THE LIVING ONE
Luke 24: 1-7
Revelation 1: 17-18
John 5: 24-29
Colossians 3: 1-4
AM I have been impressed with the expression, ‘The Living One’. It occurs in two of the scriptures that we have read. This expression is used as a title of the Lord Jesus. I wondered if we could explore a little what it involves. In Luke we have the resurrection morning, and the angel has no need to identify who he is referring to; he just says, “the living one”. That title belongs to One alone. We are referred to as ‘the living’, but He is the living One, standing out in all His distinction. In Revelation, He appears to John; He says, “I became dead”. He entered into that condition; it was a condition that was totally foreign to Him. He says first, “I am … the living one”. It is a blessed thing to take account of One who is distinguished in that way. He has set on a new order of man that will be for the satisfaction of God eternally - “the first and the last, and the living one.” It is an order of man that is marked by life, an order of man that God has before Him constantly.
As the living One, He is able to impart life - John 5 gives us that. He is able to impart life where there was none. I trust we have all heard the voice of the Son of God; it may have come to us in the gospel. We who were morally dead have been quickened if we have heard that voice. He does that; He is the last Adam, the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor 15: 45) - He can quicken the dead, and ultimately He is going to raise every one of His own; how blessed that is! He will actually raise each one of His own! Some of us were speaking before the meeting about the imminence of the Lord’s return. Think of the wonder of that day when every soul who has had faith in Him will be raised to be with Him, the life-giving One, the living One, forever. So the apostle says, “seek the things which are above, where the Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God”. He is sitting at the right hand of God; the work is done, He is the living One, and He is sitting there. I trust there will be profit in pursuing this line.
WSC The scripture you read is very interesting, saying that He has life in Himself.
AM Yes, as Man. Go on.
WSC Yes, that is critical. He says that He has authority to lay down His life and to take it again (John 10: 18), but it is a different order of life.
AM In John you get a wonderful blend of the Lord’s personal glory, what He is as a divine Person, and what He is as Man. “In him was life” (John 1: 4): that is absolute, but the Father gave Him to have life in Himself. As a blessed Man, He has been given that. So when He exercises that right, He can call souls to live according to that order of life in which He is. It is as a blessed Man that He does it, so that we are going to be with Him as Man eternally.
GMC Does “the living one” imply that everything else is dead, according to this kind of life?
AM Yes, it does. I am glad you added that last phrase because when we speak of life, we are speaking of what is morally living in contrast to what is morally dead. The apostle says to the Ephesian saints, “you, being dead in your offences and sins”, Eph 2: 1. This was a company of people who, before they were converted, had great learning. They might have been proud of what they had, but he says that whole line of things is dead. It is a great day for us when we come to it, that everything that we have according to nature ends in death. Death casts its shadow on everything down here. But there is the living One to whom we are attached.
DMW He brought life into death and into the scene of death. I am linking on with our brother’s comment that all were dead, in that state. He would go into death, but He comes into the scene of moral death to express what life is before God: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men”, John 1: 4.
AM That is very profound. So He brought something into the world that had never been there before. He brought in life according to God. The world was in darkness and death; He brought in life.
TWL He brought life in to those who were estranged from the life of God. When the angels speak here, “Why seek ye the living one?”, it is One who lived according to the life of God. Would that be right?
AM Yes, that would be right. He went into death, not because death had any claim on Him; He was untainted by it. He came into this world, and He went through the world morally unaffected by it. He even went into death; and He came out untainted by death. It is an extraordinary thing to think of, is it not? And there He is, the living One, living now in the power of an indissoluble life, Heb 7: 16. Later in this chapter we find He is exercising His service in relation to a couple of poor, disheartened souls.
MJK Would you say something as to this being associated with resurrection?
AM I think that is essential; “if even we have known Christ according to flesh, yet now we know him thus no longer”, 2 Cor 5: 16. That whole order of flesh and blood is gone. Do we all understand that? When Jesus was here, He took up everything that pertains to man, and when He was upon the cross, He represented man – He was a perfect Man, no faults, no sin, no blemish in Him, but He died! He did not die as a penalty for having sinned; He laid down His life. And God would say, as it were, ’If the one Object that was here in perfection in flesh and blood condition has gone into death, that means the end of that flesh and blood condition’. So Christ died for all, and that proved that all were dead (2 Cor 5: 14); morally, every one according to nature was dead.
WSC So the life in Him is intrinsic. He says, “he also who eats me shall live also on account of me”, John 6: 57. There is something transmissible there of that life.
