GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 8

OUR PERSONAL PROMISES

JESUS, YOU…………DELIVER ME OUT OF ALL MY AFFLICTIONS —Psalm 34:19

 JESUS, YOU……….. RAISE THOSE WHO ARE BOWED DOWN  Ps 146:8

   JESUS, YOU….. ARE BEFORE ALL THINGS AND YOU HOLD ALL THINGS TOGETHER    Col 1:17

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THE WORD FOR TODAY

1Corinthians 1:30

 “But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption”

Andrew Murray begins chapter 10, entitled “As Your Redemption” in his book, “Abide in Christ”

Here we have the top of the ladder, reaching into heaven – the blessed end to which Christ and life in Him is to lead.  The word “redemption”, though sometimes applied to our deliverance from the guilt of sin, here refers to our complete and final deliverance from all its consequences when the Redeemer’s work will become fully manifest, even to the redemption of the body itself. ( Romans 8:21-23 ~ “because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.  For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.  Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.”)

The expression points us to the highest glory to be hoped for in the future and, therefore, also to the highest blessing to be enjoyed in the present in Christ.   We have seen how  Christ is our wisdom, revealing to us God and His love, with the nature and conditions of the salvation that love has prepared.  He is our righteousness, restoring us to a right relationship with God and securing us His favor and friendship.  As a King, He is our sanctification, forming and guiding us into obedience to the Father’s holy will.  As these three offices work out God’s one purpose, the grand consummation will be reached, the complete deliverance from sin and all its effects will be accomplished, and ransomed  humanity will regain all that it had ever lost.

“Christ is made by God unto us ….redemption.”(1 Cor. 1:30)  The word invites us to look upon Jesus, not only as He lived on earth, teaching us by word and example; as He died, to reconcile us with God; as He lives again, a victorious King, rising to receive His crown;  but also as, sitting at the right hand of God, He takes again the glory that He had with the Father, before the world began, and holds it there for us.  It consists in this, that there His human nature, yes, His human body, freed from all the consequences of the sin to which He once had been exposed, is now admitted to share  again the divine glory.  As the Son of Man, He dwells on the throne and in the bosom of the Father; the deliverance from what He had to suffer from sin is complete and eternal.  The complete redemption is found embodied in His own person;  what He as a man is and has in heaven is the complete redemption.  He is made to us redemption!

We are in Him as such.  And the more intelligently and believingly we abide in Him as our redemption, the more we will experience, even here, of “the powers of the world to come” (Hebrews 6:5).  As our communion with Him becomes more intimate and intense and we let the Holy Spirit reveal Him to us in His heavenly glory, the more we realize how the life in us is the life of One who sits upon the throne of heaven.  We feel the power of an endless life working in us.  We taste the eternal life.  We have the foretaste of the eternal glory.

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