2.-Crucified together with Christ.
Though I have spoken, first of all, of association with Christ, as in His death-there is the association with Him, as on the cross; which, according to the order of the subjects, should naturally come before the other. Following, however, the order which the needs of conscience seemed to suggest, I have taken that first, which, as Scripture presents truth, ministers most directly to the soul's liberty and peace.
The being, through the grace which identifies us with Him in death, "dead to sin," -"baptized into His death," -"buried with Him into death," and as " dead -free from sin," etc., changes the whole standing of a soul. It takes it clean off one foundation, and sets it upon altogether another; takes it out of one place which has a character, judgment, and experiences proper to it, and sets it in an altogether other place, having a character, judgment, and experiences, which are in contrast with those of the former place, and which are peculiar to itself.
Israel in Egypt, and Israel out of Egypt, were strongly in contrast. Egypt was the iron furnace, the house of bondage, the land of captivity,- a doomed place, under God's judgment; and though it might have its leeks and melons, and cucumbers, it had, also, its tale of bricks, and its treasure cities to be built by Israel's toil. There, too, Israel was a nation of slaves, thrust aside as unfit to associate with the lords of the earth—the murderers of their male children. Outside of Egypt, they were the Lord's freed ones,- bound for a land flowing with milk and honey, a land of rest, and a place of blessing. And they pitched their tents around the tent of Jehovah of hosts, the king of the whole earth, possessor of heaven and earth. The purpose of the Lord concerning them, had ever been the same; but the positions are two, and contrasted. First, the providence of God lets them sink down to the standing of a nation in slavery, in Egypt; but then the God of providence takes that same people to be as His own firstborn Son, and overthrows the power of their oppressor. It was their passage through the Red Sea which definitively marked the redemption of the chosen ones; for the return of the waters which destroyed the pursuer, shut them effectually out of Egypt, and with God in the wilderness. The positions are two, and easily distinguished, the one from the other.
The positions, also, are two, and contra-distinguished, of a man when trying to bring a clean thing out of himself, who is unclean, and of the same party when the death of Christ has been made his. He was an outcast from Eden; member of a race under judgment; himself so far wrecked and ruined, as that he thought himself competent to find out God; and, as a sinner, to stand in His presence, and to settle matters with Him for death and judgment to come, and to bring life, by his own power, where death reigned. His standing ground was human nature as a creature. But he has heard that Christ died, the just One for the unjust; and that faith identifies the sinner with Him who died under the penalty due to sinners. All that he had, and all that he was, has found its answer, and its end, in the death of Christ. Divine, indissoluble association of the old Me and all that it had or was, with the death of Christ, the Son of Man under judgment for me, is the goal, the end of that Me. "I [yet not I (that ended in the death of the Son of Man under judgment)], yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me—'live.' "
The unbelieving believers of this day, know little of the death of Christ in this way, as the Red Sea between God's Israel in the wilderness and Egypt. They have forgotten that it was " when He had by Himself purged our sins," that, then (and not till then), He " sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." They have let slip that " we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all;" that this One, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever (as to sacrificial offering), " sat down on the right hand of God;"-he rested from all further offering, and sat down: -" For by one offering, He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified." Surely, if, instead of looking to the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man; and judging themselves and their feelings, according to what is found in God's display of mercy in the heavens, if I say any are absorbed in what passes within themselves, and so let slip the display of mercy in the heavens; substituting for God's dealings in mercy, God's conduct with His saved people in government, there is great danger and just cause for us to stand in doubt of them. However unintentionally on their parts, they yet do, practically, use the death of Christ as the means to get themselves into a place of judgment, and out of the place of liberty and peace on the other side of the judgment.
As to the bearing upon the believer, through grace, of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have it explained in Rom. 6:66Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. (Romans 6:6), and Gal. 2:2020I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20).
As we shall see, the thought presented is not that of our bearing the cross to-day (though that, in another connection, as saved people, may elsewhere be taught), but that which is presented to us, is God's estimate of "our old man;" God's treatment of it, once for all, when the Just One once stood before Him as representing the many unjust, and bore our judgment for us.
" Knowing this, that our old man is crucified (or has been crucified) with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin " (Rom. 6:66Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. (Romans 6:6)).
The cross was a wantonly cruel punishment; and when God gave laws to His people Israel, He appointed another mode of putting a sinner to death, and branded the cross by saying, " Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree " (Deut. 21:2323His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance. (Deuteronomy 21:23)). How marvelously had He, in grace, thus anticipated a way for His own mercy to flow forth in to a rebellious people. We may see this in Gal. 3:10-1310For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. 11But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. 12And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them. 13Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree: (Galatians 3:10‑13): " For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." All that are of law are under the curse, because it curses all that keep it not, and none can keep it: but Christ bore the curse in His own body on the tree. But then, if He who merited everything good when He was our substitute in the judgment was so treated, we -the old man -(i.e. what we were, and what our body is), got there expressed upon it God's estimate of it He treated it, when we were represented by His Son, in a way to mark His estimate of it, that is, of us according to our Adam connection. Crucifixion and death are not necessarily identical; a man might be saved from death, though he had been put to open shame before God and man, and been nailed to a cross; so, Christ was not only nailed to the cross, and had experiences when there, as if, instead of being the faithful Prophet, Priest and King whom God delighted to honor, He had been one whose sins and iniquities were more in number than the hairs of His head, and that He could not look up—His cry before He died was, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me"-but, besides this, He gave His life a ransom for us.
