God desires those who are His to know there is nothing we will do that can ever effect change in our acceptance of Him in His Son. He knows our ever-constant primary goal is to “please” Him, and this goal is the most manifesting issue concerning our faith, and sums up all in our fellowship with Him. I say “will do,” not could do, because those who could will to do otherwise have not been under the “work” of His hands (Phl 213). He knows where we will error, but the issue lies not in all that we do, but rather in the fact that it’s never our will to displease Him, for we always will to “please” Him—whether success or failure (though our walk ever progresses “in the Spirit”).
NC
The Why Of It All
Do you know the Lord Jesus as your Savior? Not only your Savior from the wrath to come, and from Satan and the world (unbelievers, whom has always made up the majority of earth’s populous, hence the term “world”—NC), but from self? Many a one needs to have that driven home. What characterized the Lord Jesus when here? All that Satan could do, he could get nothing out of the Lord. When He was here, He was always master of Himself, and He undertakes to save us from ourselves (our sin-source, the “old man.” It’s been said that the lost need saved and the saved needs delivered, i.e. Holy Spirit “mortification” in our walk—NC). When He presents us to the Father, we shall be in glorious bodies, delivered from humiliation, “made like unto His own glorious body” (Phl 3:21). Then we shall be perfectly and eternally delivered from everything not of Him. Can you say to the Father, I am a poor, simple and foolish thing, but I see that Thou hast said, and written down, that I have been crucified together with Christ? Thou lookest on me, having faith in the love that gave Thy Son; Thou lookest on me as crucified together with Him who was put to open shame.
A second thing comes out—dead together with Him! He “gave Himself a ransom” for us, and the eternal life with which He quicken us is the eternal life which He had “before the world was” (Jhn 17:5). There can be no mistake as to what that quickening is. Dead, buried; ah, do all believers know what it is to reckon themselves buried together with Christ? When I think of the grace of the Lord Jesus, I say there was the end of myself in Adam (1Co 15:48, 49). God put me away on the Cross.
Now as to the power of this practically: if you have got any gospel at all, what is your gospel? Is it the Gospel of eternal life? If so, I expect you to be doers, not hearers only (hearers only are absent of faith, for faith always brings forth the works or “fruit” of the Spirit – Jam 2:18, 20—NC). You cannot have life, and not be a doer. The Father has met everything against me in His Son. What is the grace mark of that given to us here? “Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin (not to die but manifest in our walk we are dead—NC), but alive unto God.” Do you count yourselves to have died unto sin? Do you know what it is to be in the presence of the Father and in fellowship with Him and His Son? That He is a living Person, whose glory we can have little idea about? The Lord Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God; and do you and I know what it is to say of everything connected with the first Adam, Thou sayest of me that I have been crucified together with Christ, dead together, buried together, raised and ascended together with Him (ascended with Him in position, and though not yet physically, it is certain as if presently so because it is inevitable—NC)?
If you say that I can reckon myself to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God, I believe. Yes, you say; but do you see that I do not feel it? He never said that you would feel it! Abraham was given certain promises, and God took special care to let everything in nature get the sentence of God against it. You see how faith versus feeling was tried in Abraham. “A father of many nations have I made thee.” I can quite suppose the people around him saying, “Where are all these nations?” You have no child even, only Ishmael, who was not born in thy house. Where are all these nations? What did Abraham say? Just leave all alone. God has committed Himself by promise, and He is able to perform—leave it all alone.
Abraham took the truth of God just as the thing in which he could rest (faith is always about unceasing trust in God for all things—NC), and would rest, and did rest. I do wish to press that side of the truth. The heart having been found in the humiliation of the Lord Jesus that which enables it to look ruin in the face and say, I am not afraid to see the place Adam got me into, not afraid of the flesh or of the world. Why? Because there is my Savior! “Know ye not that as many as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into His death?” We have been crucified together with Him. There is where the saint gets rest. My Father said it, my Father has written it. We have just a little bit of the blessedness of the humiliation and the glorification of the Lord Jesus, if we have faith in the facts; but the Father knows the fullness of it all, and He will give us perfect blessing in His own time and way.
