We are, as regards our conscience and standing, before God, perfected forever 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 41 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.
II. In 1 Peter 1:11, 1311Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. (1 Peter 1:11)
13Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; (1 Peter 1:13), 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 characterize 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 fulfillment 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 baptizing with the Holy Ghost. (John 1:3333And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth 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 baptized 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 2:3333Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. (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 ye 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 Psa. 68 it is said, “Received (be-adarn) 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.”