1 John 2
THE beginning of this chapter refers to the preceding chapter. There he is speaking of the manifestation of that eternal life which was with the Father, and the revelation of the perfect light in God, in Him of whom we read in the gospel, "the life is the light of men." Walking in the power of that life, we have fellowship with the Father and the Son; for this life is in the Son. Still, God is light: and if we say we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth. But in the light, by life, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. Then in the first two verses of the 2nd chapter, the apostle speaks of the resources of a Christian when he fails, (viewed as placed in this light,) as, alas! we know that we all do fail. In the former chapter we have seen three things: 1St, the Christian is in the light, as God is in the light; 2nd, he has fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. This can be and is because, 3rd, the blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin. This depends on the possession of life, and makes the Christian's standing complete. Then in the 2nd chapter, the bearing of our practical feebleness here below on this is met by grace, in another way; the Christian, having sinned, we have an advocate with the Father; and this is bringing out quite another principle altogether. It is not merely that the saint has a divine nature, making him capable, through the Holy Ghost and the efficacy of Christ's blood, of communion with the Father and the Son; that nature he has when he fails; but he is not walking in the power of it, and consequently fails, and therefore needs an advocate with the Father; and this is quite another aspect of grace, from that of communion. It is not joying in God, the just state of the Christian, but the interference of God in grace, in the person of a mediator, one between God and us. Now, what is in question here is not our justification. There is no possibility of anything being imputed to us. He was made sin for us, and the work of Christ has put us in God's presence without a question remaining as to righteousness, and that position we never lose. It is not that which is here touched on, but another thing of all-importance to us, the daily exercise of spiritual affections in free communion with God. It is not that we fail, as to our standing, before Him—Christ is that, and He cannot change—but down here we do. "In many things we offend all." We fail constantly, inwardly and outwardly, but the exercise of our affections must be, if they are real, according to what we are down here, dependent, on one hand, on our increasing in the knowledge of God, and of what His love is; and, on the other, on what our real state is. God demands righteousness, but it is not, as many think, that the work of blood-sprinkling has to be done over again, or that our righteousness has failed before God; for the moment I believe, I am righteous as He is. There is no decay of it; it is always of the same value. This is a question of who He is—who is my righteousness. The advocacy of Christ is founded on this unchanging righteousness, and on the fact that it has brought us into the light, as God is in the light; and it reconciles the circumstances of feebleness or failure of our actual state with the privileges of our standing in the light, through righteousness divine. It is founded on the fact of the new exercise of heart and conscience into which I am brought, by being placed, through Christ's blood, in the perfect light and love of God, with a nature formed to enjoy them. The advocacy of Christ is thus founded on the fact that, in virtue of the sacrifice of Christ, I have my conscience exercised in a way I could not before, in view of the light and love of God, in which I am, to which I belong, in my new nature. It could not be exercised if the righteousness were not complete; nor, if it were not, could God deal with sin as He does in discipline and tenderness, through the priesthood of Christ. But He is, as here expressed in connection with it, Jesus Christ the righteous, and the propitiation for our sins. He intercedes on the ground of our present standing in righteousness, in the presence of God, in Him, and of the propitiation having been made for the sins in respect of which He intercedes. The righteousness is always in the presence of God. He has not to look for that now in His dealing with us, for Christ is always there. God has been perfectly displayed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and perfectly glorified, as to sin, by Him; and now I can go into His presence and not be afraid, because of this righteousness. But how is my intercourse with God. to be carried on by such a poor failing thing as I am, and that in the presence of light, and called to walk in it as God is in it? It goes on in virtue of what I am in Christ. Christ, my righteousness, does not need to be maintained or renewed. He fails and changes not, nor does my righteousness; but I need to be sustained. Suppose I have failed, my communion is at once interrupted: God cannot have communion with evil. Well, here the advocacy comes in; Christ's priesthood comes in to meet me; it does not acquire the righteousness, but lifts me up, if I fail, in virtue of it. The intercession of priesthood imputes to me, as my abiding position in divine righteousness, what I am in God's sight, to lead me to judge myself, according to the light I have been brought into by this righteousness. My judgment of good and evil increases, no doubt, as I grow up before God. But from the beginning of my justified career, the standard of my judgment is the light of God's presence. There are two things needed: grace to keep us in the way, and mercy to restore us to communion, when we have got out of it. In the enjoyment of these, our great High Priest secures us,—all the grace, in a word, we need by the road, while He maintains us in the abiding assurance of our position before God. Peter did not lose his trust and confidence in God, though he denied his Master. Satan might come and say to the soul, "it is all over with you; you are too bad; His sentence is gone out against you, and there is no hope;" and thus confidence in God, our only resource in failure, be lost. But before Peter failed, Christ had prayed for him: thus he learned what he was in himself, and knew the grace that sustained him; and then he uses it to profit: " Strengthen thy brethren." He was competent to help those who were weak and failing like himself, because he knew his weakness and the blessed resource of grace. It is exactly the same grace that met us at the first, that sustains us all the journey through.
