Chapter 4 - the Twelve Stones at Gilgal

IN the preceding chapter we have seen that it is faith in Christ which enables us to apprehend (after an experience often as long as the forty years in the wilderness were for Israel) our deliverance from our old estate, and introduction into a new one in Christ. The soul, long exercised learns at length-and it is God who reveals it to faith-that what it was striving vainly to attain to, has not to be done, but is a present reality, for -faith a fact, an accomplished fact, in Christ.
I used to wonder at the extreme simplicity of the language produced by the discovery of this important truth in Rom. 7, whilst it takes a whole chapter to describe the experiences of a soul previous to knowing deliverance. More than this, the despairing utterance caused by the hopelessness of the situation, changes without any interlude into one of gratitude and joy: " I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." The reason now seems simple enough. When the soul makes this discovery it learns that the deliverance which it was incapable of attaining, God had already wrought by and in Christ, so that it is no longer a thing to be accomplished. The soul discovers and appropriates it as an accomplished fact prepared long ago for faith. Then calmly and peacefully the believer can say: Henceforth I am dead, because I am in Christ; dead with Christ, dead to the law, to the world; and " I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." (Gal. 2:19,20; Rom. 6:10; Col. 2:20; Gal. 6:14.)
It is a truth which is outside the region of the intelligence; reason cannot explain it, memory cannot retain it. How often have I seen souls seeking, by similar efforts, to lay hold, so to speak, of deliverance! What was the result? When, after much painstaking, they thought they had grasped its import, a single night sufficed to disperse the illusion, just as dead leaves are swept away by a breath of wind between the evening and morning.
Ah! deliverance is not obtained in a moment, for just as there was no Jordan for Israel before -the desert, so, for us, deliverance comes after we have made the discovery of what the flesh is, and not before. Deliverance itself is not an experience, but a state which faith grasps. It is only experimental in the sense that I see myself in Christ, instead of laying hold of a work accomplished outside of myself as in redemption.
Such for us is the import of the Jordan. But God desires that the memorial of this victory should, be continually under our eyes. Joshua commands the representatives of the twelve tribes -to take twelve stones from the midst of the Jordan, from the place where the feet of the priests stood firm. They were to be for a memorial unto the children of Israel, and were to be laid in the place where the people passed their first night in the land of Canaan. The place was Gilgal, but what was the signification of the stones? They represented the twelve tribes, the people, snatched from death by the ark which had stood in the very spot where deliverance was needed, and which had stayed the waters of Jordan so that Israel could pass over. They became a monument at the very entrance of Canaan, at Gilgal, a place to which (as we shall see later on) the people had always to return; they were henceforth to be a sign constantly under their eyes and those of their children.
Now we, like Israel, stand as trophies of the victory achieved over the raging waters of the river. Christ went into death because we were there: "If one died for all, then were all dead." (2 Cor. 5:14.) But it was in order to deliver us out of death, and bring us into a new life in His own resurrection. " When we were dead in sins hath quickened us together with Christ.. and hath raised us up together." (Eph. 2:5,6.)
But the monument of this memorable work is permanently established on the other side of Jordan to serve for the maintenance of Israel's faith, a monument to be recognized at all times by the people at the entrance of Canaan. For us it is Christ, the object of our faith, the Firstborn from the dead, risen and entered into the heavenly places, but a Christ who represents us there, associating us with Himself, even as He associated Himself with us in death.
Moreover God desires that Christ thus set before us should produce a corresponding moral effect in us; that, in the contemplation of Him, our consciences should be laid hold of in a lasting way. " It is a memorial unto the children of Israel forever." It is also this for us, accompanied by an inward effect. The believer, risen with Christ, has the indelible marks of His death imprinted on him, and, if such is my place in Christ, can I live any longer in the things which I have abandoned, which Christ has left in the depths of Jordan? " In that he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God." Up to this, it is the memorial, and then comes the moral effect:” Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus." (Rom. 6:10,11.)
The twelve stones at Gilgal, then, are not merely our death and resurrection with Christ (the Jordan typified that), but the memorial of this death and resurrection as seen in a risen and glorified Christ. This monument reminds us of what we have henceforth to be. In the Jordan God declares us to be dead, and it is the portion of all the people; every Christian is dead and risen with Christ; in Gilgal we have the moral realization of this. All had crossed the Jordan, but many amongst them perhaps cared but little to inquire the meaning of the monument in Gilgal, those stones which seemed to say in living accents to the people: " Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus."