The Churches in Christ (Continued)

“The Churches of Judea which were IN Christ.” — Gal. i. 22. “Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcisiou by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; that at that time ye were without Christ.... But now IN Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” — Eph. ii. 11-13. “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.” — Gal. vi. 15. “Ye are all one IN Christ Jesus.” — Gal. iii. 28.

HERE is another aspect of the subject treated in the previous meditation, bearing on the Apostle’s great motto, which demands a few passing thoughts. It is one that was very much local and temporary; having an almost exclusive reference indeed to the Apostolic age. As such, therefore, it is of limited interest as compared with the grandeur of that vast spiritual union, just considered, in reversion for the Church of the future.

But the subject is referred to in such distinct, and almost exulting terms (and that more than once), that we cannot pass it altogether nnnoticed. “In Christ.” That word — or rather the power and principle which it enshrines, was the mighty talisman that effected the strangest of all national and social revolutions: in the noblest sense of the term “turning the world upside down.” To any diligent reader of St. Paul’s Epistles, it is evident that next to his own marvellous conversion, there was nothing to him so wondrous, so almost incredible, as being able to speak of “the churches” in JuDEA which were “in Christ;” the fusing (with all their antagonistic and irreconcilable elements) of Jew and Gentile “into one body.” For what did such an amalgamation involve? The abandonment of all that an Israelite held most sacred. The renunciation of proud national and spiritual prerogative; the surrender of his chartered rights: — “to whom pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises” (Rom. ix. 4). The Jew had no dealing with the Samaritan: the Jew and Samaritan together had still less dealing wdth the outside Gentile. The Gentile was ’ ostracised: ’ regarded as a dog,’ unclean, an “alien from the commonwealth of Israel and a stranger from the covenant of promise.” No wonder that Paul should speak of the

“Tais iv Xpi(TT(^. This addition was necessary when speaking of the Christian brotherhood of Judea, for the unconverted Jewish communities might still be called the churches of God.” — Bishop Lightfoot. demolition of that partition- wall as a “mystery;” something so astounding as to be entitled to the appellation of a New dispensation. Hear his own words — “For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, if ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you- ward: how that by revelation He made known unto me the mystery” (Eph. iii. 1-3). And then note how explicitly he states, that this ‘mystery’ — this new charter-deed of admission within the household of faith — is inscribed “in the name which is above every name.” The intervening veil, or curtain, is rent away in Christ (2 Cor. iii. 1 4): — “That the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the Gospel” (Eph. iii. 6); or, as he employs the same expression in writing to the Church of Colosse — “The mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to His saints: to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. i. 26, 27).

Nor did this wondrous moral and spiritual revolution terminate here. There were other conventional and hereditary barriers within the Jewish body politic, which might have been deemed equally insuperable, which shared in the demolition. To jiame but one of these (distinctive of most Oriental nations, and to which, partially at least, the Jew was no exception) — the position which females held, socially and ecclesiastically. Men and women, even in their acts of worship, were divided. The Synagogue was rigidly partitioned for the separation of the sexes. The females sat screened “behind the lattice.” They had their separate oratories for prayer. They had their assigned court in the Temple. But, in their case specially, an abolition of caste in domestic religious life was effected “IN Christ Jesus.” Hear the Apostle’s own words, which so graphically describe the breaking down of this barrier that severed Jew from Greek and male from female. The words, in connection with our theme, are surely very significant: the monogram is twice repeated — “Tor ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 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” (Gal. iii. 26-28).

Wondrous triumph! What, from the Jewish standpoint, would have been regarded and denounced as the most Utopian of all dreams, not only rendered possible, but made an accomplished fact IN Him: the wide, yawning gulph — national, social, and spiritual — filled up IN Him: one undivided brotherhood and sisterhood IN Him. It was a threefold superscription in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, that was written on the cross of Calvary — Jesus OF Nazareth, the King of the Jews: — testifying that the kingdoms and peoples, and homes io8 IN CHRISTO.

of the earth were in Him to be confederate. These outstretched arms of His, as He hung upon the tree, were designed figuratively to embrace no partial nationality, no exclusive covenant race, but a whole world He died to save: — Greek and Roman, master and slave, bondman and freeman, male and female. The Jew, the representative of spiritual exclusiveness; the Greek, the representative of advanced culture; the Roman, the representative of power; the slave, the representative of oppression; the female, the representative of weakness — “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision. Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all and in all” (Col. iii. ii).

0 Christ! how Thou hast broken the fetter of the crushed and down-trodden, and taken from man’s helpmeet the curse of degradation; raising her from being his drudge to her birthright as his companion; purifying the domestic home; hallowing alike the domestic hearth and altar; mitigating the horrors of war and famine; opening the sluices of individual and national sympathy; providing asylums for the poor, shelter for the suffering, bread for the perishing, homes for the homeless, and better than all, salvation for the lost!

We are reminded of that memorable scene at the Beautiful Gate of the Jewish Temple of old, when Peter, challenged by the Jewish Sanhedrim to reveal the * power,’ or the * name ’ by which he had wrought so signal a deliverance on the cripple; and when, repudiating the possession of any virtue or efficacy in himself, he replied that it was by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth (Acts iv. i o). The Gospel of the grace of God is, in the noblest figurative sense, that Beautiful Gate of Mercy opened by Christ and IN Christ, and which no man can shut. We behold the vast and varying, almost incongruous multitude, issuing forth from the healing portals under the life-giving impulse of that same all-glorious * Name; ’ with their fetters broken, their diseases healed, their tongues unloosed, and souls saved, “walking and leaping, and praising God!”