Here is the government of God, as a father with his family. It is not like " Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone." This is the most dreadful of all chastisements, the leaving us to eat the fruit of our ways. God surely will never finally forsake us, but He may leave us to the fruit of our own ways. This is an extreme case. In general He will deal with us in present discipline, according to our ways. As I have before remarked elsewhere, this government of God, in this sense, His love, the present exercise of manifested affections towards us, is made to depend on our acts and doings, as in John 14:23; 15; 1023Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. (John 14:23)
23He that hateth me hateth my Father also. (John 15:23)
23And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch. (John 10:23). God's love to us, as sinners, we well know, does not, nay, cannot, depend on our love to Him; for it is as sinners He loves us in grace and so, even as to our conduct, (for, after all, it is grace that enables us to go on well,) He deals with us always in grace, and can be nothing else towards us; still it is here connected with His righteous ways. He takes notice of our conduct, of the state of our hearts, our walk. God deals with His children. And so Christ as a Son over His own house. If we speak rashly to our brother, or walk abroad carelessly through the streets, and see some vanity and are distracted, we shall find the effect of it in our own souls at the end of the day with God. If an angry word escapes me, I feel the effect at the end of the day with God: better still if at the moment, judging oneself. Grace will restore us. God will follow us, and bring us back. If we had a child that was unruly, we should not give it up, but wait upon it in love, and correct it in hope of reclaiming it. I might see a child go wrong, and leave it; but if it be my own child, if it be mine, I must go after it, and bring it back. This is the patience of His grace. At the same time God can never give up His holiness. No, He could not pass by or suffer unholiness in His child,—indeed it were our infinite loss if He allowed it in us. Therefore, also, was it needful that Christ should die. Thus God was debtor, so to speak, to Christ, on account of His work, for the glory of His character. "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again." "I have glorified thee on the earth." "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him." Thus nothing is passed by; but this is accomplished once for all. But the same thing is true in regard of Christ's advocacy for us. If there is failure, God sees it; but Jesus comes in and intercedes for us, that it may turn into an occasion of instruction, correction, and profit. Some say that we have to use the priesthood of Christ, that is demand Him to exercise it; but it is not so. Christ uses it for us. Why do I turn to God when I have failed? It is because Christ has used it, and fresh grace is applied, which has drawn me back to Him; fresh grace has wrought in my mind, in virtue of the intercession to which my wandering gave occasion. There is nothing in us brings us back to God but fresh grace working in our consciences. Therefore it is said, "if any man sin we have an advocate with the Father." It is not "if any man repent." It is just as much pure grace as at the first looked upon us, when we were in our sins. In the case of Peter, the Lord foretold him what would take place, "Satan has desired to have thee, that he may sift thee as wheat; but I have prayed for thee." He needed this sifting; and Christ does not ask that he should escape it; but before Peter got the sin, or run into the danger, the Lord had prayed for him; His grace was in exercise, and at the moment when it is needed. "He looked at Peter," and grace wrought its work. His weeping was the fruit of Christ's intercession and grace, not the cause or motive of it. The grace and intercession of Jesus is exercised towards us in all the grace and wisdom of God. It is grace which makes our very failure the occasion of God's coming in with more grace. The righteousness is not called in question; it is not touched. It is through the intercession of Jesus that I can get to God about my evil thoughts. All the consciousness of failure, all the exercises of heart, are the occasion of my going to the Father; and form so many links to link my soul to God: we learn it in our every-day wants and failures; we are all astray if we do not see that God has a holy foundation for all this. It does not follow that we must fail. God is faithful not to suffer us to be tempted above that we are able. The roots and principles of sin ought to be judged in communion before God. We ought not to fail, though we all do. Our wretched self-confidence makes us fail, and then comes in the priesthood. It is the rod of Aaron. Moses had, indeed, smitten the rock at the first, that the people might have water, but this was not to be repeated; but it was Aaron's rod that blossomed and bore fruit; and he was to speak to the rock, and it would give its water—divine prevalency in