IT IS of God we are in Christ Jesus. God makes choice of us in Christ. With desire, "in accord with the delight of His Will," He seeks us. In His own time and way He "graces us in the Beloved," and makes us His own. And even then our thirst after God is but the faint echo of His longing for us. That God comes to our life is of Himself. He awakens response and gives us to see that our highest good is to be found in Christ. And for our positive assurance God has indelibly inscribed the ever-unfolding consequence of being in Christ. "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation . . . All is of God (2 Cor.5:17,18)." If anyone is in Christ. How may this be? What are we to see and grasp to have this consciousness? And how may we be absolutely sure and certain the blessing is ours? These are questions many lips might frame, but to all God has His adequate answer, however imperfect our own. It may be because it is God's purpose that some should experience it. And to this end there are two great causes: The impulsive and the instrumental. These we find in the love of God, and the Word of truth. God sets His love upon us, and reveals, even as He recommends that love, in the Word of truth. And such love surmounts everything. It reaches, and will ever reach, God's great objectiveÄÄto be "everything to everyone." The Word of truth enlightens, enriches, and engages the heart. Therein we see God's wondrous estimate of Christ. A Saviour Who is Christ the Lord. The Son of His love, in Whom we are chosen and graced. The Only begotten, Who is in the bosom of the Father, and Who so gloriously unfolds Him. So, of God, are we in Him. "All is of God, Who conciliates us to Himself through Christ." Believing this makes it a settled matter. God has done all that is necessary, all that is called for by His own high standards. All He designed He has done, that the transforming emergence might be ours. There is a new creation. A new order of going awaits our response. A realm in which "all things are of God." It is as if we heard the words: "Lo! I am making all new!" And while it is true the old things surround us still, yet now we see them as God sees them. We have to do many things, as do others in the world, who are of the world. But they lose themselves in the every-day of life. Material things capture and hold their entire thought. Their vision is blurred, so that "the illumination of the evangel of the glory of Christ does not irradiate them." How great our blessing, then, when God comes into our life! When we see things as of Him, noting His appointments and even His withholdings, as being of the only wise God, Who so truly sees ahead! How this cuts out scheming and planning, the while it shapes and strengthens reliance on His Will! God being now quite consciously in our life, our capacity to receive and accept His will should be enlarged. Rightly exercised by all that comes to us, it will be so. Are we set in families, or do we walk a solitary way? Is fellowship of kindred minds a rare occurrence? Are we poor or prosperous? In all these states, if in Christ, the glad consequence should be a new creation. There is a new creation, but do we make it really so? And this, not only for ourselves, but does it also become apparent to others? Life can be very cramped in big cities. Man's buildings can blot out so much, even of the material. And how much more of the spiritual! To see only stocks and shares, multiple stores, houses and machinery, is but to vision creations of man. They have their use, their little day, but lift us not to things above. A picture with no sky in it lacks beauty. "It is the horizon that gives dignity to the foreground." And whether this be of reposeful or tempestuous clouds, its imprint makes the picture complete. Whatever, then, be the circumstance and detail of the foreground, may there ever be the consciousness of a great horizon. All is of God. In the immediate experience, the passing hour, this may be hard to realize. But it is just then we need the spaciousness of our horizon, even to look to Him Who is above the moments, hours, and days, even as He is in them. Then shall we restfully know, in the face of every rift, that we are of God, in Christ. Of God in Christ. What implications are in these words! God-likeness, and Christliness of life. Christ is of God. And did He not say: "Learn of me?" Think how His disciples of old learned of Him. How much they must have seen and heard!
They believed in His belief. Yet with what faltering and slowness of heart. But what of ourselves? With the rich legacies of a later day, what manner of belief ought ours to be! Placed in an era of purest grace, with the testimony of a follower like Paul, our heritage is immeasurably great. For we have obtained "the spirit which is of God, that we may be perceiving that which is graciously given to us by God (1 Cor.2:12)." The spirit which is of God. How dearly this gives us to see what is distinctly and altogether of God! When moved to the path in which it operates, our spirit senses its guidance, its power to sift the wheat from the chaff. But the spirit of the world, in its vaunting of the seen and immediate, feeds upon soulish things. For in the world's wisdom these are the things that matter: things that thrill, things spectacular, promise and prophecy of a golden ageÄÄmixture of dream and discontent. No, not the spirit of the world! But the spirit which is of God. And this spirit finds exercise in the varied situations of life, giving an enabling power of judgment, a poise and balance becoming those of God. And what a spirit should be ours in looking forth on men! Having Christ's spirit, our desire should be to give rather than to receive. And we can only give what we have. And this should be, not our thirst and our hunger, our wants and our wishes. God will see to these, that from His rare supply, we may give our bread and our gourd. God has come into our life. And the fact is demonstrated daily. Before our eyes, in all that touches us, God demonstrates the great fact that we are of Him. God always carries His statements to their logical conclusion. If then His Word declares: "You, of Him, are in Christ Jesus," He makes it absolutely true and an incontrovertible fact. And the believing of it He makes richly worth while. Life is filled with overwhelming evidence to all who know their God. What manner of being must He be Who for us holds so much? One Who can meet and satisfy the entire range of human need! And however deep, however difficult of disclosure, Christ understands them all. In Him we find the guiding thread of life's strange labyrinth. We are "enriched in everything in Him," and "not deficient in a single grace." We are sons of God. Temples of the living God. Even of Him Whose love and grace have made us such. Of Him Whose will and word, and leading spirit, are in continuous process in our lives. What larger place can we desire than that we find "in Christ?" There, indeed, is conscious, inner calm, an ever-present realization of God. And this is a truth not for study only, for the lecture or the arm chair. It is for common life, with its wearing thought, and seeming impotence in face of ill. Translated thus, the hourly path is life and peace. And even as in Canaan, houses were already built, wells digged, and vineyards waiting, so in the new creation blessings await us. The secrets of His heart are many, and once known, are unforgetable. But only the spirit which is of God enables us to understand them, and to appreciate their worth. They are things divine, things of God, in Christ. In Him, the Christ of God. The essential, indispensable Christ. The One Whose dread hour at Gethsemane and at Golgotha wrought our redemption, our "deliverance through His blood." The solitary dignity of the blood, spelling out for all time, forgiveness, magnificently full, complete. It is of God in Christ.
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