AM Yes, that is right. In that chapter, feeding is something we have to do. In John 5 when the voice of the Son of God is heard, all we do is to respond.
DMW In chapter 6 He lays emphasis on eating His flesh and drinking His blood in view of our being brought into things through His death, v 53, 54.
AM There is no way to enter divine thoughts apart from through death. It is the divinely appointed way. Otherwise, there would be something of the flesh that could be carried through. That would be unthinkable; God would not have that.
DMW That life has been laid down. He did not lay down divine life; He laid down the life that He took in flesh and blood, such as we have, sin apart, never to take it up again. So that, through His death we are brought into life according to God.
AM Yes. The eunuch in Acts 8, was reading the scriptures: “His life was taken from the earth”, v 33. The life that was on the earth was removed. There is another order of life that goes through. Stephen saw that in Acts 7; Paul saw it in Acts 9, and between those two references we have “his life is taken from the earth”.
TRC You are bringing before us the foundation of Christianity. It may seem a basic thing to say, but the fact that there is a living Man out of death sets Christianity apart from every other creed and religion of men.
AM I am very thankful you used that word. I am not going to be critical, but I have heard references to ‘other faiths’. There is no other faith. Christianity is marked by faith; everything else is dead. We need to be quite clear about that. Christianity is marked by faith because it is centred in a Man in another world. He is living there and that is the point of reference for every believer.
AML Would you think that the life of Christ was seen in Mary in a practical way in John 20? Do we see the life of Christ in Mary as a result of resurrection?
AM In John 20, Mary had no life apart from Him, did she? She was totally bereft. Whatever Mary’s literal status was, she represents the thought of the widow; she had no life without Christ. What could the world hold for her? Even angels could not impress her. Imagine seeing an angel! Mary was not concerned - the angel was not the Lord; Christ was everything to her.
AML She even surpassed Peter and John.
AM She did! They may have had more intelligence, but she had the affection.
RNH I was thinking of the reference in Genesis. God says to Noah, “The end of all flesh is come before me” (Gen 6: 13), then what was mentioned as to the line of faith coming in. He said it to Noah. I wonder if the seed of what was to take place when Christ came in was in God’s mind at that point in Genesis. He was going to be finished with that line of things and a new order predicated on faith would be what God had in mind.
AM I think so. I think in those early chapters in Genesis, God was looking ahead. “Let us make man” (chap 1: 26) looks on to the incarnation. “The end of all flesh is come before me” looks on to the cross; that is where the end of all flesh came. Think of what that meant; after all those years, and the Spirit of God striving with men, on and on, and then God says, “The end of all flesh has come before me”. That is what happened at the cross; every man was put out of sight. After three days, in the resurrection, there is One who has gone through death and annulled it; He has set up a new order of man entirely which will be for the pleasure of God eternally.
WSC Did the angel think that these women should have known that He was alive, that He was the living One?
AM It would seem like that because he says, “remember how he spoke to you”. Of course, they would not have understood what the Lord said. We have the Holy Spirit; things become clear or clearer, but these disciples just had attachment to the Lord; and they could not take in the fact that He was going to be taken in death. He had said that the Son of man was going to be delivered up and they were going to kill Him and the third day He would rise again, Matt 17: 22,23. The Lord would not have left His disciples with His removal in death as the end, so that in John 14, for instance, He says, “I am coming to you”, v 18.
WSC I was thinking about ourselves; as we come near to Him, we should have that sense of knowing Him that He is the living One.
AM Yes, what an encouraging and stabilising thing that is, is it not? We are living down here in flesh and blood conditions, and we have all the difficulties of life, we have the sorrows of life, we have trials - we know about these things. But there is One who has been through it all and He has passed through and defeated the greatest power that can come upon man naturally. He has annulled it. He is now the living One. That is the evidence that He has overcome everything that can assail the believer.
JKK Would you say something about the food supply in relation to the living One? The Lord says, “Man shall not live by bread alone”, Luke 4: 4. I was wondering in connection with your thought of the sustaining power of the Man here in relation to what the Lord takes up.
AM In Matthew, man lives "by every word that goes out through God’s mouth”, chap 4: 4. As the living One, He sustains life. The type would be Joseph, the Sustainer of life, Gen 41: 45.
JKK He demonstrated how life could be seen here. He was sustained, in a practical sense; the testings that He went through would not have been possible for man outside of the sustaining power of God.
