RISEN WITH CHRIST

^[p. 170] RISEN WITH CHRIST

We are called in the mind of God to occupy a wonderful ground. I do not refer to any external position which faithfulness entails, but to the ground on which faith puts us in our souls. It is the mind of God that we should be risen with Christ through the faith of the working of God who raised Him from among the dead.

There is danger that we may hold all the truth of Christianity in a human way — taking it up as doctrine to be held, and getting it disconnected from divine Persons and from spiritual realities. We accept the truth of Christ’s resurrection, but how far we are in the faith of God’s mighty working therein is another matter.

We have received the Christ. His own did not receive Him, but the gentiles have received Him. God’s blessed anointed Man has come in — the One in whom all His pleasure is secured — and we have, through grace, received Him. But to receive Christ involves the refusal of self. The reception of Christ means little if it does not mean that we have ‘changed our man’. Now we have to walk in Him as those who have been rooted in Him and are being built up in Him. We are to walk in the practical refusal of the flesh. We have received another Man, and we are to walk in that Man.

Then Christ becomes the test of everything. What is “not after Christ” is of the teaching of men or of the elements of the world. We have to keep on our guard. There is the full expression of the Godhead in Him, and on the other hand He is the Head of all principality and power, Everything in the universe is going to take character from Him. Principalities and authorities give character to all that is under them, and Christ is Head of all.

To walk in Christ, and to be built up in Him is the one thing we need. We have in Him the complete setting forth of the Godhead, and the complete setting forth of all that will be for Gods pleasure in the universe. Everything will find its centre and the spring of its being in Christ, and all else will disappear.

In getting an apprehension of this we are prepared for circumcision, We have received that which is excellent and blessed in Christ; in Him there is no element of perfection wanting. Revelation and response are there in perfection.

^[p. 171] Then we are glad that everything that is of us should go. It is as we are rooted in Christ and built up in Him that we see the necessity and also the privilege of circumcision. Everything that is not Christ — the whole body of the flesh — must go. And, blessed be God, it has gone in the circumcision of Christ. It has been cut off in the death of Christ.

Do I want to live in that world in which and to which Christ has died? No, I come to the truth of that of which baptism speaks — I retire from all that is of life in this world — buried with Him in baptism. We judge the world system in the light of Christ, and retire from it.

But a new world opens up. God has raised Him from among the dead. We see the mighty working of God — not to put things right here as yet — but to put Christ in resurrection completely outside all the ruin and disorder here. In the apprehension of this working of God we are risen with Christ. This is the ground God would have us occupy.