1. — Christ's Work.
1883 263 The more truth and the state of Christendom develop themselves, the more it becomes evident that the evangelical world (I cannot say has lost, but) has never had the full truth of the gospel, nor the present power and hope of God's assembly; nor the individual Christian his true present standing and calling before God; that the full development of the state of a redeemed soul with God, as given in the writings of the New Testament and especially in those of Paul and John, is not possessed, not even in theory — generally objected to, never possessed. At the utmost is forgiveness of sins and divine favour enjoyed (seldom that); and all that concerns their new position in Christ ignored, or alas! guarded against as dangerous. Men are placed under the new covenant which does not go beyond remission of sins and the law written in the heart, and even that rarely realised; but the being in Christ, and knowing it by the Holy Ghost, and what it involves now, and in hope, has dropped out of their creed altogether.
I recall what I have often stated long ago. The blessed Lord, as a Saviour, is seen in three distinct positions: on the cross, accomplishing redemption; on the Father's throne, the Holy Ghost being sent down consequent upon Christ sitting there as man; and His coming again to receive the saints to Himself into the like glory, and thereupon take His own throne too.
After the long, dark, and indescribably wicked ages of popery, saturated as they were with iniquity which baffles recital, the work of God in the Reformation brought out the first point, though with at least one glaring defect, and all marred by a doctrine of the sacraments remaining over from popery, which vitiated and contradicted the truth they preached. The main points, in which that great deliverance was defective or carried evil and error with it, were these (and they are what are agitating the christian world now, as in part they have done ever since): justification by faith was preached as we know, but the work of Christ was presented only as meeting and satisfying God's justice (a vital point surely*), but not as the fruit of God's love. I do not say that this never was felt — I do not doubt it was: but the theology of justification left God a judge, and presented Christ as the Saviour in whom the love was. It said, The Son of man must be lifted up, but it did not say, For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son** as the blessed word of God does. This characterises the work of that day.
[* Art. iv. of the Thirty-nine articles of the English establishment: "One Christ, very God and very man, who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to reconcile His Father to us." Conf. Aug: Art. iii. dicitur: Christus mortuus est ut nobis patrem reconciliaret. The Westminster confession says, viii. 5: "The Lord Jesus, by His perfect obedience and sacrifice of Himself … hath fully satisfied the justice of His Father, and purchased not only reconciliation, but," etc.]
[** It is just the opposite which characterises revival preaching now.]
The other point was, that people were born of God by baptism. This was the doctrine of all the reformed churches, Lutheran, Reformed, or Presbyterian, Anglican.* All held this. The root of popish confusion was here, and it has carried more or less of its leaven with it even where the error is denied.
[* Lutheran Cat.: minor, parts iv. first) second, third questions — major, part iv. 1-27. Appendix ad minorem, v. 20.
Anglican: public and private baptism of infants, thanksgiving after baptising the child, the same, but less clear, in the baptism of those in riper years. So, in the second question of catechism.
All the formularies of the Reformed church teach the same doctrine, as does the Scotch Presbyterian article on baptism
The Presbyterian Confession of Faith, (xxviii. 6) "The efficacy of baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered. Yet notwithstanding by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited and conferred by the Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto according to the counsel of God's own will in His appointed time."
The difference between these bodies is that Lutheranism and Anglicanism confer the grace on all, Presbyterianism only on the elect, and, if that come when one is forty years old, still it was in baptism. See section 5.
The same doctrine will be found in other local reformed churches, as Dutch, etc.]
Baptism is not even a figure of being born, or getting life. We are baptised to Christ's death, and at the utmost are raised in a figure in coming out of the water, though this be connected, in the only place to be cited as speaking of it (Col. 2:12), with faith in the operation of God who raised Christ from the dead. Regeneration is not used in scripture for being born again. It is only used twice: in Matthew 19 where it refers to the coming kingdom of Christ; and in Titus 3, where it refers, I have no doubt, to baptism, and is distinguished from the renewing of the Holy Ghost. I am in no way advocating Baptists' views here.
