Table of Contents

The Work of Grace

THE WORK OF GRACE FOR, AND THE WORK OF GRACE IN, MAN.

"Dying to Death."

The Fear of Death

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G. V. Wigram - Short Papers

G. V. Wigram

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The Work of Grace

The Work of Grace

from Short Papers

by G. V. Wigram.

(Allan, 1871)

THE WORK OF GRACE FOR, AND THE WORK OF GRACE IN, MAN.

"Then were there two thieves crucified with Him, one on the right hand, and another on the left. And they that passed by reviled Him, wagging their heads, and saying, Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross. Likewise also the chief priests mocking Him, with the scribes and elders, said, He saved others; Himself He cannot save. If He be the king of Israel, lot Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now, if He will have Him; for He said, I am the Son of God. The thieves also, which were crucified with Him, cast the same in His teeth" (Matt. 27: 38-44).

"And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on Him, saying, If thou be Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Luke 23: 39 - 43).

THE SAVIOUR, the Son of Man, was dying: the just One in place of the many unjust; bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. This was His great work for us. But of the two malefactors, between whom He was crucified, both of whom had reviled Him — one became converted, and showed a work of grace wrought in him.

The work of grace for us, and the work of grace in us, are not one and the same thing, any more than the death of Christ for the thief, and the change inside the thief (by the means of which he ceased to be a blasphemer and owned Jesus), were one and the selfsame thing. The former is outside of us, and was in and by CHRIST; the second is in ourselves, though wrought there by grace.

I desire to present a few thoughts which are connected with this most important subject.

And first: what is it which hinders God and a sinner meeting and being together. True: the sinner's will is opposed to God; his heart's affections, too, are alienated from God; and, doubtless, if he, as a sinner, were in the light of God's presence, he would find, soon enough, that the light of God's presence discovers all the sin of the creature. But the difficulty was not in the creature, however sunk, alienated, and deluded he may be, and however unsuited for such a one the holiness and majesty of God's presence may be. There was another question, one of far higher and deeper import, viz., How could God, in His holiness and righteousness, meet a sinner who has, by sin, done dishonour to God? Sin is an insult to God — to God in His majesty and being  - and the soul that gets into light knows this to be so.

So far as God is concerned, the work of grace in us is never separated from the work of grace for us. From the day of the fall and of man's exclusion, from Eden, God wrought in man, but always upon the ground of the work which He meant to do for man. And in working thus in man he has constantly presented some object to the mind, in which the work for man was shadowed forth. The sacrifice offered by Abel; the victims of the patriarchal worship; the sacrifices of the sanctuary, etc., all pointed onward to the work which Christ was to do for man, work by which alone God could be just while justifying a sinner, work which alone can ever satisfy the conscience of a sinner in the presence of God about sin. But the work in man preceded the work for man in all these cases. At Calvary, the Son of Man gave Himself a ransom for us. From that day onward, the work of grace for man has had nothing added to it, nothing new from the time that by one sacrifice He perfected for ever them that are sanctified. But though the work for man is finished, yet is the work of grace in man quite as needful now as ever. That it is wrought in man by the Holy Ghost, through faith in the work accomplished for man, is true; but it must be wrought in man or man is lost.

The peculiarity of the conversion of the thief upon the cross is, that it is a case in which grace was working in a man to open his heart to Christ, at the very moment that Christ was doing for man that work without which no way was opened for God to bless, nor open for man to come for blessing.

On this account the distinctness of the two things is the more easily seen, and this may help some to see how they should not confound them together, and how impossible it would be for the one to be exchanged so as to be made to take the place of the other.

Justice had brought the two thieves, for their misdeeds, to the violent death of the cross. There, they were surrounded by a mass, who (cared not for them, but who) were gathered to the spot to revile and blaspheme the dying Saviour.

The thieves heard the revilings, and adopted them, for they cast the same in his teeth. But an entire change came over one of them. Light broke in upon his soul, and in its case it was the light of life — eternal life.

God had taken His rightful place in the man's soul. The effect is immediate; and, remark — he rebukes his fellow-malefactor: "Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? and we, indeed, justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss." When the candle of the Lord searches a man, it is sure to discover sin in him to himself. It must be so; for righteousness and holiness are inseparable from the light of God; and man is unholy. The light detects and shows the unholiness. Yet is there in this experience of the thief also another feeling expressed. He knew sin to be inseparable from himself — he knew it, and yet he sought to put it down with an unhesitating mind. He rebukes his fellow-malefactor for doing the very thing which himself had done just before, and the which he had but just ceased to do.

