In Christ Jesus
"In Christ Jesus" is the definition of all Christians, and
it defines them as a people identified with the One who as a man has entered
into the presence of God; "for in that he died, he died unto sin once; but in
that he liveth, he liveth unto God" (Rom. 6:10). "In Christ" is the language of
complete identification. Crucified with Him on the Cross, His resurrection was
the divine declaration of our acceptance with Him in His work and place.
Henceforth the eye of God sees us ever in Him alone. We are reckoned, and are
to reckon ourselves, as with Him dead, buried, quickened, risen, and in Him
seated in the heavenly places before the Father. His delight in us is His
unchangeable delight in His Beloved Son; therefore the Lord Jesus says to us,
"because I live, ye shall live also" (John 14:19).
How could there be a
doubt about the believer's perfect security if this were realized? It would be
impossible. Can He change? Or will His Father say to Him, I cannot any longer
accept You as standing for this people? Or, once again, if standing for them,
is He on probation yet? Is His work completely done, or still to do? It is
finished, blessed be God: He sits in the glory of God. His heart is at rest,
and ours may be. Had He not entitled our hearts to rest, His own heart would
not allow Him to be seated there.
"There is, therefore, now no
comdemnation to them who are In Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1). "In Christ"can
God's own eye find fault with Him? "In Christ" is there any fleshany body
of death, any thing for men to improve or alter? And in Christ we are! There
our chains drop off. Much more, but still that. We are delivered: we are free!
Let us understand well. This is not walk yet; it is the principle, the
positionthe key, and, when applied by the Holy Spirit, the power for it.
We are to "walk as Christ walked" ; we are to walk "in Christ"; and "the law of
the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus sets us free from the law of sin and death."
Thus the responsibility of a right walk is still ever ours. It is not that
Christ's walk is substituted for ours, or His holiness imputed to us, or
anything of the kind. It is not yet the question of how to walk, but of what I
am; but a question which, when settled in God's way, stops necessarily the
effort to be what no effort of mine can make me, and what, thank God, His
infinite grace has already made me: complete in Him. "As Christ is, so are we
in this world" (1 John 4:17).
Could effort of ours make us "as Christ is"?
It would be clearly impossible; and yet nothing but this would reach up to the
standard God has given us. Nothing short of this would be perfection, and
nothing short of perfection could we rightly rest in. If imperfection God
cannot accept, and perfection I cannot bring Him, what then? Then I must accept
a perfection of my Father's providing, and find in the Lord Jesus a new self
that needs no mending and cannot be improved, where no body of death disturbs
or oppresses, and occupation with which is not legalism, nor Pharisaism.
I
am privileged to turn away from what I find in myself as a man down here, then,
because in the death of the Cross, the death wherein I died with Him, "sin in
the flesh" has been fully dealt with. The condemnation of it by God has already
found its full expression on the Cross. For faith, not for experience, I too
have died, and that "to sin", because "he died unto sin once." I reckon myself
(not feel or find myself) to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in
Christ Jesus (Rom. 6:11).
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