Communicates Life
What the Spirit of God speaks of in chapter 1 of this epistle as to our relationship with the Father is surpassingly marvelous, and we can only know it by knowing for what purpose Christ came. Knowing it, we are identified with that Son who came into the world that we might have life in Him, and God sent His Son that we might have life. What sort of life is it? A life that brings a believer into direct connection with the Father and the Son. Not only am I a son, but being born of God I have a new nature.
He tells me I am in His Son who was before all worlds and He in me. Think what a place it is in which He sees me, and notice all God's springs are in Himself. He saw nothing in man but hatred, and it was divine love that led Him to give His Son, and love that led that Son to come into this world that God's love might be manifested to His creatures. His own nature and heart led Him to do it. He drew His own motive from within Himself, and He puts this same love into the heart of him who tastes it. It is love that brings us into the presence of God Himself, a love that communicates the life of His Son to those dead in trespasses and sins. They have a life that is locked up in the Son and never can be touched.
Is it true that you can say, "The manner of life I have is life hid with Christ in God"? If Christ Himself in glory is my life, it links me up with Him in whom is the whole bundle of life. The Head cannot say to the foot, "I have no need of thee." Why? Because of its being bound up in the bundle of life. Not only is that life brought out in all beauty in Him who was with the Father, but that life has been communicated by the Father to us, and is so in us that Christ cannot say He has no need of us.
Did you ever look up into the face of the Lord Jesus Christ with the consciousness of having one life with Him? If so, you cannot entertain a single question about the place you are in before God. In Eden all was very beautiful and looking around man might have said, "What a great Giver God is." But what can we say as those to whom this life has been given, and whose fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ? Surely we can with deeper feeling say, "What a blessed Giver our God is!" When I wandered in sins, He found me and gave me a life that has brought me into fellowship with Himself and His Son.
The eleven on the day of Pentecost saw the stream of life flowing to this and that one, and even to men who had dipped their hands in the blood of God's own Son. But did it cease then? No, it has flowed for over nineteen hundred years into the dead souls of sinners. When we look, we find it has connected us with another scene altogether. Well may you say, I am very unlike Him whose life I have. If you have it, you have found out, and will be finding out till He comes to take you to Himself in a glorified body, what a contrast you are to Him.