A Man in Christ

’ I knew a man in Christ.” — 2 Cor. xii. 2. ‘’In the Zort/.” — Eph. v. 8. ’ Of him are ye in Christ Jesus.” — i Cor. i. 30.

HE need not pause to speak of the vision Paul refers to in the first of these motto-verses, and which, we have every reason to inferp occurred in the early period of his life and apostleship. It was doubtless a memory ever sacred, and which would follow him like that of the Angels in Jacob’s night-dream at Bethel. As a chime of bells from the New Jerusalem, would the music of the message then delivered continue to cheer and gladden him to the last — “My grace is sufTicient for thee” (2 Cor. xii. 9). In introducing the incident, he designates himself by the circumlocution “a man in Chmst!” He felt no title could be more honourable. He has been spoken of among the Apostolic band as describing the orbit nearest the sun. He himself, while repudiating any such selfexaltation, in reality claims more. Bather is he like that “other angel” of the Apoca-A MAN IN CHRIST. ii

lypse, who is described as “standing in the Sun” (Rev. xix. 1 7). By a blessed interchange, he was “in Christ,” and “Christ was” in him “the hope of glory.” In the fervent utterance of the ancient Church, he could say — “My beloved is mine, and I am His” (Cant. ii. 16).

It may be well, before entering on the more special topics of the Volume, to define somewhat more minutely than has already been done, the great Pauline truth which it is the object of these pages to unfold. The believer’s union, or identity with Christ, is described in the New Testament under various figures. At one time it is the compact relation of the stones to the building; at another that of the branches to the vine; at another, that of the members of the body to the head (Eph. ii. 21, 22; John xvii. 1 — 7; Rom. xii. 5; Eph. i. 22, 23). This Article of faith, however, can only be intelligibly apprehended by being viewed in connection with another cognate doctrine, which, slighted though it be by some modern Schools of theological thought, runs like a golden thread throughout the Sacred Writings, viz., Christ the Surety-Substitute of His people; — standing in their room and stead.

Every notable official act in the Incarnation is described as performed by Him, in His federal character, as our covenant Head and Representative. When He died, it was reckoned as if His people had died with Him. “I am crucified with Christ:” — “Buried with Him by baptism into death” (Rom.

vi. 4). By virtue of the same umon, believers become partakers with Him in the great Easter triumph. They are “alive from the dead.” “Like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection “(Rom. vi. 4, 5).” Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him “(Rom. vi. 8). So also is it in His ascension. His people are spoken of as if they had already received by anticipation, in the Person of their Head, the great covenanted reward — the happiness begun on earth which is to be perfected and perpetuated in heaven. They are ‘’made partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light” (Col. i. 1 2). “Our conversation (or rather, our citizenship, ‘KokiTevfia) is in heaven” (Phil. iii. 20). “Ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God” (Heb. xii. 22). When, in one of the Messianic Psalms, we hear the Father addressing His Divine Son, — “Sit Thou at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool” (Ps. ex. i ), — we have in that coronation welcome an assurance given also to believers, that they are IN Him already promoted to regal honours; — that as now (to use a law term) they are de jure, so, ere long, they shall be de facto, in possession; when, in the fulness of perfected bliss, “with gladness and rejoicing they shall be brought, and shall enter into the King’s Palace.”

“Whither the Torerunner is for us entered” (Heb. vi. 20). The daily life of the believer is lived by virtue of this ’ oneness ’ with Christ: — “The life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God” (Gal. ii. 20).^

The same truth is expanded and illustrated by our Apostle in the seventh chapter of Romans, under a different, but equally expressive figure, that of the marriage union. A woman whose husband is deceased is “loosed” from her first contract; she is free to marry another. The believer, having become dead to the law, his obligation to it (not as a rule of life, but as a covenant of works) lapses and becomes null. “He is married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead” (Rom. vii. 4). “He that is joined to the Lord” in this holy bond “is one spirit” (i Cor. vi. 17). We may add, that in the case of Paul, nothing surely could bring before him more forcibly the reality of this union, than the words which he first heard “as he journeyed towards Damascus:” — “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?” ‘Me, in the person of My poor saints, — those whom I regard as part of Myself. In breathing out slaughter against the sheep, you are breathing out threatenings and slaughter

