"IN CHRIST".

“IN CHRIST”.

If when you know reconciliation you are apart from man after the flesh, and the Holy Spirit has been given to you, you are altogether on new ground; you must know new creation if you know reconciliation. Next you know that you are “in Christ”. I will not dwell on it long, though many spend years before they know that they are in Christ. I ask, Why? I knew for years that all was gone from God’s eye in the cross to His infinite satisfaction, and yet it was not gone from me. Why? Because I was occupied with the flesh, trying to improve it; that was the hindrance; I see it now very plainly. Everyone can see when his eyes are opened. I see now that the same Holy Spirit who assures me that God loves me, is the One who as “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from ^[p. 389] the law of sin and of death” (Romans 8: 2). We are in the Spirit, and not in the flesh, and being led by the Spirit we are the sons of God. ^† It is a wonderful deliverance to be in the Spirit and not in the flesh. “The flesh profits nothing” (John 6: 63) is the first lesson we learn, and I believe everyone will admit that it is the last that we learn fully. “If we live by the Spirit, let us walk also by the Spirit” (Galatians 5: 25). We all fail, either as the Corinthians or as the Galatians failed; we go back to the flesh. Who is your Friend? The Spirit of God; and if you walk in the Spirit, “ye shall no way fulfil flesh’s lust” (Galatians 5: 16). If you have-a hasty temper, if you walk in the Spirit you will be kept from it; you do not improve your temper, but there is a power within you far greater than the flesh, that you cannot do the things that you would. Your body is the Lord’s; you are under new government. Now you can say, “I am crucified with Christ, and no longer live, I, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2: 20. If you know that you are in Christ - not only that you are accepted in the Beloved - it is a wonderful day to you; you are in liberty, you are free from the flesh. I admit that you may swerve from it, like the Corinthians and the Galatians; but how were they restored? They came back to Christ. To the Corinthians the apostle writes that by beholding the Lord’s glory we are all transformed into the same image. To the Galatians it was that Isaac should get his place; that is, that Christ should be formed in them; that it should be, “No longer live, I, but Christ lives in me”.