This was, as man would count it, practically inconsistent. Quite so. Conscience, when it gets into God's presence, and has the light of life, acts in a way which is very inconsistent with human thoughts of consistency and propriety. He was inconsistent as a man, but consistent as a saint. 'Tis strange, that first-dread and hatred of sin which leads us to put our mouths in the dust and to condemn sin in ourselves — part of our being as it may have been. But it is a blessed instinct of the new life, of life divine in a soul: that sin must be condemned, for it is hateful . This true taste of what sin is, is a very different thing from the dread of the consequences of sins. Dread of the consequences of sin and sins may alarm and terrify the soul, and drive it to seek a Saviour. But the light of life shining, in quickening power, into a soul, separates between it and the sin itself: gives it an altogether new estimate of what sin is. "Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? and we indeed, justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss." How full — both in the general statement and in the particular detail in his confession of sin: what an abandoning and disclaimer of all human righteousness.

"We indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds." And it was light, not vague and ill-defined, that shone in upon his soul, but clear and distinct; for it was the light of a contrast between the Christ of God and himself: "But this man hath done nothing amiss." Himself and. the Christ were in his conscience, contrasted the one with the other. His language was that of faith; and, little as he knew it, he was, in the hour of the Lord's being forsaken by all, giving the description of Him which will be owned of God to be true of Christ alone. "This man hath done nothing amiss" will be loudly proclaimed as true of Christ alone in the glory; and all of us that will be there will know and own the perfectly graphic, distinctive description, as being His alone. Of Adam's race, not one, from Eden down to the placing of the great white throne, not one, save the seed of the woman, of whom it could be said in truth, This man hath done nothing amiss."

God; sin; himself; the man that is Jehovah's fellow — these were not only new experiences of his soul, but they marked that he had a new life — and had got into a world of light, where things are seen just as they are. But his faith went further, and he sees not only the personal peculiarity of the sinless One at his side, but, also, that there was in him a heart on which, spite of all the contrast between the Christ and himself, he might cast his every care. "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." The glories, and the kingdom, and the majesty of the Lord brake in upon his soul — sinner as he was — and yet he saw that in that One there was the only rest, the alone hope for him. This, also, is an instinct of the new nature. It will see and own the contrasts between the Christ and what we are, but it will cleave to Him in spite of our misery and His gloriousness — it will cleave to Him as being all our salvation.

If we are to be vessels filled with grace, we may be assured that there has been a somewhat similar work wrought in us — and we shall be able to record it as a work of the Lord in us — a work which puts us just where the Lord's work in the thief put him, viz., into the position of expecting from the Lord, into a position in which the Lord could show some of the exceeding riches of His grace as He did in His answer to the thief. The thief asked to be remembered in the kingdom: Jesus answered, "Verily, I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise."

Christ had His rightful place in this poor sinner's soul, and no mistake about it, and this place was His from the time that the rocky heart was riven open. But what the thief experienced in his own soul — the blessed work which God was doing in the soul of the poor thief, while it fitted him to receive the grace, could not appear in heaven in place of the blood of the Lamb of God: there it could neither justify God in justifying a thief, nor discover to the thief that which, in the light, is his justification before God. Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. Christ was then and there shedding His blood, giving His life, the just One in place of the unjust. And whether that poor thief, or any other sinner, were ever saved or not — He, risen from the dead and gone into heaven, the way is plainly set forth, in which God declares that He is free to bless the vilest of the vile; — the way, too, in which the vilest of the vile that comes by it finds a way of peaceful access to God. If no one upon earth cared for that new and living way, yet it is a new and living way, and it is open: open for God the Holy Ghost to come down by, and open for man to draw nigh to God, even into the holiest of all in the heavens. The work of grace in us cannot be substituted for, cannot be put in the place of, this the work of grace for us; the work of grace in me cannot vindicate God's holiness so as to justify Him in moving in favour of me, a sinner. And, clearly, so far as it is a work of grace wrought in me by God, God has moved in my favour to work it ere it over was wrought.* And, moreover, it contains in it, for just the self-same reason, no answer to my conscience if it is in the presence of God — nothing that can make for me a perfect conscience.

*People may look at the incorruptible seed in the Christian, and say, that it is a reason for God to act, viz., because it is of God. But then how came God to put it into me? How was His holiness, His justice, vindicated in this standing up for me at all? The blood of Jesus Christ is the alone answer.

God has a right to act without man's leave, and in spite of man. None can say unto Him, "What doest thou?" But then He has a character of His own, which He will not deny. And if He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, and will have compassion on whom He will have compassion, He does so in a way which thoroughly vindicates His holiness and His justice, in a way which elevates conscience in man, while it gives to it perfect liberty and boldness of approach unto God in the light.