God's estimate of our old man, of the "I" that was crucified together with Christ is pretty plain; and it is a good thing for those whose tastes and minds are being formed in their communion with God, to see His estimate of what they were when He found them. A little more disgust and nausea with our own old selves, and with man in himself, would not be at all an evil thing in us. God's treatment of our representative, in spite of all His personal perfectness, chewed His estimate of me, and that may suffice to form and fix mine.
There is a needs be that a believer should have the same thoughts as God has about his old man his former self. God has presented His thoughts in no ambiguous mode of expression; they have been strongly expressed: but, if strongly expressed, what considerateness is found in God's mode of expressing them. God's own Son crucified, that on Him, when bearing the judgment due to us, in self-devoted love to us, those thoughts of God concerning what we were by nature might be seen. And let it be observed, that as God does, to our comfort and salvation reckon, that our old man was crucified with Christ, so He calls upon us also to reckon it so.
Instead of this simplicity and firmness of faith, which in Paul reckoned that to be true which God declared, and in spite of experience and feelings, accredited God's declaration, and, therefore, acted upon it, we are apt to change everything. Paul took God's view of things and acted upon it-upon God's view of things-that "our old man is crucified together with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin." Paul reckoned that God was true in this and acted thereupon. He reckoned himself to have been "crucified" and "to be dead, indeed, unto sin," and acted accordingly: for he knew who had said: "For sin shall not have dominion over you." Instead of like faith hereunto, we find that but few receive and hold fast what God has said about the old man having been crucified, and being dead even so far as it bears upon justification of themselves; and still fewer hold it as to the principle of sin in them.
Now the hard thing is not for the results of faith to flow from faith; for the results of faith flowed from faith as naturally in Paul's case as the results of unbelief, nowadays, naturally flow from unbelief. Paul reckoned himself as crucified and dead, because God said that He reckoned him, through Christ, to be so—and sin had not dominion over Paul. Christians, now-a-days, own the cross and death of Christ as the alone portal of rest, but they do not reckon that as to the penalty due and the power of sin in them they are dead through Christ's crucifixion and death, and so they go on in doubt and sinning. The difficulty is not in the connection between faith and good works, or between unbelief and bad works; that is natural and easy enough in both cases. No: the difficulties are here rather, to let God be true and every man a liar; to believe God and trust ourselves implicitly to Him and His hand.
What a difference between the being crucified with Christ [as (in Matt. 27:4444The thieves also, which were crucified with him, cast the same in his teeth. (Matthew 27:44); Mark 13:3232But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. (Mark 13:32); John 19:3232Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first, and of the other which was crucified with him. (John 19:32)) we read of two thieves who were crucified on Calvary, when the Lord was crucified], and this being crucified together with Christ, through grace (Rom. 6:66Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. (Romans 6:6), Gal. 2:2020I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)).
In the former case (just as in the crucifixions of the Romanist, and other carnal religions, which propose to punish men's bodies for the sins of their souls) all the pain falls upon sinful flesh; in the latter case, it all fell, and fell in times that are past-the reward justly due to us upon the sinless Jesus, who bore our sins in His own body on the tree.
The cross of Christ has branded me (in all that I was as a fallen man) as with a stigma; but then His death has freed me, at once, from the penalty due to sin, and from the liberty to go on sinning. May we act accordingly!
Therefore we are buried together with Him, by baptism into death.
Buried together with Him in baptism.
That which is buried, is put away out of sight. God has, in His grace, revealed, and faith has received, the testimony, that all that we were has been put away out of sight, through association with the Lord who died. I, yet not I, but Christ that liveth in me, was Paul's word when he was speaking of the energy that was active in him as Apostle. But, previously to this being true of him, as Paul, the case of Saul had had to be met. He had had to say, previously, as speaking of that, " I am (or have been) crucified with Christ:"- that was the fate and end of him as Saul. The light of a living Christ, risen and ascended, had broken in upon his soul, and he learned that grace looked upon all that had been Saul, all that was of Saul, as so identified with that Christ, that the end of it, in death and judgment, was reckoned of God to be therein Christ crucified. If God reckoned it so, so would he; and so, " I am (or have been) crucified together with Christ." But if the chapter about Saul contained that blessed truth, the chapter about Paul went on with a " nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." But there was this one most gracious provision to be noted, as to the Saul, not moribund, but defunct to be noticed, to the praise of the grace that saw that God's glory required it, and for the comfort of the party thus found and blessed,- the dead was buried also out of sight, through God's grace through Christ—buried together with Him by baptism. " To bury our dead out of our sight," is perfect in its own needed time and place.
