(Continued from page 133.)

"God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord" (1 Cor. 1:9).

It is instructive and beautiful to notice that, at the commencement of each corrective epistle, the apostle Paul reminds the saints of their calling, and usually commends whatever can be commended, before speaking of failure. If the thought of the exceeding grace of God, and His purpose in Christ Jesus, fails to recover the soul, what hope can there be? So, in the first epistle to the Corinthians, at the commencement, Paul wrote, "God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord."

Notice the fulness of the title given, "His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord." It covers the whole ground of Christianity. Let us then briefly dwell upon what this wonderful verse implies.

(1) Our association with Him in His death.

It will be joyfully conceded, surely, that all we have received and all that God has promised, comes to us in association with Christ, and that the foundation of everything is "His death." If we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection (Rom. 6:5). The word "planted-together" here is unique; scholars tell us this is the only place in the New Testament where the word so translated occurs. To transpose the words and say, "We altogether were planted," would not give the true sense, nor would "We all were planted together."

Another has said in reference to this scripture, "The idea of consolidation in one, of what-could be looked at as having many component parts, is easily traced. In ordinary Greek (as contrasted with the Greek in Scripture), we might give, 'Growing together naturally, or necessarily connected together,' as the meaning. In a secondary sense it is applied to a closed, healed wound, where the parts have grown together in one." This serves to show the closeness of our association with Him. Literally rendered, Romans 6:5 might read, "For if we have become co-planted in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in his resurrection."

But let us for a moment retrospect. "By man came death" (1 Cor. 15:21). The first man (Adam) not only brought in death as to the body, but before being driven out of Eden, he had become morally dead-totally insensible to what is of God. Outside of Eden, he became head of a fallen race; the dire results of his transgression became the common heritage of his posterity:"Even as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned" (Rom. 5:12).

Into this state of moral ruin, where death held sway (because Satan had so signally triumphed over man), came the Son of God in grace. Made in the likeness of man (Himself guiltless, no taint of sin in Him, incorruptibly pure, and therefore not subject to death), He voluntarily drank the cup of God's righteous judgment which was our due. Made sin!-treated as if it were Himself who had violated the majesty of God's law, and He tasted, in its deepest bitterness, death as the judgment of God against sin. He associated Himself with our guilt, that- by His death-we might become associated with Him in resurrection-life and glory. What a mighty change has been wrought, introducing us into a place where no mere creature could possibly have a place. As a creature, we cannot rise above our own creature-thoughts and conditions. In association (fellowship) with Christ, death and judgment are behind us, and we have to do with the resurrection-power which raised Christ from the grave.

At the close of Romans 5, the writer speaks of the two headships-of Adam and of Christ-and he contrasts the position of those severally under those two heads before God. In the following chapter he shows how the soul reaches this new position, and how complete is the transference (as before God) from the Adam headship-under which all men are by natural birth-onto the ground of Christ's headship.

Do we sufficiently realize how impossible it is for a person to be under two headships at the same time? We acquiesce in this, but are we living in a conscious sense of having died out of that condition to which the penalty of sin and death attached, having become identified with Jesus Christ in His death?

"Planted together in the likeness of His death"-the penalty having been fully met, the once guilty is completely cleared of all charge, and the guiltless One having borne the judgment of God, the once guilty is now accounted guiltless before God. "In that He died, He died unto sin once" (Rom. 6:10). There is, of course, only one interpretation of this passage:He died penally, once for all. Never will that question need to be raised again. The sentence under which we lay has been executed; and not only this, but God's judgment against the very root which produced such sad fruit (sin in our nature), has been executed, and we are now in Christ, our new Head, so that the believer can sing:

Death and judgment are behind us,
Grace and glory are before;
All the billows rolled o'er Jesus,
There they spent their utmost power.

Jesus died, and we died with Him,
'Buried' in His grave we lay;
One with Him in new creation,
Now 'in Him' in heaven's bright day.

To the believers in Colosse, Paul wrote, "You being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh" (2:13)-that is of course morally dead-and entreats them thus:"Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ, from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world are ye subject to (worldly) ordinances?" (Col. 2:20); and he continues, "Set your affections on things above and not on things on the earth. For ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3).

May God help us to be true to this fellowship, refusing all that merely appeals to the natural man. J. W. H. N.

(To be continued.)