HOW CHRIST PRESENTS GOD TO US, AND US TO GOD

^[p. 139] HOW CHRIST PRESENTS GOD TO US, AND US TO GOD

“And not only that, but we are making our boast in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom now we have received the reconciliation”, Romans 5: 11.

“Jesus says to her, Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God”, John 20: 17.

I have read these scriptures because they show how Christ presents God to us, and how He presents us to God. It is very striking to see how God is before us in this part of Romans. We believe on God, the Raiser up of the Lord Jesus; we have peace with God; the love of God is commended to us in that Christ has died for us, and is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit; we have been reconciled to God by the death of His Son; and we joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

It affects me profoundly to see how God has been expressed in Christ — brought near to us in that blessed One, so that we may know Him and be able to joy in Him. Our place is to sit down under the shadow of Christ with great delight and to find His fruit sweet to our taste (Song of Songs 2: 3). “His fruit” is the knowledge of God that He brings to us.

He came here to make God known. His word to the woman at the well was: “If thou knewest the gift of God, ..”. God was known in His beloved Son in the beneficence of His nature and grace. He has given His Son and gives His Spirit that we might know Him and make our boast in Him.

We joy not simply in what Christ has done for us, nor in God’s goodness to us in our pathway here, but in God Himself — known to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. God has been brought near to us — wondrous thought! He is near to us in supreme blessing. We know Him in righteousness, and in power, and in grace; we know Him in unsullied holiness and in the purposes of His love; we know Him, too, in the infinite wisdom of counsels and ways which give effect to every purpose of His heart.

How blessed it is to sit down under the shadow of Christ J ^[p. 140] in holy quietness with no thought of doing anything or being anything, but in rapture of soul to enjoy the blessedness of what God is, as made known through our Lord Jesus Christ! There is nothing like it. It is the highest happiness of which a creature could be capable,

Then not only does Christ present God to us in this blessed way, but He presents us to God in a place and relationship that is wholly according to divine love. He speaks of us as “my brethren”. This is altogether apart from what we are as in the flesh or as men and women in this world. It is as made alive in the Spirit in resurrection, that the Son of God calls us His brethren. When He was here in the flesh, He was alone in the unique glory as of an only begotten with a father.

There could be no association with Him thus. How could corrupt and sinful flesh be brought into contact with holy flesh? Hence He said, “Touch me not”. We could not touch Him at all according to the flesh. But He was “put to death in flesh” to bring that order of things to an end before God — that our sinful flesh might be condemned and removed — and He was “made alive in the Spirit”, and now from the right hand of God He has given us the Spirit that we might live in association with Him before His Father and His God.

It is by the Spirit and in the life of Christ that we are in association with Him, not in any natural way. He presents us to God His Father in His own life, and thus ‘as sons with Him who is above’. The Spirit of God’s Son is in our hearts and cries, “Abba, Father”. We are before God in complete moral separation from flesh of sin, and in identification with the Son of His love. We are in the life of Christ and have His Spirit; we are His brethren.

Christ is Head to fill all things for the pleasure of God. The assembly is the first circle to be filled. The fulness of grace and truth is in Christ, and “of his fulness have all we received”. As filled by Christ God becomes “all” to us; we are in the life, and have the Spirit, of His Son.

And what Christ fills as Head, He presents to God for His pleasure and satisfaction. He is bringing many sons to glory. He fills us from His own fulness that He may present us to God in perfect suitability to the mind and love of God. God has complacency in us; we are objects of delight to His heart. How blessed it is to have to do with the Son of God! To be taking in what He is, growing in the apprehension of His ^[p. 141] moral greatness and glory, and consciously receiving of His fulness!

Ere long all things in heaven and in earth will be headed up in Him; He will fill all things and He will present everything to God carrying the impress of His own perfection and thus an infinite delight to God. But in the meantime we are reconciled, and presented holy and unblamable and irreproachable. We do not retain before God one trace of the moral deformity of the flesh; we derive all from Christ the Head of the body, the assembly.