People may argue against justification. by faith alone; but they may depend upon it, that if they ever find themselves in the same light of life in which the poor thief found himself, they will find that they themselves appear very miserable, and that there is an attractive beauty about the Christ, who is all the salvation of the soul.

Many may turn faith into a work for themselves to work; but they will find that the Spirit convicts of unbelief; and that all their rest is in the Lord Himself, and in the work He has wrought for poor sinners.

From the fall until Christ died, God renewed souls, and this was at once His instrument of doing it; and the reception of it was the only warrant before Him. the reception of the testimony He might be pleased to give about the seed of the woman that was to come. All His actions supposed that work to be sure and certain. From the day of Pentecost the testimony of God has been about that work itself, and how heaven was opened thereby for the Holy Ghost to come down, and for man to draw near by faith.

Where the testimony of God is received, as, for instance, about Christ as a new and living way (see Heb. 10), the soul that receives it finds its assurance to be in the work itself so presented to it: not in its own feelings, thoughts, or experiences about it, but in the work ITSELF. For so has God been pleased to settle it. The light shining in brings with it its own testimony. It places me in the sight of God upon His throne in heaven, where He has placed Christ, who bare sin in His own body on the tree, that He might become the new and living way of blessing from God to man, and of approach by man to God.

The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is revealed as the God who has provided Himself a lamb, that His mercy and His compassion might be evident before all — heaven opened upon them.

That the heart of man is so wicked and so deluded, that it cannot, will not, believe such things of God is true. and in this is seen the awfulness of man's condition. It must meet God, and it hates Him, and loves to nourish hard thoughts of Him. But when the light of life does break in, it is its own evidence. Its entrance may not be understood at first; but the light will be found to be evidence of the subject whence it comes, and will be found to be the light of life.

"Dying to Death."

"Dying to Death."

from Short Papers

by G. V. Wigram.

(Allan, 1871)

To a believer, death (his own death) is now, in point of fact, "dying to death" - "the ceasing to have to do with dying." I am quite aware that this statement may be startling, at first sight, to some — perhaps to many. But is it not truth?

Though I am a believer, yet have I now, and so shall I have, all through my pilgrim-life, the law of sin and death in my members; I have, therefore, to die daily; again, death, moral death, is reigning in the world all around me, and the only way in which I can give a testimony of life, eternal life, here, will also be found to be inseparable from dying daily: but that which men call death — the last act of my mortal life — is really the act in which I cease for ever from all that is mortal; in which I taste for the first time without contact with death — eternal life.

When a Stephen, when a Paul, died, he (in and by his death) ceased, and for ever ceased — 1st, from all connection with the law of sin and death in his members: and, 2ndly,* from the needs — be of dying daily, — because he ceased from that which, in his body and in the circumstances of the earth, rendered it impossible for eternal life to shine out of him without his dying daily.

*Note it well: there was nothing in the body of the blessed Lord Jesus (who was the Life) as to which He could die daily  - for He was divinely perfect: but from the character of the place in which He gave testimony, that testimony could not flow out, could not be made good by Him, save by an incessant carrying by Him of the cross (indeed the being in the place was a cross to Him from the very nature of its evil opposition to His own purity), which, morally, He did from the very commencement of His testimony; and He had also to walk as one who had no life upon earth, either to treasure up for Himself with care, or, to protect from danger with caution.

As a believer, I am reckoned of God, and reckon myself to have been — and to be — crucified together with the Christ: that is, He in grace bore, in my stead, upon the cross, the whole judgment which was justly due to me as the penalty of my sin and of my sins. "Nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Now this new life is essentially (that is, in its very self and nature it is) a new thing. It has a world and circumstances proper to it; but the source and centre of them, each and all, is the Christ of God; and He is not now in this world. While I am here below, this new life may have communion with Christ who is in God, and it may count upon the presence and guardian care of God the Holy Ghost: and it certainly is cared for by the Christ, and preserved by the Holy Ghost: yet is it in near contact with all that is in the earthen vessel in which it now is, and that earthen vessel is also in a world of iniquity. But the moment at which the tie that binds me (who am a new creature in Christ — one that is born of an incorruptible seed) to the earthen vessel is dissolved, all this connection with weakness, and sin, and sorrow, ceases at once, ceases for ever; and, at once, absent from the body, I am present with the Lord; and to depart and be with the Christ is far better. This divine act, so full of grace, of dissolving the tie which binds one that is a new creature in Christ Jesus, which links him to that which is not alive in him, is it "the wages of sin?" By no means: so far from being the wages of sin and the expression of part of the actions of him that has the power of death, that is the devil, it is an act of Christ; and His power to do it is most emphatically one of the first early fruits of the complete victory of Him who, as the seed of the woman, found death (not as did Adam in the path of disobedience, but) in the path of an unparalleled obedience, and toward the very terminus of that part of the path where humiliation was to cease. To man, it is appointed once to die, and [long] after that the judgment: but, in contrast to this, Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation. After being crucified, He was, indeed, dead and buried: but on the third day He arose again, — showed Himself on earth, and then ascended up to heaven, and, when once seated there in heaven, then could He show forth to and in His people the fruits of His victory over Satan, and death, and the grave.