priesthood. That is the way grace takes away the murmuring of the heart. Two years Israel was in the desert; and thirty-eight years more, because they did not go up and take the land, as they had been told; and if we, like Israel, will not go up, it detects our state-we are making the way long. Israel had not the faith to go up to the Anakims. If we would break with the world, and take up the cross properly, it would give us the enjoyment of the full power of communion with God at once; if not, we must learn, by its daily mortification in the desert, what flesh is. H we think to escape dangers by leaving the path of faith, we shall surely get into sin. Israel found the same Anakims in Canaan, the giants still there, when they got into the land at last, that frightened them at the first, and hindered their taking possession. What is the reason Christians have often more joy on a death-bed than all their life through before? Why, the reason is, they had never till then surrendered up all for Christ, had never before learned Christ to be everything, and everything else to be dung and dross. But Israel's raiment had not waxed old for forty years in the wilderness, neither did their feet swell. They learned in all this way the wonderful detail of all God's goodness. The manna never ceased, and the patient grace never fails to the end. Our foolish hearts, alas! will not trust God, and so the Lord shows us the patience of His grace. He goes with us wherever we go, even in our failures, as He turned back with Israel through the wilderness; and if our hearts have experienced the exercises of the desert, we have learned the vanity of earthly things, and after all find it better to give it all up, and trust God -that He may be everything to us; and if we had done it at first, we should have had it at once. But to continue. The constant exercise of Christ's priesthood is carried on in heaven, in connection with our heavenly standing, and is made to bear on our actual daily state down here; we are to be heavenly men on the earth. Christ was the heavenly man down here; we are joined to Christ by one Spirit. " He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit." Mark the effect. What was Christ? Not only the obedient man, the perfect man under the law, but He was the perfect manifestation of the divine nature in a man; there was in a man all the effect that Godhead could produce of goodness in a man, (I am not speaking of miracles,) patience, endurance, love, purity, holiness, and every other grace. It is not that we can be as Christ was, because sin is in us: there was none in Him. But we are called to walk as He walked, through the power of His grace making us walk in the Spirit. There is not a willingness always to walk: there is a will in us. He must break our will. So long as our walk does not flow from the word of God, there is flesh working, and there must be weakness in the ways of God. " Well, but," one may say, " I am so young a Christian; I am so weak." It is not a question of age in grace. If your eye were single, and there were not self-dependence, God would not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able, but would, with the temptation, make a way for you to escape. We may be weak, but that is no hindrance to our walking as He walked, for His strength is made perfect in weakness; but He cannot be the strength of our will. One born only yesterday may follow Christ as much as an old Christian, and Christ is as much for him; there may not be so much wisdom, but in the child in Christ there is often more singleness of eye and more undividedness of heart; the great thing is that the will does not work. There it is, again, we see where Christ was so perfect. Still I see in Jesus that He comes down to the first moment in the divine life in sinners. This we see at the baptism of John. John calls to repentance, and they go, and Christ goes with them. He needed no repentance, as John insists, for He had no sin; but in them it was the first step of spiritual life, and Christ accompanies them there. From the first step which the working of God's word in them produced, in this baptism by John, there is not one that Christ does not take with them; no spiritual step in the whole course of our life in which Christ does not throw Himself into our path. He is the life, in which we walk in it. The will of God was the spring of all Christ's conduct. He was come to do His will: " Lo, I come to do thy will, 0 God." "Mine ears hast thou opened." That is, He put Himself in the place of obedience; and hence the rendering of the passage is accepted: " A body hast thou prepared me." He became a man, that is, took the place of a servant; He was to walk by what He heard. He was willing to do this, "Lo, I come." "Not my will, but thine be done." The will of God was the spring of all His conduct. He was not only the obedient One, as we commonly understand obedience, that is having a will of His own, yielding it up when prohibition came; such, and in a certain sense justly, we should call obedience in a child: Christ never had such. His Father's will was His one motive for acting. Where