- G V Wigram (1805 – 1879)
NC
The Why Of It All
Do you know the Lord Jesus as your Savior? Not only your Savior from the wrath to come, and from Satan and the world (unbelievers, whom has always made up the majority of earth’s populous, hence the term “world”—NC), but from self? Many a one needs to have that driven home. What characterized the Lord Jesus when here? All that Satan could do, he could get nothing out of the Lord. When He was here, He was always master of Himself, and He undertakes to save us from ourselves (our sin-source, the “old man.” It’s been said that the lost need saved and the saved needs delivered, i.e. Holy Spirit “mortification” in our walk—NC). When He presents us to the Father, we shall be in glorious bodies, delivered from humiliation, “made like unto His own glorious body” (Phl 3:21). Then we shall be perfectly and eternally delivered from everything not of Him. Can you say to the Father, I am a poor, simple and foolish thing, but I see that Thou hast said, and written down, that I have been crucified together with Christ? Thou lookest on me, having faith in the love that gave Thy Son; Thou lookest on me as crucified together with Him who was put to open shame.
A second thing comes out—dead together with Him! He “gave Himself a ransom” for us, and the eternal life with which He quicken us is the eternal life which He had “before the world was” (Jhn 17:5). There can be no mistake as to what that quickening is. Dead, buried; ah, do all believers know what it is to reckon themselves buried together with Christ? When I think of the grace of the Lord Jesus, I say there was the end of myself in Adam (1Co 15:48, 49). God put me away on the Cross.
Now as to the power of this practically: if you have got any gospel at all, what is your gospel? Is it the Gospel of eternal life? If so, I expect you to be doers, not hearers only (hearers only are absent of faith, for faith always brings forth the works or “fruit” of the Spirit – Jam 2:18, 20—NC). You cannot have life, and not be a doer. The Father has met everything against me in His Son. What is the grace mark of that given to us here? “Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin (not to die but manifest in our walk we are dead—NC), but alive unto God.” Do you count yourselves to have died unto sin? Do you know what it is to be in the presence of the Father and in fellowship with Him and His Son? That He is a living Person, whose glory we can have little idea about? The Lord Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God; and do you and I know what it is to say of everything connected with the first Adam, Thou sayest of me that I have been crucified together with Christ, dead together, buried together, raised and ascended together with Him (ascended with Him in position, and though not yet physically, it is certain as if presently so because it is inevitable—NC)?
If you say that I can reckon myself to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God, I believe. Yes, you say; but do you see that I do not feel it? He never said that you would feel it! Abraham was given certain promises, and God took special care to let everything in nature get the sentence of God against it. You see how faith versus feeling was tried in Abraham. “A father of many nations have I made thee.” I can quite suppose the people around him saying, “Where are all these nations?” You have no child even, only Ishmael, who was not born in thy house. Where are all these nations? What did Abraham say? Just leave all alone. God has committed Himself by promise, and He is able to perform—leave it all alone.
Abraham took the truth of God just as the thing in which he could rest (faith is always about unceasing trust in God for all things—NC), and would rest, and did rest. I do wish to press that side of the truth. The heart having been found in the humiliation of the Lord Jesus that which enables it to look ruin in the face and say, I am not afraid to see the place Adam got me into, not afraid of the flesh or of the world. Why? Because there is my Savior! “Know ye not that as many as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into His death?” We have been crucified together with Him. There is where the saint gets rest. My Father said it, my Father has written it. We have just a little bit of the blessedness of the humiliation and the glorification of the Lord Jesus, if we have faith in the facts; but the Father knows the fullness of it all, and He will give us perfect blessing in His own time and way.
- G V Wigram (1805 – 1879)