Christ ascended, and in glory with God and the Father, was Himself the proof of God's mercy and compassion; of the complete and finished salvation which was in Him: in Him life was found, and from Him the Holy Ghost came down to form and sustain eternal life, and a testimony in and by those that believed in Him; to whom He had given a conscience made perfect from all guilt, through the knowledge of Him alive and on the throne. But more than this, life and immortality having been brought to light by the Gospel, the opening of the heavens upon man down here could take place, and the character of the glory which is hereafter to be shown in the heavens could be presented — and more than this too. For if the humiliation part of the Christ's course was ended, and if He had in heaven, to fill up, in patient trust in God, a period of waiting until the time should be come for His taking His Power and reigning, not only is the believer taught to fill up that which remains behind of the sufferings of Christ for His body's sake, — still looking onward, that if so be we suffer with Him we may also be glorified together — but also much and most blessed truth has been revealed to him, about the blessedness of being absent from the body and present with the Lord.

When death was announced as the wages of sin, there was no eternal incorruptible seed in man: moral death is disobedience; death of the body in the separation of the soul to go into an unseen world, and the body to return to dust; and the second death of the lake of fire and brimstone prepared for the devil and his angels — were all before man. Not understood by man, as they may be now understood; not set forth clearly by God, as they now are set forth; though ever, from the beginning, presented more or less clearly by Him, as a God of righteous judgment and a just Judge. But not until the Son of man was glorified, seated as Son of man in the glory which he had had with the Father ere ever the world was, were life and immortality brought to light. That which makes the essential difference to us in handling our subject was, until then, wrapped up in a thicker cover than covered any part of the most holy of the tabernacle furniture — the curtain that hindered the light shining out, or man's eye looking in or seeing it, was thicker than the veil of the temple which was rent at the death of Christ. Who can be thankful enough for the actual fact of the Son of man being in heaven? He is there personally; and He makes all sure for us. From Him descends to us the light of knowledge that He is there; all the instruction, too, which we have as to the manner and kind of blessing which is ours in Him, has come down from Him; from Him, too, we have learnt about suffering now — the dying daily to self and sin and the world, even as, hereafter, we are to be in the glory which is reserved for Him: from Him, too, has descended to us the knowledge of what we are as new creatures in Christ Jesus, and how it is reserved for Him to change these bodies of humiliation, and to fashion them like unto His own body of glory, by the mighty power whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself; and, before that hour come, how it is His, according to the power that pertains to Him alone, to loose and gather up to Himself that new man that He has formed in us, and thus to give us to taste, as then fully freed for ever from all that is mortal, to taste in spirit, in His presence, before the mortal body shall have put on immortality, and before this corruptible body shall have put on incorruptibility — to taste, I say, the sweetness of being "with the Lord."

I know nothing that shows out more simply the divine and eternal reality of what Christ does for a poor sinner that believes in Him, than that which thus comes out to light when the tabernacle is thus left. It seems almost as if it were needful for the glory of Christ, that what He has given to us should be thus thrown out in relief. There is something in man, as a believer, which was not in Adam when first created; there is a direct contrast between its nature and the state of all that is in me and around: Satan has not power over it; the corrupter cannot corrupt the incorruptible seed. Liar and destroyer that he is, and having the power of death as the devil may have, yet could he not touch Job's bodily life, nor a hair of his head, without permission. This tabernacle of my body will not drop, nor shall I get away from it one moment before my Lord appoints: but whether it be burnt in the flames in martyrdom or nailed to a cross, and there and so the cord that binds me to the body be roughly broken, or whether the bond that ties the bird to the open cage be dissolved in some more gentle way, the dissolution of the tie is not the dissolution of anything immortal, but of that which is mortal. And if it ever take place (and it will never take place if Christ come in my mortal days), then it takes place under the hand and by the act of Christ Himself, who then and there will free me, completely and for ever, from all that is now mortal in me and in my circumstances, and He will use me as one of those blessed proofs of the entirely new order of blessing which He, as Redeemer, has introduced. He can sow the body in corruption until the hour of His appearing in glory, and realize to myself in soul and spirit what the power and what the blessedness of being absent from the body and present with the Lord: positive and real and unalloyed blessing with Himself; though not perfected as to measure until the body be raised.