But with these qualifications (that its origin, and so the nature and character of God in love in it, was left out, and that superstition, ascribing being born again to a rite, not to the word and Spirit, as Scripture clearly does, was continued) that one blessed aspect of Christ's salvation, His dying for our sins, the efficacy of the work of the cross as justifying, came to light at the Reformation, by labours, and faith, and suffering which ought to draw out the heart of every Christian with thankfulness to God, and admiring joy in the grace that was given to these blessed and honoured witnesses of the truth. If states laid hold of it to get rid of the incubus of the Pope's authority, this does not alter the reality of the grace and faith of those who brought the truth out. None could be farther than myself from despising these instruments of God in our deliverance from the deadly evil of Romanism. Still, in judging historically of what was taught, we find this great defect in their gospel on the one hand, and on the other the presence of a doctrine as to the sacraments which left the suckers of popery there, if not its stem.
With these qualifications than the value of Christ's work on the cross was brought to light. But the other two truths (the coming of the Holy Ghost and His dwelling in the saints individually, and in the assembly as the house of God, and forming the body of Christ down here; and Christ's coming again to receive the saints to Himself, that they may be with Him glorified where He is, and establish His throne and kingdom over the earth) — these, I say, were entirely left out or denied. These are the great truths which constitute the present character and specific future of the Christian and Christianity, and which God is now bringing out to awaken the saints of God to their true calling and character. I do not speak of them as mere acquirements of knowledge, nor do they form the foundation, as the person of Christ revealing the Father and His work do; but as constituting the true present distinctive character and power of the Christian and Christianity.
Modern evangelical Christianity has advanced one step. It has recognised that a man must be really born again to enter into God's kingdom; and that it is not by a rite but by the Spirit and word of God. But they who, in the original and larger Protestant bodies, have so far acknowledged and professed the truth are paralyzed by being tied to a system which declares the contrary, and in virtue of which they hold their place and ministry. It is not merely the tendency of failure we are all liable to; but they are obliged, in all the original Protestant bodies, in dealing with souls, to declare that to be deadly error which they have systematically accepted as true, and by which they hold their official place, and in some cases constantly put forward as truth. They may forget it more easily, as in Presbyterianism, where it is not constantly used as a formulary. Still such a course tends to demoralise those who are in it, and to break up, in the measure in which they testify the truth, the system to which they belong; and the various bodies are feeling the effect of this course as truth becomes more prominent, popery and infidelity making breaches in systems which have no divine strength.
1883 281 That God has blessed the preached truth in spite of all this I gladly own; but it is an individual work, and the bonds of existing bodies are weakening on all sides. But even where amongst these, and Dissenting offsets from them, true spiritual truth is individually owned, there even neither a clear full gospel, nor the fact of the presence of the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, nor the expectation of God's Son from heaven, form a part of their faith. I do not mean that they are not orthodox — that they do not own the Holy Ghost as a divine person, or the fact of His coming down on the day of Pentecost, and that Christ will come again some time or other, as at the end of the world: even Romanists are orthodox in these things. The fatal point with them in their teaching on this head is not failure as to the facts, but that the value of what is true is denied in its present reality, or as far as owned) appropriated by sacraments and works, not by the power of God's word and Spirit; while in the mass they deny that by one sacrifice, once offered, Christ perfected for ever those who are sanctified. Now the last point evangelical Christendom has lost too, and for the most part rejects; while the divine effect of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and the present expectation of Christ are not owned at all, nay diligently opposed and these altogether.
On the first point they have gone back from the Reformation doctrine. The personal certainty of one's own salvation was alone held to be justifying faith, and was condemned in the council of Trent as the vain confidence of the heretics. It constituted the distinctive doctrine of the Reformation — what they held to be justification by faith. I am bound to add that I think they put it wrongly. They made assurance about oneself to be justifying faith — faith in something concerning myself; whereas faith is faith in something about Christ, and the Father's love that sent him. I believe that He is Son of God, that God has raised Him from the dead, that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Now, I do not mean what I have learnt by education (this is but the unlighted fuel in the fireplace, it is no fire at all); but where the Son as revealed in the word has been revealed in me, God pronounces me judicially justified and saved. But my faith is in Christ and by Him in God, not in anything as to myself. Still, though in an imperfect way, the Reformers all held personal assurance of salvation as the only true christian place and state, and they were blessed. This evangelical Christendom has utterly lost and in many eases, I may say, in general, condemns. It is reviving, thank God! but by an action of the Holy Ghost, in individuals outside the corporate system, tending consequently to break them up.
