ABIDE
IN CHRIST by Andrew Murray
Day
10
As
Your Redemption
“But
of (God) you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from
God—and Righteousness and sanctification and REDEMPTION—” 1
Corinthians 1:30
Here
we have the top of the ladder, reaching into heaven—the blessed end
to which Christ and life in Him is to lead. The word redemption,
though sometimes applied to our deliverance from the guilt of sin,
here refers to our complete and final deliverance from all of its
consequences. This will be when the Redeemer's work will become
fully manifest, even to the redemption of the body itself (comp. Rom.
8:21-23; Eph. 1:14, 5: 30). The expression points us to the highest
glory to be hoped for in the future, and therefore also to the
highest blessing to be enjoyed in the present in Christ. We have seen
how, as a prophet, Christ is our wisdom, revealing to us God and His
love, with the nature and conditions of the salvation that love has
prepared. As a priest, He is our righteousness, restoring us to right
relations to God, and securing for us His favor and friendship. As a
king, He is our sanctification, forming and guiding us into the
obedience to the Father's holy will. As these three offices work out
God's one purpose. The grand consummation will be reached, the
complete deliverance from sin and all its effects will be
accomplished, and ransomed humanity will regain all that it had ever
lost.
Christ
is made of God unto us redemption. The word invites us to look upon
Jesus, not only as He lived on earth, teaching us by word and
example; as He died, to reconcile us with God; as He lives again, a
victorious King, rising to receive His crown; but also as, sitting
at the right hand of God, He takes again the glory which He had with
the Father, before the world began, and holds it there for us. It
consists in this, that there His human nature, yes, even His human
body, freed from all the consequences of sin to which He once had
been exposed, is now shares the Divine glory with the Father. As Son
of man, He dwells on the throne and in the bosom of the Father. The
deliverance from what He had to suffer from sin is complete and
eternal. The complete redemption is found embodied in His own person.
What He as man is and has in heaven is the complete redemption. He is
made of God to us redemption.
We
are in Him as such. And the more intelligently and believingly we
abide in Him as our redemption, the more we will experience, even
here in this life, "the powers of the world to come." As
our communion with Him becomes more intimate and intense, and we let
the Holy Spirit reveal Jesus to us in His heavenly glory, the more we
realize how the life in us is the life of One who sits upon the
throne of heaven. We feel the power of an endless life working in us.
We taste the eternal life. We have the foretaste of the eternal
glory.
The
blessings flowing from abiding in Christ as our redemption are great.
The soul is delivered from all fear of death. There was a time when
even the Savior feared death. But now no longer. He has triumphed
over death. Even His body has entered into the glory. The believer
who abides in Christ as his full redemption, realizes even now his
spiritual victory over death. It becomes to him the servant that
removes the last rags of the old carnal clothing before he is clothed
upon with the new body of glory. It carries the body to the grave, to
lie there as the seed from which the new body will arise as the
worthy companion of the glorified spirit. The resurrection of the
body is no longer a barren doctrine, but a living expectation, and
even an introductory experience, because the Spirit of Him who raised
Jesus from the dead dwells in the body as the pledge that even our
mortal bodies shall be quickened (Rom. 8:11-23). This faith exercises
its sanctifying influence in the willing surrender of the sinful
members of the body to be subdued and completely subjected to the
dominion of the Spirit. This is as preparation for the time when the
frail body shall be changed and fashioned like to His glorious body.
This
full redemption of Christ, extending to the body, has a depth of
meaning not easily expressed. It was said of man as a whole, soul and
body, that he was made in the image and likeness of God. In the
angels, God had created spirits without material bodies. In the
creation of the world, there was matter without spirit. Man was to be
the highest specimen of Divine art. The combination in one being, of
matter and spirit in perfect harmony, as an example of the most
perfect union between God and His own creation. Sin entered in and
appeared to thwart the Divine plan. The material obtained a fearful
supremacy over the spiritual.
The
Word was made flesh, the Divine fullness received an embodiment in
the humanity of Christ, that the redemption might be a complete and
perfect one. This was done so that the whole creation, which now
groans and travails in pain together, might be delivered from the
bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children
of God. God's purpose will not be accomplished, and Christ's glory
will not be manifested fully, until the body, with that whole of
nature of which it is part and head, has been transfigured by the
power of the spiritual life, and made the transparent clothing for
showing forth the glory of the Infinite Spirit. Only then shall we
understand: "Christ Jesus is made unto us (complete)
redemption."
In
the meantime we are taught to believe that “of God are you in
Christ...as your redemption.” This is not meant as a revelation, to
be left to the future. For the full development of the Christian
life, our present abiding in Christ must seek to enter into and
appropriate it. We do this as we learn to triumph over death now. We
do it as we learn to look upon Christ as the Lord of our body,
claiming its entire consecration, securing even here in this life, if
faith will claim it (Mark 16:17, 18), victory over the terrible
dominion sin has had in the body. We do this as we learn to look on
all nature as part of the kingdom of Christ, destined, even though it
be through a baptism of fire, to partake in His redemption. We do it
as we allow the powers of the coming world to possess us, and to lift
us up into a life in the heavenly places, to enlarge our hearts and
our views, to anticipate, even here in this life, the things which
have never entered into the heart of man to conceive.
Believer,
abide in Christ as your redemption. Let this be the crown of your
Christian life. Do not seek it first or only, apart from the
knowledge of Christ in His other relations. But seek it truly as that
to which they are meant to lead you up. Abide in Christ as your
redemption. Nothing will fit you for this but faithfulness to the
previous steps of the Christian life. Abide in Him as your wisdom,
the perfect revelation of all that God is and has for you. Follow, in
the daily ordering of the inner and the outer life, with meek
submissiveness His teaching. In doing this, you will be counted
worthy to have secrets revealed to you which to most disciples are a
sealed book. The wisdom will lead you into the mysteries of complete
redemption. Abide in Him as your righteousness. Dwell clothed upon
with Him in that inner sanctuary of the Father's favor and presence
to which His righteousness gives you access.
As
you rejoice in your reconciliation, you will understand how it
includes all things, and how they too wait the full redemption. “For
it pleased the Father... by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself;
by Him, I say, whether they be things on earth or things in heaven"
(Col. 1:19-20). And abide in Him as your sanctification. The
experience of His power to make you holy, spirit, soul and body, will
quicken your faith in a holiness that will not cease its work until
the bells of the horses and every pot in Jerusalem will be Holiness
to the Lord. Abide in Him as your redemption, and live, even here, as
the heir of the future glory. And as you seek to experience in
yourself the full power of His saving grace, your heart will be
enlarged to realize the position man has been destined to occupy in
the universe, as having all things made subject to him. You will for
your part be made fit to live worthy of that high and heavenly
calling.
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