Saul was once dead in trespasses and sins, and had an experience accordingly. When Christ revealed Himself to him, and gave him the new name of Paul, he became alive in Christ Jesus, and had the joy (earthen vessel as he was still in himself) of Christ in him the hope of glory: but then his experience, though gladsome in spirit on the heavenly side, was one of death and resurrection, so far as himself and his services lay in the wilderness. Now he is out of the precincts of death altogether; the death of his body let him go free from death, completely and for ever; Christ took him away, gathered him up, to be present with the Lord. And there above with Christ he now waits, until Christ shall rise up, and shall call up out of the graves the bodies of those that believed in Him; and then shall Paul, not as now, absent from the body and present with the Lord (a most anomalous state, which nothing can explain but the abnormal state of the Son of man upon the Father's throne — in patient trust, waiting for the time of His manifestation in glory), but clothed upon with a glorified human body, have the full joy and glory to which redeeming love has called him.

Let the reader mark these four states, and four experiences of Paul; and he will certainly see, that in entering upon the third of them, Paul left mortality and all that was mortal (whether death-bearing, or capable of death, be the sense of mortal) far behind him. And is it not clear, that the power to quit the mortal and to enter into the pure regions of divine immortality was not in Paul? and certainly it was not in Satan's hand or heart to give: — and the more so, because the whole being of Paul — body, soul, and spirit — went not into the place destined for it, in the new heavens; but part was left to be sown in corruption, watched over and guarded by Christ; and part taken abnormally into the presence of the Lord Jesus, in His abnormal anomalous position, which, in grace, He holds in the protracted period between the time of His suffering and the time of His reigning.

'Tis a field of pure light: cloud is there none in it. and no dark spot either is there in this region of light; but 'tis a field which is open to faith alone; nought, but faith can visit it; no experience of what was, or is, merely human (as in Eden's garden or in man's nature) can serve or help in the study of this field: faith, and the Word of God alone, can teach us what lies in it.

I need not say, that until the death and resurrection of the blessed Lord, with all the wondrous results thereof, are known, the conscience can never be free as to the fear of death; nor can the power be possessed of entering upon any truth whatever; for our alone power is that of the Spirit of God (imagination of man, and human imaginings have no place in God's school, save to be crucified), by which truth can be viewed and profited from.

But, again, the death and resurrection of Christ may be known, and peace in the conscience be known, and the liberty of the sons of God, individually; and yet the soul may not have its proper joy in the thought of the individual happiness which is near to it all through its pilgrimage, in this vision of the glory and of the communicable blessing which is now already Christ's, as He waits in the Majesty of the Highest for the kingdom, and thence serves His people down here.

The soul has individually to get settled itself, as to the peace and acceptance with God, through Christ crucified and risen from the dead. When Christ rises up from God's right hand, all that are on the earth of His shall rise up together en masse to meet Him: in that meeting there will be individual experience of His presence, of course; but the thought of being one in a collective crowd, brings in thoughts which modify that of one's own self meeting Him; and to a mind little exercised in truth, the communion in glory may have as wrong* a place as the communion of saints upon earth has with some. But the intermediate stage is one in which the individuality of each stands out most conspicuously; this is happy, and profitable, and blessed.

*For instance, many young Christians content themselves with this, that they know they are passed from death unto life because they love the brethren: a most true and sound, because a divine, argument in its place. But, then, no love to me of the brethren, no true love in me toward them as such, would suffice for peace to my soul when it is in the light of God's soul-searching presence. There, nothing but faith in the mercy of God and in Christ, the way by which that mercy has expressed itself to me, chief of sinners though I be, could give peace and rest as down here on earth; that God's company of people is my company, is most blessed and assuring.