no word from Him was Christ remained still. He might be hungry, but would not use His power by His own will,—"Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." He might love Martha and Mary, but He waits God's time and will to go to them. " The Father has sent me," He says, and I live by [or properly on account of, in virtue of my connection with Him] the Father," &c. We are not only so to walk, as to acts, as He walked, but the way He walked, in principle and motive, Right conduct does not suffice, it must be obedient conduct. The spring of Christ's conduct was never His own will; not that His will had to be corrected, but He came to do His Father's will. Satan tried to binder; man tried to hinder; but He goes through it all. He takes the first place, as indeed He must go first in the difficulties. " When he putteth forth his own sheep he goeth before them." He was led by the Spirit to be tempted; everything that could put His obedience to the test must be tried on Him. He learned it by the things which He suffered. Yet even here we see the difference in the glory of Christ's person and another. Moses had to fast forty days to be with God on the mount: Christ, as a living man on earth, was always with God. He fasts forty days to be with Satan, tempted in the wilderness; and you could not see Him in those circumstances without seeing who was there. If all the glory of the world was offered to Christ there, it is offered to you in detail every day; and we see, in a day like this, people are hurrying after it with all their hearts. Well, Christ meets him. " Make these stones bread;" satisfy your hunger by your own will. He had no word from God for it. His will was never shown; it was perfect obedience; the humble, holy, patient life, that does not stir without God. If you will not do anything without a word from God, then you are sure to have the strength of God in what you do. " Cast thyself down." No; He would not put God to the test. He was not going to tempt God by trying whether He would protect Him. He had confidence in God. As we read, " the people tempted God, saying, Is God among us?" They would prove whether He was among them or no; and this is the scriptural sense of tempting God. He was sure in the way of obedience to find Him. When Mary and Martha sent to the Lord, saying, " Lazarus is sick," He does not stir; He had no word from God; and he died. Mary might think it cruel that He should abide two days in the same place, and not come immediately to heal him. If He had been there He might have wrought a common miracle; but His raising him from the dead is for the glory of God. Satan tries him; but there was no will which had self for its center and object. Satan must betray himself at last. "If thou wilt fall down and worship me, all shall be thine." But a manifested Satan, to the obedient servant of God, is a conquered one: " Get thee behind me, Satan." Still He takes the word, " it is written," as the obedient man; but this is power. Satan has power against pretension, against knowledge, but no power against obedience, if we are acting by the word, with no will of our own. He took His conduct from the word. It was the source of His conduct. " If we say we abide in him, we ought to walk even as Christ also walked." Satan was baffled; the strong man was bound; and that is how He bound him, by simple obedience. He then exercises, freely for man, the power which overcame the enemy: that is a distinct subject. He healed the sick, fed the hungry, cast out devils, raised the dead; He could have set men in blessing here, destroying the works of the devil, if they had been capable of happiness, and prepared to enjoy God. But man's heart itself was enmity against God. Will and lust were there, and another work, redemption and a new creation, were needed: but Christ passed through everything that could be put before Him, to hinder Him in the path of godliness; everything that could test the divine life. Christ knew in that sense what it was to be tempted like as we are, sin apart. It was all the exercises He went through which prepared Him to be our High Priest. Man will say, and has said, He cannot feel what I feel of inward conflict. I answer, we need sympathy in the exercises of the divine life in our souls, not sympathy in our lusts; those we must practically kill, as we have a right to count ourselves dead. But everything that could try a living man He passed through, perfect in all; and He learned the application of His Father's love to His heart in it all, in the peace which He experienced: and now He can say to us, " My peace I leave with you," and " that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. If the world has hated me, it will hate you; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." He knew and understood experimentally and practically, as a man, in passing through this world, how divine favor from above flowed in the comforts of a tried soul, and applied itself to every exercise such a soul went through here below, in the midst of ruin and the presence of the enemies;—how it was sufficient for every soul's need to live