THE CARDINAL FEATURES OF CHRISTIANITY
THE CARDINAL FEATURES OF CHRISTIANITY
I wish to say a word trusting that the Lord may use it to lead us on a little into the apprehension of what may be described as the cardinal features of Christianity. There are two most important and characteristic truths in Christianity, the one is a new man in a new place, and the other, that the Spirit is given. What the Galatians did was to slip away from the first, and with that they were disregarding and ignoring to a great extent the presence of the Spirit here. The two truths are bound together, for we can know nothing whatever about the new man and the new place except by the Spirit. More than that, I do not see how the truth of a new man in a new place could come out while the Lord was here on earth, nor until He had passed out of our place of responsibility. Nothing fully came out until Christ was entirely separated by death from us and from our place. Then the truth came out by the Holy Spirit, the cardinal truth of Christianity, a new man in a new place; and the Spirit came down from that place to form us down here for that place. That is what I understand to be the true character of Christianity.
I desire if the Lord enable me to enlarge a little on this chapter. In this and the two succeeding ones we have three points especially to be noticed. The great point in chapter 3 is that the curse is gone and that the blessing of Abraham has come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus. In the next chapter we get liberty. Until you know the blessing you know nothing about liberty. “Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father”. Then in the succeeding chapter we have walk, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit”. We are dependent on the Spirit at every point and can get nothing apart from the Spirit. Liberty lies in the Spirit, there is none apart from Him. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty”. So the apostle exhorts in chapter 5, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free”, and in the latter part of the same chapter we have “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh”.
The first point then is that the blessing of Abraham has come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus. What for? “That we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith”. I do not think the blessing of Abraham goes beyond the thought of justification. That is what is referred to, that we might be justified before God. But the point is this, we are justified that we might receive the promise of the Spirit, and when we come to the closing part of the chapter we see how it works out. In verse 23 we read “Before faith came we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith”. What follows? “Ye are all God’s sons”; all sons of God “by faith in Christ Jesus”. “In Christ Jesus” marks our place. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise”.
We have thus the place and state and inheritance of those justified. Now beloved friends, the first thing is, Christ Jesus is the new Man in the new place. The beginning of the truth is that He came into our place, not only to bear our judgment, but that He might glorify God in that place. The cross was not the place of man’s responsibility, but the earth. Christ came to glorify God on the earth. That is the first thing in [p. 3] connection with Him. God had to be glorified in man in every position in which He had placed him. Christ became Man that He might glorify God as a living man upon earth, in the place of man’s responsibility. But further, on the cross He bore man’s judgment, the judgment that lay upon man. But I do not think that was the place of responsibility; that was the place of substitution. He was lifted up on the cross, and there He perfectly glorified God in death. He had in life magnified the law and made it honourable, and had completely foiled Satan in every temptation. He had walked here upon the earth in the place of man’s responsibility to God’s perfect satisfaction, but all that is now over, and now He goes to the cross to take the curse, the judgment that lay upon us, and especially upon Israel. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree”. It was no question of responsibility with the Lord Jesus on the cross. He bore the judgment of those who had failed in their responsibility. He had glorified God in the place of man’s responsibility, and on the cross we see everything taken up in which man had failed, and every question there settled. He was made sin. He was offered for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant. He was made a curse for us to redeem from the curse of the law, and all ended in death; every part and every element of judgment resting on man from God was borne upon the cross, and God was completely glorified. That is the work of the cross. Now what has come to pass as the effect of that work? God has got in Christ a man, a new man, in an entirely new place for man with God. Not only there the object of perfect love, dwelling in the love of God, but in the place of righteous acceptance on the ground of the work which He had accomplished, there in divine favour and acceptance, but in the place, too, where He ever was personally [p. 4] the object of divine affection. He could make known, here on earth, what it was for a man to abide in the love of God. As He says, “Even as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love”. Where was ever a man before that could say he abode in the love of God? Never till the Son of God came. But then there was this, that He was actually in the place of man’s responsibility, and going on to bear upon the cross the judgment that lay upon man. But now all this is completely finished, and the Lord has passed for ever out of this place. He is eternally in the full light of the love of God, and the “light of the knowledge of the glory of God” shines in the face of Jesus Christ. The moral effulgence of God shines out there. More than that, He is the supreme and eternal object of divine love, and divine acceptance is witnessed in Him. Think of it, He is, as Man, the perfect adequate object of divine love. He is in the full delight and enjoyment of it, and in the place of acceptance, on the ground of that work in which He perfectly glorified God; the work of the cross, where not only sin was borne away, the curse and judgment removed, but where He perfectly glorified God; so that in Him, man could enter on an entirely new footing with God, on the ground of that accomplished work.