Christ alive, and as He now is, and occupied with His people as individuals as well as collectively, and able and ready now to give to me, individually, this blessed taste of being absent from the body and present with Himself, is no more inconsistent with hope in me as to the kingdom and glory, than was His own perfect anticipation of His present position in heaven inconsistent with His own perfect onward bent in mind and action, to the crushing of the head of the serpent, and to the time and act of putting down the last of all enemies under feet. In us, truly, that hope, that purpose, had to be formed. To Him 'twas, from the first, a fixed purpose. In us, too, the beginning of the ending had to be revealed and formed; viz., His forming in the heavens His millennial court, at the beginning and not ending of His reigning. But, while these things give us the all-important placings of the great and grand parts of redemption-glory, they in no way militate or interfere with the flowings of His individual love, as He now is, to us as individuals: nor to a well-taught mind will the blaze of light and glory, that marks the display of the Christ in the heavens and over the earth, veil that love which — till the time of His taking His own in the heaven comes  - has made Him mindful of the individual people of His love, who, in succeeding generations, from the time of Stephen onwards, have been housed, one after the other, when their work was done, and made to know the blessedness of that anomalous "absent from the body and present with the Lord, which is FAR better."

Some may say, "I wait for the Lord to come and not for death:" so, truly, say I. But that is NOT the question; nor is the statement thus made the real. expression of what is in the mind of the maker, at least, in many cases. That for which Christ waits, the Spirit and the Bride of Christ also wait; and as the Spirit and the Bride say, "Come:" so does He, most surely, say, "Behold, I come quickly." But that is not the least in question. I wait for Christ until He comes. But the question is (that which some overlook), Am I to wait for His coming here in the wilderness; or am I, absent from the body and present with the Lord, there to wait for His coining?

Again, the statement is often the expression of will, human will; and, often, is the cover of the thought of having a right of our own, and of not being, solely and altogether, the right and property of another. Now, blessed be God, we are bought with a price; we are not our own. To the Spirit that leads us, our likings (according to nature and flesh) are not what regulates in any way, but the work of God and the glory of Christ. When the work of God and the glory of Christ, in our course here below are answered — the love, divine and human, of Christ wills to have us with Himself. And He is worthy to have His pleasure, in God's appointed pathway for us, made good. We are not our own, but bought with a price — even the costly price of His most precious blood. Blessed be God, that He confers not with our flesh, but takes His own course and way of blessing; yet making us willing in the day of His power! And surely the blessed fulness and freshness of His love to us, individually; who delights in us as His own, as given to Him by His Father — may well quicken our affections and desires to hear His voice calling us, when so He wills, home to Himself.

To conclude; it is in Christ, personally, who has loved me and called me, as an individual, that I should form a needed part in that glory which God, in His love, has provided for Him. But let that glory be what it may — an inheritance incorruptible, or the presentation of the church as a glorious church — I am bold to say, "I love my Lord better than the inheritance, better than the glitter of all the glory." Yea, when I think even of the many sons presented in the Father's house, or of the presentation of the Bride — the glory has (if one may so say) no glory to my heart in comparison with the joy of Christ's heart, through the joy of His Father in Himself, at the bringing of the sons to glory; and is not the church's blessing this, that He presents her to Himself a glorious church, etc. I do not want (so to speak) the house without the Father and the Son in it. What would it, or the glory of the city, be to me without them? I love the Father and the Son, in personal presence, everywhere, better than their circumstances. Rather would I have Egypt's cruel bondage with Christ for my comfort under it, than all the brightest scenes in Canaan without Himself. 'Tis Himself which is my joy far above the Glory. Will not every renewed heart say, Amen, and Amen!?

The Fear of Death

The Fear of Death.

from Short Papers

by G. V. Wigram.

(Allan, 1871)

"Want of subjection to God" — is, in every creature in whom it is found, Sin. I intentionally say, want of subjection, or, the absence of subjection (i.e., non-subjection, which is negative); and I do not say in-subjection: because, to many minds, insubjection would seem something positive. But the absence of subjection is sin, without its being needful to prove the positive presence of any activity of rebellion, or any act of rebellion whatever.

It is written concerning man, "The wages of sin is death." We know from Scripture that on man* death has two parts: there is, 1st, the death of the body, when the mortal life ceases to animate it; and there is, 2ndly, hereafter, the second death. Moral death (as men speak) is sin indwelling. To touch a certain tree in Eden was the expression of man's independence toward God. I can think with awe and dread of the touching it, without sin or moral death; but when the will to touch it was once formed, there was sin; and when Eve had touched it, there was moral death. The judgment of this sin was death of the body, and after that the judgment and second death, of the whole race who might descend from Adam and Eve.

*That "By sin came death;" that "The wages of sin is death," etc., was said of man, who had been made a living soul, with power to recognise God as the Source and Giver of all good, is clear. Animals and vegetables are not upon the same footing as man as to death; God has not put them upon the same grade in creation as He placed man.

