Fellowship With Christ: 4. Quickened Together With Christ

In the three articles which preceded this, we have looked at that which the Holy Ghost teaches us, in Scripture, as to the provision, made by God, for meeting all the evil of our old former selves; of ourselves looked at-in fallen nature, and according to our descent from Adam. In Christ there was Life, and Christ's work was such, that by it God could meet (meet and set aside) all the consequences of that which He finds to be in us by nature. Crucified together with Christ; dead together with Christ; buried together with Christ, are three most precious benefits to us of the humiliation of the Lord. What an epitaph, worthy for the God of all grace to put over Saul the persecutor, and such like, when, through grace, they believe, " Crucified, dead and buried together with Christ." Other remedy, other refuge was, is, can there be none for a lost son or daughter of Adam than is here presented. But God thought not to meet us in our evil only, and to deliver us from its awful consequences and results; - the love that looked upon us when we were in our sins (and when we were children of wrath looked upon us and thought to interpose between us and the fruits of our sins, by the work of Christ), that love had a length and a breadth about it which could not measure itself out fully in the limits of our misery, - but having loved us, in spite of what we were, and fully met all the evil at its own cost, that love has taken an arena for itself which is vast enough for it to show its full measure in. The Son of God associated Himself, as Son of Man, with all the circumstances of our misery, was put to shame in our stead upon the cross; died in our stead thereon and was buried. This was His downward path; obedient unto death, the death of the cross. "He died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and - He was buried" (1 Cor. 15:3,4). But He also "rose again from the dead," etc., and, as we shall see, has associated us with Him in all the stages of His upward course of honor and blessing. He, associating Himself with us, had to suffer for us: He, associating us with Himself, in that which followed His suffering for us (as substituted for us), - how rich are the blessings which are ours in Him! These we will now turn to consider.