GOD MANIFESTED IN FLESH. THE MAN CHRIST JESUS NO. 4
GOD MANIFESTED IN FLESH. THE MAN CHRIST JESUS NO. 4
The truth is that God was manifest in flesh; the divine Being, a Spirit, took bodily human form. Outwardly there was no distinction between Him and other men. If there were, the high priest would not have given thirty pieces of silver for singling Him out from His disciples. He was only a man to the natural eye, but when any one had light from God to know Him as a divine Person he was there and then greatly blessed. See Peter in Luke 5 and all through the gospel until you come to the thief on the cross. I believe the opposition is really against the new man — the man out of heaven. Many Christians know something of man being judicially terminated in the cross — and every pious one would like to have more of the grace of Christ in his ways and thoughts, but I am afraid very few would like to have the first man altogether displaced and to be here in the grace and manner of life of the “Man out of heaven”. The opposers want to have two persons in one, man and God, one time to act as God, and at another to act as Man. They really do not see the incarnation. They do not see that He who was God became a Man and hence a Man out of heaven. They would have Him to be a Man in flesh and blood, and in a way distinct from His being God — whereas He is God, and He, that same Person, became a Man in flesh and blood, but He came from God, He brought everything with Him. He learned nothing from His mother nor from any one here. He is [p. 128] a Man out of heaven. He bore the judgment on man, He was put to death in the flesh but quickened in the Spirit, and He is the Man of God’s pleasure for ever; and it is only as you are of His nature and order that you could be united to Him, or, that you are a “living stone” in His building.
I believe when we rightly apprehend the new creation which is ours in Christ, that we must see how very far we are from the manner of life in thoughts and ways which is really ours as “brethren” of Christ; and hence some of the truly conscientious shrink from seeing the exalted position in which He has placed man through Himself.