AM That is right. He would not call upon the stones to become bread; the Father had not told Him to do so. Everything He did, He did by the word of God. The living and abiding word of God is available to us, and that should be what sustains us.
SWS I was wondering if you could bring before us a little more as to that expression, “Why seek ye the living one among the dead?”. I know that has to do with that particular time, but does that not have a current bearing on us now? It is instructive, “Why seek ye the living one among the dead?”. There is so much in this world that is characterised by death. Christ will not be found in the things of this world, the dead things of this world.
AM People fill their time; they need their amusements and occupations to fill their time, but they do not find the Lord in that way. The way we find the Lord is simply in coming to Him, acknowledging the condition that we are in, and coming to Him as the living One and getting that quickening touch from Him. I think what you say is wholesome. The whole world is all going to be done away with, all the things that occupy men’s lives will be ended, but there is something that is going through, and every believer would have a part in that. There is an order of life that will never end, and it is going through in triumph.
GMC I was thinking of what Peter said. He said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast words of life eternal”, John 6: 68. There is only one source, is there not?
AM Yes, that is good. The One who relied upon the word of God totally; He had words of life eternal to sustain His people. The people in John 6: 60 say, “This word is hard; who can hear it?”. And they went away. If you do not understand the truth, then turn to Him, the One who is the origin of it all. And you find that He is a source of life and understanding. He has the words of life eternal.
WKC I was thinking of what the Lord Himself said at the beginning of John 17, “as thou hast given him authority over all flesh”, (v 2), and He leads that through to life eternal: that “he should give them life eternal”. We are knowing something of that now, are we not?
AM Yes, that is right. Eternal life requires a sphere in which it can be enjoyed. And that sphere is not connected with this earth. It does not mean we have to wait until we are translated to enjoy it. We can have part in what is heavenly, and for that, we need one another, do we not?
AML The Lord says, “Yet a little and the world sees me no longer; but ye see me; because I live ye also shall live”, John 14: 19. Would the Spirit help us to have faith to see the living One? It really is an appeal to every believer who has the Spirit. And the Lord loves to include everyone in seeing the living One.
AM Yes, indeed, and if you have the Holy Spirit, the effect of that is that you are united to Christ. You might say, ‘Well, I do not live as if I am united to Him’, but you are. That work of God in your soul has to be there if you have received the Holy Spirit. That work of God is united to Christ and you belong to Him. And the Lord says, “because I live ye also shall live”; our life is bound up in Him. That is helpful.
KRO Could you help us as to the thought of the Lord’s title as “the life”? We had reference to John 1 and it is reciprocal there, the light of men was “the life”, and we have “the way, and the truth, and the life”, John 14: 6. How would you open up for us the thought of the living One and “the life”?
AM One thing that that conveys to me is that there is no life outside of Christ. He is the life. “When the Christ is manifested who is our life, then shall ye also be manifested with him in glory.” He is the only source of life. Life is found alone in Jesus, the only One.
DMW Is it more than position? One of the things we are given to understand is that the Lord Jesus sent the Spirit. Being united to the Lord Jesus has already been mentioned. That would be one of the reasons to maintain the living link in ourselves with the heavenly Man.
AM Yes, life is more than position. He says, “When he is come … He shall glorify me”, John 16: 13,14. The One whom the Holy Spirit glorifies is the One to whom we are united; He is the One who is our life.
DaJK I was interested in what our brother brought up as to Him being the source, and I was thinking about your opening remarks when you quoted, “Why seek ye the living one among the dead?”. I thought of what the Lord says there in John 4: 14, with the woman, the “water, springing up into eternal life”, and then in John 15: 5 the branches abiding in the vine. He is the only source, and it is not a source out of this earth, is it?
AM That is very helpful. The branch has to abide in the vine; if it does not, it is cast out, is it not? It has to abide in the vine. And the evidence of that life is that there is fruit.
LPC In Luke 24: 8, it says, “they remembered his words; and, returning from the sepulchre, related all these things to the eleven and to all the rest”. Do you think that we know spiritually by the power of the Holy Spirit that He is the living One? We need to show by witness that He is the living One. They remembered His words, then they went back and witnessed to them what the two angels had spoken to them, and they related it to the disciples. That is the thought in Romans 6 where it says, “if we are become identified with him in the likeness of his death, so also we shall be of his resurrection” (v 5), and “so we also should walk in newness of life”, v 4. We have to be witnesses of it, not just knowing and rejoicing that He is the living One, but we need to be the witness of it.