[* Confession of Augsburg: "They are justified by grace on account of Christ by faith, when they believe that they are received into grace and that their sins are remitted on account of Christ, who satisfied by His death for our sins."
Anglican: "one Christ, truly God and truly man, born of the Virgin Mary, who truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried, that He might reconcile His Father to us." "But these articles of our faith the devils believe, etc.; the right and true Christian faith is not only to believe that holy scripture, and all the present articles of our faith are true, but also to have a sure trust and confidence in God's promises, to be saved from everlasting damnation by Christ For how can a man have this true faith, this sure trust and confidence in God, that, by the merits of Christ, his sins be forgiven and he forgiven and be reconciled to God," etc. (Third part of Homily of Salutation.)]
And now to turn to the two great points which the Reformation ignored or rejected. God dwells with men only in consequence of redemption. He did not dwell with Adam in his innocence, nor with Abraham walking by faith and called of God; but so soon as Israel was redeemed out of Egypt, we learn (Ex. 29) that He brought them up out of the land of Egypt that He might dwell among them. And He did so, sitting between the cherubim. When eternal redemption was accomplished, the same blessed result took place, as a present characteristic of it, by the coming of the Holy Ghost; nor will it be lost in eternal ages, but fulfilled in a more glorious and everlasting manner.
Redemption involves two things, perfect glory to God in all that He is, and clearing our sins away according to that glory, so as to bring us out of the condition in which we lay far from God, and with a nature contrary to and at enmity with His, into His own presence, to enjoy it in a nature morally speaking like His, partakers of the divine nature, holy and without blame before Him in love. But it did more, for the Word having been made flesh, man was in the place of Son, with God; and we are predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Hence, when redemption was accomplished, the risen Lord sends word by Mary Magdalene to the apostles, "Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." The work on which redemption was founded was complete, its results of course as yet not all produced, but every question as to good and evil brought to an issue and solved, every truth as to them proved and made good man's absolute enmity against God manifested in goodness; Satan's complete power over man; in Christ, man's perfect obedience, and love to His Father; God's holy righteousness against sin in the highest way, and love to sinners. Here, and here only, could God's righteousness as against sin and love to sinners coincide and meet, His majesty be glorified (Heb. 2:10), or His truth be vindicated.
The double question of life given and secured to man, and responsibility, has been raised from man's creation, but never solved till now. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life in the midst of the garden, involved the two points; and all depended on man's obedience. He fell and was shut out from the tree of life; he was not to fill this world with undying sinful men — it would have been horrible. The sentence of human death was not to be reversed; judgment would come after. The law raised the same question with men in the flesh, only accomplishment of responsibility came first: "Do this and live." It dealt with man's responsibility as a still open question, testing man with what was a perfect rule for a child of Adam; but he was a sinner and transgressed the law. The coming of Christ not only proved lawlessness and law-breaking; but, when these were already there, enmity against God manifested in goodness where they were. Promises withal were rejected as well as law broken. But then God's blessed work in grace comes out in the very act that proved this enmity. Christ on the cross not only (and thus in the very place of sin, where it was needed for that glory) glorified God in all that He was, but He met our failure in responsibility, bearing our sins, and became the life of them that believe in Him. His death had a double character. He appeared once in the consummation of ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, and "as it is appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many." The work on which the eternal state was founded, God being perfectly glorified, was accomplished, and the sins of those that believed in Him put away so that they were gone for ever. This is a work in which responsibility was met, and in a work whose unchangeable value in the nature of things could not alter, the sure basis of eternal blessedness according to the nature of God.
But there is something more, the purpose of God. Christ by His sacrifice obtained for us, according to God's purpose, that we should be with Himself and in the same glory, though He be the Firstborn — that which God ordained before the world for our glory. If we look at ourselves, it is an inconceivable wonder, but intelligible when we read that in the ages to come He should show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus: the wonderful but blessed mystery, that He that sanctified and they who are sanctified are all of one, for which cause He is not ashamed to call us brethren.
