Only
a few words, yet how blessedly full of peace and joy! How precious
they are to faith! If we, to whom they apply, would remember them
daily, how happy in Him we would be. In all our ways, in good and
evil days, yea, every moment the truth contained in these words ought
to be real to the true believer. Is not all our failure due to the
fact that we live not sufficiently in the consciousness and reality
of this wonderful fact, that we belong to Christ, that we are one
with Him? Before these words in the third chapter of First Corinthians
we find the statement "all things are yours." And after
these words it is written "Christ is God's." We are Christ's
and Christ is God's; all things are ours because Grace has brought
us into this marvelous relationship. "Christ is God's" gives
us once more the whole story of God's Love and Grace. As the Only
Begotten He ever subsisted in the form of God, the image of God,
one with Him, absolutely God. But He came down, took upon Him the
form of a servant, taking His place in the likeness of man. In the
form of man He wrought the great work of redemption on the cross
and now after His resurrection, by which He is proven Son of God
and His presence as the glorified Man in the highest heaven, He is
the one in whom and through whom God, the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ gives all blessing. "Christ is God's," then,
means what we learn from the following scriptures: "The Father
loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand" (John
3:35). "Whom He hath appointed heir of all things" (Heb.
1:2). "Christ is God's" is a word which tells us that He
who is the Creator of all things, the visible and the invisible,
came in incarnation, redeemed us and is now, the beginning, the first-begotten
from the dead and the Head of His Body, which is the Church. This
is how God has brought us to Himself in the person of His own Son
by whom he has redeemed us, in whom He has exalted us and with whom
He has given us all things.
To that wonderful person, Christ, the Christ of God, we belong. We are His, who is One with God, by whom and for whom all things were created. The Son of God for such as we are, became poor, even to the poverty of the cross. There He took our place and in His own body He bore our sins and died for us. He saw us then the travail of His soul. We can look back to the cross and say, as His Apostle said: "Who loved me and gave Himself for me." We belong to Him, who has all power in heaven and will have all power before long, as King of Kings and Lord of Lords on earth. We are Christ's, whom God has appointed as the second Man, the head of the new creation as Heir of all things. We are Christ's, who is the Head of the Body, to which we belong. In Him and with Him we are the Heirs of God. God and Christ are inseparable and so are Christ and we who have trusted in Him and have His life. All Christ has belongs to us; all Christ is we shall be; where Christ is there we shall be in all eternity. Reader! Child of God, pause! Does your faith lay hold of this? Do you read it only and enjoy it just for a moment or is this great fact of your union with Christ and God becoming daily a greater reality in your life? Is it really so that you enter deeper and deeper into that love which passeth knowledge? Oh! that it may be so with the writer and each believer who reads these feeble words on so great a theme.
"Ye are Christ's." Then we are not our own. That is exactly what is elsewhere stated in First Corinthians. "Ye are not your own;" we are bought with a price; "therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's" (1 Cor. 6:19-20). Our hearts occupied with Himself, increasingly attracted by the glorious Person of our adorable Lord, realizing by the power of His Spirit our glory and destiny with the Lord of Glory, we shall act and walk as such, who are Christ's. Every step of the way it will resound in our hearts "ye are Christ's." In all we do we shall always remember we are Christ's. Cares, anxieties, worldly ambitions, all manner of temptations, will fall before the fact grasped in faith, "I am Christ's."
We are convinced that only the Person of Christ put before the heart of the believer through the Word of God and the power of His Spirit can keep the Christian in these awful days of apostasy from going along with the fearful current of the last days. If Christ and our blessing in Him become more real to us we will be beyond the reach of the god of this age with his wiles and sinister purposes.
Furthermore the demand of the hour is for us to exalt Christ. How He is dishonored is a dread reality. The rejection of Christ was never so marked and never so satanic as in these days. God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ expects from us His children that we exalt Him in the days of His rejection and thus share His reproach. Let us do it!
And lastly, if we [always] have the Person of Christ before our hearts, we shall walk in obedience to Him as our Lord. Then if we exalt Christ and are obedient to Him we have the fullest assurance that the Holy Spirit will be with us, upon us and fill us. There is no need to seek "the power" as some express it, nor a baptism of the Spirit. He will be with us and in us in the measure as we exalt Christ and walk in Him.
O gracious Lord, when we reflect
How apt to turn the eye from Thee,
Forget Thee, too, with sad neglect,
And listen to the enemy,
And yet to find Thee still the same—
'Tis this that humbles us with shame.
Astonished at Thy feet we fall,
Thy love exceeds our highest thought,
Henceforth be Thou our all in all,
Thou who our souls with blood hast bought;
May we henceforth more faithful prove,
And ne'er forget Thy ceaseless love.
From The Lord of Glory... by A. C. Gaebelein. New York: Publication Office "Our Hope", ©1910.
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