“Even now He is to be considered as our public Man, our Head; and so, One in Whom is concluded all the elect of God, We are by Him already in heaven. In heaven I say, by Him, yea, set down there in our places of glory by Him. Hence the Apostle, speaking of us again, saith that as we are predestinate, so we are called, justified, and glorified.” — John Dumjan, against the Shepherd; in injuring them, you injure Me ’ (Acts ix. 4).

But this suggests to us, better than the Apostle’s words, the light thrown by his divine Lord on the mystic union subsisting between Himself and His people, and His frequent declarations regarding it.

Its reality: — “He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, dwelleth in Me” (John vi. 56); “I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you” (John xiv. 20). Its intimacy: — “As Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee” (John xvii. 21); “As the Father hath loved Me, so have I loved you” (John xv. 9). Or as He otherwise expresses it, in one of the verses of His great Shepherd-allegory, (not as it stands in our version, but beautiful in its preferable rendering): — “I know My sheep, and am known of Mine, even as” (that is the measure and strength of the mutual relationship) “even as the Father knoweth Me, and as I know the Father” (John x. 14, 15). The whole drift of the Intercessory Prayer, seven times repeated, is this: — “Thou hast given them to Me; they are Mine, and shall be Mine for ever.” As indeed Himself * very God of very God,’ that Divine Intercessor is possessed of essential rights and glories which His people cannot share: but in their fellowship with Him, as the God-Man, — the Brother in their nature, — they are co-heirs with Him, and to be at last “glorified together” (Rom. viii. 1 7). See how their very names are identified: — He is “Beloved” — so are they, “Beloved of God” (Rom.

i. 7); He is “Son,” so are they — “God dealeth with you as with sons” (Heb. xii. 7); He is “Light,” so are they — “Ye are the light of the world” (Matt. v. 14); He is “seated on a throne” — so are they, alike in possession and reversion. “Hath made us kings” (Rev. V. 10); that is their royalty in possession; “To him that overcometh, will I grant to sit with Me on My throne” (Rev. iii. 21); that is the promise of royal rights and privileges in reversion. With what force and impressiveness is that same identification spoken of in the drama-parable of the final day of Judgment, when the Saviour counts done to Himself what has been done to His people: — “Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me” (Matt. xxv. 40). It is, moreover, by virtue of this union with the Divine Son that we obtain communion with the Divine Father. “In that Day,” says Christ (’ as the continually increasing light breaks upon you ‘), “ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye IN Me, and I in you” (John xiv. 20). (Alford.)

Amazing thought! outpeering all the fantasies which have gathered round the Pagan doctrine of transmigration. Transmigration indeed, but nobler than that alleged to be attained by mortals, as through successive stages and aeons they climbed to banquet with the gods in Elysium. Can we wonder, after this, that the “man in Christ “made Him, with whom lie was thus exalted into living fellowship, his “all in air? that the one absorhing theme, nearest his heart, uppermost in his thoughts, moulding and sanctifying his life, was Christ the ever-present, ever-living, everloving Friend! He describes himself in the superscription of his earlier Epistles as the “Slave of Christ;” and in his last letter, when immured in the Mamertine, it is still “the Prisoner of Jesus Christ” (Eph. iii. i ). By Christ, and in Christ, the world was crucified to him (Gal. vi. 14). When he addresses the adorable Eather, it is with the filial confidence which that mystical union inspires, as the “God and Eather of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. i. 3). When he describes the distinguishing mark of the spiritual children he has begotten in the Gospel, — the stamped coin of the kingdom, — it is, “Of him are je in Christ Jesus” (i Cor. i. 30). When he adverts with pride and joy to their spiritual parentage, it is, “In Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel” (i Cor. iv. 15). Does he speak of the one ceaseless aspiration to which all God’s dealinG;s with himself are tendinfj? it is “to be conformed to the image oi His Son” (Rom. viii. 29). When he asks his beloved converts to follow his steps, he defines the measure of their adherence and loyalty thus: — “Be ye followers of me, even (or rather, * in as far ‘) as I also am of Christ” ( i Cor. xi. i ). Would he put a star into the midnight sky of those in bereavement and sorrow? it is, as we shall afterwards more fully dwell upon, that “the sleepers IN Jesus” shall be “brought with Him” (i Thess. iv. 14).