Let us see then where we stand now, how far the fruit of this great work, which stands alone in the history of eternity, and fills it in its counsels and its fruits, is accomplished, The work is done, finished completely and once for all. But more, it is accepted of God as adequate to His glory, as perfectly glorifying Him (John 13:31-32; John 17:4, 2), and Jesus the Christ has been raised from the dead, and set as man at the right hand of God in the glory He had with the Father before the world was. Man in righteousness, at the right hand of the majesty in the heavens, sits there till His enemies are made His footstool — has overcome and is set down as Son on His Father's throne. Now first this meets perfectly the guilt of him that believes. Christ has borne his sins in His own body on the tree. They that are such are washed from their sins in His blood. All their responsibility as children of Adam — I do not speak of their responsibility to glorify the Lord as saints — but their guilt has been met. "When he had by himself purged our sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in the heavens;" delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification. And we, justified by faith, have peace with God. The work that clears us as children of Adam is finished. Believing, we are forgiven; our sins effaced; our conscience purged.
1883 296 We are, as regards our conscience and standing, before God, perfected for over by that one offering; and God will remember our sins and iniquities no more. The believer, as man connected with the first Adam, has by the work of Christ on the cross the whole question of his responsibility (that is, of his guilt) settled, through faith, forever. He is justified and knows it, he has peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ "who has made peace by the blood of his cross." God has dealt with his sins there, and never fails to own the work of His Son who appears in the presence of God for us. Christ has said, "Thy sins are forgiven thee," "Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace." The believer is perfectly clear before God.
But all this refers to his place as a responsible man, a sinner before God. But much more is involved in it. First, God's infinite love. "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son." And "hereby know we love, that he laid down his life for us." But more, He has obtained glory for us, He is entered as our forerunner. The glory the Father has given Him as man, He has given us. We are to be conformed to His image; as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the Heavenly, and while we are before God even our Father as sons, we shall reign, as joint-heirs with Christ of all that He has created and inherits as man, with Him whom God has appointed heir of all things.
Of this double character of blessing we have testimony in Luke's Gospel. In the transfiguration Moses and Elias were on earth in the same glory as and with Christ; and there was the cloud whence the Father's voice came, the excellent glory into which they entered also. So in Luke 12 there is the table spread in heaven for those who had watched for His coming, and rule over all for those who had served Him according to His will while away. But this is not fulfilled.
2. The Spirit's Power
In 1 Peter 1:11, 13, we get the order of these things, at least as far as their development in this world goes. The Spirit of Christ in the prophets testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories which should follow. They found it was not for their day; then the things are reported, not brought in, by those who had preached the gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; and Christians have to be sober and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought to them at the revelation of Jesus Christ. The prophetic dealings of God before the sufferings and glories; the gospel, when the sufferings were complete, and Christ glorified on high, though the results were not yet produced but reported, leading to sober hoping to the end for what was to be brought at the revelation of Jesus Christ. It is true this does not present to us our portion within the cloud — the Father's house; still it gives us very definitely the progress and order of God's ways (the time of the gospel being the time of the Holy Ghost being sent down from heaven, and the appearing of Jesus Christ being the time looked forward to in hope). Nothing can be more definite, and the prophecy in which holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, distinguished as quite another epoch from the Holy Ghost being sent down from heaven; they had learned in their study of their own inspired prophecies, that they did not minister what they prophesied of for their own time. We get then, the sufferings now accomplished and over; the glories which should follow not yet manifested; but the Holy Ghost sent down meanwhile, teaching us to wait for these glories, for the revelation of Jesus Christ. Nothing can be clearer or more definite: the coming of the Holy Ghost already fulfilled, and His abiding presence; and the waiting for the revelation of Jesus Christ, constitute and characterise the Christian position. One is the fact which has taken place, the other, what we are exhorted to expect and wait for; while they throw back the strongest light on the efficacy of the sufferings.
