The more we search into the words of Jesus, the more we see how entirely it is a new thing that He is setting up, on the ground of the redemption He had accomplished.
“I have glorified Thee upon the earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do; and now, O Father, glorify Thou Me.” We see how, while the divine nature of the Lord Jesus shines out upon every page of this Gospel, not only doctrinally, but in a thousand things when the eye is opened to see it, yet He never goes out of His place as Man, the place He had taken in order to fulfill the Father's will. It was the very thing Satan above all wanted Him to do; he tried in the wilderness to make Him leave it when he said, “Command that these stones be made bread.” Act from your own will; don't stay in the place of a servant. Christ would not listen for a moment, and says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” He had taken the place of a servant, and being in that place He never went out and never will go out of it. Therefore He does not say, “Now I will glorify Myself,” but, “glorify Thou Me;” yet it was “with the glory I had with Thee before the world was.” Thus, while we see His title to the divine glory, at the same time He never leaves the place of lowliness and humiliation He took. He could speak of “the Son of man which is in heaven,” and yet walk about the earth as one that served; He came down to death, but He “gave up” His spirit. We see God shining through the humanity of Jesus, and it is the joy and blessedness of the saint who has eyes to see (for He came in a shape in which I can see Him), that He was down here a man amongst men; but it is God Whom I see” there!
We see God's power manifested in creation, but we see nothing of His heart there. But when God is manifest in the flesh, we get all His perfect grace and goodness.
There are both sides, and if I lose either, I lose everything. If He is only a man—well, I see blessed grace and beauty in Him; but there is only a Man Who is so much better than myself that He could have nothing to say to me. If He is only God, a little bit of His glory terrifies me; but we have divine love serving, and the more we contemplate it, the more blessed we shall be.
There is another thing. We cannot eat of the bread of God, the true manna come down from heaven, unless we first eat His flesh and drink His blood—unless we come by His death. We may be attracted by His grace, the Spirit showing it and drawing the heart, as with the poor woman who was a sinner; the grace that was in Him attracted her heart, and she goes into the house. She had seen divine goodness and love so completely above all the evil in love and holiness, that He could bend down to all the evil (not allowing it of course).
We have a revelation of God in the Lord Jesus. He comes down to us where we are in our sins, but it would be nothing if it were not He Who comes down; for I should say, “I have seen blessedness and holiness, but I cannot stand before it.” We must remember that love never gave up holiness. But there was this blessed testimony to a love which never gave them up, and could bend down to sinners and come to them; “for God commendeth His love to ward us, in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” He never says, “Come unto me” until He had come in perfect grace and holiness to them. But the moment He had thus come, He presents a blessed Object to attract the heart: the blessed Son of God come down to the place of sinners and of sin; and there is nothing like that and never will be!
It is the one thing in which everything centers; all the purposes and counsels of God are made good in that. “I have glorified Thee upon the earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.” The Son of God is exalted in consequence of what He has done: He has finished the work and glorified God as He never could have been glorified except for sin. This may sound strange; but what was in the heart of God never could have been shown out in any other way, as it has been shown at the cross. He displayed His power in creation; but when I come to the case of sinners, all that God is in goodness, grace, and patience, comes out as it could not have done with an innocent man.
All that is most blessed is unfolded when good and evil come out, and this to a meeting-point. Satan's and man's hatred found its complete utterance; it was shown in a fall and final way in the rejection of the blessed Son of God come in love. Every possible detail in which evil could be shown—treachery, base abandonment where love had been, injustice in the judge who should have defended the innocent, in the priests, who should have pleaded for weakness, pleading against Him. Everything man ought not to be was shown out then; man's enmity definitely proved when God was there in love, and in the blessed perfect manifestation of what man ought to be in obedience.
All that God was in love met all that man was in sin, when Christ was made sin for us (2 Cor. 5). For creation could not glorify God. What has creation to do with sin except that it has been spoiled by it? Thus, sin having come in, God was dishonored in the creature of His delight; and the blessed Lord Who had God's glory perfectly at heart puts Himself forward—is made sin for us; and the righteousness of God goes out against sin.
God was there manifesting such unspeakable love as could not have been manifested except for sin, and at the same time fully establishing His righteousness and glory. The cross was the pivot on which turned all that went on in the counsels of God before the world, and that will be in the new heavens and new earth hereafter.