in holiness, and enjoy God in spite of everything that beset Him in this life of holiness. He who lived it is become our life, and He strengthens our human hearts in the pain and trial of living it, which He has felt. Do we want to be comforted, when sin is at work? No; we want what is sharper than any two-edged sword for that. This judges the intentions of the heart, there where the sin lies. For the infirmities we have our High Priest, who feels them. He has suffered, being tempted. He will strengthen the new man against the lusts of the old. As to imputation or distress arising from that, it is gone for the believer; as to dominion, sin has it not over us, if we are under grace; we are under law if it has. The most cases of distressed hearts who would seek Christ's sympathy in their conflicts need to be set free. They are under law. Strength against sin we do need, and that Christ will surely give; but if we are under grace sin has not dominion over us. There may be careless failure, but this is not the case of distress we speak of. It rather needs a rod, though God may graciously draw even out of this. But in sorrow and trial we have Christ's sympathy.
The Lord knew what trouble was; His soul was bowed down with trouble, but the first word is, " Father." The first moment we are in sorrow, instead of looking around for comfort, for sympathy, or looking to the actings of the flesh, as to what I have done or what I have not done, and pouring forth our sorrow in nothing but fleshly murmuring, let us turn immediately to God; and then the heart would be cast down, indeed, perhaps,—Christ's could be,—but in perfect submission to the will of God, and thus the sting of the sorrow would be removed. The instant there is perfect submission, there is perfect peace. " Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say, Father, save me from this hour, yet for this cause came I to this hour. Father, glorify thy name." The deepest depths are the occasion for Him of the deepest sub- mission' and all is light. " Not my will but thine be done," is the expression, of His heart, when finally tested with that which He could not, because He ought not, but to have wished to pass, before which He righteously feared—God's holy wrath. But I return a little back to give its true character to this last trial, as regards us, and one that Christ could, as we have seen, so far as victory over Satan's power went, have brought in all the promised blessing at once. He could have raised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as He did Lazarus. But, alas! another awful truth was brought out. It was not merely Satan's power and its sad effects. Man did not like Christ to be there, even though He delivered him. He would not have God, even if He came to bless. He showed himself to be alienated from God in his own mind, and was proved utterly incapable of enjoying happiness where God was the source of it. The carnal mind is enmity against God; dreadful thought! " Now have ye seen and hated both me and my Father." Christ could not have anything to do with the world in its moral state. But did grace and divine love cease to work? No; of course God knew all this; and this very rejection brought out the full purpose and work of His grace, and the trial of Christ, which hung on the accomplishment of it. He now had to meet the effect of sin itself in the power of Satan, holding man captive under death to the judgment and wrath of God, against sin-for I still speak of the trial, not the work of atonement itself. But He had to redeem man; and if Gethsemane was, as He declares, the power of the enemy, the cross was the judgment, the terrors of which the enemy sought to use against him. And now He takes the place in resurrection, to apply redemption; the righteousness was worked out, that we should take our place in heaven; we must be broken off from the world. He gives us everything in the way, but never presents it as our end. It is neither Canaan nor Egypt, but a wilderness. By clinging to it we are not in the wilderness, but in heart turned back to Egypt. And that is why so many need chastening; for if we would make a Canaan of it, then it will become Egypt to us. The moment we make it our home, and settle down in it, it is our Egypt; and the Lord must break our will, thus keeping us there. He says, "A little while and the world seeth me no more." For Him it is entirely done with. He puts a distinction between Himself and the world. Therefore if we take Him we cannot have the world, and if we take the world we cannot have Him; we cannot have both. "If any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him." "Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world." Men are everywhere playing into the infidels' hands, in thinking to make the world better with their brotherhood, their arts and sciences, their social intercourse—making themselves happy without God; for while they make a show of their cleverness, and talk a great deal about acknowledging God's gift in the skill and ability he has bestowed upon man; they do it to exalt man, and continue still to reject both God and