After, as we have seen, God had tried in every way the first man, and his responsibility had been fully put to the proof (first as innocent, then by all the means which God could use for his recovery), and failure in man had resulted in manifested enmity, God did His work through the man of His purpose and counsels, fully tested indeed, but by it His perfectness proved — the work of redemption, in which God was perfectly glorified, and what we needed according to that glory perfectly accomplished; and Man, according to the value of that work, raised by God, sat down in glory at the right hand of the majesty in the heavens: the blessed and eternal proof of the value of the work which He had wrought. A new estate to which the Lord often refers is man raised from the dead after the question of sin had been settled, death (brought in by it) overcome and left behind, Satan's power annulled — a state founded on God's righteousness, now fully revealed; not a state of happiness dependent on man's not failing, but a state of glory according to the whole nature and character of God who had been glorified in that nature and character, and this in the very place of sin (Christ made sin for us). Nothing remained to be done as to this. God put His seal of acceptance of the work in raising Christ, and showed the effect of it to faith in setting Him who had done it in His own glory, entered into the glory as our forerunner; the whole basis of eternal glory according to God's purpose in man, and of the new heavens and the new earth, laid, and God Himself glorified and known as revealed in redemption and love. Thereupon the Holy Ghost comes down, given to those who believe in Christ, and have part in this glorious work.
Let us see the definite statements of scripture as to this; the coming and presence of the Holy Ghost, not sent to the world which had rejected Christ, but to believers. Our theme is the presence of the Holy Ghost as now come, consequent on the exaltation of Christ as man to the right hand of God. Not as a Spirit moving the prophets or others, but come now (as the Son had come in the incarnation) another Comforter to take Christ's place, when He was gone, with the disciples.
In the Old Testament this was a prophetic promise: God would pour out His Spirit on all flesh in the last days; a promise, the fulfilment of which awaited, in the wisdom of God who knows all things, the accomplishment of redemption. Christ (in John 7, at the feast of tabernacles, the antitype of which in the rest of God's people is not yet come, on the last — the great — day of the feast which He could not keep, nor show Himself to the world) declares that whosoever should come to Him and drink as a thirsty one, out of his belly should flow rivers of living water. "But this spake he of the Spirit, which they which believed on him should receive, for the Holy Ghost was not yet [given], because Jesus was not yet glorified." What was called the Holy Ghost as known in the church was not yet. Every orthodox Jew knew there was the Holy Ghost who inspired the prophets and came on many of their judges and Saul, and once moved on the face of the waters. But the Holy Ghost, as sent down from heaven on believers here, was not yet, and could not be, because Jesus was not yet glorified. Now as Jesus was "the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin [not sins] of the world," so His other great work was baptising with the Holy Ghost. (John 1:33.) And this character of Christ's work was the more remarkable because it is connected with the Holy Ghost descending and abiding on Him as man. It sealed and anointed Him on the part of God and the Father. He was sealed by reason of His own perfectness; we could not be, till redemption was accomplished, when we are sealed as believers and anointed. "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone." So in the Old Testament the leper was washed with water, then sprinkled with blood, then anointed with oil. And the like essentially was the case in consecrating the priests. Aaron by himself was anointed without blood; when he and his sons were brought, for they could not be dissociated from him, blood-sprinkling was employed.
But more: the Lord tells them in Acts 1 that they should be baptised with the Holy Ghost not many days after. Accordingly the day of Pentecost, — the second great feast of gathering, connected with Christ's resurrection (the first of the firstfruits), but withal a distinct feast, but firstfruits still — the Holy Ghost came down from heaven. But with this another revelation came by the mouth of Peter. Christ had received it to this end afresh, consequent on His exaltation to the right hand of God. "Being," it is written in Acts 2:33, "by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Spirit, he hath shed forth this which you see and hear." It was not simply God, who put His Spirit into the prophets and others, but man exalted to glory, who received it to give it to others. Hence, in Psalm 68 it is said, "Received (be-adam) in respect of man," or as it is interpreted in Acts "for men;" but He received it as man for them. So, though the prophets and righteous men were in an inferior position to the apostles who had actually Christ with them, yet so great a thing was the coming of the Holy Ghost, that it was expedient for them that He should leave them. "For," He says, "if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I go away, I will send him unto you."