Abram and Isaac, and Jacob and Joseph, felt this; and, by faith, saw God in connection with their burial- place. God foresaw the tomb where the body of our Lord should lay, as we see in Isa. 53. Devout men also carried Stephen to his burial; and Divine wisdom and grace had provided a grave for the "I" who was Saul the persecutor, and for the "I" wheresoever found dead in trespasses and sins, that finds grace unto eternal life. The law could curse such an one—could pierce through with its thunderbolts—could show that there was life in no one who stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, and that moral death reigned in each and in all of them;-but Moses could neither kill nor bring to an end the life of such a one as Saul, nor give him a new life. Christ secured to him the full benefits of death—made over His own death in all its fullness to him—shared with him the cross in all its fruit—and declares Himself the burial-place. Buried together with Him by baptism into death; buried together with Him in baptism.
All these things are of faith; and, therefore, are made rood to individuals by faith, and enjoyed by individuals, through faith. It may be true of each individual member of a family, or of a community, whether the family have but three members, as a man, his wife, and a child, or whether the community be as numerous as is the church of God;—But these things are not true of the family, or of any community, as such. Of no family, of no community, as such, can it be said, it is " crucified, dead, and buried in Christ." To say that the Church is dead, crucified, and buried with Christ, would be senseless as a statement; and, if it meant anything, must mean something very wide of what would be truth. Of every member in the church, it is true, however, as to what he was; and God reckons each one that believes, to be, as to the old man, crucified, dead, and buried, together with Christ; and the Word bids us, also, to reckon that His measure and estimate of the self in us, as thus formed in Christ Jesus—the crucified.
" To be as God, knowing good and evil," is the practical folly of our fallen selves; the cross for His Christ, the equivalent, according to God, of this folly in us. So, when He dealt to Christ, according to. His estimate of us, did He act; -so has He branded, as with a stigma, ourselves and our self-complacent wisdom, and love of power.
So much then as to the "I," which was, and was looked upon as standing upon its own foundation as a creature, upon the merits and being of what is and is found in and of ourselves before God. Through grace God has said of all that, " crucified together with Christ; dead together with him; buried together with him." God's estimate of what each of us was, God's judgment of it, and God's putting of it, as it were, out of sight, are presented to us in the crucifixion, death, and burial of the Lord. What was true of us morally, was visited on Him penally. God so identifies, so reckons us (in all that we were and had of our own) one together with Christ in His crucifixion, death, and burial, that we can and are bound, as believers, to reckon that it is finished. God, who calleth those things which be not as though they were (Rom. 4.17), is He with whom we have to do. He has reckoned it thus. Who will say unto Him, What doest thou? or, What hast thou done? Are His rights limited? Is His power straitened, that He should have no title to do as seemeth Him good, no power to make good what He wills? Nay: rather hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good? But for His grace in reckoning each one that believes one, according to all that he had or is, one with Christ, Christ would never have been crucified, never have died, or been buried. But He has been crucified, dead, and buried; and faith says, " And I am crucified, dead, and buried together with Him."
Divine grace is wondrous in power and in wisdom. It has made death and judgment, which are in prospect before man in the avenue of human life, to be in retrospect behind the believer in the course of grace. Grace, too, has known how to substitute the death of the only sinless and the only just one, and His judgment on the cross, who is to be judge of quick and dead, in the place of the death of the sinner that believeth, and in place of the judgment of the self-accused culprit. Grace, too, has not only thus met the anticipations of the sinner that believes, but it has also, in the one same deliverance through the crucifixion, death, and burial together with Christ, cleared out all old family scores and debts. There was a reckoning to come in judgment, because of the rebellion of the ancestral head of the family; another, because of a nature in corruption come down from him,-tried, as it has been, in. every varied way by God since Adam fell, and always yet showing itself rebellious. Grace has met and canceled all that: for if the penalty borne by the Son of Man on the cross, was borne because He was identified with some whose case challenged judgment, substituted for those in the judgment, all has been met; and faith can say, "I reckon myself (all that I was, as a mere creature, descended from Adam) crucified, dead, and buried; and there is an end of the whole matter, for me, at least, among men, because God has said it is the end of the whole matter with Him for whosoever believeth."
Unless a man reckon himself crucified, dead, and buried together with Christ, where is his faith-where is his apprehension of what God reckons as to every one that believeth? I press this, 1st, because I know, from Scripture, and from experience too, the needs of the soul and of conscience of the poor sinner before God. There is no measure of self-that is, no divine and perfect measure-such as can satisfy the soul in God's presence, because it has satisfied God Himself-save the cross of Christ Jesus; no end of self save His death; no burial-place for self unless it be Himself: and, 2ndly, because unless a man has said " dead," how can he say, " I am alive again"? This brings us to the close of the first part of our subject.
I would desire to challenge my own conscience, and that of my reader, with the question-How far does conscience, in the secret solitude of God's presence-there, where it is thinking of righteousness, temperance, and eternal judgment to come-know these things to be real and existent, according to God's thoughts of us and our own thoughts of ourselves?
Crucified,
Dead, and
Buried,
Together with Christ.
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