Union With Christ # 14

Eternal Union with Christ (continued)

a. The Fact Governed by the Meaning of Christ

And why therefore is it so important? Why all this? Why is this age such a great age, and why is it that in this age heaven's fullness has been poured out? Why all this excitement, if we might so put it, on the day of Pentecost and thereafter? Well, that is just the point in our whole meditation. It is all governed by the meaning of Christ. Christ is God's Son and He is called "the firstborn of all creation" (Colossians 1:15), God's Firstborn, and everywhere in Divine revelation that designation means the "heir." He is the "heir of all things" (Hebrews 1:2). He must have an inheritance. Its very sense is that He must have an inheritance. "In whom also we were made a heritage" (Ephesians 1:11). What is the "also"? Look at the context. "To sum up all things in Christ ... in whom also we were made a heritage." "We - who is meant by the "we"? The Church. The Church is a part, the central part, of the vast inheritance of God's Son on which we have been speaking earlier in this series. "The Church is the main part, the most important part, of those all things that form the inheritance of God's Son. "In whom also we were made a heritage": Simply, it was this. God determined an inheritance for His Son. God knew what that inheritance would be - we will at least cede Him that. Even an earthly father intending and deciding to give his son an inheritance would have some idea of what it would be. And then he would certainly not leave it to chance: he would secure it, he would see to it that there was an inheritance to have. So God created all things through and unto Jesus Christ His Son. He made His Son the horizon of all things. That is, the whole inheritance was horizoned and circled by His Son; He made "in Christ" to be its sphere.

Now, that is very important, because it is not only a statement of a comprehensive truth. It is a statement of a discriminating truth. The Bible, the New Testament, makes it perfectly clear that there is that which is not in Christ and there are those who are not in Christ. That "in Christ" is quite discriminating. There has been a good deal of playing fast and loose with these fragments. "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Corinthians 15:22), and that has been given a comprehensiveness which it will not carry. In Christ you shall be made alive; out of Christ you will not. "He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life" (1 John 5:12). "This is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ" (John 17:3). "In Christ" is a discriminating sphere as well as a comprehensive inheritance. There is also all "out of Christ."

Well then, allowing God to choose for His Son an inheritance, to define the inheritance, to create the inheritance, to determine that the inheritance should come to Him, we surely will allow that, being God, He foreknew the "in Christ" people. That is as far as I am going to carry the argument side of it.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 15)