1883 311 His coming was the testimony that man was at the right hand of God, redemption being accomplished, the world judged, and lying in sin, and Satan its prince, as having rejected the Son; but God's righteousness revealed, as the portion of believers, manifested in the Father setting the Christ in the divine glory at His right hand. (John 16:10.) Of this the Holy Spirit's presence was the witness. This was not for the world. Christ had come as its Saviour, and they would not have Him; the Holy Ghost was for believers only, not as one working in them to make them believe, though that were true in its time, but because they did. "Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts." He guided them into all the truth; He made them know they were in Christ, and Christ in them; He shed the love of God abroad in their hearts for a witness with their spirit that they were sons. They were in the Spirit, as there stated, if so be the Spirit of God dwelt in them. If any man had not the Spirit of Christ, he was none of His. (Rom. 8) Christianity was the ministration of the Spirit as of righteousness. (2 Cor. 3) Paul (Acts 19), seeing something defective in some disciples, asks, "Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?" For, after believing, men were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. It was a true real presence of the Holy Ghost dwelling in the saints. "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost?" says the apostle. "How," he says to the Galatians, "did ye receive the Spirit?" Of that there was no question or doubt, bad as was their state. Fruits in grace were fruits of the Spirit; sanctification was sanctification by the Spirit. If convicted of sin, men asked what they were to do. "Repent, and be baptised…" is the answer, "for forgiveness of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost," anointed, sealed with the Holy Ghost by God, as Christ Himself had been. The Spirit was the earnest of their inheritance, revealed Christ to them, and helped their infirmities.
[* In John 14 the Father sends it in His name. In John 15 He sends it from the Father.]
That which had been prophesied of in the Old Testament as to the outpouring of the Spirit, was accomplished in the New. The Christians as such were after the Spirit and minded the things of the Spirit. They lived after it, were led by it, were sent out and guided by it in their service. The flesh lusted against it. He made intercession for them in their hearts, with groanings which could not be uttered. The whole christian life and state is characterised by His presence and activity in them. They were not to grieve Him in their walk, nor quench Him in His gifts. The Spirit searches all things; the spiritual man discerns all things. It is "an unction from the Holy One," by which we know all things. Christ is graven in the heart by the Spirit of the living God; they were changed into the same image by it. Love is "love in the Spirit;" fellowship was "fellowship in the Spirit." Their walk was to be a walk in the Spirit; by one Spirit Jew and Gentile had access to the Father through Christ. The presence of the Holy Ghost, clearly and dogmatically taught as coming consequent on Christ's exaltation as man, and not possible till then, characterises in every detail the christian life. His presence constitutes Christianity individually for a man; he is born of the Spirit; it is a well of water in him, and flows as a river from him; it gives him the consciousness of his divine relationship and unites him to Christ: for "he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." Collectively, also, they are builded together as a habitation of God through the Spirit, being thereby the temple of God collectively (1 Cor. 3), as individually (1 Cor. 6)
I have not spoken of gifts, because there it is not denied that they were manifestations of the Spirit. Christianity is constituted and characterised by the presence of the Holy Ghost come down from heaven, consequent on the exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ there. The consequence for the Christian was that he knew his relationship to the Father, and knew Him — knew he was in Christ, and Christ in him; was united to Him, the exalted Head in heaven; yea — knew he was in God, and God in him. If he sinned even in thought, he grieved the Holy Ghost; if he committed the fornication, he defiled the temple of the Holy Ghost, and made the members of Christ the members of a harlot. (Compare 1 Thess. 4:8, as to sinning against a brother in this respect.) On the other hand, it was by the Spirit he mortified the deeds of the body and lived. Life, knowledge, spirituality, and power, all depended on the presence of the Spirit who dwelt in him; with Him they were to be filled. I do not speak of gifts: these were confessedly the operation of the Holy Ghost.
