"And upon His head were many crowns." (Rev. 19:12.)

CHAPTER VI. (Continued from page 119.)

The "Second Man."

We must look on, then, to resurrection to see the Second Man in full character as that, and to see fully what humanity has gained in Him. But this will be better considered when we contemplate Him as last Adam, the Head of the new race of men. For moral perfection, as already said, He could not wait for that, but was (as even the demons confessed Him) "the Holy One of God," perfectly according to His mind, all through. There was no possible mutability of nature in Him ; and we must not pervert the idea of His full moral freedom to the admission of such a thought. Perfectly free He was, of course, in glorious holiness :it was the devil's thought that He was free to sin,-free as implying in Him a sort of balance of possibilities, and as if this were even necessary to His perfect trial and the reality of a final victory over evil :for without struggle, they would say, there can be no victory.

But struggle with Himself there was not, and victory over Himself would have been already defeat:He would be no more the Christ of Scripture, "tempted in all things as we are, apart from sin" (Heb. 4:15). The "yet without sin " of our common version, and still remaining in the revised, has done terrible work in lowering Christ in the imaginations of men. There is no justification of the "yet " possible. The Greek has nothing of it. It came in through the mere supposition that "without sin" spoke of final result, instead of an exception to the kind of temptation. Sin was no possible temptation to Him :there was absolutely no power of seduction in it. That did not touch the question of His freedom, but characterized it. The more unassailable by sin we are, the freer we are, not the less free. We are not perfected by loss of liberty. To walk with God is to walk in the consciousness of the reality of things, undeceived and unperverted.

If I say of any one, "He cannot do a dishonest act," do I think of him on that account, as less a free man ? If there is no moral certainty about his actions, do I credit him, therefore, with a firmer will and more perfect self-control ? No one can say or think so.

Nor did He who came into the world as man's Deliverer divest Himself of His necessary perfection, that He might be on more equal terms with the adversary. Had it been a necessity to do so, it is hard to see how it could have been accomplished. For how could moral perfection consent to its own debasement ? or how could its enfeeblement be other than debasement ? For even a divine Being there are impossibilities, which proceed from perfection, and which therefore are perfection. The impossibility of sinning was a necessary glory of the Christ of God.

But men object to this on the other side that it involves an impossibility of sympathy with those encompassed with infirmity such as belongs to fallen creatures. No doubt it does with everything that implies sin, or that depravity of nature which cannot be separated from it. But sympathy with this is (as has often been pointed out) as far as possible from what a Christian needs or could find true comfort in. He finds in Christ a perfect atonement for it, and, if he knows deliverance, a power in divine grace which has broken for him the dominion of sin. Walking in the Spirit, he does not fulfil the lusts of the flesh. Moreover, the evil in him is that which God in His wonderful wisdom uses to turn him from self-occupation to Christ, and to hide from him all pride and self-complacency. But the evil itself he does not sympathize with, but condemns, while in all else he finds truest sympathy. But this is not the place in which to enlarge upon all this :it ought to be enough to quote here the apostle's words that " such a high-priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens" (Heb. 7:26). But the examination of this belongs also rightly to another place.

The "Second Man" is, necessarily and emphatically "of heaven," heavenly. True, His manhood has in it promise for the earth also, gives indeed for the inhabitants of earth the sweetest possible assurance; but this too gains, and not loses, by such heavenly character. This is inseparable, of course, from His being the Son of God in humanity; but it attaches to the Second Man as such, as the text from Corinthians clearly intimates:for, in contrast with the first man being "of the earth earthy," the " Second Man is of heaven."

If we look on to the full " image of the heavenly" (i Cor. 15:49), which we are yet to bear, the glorious body which is to be our own, though the resurrection of what has been sown in the dust, or the present mortal one changed to immortality, is yet spoken of as "our house which is of heaven" (2 Cor. 5:2). "Mortality" will then, says the apostle, be swallowed up of life" (ver. 4). There will be then the quickening of our mortal bodies, now "dead because of sin" (Rom. 8:10,11), which will make them, as yet they are not, to be partakers of "redemption " (ver. 23). Thus the new life-power it is which, pervading and molding them, will make them heavenly, the "image of the heavenly" being reached in them also.

But even now, and while yet we wait for this, by virtue of the work which has begun in us, we are already "heavenly" (i Cor. 15:48). For the quickening of the Spirit we already have ; the heavenly life is begun, though amid hindrances and in obscurity, in that which is the highest part of our humanity.

When we turn to consider the Lord as among us "in the days of His flesh," we find in Him also not as yet the full heavenly character. As to His body, though in no wise (as with us) under the power of death, and with none of the penalty of sin upon it, He is yet "in the likeness of sinful flesh "(Rom. 8:3),-according to the pattern of the humanity that has failed in Adam, though without failure or any consequences of it, save as in grace He might stoop to these.

Every way He is without blemish, but more :this body of flesh and blood which He has assumed-as the vessel of earth in which the bird of heaven may die for the cleansing of our leprosy (Lev. 14:5)-is itself, all true as it is, of course, a "veil"of the higher humanity which has come in with Him, and which is not innocent and earthy, as in the first man, but holy and heavenly. In Him is manifested to us "that Eternal Life, which was with the Father" (i Jno. 1:2), and is now, without fleck of shade or moment of intermission," the light of men" (Jno. 1:4)..

This Life is "in Him,"as it could not be in any other:"for as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself " (John 5:26). He is thus the Source and Spring of it for us as the "last Adam ;" and possessing it as Man, is characterized absolutely by that "divine nature " which it implies as divine life. This touches in no way the full reality of manhood in Him-spirit and soul and body:for little as we know of the mystery of "life," we do know that it sets aside none of these, but gives them their full value and reality.

As the "First-born among many brethren," this life manifests itself in Him as a life of faith, in constant dependence upon God, nay, living (as we would not have dared to think of Him, had He not Himself taught us so to apply the scripture) "by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Matt, 4:4). To this indeed, as we know, was His constant appeal, treading in this respect in a path in which He calls us to follow Him as "Leader" in "and Completer of faith" in His own Person (Heb. 12:2, Gk.); while this perfection He did not plead as title to escape the trials and sorrows of a pilgrim-path, but on the contrary tasted the cup of affliction fully, even to death, yea, the death of the cross. But this was His grace and our need only:for Himself He was no debtor to death at all. No one took His life from Him, but He laid it down of Himself, having power both to lay it down and to take it again.

Upon this it does not need to insist here. The word of God speaks with absolute decision about it
all :did one enlarge, how much would have to be written ! We are here, however, but attempting an outline of truth, to fill in which materials are everywhere to be found, while the full reality is unspeakable. Heaven and earth meet here together, and all the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily in the Man Christ Jesus. How marvelous to be told in this very connection, that "in Him we are filled up" (Col. 2:9, 10) ! F. W. G.

(To be continued.)