We cannot sit and contemplate the blessedness of the life of Christ unless we first come in by the death of Christ. Am I not a sinner? And do I sit down and say, I am competent to estimate all that beauty and blessedness? What! with my stupid debased mind? No, if I come in truth I must come as a sinner; and then I find the grace that suits a sinner. I must meet Him in the grace that suits my need, or I must meet Him in His glory when He comes to take vengeance on them that know not God.
But when I have gone into the holiest of all through the rent veil, then I can turn on God's side of the cross, and look back at all that it was to Him, and all that His life was in leading up to it; and thus I can eat the manna, after I have eaten His flesh and drank His blood. It is impossible that a sinner can come with a divine mind, and meditate upon all His perfect divine mind upon earth, unless he first come through the cross. There is no truth else. How can I talk about contemplating God till I know His mercy? But when I go through the veil and am at peace, perfectly reconciled to God, not a question about me left, not with the spirit of bondage, but with the Spirit of adoption—when I make my own what He has said, “I go to My Father, and your Father, to My God and your God” —then, being at perfect peace with God, and seated in Him in the heavenlies by counsels of divine love, I can turn back and look at what that offering was by which I have come, and see its intrinsic value. It is of infinite value! He could say, “Therefore doth My Father love Me.” All our thoughts are poverty itself; but there is that blessed aspect of Christ to the soul; and I can sit down and adore and worship.
A young Christian has got forgiveness and he is full of his happiness; he is thinking about himself. No one can come in any other way: we would most strongly insist upon that. The first thing is to get washed. But we may see the character of what is meant in a very simple way. For, coming about his own sins, one measures God's grace and goodness and our comfort and blessing, by the fact that Christ has met all those sins. But when I have come and am in perfect rest, then I can sit down and feed on Him, eat that Bread come down from heaven, what I shall eat forever and ever! It is blessed to see in the sacrifices how this is always kept in view. In the peace-offering the fat was burned; it was the Lord's part. The priests (all Christians) eat the flesh of the sacrifice, and the people who were invited eat it; that is, they entered into the blessedness that it was to God.
We get in these sacrifices the difference brought out. In the sin-offering, something wrong had been done; and they had to bring their offering; but it was not a sweet savor. The blood was carried within the veil, but the beast was burned without the camp.
Note here, the sin and trespass offerings are directly in connection with our responsibility. Christ crucified bore the sins which we have committed. But there is another thing—not only what we have done, but that our hearts should also feel where we were. It is not only, “What hast thou done?” but as God said to Adam, “Where art thou?” Where was he? Away from God and getting away from Him if he could! This is the dreadful thing. He had sinned; but it was far more to be away from God, “without God in the world,” as “there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” by and by.
That is where man is.
We are not in paradise; where then are we? The first great wickedness of Cain was that he did not know he was away from God. He was so utterly far from God that he never found it out! He had not the sense that he was totally gone from God; he thought he could just worship Him and offer the fruit of his toil as if nothing had happened; for he did not enter one atom into the thoughts of God.
It is a picture, not of the open rejection of God in an outward way, but of the utter dreadful insensibility of the human heart as to where we are. Abel recognized that he was outside, and that Another must make atonement; he owned where he was. The one came as if there was nothing the matter, nothing gone wrong; the other recognized that he must have an atonement, or he could not come at all.
The condition of man was definitely brought out at the cross of Christ. “If one died for all, then were all dead” —dead in trespasses and sins; and, if so, there must be a new creation. “The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.”
The first man is cast out of paradise, and he is insensible; but now Christ, the second Man, has entered into a far better paradise, and we are brought in with Him. “To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.” The second Man is gone up into it, and we are made heirs with Christ—members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.
When looking at the wondrous glory of the church of God, if we would have these blessed truths really and solidly in our hearts, we must rest thoroughly upon the foundations. Can I look up and say that it is all mine, joint-heir with Christ, member of His body, one spirit with the Lord? that I am given to enter into the joy of my Lord? that when He shall appear, I shall be like Him? To enable us to hold the thought of these blessings, not only as scriptural statements, but in health in the soul, we must enter into the truth of Christ having come in grace where we were, and then we see that it could not have been otherwise.
When I see the blessed Son of God going down as man into death, that glory is then seen to be the natural consequence. I do not get this till I see Him bearing our sins in His own body on the tree; and this makes it not a more matter of head-knowledge, but one which calls forth the adoration of our hearts.
J. N. D.