In the Beloved | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 9, 1903

“In the Beloved”

God made man a little lower than the angels, but man fell much lower by his sin. Now he is far separated from God, but he is to be brought back again. Jesus Christ came to do that work; and in order to do it, he came, not where man was before he fell, but where man was after he fell. This is the lesson of Jacob’s ladder. It rested on the earth where Jacob was, but the topmost round reached to heaven. When Christ comes to help man out of the pit, he does not come to the edge of the pit and look over, and say, Come up here, and I will help you back. If man could help himself up to the place from which he fell, he could do all the rest. If he could help himself one step, he could help himself all the way; but it is because man is utterly ruined, weak, and wounded and broken to pieces, in fact, perfectly helpless, that Jesus Christ comes right down where he is, and meets him there. He takes his flesh, and becomes a brother to him. Jesus Christ is a brother to us in the flesh; he was born into the family.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.” He had only one Son, and he gave him to us. “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son

is given.” Sin has made a change even in heaven; for Jesus Christ, because of sin, has taken upon himself humanity, and to-day he wears that humanity, and will through all eternity. Jesus Christ became the Son of man as well as the Son of God. He was born into our family. He did not come as an angelic being, but was born into the family, and grew up in it. He was a child, a youth, a young man, a man in the full prime of life, in our family. He is the Son of man, related to us, bearing the flesh that we bear.

Adam was the representative of the family; therefore his sin was a representative sin. When Jesus Christ came, he came to take the place in which Adam had failed. “And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” The last Adam is the man Christ Jesus, and he came down to unite the human family with the divine family. God is spoken of as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, came himself to this part of the family, that he might win it back again, that there might be a reunited family in the kingdom of God. He came and took the flesh of sin which this family had brought upon themselves by sin, and wrought out salvation for them, condemning sin in the flesh.

Adam failed in his place, and by the offense of one many were made sinners. Jesus Christ gives himself not only for us, but to us, uniting himself with the family in order that he might take the place of the first Adam, and as head of the family win back what was lost by the first Adam. The righteousness of Jesus Christ is a representative righteousness, just as the sin of Adam was a representative sin; and Jesus Christ as the last Adam, gathered to himself the whole family.

Jesus Christ, in taking the place of Adam, took our place completely, in order that we might take his place. He took our place with all its consequences, and that is death, in order that we might take his place with all its consequences, and that is life eternal. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” He was not a sinner, but he invited God to treat him as though he were a sinner, in order that we who were sinners might be treated as though we were righteous. “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.” The sorrows that he bore were our sorrows, and it is actually true that he did so identify himself with our human nature as to bear in himself all the sorrows and all the griefs of all the human family. “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.” What was bruising to him was healing to us, and he was bruised in order that we might be healed. “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” There was no sin in him, but the sins of the whole world were laid on him. “Behold, the Lamb of God, that beareth the sin of the world.” “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”

Whether a man repents or not, it is true that Jesus Christ has borne his griefs, his sins, his sorrows, and he is invited to lay them on Jesus Christ. If every sinner in this world should repent with all his soul, and turn to Jesus Christ, the price has been paid. Jesus Christ did not wait for us to repent before he died for us. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Christ has died in behalf of every single soul; he has borne the grief and carried the sorrow; and he simply asks us to lay it on him, and let him bear it.

Every one of us was represented in Jesus Christ when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. We were all there in Jesus Christ. We were all represented in Adam after the flesh; and when Jesus Christ came as the last Adam, he stepped right into the place of the first Adam, and thus we are all represented in him. He invites us to step into the spiritual family. He has formed this new family of which he is the head. He is the new man. In him we have the union of the divine and the human.

In that new family every one of us is represented. “And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, paid tithes in Abraham. For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him.” When Melchisedec went out to meet Abraham returning from the spoil, Abraham paid to him a tenth of all. Levi was still in the loins of his father Abraham, but inasmuch as he was a descendant of Abraham, what Abraham did, the Scripture says that Levi did in Abraham. Levi, who descended from Abraham according to the flesh, had not been born when Abraham paid tithe, but in that Abraham paid tithe, he paid tithe also. It is exactly so in this spiritual family. What Christ did as head of this new family, we did in him. He was our representative. He did not become simply a man, but he became flesh, and every one that should be born into his family was represented in Jesus Christ when he lived here in the flesh. You see, then, that every one who connects himself with this family is given the credit for doing in Christ all that Christ did. Christ was not a representative outside of him, disconnected from him; but in this spiritual family, every one who should afterwards be born did what Christ did, as Levi paid tithe in Abraham.

All humanity was brought together in the divine head, Jesus Christ. He suffered on the cross. Then it was the whole family in Jesus Christ which was crucified. “For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died.” What we need in our experience is to enter into the fact that we did die in him. But while it is true that Jesus Christ paid the whole price, bore every grief, was humanity itself, yet it is also true that no man receives benefit from that except he receives Jesus Christ, except he is born again. Only those who are twice born can enter into the kingdom of God. Those who are born in the flesh must be born again, born of the Spirit, in order that they may really be in Christ.

The work of Christ is to bestow the character of God on us, and in the meantime God looks upon Jesus Christ and his perfect character instead of upon our sinful character. The very moment that we empty ourselves, or let Christ empty us of ourselves, and believe on Jesus Christ and receive him as our personal Saviour, God looks upon him as indeed our personal representative. Then he does not see us and all our sin. He sees Jesus Christ, and we are accepted in the Beloved.