CHRIST THE HEIR - THE CHURCH JOINT-HEIR WITH HIM, THROUGH RESURRECTION

CHRIST THE HEIR — THE CHURCH JOINT-HEIR WITH HIM, THROUGH RESURRECTION

It is on this gathering together of all things unto Christ and in Christ, as their Head (Greek, anakephalaiosis — heading up), that depends the character and the substance of the hope of the church, until God be all in all. In this point of view, Scripture speaks of Christ manifested, as being Heir of all these things, and of the church as being joint-heir with Him. This is, as it were, the formal character which is attributed to Him with regard to all things; that we may understand what is our place with Him. Thus it is written, that God has appointed Christ “heir of all things” (Hebrews 1: 2); that, in Him, “we have obtained an inheritance” (Ephesians 1: 11); that we are “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ,” Romans 8: 17. This glorious title of Christ — the Heir — has a still more glorious origin. He is “the firstborn of every creature, for by him were all things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth ... and for him,” Colossians 1: 15, 16. The church, the children of God, are therefore joint-heirs with Christ. How are they such? It is this which we are about to develop. Christ receives the inheritance in His character of man, of risen Man, once our companion in sufferings because of sin, and then the Head, the root and spring of all blessing.

We must first remark that the first Adam, “the figure of him that was to come,” is a type and figure of the Second Adam of whom we are speaking. He is referred to in this respect in Ephesians 5: 30, 31. Before His manifestation, the last Adam is, as it were, hidden, as the first Adam was buried in sleep;⁺ Eve, who prefigures the church, is taken from his side, and God presents her to him as the help meet for him, to be his companion in the government and the inheritance of all things given to him of God in paradise.

⁺This analogy is very questionable. It is rather as dead that Adam is a figure here of Christ.

^[p. 269] Thus Christ, who is God as well as man, presents the church to Himself, when He awakes in His glory, that it may share that glory with Him and that dominion which He already possesses in title and by the gift of God. “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them,” John 17: 22.

Adam and Eve, taken collectively, are called Adam, as if they were but one (Genesis 1: 27; 5: 2), although, in a certain sense, Eve was inferior to her husband, and had come after him. So it is with Christ and the church, who are but one mystical body. This type, familiar to those who read the Scriptures, presents, in a most simple way, all the forms of the reality prefigured, with this exception, that the Second Man, being “out of heaven” (1 Corinthians 15: 47), is also the Head and Lord of the heavenly things.