Why do men fear death? I cannot answer this question in full here — a few words must suffice. An honest infidel (if such a thing can exist) told me that "death was as a black curtain across his path, and was ever there before him, telling him that he was worse off, by trusting to reason, than the Christian, by trusting to faith; for reason was at a dead stand before death. Faith could walk through it, and know what was on the other side." To intelligent nature, death must be a fearful thing; because death is the judgment which God spake of as the result of man's transgressions. And to unintelligent nature, it is very humbling to be not only exposed to the attacks of a strong adversary, who cannot be guarded against, or set aside and sent away, and who is gradually gleaning away, to the bottomless sack behind him, the generation to which we belong.

To him that has God's word in his hand, death is known to be a just act of the judgment of God, by reason of sin, and that it has an arrear of details behind it in the second death.

When the Christian doctrine is known and received of a new nature communicated to each believer, and of the present connection of him that has it with Christ, as a living person now in heaven, — everything as to death is changed.

Nature's view and faith's view of death must differ; because the testimony of God as to what death is, in itself, and, to a man in nature, is the opposite of what His testimony is as to what death is to a believer in Christ. Observe

1st. There is an essential difference between a believer, on the one hand, and, on the other, Adam, as set in his first estate in Eden, together with all those who have no higher nature than he had; and,

2ndly. The basis, or ground of standing, of the two are contrasted —

a) Man was a living soul, that knew God as the Giver;

and

his basis, or ground of standing, was obedience.

Alas!

his race are all dead in soul, and ascribe to themselves what is due to God alone.

b) The believer is quickened in the Spirit; one Spirit with the Lord,

and

stands in and together with Christ.

Happily,

Christ was, now is, and will be FOR him; and the Spirit of Christ dwells in him.

I do not admit that death is the wages of sin, to a believer, in any sense whatever. As a man, I was upon the ground of nature. Christ found me there, and undertook for me. His whole work, as finished ere He rose, went to settle all that for me. He had paid all; and He cried, "It is finished!" ere He gave up the ghost. When He rose from the grave, He rose as a Head; and the purpose of grace concerning me has now been fulfilled, for I know and believe that I rose together with Him. Does the death of believers enter into the debt to be paid? Surely not. For if the death of one of them was needful, as part payment, then, also, the death of all of them. But all will not die, but a great part be changed. And if I have to pay part of the penalty, then the penalty is not paid already by Christ, and grace is no more grace; nor am I upon the ground of being in Christ Jesus at all, but I am still upon the ground of being in Adam, and a debtor. Well! but shall I not die? Do not you see believers dying all around you I No; never. I shall not die. If the tabernacle be taken down, that will not kill me. I myself, a man in Christ, can go through the death of this body cheerfully, Christ cheering me as one, through grace, associated with Himself; just as I can go through all the sorrows of the wilderness as a Christian, and not only as a man. I do not see that the new man — the man in Christ — ever dies.

The Christ who stood for me, as my substitute, in His death, has, by the faith He has given to me in His work there, and in Himself, as alive from the dead, enabled me to know that the whole score that stood against me has been cleared off; and not only so but myself put upon an entirely other ground than that I was upon before; not now in Adam, where all die, but in Christ, where all are made alive. I am not now under a broken law, nor before a God who is demanding of a ruined creature the payment of his debts, and the enduring of the penalties of sin. I am in the wilderness where Christ once was, but I am there as being already a redeemed one, and in communion with Him, who is now for me in heaven. If I am to pass through death,* the first question will then be, By what death I shall glorify God (a very different thought from that of nature)? and the second, How much shall I gain by the death of my body? "for to live is Christ, and to die is gain," to the Christian, at least.

*A man in nature (or merely as a descendant of Adam), could not talk of passing through death. He himself was to die. The Christian passes through death. Death is his; it pays him, as a Christian, tribute; he is in all things more than conqueror; the victory in death is already his, in Christ. But a man in nature is under death; pays tribute to it in the most awful way: is conquered and vanquished by it.

If, indeed, I walk here below after the flesh, and according to it, I shall find (believer though I am) that I am in the wilderness, as Israel was; but if I walk after the Spirit, and according to it, I shall find the wilderness is to me what it was to Christ. Faith would make me taste it as Christ tasted it. Experience as a man would make me taste it as Israel tasted it. Two very different ways of tasting it. If in the wilderness, then I have already passed through the Red Sea. It may be that little faith may have a great deal to relate of long experiences made! and awful ones too! ere it knew where it was, and how it had passed through the sea. But at whose cost, and toil, and labour, was that boundary mark between Egypt and the wilderness passed by Israel? Surely their God was at charges for them altogether, and none other. And what shall we say as to what we did, or suffered, in the redemption which our God wrought out in Christ Jesus, and revealed to us!