Does he advert to the one ultimate aim of his toil and labour, his perils and sufferings, his watchings and fastings? it is to “present every man perfect in Christ Jesus” (Col, i. 28). Does he proclaim victoryover the last enemy? — “Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” ( i Cor. XV. 57). What to him was life? — “To me to live is Christ” (Phil. i. 21). What to him was death? — “A desire to depart, and be with Christ” (Phil. i. 23). What was that heaven begun, and that heaven for ever and ever, from which we shall afterwards find him challenging all the powers of the universe to separate him? — It is “the love of God:” but even this love has its climax, its quintessence, its glory, “IN Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. viii. 39).

Is it unwarrantable further to surmise, that Hebrew of the Hebrews as Paul was, and proudly familiar, in common with every Jew, with the ancestral temple, he might (from the new Gospel light which had flashed upon him) see his own future mystical union in Christ reflected in its typical rites and ceremonies and material forms. He speaks elsewhere of “the covenant that was confirmed before of God in Christ” (Gal. iii. 17); and again, “which vail is done away in Christ” (2 Cor. iii. 14). Lifting this vail which screened the Most Holy Place, might he not have discovered his familiar monogram, e.^., significantly set forth in the very construction of the Ark of the Covenant? That Ark itself was surely a remarkable type of Christ in His twofold

B nature of Deity and humanity. The fragrant Shittim wood, of which it was composed, formed a meet symbol of His sinless, spotless, human nature; while, in being “overlaid within and without with gold” (the “Propitiatory” rimmed with the same precious metal), there was the equally expressive representation of His Godhead. Might not that ‘clearer light’ have led him still further to recognise, in the golden Cherubim which stooped with expanded wings over the mercy-seat, the emblem of believers bending towards one another? — not looking at one another, but turned with arrested gaze towards the ark, and through it, to the Great Antitype — the true Ark of their salvation. If so, then, dearer than all to him would be the additional figurative revelation of the truth he was privileged specially to expound, and with a personal love to cling to. For was there not a distinct injunction given in the original construction of the sacred chest, that the figures of the Cherubim were not to be separately cast and then simply laid upon the golden lid, or otherwise attached; but they were to be welded. The gold of the Cherubim and the gold of the “Propitiatory” were to be one and indivisible, of the same mass or lump (Exod. XXV., xxxvii,). Unmistakable typical picture of his own great Verity, the identity and incorporation of the Believer with his Divine Lord: — “Ye are all one IN Christ Jesus!”

Or, to take but one other kindred suggestive figuration. Could he have absent from his oft ponderings of “One greater than the Temple” (Matt, xii. 6), how it was required of Aaron that when he appeared in the Most Holy Place, it was to be with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel engraven in precious stones embedded in his breastplate; so that when he ministered before the Lord, the entire covenanted people might, in one very expressive sense, be said to be IN Him? Significant type surely, yet again, of Paul’s glorified High Priest, in His every approach to the Father’s Throne, the true “Holiest of all.” He has the names of His spiritual Israel — one with Himself, engraven on His breastplate, or rather,, engraven indelibly on His heart. In His own Person He represents them. “Now to appear in the presence of God FOR us” (Heb. ix. 24); saying, as He stands with the golden censer at the golden altar, “Behold, I and the children whom Thou hast given Me” (Heb. ii 13).

