(Continued from page 25.)

8. JUSTIFICATION BY THE SPIRIT.

1 Cor. 6:11:"And such were some of you; but ye have been washed ; but ye have been sanctified, but ye have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God."

God associates the name of the Lord Jesus with justification, attaching to it all the infinite value of His blessed person and work. This must, of necessity, be stated first, as the basis, and then "by the Spirit of our God."We "are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you" (Rom. 8:9).That we should be temples of the Holy Ghost, who is dwelling in the believer, is a very high order of justification. It is the seal put upon us as a testimony to the perfection of the work of Christ, in virtue of which we are fully and freely justified.

As the Spirit could only come after Jesus was glorified (for His coming is plainly the witness to this fact), so He could only come and indwell the believer after justification could be publicly declared as attaching to those who have faith in Jesus. Hence, He did not and could not indwell Old Testament saints, because there was not and could not be any public declaration of the believer's justification until after Christ had come and accomplished the work of redemption, so that God could be manifested righteous in justifying him who had faith in Jesus. And with the coming of the Spirit, God linked deep and blessed consequences of another order, such as were to signalize so great a gift of His grace, and mark the peculiar blessedness of it for all eternity. We speak of the one Body of which Christ is the Head, and which is the fulness of Him who fills all in all. To this Body all believers of the present dispensation belong by the indwelling of the Spirit. This is the truth of union according to Scripture, involving much more for us than anything we have so far considered, and thus we see, too, the link between it and the truth of justification. J. Bloore

(To be continued.)