arm is long; as Psalm 139 tells us, God has a long arm, and you cannot get away from it, no matter where you go. If you go down in the depths of the sea, and into a part where it cannot be fathomed, yet God’s arm can reach you. That is where I was, and I suppose that is where you were! If we were honest, that is where you were, that is where I was; that is Romans. I was in the same state in Ephesians too, I was “dead in offences”, there was not a pulsation of life or feeling or desire in me towards God. That is the truth, and so we can see how Ephesians finishes us according to the flesh. It does really, in a very gentle, only way, you might say, in about half a dozen words, and then you are finished; forty years it takes us to reach it, does it not? But then, I suppose, God would speed it up! He says, ‘Well, We will look over what has happened and then we will speed the thing up’; because there are not forty years left, there may not be even forty hours left, maybe there are not even forty minutes left, and God can speed it up. In the twinkling of an eye He can do it, change our bodies, and we will all stand on the earth in resurrection, in the power of it; the trumpet will sound; we shall not sound it; no, the order to sound the trumpet will come from headquarters, it will come from Christ on the Father’s throne. No one will be able to delay it, no delayed actions, it is a great military matter, and everything will move according to the military power. That is conveyed in “the last trumpet”, 1 Cor 15: 52. We are dealing with God, and that is a great thing; so we ought to be encouraged to deal with God in all these matters, whether hidden, whether they have been long-delayed, secret or deceitful. Whatever it is, we ought to be encouraged to deal immediately with everything, because what a God we have to do with! He knows it before we tell Him; yes, He knows it! He says, ‘Forty years! I knew you would have to tell me sooner or later; now let us get down to it, and let us have it all over in about two minutes!’ What a God He is! He can settle everything, He can do everything; there is nothing He cannot do; that is the God we have! How unbelieving we are, are we not? How ungrateful we are too; that is how I feel, ungrateful (yet grateful that I should have such a God as that); and not know Him, and not appreciate Him, and not trust Him, and not let Him do what He wants to! You have said to Him, ‘Keep your hands off!’ And He will, for so long; and then He will put His hands on, and then all will be over!
This is Ephesians, “quickened us with the Christ”. Would you like to be like that? I suppose that is where we were this morning, “raised us up together”, made to “sit down together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus”, made to feel comfortable, happy, responsive too. Have a look round, see where all the cupboards are full, they are all full up there! No refrigerators up there, everything is kept fresh; you bring it back, and it keeps for a week, that is all! You must spend it. It is like going into a country, and you spend your money, or else you have to give it back and lose on the exchange; so you have to spend it. Think how God sent us back this morning! He said, ‘You have a testimonial week in front of you! and you will need to be provisioned’; so God has provisioned us for the week; use it every day, do not use all of it tomorrow, use some of it tomorrow, and see that it all relates to where you have been this morning. So there it is; it all relates to the One you have been to, God the Father! What a glorious economy it is: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and to be in their own conditions, and their own environment; They make you feel at home, and you say, ‘I wish the rapture had come!’ Well, that is what God has been giving us in these three days. He says, ‘The rapture cannot come because there is something that is not right’. So are you going to put it off for all those who are right, because it is not everybody that is wrong, it is only I that am wrong! Everybody else is right, and I am putting all things off because I will not get right. Oh, what a God He is!
So “coming, he has preached the glad tidings of peace to you who were afar off” (v 17), that is the gentiles. Fancy gentiles having a place in the mind of God! Why did they have a place in the mind of God? Because they had a place in the purposes of God. That is Ephesians. So you are up against a rock when you come to the purposes of God. We can preach the purposes of God in the gospel; of course we can! He does not tell us to leave off when we come to Romans, He says, ‘That is not the finish, Ephesians is the finish’. So we go on, God encourages us to do so. He can do everything, “has quickened us with the Christ”, “has raised us up together”. What for? For “the coming ages”. The world to come will show what He has done in this present age, this great age of adversity; it is a great time of adversity. Oh, what God has had to put up with us, what adversity He has found with us! That is chapter 2. That is what Mr James Taylor taught us, ‘Ephesians 1, love at home; Ephesians 2, love in adversity’2. How much adversity we have caused God, but He says, ‘I am going to win’. He is going to win too; yes, He will win! You may put your back up, but you will have to put it down; you must, because you are up against God, the mighty God, the Almighty God, “From eternity to eternity thou art God”, Ps 90: 2.
So He comes and preaches peace, He does not preach war; no, the war is over. The war is over on the cross; what a war it was in that sense! What sufferings on the cross! A Saviour suffered, a Saviour abandoned, a Saviour gone into the grave; then God raised Him, and exalted Him, and He is on the Father’s throne; and now God is doing things. Ephesians is the gospel of the land, not the gospel of our need, but God’s need, so we are able to preach God’s need as well as man’s need, and that is what Ephesians is, it is the gospel of the land. You not only want a gospel about the Man, but you want a gospel about the place, because what is God doing? He is just weaning us from earth to heaven! ‘This is not your place’, He says, ‘you would like to stop here, you would like to be a hundred years old, and you would like to enjoy your plot of land, and all that; but I have another place for you, and that is the gospel’. That is Ephesians, the gospel of place. Have we all been transferred from earth to heaven, in our affections, lives, ambitions, associations of life? That is what Ephesians is. God does not quicken us to live in the wilderness; there is no quickening in this sense in Romans. Fancy living in the wilderness, marching round and round on the sandy desert, and fancy liking to do it too! That is what the flesh likes to do.
Then God transfers us by His quickening power. “Quickened us with the Christ”; where is the Christ? Not in the wilderness, is He? Christ is above. That is our place, sonship belongs up there; it does not belong here. We are to be like sons here; yes, you can be like a son here, but it is not your place. If it was, you would never be a son here, and you would never be like one either. You are like a son here because you enjoy sonship up there.
May the Lord help us, for His Name’s sake.
Croydon
28th August 1968
From ‘The Word Proclaimed’ 1968
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