His gifts. They will not have a God in Christ. Men think the world can be set right by cultivation and science, by encouraging the arts, and such like. Why Christ could not set it right: infidels are saying, Christianity is only a figment for it has not set the world right, and men are taking the words of Christ in their mouths, saying men should love one another as brethren, and bringing all nations together to cultivate amity and good will, and the very words that they take in their mouths, while they are thus seeking to make the world happy, are the words that the infidels use. They would make it happy, too, in the same way. Christ knew it could not be, and declared plainly it would not be the effect of His coming. No: as to the world, its day is over. Christ was rejected by the world, and its day is closed. God's grace is gathering out sinners; but as to the world, the Lord said, "it seeth me no more.'' Either it is to get better without Christ, or not to get better at all. "It has hated both him and his Father," and its day is over. "I have got one Son," we read in the Lord's description of His Father's ways, "it may be they will reverence my Son." They took Him and slew Him, saying, "the inheritance will be ours." And this is what has been done, and now men are making the world comfortable as their own inheritance. The Lord preserve us from all the deception which, by the side of Christ, close to Him, we so soon detect. He has taken a heavenly place. "Such a High Priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, made higher than the heavens." He exercises His ministry where we belong. I do not belong to the earth. We have a heavenly calling, and need a heavenly priest, who has gone up on high to take our hearts up with Him. Our body is not gone up yet, but we have our place with Him up there. Christ Himself, who was a man on earth, manifested a heavenly character down here.
Christ having given us our place on high, after having put away all our sins, sends down the Comforter that we may manifest Him in our walk down here, being living epistles of Christ "known and read of all men," a heavenly people on the earth. God loved us when we hated Him. We are to love those who do not love us, and thus show the character of God down here. Christ was the living expression of it as a man. "He that saith he abideth in him ought himself so to walk even as he walked." As High Priest, Christ obtains for us all we need, and lifts us up if we do fall; but He sustains us to walk as He walked, having the word of God as the source of our actions, as God was the source of all His thoughts; but if we fail, there is grace to restore us. (1 John 2:11My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: (1 John 2:1)) "That ye sin not," is the object of revealing our privileges and the grace that has placed us in communion with the God of light; "but if any man sin we have an advocate," &c. Flesh ought never to work; your life ought never to be an expression of the flesh, but of the obedience of a child. The youngest child in Christ cannot walk as a father in Christ, but he can walk in the obedience of a child with Christ. We have the flesh; but if I am in the light, practically, with God, I know what the flesh is; but then all that I am, as regards the flesh, is judged. A child of two years old can be as obedient as a child of twelve years. It is not a question of age, of strength, but of obedience. We have the pattern of Christ at twelve years old, who was obedient to Joseph and his mother, and went home with them, being subject unto them. "He that saith he abideth in him ought himself so to walk." Is this the delight of your soul, to walk as He walked, as self-denying, as separated from the world, with as much love; or would you spare something?—a little bit of the world, a little bit of comfort? Christ never did, or you could not have been saved. Peter said, "this be far from thee, Lord:" spare thyself. His reply was, "get thee behind me, Satan." How often does our wretched heart say, spare thyself. That is not walking as Christ walked; not doing His bidding as our Master. Have your hearts been attracted by the beauty of Christ? It is real liberty. The world is merely a snare to entrap us: not that I would scorn the world, Christ did not scorn it; but the world is just this—Satan using all manner of things to seduce the flesh, and that is the world. Satan attracts us by his snares, and has the soul in bondage; but the liberty in which the Son has set us, is to be free from the flesh, the world, and sin, and Satan; not only to walk as He walked, but to walk with Him in perfect freedom, and in the comfort and consciousness of walking with Him. May we find our joy in Him, not pursuing a life of our own hearts, but a life of His grace and goodness, and may He keep our hearts fixed on Him; and a crown with Him will close in eternal blessing the history of His grace.
In considering this great subject, (though in few words,) it is intended to avoid all question of the time of the application of it, and the like; and to regard in it only the mind of God as the object of faith.