And if even the Apostle, with all his spiritual discernment, may have seen these things only dimly and obscurely — “the figures of the true,” we at all events can focus the light both of the Old and New Testament economy, and read the exposition of infallible lips. Hear the very words of that Prayer to which we have already incidentally alluded — “I in them, and Thou in Me, that we may be made perfect in one” “All Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine; and I am glorified in them” (John xvii. 23, 10). Every man has an ideal life of excellence and bliss, unattained and unattainable in the present and the finite. But the moment he is IN Christ, that ideal and typical perfection becomes his — the unrealised pleroma of the Platonic philosophy (of which we shall afterwards more particularly speak), the “fulness that is in Christ.” We live in the power of His risen and eternal life, and that Life is the guarantee of our own. We may imagine Him saying, regarding each of His people, as David said to Abiathar, “Abide thou with me, fear not: for he that seeketh my life seeketh thy life: but with me thou shalt be in safeguard” (i Sam. xxii. 23). “Christ who IS our life!” (Col. iii. 4). I can be satisfied with no mythic or historic Saviour; I must with Paul have a personal Christ. I must “know” (not “in whom,” as that verse is often misquoted, but) “WHOM I have believed” (2 Tim. i. 1 2). It must be life in a living Redeemer; I must be able, with the consciousness of newly inbreathed spiritual vitality and divinely imparted love, to say, “He loved me and gave Himself for me.” Thus realised, with higher reference than to a Christian’s death or tombstone, the familiar motto of the ancient catacombs may be appropriated, “In Christo, in pace.” “In me,” says the Saviour Himself, “ye shall have peace.” The moment that transition takes place, the believer receives, so to speak, the first instalment of an everlasting future. How inviolable becomes his security, “Both He” (that is Christ) “who sanctifieth, and they” (His people) “who are sanctified, are all of one” (Heb. ii. 1 1 ), “They shall walk in the name of the Lord their God for ever and ever” (Micah iv. 5).

From the new standpoint, moreover (in Christ), as we shall find our Apostle afterwards teaching us, everything else looks bright and’ beautiful. The sphere of vision, even in regard to external things, is transformed. The very outer world which was made by Him, and redeemed by Him, is invested with new loveliness. The sun shines with a softened splendour, the stars gleam with a new glory. Undertones, never heard before, give new music to rill and river. The voice of the Lord God, not in terror but in love, is once more heard among the trees of the garden. In Christ! — “And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. xxi. 5). Manifold, indeed, are the Bible emblems of the believer’s close and endearing relationship with his Saviour, “Sitting under the Beloved’s shadow;” “leaning on the Beloved’s arm.” But the “IN Christ” of St. Paul, if it does not transcend, at least includes all the others. It is asserted as the noble privilege of the saints, that they are to be “equal with the angels.” But the Apostle’s great motto speaks of something even higher than to be brother and sister to the Archangel before the throne. It is to be “partaker of the divine nature.” He who is Himself the Great Temple of Heaven, predicates of each member of His redeemed family — “I will make him a pillar in the Temple of My God” (Rev. iii. 1 2).

We may imagine Him whose monogram has been suggestive of these thoughts (now himself a glorious pillar in the upper sanctuary), — thus addressing the Church of the future, “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col. iii. i, 2). Yes, to use the characteristic words of Chrysostom, as Paul stands “glistering near the throne of the King, where the cherubim sing the glory, and the seraphim are flying,” we can think of him with his own glowing expectations eternally fulfilled; — transformed into the image of His Saviour. It is said by Prudentius that the name of Christ, inwrought with jewelled gold, marked the purple laharum and sparkled from the helmets of the army of Constantine. In a nobler sense was this the case with the great leader in the host of the Lord. Oh, what would it have been, to have had our faith brightened, our spiritual sensibilities quickened and intensified, our feeble, timid, half-hearted falterings and misgivings rebuked, by one hour’s fellowship with this “Man IN CHPtlST!”