3. The Lord's Coming.
Such was then the present life and power of the Christian while Christ was sitting on the Father's throne. The Jew must wait till Christ comes out to see and own and know Him! The Christian not, because the Holy Ghost is come out, and associated him with Christ while He is within. When He comes out and appears, we shall appear with Him. What then is his hope if this be the Christian's present life and power? What is that in which he abounds in hope by the power of the Holy Ghost? The coming of the Bridegroom, when he will be conformed to the image of God's Son — be with Him forever, and like Him. When and how shall this effect which is before his heart be realised? When Christ comes. The coming of the Lord. This is the object, and with it, the state to which the Holy Ghost directs his mind in hope — to see Christ as He is, to be with Him, to be like Him; and this is at His coming. He is always confident meanwhile (2 Cor. 5:6), he knows that Christ being his life, if he dies before He comes, he will, absent from the body, be present with the Lord; but his desire is not to be unclothed, though in itself it be far better, but to be clothed upon, like Christ in glory — to see Christ who has so loved him, as He is, to be perfectly like Him, so that Christ shall see of the fruit of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. This fills his soul with hope, and he knows that all the raised saints (or changed, for we shall not all die) will be glorified with Him, yea, He glorified in them, and His heart, and surely ours, satisfied.
1883 328 I shall now show, not only that this hope is thus set before us, but that it entwines itself with all the states and thoughts and motives of the christian life. The Lord in leaving His disciples comforts them first of all with the assurance that He would come again and receive them to Himself. When He was going up, the angels asked the disciples why they were gazing up; that He would come in like manner as He had gone away. The last parting word of Revelation is, "Behold I come quickly, Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus." Having Jesus again, whom in a personal sense they had lost, was the bright and blessed hope set before them.
We will now see that all is referred to this, that every feeling and motive is connected with it; it is interwoven with every gospel feeling, and enters into its whole texture. In 1 Thessalonians 1 they were exhorted to wait for God's Son from heaven. It was, as to hope and the future, the effect of their conversion. His person was before their minds, and waiting for Him was the state they were called into. Next (1 Thess 2), as to the joy of service and ministry: "What is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming?" To what is holiness referred? "Unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints."* What the comfort as to a saint fallen asleep? "Them also which sleep in Jesus shall God bring with Him;" and then it is fully revealed how we shall all be with Him in order so to come. We are withal "of the day" that it should not "overtake us as a thief."
[* Present holiness is never separated from the glory; it is its reflex here.]
I do not go into warnings to the world, because my object is the saints; but that day will come upon it as a thief in the night. But we are thoroughly associated with Christ in glory now. As yet our life is hid with Christ in God; but He will appear, and we shall appear with Him in glory. We see Him through the Holy Ghost by faith. We are now children of God, and the world knows us not, because it knew Him not. It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but as He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all one, we know that "when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is;" and hence he that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself even as He is pure. We are changed into the same image from glory to glory. Our conversation (living associations) is in heaven, from whence we look for, as Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile bodies and fashion them like His glorious body.
The Lord's statement, as to the true character of the Christian (Luke 12), is that he is waiting for the Lord; the blessing rests on those who are found watching. And this specifically; for the watching is distinguished from service while He is away, and the reward distinct (see verses 37, 43, 44): for the watcher, the joy of heaven ministered by Christ; for the servants, rule over all. Again, the Christian calling is represented as originally going out to meet the Bridegroom; failure as going to sleep and forgetting it. 'What again roused the saint and set them in their true place was the cry at midnight: Behold the Bridegroom! Then they arose and trimmed their lamps. "Occupy till I come" was the direction to the servants when He went away. What led to worldliness and ecclesiastical oppression in Christendom was saying in the heart, " My Lord delayeth his coming;" and judgment and cutting off as unbelievers and hypocrites was the consequence. No time was declared — midnight, cock-crowing, or in the morning it might be — so that they were constantly to wait and watch. The dead saints would be raised, the living changed, and hence Paul, being alive, says, "We which are alive and remain;" for he was then of that class. People have been bold enough to say he made a mistake. He made none, lint will fully reap the fruit of his thus walking, waiting for the Lord, as he had told them to do. Peter knew he would die soon, before the Lord came. But how strongly does this show the truth I insist on? Who would think of a special revelation for anyone now that he would die?