The first and fundamental character of all baptism, as an appointment in the outward sign, is, that it is UNTO something. The children of Israel were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea: that is, unto the covenant they were to receive at Mount Sinai, in subjection to him who was over God's house; separated from Egypt and all that was in it, and from the rule of its ruler, by the cloud that stood between them and the land of Egypt at Migdol, as afterward by the sea.
Those who came to John were baptized unto repentance, John saying that they should believe on Him that should come after him, even Christ. The Messiah was about to appear to Israel as the reformer of their state; and the new covenant was the law written in their hearts; and Christ was to rule as the Head of His own house. The word repentance at once betokens what they were to be separated from, namely, the departure from God in the existing state of Judaism, which, as it was, rejected Christ when He came.
The baptism the Lord left was unto Himself. Faith was come. The covenant of righteousness of life and of power in Christ by GRACE. Those who received baptism, as confessing the name of Christ, (in baptism they put on Christ) were evidently in a very various state of advance; some were zealous of the law, others capable of being shown its weakness, but the relationship to Christ in character was an established thing, and every advance only left more behind, in the separation first indicated. The baptized Jew, now zealous of the law, might advance to an apprehension of being dead to the law by the body of Christ, and to the knowledge of union with Christ by faith. Such would not be baptized again. If this baptism were into anything, (as may be considered shortly,) it is not into Christ; but the separation is from all that was evil, and all that was old, whether the soul realized it or not, and that Christ supplied the place of all. It was in truth, then, a separation from law, from the world, from the rudiments of the world, and from all that applied itself to man, in his various pretenses as capable of good, and from ordinances UNTO Christ. The doctrine of Rom. 6, stands out preeminently as marking the separation from the old man in the fruits thereof, in being buried with Christ. In Col. 2, separation is from philosophy and vain deceit, from the traditions of men, from the hand-writing of ordinances that was against us, from sabbaths, and the like, and from all else that is not now by the living God applied to our soul in Christ, through faith. We are complete in Christ, who is the head of all principality and power.
Further, it is most important for us to see that the things really left us by the Lord relate to us as on earth. HEIRS BY GRACE TO THE KINGDOM, we are separated in the world, by baptism, unto Christ. Nor is it needful to look for significations in these things, for us on earth they can be something. To this the expression of burial directs us. Baptism is given us as the grave of Christ, and all the things which life in Christ has stamped with death are buried with Him, and we and they with Him, in baptism. We are buried (thus can those that are dead in Him look at it) in His grave. We are buried with Him by baptism. The mind of God in it is the object that our hearts are directed to. It is practically important. There is power in measure, through faith, as appealed to by the apostle in Rom. 6 It is important to say that the old man, in his sinful habits, as on earth, is buried. This is being buried with Christ by baptism into or unto death. The living subject of baptism sees the assigned place of these things. We who are alive and conscious are so to see them. Christ, charged with them, went down into the grave, and came out of the grave without them, and we, coming out of the water, leave them all, and all that can apply to them, being weak through the flesh, in the water, in the mind of God. We leave ourselves there. We look back on our baptism in such an aspect, and are called on by the apostle to do so.
The Church, as divine, is baptized with something else, namely, with the Spirit of God, uniting her to Christ in living existence. The baptism of the Church, as conferring its special character, is heavenly. She has a time to sojourn on earth, and to this baptism refers. The Church, as on earth, has a subjection and confession to fulfill to the Lord, who hath purchased her for Himself, and given her, besides, a character as joint-heir with Him; and her holiness on earth is in being true to it to His glory. The difference between these two greatly affects the application of terms in scripture, which may in no wise be confounded. It is the mingling of that which is of earth and that which is of heaven that has been and is injurious to truth, and to the use of the things of God according to God.
It is not that we are not to see, as on earth, something more than that which is merely significant of other things. It is not intended to enter on them in this point of view now, and they are quite distinct from them.
