Life in Christ

“For the law of the spirit of life IN CilRlST Jesus.” — Rom. viii. 2. “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to he dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God (lit.) IN Jesus Christ our Lord.” — Rom. vi. ii. “For the wages of sin is death; hut the gift of God is eternal life through” (or rather, IN) “Jesus Christ our Lord” — Rom. vi. 23. “As in Adam all die, even so IN Christ shall all he made alive.” — I Cor. xv. 22.

DEATH and LIFE: — Death by nature, — life by grace; — dead in sin, — alive unto God; — death in the first Adam — life in the second Adam; — this is the reiterated theme of these varied passages.

It is God’s plan to bring life out of death. Nature reads it in her yearly parable: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John xii. 24. The Apostle recognises, in the believer, a double death; and in each case there is the new resultant life. He dies to the law: “Now we are delivered,” says he, “from the law; that being dead wherein we were held” (Rom. vii. 6). He dies also with Christ: “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live” (Gal. ii. 20). While he exclaims in language of no sembled agony, almost in tones of despair, “0 wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. viL 24); the glorious deliverance rises the same moment to his lips; he has a ready response to his wailing cry; — the miserere is answered by the paean, — “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. vii. 2 5 ) — ‘He shall deliver me; He has delivered me ’ (for so may the incomplete utterance be filled in and supplied). Yet again, to repeat one of the motto-verses at the head of this chapter, “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God” (the gift of all gifts, like a giant Alp soaring above its surrounding compeers) “is eternal life IN Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. vi.

Nor was this topic, ’ dying,’ yet * living in the Lord Jesus,’ a casual theme, associated with any one special period of Paul’s ministry. The golden thread is retained and clung to, to the end. What cheered him in Corinth, when in the fulness of his manhood and apostolic vigour he wrote his Roman Epistle, formed also his sheet-anchor and solace amid the days of darkness and the lengthening shadows. In the last letter he ever wrote, — that addressed to Timothy from his dungeon in the

1 In {iv). See Alford’s remarks both on this verse and verse 1 1. “By virtue of our union with Him; not through (did). In this chapter it is not Christ’s Mediatorship, but His Headship, which is prominent.”

city of the Caesars, — when his thoughts, we may well believe, were most matured in Christian doctrine and spiritual things; when, had there been aught of the mystic in his past creed, he would have disowned or cancelled it, — the old parallelism of “death in Christ “and” life in Him,” lingers like a cherished strain in the doomed man’s ears. He holds to it amonsr the few “faithful things” which still survived; — “This is a faithful saying” (one, among unreliable promises, to be wholly, relied on), “that if we be dead with Christ we shall also live with Him’’ (2 Tim. ii. 11). The Apostle of love, when he also had reached his waning years, rises to the fervour of a kindred utterance: “This is the record” (not part of the record, but the record, the sum and quintessence of all His teachings), “that God hath given to us eternal life, and that life is” (not shall be, but a present glorious possession is), — “in His Son” (i John V. 1 1).

Thus, what the first Adam lost, not only the second Adam restored, but far more than restored. We know not, regarding the former, whether life would have been contingent on his remaining loyal in his allegiance: or, though successfully resisting the first assault of the tempter and his wiles, whether, by some subsequent failure in obedience, that life would have been forfeited. But there is no such contingency in the life purchased and guaranteed by the Second Adam — the Lord from heaven. Hence, in contrast with the ‘Paradise Lost,’ and the sword of its flaming cherubim, the Great Giver of this new life could aver, “I came that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly;” — a life with no possibility of fall or forfeiture. Beautiful is the similar comment which the Divine Eestorer — the living, loving Head of the Second Covenant, Himself makes, as He stands amid the weeping throng at Bethany — “He that believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall He live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die; believest thou this?” (John xi. 25, 26). We are reminded of words of prophetic song spoken regarding a Mightier than the Psalmist of Israel; — the pleading of Messiah for the Church redeemed with His blood: — “He asked life of Thee, and Thou gavest him a long life, even for ever and ever” (Ps. xxi. 4. — Prayer-book version).

Though it must be confessed a subordinate and secondary, there is yet another view of the present theme to which at least the reflected life in Christ may be applied, and with which it may not be inappropriate to conclude the present meditation.

The World, as well as the Church, stands a debtor to that Life. “I,” says Christ, “am the Light of the world J’ To borrow a lunar illustration. Just as the moon in the heavens (the invariable Scriptural emblem of the Church) not only derives all her light and splendour from the sun, but gives back also that light in a reflected shape to the planet of which she is the satellite: — so with the Church and the reflected beams of the true Sun of Righteousness. What would our earth have “been hut for Christianity? She may be too proud to make the acknowledgment: — or unconscious of the presence of the Greater light from which she derives the boon. Be it so. She is nevertheless the recipient of His blessings. From that cradle of Bethlehem, that home of Nazareth, that cross of Calvary, that grave of Golgotha, there have gone forth ameliorating, civilising influences, to mankind. Believers are the alone partakers, indeed, of real spiritual light and life, the true radiance of the divine Sun. But all, in another sense, have benefited by the brightness of His rising. So that the words of the Psalmist have a far wider than their literal meaning: “In them hath He set a tabernacle for the sun; which is as a Bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it, and there is nothinor hid from the heat thereof” (Ps. xix. 4-6). Nay, more; is it too much to add, that this material earth of ours, — this creation groaning and travailing in pain — has become so far now, and will be to a vaster degree hereafter, a participant in the life-blessings in Christ? Glorying, above all, in their grander spiritual meaning, St. Paul did not despise or overlook these elevating hopes and prospects, which had become the heritage of the material economy around him, through the death of his great Lord. It was contemplating such, that he could take down his harp from the willows, and sing of Creation, so long “subject to vanity,” being “delivered from the bondage of corruption, and translated into the glorious liberty of the sons of God.” Oh yes, smile as many may do at the assumption; a dead and dying world, — the fields around us, the flowers that waft their fragrance on our path — the revolving seasons that gladden us — the verdure of Spring, the radiant glory of Summer, the mellowed stores of Autunm; — in a word, the earth we tread, stands debtor to “the law of the Spirit of life IN Christ Jesus.”