AM Yes, you remember Festus in speaking to Agrippa, said, “a certain Jesus who is dead, whom Paul affirmed to be living”, Acts 25: 19. Paul had seen Him in glory. Nobody could convince Paul that the Lord Jesus was not living; he had seen Him, and really every one of us has had to do with the Lord Jesus, not in flesh and blood conditions, but we have had to do with Him in His present condition in glory and therefore, every one of us really is a witness. The fact that we are here is a witness.
RB I wonder if there is a link with what Paul said to the Galatians, “I am crucified with Christ, and no longer live, I, but Christ lives in me”, chap 2: 20. Is that the life, by extension, found in us?
AM Yes, Paul could say that “no longer live, I”; the old Saul of Tarsus was not there. What a test that would be, actually. But Paul says, “no longer live, I, but Christ lives in me”. That was the demonstration of that life in a man.
GMC I am wondering in relation to that if our life is hid in Christ. It is not important what my life naturally is, but that Christ is seen in me. Would that be right?
AM Yes, James says, “what is your life?”, Jas 4: 14. The world does not understand the life of a believer, but it is Christ. The true life of a believer is Christ. There is nothing else; that is all God has before Him. So anything I have before me that is not of Christ is just going to be done away with.
DMW The features of Christ morally go through. Would you say that the Spirit has been sent so that those same features morally come through in the company of believers. So Christ loved to obey; He loved to be dependent; and the way we prove the Spirit is we follow in His steps. I might say, ‘Well, I don’t love to obey’, and certainly in the flesh we do not, but at some point we have to prove that the Spirit is more powerful than the flesh. And so one could say, “I myself”’ (Rom 7: 25); so we begin to identify what our brother is referring to in Galatians 2: 20 - “no longer live, I, but Christ lives in me”, and so we begin to love to obey; we love to be dependent; we love those things that came out in Christ that are so attractive. We prove that, do we not, by the Spirit’s power in us?
AM Yes, Romans 8 presents the power to get through Romans 7. It is the chapter of the Holy Spirit. In Romans 7 is the struggle I find in myself because I want to do what is right, but I find I fail. The power to get through that struggle is in the Holy Spirit.
TRC In Matthew 17: 22-23, “Jesus said to them, The Son of man is about to be delivered up into the hands of men, and they shall kill him; and the third day he shall be raised up”. That may be the reference that was alluded to by the angel here; but what the angel says is different: “be crucified, and rise the third day”, as if it was His own volition, do you think?
AM Yes, there are different aspects to the Lord’s death and to His resurrection. He had authority to lay down His life; He had authority to take it again. As a divine Person, He had the power for those things, but He relied on the commandment of the Father. And then the Father raised Him - I think divine Persons acted in unison in the resurrection of Jesus.
TWL Where you read in Revelation, the Lord says, “I am the first and the last, and the living one: and I became dead, and behold, I am living to the ages of ages, and have the keys of death and of hades”. I was thinking of what you said earlier in relation to our lives being attached to Christ. Does it help us that we consciously, actually, and I say this as much for the older ones as the younger ones, have the reality of knowing that Christ has set aside everything that stood in the way of our liberty, before our God, so that we can live there? “I have the keys of death and of hades.” Men in general, through the whole of their lives, through fear of death are subject to bondage (Heb 2: 15) - we have been set free from all of that, because a Man lives and He has come and has said, “I am the first and the last, and the living one”. He is God’s purpose for men. Does that help?
AM I am glad you brought us on to Revelation. “The first and the last, and the living one”: God begins with Christ. Everything is secured in Christ; nothing supersedes Him. You cannot add to the Lord; He is the First and the Last. You have a touch there of the greatness of who He is – “the first and the last and the living one”. But then He says, “I became dead, and behold, I am living to the age of ages, and have the keys of death and of hades”. He will use those keys. The Lord Jesus broke the power of death by going into it. It is good to remember that the resurrection was not the breaking of the power of death; the Lord Jesus went into death. There was no conflict; death fled before Him. “What ailed thee, thou sea, that thou fleddest? Thou Jordan, that thou turnedst back?”, Ps 114: 5. Death had no claim upon Him. He went into death, and death quailed before Him. It could not stand before Him; its power was broken. The resurrection is the testimony to that fact, that death has been vanquished.
WSC I was just thinking of what you read in Revelation, “I became dead” – “became dead”, but He did not ‘become alive’; He was living.
AM “I became dead, and behold”, as if to say, ‘just look!’ - “I am living to the ages of ages, and have the keys of death and of hades”.