But to resume: the moral necessity of the truth connected with the reality of baptism, as the burial of all that could usurp the place of life, is evident. The divine truth, that the power of Christ's death upon all evil is the necessary preliminary to the expansion of the divine life, is instructive; that carries us far into the divinely moral order of our restoration in the image of Christ. That this is expressed in baptism, over and above the actual burial of the old things, is manifest from scripture. The old man, and all that could attach to him, is to be never seen out of the water again; for it is in this burial we divinely rise, by the regenerating power of God, " through faith of the operation of God." It is not out of it, but in it. (Col. 2:1212Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. (Colossians 2:12).) So it is in Rom. 6, in its proper proportion. We are buried into the death—in fact, in this aspect, the old man is in the grave buried, that we might walk (being risen in the power of God) in newness of life. So in 1 Peter 3:2121The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ: (1 Peter 3:21), We are saved by baptism—clearly by what must die (in order that we should live) lying buried there; in the answer of a good conscience in the living and divine condition of the living man; in fact by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whenever all that was to be buried rises, it causes to sink, so to say, all that which ought always to be above the place of death in the power of the glory of the Father. This is the divinely moral truth given us in these things.
As divine and heavenly, the Church can know nothing but the Spirit of God, as above with Christ, having spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Him. Christ is our righteousness; ordinances, therefore, receive a secondary place only. This, their real place, should be seen, lest otherwise they make a gift of God for blessing in the place assigned to them, an occasion of stumbling, and they become a door to the apostasy; and such have they become, and become fixed, as such, through the tradition of men. They were given to serve the purpose of separation. All ordinances were, and those left by Christ as well,—baptism administered by others; the Lord's supper—the act of the living adoration of the Church. We may be in a state of imperfect knowledge as to either, but except as an act of living adoration of the Church in worship in the Supper of the Lord, the knowledge of and faith in the mind of God in them will make a great difference in our blessing. There are many things we have to know about them, which, as they are gradually received, are better sought in the word. Nor ought we to close these remarks without some direct reference to the necessary truth, that we must die in order to live, applying it immediately to our consciences. Found of God when we sought Him not—sought in the wonders of His grace—we are exhorted to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our reasonable service. This is in the shape of motive, but the matter also lies deeper. The actual relationship of death unto sin and new birth unto righteousness, that being by nature born in sin, but now the children of grace, we may be molded daily into the likeness of Christ, is the work of God by faith—changed into the same image, says the apostle, from glory to glory. "If," says St. Paul, Rom. 6:55For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: (Romans 6:5), "we are (or have become) plants together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be plants of his resurrection, (or plants in the likeness of his resurrection.)" Justly the same fountain should not bring forth sweet water and bitter. How can there be growth in the Spirit (putting all seeming aside) but in the declension of the flesh and its lusts. If by the Spirit ye mortify the deeds of the body, saith the apostle, ye shall live. If ye walk after the flesh ye shall die. Let that mind be, in you which was in Christ Jesus; who on the cross condemned sin in the flesh in dying. It was truth told to us in Him, in whom was no sin. If ye are Christ's, ye have crucified the affections and the lusts. There is no room allowed of God for the old creation and the new in the same man. According to this truth is the death intimated to the Christian in his baptism and in the mind of God in it, and in it is the resurrection he finds in its realization, by the exceeding greatness of God's power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places.
The separation of us from the world is more on the surface, but is as express. The apostasy has so far grown that its use of baptism is an entry into the world, instead of a separation out of it and from it; while the baptized should, as thus passed the Red Sea, look over the closed waters on the towers and pyramids and glories of Egypt, shut out from them forever, while they rejoice on the way. Let every Babylonish garment, every pursuit of forgetfulness, of which Satan makes such use,—not to say the enticing pursuit of the world itself,—be seen as cut off from us in the water. The pursuit of the world's possession (amidst which God may in His grace have given on earth duties of application to His glory,—and yet, blessed are the poor) shall pierce the soul through with many sorrows, sent in grace that the true and divine riches, those only called "our own," may be duly estimated as enduring forever; while He will not leave nor forsake those that are fed of His bounty in the wilderness, or as strangers in the land.
Now the Lord increase us in acquaintance with the ways of God in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, unto all fruitfulness unto eternal life, in Christ Jesus. Amen.