04.23. LESSON 23

LESSON 23

God the Father imparts his own life to each of his children in a spiritual birth. Then the child has the privilege of growing up in the family of God into a mature son, who, when in sorrow, can always in "The Spirit of adoption"... cry, "Abba, Father," as Christ, his Elder Brother, in his deep sorrow, cried, "Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; remove this cup from me: howbeit not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Mark 14:36). In this beautiful, natural manner of little children and of Jesus, we should be "Waiting for (the full realization of) our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" (Mark 14:23), at his coming.

"And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ, whom God ’appointed heir of all things’ " (Hebrews 1:2). Do we grasp the truly amazing import of these simple words? Angels are promised no such patrimony. Why are we so little excited about our inheritance? Paul knew the need of praying that Christians "May know the hope of his (God’s) calling" (Ephesians 1:18).

God’s Over-all Program The Maker of man built into both his physical and spiritual constitution the necessity of his dependence upon his Maker. Therefore when Adam revolted against God, the injury to himself and to his progeny was so constitutional, and to God so grievous, that God announced his sublime economy, conceived before the foundation of the world, of his Son’s becoming man in order to woo man back to allegiance so that God and man working together might repair the wrongs each had suffered. Accordingly, the eternal Son, as seed of the virgin Mary, became God-man to found and to reign over a mediative redemptive kingdom, within the universal, eternal kingdom of his Father, until the rebellion should be put down. Then Christ, as triumphant Conqueror, shall deliver up his special kingdom to God, the Father. And "That God may be all in all," Christ, though crowned with the glory he had before the world was, shall be in subjection to God, who shall reign forever over "New heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." This, I believe, is a spiritual, skeletal outline, historic and prophetic, of the kingdom, or church, of Christ (1 Corinthians 15:20-28; Revelation 21:1-8; 2 Peter 3:8-13). To give up this scriptural blending of God and man is to give up Christianity itself. Christ prayed to God for Christians: "That they may all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us" (John 17:21). John, who heard this prayer, never forgot it, for his writings are saturated with its doctrine. "And he that keepeth his commandments abideth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he gave us" (1 John 3:24). "Hereby we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit" (1 John 4:13). These Scriptures and many more such as, "For both he that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren" (Hebrews 2:11), chord perfectly with Romans 8:1-39, and with the symbolism of the Lord’s Supper.

"Speak to him, for he hears,
and Spirit with Spirit can meet—
Closer is he than breathing,
and nearer than hands and feet."

According to the Bible, the Holy Spirit links Christians to Christ, who is both God and man—man as he was made, and is to be again when fully redeemed. As God, he is "The image of the invisible God," "The effulgence of his glory, and the very image of his substance." Christ said to Philip, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." As man, Christ, during his life on earth as a man, was what

Adam, had he obeyed God, might have been. And since his resurrection even until now, he is what fallen man is yet to be; for at his coming, in the same body that arose from the tomb, that appeared to friends, and that ascended into heaven (Acts 1:11), "We shall be like him" (1 John 3:2). Bodily resurrection, instead of being something exceptional which lifts Christ to a life, inaccessible to others, is to be the common experience of all Christians—"Christ the first-fruits; then they that are Christ’s at his coming." This truth is what gives such tremendously vital, personal meaning to the fact of Christ’s resurrection.

Life is God’s first and last law. Abnormal, penal death, "the wages of sin," marks the entrance and exit of sin. In Genesis 1:1-31, Genesis 2:1-25, sinless, therefore deathless, man appears. Revelation 21:1-27, Revelation 22:1-21, "Though a wide compass be fetched," return to the starting place of sinless, therefore deathless, man. The intervening chapters are dedicated to God’s spiritual way of winning foolish, sinning, suffering, dying man, "spirit and soul and body," back to life. "Why is it judged incredible with you, if God doth raise the dead?"

Suffering and Hoping
Romans 8:17-25 The suffering of these verses is not merely the unavoidable kind that sin has brought upon the whole frame of animate and inanimate nature, but also the inevitable kind that being in fellowship with Christ involves—the kind that Paul knew so well by choice. It is especially the non-meritorious suffering that chastens and conditions us to reign with Christ in glory. "If we endure, we shall also reign with him" (2 Timothy 2:12). Unless we are led by the Holy Spirit as was Christ, it is impossible for us to possess his disposition to serve and to suffer; impossible for us to be his brethren and co-heirs, and to be promoted finally to the glory of perfected sonship. Suffering in general is the penalty of both sin and love. As a mother suffers with her suffering child, so God suffers with his suffering earth; as a shepherd and his lost sheep must meet at one place, so Christ and lost men come together in common suffering. May we with Paul look at present trouble through smoked glass, but at coming glory with unclouded eyes. This pregnant Scripture declares the all-pervading unity of the universe, the interdependence of rational and irrational creation, and Christ’s kinship, even unto the dust of his body, with all created earthly things. It represents the whole world as groaning in birth throes, longing and hoping for deliverance from the decay, dissolution, and death that the colossal stupidity of sin has entailed upon it until "The blessed hope and appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:12). Without such teaching, we could but hopelessly and helplessly stand aghast at the world-old waste and misery; with such teaching, we can patiently wait for the bad dream to end with the coming of the morning.

Questions