EVEN AS HE - THE SECRET OF HIS LOVE

The wisdom of the fathers

EVEN AS HE

THE SECRET OF THIS LOVE

“Because as he is, so are we also in this world!” This love is the fruit of faith. It is the blossom which grows on the fair tree of trust. Its roots are in the very heart of Jesus. Its life is nourished by His very life and love. It is as we realize what He is to us, and what we are to Him, that we enter into the fulness of His love. There is no stronger statement anywhere in God's Word of our intimate and absolute union with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It does not mean that some day we will be like Him, but here, and now, as He is, so are we in this world.

1. WE ARE ONE WITH HIM IN HIS DEATH

His death was our death, “For we thus judge that, if one died for all, then were all died.” He hung upon the cross in our name, and His dying has as effectually settled all the claims of God's law against us as if we had been executed for our own crimes and had already passed through all the pains and penalties of hell. How can we help loving such a Friend? What will we fear when He Himself has taken our very sins? It is only as we realize this fully that we will live in the perfect love that casts out all fear.

2. AS HE IS IN HIS RESURRECTION, SO ARE WE IN THIS WORLD

For we are not only dead with Him, but we also live with Him. The life we now live is not the same as our past. The saved man is no longer himself. He is dead, and the man who lives in His stead is a new man in Christ Jesus. He can truly say: “I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me.” It is not the same man. Your old sins are regarded as the sins of another. You are even as He. God recognizes not the old man, but the Christ in you, and receives you as He does His own beloved Son. Why then should you be afraid? Only realize your unity with Him, and His perfect love will cast out all fear.

3. AS HE IS IN HIS ACCEPTANCE BY HIS FATHER, SO ARE WE IN THS WORLD For “He has made us accepted in the Beloved,” or, literally, in the Son of His love. That is to say, we are accepted even as the Son of His love is. We are as dear as the Son of His love is. The word “accepted” means received with complacency and delight -- God is pleased with us for Jesus' sake, even as He is with Christ Himself. to be continued

(from "Wholly Sanctified" by A.B. Simpson)