There is a striking scriptural circumstance connected with this, that the Lord or His apostles never speak beforehand of the coming as beyond the life of those concerned, or to whom they address themselves. The virgins who fell asleep are the same who awoke; the servants who get the talents, as those who were judged. So, when He would give a moral history of the professing church to the end, He takes seven existing churches to picture the successive states. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, but long-suffering to usward. But those who were to be judged when He came had already appeared when Jude and John wrote, "These are they," says Jude, "of whom Enoch prophesied." That was corruption in Christendom. John tells us that they knew it was the last time, because antichrists were already there.
People talk of death as Christ's coming to us; but this leaves out all the thoughts and purposes of God. Our spirits, absent from the body, go to Him; but when He comes, the dead saints will rise, not die, and all of them; and, further, they will be raised in glory or, if alive, changed into His likeness. We shall see Him as He is, and be like Him the two great features of blessedness being that we shall be with Him, face to face, and be like Him, and so ever with the Lord. Christ's coming to saints is resurrection (or change), not death. The Corinthians, bad as their state was, were waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor. 1) The oppressed were to be patient until the coming of the Lord Jesus. (James 5) The prophets learned what they prophesied of was not for them, but for us to whom the things are reported with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven: wherefore we are to be sober, and gird up the loins of our mind, and hope to the end for the grace to be brought unto us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1) It was the Son of man coming in His kingdom which was shown to the three who were to be pillars, to strengthen their faith. We are predestinated to he conformed to the image of God's Son, that He may be the firstborn among many brethren; but this is as He is in glory, not as when He died and His body was in the tomb. We have borne the image of the earthy, and are to bear the image of the heavenly — see Him as He is, and he like Him when He appears, and appear with Him when He appears, caught up to meet Him in the air, and then brought with Him in glory.
And present holiness, note it well, is always identified with this likeness to Christ in glory, perfected when we are raised. "Beholding with open (unveiled) face the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord." So in John: "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; and he that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure." (1 John 3:2-3.) So in the passage already quoted from the Thessalonians: the holiness now sought is in its true perfectness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints. And so in Ephesians: "He loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it by the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot," etc. (Eph. 5:25-27.) Holiness is always identified with our correspondence to Christ in glory when He comes — being like Him then.
Every book in the New Testament but two — Galatians and Ephesians — specifically and distinctly presents the coming of Christ as the known constant hope, characterising the Christian. The saying, "My Lord delayeth his coming," is noted as the cause of the church's worldliness and ruin; the denial of it, as characteristic of the scoffers of the last days. It is identified with every element of the christian life and service. They were to be as men that waited and watched for their Lord. The Galatians had got, in their minds, away from the faith; the apostle had to travail with them in birth as to justification by faith. Ephesians gives us the counsels of God, a new creation in which all is perfected, not the way of bringing it about in His ways. All the other books either teach the coming (sometimes for the saints, sometimes with them to judge the world), or minister to conscience and hope by it, or speak of it as the known and one full hope of the Christian. What characterises the Christian is the hope of Christ's coming, the waiting for God's Son from heaven; and that in the present power of the indwelling Spirit sent down from heaven, consequent on the perfect fulfilment of redemption.
Reader, are you waiting for Him? I do not ask you if you hold the Lord's coming; but are you waiting for Him? The church in general has lost the object, as to what is before us in hope, to which they were converted. Are you walking in the power of the indwelling Spirit, who makes us have our conversation, our living associations, what we belong to, in heaven? The waiting for God's Son is the normal state of the christian because he does belong there; and when He does come, he will be there with Him. Then, too, he will be like Him; God our Father will rest in His love, Christ will be perfectly glorified, all the saints perfect, with and like Himself; Christ will possess what He is worthy of in glory. Till then all is imperfection, this earthen vessel dimming the sight of what God has prepared for them that love Him while we are down here, or perhaps with the Lord indeed with no body at all, He expecting still and we with Him till His and our full glory is accomplished. Are you waiting for God's Son from heaven? Christ is expecting on the Father's throne, the Holy Ghost is come down to reveal Him — the Man in glory to whom we belong, to whom we shall be like, with whom we shall be for ever. The living presence of the Holy Ghost, and the waiting for Christ, characterise Christianity and the Christian state. Not to be thus is to have lost it.