NJP So in that way, do you think, the thoughts of the living One, and life, relate to purpose? We see it in the scripture here. “The first and the last” relates to His purpose, does it not?
AM Yes, it does, and the fact that He is the first and the last shows the unchangeability of God’s purpose. What He brings through, what He is going to have eternally, is exactly what He has set His heart upon in purpose,
LJG I wondered as to John 1 :14 where we have what actually came into being, “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us”; but He became something that He was not before. I am thinking as to that, “For the law was given by Moses: grace and truth subsists through Jesus Christ” (v 17), so what actually came into being?
AM Think of what came into being then! John 1 is a most exalted view of the incarnation - “the Word became flesh”, John 1: 14. Think of the glory of that; a divine Person entered into His own creation. Think of the majesty of what took place: “the Word became flesh”, and then men could take account of Him. And what did they see? They saw something which had not subsisted before - “grace and truth subsists” v 17. Grace and truth are treated as one thing, which “subsists through Jesus Christ”. You might ask, ‘What dawned on this world when Jesus came in?’: a glory that men did not understand.
LJG I was thinking of the world itself, it all came into being itself, but it says, “as many as received him”, v 12. There are those that have not, but I was thinking as to that “as many as received him” come into that life.
AM That is right, because they are brought into the family: “as many as received him, to them gave he the right to be children of God”. They are brought into the divine family, and the whole thing is characterised by an order of life which is set out in Jesus.
KNP Would that help us to be found more in contemplation? John in his epistle speaks of “that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes; that which we contemplated, and our hands handled”, 1 John 1: 1. That is the glory of a Man that is risen and living, is it not?
AM Is not contemplation so important? I think the enemy deliberately sets out to cause our lives to become crowded so that we do not become contemplators. The one who was a contemplator was the one who leaned on the bosom of Jesus, John 13: 23. He knew what it was to be sustained by Him, by His love.
TWL In the light of all of this, does it help us to see there is purpose behind this life, and that is relationship? So there is life in what it is in its relationships, and there is life in what it is in its power, and what He is as the living One, there is life in its power because it is the way to life in its relationships.
AM That is good. Say some more about your last comment.
TWL The brethren will be well acquainted with it anyway, but Joseph preserved life in its power before he exercises life in its relationships. He preserves life in its power.
AM So when we are speaking about life, we are not speaking about the kind of existence that even the lower creation has; we are speaking about life which is known in a whole circle of relationships and affections. And really, affection lies at the bottom of a believer’s life, does it not?
TWL “We have seen, and bear witness, and report to you the eternal life which was with the Father, and has been manifested to us”, 1 John 1: 2. That is more than life in its power; that is the life in its relationships. But the power had to be there first.
AM Yes, exactly.
RB In that connection I was thinking about Romans 5: 10 where “we shall be saved in the power of his life”. ‘In the power of’ there is in parenthesis but that relates to the life of Christ where He is, does it, to bring us into relationships and present salvation? We have been saved from wrath in His death. That deals with our eternal salvation, but is the power of His life what we enjoy currently?
AM Oh yes, it is, as being united to Him as and where He is. Salvation is a very wide subject; we are saved from many things. His life in His present position is the way of salvation for the believer at the present time as we go through this world. He went through the world morally unaffected by it, and the believer is to be morally clear of it. The world has its claims and there is that in us naturally which answers to them. Hence we have to keep reverting back to the death of Christ, the shedding of the blood and the water and there is salvation in His present position.
DJK So the apostle could say, “in that I now live in flesh, I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”, Gal 2: 20.
AM Those who knew Paul must have seen a great change, and he would say, ‘There is the life I do not live now; the life I live now, I live by faith’. Faith connects us to Christ where |He is, in another scene. Faith connects us to what is unseen by nature. There is another world, and Christ is the centre of it; He fills it.
AML Would it be right to link it with Hezekiah? “The living, the living, he shall praise thee”, Isa 38: 19 - he presents that as the contrast to death and Sheol just before. He is almost brought into another life altogether.
AM Yes, in figure he is. Sheol is hades, but he has been made to live. “Lord, by these things men live” (Isa 38: 16), but then he says, “the living”, that is, those who have the active energy of life through association with a blessed Man who is the living One.
RNH I was thinking of the Christ in Colossians: “seek the things which are above, where the Christ is” is a relationship. In Acts, God has made Him both Lord and Christ (chap 2: 36), and in Romans, “if anyone has not the spirit of Christ he is not of him”, chap 8: 9. These things entered into my thoughts as to what present association and relationship with the Lord Jesus is, as related to Him being the Christ; would you say something as to that?
