.I (lnclt1nbent OJ St. Jmnes's, Ryde, Isle oj Wigllt.) - The Gospel ...

736 The -Gospel Magazine
Well, first, we know how deeply sunk in ruin and sin we were and
are by nature. Oh! what an agonizing, humbling, distressing beyond
description sight, when the Holy Spirit opened our eyes to see how
helpless and ruined and permeated with sin-altogether lost. "Behold,
I am vile, I abhor myself"; "My sin is ever before me." But Job
and David were brought into loving favour, and blessed. So are all
the dear blood-bought family of God. Painful and humbling as this
quickening of soul and enlightenment were, yet it was life from the dead.
God's own beloved people are brought low by reason of knowledge of
sin, and raised up when the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus" made sin for us,
that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."
Then, indeed, meditation of Him is fragrant and sweet, as the
believer's standing in Christ is seen in all its beauty and fulness and
sate keeping. "Ye are complete in Him," or as another rendering of
the words has it, "Ye are filled full in Him"-washed in His blood,
justified by His grace, sanctified by the Holy Spirit, made new creatures
in Christ Jesus. Oh! that soul-comforting expression, "In Him,"
so often used by the Apostle Paul. "Your life is hid with Christ in
God." It is a wonderful declaration, implying incorporation; so to
speak, into His life. How assured, how inviolable, how unassailable!
" Your lite is hid with Christ," and not only so, but" Christ in God.'·'
Reader, just think of it. Dwell upon it for a space-my hidden life
"with Christ in God." Meditate upon the sweetness of it all-so
closely joined to Him that thy life is invisible, covered with Christ,
" hid with Christ in God." It seems to me from the context of the
passage-" Ye are dead"-and the precept immediately preceding­
" Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth"­
that the whole life and standing in Christ means entire separation from
the world, insensibility to all its charms. "Ye are dead "-dead to
this poor fleeting sinful dying dazzling world, with its sorrows and
fears and snares, its allurements, its temptations, its meretriciousness;
dead to all lure, but in very truth alive unto God, living in Him, the
life all covered and centred and hidden, "hid with Christ in God."
Immediately follows the glorious passage, "When Christ, Who is our
life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory." As
the quaint hymn expresses it :-
" And this I do find
"Ve two are so joined,
He'll not be in glory
And leave me behind."
" Christ in you, the hope of glory"; "I am glorified in them";
" The glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may
be one, even as We are one: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may
be made perfect in one." How harmoniously the precious words,
" I in them, and Thou in Me," chime with " Your life is hid with Christ
in God." "Accepted in the Beloved." In Him accepted and acceptable.
I was reading lately, " The Beloved is accepted of God: the
saints are in the Beloved: and the saints therefore are accepted in