Is Jordan a worse stream than the Red Sea? or who has ever been called to cross it at his own charges? or why lingered the hearts of the two and a-half tribes on this side of the river? Did they wisely so to choose?

The pestilence, or famine, or war, sweep o'er the earth. The wave of Death rolls in upon a man who is in nature; it finds him in nature, with nothing in him which is beyond nature. It takes its course (say), and he dies: it comes next to a believer. But here another question arises, viz., not only who is it that has the power of death (that is, the devil), but "that one," says Christ, "is one of my sheep, I gave my life for it." Has Satan — has death — any title which is above Christ's? No; none. Suppose, however, that the time be come for that individual to glorify God by being stoned to death — by being nailed to a cross head downwards. If he that has the power of death is hailing a storm of stones on Stephen, He that has the power of life is there too. A saint is not like an ordinary man; he cannot be killed till Christ, as Prince of Life, acts. Death may roll in, under a general and a particular providence, among men as mere men. But a saint has to go on high; the life — well-spring of life, eternal life — in him, opened there by Christ, and fed by Christ every moment, can neither be stopped up by the enemy, nor can the thread of life be cut off by him. Satan cannot do it. It needs Christ to gather up the life to Himself.

Jesus of Nazareth, alive again from the dead, and owned in heaven as Lord of all and Christ; and, proof thereof, the believer down here consciously in possession of a life in and from Him; — these are the two great points as to freedom from the fear of death.

I believe that the common expression, that death is the portal into eternity, is a very erroneous one. This life, to a mere man, is the portal: as the tree falleth, so shall it lie. But to the believer, eternal life has been given to him, and he has been already introduced, really, though by faith, into the presence of God and of Christ. Christ, in the glory of the place where he is, has made Himself known, with life-giving power, to me, or I am not a Christian. For he that does not know Jesus Christ risen from the dead is none of His. I have no doubt that the expression referred to, and similar ones, are among the means used by Satan to confuse the thoughts of Christians.

_____________

P.S. — The hope of many seems defective. They speak as if they hoped to wait on earth until the Lord comes down to it. Such is not my hope, as a heavenly Christian.

Faith reveals to me Christ as Son of God, now upon the Father's throne. I, on earth, have enjoyed Him there, as did Paul when he was here. So does he now also, that, absent from the body, he is present with the Lord. Until He leaves the place where He is, there will be this enjoyment; to many in His presence, and to some few upon earth. When I speak of Hope, my hope, like my faith, has Him as the substance of it. I being in the body, my faith lays hold of Him, and of who and what He is, and where He NOW is; the very things which I should taste (only the more fully and without let) if I were absent from the body and with Him. Hope views Him, not as in His present position, but in a future one.* Hope has Christ in what is to Him a future position for its substance: it must be so, for the Spirit in us views things, not according to our feelings, but according to Christ. He has to rise up from the position in which He now is, in order to enter into those heavenly courts which form part of the redemption-spheres. So far as I can see, He conducts with Him, in His train, the company of blessed ones who have been absent from the body and present with Him. That the dead in Christ shall rise first, is true; yet while it be but a moment, but the twinkling of an eye, that the power, which is in Him, will take to cause the corruptible to put on incorruption, and the mortal to put on immortality. They that sleep will be first, but the rest follow close after; one blessed crowd, though it have its front-line and its rear-line.

*I would not admit that Paul's hope, as a Christian, was realised by being absent from the body and present with the Lord, though, in a human sense, Paul did long for that.

The way that some shrink from being present with the Lord, and cleave to being absent from Him, is strange!

Do they find that all in them is so perfectly homogeneous with the glory to come, that they would harmonise with it in body, soul, and spirit, just as they are, if He came? How, then, not be happy with Himself where He is?

Is it that they have no taste for solitude with Christ, so that they know not how to trust themselves all alone to Him? Or is there, to His lovers, nothing attractive in His being where He is? Or are Peter, James, and John in a lower condition than they were in when they were pilgrims on earth?

The quiet experience of Christ, as pilot of my soul, is not strange to me. He is to choose for me, and He is to be trusted, whichever way He leads. Who knows the straits of death so well as He, or how to comfort a Stephen therein? The passage through the veil is a pass well known to faith, and neither did Christ — the living Christ — ever yet fail me; nor are the courts of heaven, as a terra incognita, afar, afar off, with a wide sea between.

What it is, I know not; but I do fear that, in many, in this respect, things that are seen, and can be seen, have a stronger hold upon them than things which are spiritual and but the objects of faith. Or is it that, like Jacob at Jabbok, they can send their all over the little brook, but not pass over themselves until their flesh has been crippled?