"A MAN IN CHRIST"
“A MAN IN CHRIST”
The way Paul speaks of himself as “a man in Christ” is most instructive, for it shows how a saint can be abstracted in his mind from everything that he is naturally, and can be conscious of what he is as in Christ without anything else being present to his consciousness for a certain period of time, his body even being no hindrance, for he was not conscious of his body at all; he did not know whether he was in it or out of it. Paul was, for the time, taken out of his responsible existence, but not taken out of the consciousness of being in Christ. As having this consciousness he was caught up to the third heaven, which in itself is deeply interesting as showing that there are three heavens. The tabernacle was the representation and shadow of heavenly things, the figurative representation of things in the heavens, and it had three distinct parts. Our great High Priest has passed through the heavens. These are the heavens of Genesis 1 where the sun, moon and stars are set, and there is a heaven where the sun, moon and stars are set, and there is a heaven where angels are, both good and evil, and from which Satan will be cast out. Then there is a third heaven where the immediate presence of God is, and that is the place which God has prepared for man in Christ.
As far as the third heaven — we never read of a fourth heaven. It is where Christ is, and a man in Christ can be caught up there. He is equal to that elevation. A man blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ is as suited to the third heaven as Christ is. Then Paul was also caught up into paradise. The word means, I believe, a garden of delight, and I think it has reference to God’s delight in Man. It is because the Son of God is there as Man that it is paradise. Paul was caught up into it; he was brought in a miraculous way into the very inner region of divine delight.
[p. 243] And there he heard unspeakable things said. Who said them? We cannot doubt, from verse 1, that it was the Lord. If we were entirely abstracted from all that belongs to the natural, and only conscious of being “in Christ”, what wonderful things we should be capable of hearing! Such is the state of those who are with Christ.
But we need to go back and enquire from Scripture how we come to be “in Christ”. First of all, I apprehend, it is through redemption (Romans 3: 24). Sinful creatures are justified, righteously cleared of every charge, but they are justified in Christ. How I am cleared I have to see in another Man raised from among the dead; hence it is by faith. Redemption shows that full value has been paid, on the ground of which God can justify, but it is known to faith alone.
Then as to life we are to reckon ourselves alive to God in the One who lives to God. I live to God as in Christ, and in no other way. But then this requires a work of God in me, and we read in 1 Corinthians 1: 30 that it is “of him” that we are in Christ Jesus, who is made so wondrous as our all.
We have just to pursue the knowledge of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus for liberty.