AM ‘The Christ’ is the anointed One, and He is the Head of an anointed system of things; and that includes us. God has committed Himself to Christ; that is involved in the anointing. Literally the Lord Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit when He came out of the waters of baptism; the Holy Spirit came down and dwelt upon Him. But He has secured an anointed system, an anointed vessel, and He is the head of it all. He gives character to it all; He is the Christ.
RNH It is as He has ascended He has been made Christ; He is anointed and He is a priest there as well. But what was mentioned before about believers having the Spirit, I thought of the disciples, the Lord breathed into them, “Receive the Holy Spirit”, John 20: 22. It was special to them perhaps but it is one Spirit, of course, and as taking the place of the Spirit of Christ - of that Man - He is unique. We should know that.
AM Yes, it was the Spirit of the Man they knew. They had seen something in the Lord Jesus, so the Lord says in John 14: 17, “ye know him, for he abides with you, and shall be in you”. He was abiding with the disciples when Jesus was here because He was in Christ. And they could see everything Jesus did, He did by the Spirit of God. He says to the disciples, “ye know him”: ‘you have seen His operations, you have seen the Lord Jesus casting out demons’ - it was by the Holy Spirit that the Lord did those things.
DMW The Spirit of Christ is related to the Spirit of life. I was just referring to the scripture in Romans 8, “if Christ be in you, the body is dead on account of sin, but the Spirit life on account of righteousness”, and “if any one has not the Spirit of Christ, he is not of him”, Rom 8: 9-10.
AM Yes, the Holy Spirit was manifested in Christ. You can see the Spirit of Christ; they would take account of it. That is a divine Person: it is not the small ‘s’. We might speak of the spirit that marks somebody, but the Spirit of Christ is a divine Person and that divine Person is life to the believer.
DMW Would it be that He is righteousness – “the Spirit life on account of righteousness”, because the family of God was here? And the Spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are in that family (v 16), and we have the power therefore to prove that we are on the path of righteousness.
AM So that is the beginning of Romans 8: 1-3, “There is then now no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and of death. For what the law could not do” - the law could not produce righteousness - “in that it was weak through the flesh, God, having sent his own Son, in the likeness of flesh of sin, and for sin, has condemned sin in the flesh”. The power for what the law could not do is in the Spirit Himself.
LJG I am thinking as to how the Spirit came and descended upon Him as a dove and how He abode upon Him; there is no other that could be said of. I was thinking as to the spirit of Christ; we see the meek and lowly Man in that way. Do we see that in Him?
AM I think the Holy Spirit could totally identify with the moral features of Jesus. He descended upon Him and abode upon Him; that is John’s presentation. John the baptist was extraordinary. As far as I am aware, he was the only person ever to have seen the Holy Spirit, descending in a bodily form upon Christ. And it abode upon Him; there was the testimony. There was the moral perfection of Christ, and the Spirit of Christ was there, and thereafter everything He did was in the power of the Holy Spirit.
LJG I was thinking as to what you said, “let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus”, Phil 2: 5. I was thinking of that spirit of humility.
AM Yes.
WSC Mary was told, “The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and power of the Highest overshadow thee, wherefore the holy thing also which shall be born”, Luke 1: 35. From His very conception, He was living.
AM Yes, that is right. We often relate that to the oblation, do we not? “Mingled with oil”, Lev 2: 5. The Holy Spirit was involved in the conception, the birth of Jesus, “mingled with oil”; then as He was about to go out in service, anointed with oil, v 4.
DHM What about Colossians 3: 4, “When the Christ is manifested who is our life”? That is the present condition; we are able to enter into that; then the wondrous blessing is we will be manifested with Him. It is something that goes through.
AM Yes, is it not wonderful that when He is manifested, we will be with Him? We will be with Him even when He comes out in public glory. He would not have it otherwise. We will be manifested with Him. In view of that we should know what our life is here.
DMW One word to add to what our brother said: that manifestation will be bodily: “they found not the body of the Lord Jesus”. There are millions now in a disembodied state, but this has in view bodily manifestation.
AM Yes, that is right, but it will be a new body, will it not? A body capable of displaying what has been worked out morally in the saints. It says in 2 Corinthians, “if our earthly tabernacle house be destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens”, 2 Cor 5: 1. There will be that which is capable of manifesting the moral excellence that has been wrought in the saints. I think that is wonderful to consider.
Wheaton
25th November 2022