I feel for myself how poorly one can speak of it. The end was that the “blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles in Christ Jesus; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith”. The barrier between Jew and Gentile is broken down, the Gentiles are completely relieved. The judgment of death was universal, the curse was limited to those under the law; but in the removal of it the blessing of Abraham has come to the Gentiles. This is justification. We are relieved of the burden of judgment lying on man. So long as Christ was here, the barrier remained, but in His death it is gone, and now the blessing of Abraham has reached us, and the Gentile [p. 5] is as completely justified as the Jew, and we receive “the promise of the Spirit through faith”. What for? The object of the Spirit is, that they who are justified might be conformed to Christ in the place where Christ is. That is the wonderful thing. That is the office and function of the Holy Spirit down here, we have not only the washing of regeneration, but the renewing of the Holy Spirit; that man might be entirely different from what he was and completely conformed to Christ in the place where Christ is. Now at the close of the chapter the saints are set in the place. The law was our schoolmaster unto Christ, and now “ye are all God’s sons by faith in Christ Jesus”. That marks the place; the sonship was in Christ Jesus; and the way into it was faith. There is a hymn that gives it exactly:-
‘In Him we stand a heavenly band,
Where He Himself is gone’.
Do you know what it is to be a son of God? We talk of relationship, but we are apt to take too much from human analogy. It is to be the object of God’s love; that is “In Him we stand”. Does anybody ask me where my place is? I answer in the love of God. I am the object of His love and formed by it. I am more and more convinced we are all formed by the place in which grace has set us. If the grace of God has set us in the love of God, we are formed by that love, and He looks for us to be formed thus. Why are we so little formed? Because we have so little sense of the place. If we knew, in our souls, the good of the gospel in the light of the love of God, that love would be far more formative through the Holy Spirit in us. If in the place, I must have the enjoyment of the place; and you have not only a title, but you are in the place; and if in the place you are formed by it. Formed in the ways of heaven, and it is a great place to be in, not only in the acceptance, but in the love revealed in Christ; a place man was never in before till Christ [p. 6] became a Man. He brought it to us in this way, and removed the judgment on us, that we might have entrance into it. He brought love to this world and left it here, and now man’s place is in the love of God, and if in it, having received the Holy Spirit, he is being formed by the place in which He is. This is a great power to separate people from this world. I know the world, its temptations, and the power of it. But it is of no use bringing the world to the one in the love of God; you cannot offer him anything compared to what God gives. The grace of God has given him such enjoyment in the love that nothing down here could compare to it. What is the world but a sham, a keeping up of appearances, with a seething mass of misery underneath? That is pretty much what the world is; it is not good enough for the Christian. Another thing is that when you fear the world you are under the power of it. But we are to be in the place of liberty where God has set us now to serve in the world according to God.
The next verse brings in our state “For ye, as many as have been baptised unto Christ, have put on Christ”. It is what we are with God in Christ, all one. Why? Because we all have one common Spirit of life. We have our individualities, but not different Spirits. All one power of life, all alive in the Spirit, for we have all received the same Spirit, and therefore we are one in Christ Jesus. I know as long as we are down here we cannot get wholly out of earthly distinctions, but in what we possess in Christ, we are all one, because we have all one Spirit. Then “if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise”. Now we come to the lower thing, the inheritance. Sonship is greater than inheritance, though that will never so appear to one who does not know sonship. It is the greatest thing with God. What is the meaning of sonship? You are the objects of the love of God. The next chapter brings out [p. 7] another truth. In the power of the same Spirit you respond to God’s love. Abba, Father, is the expression of affection and the answer to love: no one could cry Abba, Father, without an idea of God’s affection. People may take it up in a formal way, but to cry Abba, Father, does not mean the truth of sonship merely, but the response of affection to the love which we know God has towards us. I would I could impress everyone here with even the poor sense I have of it, but I cannot if you do not take in what I began with. Think of the love of God in bringing us into this place that we should be formed by it. What a wonderful thing to get before we reach home! We could not be formed in heaven. We are put into it now in faith, in order that we may be formed by the place before we get to heaven. That is the thing I wanted to indicate, how the blessing of Abraham has come to us and its consequences. Justification has come to the Gentiles, a poor dog of the Gentiles is brought from the distance to be placed before God here upon the earth. Where? In the place of the Jews? Nothing of the kind; brought into the most wonderful place a man could be set in, in the love of God! What never could have been the case except by the Son of God becoming a man, but by becoming such, He puts man into that place in the love of God, but it would not have been available for us unless the judgment had been removed, that we might receive the Spirit of God’s Son, and then go in, in company with Him, and be formed there by the Spirit. May the Lord give us a real taste of it, and enable us to learn what we are to Christ, and what the love of God is. I am only now speaking of the gospel, not of the mystery. My soul is brought into the love of God from which the gospel came, and the mighty power of the Spirit has come down from heaven to earth to bring us to that place, and to conform us to that Man in the place where God has set us.